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Ben Atkinson explains on page 4...
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A note from the editor Welcome to the sixth issue of Marketing Matters Magazine, a monthly online magazine that is full of practical marketing advice from specialists across the UK. In this edition of Marketing Matters Magazine, we have some fantastic advice from experts across the UK to help you jumpstart your marketing, including a great article from Ben Atkinson from Tall Lime about social cards, and how important they are for demonstrating your expertise online and growing your brand. Stay tuned for the next edition of Marketing Matters Magazine, which will be released on the 31st March 2017. We hope you find it just as useful. Wishing you every success,
Rachael Smith Managing Editor
The Editorial Team
Editor-In-Chief
Managing Editor
Joanne Wilson 01522 581 911
Rachael Smith 01522 581 911
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How to use social cards to grow your brand online . . . Ben Atkinson, Tall Lime Have you ever considered how your website is displayed on social media? Let me explain. As you’ll probably have gathered, it’s not enough nowadays to just have a website. You also need social media channels that feed into your site and are appropriate for your audience. Setting up your own social media channels is a great place to start, but once they’re up and running you’ll be competing for content space with a vast number of other users across Facebook, Twitter and all the other platforms. Posting engaging and insightful content, is big part of standing out from the crowd and so is ensuring you maintain the same corporate feel across all your messages. The biggest problem we’ve found with maintaining your brand across the web, comes in the form of the links that are shared from your website. It goes without saying that your website is a key marketing tool and as such you’ve invested plenty of time in the design and content. But while you’ve spent thankless hours ensuring everything looks right on your own site, you can’t always be sure how your pages and blog posts will translate and display across the web when someone else shares them, often on social media. Thankfully there are some simple tricks you can employ on your website to ensure you’re staying on-brand and engaged wherever your business happens to show up – step up, social cards! We’ve all seen examples of links shared on Facebook and Twitter.
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You know the kind; someone will post an update which contains a URL and instantaneously below that will appear a white box with a photo and a short description of the page they’re linking to. The technical term for these little boxes is ‘social cards’ and ensuring the right content appears on each card is a painstaking but important process. Now to the nitty-gritty. Both Twitter and Facebook provide in-depth guides on how you provide specific open graph data manually in the form of meta tags. The Moz Blog has a great article from 2013 on exactly which meta tags can be used for which purpose and how you can test how these are working on a variety of platforms.
fit directly into the space provided on each social media site.
If you’re website is hosted on the WordPress platform you can easily manage your social media cards using the Yoast SEO plugin. If you’ve used the plugin before, you’ll be familiar with the SEO box that appears at the bottom of every post and page on your site. From here you can edit the title and description as it would appear in the search results, but if you look to the lefthand side of the box there is a social media icon and once you’re in this panel you can specific an alternative title and description for Facebook and Twitter. Yoast even gives you the dimensions of the image you’ll need to upload to
There is no denying, updating and testing social cards for every page and post on your website is a time-consuming task. But it’s one that is well worth doing. These days’ social media links are vitally important when it comes to generating new clients or customers and let’s face it, nobody is going to click on a link that looks bad! If you invest a little time in looking at the way every page and post on your website is displayed on social media, I guarantee you will reap the rewards.
Now you’ve managed to update one small section of your site to provide a relevant and on-brand social media card, just think of the possibilities available to you for the rest of your website. Tweaking the title and description for Twitter and Facebook will allow you to write a little more or a less as you need to, while uploading a relevant image provides you with additional valuable real estate when it comes to promoting your brand.
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Our Experts
Digital Media Edge
Fill the Gap Marketing
Fill the Gap Marketing
Richard Mawer 01522 837259
Rachael Smith 01522 581911
Gemma Price 01522 581911
Fill the Gap Marketing
Mail Magic
Positive Networking
Jo Wilson 01522 581911
Lee Callender 07590 844783
Mike Stokes 01733 211873
Tall Lime
Through the Lens Photography
Ben Atkinson 01522 300729
Adam Winfield 01522 246645
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Who am I? Let's start a brand story . . . Gemma Price, Fill the Gap Marketing Branding is more than just the name of your business, it’s more than a tag line or slogan. So what is it? Branding is the essence of your business. Your brand is your identity. Your brand is the voice your customer hears when you speak to them. Who needs a Brand? Everyone, every business of every size must speak to their customers in a language they understand. Why? A brand will help consumers identify with you, it will clearly establish who you are and what you can offer. A brand will build loyalty and will not only help you to attract new customers but will also retain them. Making a business decision with your brand in mind will result in a better, informed, decision every time. If you are speaking directly to your customers and building trust and better relationships your business will prosper and thrive. You can't take care of others until you learn how to take care of yourself.
