Marketing Online - Issue 1

ISSUE ONE

OCTOBER 2015

OUTBRAIN: Changing New Zealand’s Media Landscape RSS dead or alive?

How to optimise your website for mobile

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WWW.MARKETINGONLINE.CO.NZ

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T I D E IAL R O

Our beginnings are humble, but our ambitions are grand!

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et’s face it, most of our digital, marketing and thought leadership is generated in the United States and the United Kingdom – even Australia – but if you, like me have wondered how much of it is really relevant to the way we do business here, then welcome to Marketing Online because that’s exactly the story we mean to test.

Marketing Online’s mission is to tell stories about what works in New Zealand, and not just the big corporate agency stuff either.

Our market is a small one. We are generally more self sufficient, inventive and modest in our thinking. We have to be.

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Write a piece of content or put out an ad in the USA and you have 100,000 eyeballs instantly. We don’t have the benefit of that scale, so we have to work harder and smarter.

Exactly how you do that, and what works and what doesn’t work here in New Zealand for big and small companies, is the purpose, mission and thrust of this publication. Thank you for joining us here in our humble beginnings, we hope you stick around for the journey because it’s going to be grand.

Colin

10. L EAD GENERATION Do I Need RSS for My Email Marketing Programme?

12. MOBILE How to Optimise Your Website for Mobile, for Decision Makers 16. S OCIAL MEDIA Why Old Marketing Ideas Won’t Work Online 18. C ONTENT MARKETING Differentiate, Strengthen and Position Your Content with a Strong Cause or Mission 22. EMAIL Email Marketing Alive, Kicking and Well Supported 25. EVENT CALENDAR

ABOUT / Short and sharp, Marketing Online is a free eMagazine delivering thought provoking and enlightening articles, and industry news and information to forward-thinking marketing people.

EDITOR / Colin Kennedy ART DIRECTOR / Jodi Olsson

CONTENTS

4. Crossing the Rubicon with Outbrain

CONTENT ENQUIRIES / Phone Colin on 027 2456060 or email colin@espiremedia.com ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES / Phone Jennifer on 09 522 7257 or email jenniferl@espiremedia.com ADDRESS / Marketing Online, C/- Espire Media, PO Box 99758, Newmarket, Auckland 1151, New Zealand WEBSITE / www.marketingonline.co.nz

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CROSSING THE RUBICON WITH OUTBRAIN

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The arrival of content discovery platform Outbrain in New Zealand, 17 countries later, nevertheless signals a sea change for marketing in this country. We talk to Australasian general manager AYAL STEINER about Outbrain and what it means for local Kiwi brands.

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here was a group of oxen who found themselves in the holding pens of a local abattoir.

Alarmed and angry, the oxen plotted revenge on the butchers, planning to kill them with their horns. But then a wise old ox spoke, saying: “These butchers, it is true, slaughter us, but they do so with skilful hands, and with no unnecessary pain. If we get rid of them, we shall fall into the hands of unskilful operators, and thus suffer a double death: for you may be assured, that though all the butchers should perish, yet will men never want beef.”

Aesop’s Fable of the Oxen and Butchers is reminiscent of today’s media protesting the inevitability of brand journalism, content marketing, native advertising and Outbrain – the content discovery platform that put down roots in New Zealand just ten months ago, and is already attracting the interest of some major brands like Kiwibank and Air New Zealand.

Essentially a content recommendation platform, Outbrain lets anybody with content utilise the platform – budgeting as little as $10 a day (or $20,000) on a cost per click basis – to buy space on high authority, high traffic sites such as Stuff and the New Zealand Herald.

Outbrain’s algorithms are designed to identify contextually relevant audiences who –provided the rules of good content are followed (inform, educate, entertain or inspire) – will hopefully click through to view the content on your website.

Ayal Steiner, General Manager, Outbrain Australia - New Zealand, says that in addition to providing a revenue stream for publishers, Outbrain also helps publishers engage their own audiences.

