Optimize Magazine - Summer 2013

issue 2 • summer 2013

IDEAS FOR MARKETING AND CREATIVE PROFESSIONALS

get smart get social!

How small businesses can LEVEL the playing field by LEVERAGING social media. Page 12

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HOW TO…

Take the design of your magazine to the next level

Create content that attracts customers and drive sales

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WeLCOme

Summer 2013

Summer 2013

EXPERT OPINION Read insight from the following contributors in this issue:

a resurgence in direct mail Because of the lack of competition in the mailbox, there has never been a better time to capture your reader’s attention in the post.

I

would like to start by thanking you all for your overwhelmingly positive comments on the first issue of Optimize. We are delighted that you found the magazine informative, thought-provoking and, most importantly, practical and relevant to your business.

hunting ground for many marketers. Second, because of the relatively low volume of print mail arriving in our mailboxes these days, it’s easier than ever to stand out and make an impact. Our clients are telling us that an eye-catching piece of creative combined with a compelling offer and a clear call-to-action can once again produce an excellent return on investment. To this, we are able to add coordinated digital and online components that heighten the effectiveness.

To make the most of this advantageous environment, your piece should ideally lead with a great image and a short, well-written headline that really grabs your reader’s attention. Where possible, bullet points are preferable to long sentences. Overall, the longer you can hold the reader’s eye, the greater the chance they will take action.

We have helped create and shape many successful direct mail campaigns over the years, and we would be delighted to share our ideas and experience with you as the genre continues to adapt to the digital age.

After reviewing your feedback, we’re excited to announce a few changes. To incorporate more in-depth pieces, we have bumped up the size of the magazine to 20 pages. Second, in response to several requests from the “creatives” among our readership, we have included a feature that specifically addresses the topic of magazine design. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on how we can continue to improve your magazine.

As a commercial printer, we pay close attention to our clients’ marketing activities. One interesting trend is a resurgence in direct mail. The reason for this is twofold.

First, with many people now receiving hundreds of emails each week and spam filters becoming increasingly Roy Waterhouse sophisticated, the email inPresident, Hopkins Printing box is evolving into a barren

coVer storY 12 Social Media for

Small Businesses

How smaller companies can level the playing field against larger competitors by leveraging social platforms.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this issue of Optimize. Please let us know how we’re doing.

04 Insights

austin Hurwitz A brand strategist and social media guru, Austin explains how small businesses can successfully leverage social media

Eleanor Williamson Art Director of SKI and SKIING magazines, Eleanor reveals the secrets to a successful magazine redesign project

Tim sweeney A freelance corporate writer, Tim helped craft the features on social media for small businesses and magazine redesign.

Ideas, opinion, news and trends.

16 The Power Of Infographics

08 Content Marketing

How to tell complex stories in a simple yet powerful way

How to build your brand with content.

14 Magazine Publishing We highlight the four key steps to a successful redesign.

18 What’s On My Mind?

Three senior marketers tell us what keeps them awake at night.

Executive Editor Cindy Woods Art Director Alan Platten Contributing Writers Tim Sweeney,

Nick Wright, Rick Julian Produced by Fourth Element Creative and The CMO Team ©2013 All Rights Reserved

Printed and distributed by Hopkins Printing www.hopkinsprinting.com

03

summer 2013

iNsiGHTs

NeWS | reVIeWS | IDeAS | OPiNiON |

talking points »

The Power of

The Printed Page Why magazines and mail are still important to the younger generation

W

hile digital is near and dear to the hearts of millennial shoppers between the ages of 18 and 34, a recent survey has revealed that traditional print media still plays an important role in their purchase habits. Newspapers, magazines and direct mail are not only instrumental in influencing the decision-making of millennials, they often serve as the primary catalyst to online shopping behavior.

Valassis’ Consumer Print Usage Survey revealed that 91 percent of millennials who use newspaper inserts do so to save money and that 60 percent would shop less without them. Newspaper inserts also guide millennials by alerting them to sales (68 percent); driving them to purchase (51 percent); reminding them of a need (46 percent); helping them decide where to buy (35 percent); and alerting them of a product or service (26 percent). In addition, 30 percent said they go online after seeing a product or service in a newspaper insert.

The survey also indicates how print and digital media work together to drive consumers from awareness to action, and highlights that the traditional path to purchase has evolved into a non-linear journey. The younger generation combines insert advertisements with online searches along the route to purchase.

The study also found that millennial shoppers use newspaper inserts when choosing restaurants (87 percent); to find coupons or discounts on apparel (84 percent); and when making decisions on telecom products and services (64 percent).

The survey platform, Facebook, was selected based on its history of heavy millennial use. Approximately 86 percent of millennials visit every day.

‘Some 91 percent of millennials who use newspaper inserts do so to save money; 60 percent would shop less without them’

INSIGHTS

technology

05

Summer 2013

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Acquisition

soUND

bites Others 29.1 %

Direct Mail 31.3 %

Email 16.7 % SEM 10.4 % Social Media Engagement 12.5 % Social Media Engagement 10.4 %

retention

OVERHEARD RECENTLY

“If you wait until there is another case study in your industry, you will be too late.”