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How? Well, this is the good bit. Brands aren't an invention Branding is a development of who you already are. What sets you apart from your competitors and brings your customers in is the identity of your business. Establishing a brand means taking a good, hard look in the mirror. Some things you see will please you, inspire you and drive your business forward. Some things will please you less, things you may not even be aware of, or haven't realised are affecting you negatively. The great thing about taking time to establish your brand is that it brings these to the surface and you can work on them. Getting feedback from your customers is the golden key to all these questions. Spending time researching your competitors will help you to see what makes you stand out, do you offer as many services as they do, could you offer more? Do you specialise in something they don't have on offer? Do your customers VALUE these services, selling ice to an Eskimo leads you nowhere but, offer him an ice pick and your business relationship
begins. Understanding what your customer needs from you is paramount to building your brand. It is important to be realistic when establishing your brand. Great customer service starts with being able to deliver a great service again and again. Branding should incorporate some aspiration of course, and it should have room to grow, but you need to be able to execute what you promise again and again from the get go. A great business delivers exactly what it says it will. Your brand will develop with you as you grow, and your customers will come back because they believe in what you promised them and know you will deliver it. Once your brand is established not only can you write a great tag line for your business.... you can build a website that speaks the right language, create an advert that targets your audience, create engaging content and know where to aim it. It all begins with a brand story.
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How to incorporate social media into your email marketing campaign . . . Lee Callender, Mail Magic
2. Consider the preferences of your customers
The rapid growth of social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, has resulted in very exciting opportunities for marketers over the past few years. Communication channels are known for shifting and evolving consistently, which leaves online marketers with the challenge of locating the best ways in which to incorporate these social platforms in ways which engages consumers and results in increased revenue.
The best marketers know and understand that preference centres assist in helping to increase the relevance of your message and therefore reduce list churn. For example, offering an alternative to communicating via email such as social networking, text messages and direct mail, helps businesses to communicate with their customers on their terms.
While the effective incorporation of social media communication channels holds a vast array of potential, a successful method of implementation needs very careful planning. Below are three methods used by email marketers to capitalise on this thrilling prospect: 1. Employ social media platforms to encourage opt-ins for email programs Social media websites attract a brand new cluster of individual and therefore attempting to add followers, friends and influences on these platforms to the email channel, which is where conversions and building relationships can occur. Firstly, you should make sure that your email includes opt-in forms and/or links on to your business’s social network profiles. Secondly, you need to think about the people who interact with your company’s social networks and what they may expect from you such as personality and tone in your communications. Therefore, ensure that your marketing messages are focused on education and personality rather than professional, corporate speak.
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Whereas some businesses might wish to use text messaging for only urgent notifications and social media for promotions and as social media continues to flourish and become the channel of communication of choice, the preference centre will become more and more important. Therefore, you should think about adding a link to your preference centre onto your Facebook page and Twitter profile. 3. Increase your email message share-ability One of the key elements of incorporating social media into email marketing is by making it easy for your consumers to share what you have to say. In order to encourage your recipients to distribute your message, you need to make sure
that it is relevant, personalised, containing suitable links to social media sites. If your business collects user reviews of your products and/or services then review-posted notifications can provide a fantastic chance to encourage recipients to share the content. Why not try including social media links into the messages you send your users once a new review goes live on your website. This will provide your consumers with a chance to broadcast their opinions through their social media profiles, and therefore increasing how many people will see your business’s offer or promotion and brand. Despite presenting a range of challenges, integrating social media into email marketing activities offers the opportunity to grow and engage with your audience in a more effective and rewarding way. Don’t miss this chance to turn conversations into conversions and, ultimately, cash. For more useful hints and tips email lee@mail-magic.co.uk and he will add you to the mailing list...