“On Stuff.co.nz for example, Outbrain is powering organic stories and helping people discover more stories on that site; so you’re getting content that the publishers don’t necessarily generate themselves, but which may appeal to their audience.

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AESOP’S OXEN AREN’T HAPPY “This is about how technology can power the discovery of the next story, or optimise the home page.”

While Outbrain works on a pay-per-click model, Steiner dismisses any comparison to Google Adwords, pointing out that mega trends globally are pushing brands away from traditional advertising into storytelling.

“We provide for the organic discovery of content; it’s editorial, not advertising.

Money paid to Google Adwords goes to Google. Money paid to Outbrain is shared with the publishers and stays in New Zealand,” says Steiner, adding that the content discovery platform is changing the way brands go to market.

“For the first time we have an opportunity to create not ad placements, but content assets that sit on their own media channels and use channels like Outbrain to get audiences to their content. When you look at it through that lens, it is solving the scale and reach issue for anyone with content.

“Companies love channels like Outbrain because under the traditional public relations model, stories published today are gone by lunchtime. With Outbrain we can quadruple the reach and keep those stories alive for three or four or eight weeks; and we can tell how many people read the piece or watched the video, and where they came from – it makes PR more accountable,” he says.

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However, there are still some elements in the media who aren’t happy, and you don’t have to go far to discover headlines like: ‘Have publishers lost their minds with Outbrain?’ or attacks on native advertising by the likes of satirist John Oliver who famously dubbed the new format “repurposed bovine waste”.

The belief held by many journalists, that brands and business in general cannot tell stories and create quality content that is relevant, honest and valuable, is partly to blame for the media’s current predicament. For too long they held brands at arms length, happy to take their money while labelling them evil capitalists not worthy of trust.

The irony of course is that journalists happily took public relations pitches for years, and the audiences had no way of knowing which stories had originated from public relations agencies. At least with content marketing and native advertising there is less doubt about the origins of the content.

Then technology changed the playing field and audiences discovered that brands do have something valuable to say, particularly about their areas of expertise. One of the challenges for brands, however – even as they cut back on advertising spend and publishers’ revenues started to tank – was finding the audiences.

DID OUTBRAIN ENABLE CONTENT MARKETING?

BEATING OFF THE CLICKBAITERS

To begin with there were the trusty stock of owned assets, like the company website, blog and social media, and of course earned media – which was heavily reliant on public relations tactics to get mainstream media to pick up the content.

Slowly but steadily however, content marketing began to gather momentum but, according to Steiner, the content revolution only really took off when Outbrain came on the scene.

He has a point.

Outbrain at last delivered a content discovery platform that allows anybody with content to get that content in front of a ‘contextually relevant audience’ – in other words an audience most likely to be interested in the content. But the content still has to stand on its own merits, even work harder, because it originates with a brand, where there is potential for perceived bias.

In the beginning however, the content discovery platforms were abused and the practice of ‘click baiting’ emerged as an attempt to trick audiences into parting with their hard earned cash. Essentially sensational content with outlandish headlines, click bait content was often misleading, inaccurate and just plain rubbish (and still is).

Which brings us back to the fable of the oxen and the butchers because, if content marketers, native advertising and the likes of Outbrain are butchers, at least they are skilful butchers.

Outbrain was the first content discovery platform to clean out the click baiters and, while other content platforms are still harping on about self-regulation, Steiner makes it clear that Outbrain has worked alongside premium publishers like the BBC, The Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald to create stringent house rules for quality content.

“We have the strictest editorial guidelines in the industry, which we enforce. We mandate rules around headlines, images, and also the tone of the content itself – and we manually check every image and every title.

“An investment in Outbrain is an investment into the local publishing scene. Publishers and brands benefit from our networked content, and money stays in the local economy and supports local journalism,” he says.

Locally Outbrain has established partnerships with NZME, Fairfax and YahooNZ, and is on the look out to work with more brands, agencies and publishers, but it’s still early days and that is one of the reasons why local readers will still find headlines like ‘15 vile wedding dresses that will hurt your eyes’.