SETH GODIN Marketing Guru and Author

Others 10.3 %

Direct Mail 37.5 %

Email 29.2 %

“If it’s been done, do it better. If it hasn’t been done, do it so well that better is not an option.”

Lee Clow’s Beard Creative Director

DR space 6.3 % Telemarketing 6.3 %

Direct Mail Still Tops For B2C ROI Direct mail delivers the strongest ROI for customer acquisition and retention for B2C direct response marketers, according to Target Marketing’s Seventh Annual Media Usage Forecast Survey. The company’s first annual survey of marketers’ media spending plans in 2007 revealed that 91 percent of marketers used direct mail, 85 percent used email marketing and 63 percent used search engine optimization.

Today, although the number of marketing channels has significantly expanded, direct mail remains the top ROI channel, used by some 80 percent of companies.

• For customer acquisition, direct mail (31.3 percent) is the most effective method of attracting new customers, followed by email marketing (16.7 percent) and social media marketing (12.5 percent).

• For customer retention, direct mail is the clear leader (37.5 percent), followed by email (29.2 percent) and social media (10.4 percent).

“Make the customer the hero of your story.”

Ann Handley Marketing Consultant

“Social media are tools. Real time is a mindset.”

3 moBilE marKEtiNG TrENDs You Need to Be Aware Of The combined penetration of smartphones and responsive websites means that 2013 is the year when mobile marketing will really take off.

1Location and geotargeting

A new wave of apps will allow brands to offer much more to customers than just information about products.

Location technology – also known as geotargeting – will be increasingly used by local businesses to target mobile users in their vicinity as well as offer incentives via smartphones when customers “check in” to a store.

Near-field 2 communication and mobile point-of-sale Consumers are already using smartphones to research products and compare prices. The natural progression is to make purchases.

Expected to be the most widely-used mobile payment solution by 2015, near-field communication (NFC) allows mobile users to transfer information from their mobile devices to card readers. Smart mobile marketers will leverage NFC to offer promotions, discounts and coupons.

PayPal, for example, recently launched a new app that allows customers to make payments from their smartphones.

“Clarity trumps persuasion.”

3

=

Quick Response (QR) codes are already popular, but the new wave of codes is increasingly being used to provide offers in-store and online, as well as deliver additional product information from the Internet.

Customers’ fingerprints are scanned or detected via the touchscreens on their smartphones while making payments with mobile apps to add another layer of end-user protection.

the World Leaders – By Country

Content Marketing Guru

Marketing Psychologist

QR code 3 Arevolution

SmartpHoNE PENEtratioN

David Meerman Scott

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin

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1. Spain – 66 % 2. United Kingdom – 64 % 3. USA – 57 % 2 4. France – 53 % 6 4 5. Italy – 53 % 1 5 6. Germany – 51 %

summer 2013

iNsiGHTs

NeWS | reVIeWS | ideas | OPiNiON |

technology »

Augmented

Reality

How are you going to use it?

A

ugmented reality. It’s a term that almost sounds too good to be true, or at least too good to be legal – taking reality and, well, making it better.

But the use of technology to superimpose digital information on an image as it’s viewed through a device is no fairy tale. In fact, although a host of augmented reality (AR) products crashed the marketing space recently without making the industry-changing impact many pundits predicted, a new wave of AR products with smartphone implications are on the way.

If you thought that sitting in your doctor’s office holding your phone over a QR Code in a magazine was cutting edge technology, just wait. AR allows brands to create more rich content and bring the consumer one step closer to the in-store shopping experience and to purchase – regardless of where they are.

Some heavyweight brands, including IKEA and Lego, have already jumped in feet-first. Lego saw a 15 percent increase in sales after teaming up with AR leader Metaio to create in-store displays that showed a 3D image of what the Lego product would look like when built. IKEA’s AR app allows customers to hold their smartphones over its catalog to view items in 3D, and then move the furniture around to see how it might look in their home.

5 (very) cool augmented reality smartphone apps Technology that puts the world around you at your fingertips.

Improving the shopping experience isn’t where the possibilities end, however. Imagine an electrical appliance company using AR to show its customers how to easily perform repairs at home. At the 2012 IFA Trade Show, Siemens displayed its House of Innovations, which featured an AR smartphone app that could be used when an appliance – say, your washing machine – is acting up. The homeowner could pull out their phone and point the camera at the misbehaving washing machine. 3D graphics would appear over the live image, showing the user how to fix or service the machine. Note: cut to landlords rejoicing the world over! n

GooGlE GoGGlEs

SNapSHop SHoWroom

Since it’s seemingly such a hassle to type words into your phone nowadays, meet Google Goggles, a free visual search app for Android 2.1 and iPhone 4.0 that lets you snap a photo of an object or place and then attempts to recognize what it is and kick back relevant search results. The app recognizes books, landmarks, logos, artwork and more – though not animals, furniture or apparel.

Similar to the IKEA app discussed in the accompanying story, the SnapShop Showroom app for iPhone allows consumers to see what furniture might look like in their own home, without having to move items around their living room. Shoppers can browse products from various top brands and use their fingers to place furniture in their iPhone camera or photo album using AR. A shopping cart button takes consumers to the retailer’s website once they’ve decided what they want.