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Using 'ABCD' to ensure positioning consistency when networking . . . Mike Stokes, Positive Networking
Behaviour
You have all learned that the positioning of our brand needs to be consistent across all of your marketing activities. It is just as important to maintain absolute consistency across your networking activities, in order that you do not compromise the positioning you have established. When attending networking events, you need to ensure that your appearance, behaviour, content and delivery (ABCD) convey the same message to your fellow networkers.
Whatever you are offering in terms of goods and services, it is very unlikely that late delivery is a feature you have highlighted.
Appearance Before deciding what to wear at networking events, find out who else is going to be there. Then consider what opportunities are likely to be presented. Will there be chances to meet potential buyers, sellers, advisers, collaborators?
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In that case, do not arrive late for networking events. Take the time to understand exactly where events are taking place and how far they are from car parks, bus stops and train stations. Also check what time the events start. Having checked all of these facts, get there early, fully prepared and relaxed. If you are always the person turning up late, looking dishevelled and disorganised – what does that say about your business? Content No matter what type of event you are attending, prepare your pitch beforehand – stressing the benefit of
what you offer and being clear about what help you are seeking. Do not trivialise your business with cheap jokes, but don’t use too much jargon either. Prepare your pitch, rehearse it, time it – and don’t just turn up and “wing it”. Delivery When delivering your message, ensure that your style, demeanour and body language are in line with your content. Be confident, positive and approachable – with anecdotes or humour for effect. This is your shop window and your chance to confirm everything people have read in your marketing material.
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Introduction to Inbound marketing - part six . . . Richard Mawer, Digital Media Edge
have one core service or product to offer.
Developing your inbound sales systems
They are limiting the “cost of entry” to becoming a customer. We recommend developing three types of “offer” to really create an effective sales funnel that drives conversion but also maximises revenue:
Over the past few weeks we have shared the secrets to setting up an effective inbound marketing funnel, to drive visitors, convert those visitors into leads and build a relationship with those leads through sharing “remarkable” content on social media, your website and via regular email. So you should now have an effective “lead generation” process in place, it is now time for the final piece of the puzzle. How Inbound Sales Converts Leads Into Customers and Revenue For Your Business You now have a growing CRM of engaged leads, now it is all about turning those leads into customers by building a sales process that will achieve this effectively. It is also extremely important to reach out to your existing contacts with dedicated email sends, blogging interesting content and making your social media content interesting and engaging. To nurture your existing leads into loyal customers you must use remarkable content to reel them in and develop offers that they can’t refuse. Developing Offers That Your Leads Can Not Resist The problem that most businesses we work with face, is that they only
1. Tripwire Offer – The first stage in the sales relationship is in converting a lead into a customer, this is a very small and subtle change but also a very important change. A trip wire offer is low priced but high perceived value product or service, the entire purpose being to get a lead to commit some time and money to you as a business. The small proposition has put them into your sales funnel and in turn you can upsell them to your core offer. 2. Core Offer - This is your main service / product, what you are famous for delivering or selling. As with the content you produce, you must work hard on your core offering to make it remarkable, it must be attractive enough to not only make people want your product or service but to spread the word about it and become advocates. 3. Profit Maximiser - this is the offer that many company’s simply do not produce. A high value product that will be your upsell to loyal customers who have enjoyed your core product or service. The profit maximiser needs to be special and individual, avoiding more of the same that you or your competitors have created. Your profit maximiser will be all profit to your business.
But don't forget about your existing customers! It’s not just new leads you need to keep happy, you must maintain and strengthen relationships with people who already love your product. In this case, you can use quality content as a retention tool and prompt them to spend more money on your services or product. Through emails that are personalised just for them, you can showcase one time offers or products that will make them feel special to your company and they will be more likely to click through to investigate. Making your customers happy should be the number one priority and away to heck if your efforts are working is to create a survey. Use software such as Survey Monkey to ask them questions such as: - What do they love the most about your products/services? - What kind of content do they find interesting? - What offers would they like to see? - How they rate what you do? You’re not just looking for a score out of 10, you want to know if there are ways you can improve your sales efforts. Asking the question “what would it take to make it a 10?” after each question will help you find out what is and isn’t working.
