Latest Multichannel Marketing content from Econsultancy

Innovative trends to watch in 2012

2012-02-10T09:22:00+00:00

Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of crossover, with mobile, video and social technologies all emerging as consistent trends to watch.

While some technologies are still in their infancy, savvy marketers are starting to experiment with new channels as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

The expanding mobile market

The “Year of Mobile” may have been repeated to the point of cliché, but many contributors felt that 2011 was the year when mobile devices became ubiquitous. Concerns about multichannel attribution finally became a reality for marketers, while optimisation and platform relevance would increase in importance going forward.

Nishma Robb, Business Development & Marketing Directo at I Spy Marketing summed this up nicely:

In 2011 we were told that it was the year of mobile although we at I Spy thought that it was the year of the smartphone. This year we think that it will be the year of multichannel integration on smartphones.

While many others commented on the expected expansion of the market in 2012.

Maani Safa, Innovation Director at Somo talked about the role of tablets:

Looking ahead I believe there will be an explosion in tablet-first applications. To date the mobile space has predominantly focused on consumer markets. In the year ahead I am particularly interested in how mobile and tablet devices can be put to use within the enterprise.

Jonathan Horden, MD/COO at PrismaStar

The rise of the tablet; whether it's Apple’s iPad or Amazon’s Kindle, innovation in tablet technology has been phenomenal in 2011 and has now bridged the gap from early adopter to main stream technology must have. Could these be the death of the laptop?

More efficient data tracking and use

Jonathan also felt that understanding the data setsprovided by multiple devices would be key to success in the future, a view echoed by a number of those we interviewed:

The biggest trend has to be convergence, creating a unified online experience across whatever channel the consumer wants to interact with the ability to transfer that experience to any other media. This includes mobile phones, tablets, the PC at work, the laptop at home, calls to telesales or customer services and any in-store experience.

A shopper can browse for products on our in-store kiosks, transfer results to his home PC or mobile device, complete the transaction with a telesales operative, or any combination of the above! The entire experience is consistent and integrated across all channels.

Chris Ward,European MD at Kenshoo, and HSBC Expat’s Head of Marketing Lisa Wood also felt strongly about this:

Chris Ward:

I think the biggest trend for 2012 will be consolidation. With multiple new channels emerging, marketers will want to consolidate all their activity on one platform/dashboard. It has become even more important now to be able to see the larger picture and understand how all the different marketing activities tie in together to help achieve a goal.

Lisa Wood:

Increasingly businesses also need to view and manage all their digital activity in the wider context of the ‘digital marketing ecosystem’. Everything is interconnected.

Paid media can launch a viral campaign based on owned content, generating earned media conversations and links, which drive traffic, improve search engine rankings and ultimately save money in paid media ads that can be reinvested.

Overlaying this will be the need for one analytics package that allows businesses to see the effects of digital marketing efforts across the ecosystem, and ultimately compare ROI of paid, owned and earned media using a common set of metrics.

The importance of video

Lisa was one of many who believed in the growing importance of video next year, despite the problems presented by multiple platform deployment.

In addition, many believe that TV will once more move to the forefront for advertisers, thanks to connected technologies and increased integration.

Lisa explains:

Google TV was probably inevitable, but the fact that you can now use your mobile as a remote control for your TV when you’re on the move is a great innovation. Increasingly I think we’ll see mobile devices being able to control all aspects of your life.

3D TV is starting to really take-off and the fact that you’re going to be able to view 3D TV without glasses will mean this innovation is more than a fad. Couple this with the latest camera gadgets that allow you to shoot your own 3D film and this becomes a really interesting area.

As founder of video agency Adjust Your Set, Chris Gorell Barnes is well placed to comment on increasing importance of video:

Video will be everywhere. So prevalent has video become as the pre-eminent communication tool of our age that Cisco has claimed that by 2015, 1m minutes of video will cross the internet every second.

The next 12 months we’ll see a rise in communication and engagement using video across multiple channels. There will also be a rise in mobile as a marketing channel, particularly mobile vouchers and these devices working together, engaging with content that will lead to sales for brands both via e-commerce and in-store.

Michael Steckler, Managing Director, Northern Europe for Criteo told us:

Connected TV/Video online, driven by both social applications and devices the way we consume TV will never be the same again, morphing into sophisticated applications, which allow you to interact in real-time.