‘IKEA’s AR app allows customers to hold their smartphones over its catalog to view items in 3D and then move furniture around to see how it might look in their home’

YElp Handy in an unfamiliar neighborhood, Yelp’s AR app has a feature called Monocle that allows users to point their phone in any given direction and see info on restaurants, bars, tourist attractions, or even where friends have checked in.

The restaurant tab, for example, shows the name of restaurants in the direction you point, as well as Yelp user reviews, the average review rating, the distance from your location and a cost indicator.

INSIGHTS

Summer 2013

opinion » new trend »

The “Gamification” of

MARKETING

How companies are learning from the online/offline games industry to increase engagement with consumers.

Since we were old enough to walk, we’ve played Duck Duck Goose, Musical Chairs and even Monopoly – where we compete for, of all things, fake money and property. As adults, we have demonstrated our love for games by playing right along with marketers for the last several years, “liking” posts on Facebook, re-Tweeting for a chance to win or, the most bizarre of all, earning points for “checking in” at our favorite burger joint. The “gamification” of marketing – when companies use game concepts in a non-game arena to increase consumer engagement – is big business.

Truth is, the tactic has been used by sales organizations for as long as there have been salesmen. Organization X dangles a free golf trip to the sales rep who sells the most of product Y over Z number of weeks. Efforts increase, company hits target, top performers enjoy bogey-free weekend getaway then come back and tell everyone how great it was. Motivation and mission accomplished.

The same recipe works on consumers, who love to make progress and be rewarded – be it with frequent flyer miles or points toward a free Starbucks coffee. In doing so, brands are driving consumers down a desired pathway by using an interesting, enjoyable experience and rewarding them early and frequently so that they come back.

HoW it WorKs: Tourism Queensland’s “Best Job in the World” campaign

A prime example of all the pieces coming together in a very original competition, the “game” promoted the Great Barrier Reef as a destination, encouraging people aged 18-30 worldwide to apply for a $100,000 position as “house-sitter” for the reef’s islands. The campaign led to 35,000 applications and global media attention.

HoW yoU caN Do it: Follow these key tactics Not every business can reward its audience with a highly paid job, but the goals are the same: create engagement and increase consumer awareness and sales. Success can be measured in many ways – responses, likes, shares, re-Tweets, or even an increase in page views to raise ad rates. The irony? In most cases, consumers are earning only virtual points. Maybe playing Monopoly wasn’t such bad practice, after all.

WiKitUDE WorlD BroWsEr The Wikitude World Browser app has been voted “Best Augmented Reality App” by the AR community four years running for a reason: it delivers just about everything around you on one app, with sections for restaurants, travel, accommodation and events.

Tap on the “Events” tab, for instance, and get all the theater or concerts happening around you at that time.

The app defaults to your camera as the display, but can also deliver in map or list format. You can even save your “favorites” to find them later on.

SpyGlass For the avid outdoorsman – or just someone who doesn’t want to get lost on a day hike – the Spyglass app for iPhone and iPad delivers an AR navigator and compass for the wilderness. Among the bells and whistles: a hi-tech viewfinder, maps, tactical GPS and speedometer. AR navigation allows you to tag, find and track multiple locations and bearings in real time.

You can even store handy locations for later.

Why a B2B brand

doesn’t have to be bland Just because your company sells to other companies instead of individual consumers doesn’t mean you need to take a cautious or conservative approach to your corporate messaging and branding. Here are three ways to attract and hold the attention of your customers.

1

Try The Human Touch Abandon the belief that B2B and B2C brand dynamics are fundamentally different. Reframe the theatre of operation.

It’s no longer B2B or B2C, it’s H2H: human-to-human. Remember that faceless businesses won’t be consuming your B2B branding – a living, breathing human will – so communicate with them.

By Rick Julian

2

story and it will

Always Be Interesting All branding is about the cultivation and retention of memory. People more easily forget boring stimuli than they do interesting stimuli. Your brand communications are no different. Apply the following three objectives to every brand interaction you deliver to your audience: ENGaGE: No matter how strong your product or service is, if your branding doesn’t have stopping power, your audience will never know how good you are. Be visually arresting, too. Humans gather more information via sight than any other sense.

INform: Start with this question: What are the three primary pieces of information you want your reader or viewer to understand and take away?

Then, craft your messaging with a disciplined focus on those key points.

ENtErtaiN: An old Indian proverb contains invaluable branding wisdom: “Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”

3

Leverage Video Video is one of the most compelling and effective ways of delivering brand messages while incorporating all of the key communication elements above. Businesses that learn to leverage its power will gain a significant competitive advantage.

Rick Julian is Chief Creative Officer of QUO VADIS, an award-winning brand consultancy. www.qvbrands.com

“Tell me a truth and I’ll believe.

But tell me a live in my heart forever.”

07

“Getting started, we did the very same things that we advise our clients to do today. We focused on the pain points of our customers and helped solve them.”

Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, Joe Pulizzi built a successful business from scratch– and

mEET THE KiNG oF

it all started with a blog.

coNTENT marKETiNG

Summer 2013

interView: BuiLD YOur BrAND THrOuGH CONTeNT »

O

ne thing you can say about Joe Pulizzi is that he has always been ahead of the curve. He first started using the term “content marketing” in 2001 when he left his executive position at Penton Media to launch a specialist consultancy that helped custom publishing firms find clients. In the right place at the right time, Pulizzi was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the wide range of opportunities presented by the emergence and growth of digital and online content, and social media.