“We are seeing phenomenal uptake and New Zealand has been a very successful start for us. Having said that, there is still room to go.

When there are not enough local stories, international publishers who are just buying traffic from our network will start to appear, particularly viral aggregators and social sites.

“It’s a chicken and egg situation, but as more brands and publishers come on board you will start to see more local stories, which will improve the relevancy of content to New Zealand audiences,” says Steiner.

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“WE HAVE SET UP 17 OFFICES AROUND THE WORLD, BUT I BELIEVE NEW ZEALAND HAS THE CONDITIONS TO REALLY FAST TRACK AND LEAD THIS SPACE GLOBALLY; TO PUNCH ABOVE ITS WEIGHT.”

SHARING ON STEROIDS There is no template for success when it comes to Outbrain.

“There is no formula. I think that as a general statement, brands have to find their sweet spot – the type of stories they want to put out there – in the best format (whether videos, text or images), and then use Outbrain to get audiences to discover these stories,” says Steiner.

Titles are important when it comes to making Outbrain work for you. Unable to rely on sophisticated data driven audience targeting (because the platform sits on independent publishers’ sites rather than social networks like Facebook), content marketers have to make the words work if

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they want to invite the right audiences.

“Companies that have their pages optimised for social sharing and time on the site, all they way through to direct call to actions on the page, are the ones that are seeing real value from Outbrain, as opposed to those just looking for traffic.

“In the short period of time we have been in New Zealand I have seen an industry that is extremely sophisticated and savvy.

The local market is clearly innovative and eager to get things done. We have set up 17 offices around the world, but I believe New Zealand has the conditions to really fast track and lead this space globally; to punch above its weight.” ▼

GOT A PRODUCT, SERVICE OR BUSINESS WORTH TALKING ABOUT? Want to grow brand awareness in a more effective and useful way?

TALK TO ESPIRE MEDIA ABOUT OUR CONTENT MARKETING SERVICES We offer a range of ways to attract and retain customers, by creating and curating relevant and valuable content to engage and add value to your audience.

BENEFITS: • Expand your digital footprint • Grow brand awareness • Increase traffic to your website • Thought leadership • Media exposure • Attract new customers • And... grow SALES!

Get in touch with Jennifer now to discuss our options. +64 9 522 7257 (NZT) | jenniferl@espiremedia.com | www.espiremedia.com

Check out our blog for content marketing advice, tips and ideas, plus a free copy of our content marketing guide The Content Creation Cookbook!

LEADGENERATION

DO I NEED RSS FOR MY EMAIL MARKETING PROGRAMME? REBECCA CAROE looks at where and how RSS fits in a modern marketing programme.

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any brands and B2B businesses have a news page with an RSS feed.

The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed is a helpful tool developed in 1999 to syndicate web content in a common format. Today the orange square with white radio waves is well-recognised on the internet, and is used by blogs and news pages to allow subscription updates to be automatically sent to readers.

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Aggregation services sprang up to enable users to group all their RSS feeds into a single location for easy reading. Some RSS readers are online ( Feedly , Netvibes ) others are desktop applications ( NewsGator , Toolbutton ) and others are apps ( Flipboard , Newsify ).

WHAT PROPORTION OF CONSUMERS AND BUSINESSES ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO SET UP AND USE AN RSS READER? Forrester reported in October 2008 that consumer adoption of RSS was only 11 per cent which is tiny compared to consumer readership of blogs. In response to this finding, commentator Steve Rubel said: “Feeds are way, way too geeky for most and the benefit does not outweigh the learning curve”.

AND SO THE KEY QUESTION IS: “HAS RSS ADOPTION CHANGED SINCE 2008?”

My instincts say ‘no’. Leading geeks have long left RSS behind in their search for the latest including newer RSS tools iGoogle, Waves and Yahoo’s Pipes (anyone remember these?). Most of the populace are not interested in using these tools.