Miso and Zeebox are a couple of examples of companies that are really taking the lead in the social video space. Video is an area where we will probably see more consolidation.

With $160bn to play for globally, it’s an extremely hot area – and much like display advertising, we may start to see a divergence between video advertising that has a more direct response (utilising data, multiple creative and real-time user feedback) and brand advertising which will be driven more by the content experience, engaging formats and new distribution channels.

Personalisation and integration

Overall, respondents felt that 2012 would see an increased leap into multichannel, with more accurate data attribution and tracking combining with increased use of mobile technology to create a more socially driven experience.

Dan Robins is Head of Paid Search at Carat / iProspect:

I think 2012 will be the first year digital properly bridges the gap into offline. Carat has proven the link between search and in store sales, Google is releasing more voucher-type products, QR codes have really exploded despite many years in the doldrums to name a few, and I think advertisers are no longer able to view their online channel in isolation.

Added to this I think digital marketers will finally make the break through into exactly how to get to grips with attribution modelling. For all too long, we’ve been talking about it as being important to look into but the models have been slow to produce, unwieldy and really speaking didn’t show to much of use.

As cross-channel technologies such as Ignition One and Marin develop and their use grows, more advertisers will find it easier to build cross-channel attribution models and actually put them to good use, driving efficiency in their activity.

This increased ability to track consumer behaviour looks set to transform campaigns, making it possible for companies to provide truly integrated, optimised ‘customer journeys’ for the first time.

This in turn is driving a remodelling of display and targeted marketing messages.

Deepak Jha VP of Commercial at tour booking site isango! Covered all of this in his response:

Mobile. As more attractions and tour organisers start accepting paperless vouchers, tablets become more sophisticated and roaming charges come down- the battle will shift from search to bookings.

Social media. Integration of facebook and the trading websites so that brands can influence customers based on the behaviours and attitudes of their friends in the reference group.

Globalisation: The ability to adapt the business to local context in emerging markets like BRICS (Brasil, India, Russia, China, South Africa) and MENA (Middle East and North Africa). We rolled out Love Orlando Tickets to Brazil recently and got an excellent response, however there were many local contextual factors that we had to address on the way.”

What are your thoughts on the coming year?

Do you think that increased globalisation and multiple touchpoint campaigns will increase, or do you feel that personalised journeys are still out of reach on traditional platforms like TV despite new interactive and integrated technology? We’d love to hear your opinions in the comments.

As we draw closer to this year's Innovation Awards, we’ll continue to post responses from our shortlist on a variety of innovative topics.

Click here to see this year’s full shortlist and book your table for our awards ceremony, taking place in London on February 23rd. For further information you can also download our regularly updated Innovation Report.

New Cillit Bang product launched exclusively on Facebook

2012-02-09T12:13:13+00:00

The launch of Cillit Bang 'All in 1 Dish & Surface Cleaner' is being supported with digital activity across several social media channels, using competitions and games to talk to its target audience.

RB is also resurrecting its Barry Scott character, who featured heavily in previous campaigns.

RB's UK marketing director Stefan Gaa said the use of social media allows the company to interact more intimately with its target market, tailoring Facebook page offers quickly and precisely.

F-commerce is a growing trend among consumer brands - last week Cadbury announced the launch of a new Wispa product to the bar’s 1.8m Facebook fans, while in November Heinz made a new Tomato Ketchup product available to its 900,000 fans a month before selling it in shops.

However while these two examples made sense since the brands involved had large existing Facebook communities that were highly engaged, Cillit Bang currently only has 12,000 fans on the social network.

Are consumers going to be as excited about an extension to a range of cleaning products as they are about the launch of a new variety of their favourite chocolate bar?

MPG Media Contacts head of consumer innovation Amy Kean said that while a Facebook launch and bespoke shopping tab may play a part in driving word of mouth, RB shouldn't rely on Facebook as its sole marketing activity.

We have to remember that it can cost a relatively small amount to create these applications, and as long as Cillit Bang is treating this as a test, rather than hedging its bets on driving all its sales through a social platform, then it's a great tactic."

She said that Cillit Bang is a well-respected brand, with an engaging spokesperson, and the product does look like genuine innovation in the sector.

As such, if it can enhance its social capital by amplifying purchases and gaining recommendations through Facebook, then it's probably worth the investment.

