E3 global insight magazine issue17 1

Global Insights Magazine Issue 17 - Edited by Rainfall 2014

e3 insights Relationships that last

Inside this issue

Building meaningful interactions between your brand and its customers

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Is your content

SEO is dead

Emergent brand?

Adapt or be ignored

what is missing in my life?

Long live content marketing

Evaluate your online presence

Choose your niche market

IS YOUR CONTENT

WHAT IS MISSING IN MY LIFE ?

Everything you create has to have both function and form. Function requires finding exactly what your segment needs and form requires identifying the right means to make yourself known. On the other hand, if what you offer is revolutionary, but you can’t get that message across, it’s equally futile.

So how do you reach across the chaos and establish effective communication with your audience? The answer: an effective content strategy.

Know your audience well When you’re creating content, you need to keep your audience’s motivation top of mind and consider what will make them want it. Is it because it makes them better at something, is it something they would want to share with their friends or because you just happened to be at the right place at the right time?

To find out, imagine a typical member of your target segment and try to live in their shoes for a while or simply ask them (this might be difficult some times because they might not know what they want).

Go to the places they go online and offline, gather their experience and build on that.

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Identify all the possible angles and tools and optimise them before you make them public. Make sure you are able to deliver a complete, impressive and unique experience on every platform you use. If your target audience likes images, use Flickr. If they like videos, reach them on YouTube or Vimeo. If they are at the office all day long, reach them through e-mail. Or if they use social websites, meet them there.

Maintain a relationship with your target audience “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly - they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced,” said the famous writer Aldous Huxley in his novel, “Brave New World”. The way you communicate with your audience is the one thing that will keep them hooked.

If your content is practical, easy to use and to digest, if your voice is objective, if you consider their motivation to go through your material, your chances of keeping them interested increase. Easier said than done, but even this process has a few hacks.

First of all, in order to create, you must research, you must read a lot.

You must fill your mind with impressive things.

When you create and share content, especially through social media, make sure your tone and language are friendly and readable. The days of ultra formal content are long gone. Unless you are writing soap operas, try not to embellish everything too much.

Stick to active voice, with more verbs and nouns and fewer adverbs and adjectives. And last but not least, keep the story simple. Leave only what is highly important, because time is a very precious commodity, and your readers will not spare it.

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SEO IS DEAD! LONG LIVE CONTENT MARKETING!

Since 1998 when Google was first launched as a web browser, a lot of things have changed in the way web pages were indexed. Not only that we now have a whole lot more web pages than we did back then, but they are all struggling to get Google’s attention in order to stay on top. Each year, Google changes its search algorithm up to 500 - 600 times.

While most of these changes are minor, every few months a major update that significantly affects search is rolled out.

• A wider range of keywords that are likely to convert are now targeted • Results focused on intent • Thinking about topics rather than keywords • User experience is #1 priority • Responsive design • Shorter load times are crucial to users

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and rankings

Keywords

THEN

• High quality navigation • Sorting information based on relevance

User experience • Specific keywords targeted based on search volume • Websites stuffed with repetitive keywords • Design separate from SEO

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• Almost no focus on mobile devices • Site speed was not important

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• Creative and sharable content • Professional content that is useful to reader • Linking diversity

75% of users never scroll past the first page of search result • Compelling content written for the audience • Understanding the audience • Repetitive keywords are

Off site content

flagged as spamming • Diverse content • “Selling” done through title and meta descriptions • Humanising content by giving authorship credits

• Content and copywriting outsourcing • Submitting to article submission sites

• Building brands through

• Exact match anchor text

continuous efforts

• Websites are alive and continuously updated • Relevant content helps higher ranking

93 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine

Domains On site content • Domain names stuffed with keywords

• Content written for Search Engines • High keyword density • Predominantly text content • Title tags stuffed with keywords • Ghosted text (invisible text) • Fixed and unchanging content • User experience is #1 priority • Responsive design

Public relations

• Shorter load times are crucial to users and rankings • High quality navigation • Sorting information based on relevance

• Press releases were written and submitted without thinking if it was actually newsworthy

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SEVEN STEPS

YOU WILL NEED IN REBRANDING

Define current brand positioning

Establish brand expectations

First of all, analyze the client

Brand is a feeling, a perception of a set of values associated to it. In B2B markets, reliability and sustainability are the most important expectations the brand needs to meet. However, you will need to focus on other keypoints too, such as: values, technology, innovation, research and development, environmental and social responsibility.

company, its competitors and target market and position the current brand comparative to other competitor brands. From this stage, you can develop the core brand values, points-of-parity and points-of-difference.

Create brand message

Integrate visual identity and brand communication

Brand message has to be just right, easy to understand and a promise the company could keep. It needs to be based on the customer perspective, internal perspective and marketplace perspective.