So what is happening in RSS and how can the modern marketer harness this ‘really simple’ technology to support their marketing communication strategies?

In one sense not much is happening to RSS – the technology has not advanced; it continues to work and is installed on thousands of websites. However, there is a lot happening with the RSS output. Social networks are now linked into RSS and are themselves feeds. There are feeds of feeds, feeds of comments, feeds of ‘likes’ – you name it there’s a feed for it.

Consider the tools that are actually widely used: Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Evernote, Tumblr and so on, they all have large user-bases and are all RSS aggregation tools. They pull information into a single place using RSS. Bet you didn’t know that!

YOUR AUDIENCES DON’T CARE ABOUT RSS. Modern marketers need to use services one step removed from traditional RSS. These provide feeds to subscribers but without them being aware they are receiving RSS. Cunning, eh?

I asked Phil Hollows Managing Director of FeedBlitz about this transition: “It is now the application that provides RSS-by-email – with minimal extra work by the marketer thanks to the automation built from RSS. FeedBlitz also adds value to the raw RSS feed with click-through tracking and branding while using the ubiquity of email”.

The customer doesn’t have to download an app in order to get the RSS. Today, even luddite technophobes have email at work. So make it easy for your customer; use email.

Hollows adds: “Email is THE best media distribution channel because your newsletter can also get out to Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messenger, mobile phones and Skype. And the consumer chooses how they want to receive it. They just get your news and is easier for the marketer – you scale out more rapidly to reach audiences from whatever platform they want to use”.

ACTION: • Check the feed on your news page has a ‘subscribe by email’ option • Does your bulk email service offer RSS to email? ▼

WWW.CREATIVEAGENCYSECRETS.COM Rebecca Caroe is CEO of marketing execution specialists, Creative Agency Secrets.

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▼ MOBILE

HOW TO OPTIMISE YOUR WEBSITE FOR MOBILE, FOR DECISION MAKERS Mobile is on the move, so why is New Zealand lagging behind and how do we make it work for us?

BY CORNELIUS BOERTJENS

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he number of visitors accessing the internet via a mobile device is increasing exponentially worldwide. However, in most cases, mobile users still get presented with the desktop version of the site.

In New Zealand this is as high as 60%.

This isn’t giving visitors the best user experience as desktop sites simply are not designed to be displayed on a smaller device.

To cater for the specific needs of a smaller device and to create an optimal user experience, it becomes increasingly important to ensure your website is responsive and optimised for mobile usage.

When optimising a website, one of the key things we as conversion rate optimisation (CRO) specialists focus on, is clarity.

A WEBSITE NEEDS TO BE AS CLEAR AS POSSIBLE IN TERMS OF: • Value proposition • Navigation • Design • Flow • Copy In case of mobile optimisation, this aspect becomes even more crucial. If you want to optimise your conversion rates for your mobile users, it is crucial to take note of the differences in context for mobile users versus desktop users.

SO WHAT MAKES THE MOBILE EXPERIENCE SO DIFFERENT THAT IT REQUIRES A SEPARATE APPROACH? AND WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES A COMPANY FACES WHEN DEALING WITH MOBILE USERS? Mobile devices by nature are a lot smaller than a desktop, which significantly limits the amount of data that can be displayed on the screen.

Careful consideration should be given to the content displayed, including the balance between visuals, copy and the structural elements that guide the visitor along. Instead of trying to provide all the information on the desktop site, it’s wise to establish your top three or four priorities and offer only these key elements prominently; other elements can be accessed via a secondary menu.

In addition a simple and clear flow needs to be offered, that is focused on these selected key action steps. Ideally, the visitor should be able to primarily scroll instead of click, and complete an end goal (information, sign up, registration etc.) in a few steps without having to click through to external pages.

The font used should be easy to read, even on the smallest of devices.

Another consideration is mobile users’ behaviour. Mobile devices are often used on the run, while waiting in a cue or, for instance, on a bus. Their website visit is therefore easier interrupted and a user will be more likely to stop a session with the goal to continue it at a later stage.