I'm assuming that the campaign will be launched with a significant Facebook advertising spend, too, which will at the very least drive awareness of the new product, even if the sales don't go directly through social media."

At the beginning of the year, we compiled 11 of the best examples of f-commerce for 2012, which is an updated version of a post from May 2011 that details 101 more.

O2 continues to surprise and delight with Valentine's campaign

2012-02-09T10:36:00+00:00

O2 head of social media Alex Pearmain said that the efforts at Christmas produced over 40,000 mentions on twitter, was covered on CBS' breakfast show in the US – and resulted in over 1,000 videos.

O2 is focusing on creating some ‘surprise and delight’ experiences for our customers and finding new and different ways to connect them – as well as with them as a brand.”

Unlike the Christmas campaign, which was wholly promoted via social media, customers will be informed via emails to its 5m strong newsletter database.

We wanted to make sure that customers have the opportunity to hear about and take part in the activity first, hence using our email programme to alert them ahead of anyone else.”

If people want a totally personal message, customers (and anyone else on Twitter once the campaign breaks) simply tweet the message they would like the O2 Cupids to read out to @O2, including using the hashtag #O2Cupid.

The company says that "every message will be picked up", and that the personalised videos will be posted to the O2 Cupids' YouTube Channel.

O2 will even send users’ messages to other people directly, leaving recipients guessing as to who their mystery admirer might be.

The personalised message idea is nothing new. Old Spice lead the way with its ‘Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ campaign in 2010, which was a huge success and sparked a series of copycat attempts. The Muppets used the same tactic just last month to promote its new film, getting Kermit the Frog to record personalised responses to questions sourced from Twitter.

'Surprise and delight' is also an age-old customer service method, but the introduction of social media has supercharged this. The idea of being a ‘one of the chosen’, with your personalised treat fully accessible to all, makes it more powerful. The reach is bigger, the reward is bigger, and it’s a simple mechanic that works very well when it’s done right.

The thing about this technique however, is that though it may seem gimmicky in some situations, it’s actually a very smart ways to create evangelists while benefitting from the positive effects of social media.

You create people who will talk endlessly, possibly for the rest of their lives, about that one time a brand did something amazing – while talking to a broader audience, teasing them with the idea of what they might be part of it if they were a customer.

How do you build an innovative company?

2012-02-08T10:31:02+00:00

1. Define your objectives

As with any area of business, having an initial strategy in place is incredibly important. However many great ideas you have, if they don’t fit with your ultimate business goals then you won’t see a return on your efforts.

Every company needs to decide what innovation means to them, and prioritise projects and investment accordingly. Sri Sharma from Net Media Planet told us:

First everyone has to have a clear vision of what innovation means for the company. From that, time and effort, starting right from the top, needs to be dedicated to pushing creativity, testing and ultimately innovation.

Ambarish Mitra, the CEO of Blippar echoed this sentiment, but points out that it’s important not to dismiss left-field ideas out of hand:

We as a company have a united vision with each person contribute in their roles to reach the milestones and keeping the integrity of the vision. We are very research and development heavy as a business where failure is an option.

The business is run in a very transparent fashion where each person is encouraged to pursue own micro ideas and even disagree with the business where necessary.

2. Structure your efforts

In fact, the majority of those asked believed that innovation could come from anywhere, and in order to be most useful, you shouldn’t attempt to limit who can contribute or where an idea can come from, but this does need some structure and leadership in order to be effective.

Jonathan Cook, Head of New Media at Valtech:

Bringing different but similar perspectives together enables you to make innovative leaps. We try to let people with different skill-sets and backgrounds look at a problem from their angle, often using analogies from solutions to problems in other business verticals. It is important to support the innovation process with resources, understand that it takes some time to implement and not ask for a return on investment too soon.

Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital:

For us there doesn’t have to be process around innovation. We’re an inclusive business and would never want to limit anyone. We have an email address (ideas@tbgdigital.com) which any employee can use to send their thoughts and ideas to. These ideas could be complete or just the start of something new.

Either way, we listen, digest and always respond. If the idea shows promise, we’ll get the relevant people involved in the project. However, we do think innovation has to be led by someone – committees are notoriously bad at innovation. Someone has to be responsible for the final decision of what to invest in.

Structuring your approach correctly can work both ways, allowing innovation to flourish without disrupting day-to-day business.