However, after deciding that his time was better spent serving the needs of the marketer instead of the publishing agency, Pulizzi flipped his business model and launched the Content Marketing Institute, which has since evolved into the leading online and event resource for content marketing. In addition to managing Content Marketing World, which takes place each September in Cleveland, Ohio, and launching Chief Content Officer Magazine, Pulizzi has authored several best-selling books and spoken at more than 200 seminars around the world. He took time out of his hectic schedule to talk to Nick Wright about his business and how companies of all sizes and in all industries can use content to attract customers, build loyalty and grow sales.

Q: You are well known as an authority on content marketing. Tell us a little about how you came to specialize in this field.

Joe Pulizzi: When I first left the corporate world to venture into content marketing, I launched a company – Junta 42 – which matched custom publishing agencies with potential clients. We paired more than one thousand projects over a two-year period, but we didn’t really achieve the revenue growth we were looking for. In 2009, we decided that instead of targeting agencies as our clients, we should target the marketers – the companies that needed to solve their content creation problems. So we switched our whole model

and focused on creating educational products/solutions that eased their pain.

Q: So what were the first steps in reinventing yourself?

JP: We started with a daily blog on our Content Marketing Institute website, which now has more than 150 contributors. We then launched Chief Content Officer Magazine, a quarterly print publication that is mailed to 22,000 executives in North America.

Once we built our audience, we developed our event series, which comprises domestic and international workshops. Content Marketing World is our flagship annual event. That takes place in September in the USA. In March this year, we held our first Australian event.

Q: You’ve done an incredible job of taking the content marketing space and making it your own. How did you use content to grow your business and what lessons can companies learn from your experiences?

JP: We did the very same things that we ask our clients like AT&T, Petco and Allstate to do today. We simply focused on the pain points of our customers. We identified our key clients as corporate marketers that were looking to create “owned” media practices within their organization. Once we understood what our clients needed, we created and distributed content through multiple channels to solve those problems.

Our blog was – and still is – pivotal. It’s the magnet and hub of our model. It took us five years to develop our audience, but it’s growing really fast now. We get about 135,000 unique visitors a month. What’s really exciting is the “share” numbers we’re seeing on the blog.

competitive set that has a print publication.

You can tell everybody in the world, “Hey, we have really good content online,” but for instant credibility and authority, nothing beats being able to hand somebody a copy of a magazine. I recently attended a CMO event and handed out our magazine to everybody in the room. Every single person read it and subscribed to it. That’s huge.

Q: What is your strategy in creating your print and online content?

JP: Our Online Content Director and Print Content Director collaborate on a regular basis. In the past, we made the mistake of taking our print magazine content and putting it online without any editing. That wasn’t smart because it didn’t add any value. In fact, it made it much more difficult for customers to read our material. We edit and repackage all of our “print” content so that it is either a little shorter or a little punchier for the web. But the callto-action is always a subscription. We use the print magazine to drive our database growth.

Q: What’s the number one takeaway?

JP: The key thing when you launch a magazine is that it integrates with and complements the content that you publish online. We want to play off hot topics together and attack them from different angles. Here’s an example: We decided recently that we needed to become an authority on the subject of native advertising. We immediately released several fairly short blog posts. For our print magazine, however, we needed a more indepth, more insightful and more thoroughly researched piece. So we developed a content strategy that leverages both platforms.

Q: What kind of role does print

Q: What is it about print that still

play in your marketing?

makes it a viable communication tool?

JP: Print is a huge competitive advantage for us because we are the only player among our

JP: I think it is important to realize that this evolution in media has happened many times

f

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Summer 2013

iNTerVieW

JoE PUliZZi oN… 1. Applying ROI to content marketing I actually prefer to think of this as ‘return on objective.’

The most important thing is to clearly state your goal.

Let’s say you want to improve customer retention. Put a number to that objective.

Once you add that metric, you immediately start to focus on how to achieve it. First, you make your hypothesis, then you put content against it.

Here’s an example. At the Content Marketing Institute, I know that an email newsletter subscriber is five times more likely to sign up for one of our Content Marketing World Events than somebody who is not. Therefore, it is very important to me that those people get their content so they can share it, believe it and get excited about being

part of our community. So what’s our goal? To generate the type of content that will enable us to grow our email newsletter subscriber base.

2. Finding a content success formula Creating content is both time-consuming and resource-intensive so you need to know that what you’re doing works. Once you have identified your objectives and specific metrics, commit to the content development for six months and then review your results. I love what Joe Chernov used to do at Eloqua.

He discovered that once somebody had engaged in 10 individual pieces of content on the Eloqua site, they were 80 percent more likely to become a customer. First, that’s incredibly powerful data.

before. We’ve heard that radio is dead. It’s still here. We’ve heard that TV is dead. It’s still around and as popular as ever. Shoot, I’ve even read articles that said the Internet and social media are going away. And of course, we’re constantly being told that print is dead.

No channel dies; it just evolves and changes.

In my opinion, there is a huge opportunity in print right now because there’s less physical mail being sent. You can get more attention in the post than ever before.

Q: Given that brands can now create and distribute their own content, what does that mean for regular publishers?