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▼ MOBILE

By considering these unique differences for mobile users when creating your mobile site, you have a real opportunity to ensure an excellent user experience for this fast growing audience. This will help you optimise your conversion rates for mobile and reap rewards that will have an exponential impact longer term.

MOBILE SITE CONTENT NEEDS TO CATER FOR THIS BY: • Keeping the information short and to the point • Saving any data entered • Making the site navigation really easy to use • Supporting the user in continuing where they left off

A FINAL CONSIDERATION IS THE CONNECTIVITY OF THE MOBILE DEVICE USER. As they are often out and about, the quality of their internet connection can vary, which will impact the display of your content and the speed in which this is delivered to you.

It is therefore smart to keep your media relatively simple and stick to one video to be loaded at any given time.

Nothing annoys a user more than a video or mobile site that takes ages to load – in combination with the hasty nature of their visits, this will undoubtedly impact your conversion rates.

By considering these unique differences for mobile users when creating your mobile site, you have a real opportunity to ensure an excellent user experience for this fast growing audience. This will help you optimise your conversion rates for mobile and reap rewards that will have an exponential impact longer term.

The time is now to take action because mobile is definitely on the move big time! ▼

Cornelius is a highly skilled Digital Marketing Strategist with over 14 years of experience in this field. He is the MD at Catchi, Australasia’s leading specialist in Website Conversion Optimisation with offices in Auckland and Sydney. Catchi is working with clients such as Air New Zealand, Powershop, Spaceships Rentals, Number One Shoes, NZTE, Southern Cross Health Society, Immigration NZ, AA and Lotto NZ on increasing the performance of their websites and digital campaigns. Cornelius is also one of the Course Directors of the MA’s Certificate of Digital Marketing and guest lecturer at Auckland University School of Business on Digital Marketing.

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CONTENT MARKETING SE How to attract MINAR

customers & grow sales with content marketing MAKING CONTENT MARKETING COUNT IN NEW ZEALAND Content marketing is an extremely powerful marketing tool right now, but there’s content, and then there’s relevant content. Putting aside the hype, what actually works in New Zealand and what doesn’t?

What you'll learn at this info-packed event: • How to use content to discover and cultivate the right audience • Three strategies to ensure you never run out of relevant content streams • A simple, low cost content technique that keeps the online enquiries coming (real life case study) • How effective content marketing complements each stage of the sales cycle • Find out what works in New Zealand’s small ecosystem and what doesn't – yep, NZ content marketing 'fails'!

• And more!

PRESENTED BY COLIN KENNEDY Content Marketing Thought Leader & Head of Content at Espire Media Colin Kennedy is a journalist and writer by profession, and one of New Zealand's foremost experts on content marketing. With more than 20 years experience in journalism, public relations and marketing, his previous roles include newspaper and magazine editor, CEO of New Zealand Agritech Inc and marketing director for BNI New Zealand.

GUEST SPEAKER CHRIS PRICE Founder of Ark Advance

Ark Advance was founded by Chris in 2002, and provides consultancy services to improve the effectiveness of your online marketing. They have worked with over 150 clients across 12 different industry groups including, legal, financial services, travel, health, publishing, telecommunications and technology.

kland uc A , or at er en G e Th | 15 20 r be em ov 10am–12pm | Friday 6 N p business owners - tickets only $39p Powerful insights for marketers and

REGISTER NOW!

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SOCIALMEDIA

WHY OLD MARKETING IDEAS WON’T WORK ONLINE F

BY LINDA COLES

Maybe you know you should be using social media but you are frozen into inactivity because you just don’t know where to start. Or perhaps you have set your pages up, but you’re not getting any traction and you don’t know why. Both of these scenarios are very common and can be overcome with some simple steps that can help social media work for your business.

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irstly, you need to generate your community, for instance, your customers and prospects, in the very place they hang out online.

There is no point in talking to a group that is not your target market because you will be wasting your money. As a general rule, think of LinkedIn for B2B conversations, and Facebook as mainly B2C conversations.