Bobby Healy is CTO for Car Trawler, an online car hire affiliate system and booking engine. He explains:

You have to separate the operational aspects of the company from the creative / forward thinking parts. It’s easy to think of lots of innovative ideas and products but to actually execute on them is difficult. Often, the day to day improvements/efficiencies of a business starve the available resources and you need to place a strong emphasis on the value of innovating to the longer term prospects of the company.

It’s the innovation you make today that builds on and protects the revenue two to three years from now. If you don’t get that right, you reach the top of the revenue curve earlier than you should.

3. Give credit where it’s due

Encouraging employees and allowing them the freedom to explore ideas is a great start, but it’s also important to give them a reason to share.

Glen Conybeare and Paul Huggett from marketing agency Stickyeyes emphasised the importance of incentives.

According to Glen:

Make it everyone’s job but put someone in charge to drive opportunities forward. That’s what we have done at Stickyeyes. We encourage ideas throughout the whole organisation, offering various incentives including profit share, one person has the role of turning the better ideas into viable, commercially focused business opportunities.

Paul believes 'thinking time' is vital:

As well as the above, consider that good innovative ideas can come from anywhere; from family and friends right through to clients. It’s important to step away from the day to day delivery grind and make time to have general catch ups with people with no specific aim other than to ‘chew the fat’.

4. Size doesn’t matter

Innovation isn’t the sole preserve of agile start-ups, or of huge companies with matching R&D budgets. Ideas are always valuable and should be given a chance.

Alan K. Paterson is European Marketing Director for Farnell element14, a large company that encourages innovation at all levels:

Innovation for us is embedded across all areas of the business. It is a key differentiator for us and our customers, which is why we have a vibrant culture of innovation ranging from industry leading leadership ideas like the element14 community to simple process improvements.

We have an 'innovation exchange' housed on our company intranet where employees globally can propose new ideas and suggested which are then reviewed by a representative team and prioritised on merit, investigated and frequently implemented. Earlier this year our employees globally voted on the top ranking 20 ideas and selected 5 for us to implement. Everyone who is a part of our business is involved in innovation.

5. Don’t be afraid to fail

Finally, it’s important to take setbacks in your stride. Not every idea can be chocolate covered gold (and for the optimists out there, remember that plenty of great discoveries were accidents).

If at first you don’t succeed, it’s not the end of the world. A number of candidatesmentioned the importance of learning from your mistakes.

Charlie Rowan, Founder of social bookmarking tool Whishin:

I think it is important to not get in a panic about making mistakes. When trying something new it is important to listen and learn from what has happened. If I can make sure this value is part of my organisation, future employees will feel less inhibited about voicing innovative thoughts and trying them out.

David Loughnan, MD at Clicked Creative:

Innovation shouldn’t be a department or a job title within an organisation, but rather an intrinsic part of company culture. At Clicked Creative we promote innovation by being positive about everyone’s ideas right across the company.

It’s inevitable that some ideas might not make the cut, but we make sure we explore all ideas and only make exclusions with valid reason and explanation.

In our next post, we’ll look at the financial implications of business innovation, including assigning budgets and getting stakeholders to support ideas.

How have you fostered innovative change and development in your own business? Is innovation a core business component or simply a matter of course? We’d love to hear your ideas and methods in the comments.

Econsultancy’s Innovation Awards will be presented in London on the 23rd of February. You can book a table for the awards ceremony, and view this year's entire shortlist by clicking here.

We’re sure it’ll be a great party, and to make sure we’re dancing all night, remember to add your tracks to our Awards Spotify Playlist!

How brands lost the Super Bowl race for the second screen

2012-02-07T20:16:00+00:00

Monday’s industry blogs have been suggesting that brands should be praised for not ‘drinking the social media cool-aid.’ Hashtags represent a waste of time said Drew Olandoff from The Next Web; “…there’s absolutely no way I’m going to ask millions of people to use a hashtag. There’s just no context to be had there and nothing to be gained”

But what the commentators are missing is that a successful social media strategy does not begin and end with Facebook and Twitter. Rather it manifests itself most effectively when embedded in the behaviour that the brand exhibits. When used effectively as part of a well integrated plan it’s about being useful or entertaining. They need to create a compelling reason why people absolutely have to right now this minute reach over their chicken wings and beers and reach for their second screen to call up or act on that ad they’ve just seen.