JP: We are living in very interesting times.

Let me start by saying that there is no way that traditional media companies will be able to compete with large corporations in creating content in the long-term. Second, publishers need to come to terms with the fact that corporations will continue to reduce their ad spend in magazines. That is a big problem for traditional

Second, it’s a great motivator for producing content because it’s a proven model.

3. The power of the long, long keywords tail Just like everybody else, we get most of our search traffic from the way, way long tail.

For example, while we might want to target ‘native advertising’ as a keyword, we are mindful that somebody searching for information on the subject might type in “native advertising definition” or “native advertising measurement tools.” Search has changed so much because of the advent of social platforms.

But at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself why social works. It only works if you have a great story to tell, so that’s why it all comes back to content marketing.

“Because there’s less

physical mail being sent now, you can get more attention in the post than ever before.” publishers because a significant amount of their revenue comes from advertising. It’s not a content problem; it’s just that the financial model has changed. People are still reading Newsweek, for example, but advertisers aren’t supporting the magazine like they used to.

The more innovative publishers understand that they need to move away from the sponsorship of a paid circulation model.

Take Inc. and Fast Company, for example.

Their subscriptions, newsstand sales and advertising revenues are dwarfed by their

events businesses, which create the majority of the money for those titles. Once you have built a critical mass of an audience, as a publisher you need to start looking more closely at what you can sell to those people.

Q: When content marketing was in its infancy, it was easy to capture people’s attention. How can companies stand out from the crowd with the massive amount of free content available online these days?

JP: I think it’s always going to be that way and there’s no doubt that it’s getting worse.

So we have to do two things: One, we have to tell a different story. A client recently asked me how he could stand out and be noticed in an industry where everybody is talking about the same things and targeting the same keywords. I told him that he simply needed to tell a different story. Sure, he might need to target some of those same keywords, but he could offer a different point of view, be more informative, be more entertaining.

Summer 2013

Another tactic is to build an “influencer” network. Give a lot of content “gifts” so that you build relationships with the people who like to share material. Most brands don’t do enough of that. Deliver content to the networks where you know your customers are hanging out when they are not on your site.

Q: What other reasons are there for creating content? Explain to a smallto medium-size business the reasons for creating good content?

JP: Companies of all sizes need to be using content to drive prospects through the sales funnel. Why? Because today we’re going online to find the solution to ALL of our problems. Let’s start at the top of the funnel, where the consumer is just gathering information. They may not even be aware of your company yet, but they do know they have a challenge or a problem that needs to be solved. The key question is whether, when these potential customers type a relevant question or keyword into Google, they will find your company. If you are not creating relevant, informative or entertaining content, then you might as well be invisible to the search engines.

Many companies also make the mistake here of talking purely about themselves and their services. However, an explanation of the features and benefits of your product is really only a very small part of the buying process. It’s certainly not going to help you at the very top of the buying funnel.

Q: So what’s the next step?

JP: So we know that we need to create interesting stories and to answer our prospects’ questions at the top of the sales funnel. The goal now is to move them through the funnel toward a purchase. Hopefully, you will have collected the email addresses of people who have signed up for a newsletter or requested more information. The next step might be to offer some comparison information. If you’re a B2B company, say, that might mean creating a series of white papers or PDF downloads, or

a piece of content that a buyer can take to his or her manager to help sell your product into the organization. The key, again, is to focus on the solution, not your products and services.

Identify the pain points for your customer and use your content to explain how you’re going to solve them.

I actually prefer to think of the process not as a funnel, but as an hour-glass. After you’ve nurtured a prospect and converted them into a customer, you want them to become an evangelist and to go out and spread the word about your company. Well, you’ve got to empower people to be able to do that, so give them the tools and the ammunition to be able to talk about you and to share your content among their network. The secret is to look at what your customer needs at every single step of the buying process and then develop and distribute content that addresses those needs.

Q: Is there one golden rule?

JP: If you take just one thing away from this interview it should be that customers don’t care about you or your products. They care only about themselves. They will only care about your product during a very small portion of the buying process. That means 90 percent of your content has to focus on your customers’ needs, not on yours.

Q: Not only do you have to create content, you need to understand how it will be shared and how you will distribute it, right?

JP: Exactly. Many of the brands with whom we work have made the mistake in the past of jumping straight to the channel without giving any thought to the content, the strategy or the audience. Even now, I’ll have clients say to me, “Joe, we need a blog” or “Joe, we need strategies for Facebook and Pinterest.” But they are jumping the gun. The first question they should be asking themselves is, “What are the needs of my customers?”

Then it should be, “What is our story, how are we going to tell it and will the people care about it at all?” Only then can you even think about what channel or platform to use.

Q: You talk about how companies need to identify different buying personas when creating content. Can you explain?

JP: It’s very rare for a business to have just one type of customer. In fact, most businesses have an average of seven different decisionmakers involved in the purchasing process.

This means that, in an ideal world, you should have seven different content strategies built around the individual needs of those people.

For example, you might need to create content for a business owner, the CFO, the COO, the IT Director or the CMO, all of whom might have a key role to play in buying your product.

Q: So the content marketing strategy can be as complex as you want to make it, depending on how far you want to drill down?