Of course there is a crossover because behind those user names are real human beings, but if your widget is business related software, your business network will be on LinkedIn. Likewise, if your widget is a protein bar, you can really have some fun with that on Facebook.

Decide on your target market and talk to them in their preferred place.

Online marketing is an ongoing part of your business and not something you can ‘lock and leave’ to its self.

GIVE YOUR COMMUNITY WHAT THEY WANT No one likes to be sold to but we all like to buy. Using your old ads and putting them online will simply not work. Put yourself in your prospects’ shoes for a minute and ask yourself what their biggest problem, need or desire is, and then think about how you can alleviate it.

If your product is a protein bar, then your prospects are probably health conscious and want to know about the ingredients, how protein is digested in the system or perhaps how your particular type of protein can help build muscle.

By giving them useful information that will solve a problem they are experiencing, will help tie them in to your brand. The same goes with the business software example, you just need to figure out how to solve their problems and deliver the answers.

POST AT THE RIGHT TIME So know you know where they are and what they want but when do they want it?

If you are posting useful and interesting information to the business community, then daytime hours are best. Yes you can post in the evening and weekends, but many of us are trying to relax during these times and would prefer to be entertained rather than think about business.

If on the other hand you are talking to the B2C community through Facebook, then scheduling posts for the evenings may be best when most Facebook users are online. Remember that you are competing with their friends’ baby photos! Your message therefore has to be far more worthwhile, entertaining, awe inspiring or just downright different. Interrupting someone’s newsfeed with your ad is not enough to captivate them, which is why you’ll need your creative side.

Online marketing is an ongoing part of your business and not something you can ‘lock and leave’ to its self. As long as you think like your consumer and not like a marketer you won’t be far off the mark. ▼

Linda Coles is a professional speaker, author and trainer in the area of social media and building relationships at Blue Banana. She has presented to teams at Microsoft, Transpower, ANZ, the CPA and Auckland University Business School, among others. She has been published by the New Zealand Herald, Huffington Post, NZ Business Magazine, Mashable.com and Social Media Examiner, and is one of only 500 LinkedIn influencers worldwide, with a following of over 300,000. A content-driven speaker and author, her work is thought-provoking, useful and peppered with real-life examples. She has written three books published by Wiley; her latest, ‘Marketing with Social Media’, is out now

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CONTENTMARKETING

DIFFERENTIATE, STRENGTHEN AND POSITION YOUR CONTENT WITH A STRONG CAUSE OR MISSION

BY COLIN KENNEDY

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If you wandered down the virtual path to Westpac, or BNZ or ANZ today – or any other bank – you will not doubt find plenty of advice and dozens of helpful articles like ‘how to write a business plan’ – but none of them will offer you a compelling reason to choose one over the other, and that makes each one of them less than great examples of content marketing.

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NZ did it with BlueNotes, and Westpac with RedNews and BNZ has GoodHome. Some of them at least make an attempt to be a niche – but niche isn’t enough to make a content marketing programme successful.

Not just because there may be credibility issues with offering business information – for example, some business owners may be sceptical of the ability of corporate bank managers to tell them how to start or run a business – but because articles that offer ‘advice’ and ‘how to’ content (and other bits of news and information) are of value, but not very valuable when every corner shop is offering the same thing.

In fact, all the business owners have to do is visit any one of 100 news and media sites around New Zealand (and the world) to get better advice and more insightful, in-depth business news and intelligence than they might expect to get from their banker.

As a result, it’s inevitable that attempting to compete with publishers and other

professional information providers will see the banks content marketing efforts run out of puff within a year or two.

The content marketing failure on the part of banks, and many other organisations, is a branding one. You may think that’s blasphemy and counter-intuitive if you’re a content marketing idealist, but actually it isn’t – content marketing has never been about replacing professional media, or applying the pure independence and objectivity of a journalist because truth is, you’re hobbled from the word go by the fact that you’re in business to make a profit.