According to research done by the Altimeter Group, although most ads promoted an online destination of some sort- only 16% of them promoted a call to action in what could be described as a social media space and a third had no online call to action whatsoever.

The real point here is not whether or not the TV spots drove people online –it’s about what value proposition did or didn’t await them there. Most of the TV ads that featured any online call to action at all simply encouraged people to go to the corporate website, but what would be in it for the viewers if they did? There’s been plenty of debate over who had the best or worst ad, but the point is why go out and splash $3.5 million on your 30 second spot without using social media to amplify its effect?

One of the best examples of a wasted opportunity came in the form of Budweiser commercial from Anomaly – an agency usually vaunted for its clever thinking. The ad featured a mashup of the Cult’s 1985 rock classic She Sells Sanctuary with Flo Rida’s track Good Feeling. Unfortunately the agency failed to score as there was no meaningful integration with an online strategy. Of the hundreds of millions watching, you can bet a fair few would’ve head to Google to locate the song, feet still tapping. Yet what they would have found was digital tumbleweed.

Apart from a few Cult fanzine sites, several weeks old, that announced that the ad was going to be aired, there appeared to be no strategy for using the creative assets to their full potential. What came as a big surprise was there was no corporate presence against any of the relevant searches from Budweiser – no ‘official version’ of the song or even a teaser announcing its forthcoming release. There was no iTunes link and not so much as a mention of the remixer who’s thought to combine these two tracks. They could have created something that had further reach and would drive consumers back to their own online space. As of today, they still haven't capitalised on that.

As a contrast, look at Sony’s Bravia TV launch in 2005. Their campaign went beyond their colourful ‘bouncing balls’ commercial. It featured a fully integrated microsite which had the Jose Gonzalez track freely available for download as well as a host of other goodies such as a screensaver and behind-the-scenes footage of the ad’s filming. So effective was this approach that it generated a vast amount of online buzz and huge volume of inbound links to the site which contributed to them ranking number 1 in Google for the term “advert”. The only shame is that they didn’t keep the microsite live or even better create it on a subdomain of the main Sony site, so only the wayback machine can show us a hint of what they did.

Above all, what this lack of integration shows is that there’s still a divide between Madison Avenue and Mountain View. Both agencies and advertisers were too cautious to try and mix things up, or more likely too stuck in their old planning models. This is bizarre because despite the fact that the event itself broke a new record for the number of tweets per second, very few brands actually capitalized on the second screen opportunity that presented itself better than Eli Manning’s pass to his wide receiver in the fourth quarter.

Perhaps like the New England Patriots’ quarterback, Tom Brady, the brand managers and CMOs will come to rue missed opportunities to get the most from this uniquely old fashioned spend-fest. In hindsight we can all see ways things can be improved and as the old adage goes it’s certainly easier to critique than create, but surely it wouldn’t have taken much to link a well designed digital experience to the TV spots?

Econsultancy’s JUMP (Joined Up Marketing Perspectives) conference launches in New York on May 23, 2012. If you want to learn how to create more integrated campaigns and build connected brands, come join us at JUMP. We might even buy you a Budweiser...

FUNNEL

2012-02-07T17:40:07+00:00

A roadmap for B2B marketers.

It’s a hugely exciting time to be a marketer in business-to-business and ‘considered purchase’ markets. New tools, technologies and tactics are transforming the way marketers engage with their prospects and ultimately turn these engagements into revenue. It’s all about practical advice on how to drive new business and what ‘good’ looks like.

And it’s supported by a new generation of marketing tools and technologies, including:

Marketing Automation • Lead Nurturing • Campaign Management • Email marketing. Analytics • Revenue Performance Management • Web Personalization • Marketing Resource Management • Data Management • Real-time Prospect Identification • Web and Video Marketing Platforms…

It’s all about the new strategies, tactics and technologies that generate and nurture leads over time, then convert them into trackable and measurable revenue.

Snapshot

•A one-day conference for senior sales & marketing strategists in all B2B and considered purchase markets.

•Combining ‘big picture’ vision with practical advice from front-line revenue marketers plus quick tours and deep dives into the latest marketing automation and lead management software & services.

•From Econsultancy – the world’s leading digital marketing community, independent publisher, event organiser and training company. Over 100,000 marketing members strong and growing fast.