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What makes a great marketing image? Adam Winfield, Through the Lens Photography High quality still photography remains one of the most powerful marketing tools you can utilise within your business. A picture can make an immediate impact and a little pre-planning on your part can ensure you create maximum impact within your audience. “A picture speaks a thousand words” is a phrase often used and is as true now as it ever was but to get the most from your pictures, your business needs to think very carefully about what pictures to use and how to present them. The first thing Through the Lens Photography will do when talking to a customer about their commercial photography requirement is to ask them what they hope to achieve with their pictures. Think about the story you want to tell, it could be one of quality, personal service or of unique or specific products. Don’t forget the people in your business, whilst your customers may be purchasing products they’re probably interacting with and buying from your staff so including them in your images creates valuable trust where introductions feel like they’ve already been achieved. A good marketing image should be clear, unambiguous, bright and straightforward. Remember that poor quality images will taint your business with a perception of poor quality too.
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Make your product or service the clear focal point. Don’t clutter, mask or surround your focal point or it will be lost and you’ll distract & confuse your customers. Keep your photographs simple. Photographs are subjective and pictures you think are clever or funny can be mis-interpreted by potential customers who might be put off purchasing. Make your images bright with good lighting. Dark, dull photographs never look good and will portray poor quality. Colours grab attention. If appropriate to your product or service think about whether you can incorporate bright reds or oranges, they’re the best colours for grabbing attention. With a little thought you can create images that tell your customers a story, a little more about your product, how to use it or where. Thinking about the context of your product or service is a great place to start. This could be thinking about your ideal customer, location or maybe the different ways it can be used. Lots of businesses create aspirational images by combining their products or services with a lifestyle that customers will aspire to achieve. Apple for instance developed an incredibly successful advertising campaign by being the first computer to manufacturer to use pictures of their computers within a household setting and suddenly everyone wanted a computer at home! This may
sound like a grand strategy but thinking carefully about where you photograph your product, who’s holding it, what it’s photographed alongside or where your staff are pictured should be a relatively simple exercise but can generate real added value. Be sure to also think about your brand image, the existing marketing style & colours you use as your images could match these to look great on your website or printed marketing. Equally we’ve created photos for customers that use contrasting colours to stand out and create real impact on their webpage. Finally, before you pick up your camera to begin taking photographs, quickly consider where and how the photos are to be displayed. Very few websites incorporate ‘portrait’ or ‘upright’ pictures well, instead suiting ‘landscape’ or horizontal images better and if you are creating images for a marketing brochure you may need to wrap text around square pictures. Next time we’ll look at the nuts & bolts of how to take great marketing images yourself and how just a good smartphone will probably do the job. In the meantime, if you wish to discuss your businesses use of images give Adam a call at Through the Lens Photography.
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8 tips to help you get your press release into the papers . . . Joanne Wilson, Fill the Gap Marketing Getting your press release noticed by publications can be difficult to do, especially as journalists are bombarded not only by phone calls and emails, but also through social media. Here are 8 helpful tips on how to get your press release into the papers and noticed by journalists: 1. It has to be news worthy – When you send a press release to journalists, it needs to have some news value. Think about the journalists you are communicating with…is the story relevant to them and their audience? 2. Phone before hand – Making contact with the publication before you send the press release means you know who to send it to and get first hand feedback on whether or not the story is of interest.
3. Personalise your approach – Simply sending your press release to as many publications as you can won’t guarantee you will get noticed. If you want to make your press release stand out to journalists, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to use your story. The key is to get to know the target audience of the publication and tailor your news story e.g. for a local newspaper, you need to have a local angle. 4. Use a headline that stands out – Your headline is the first thing the journalist sees. It needs to convince them to open the email, and it has to be relevant to their readers. 5. Include quotes – A quote from someone in the organisation, or even from a 3rd party, is a great way to make the story interesting. Just remember it shouldn’t be a promotional based quote, but something that is relevant to the audience.
6. Don’t use industry jargon – Never assume that the audience know what you’re talking about. You want people to be interested in your business, not put off. Write a press release that is easy to use for the journalist and not one that needs to be rewritten. 7. Include ‘Notes to editors’ – Providing notes for the editor is a great way to ensure the journalist knows all the important information about your business, without clogging up the main body of the press release. 8. Follow up in the correct way – Don’t call a journalist to ask if they have got the press release as this will just frustrate them. You should only follow up with a journalist if you are offering them extra information that can help them use your story.
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