A brand is more than a logo or a name or a slogan – it is about successfully occupying a position in the mind of the customer, and in the same way, content that occupies a ‘position’ is inherently stronger than its rivals.

Good quality content marketing is measured by its ability to uniquely position content according to the organisation’s strengths and expertise, but most importantly it rises

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CONTENTMARKETING

above all else and enters a unique niche when it is based on a publisher’s ‘mission’, or ‘a cause’…

No doubt many of the banks are inspired by the success of American Express’s OPEN Forum – an online hub and forum with news, information, advice and networking to help small business owners grow. But let’s not forget that not only was American Express first to market with this, they did it for a specific reason and that reason was to help SMEs navigate the great financial recession.

American Express’s OPEN Forum is a perfectly example of a content marketing programme that was ‘cause’ driven. Now that the recession is over, they must reposition themselves.

If banks really do want to go down the generalist path – due to policy, internal-

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politics or legal reasons – then they need to be honest with themselves. Few of us will turn to our bankers for advice on how to run a business. All we really want from a bank is money. So why not tell us how to get it? A more valuable conversation would be an in-depth and insightful pieces about business finance – how to get it and how to keep it.

But of course, banks do already offer some of that information – often as part of the business planning content –although they could do it better because the whole structuring your finance application is still something of a mystery to many.

The intricacies of finance applications remains, however, a relatively general piece of information, and one that other banks and media organisations can easily copy when they run out of their own ideas.

To differentiate yourself – to be a bit more difficult to copy – it’s important for your organisation to come from a position of what you stand for. Let’s look at Kiwibank as a good example because most of us get what they stand for – they do a far better job of positioning than their competitors (what does Westpac stand for? BNZ?).

Kiwibank does a good job of being Kiwi – independent, a challenger, local, a guerrilla… so what about creating a content marketing programme based on those brand values?

For example, rather than yet-another piece of content about ‘how to write a business plan’, how about a theme around business plans for agile businesses?

How about exploring new ideas and concepts in business start-ups?

Perhaps along the lines of the Shamrock organisational structure whereby a company is created and designed to have only a very small core of staff, while other the rest is outsourced– finance, operations, contingent workforce etc. It’s lean, agile and a new way of thinking about how you build a business.

business concepts that break away from the tried and tested institutional, fat cat blah stuff.

The 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss, represents an alternative, maverick, challenging way to think about business, and it is consistent with Kiwibank’s brand image.

By exploring business ideas and concepts that are challenging, maverick, agile etc.

KiwiBank would be able to carve out a nice niche of ‘mission’ driven content.

Not only that, it will help the bank to define a niche audiences better too e.g. the male millennial.

Another benefit of basing your content marketing activity around a ‘mission’ or ‘cause’ is that you tap into a fertile ground of unique thought leadership and a constant stream of ideas, whereas the general stuff quickly becomes stale and uninspiring (and before long the content ideas well dries up).

Then there’s the whole theme of guerrilla marketing in the digital age.

Good content marketing is not just about providing so-called ‘valuable information’, it’s about being ‘purposeful’ – that is ‘thought provoking’ and ‘inspiring’ and yes, ‘challenging’ – and in so doing you tap into specific niches (it helps define your audience and your brand in your audience’s mind).

In this way Kiwibank could grow a very definite set of content themes fuelled by a central idea – a guerrilla, a challenger – and will be free to explore more maverick

Mission or cause based content won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s better to mean something to somebody than nothing very much to everybody. ▼

Marketing Online Editor Colin Kennedy is a journalist, content marketing strategist and a professional speaker.

With more than 20 years experience in journalism, public relations and marketing, his previous roles include newspaper and magazine editor, CEO of New Zealand Agritech Inc. and marketing director for BNI New Zealand.

His guise to creating compelling content for a New Zealand audience can be found here.

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EMAIL

EMAIL MARKETING ALIVE, KICKING AND WELL SUPPORTED In an age of tweets, status updates and social shares, what space is there for the humble email message?