FUNNEL was the first UK event to cover the new sales & marketing landscape for every market that doesn’t just ‘sell off the page’ in a single hit. It harnesses the power of marketing automation, lead nurturing, data, analytics, search, social, inbound, outbound, online and offline – all in the service of revenue. Join us.

Vodafone implements TagMan's technology to create "unstoppable digital"

2012-02-07T16:00:17+00:00

 Vodafone online and telesales marketing manager Gareth Davies said that the company can now track all campaigns in one place, and view how they combine to result in sales.

We truly know how paid search, natural search, email, display affiliates and such interact and support each other.”

Davies added that using new providers would offer better value for money since TagMan will enable it to add new tags to its web pages in minutes rather than months.

Vodafone affiliate and performance marketing manager James Talbot added that the collaboration will help to generate further savings through the optimisation of the company's de-duplication model.

TagMan’s announced a partnership with call tracking specialist AdInsight back in December that combines online with offline analytics.

The companies, both of which have previously won Econsultancy Innovation Awards, said that this would connect the dots between customers’ entire online journey and any phone calls to a business by housing AdInsight’s tracking inside the TagMan tag management system. 

At the time, the companies were investigating their client bases to develop a joint trial programme of the integration., which Vodafone would seem to be a perfect candidate for.

With successful implementation of TagMan’s offering under its belt, it seems only a matter of time before the mobile operator joins the dots even further to include phone tracking as well.

JUMP 2012 London

2012-02-07T15:59:14+00:00

JUMP, now in its third year, is a one-day conference for senior marketers looking to join up on and offline data, technologies, campaigns, agencies and creative. If the last decade was all about figuring out digital, the next is about integrating it, dissolving it into the mix and finding new hybrid strategies that combine on and offline.

JUMP brings together over 1500 digital and offline and marketers who are not just learning to speak the same language, they are their sharing data, insight, strategies and successes.

JUMP is a fast-moving, content-rich symposium packed with exciting new insight from top marketers across every industry wanting to learn about how to join up online and offline.

Photos from JUMP

JUMP is all about more effective marketing across channels...

Using search marketing to improve TV campaign effectiveness
Doubling catalogue sales using insights from web analytics
Driving call centre improvements with web metrics
Generating media coverage via online buzz (and vice versa)
Optimising marketing budgets with the right mix
Leveraging customer insight from all channels
Driving up ROI

See what happened at JUMP

Do sponsored messages ever work online?

2012-02-07T14:53:40+00:00

A deeper investigation in to the feedback reveals that:

Almost all of the feedback comes from four accounts.
Many accounts that left feedback have no avatar image or bio.
Most feedback is a single word like “Great!” repeated across multiple items.

Here’s an example snapshot of feedback:

The negative reviews are damning as well:

Taking all of this in to consideration it’s easy to see that this particular “paid tweets” service is poor. That’s just one example from Fiverr but you can see the same pattern of spam feedback and extreme negative comments here.

Although my personal favourite is this one:

Because who doesn’t want to be spammed with the same message for the rest of time?

It’s not just Fiverr.com, Ad.ly has an equally bad review from Ian Lurie with the great line:

Sponsored tweets rank in profitability somewhere below hiring alchemists to try to turn lead into gold.

What’s the risk?

Part of the problem is that it’s very easy to amass a large Twitter following very quickly through spammy tactics, such as following a lot of people, then un-following those that don’t follow back.

So one account with 40,000 followers could be rubbish if it’s been made in this way. The followers won’t trust what is said on the account, which means it would very rarely lead to sales.

If you compare this to a natural account that was grown slowly with only a thousand followers, this could be a far better option if the fans are engaged and actually care about and believe what the person says.

The other thing to consider is that to be legal, any message that is made to promote your product must be labelled as sponsored (such as by writing #spon).

The Office of Fair Trading has begun a crackdown in this area to ensure the rules are being followed. Which begs the question: if people know someone has been paid to post a sponsored message, will they believe it?

Let’s take two examples:

The first example is paid, the second is a beauty blogger who tried the product. Whilst the first one is very clearly a corporate plug, the second could have occurred naturally by someone who liked and enjoyed the product.

It’s likely that seeing “spon” on messages will become the equivalent of “I’ll just pop out for a cuppah” or using Sky+ to fast forward adverts.

This type of advert blindness is going to make people less receptive to sponsored tweets and more sceptical of these types of endorsements, especially when crammed in to 140 characters.