Visual identity needs to be consistent and act as a support for brand communication. Color, typography, style, printed materials, online graphics, website - they all need to reflect the brand communication.

Implement brand message

Deliver brand message on multiple channels

Once created, a strong brand message has to be implemented on multiple levels. First, it has to be understood internally, then it has to be communicated toward competitors and customer markets.

Use integrated marketing across multiple channels and maximize brand awareness, choosing channels that best deliver the stated values to specifically targeted audience.

Measure brand equity You need to focus on two main areas: research-based evaluation and financial impact. For accurate results, try measuring both the behavioral perceptions of the brand, as well as financial results. The results need to be compared to the period before rebranding.

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EMERGENT BRAND? EVALUATE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE.

High-value brands have adapted to the changes Internet has brought in the way they do marketing and became more digital-aware, yet emergent brands have just begun to channel their efforts towards an online approach. Emergent brands should take into consideration three baseline aspects regarding their online presence – the performance of their site, the response they achieve through social media and the control they must have over the advertising expenses.

Monitoring the website

Monitoring social media channels

The website is the most important online asset for a brand. Continuously monitoring the onsite activity, traffic, conversion rates and the successful completion of goals, are the basic indicators that can be used to determine how efficient a site is. Nevertheless, an analysis cannot focus only on the marketing objectives and neglect the visitors' needs.

You should monitor the site’s demographics and the visitors’ behavior in order to adjust your online marketing strategy.

A clear social media strategy and consistent messages throughout the networks should assure a decent response rate, but a monthly evaluation can help achieve better results.

Always take into consideration the monthly growth rate of the follower base, the posts’ reach and engagement. Pay attention to the followers’ demographics in order to keep your market positioning relevant.

Monitoring advertising expenses SEA (search engine advertising) and paid ads on social networks are good at making brands known if they are used as a part of a holistic online marketing strategy. Costs can be kept under control by targeting only relevant market segments and setting daily expenses at a medium level.

SEO expenses can be lowered by monitoring and optimizing the ads. Paid advertising should be implemented over the long run by spending a constant amount of money on SEO and social media ads as means of keeping a high reach constant.

Nevertheless, remember that for emergent brands, staying focused on objectives and having a grounded strategy are the keys to online success.

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ADAPT OR BE IGNORED How niche marketing should face the age of social

Nowadays, we realize traditional advertising has become inefficient in many ways. For businesses trying to establish themselves in niche markets, integrating social media and digital marketing into their strategy has become both a necessity and a starting point.

Adsmith China / China Advertigo / Romania Aloft Group / USA

How do you advertise a furniture accessories distributor, a raw material manufacturer for composite technology or a dental implants distributor? These items are not being advertised towards the general population, but for a small subset of customers who are deeply interested in a certain product category, no matter if they are consumers (B2C) or corporate markets (B2B). They are all niche products.

The idea behind niche marketing is the long-tail rule – selling a small number of unique items at a higher price point rather than more items at lower price point. This rule is best applied for niche markets, where precise marketing segmentation and targeting is the key to success. On the other hand, social media has been a tremendous boon for niche marketers, since potential customers are much easier to find and advertise to directly. Traditional means of advertising like radio, billboards and television ads are no longer the best (or only) option for niche companies.

For niche products, it is necessary to reach a smaller, specific segment of people who are interested in what you are selling. Although social media marketing has drastically changed the playing field for businesses, it is still necessary to have and use other marketing instruments. Keeping in mind that niche marketing covers specific market segments, we can offer some general advice:

E3 Network

• • • • • • •

Build a unique brand identity Set your brand values, based on niche marketing Connect with your target audience Increase user engagement on social networks (comments, likes, shares etc.)

Have a better understanding of your followers by communicating with your audience Reach new customers through social media and search engine advertising Differentiate yourself from your competitors by optimizing your products

Ansel & Möllers / German Audacity / USA Base One / UK BB&B / France BBC / Belgium Bernstein / Germany BM Lab / Russia Café Design / Hungary C&COM Advertising / Czech Republic D.A.G. Communication / Italy Igriega / Spain Media Consulting / Portugal MetaBranding / Korea OZ Branding / Israel Preferendum / France Quarry / Canada Rainfall / Romania Recommended Finland / Finland Recommended Sweden / Sweden SPS Marketing / Austria Sander Werbung / Germany Schindler Parent / Germany Tangram / Liechtenstein Truly Deeply / Australia zurMarke® / Switzerland

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This issue of E3 Global Insights Magazine

coalition of independent brand strategy and marketing

success in both B2B and B2C sectors.

is edited by Rainfall.

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Communication experts within the E3 network

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