JP: That’s right. If you are going to get started, start simple. Start with one buying persona and create the content for your most important buyer. Perhaps start with a blog and supplement that with a white paper program or a print newsletter program. Consider hosting a small event; something regular that you can easily commit to. Start with one, ask for feedback and then you go from there.

Q: How do you deal with the client that doesn’t want to put their ideas out there?

JP: These days there are NO secrets. Your competitors know everything already. The only way to differentiate yourself is through the way in which you communicate. Your competitors can copy everything else that you are doing, but they can’t copy the way you talk to and engage with your customers. The more prospects you can drive into that sales funnel, the greater the competitive advantage you will enjoy. n WANT TO READ MORE? Download a Lite Paper of the full interview with Joe Pulizzi featuring bonus content by scanning the QR Code or going to: www.hopkinsprinting.com/index.php/pulizzi-lite-paper/

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mArKeTiNG: sOCiAL meDiA

social media For small Businesses Large corporations have quadrupled their investment in social media marketing over the past three years, while small businesses in general have failed to embrace this new platform. We asked two experts how smaller organizations can level the social media playing field.

By Tim sweeney

R oUr EXpErts

austin Hurwitz Brand Strategist and Social Media Consultant

missy Potalivo Owner/Chief Publicizer Social Sense Marketing

ecognizing that small businesses have limited time and resources, brand strategist Austin Hurwitz stresses that any social media effort must begin with objectives.

“I am surprised at how often a business will just dive in without considering what they want to get out of it,” says Hurwitz, who has worked with Gatorade, Pepsi, Lucky Brand Jeans and Callaway Golf. “The wrong approach increases the risk you’ll be talking to yourself and potentially turning away current fans of the business or stakeholders who are already cynical.”

The over-arching goal of entering the social media fray is improving your relationship with your audience.

The nature of your business will clarify your specific objectives – more followers, increased website traffic or simply wider brand exposure – and clear goals will determine what mediums will work best. “Start out small and focus on only a few areas,” says missy Potalivo, the Owner/Chief Publicizer of Social Sense marketing, a company she started to help small businesses gain exposure through social media. “I usually suggest that businesses start with Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, which are the three main

channels of social media right now – and can all be linked together.”

Hurwitz agrees with the notion of doing fewer things better and says that “fishing where the fish are and cultivating existing behaviors should be your priority.” You might want to consider starting as a silent observer while learning what types of social media channels your audience use, how they use them and what content they enjoy receiving and sharing. “Leveraging, encouraging or participating in something that your audience is already doing is much easier than asking them to alter their behavior,” Hurwitz says.

“The chosen path should then influence

your communications and how you reward the audience interactions.”

Whether you’re Tweeting, posting or Instagram-ing, if you take advantage of technological tools that can assist small businesses with quality, consistency, speed-to-market, and analytics, you’ll have the ability to punch bigger than your weight.

The good news is that getting a foot in the proverbial social media door is easier than small business owners might think, and you don’t need a Shaq-like Twitter following. Two years ago, Potalivo began working with Convict Lake resort, an “off-the-beaten-path gem” near mammoth Lakes,

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“Leveraging, encouraging or participating in something that your audience is already doing is much easier than asking them to alter their behavior”

5 KEY stEps small BUsiNEssEs caN TaKE To LEVEraGE social chaNNEls 1. Establish a Clear Goal Social media is measurable, so you should always have an idea of what you want to achieve. If you can determine realistic objectives upfront, you should be able to integrate mechanisms to help achieve your goals, measure performance and optimize moving forward.

2. Start Small And Build Focus helps ensure that you get the most out of your time and money, and that what you are providing via social media – as well as how you’re going about it – is both valuable and sustainable.

3. Know Your Audience CA., that had barely any social media presence and needed exposure to a bigger audience. Using Facebook allowed her to expand the resort’s demographic and to tap into different social and business networks. Potalivo experimented with multiple tactics early on to see what created the most interaction. She found that pictures, fishing facts and information about the area were most effective.

“We tapped into what people were passionate about,” Potalivo says.

“I think the most critical piece in any businesses’ social media success is understanding who your followers are, why they follow you and, ultimately,

what they’re passionate about.”

The resort’s Facebook followers jumped from around 100 to more than 1,700 with a high interaction rate. even better, reservations for the resort’s cabins, five-star restaurant and lake activities all increased.

When you strike a chord with your audience, be ready to capitalize.

That means finding creative ways for the audience to contribute, planning follow-ups to the initial content and using Pr to brag about your success.

“I would say an often overlooked best practice is simply planning for success,” Hurwitz says. “If it feels like you’ve got something that you know

people will want to share, you’ve got to make it really easy for them to spread the word.”

With the right approach and tactics, a strong social media presence combined with effective and frequent communication with your audience has the potential to drive consumer loyalty, even at a place with such a welcoming name as Convict Lake! “Having an ongoing connection with a brand makes me feel good about my decision to purchase its products or services, and gives me a sense of ownership so to speak,” Hurwitz says. “That’s pretty awesome, both for me and the business.” n

It helps to know who you are and who your audience is. Monitor that on an ongoing basis. Like any relationship, when you understand each other, you have a good idea of how to talk with one another.

4. Consistency is Key Social media is nothing if not current. If you can’t manage your social media sites on a consistent, daily basis, hold off on even starting until you have the time to manage the process on a daily basis.