So do sponsored messages ever work?

If you don’t get sponsored messages absolutely right you also face investigation from legal bodies. The Katie Price snickers campaign is one such campaign being investigated as it had a leading series of messages, only that last of which was labelled as sponsored.

This means that people who saw the early messages in isolation (via retweets or missing the feed) didn’t get the whole picture.

Sponsored messages can work, but they do carry a lot of risk. For all the fallout from the Snickers campaign it got a lot of people talking about the brand. It was a great PR stunt, and if you don’t take it too seriously, actually funny too.

Yes, Katie Price was temporarily intelligent and eating a snickers did make her return back in to an “idiot”, but at the same time it played around with media perceptions and was an interesting enough campaign to get picked up in a lot of places.

Organising a campaign with a celebrity isn’t as hard as you’d think either. Sponsored Tweets list celebrities and you can take your pick.

As for whether or not they’re worth it, well unless you create something viral like Snickers did, most campaigns will only ever stick with the original celebrity so you get a one hit of coverage and views and that’s your lot.

There must be a better way

The Apple Approach

Apple is the most extreme brand for customer love. People like to post genuine messages of affection for the brand’s products, they do it for free, and they do it because they love the brand.

There’s no trickery here, and those honest messages help to encourage more people to get involved with the brand.

If people don’t naturally say nice things about your brand then you can get them involved in your brand instead. Cadbury’s are the kings at this. They recently launched a new Wispa pack via Facebook and got a “super-fan” to reveal it.

The over 270 comments that resulted from this are then helping to spread the word for free.

Want more examples?

The TOM’s shoes philosophy of giving away a pair of shoes to the third world whenever a pair is sold, makes them a brand people like to talk about.
Gucci has 6.3m Facebook fans. The quality of the product is what gets people talking about them.
Like our beauty blogger earlier, you can send products out to get them reviewed (More detail on this here).
When one of our employees had a bad experience with AutoGlass, he tweeted the company and it was fixed within days. He then wrote an article praising the service.
Equally, bad service can get you noticed in the wrong way, such as the McDStories hashtag or the same for Quantas that became flooded with bad experiences.
Creating fun shareable content will get your brand noticed. A page about Hydraulic Fracturing should not have 7,000 Facebook shares but it does because it’s well designed content.

So yes, you could pay for coverage, or you could get lifelong coverage by being a fun brand, with likeable content and good customer service. Your choice.

Why retailers need to embrace mobile internet in stores

2012-02-07T10:54:00+00:00

Mobile use in retail stores

There are now plenty of surveys which show the growth of mobile usage in retail stores:

An iModerate survey found that more than half of smartphone owners are using the internet in stores, with price comparison, checking store locations, and hunting for discounts the most common reasons.
Our Mobile Planet data sees 24% of UK smartphone owners taking their phones shopping with them in order to compare prices and inform themselves about products.
A Toluna/Econsultancy survey from May last year found that 19% of 2,000 online respondents had used their mobiles to compare prices and look at product reviews while out shopping.

Why do consumers use mobile in store?

There are two main reasons:

Price comparison

This is usually the main purpose of using mobile in stores, which makes perfect sense. The state of the economy means that customers are more price sensitive than ever, and mobile is the perfect tool for the job.

What's more, there are often huge savings to be made. If I'm looking at a TV in an electrical retailer, it's quite possible I could save £100 by checking for the same product on Amazon.

Looking for reviews

This is another common reason to reach for the smartphone when in store, and this is a behaviour that high street retailers should encourage.

Checking for a review of a product is a sure sign of purchase intent. It means they like the look of a product, and are perhaps just seeking some reassurance.

The threat for retailers

The problem for retailers is that, whatever the quality of service in store and the range of products on offer, shoppers always have the option of checking prices on their mobile phones and heading online, or to another high street retailer to make the purchase.

This 'unbundling of the shopping experience', and the threat from online retailers is described in detail here by Ashley Friedlein.

There are a number of mobile apps and websites that enable in store shoppers to check and compare product prices, but Amazon’s mobile products represent possibly the biggest single threat to offline retailers.

Using the barcode scanner on the app, customers can easily check the products they are looking at in store on Amazon’s site.

Since Amazon is often cheaper, with a variety of delivery options, this can pose a real threat.

How can offline and multichannel retailers meet this challenge?