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hankfully quite a lot if those cluttering up my Inbox can be taken as a guide.

Looking back on last week’s messages I see notes from Facebook, Linked In and even Google+. Each with millions of dollars to spend in online marketing but still they choose to send me a humble email message.

So why is this? And what can you learn from these online marketing Gorillas to apply to your modest aspirations online?

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First off let’s look at how to grow your business via email – and what we can learn from these powerhouses here. Now we all know that sending unsolicited messages is against the law. So thankfully this is not the angle LinkedIn chooses as they provide a great example of how to apply it correctly.

In their case, moving from a free product to spending upwards of $90 per month is a sizable jump in value that prospects need to take. Bridging this gap will need

some serious selling. And in their case they use great content and email messaging to achieve this goal. Just look at what’s on offer here. Beautifully crafted, well presented content. All sitting behind a relatively detailed request form and delivered by great email marketing.

Sound like something you could apply to you as well? Perhaps you sell a service that competes on how your team customises its application to each customer. Think graphic designers, accountants, lawyers and the like.

In these cases offering content that clearly shows the gap between your expertise compared to the rest is a great plan. Email marketing tools will deliver the messages, ‘listen’ for those who are opening and clicking and then notifies you when a prospect drops into the ‘highly engaged’ bucket, ready for a phone call.

But what about customers? How can email marketing help you retain and expand the revenue here?

Thankfully the problem that is solved via email is one that grows each year as your customers become even more busier. The problem is their ability to forget who you are and what you do – yep after all that great work you did on the last project. If you don’t keep in touch on a regular basis, there’s a possibility that you may be passed over for the next engagement.

Email does a great job of solving this in the land of e-commerce. These days, tools will monitor those who forgot to check out their shopping cart and fire them a short missive to bring them back to finish what they started. Likewise if they purchased six month’s ago and should have been back by now but haven’t, then a voucher is sent their way to get them shopping again.

That’s why Facebook is emailing me – I haven’t been online for a week or so now so they are getting a bit jittery.

Let’s not forget the humble email newsletter. Done properly it can build repeat revenue for nearly all business types: • Pack it with good content (probably more important than a few years back – it’s that busy thing again) • Write with some personality • Keep it on a regular schedule

Do just these three points and you could well be ahead of your competition.

I predict that there’s many ways email marketing can claim some of the space in your online marketing plans. And by their actions, the powerhouses of online marketing seem to think so to. Why not take the time this month to squeeze some space for email in your business? ▼

Chris Price owns Ark Advance, a web optimisation business that specialises in online marketing. Started in 2002 the company offers customised support services for a wide range of service based companies who want to grow their effectiveness online. Ark Advance also offer a free monthly email newsletter focused on helping business owners grow their services online – sign up for free at www.arkadvance.com .

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DID YOU KNOW? A

d-blocking is on the rise. “63% of millennials use ad blockers,” according to a recent joint study by data driven inbound company Fractl and marketing software company Moz .

Overall, 59% of all respondents reported using ad-blocking software.

“Awareness of online advertising is high, but more than half of respondents are not engaging with these ads and/or actively preventing them from showing up,” writes P. Kelsey Libert, partner, VP Marketing at Fractl.

• 53.8% of respondents had not clicked on any ads in the week they were surveyed • Nearly a quarter (24.4%) clicked on a social media ad in the last week, the highest of any online ad • Somewhat surprisingly, sponsored story links were the second-most clicked, at almost 18% • More than 16% clicked on a display ad, which seems high considering a majority of respondents are using ad blockers (57.5%) • Under 10% of respondents clicked on PPC ads ▼

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EVE CAL NTS END AR

22 November

Social Media & Sales Auckland Morrison Kent

BEING THE RICHEST MAN IN THE CEMETERYDOESN’T MATTER TO ME. GOING TO BED AT NIGHT SAYING WE’VE DONE SOMETHING WONDERFUL, THAT’S WHAT MATTERS TO ME. - Steve Jobs

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