5. Create Shareable Content Pictures tell a powerful story.

People love to see photographs, images or videos about your product or business. One of the best platforms for social media right now is Pinterest, which lets you share pictures with a link back to your website.

4 sTEPs To a SUccESSFUl rEDEsiGN We asked two experienced magazine Art Directors to reveal their secrets for giving a ‘tired’ editorial template a creative makeover. By Tim Sweeney Magazine readers can be a fickle bunch. No matter how engaging a magazine’s content, the occasional refresh – or redesign – is required if a publication is to continue connecting with its audience and stand out on a crowded newsstand. What’s the secret to maintaining a fresh look?

1 our EXPErTs

Eleanor Williamson Creative Director, SKI & SKIING magazines Active Interest Media

Daniel Di loreto Art Director, The CEO Magazine Sydney, Australia

DEVELOP A CONSISTENT ARCHITECTURE most magazines adopt a similar design recipe: start with a splashy photo spread that pulls the reader in toward the contents page; follow that with quick-hitting appetizers of easy reading; then dive into features that offer longer, in-depth reads. “This architecture really works best in terms of flow or pacing for a magazine,” says eleanor Williamson, Creative Director of Active Interest media’s SKI and SKIING magazines.

“Not everyone will make it into the feature well on their first sitting. You don’t want to lose readers on a long story before they’ve really been immersed in the magazine.”

Daniel Di Loreto, Art Director for Sydney, Australia-based The CEO Magazine, adds that repetitive sections of a magazine, such as the table of contents, news and the editor’s letter, should have a repetitive style to give a magazine its identity, much like the masthead or body copy. “As a creative, your job is to keep pushing boundaries and being edgy without losing impact or reader interest,” he says.

“Designers and editors often have differing opinions, but it’s crucial that they work together closely during the early stages of a magazine redesign” Williamson, who has been in the magazine business for some 15 years, believes that readers and editors would miss the structure it if it didn’t exist.

“It keeps art directors, photo editors and editors from going crazy, since it’s much easier to assign stories to buckets, rather than just haphazardly,” she says. “And advertisers like it, too.”

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START WITH A CLEAR MISSION STATEMENT Like any business decision, redesigning a magazine should begin with a clear goal.

Di Loreto, who has more than 15 years

of design experience across fashion, lifestyle and business magazines, places a heavy emphasis on researching the target demographic. Learning what works and what doesn’t provides a definitive direction for the redesign process. “A business magazine for CeOs is by nature going to be heavily information based and will therefore have a larger word count per page compared with, say, a fashion layout, which will be more visual,” he explains.

In her 12 years at SKI, Williamson has been through two major redesigns with creative refreshes conducted annually. Now also charged with SKIING Magazine, redesigned three years ago, she finds herself working on competing titles owned by the same publisher. “It’s a constant challenge to keep the two magazines distinctly different,” she says.

“For that reason, the most important must-have for any redesign is a clear directive of what you want the publication to be and who your audience is. You need agreement from both the content and business sides of the operation.”

Williamson’s first redesign with SKI came after Time Inc. purchased

mAGAZiNe reDesiGN

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skiing magazine: Designed to appeal to established and experienced skiers, SKIING has a busier and more complex layout with hints of humor that deliver an “insider” environment.

ski magazine:

the title. The editorial team worked to create a design that appealed to a wider high-end audience (rather than the passionate ski bums of the past).

The next redesign came under Bonnier Corp, which wanted a more lifestyleoriented direction, effectively turning it into ‘a travel book for skiers.’

CAREFULLY SELECT FONTS AND TYPEFACES Williamson starts the redesign process by creating a Flickr gallery containing inspirational creative examples. “They can come not only from other magazines, but from websites, photography, signage, font research and life in general,” she says.

“We also simultaneously decide on the direction of photography and illustration, making adjustments to assignments if necessary.”

Designers and editors often have differing opinions, but it’s crucial

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Designed for all ski enthusiasts – not just experts – SKI incorporates more elegant typography and a creative use of white space to deliver an elegant and airy feel.

that they work together closely at this early stage. “A good relationship with the editor pays dividends when it comes to settling on a layout, with both parties making the necessary adjustments to finalize a design that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing,” Di Loreto says.

Because a redesign is often more about imagery than typography, Williamson stresses that a talented photo editor is crucial to the process.

“I meet with the individual section editors to hone in the details of their pages,” she says. “The next step is to template everything out, so it’s easy to maintain consistency and provide the photo editor with a definitive space to fill and the editors with word counts. marrying specific editorial sections

with design is challenging. How well you do that comes down to the quality of the initial brief.”

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DESIGN MUST MATCH THE EDITORIAL TONE When you hear “redesign”, you instinctively think about fonts and pictures, but even art directors admit that the words themselves play a vital role. For Williamson and the editorial staff, there must be a clear difference in tone between their two snow sports publications. SKI is for everyone, while Williamson describes SKIING’s passionate readership as “a bit like a club where everybody gets the same in-jokes.” The design reflects their key differences. “SKI is elegant and airy, while SKIING tends to be more complex with little hints of humor and lots of sport,” she says.