Don't block internet access

I've seen a few stories around, which are difficult to substantiate, about retailers attempting to put obstacles in the way of customers with smartphones.

This could be counter-productive, and is certainly not the kind of tactic a forward-thinking retailer should be using.

Offer reviews at the point of sale

Retailers with reviews and ratings on their websites can easily bring this information into stores to help push products.

If a digital camera is recommended for the casual photographer, and has an average review score of five stars from 35 reviews, why not use this information?

I like the recommendations that can often be found in bookshops and wine merchants, which have been written by staff. They can help customers decide what to buy, and also have a personal touch that can appear more trustworthy.

In the same vein, retailers could combine online opinions with staff recommendations and other third party reviews.

Make sure you have a mobile site or app

If customers are going to pick up their phones and look for reviews, persuade them to use your site for this. Promote it in store.

If you can provide the reviews they need, then customers won't have to use competitors' sites where they might find a better deal.

Better still, provide them with a link on the store shelf where they can find reviews, or maybe a QR code or barcode to scan and view further information.

Comet provides a great example of this with its recent barcode scanning app. The purpose of the barcode scanner is not necessarily to allow price comparison while in competitors' stores, though I'm sure Comet won't mind if customers are doing this.

Instead, the main purpose is to make it easier for customers to see enhanced information on products on the shopfloor.

Comet promotes this in store, and the site and app have some very comprehensive product pages replete with reviews and expert buyer's guides, allowing customers to access this information when they need to see it.

Better still, it means they don't have to visit Amazon to find out.

It works too. Mobile now accounts for 10% of Comet's traffic, and the retailer enjoys an advantage in this area over multichannel rival Currys/PC World.

Mobile vouchers

For retailers that offer voucher codes online, allowing these codes to be redeemed in-store is one way to increase footfall, and maybe do some cross-selling when they arrive.

In conjunction with wi-fi, retailers could even target customers when they are using their mobiles in store.

NFC / mobile payments

NFC technology is yet to capture the public imagination, but it does give consumers another payment option for those times when they suddenly realise they have forgotten to get cash out and they are already at the cash register with their shopping.

Make sure they can access the information they need

This is where wi-fi comes in. It's about making the mobile experience easier for customers. Instead of relying on variable 3G connections, providing internet access means they can browse reviews, scan QR codes, and use AR apps like Blippar to their heart's content.

Let's say a customer wants to see a review. If their 3G signal is poor and they can't find what they want, will they still buy that camera?

Providing wi-fi means that they can easily access the information, while it also allows them to download your own app.

Wi-fi and efficient customer targeting

Wi-fi in store also provides a way to capture customer details and target them with offers. In fact, customers would be willing to receive some offers in return for the convenience of decent wi-fi.

Tesco recently introduced this in its larger stores. It does require a slightly clunky registration process which involves entering clubcard numbers, but the retailer is then armed with your purchase history. If Tesco can sweeten this process with a discount or two, it may well be worth the effort.

According to the ODR survey embedded below, 74% of respondents would be happy for the retailer to send a text or email with promotions.

They're in store, when better to sell them breakfast cereal or push a promotion?

House of Fraser recently ran a promotion in conjunction with O2, using free wi-fi, which aimed to drive incremental sales in the run up to Christmas. John Lewis recently added wi-fi to its stores.

In an excellent guest post from last year, Dave Wieneke looked at how mobile can be used to enhance the in-store experience for consumers, as well as providing retailers with some precision tools to target the mobile customer.

A blend of location and personalisation can make life easier for customers, while allowing retailers to target customers with relevant offers and recommendations.

One great example of this came from the French Casino supermarket chain. Its iPhone app allows users to compile shopping lists before heading to the store, where they can use their mobile to scan and pay for items in store.

This is useful for the customer, but also provides the retailer with a wealth of information of the customer's preferences and shopping habits.

Combine this with technology like Tesco's in-store 'sat nav' app and you have the ability to target customers in real time, according to their location.

Let's say the customer is entering the dairy aisle. They bought a particular brand of butter last week, and there's an offer on that this week. It's just five yards away.

Customers already have the smartphone and tablet technology in their bags and pockets that makes this possible, it's just a question of adapting to this and making it easier by providing wi-fi.

Mobile isn't going away, and the retailers that adapt to this trend quickly and use it to improve the customer experience will have a big advantage over their competitors.