“Our redesign of SKIING cleaned up the typography in a way that would

allow the photography to shine. A lot of the inspiration actually came from Wired which, in a curious way, has a similar tone to SKIING, minus the actual skiing itself.”

Determining how to design for a new tone can be difficult and the designer who asks an editor for more words will be the first. “We all want big, beautiful images with big bold type,” Di Loreto says. Designers struggling to match the tone can look to a nearby, if not obvious, place for inspiration – print ads. “If you’re designing an ad for an urban street fashion label that targets skaters between the ages of 16 and 28, you’d probably want to use a really grungy, dirty font as opposed to a more clean cut font,” Di Loreto says. “Using a selection of fonts and imagery that your audience can relate to will help you engage your readers more effectively.”

And that, at the end of the day, is what magazines are all about. n

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key steps to creating infographics

1 Treat them like a mini ad campaign Identify what you hope to achieve, the audience you want to target and the knowledge they will appreciate and want to share.

2 focus on design, design, design Great design will give your story credibility. If you can’t get it done in-house, hire a freelance graphic designer.

3 Don’t forget to tell a story!

While design is key, it’s your story and your message that will keep people reading to the end.

HoW to TEll YoUr story WitH GraPHics

The web’s most popular infographic, What Are The Odds, has been shared more than one million times!

4 Keep it nice and simple Remember, the simplicity of your idea is far more important than the quality of your graphics.

Got a really complex piece of information you want to share with your audience?

Well, your readers are on a diet from long-form reading. It’s time to feed them content in digestible and visual portions.

By Tim sweeney

CreATiNG iNFOGrAPHiCs

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n today’s world, it seems, nobody has the time to sit and read the whole story. We make assessments of political candidates based on sevensecond sound bites and vote on important governing matters armed only with the knowledge we’ve gleaned from a few newspaper headlines. Tweets, Pinterest pins, Facebook posts, sports headlines and stock market tickers that scroll across the bottom of our TV screens – we’ve grown accustomed to getting information quickly and moving on to what’s next.

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Treat your infographic like a mini ad campaign

To maximize your reach and share impact, you’ll first need to identify what you hope to achieve and the audience you’re targeting, as well as what knowledge they might appreciate being given and are most likely to share. Start by thinking about how you want to tell your story. The most popular and successful infographic themes are humor, how to, unique insight, and commentary on current industry/business trends.

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Design, design, design

The importance of a strong design cannot be understated. If you can’t make your infographic immediately engaging using your own inhouse talent, hire a freelance designer. A talented graphic designer will know how to enhance your copy with graphics, and vice versa. Once again, you have multiple options when it comes to presenting your information – graphs, flowcharts, simple charts, timelines and mixed charts that feature a variety of different graphical elements.

Information graphics – or infographics – which visually deliver useful information or data, cater to our natural desire to view and share easily-digestible content. Social media channels have made it simple for millions of people to spread information around the globe very quickly.

If done well, infographics can be an ideal vehicle for marketers to drive additional traffic to their website by packaging useful information within an attractive layout.

Other advantages are the ability to break through the online copy clutter, easily link back to your website and grab your fair share of search engine attention. In fact, many companies have experienced enormous growth in re-tweets and Facebook likes after substituting traditional text-based posts and tweets for more attractively designed infographics.

So where do you start? If your company doesn’t have the in-house capabilities to create an infographic, there are plenty of companies that can create a bespoke design, provide a basic template, or simply connect your brand, agency or company with designers who can construct the infographic for you. Think about it: reading just about anything is going to be more fun in an infographic. Except, perhaps, a story about infographics!

Here are four key steps to getting it right:

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Don’t forget to tell a story!

As important as the design is, if you don’t deliver useful information that educates or entertains your audience, no one will care or share.

Your infographic should tell a compelling and interesting story, so delivering the information with snappy, engaging and well-structured copy is crucial.

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Keep your message short and sweet…and simple!

The success of any piece of online content is heavily influenced by how well it is promoted by blogs and social media power-users. When it comes to infographics, it’s not necessarily the quality of your imagery that will lead to multiple shares, but the simplicity of your message or idea.

If you have several fun facts that can stand alone, Tweet about those elements individually so they can attract attention and create curiosity about what else you might have to offer. Finally, be sure to add your company logo and web url – preferably embedded in your graphic – to increase your exposure.

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Summer 2013

What’s on my mind?

Three senior marketers tell us what’s keeping them awake at night

leda Buster

Kate Frost

roger Barnes

Digital Marketing Solutions Manager

Director of Marketing

Global Marketing and Brand Manager

DJO Global

Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP

CDS Global Logistics, Inc.

“DJO Global is a large medical device company that comprises 14 brands.

We traditionally have marketed to and communicated with healthcare professionals. Given the changing landscape of healthcare, however, we are transitioning to communicating with both healthcare professionals and patients.

Given the sheer volume of products and services that we offer, we are looking for new and unique ways to connect with the audiences, deliver information in a relevant and meaningful way and then, if appropriate, direct them to the correct channel to purchase. We know that patients spend a considerable amount of time online researching information

“Evolving to meet the new healthcare landscape and delivering content to both professionals and patients” on products and services. One of our focus areas is producing content that helps the healthcare professional and patient understand how to use our product properly. We continue to explore social media and other platforms to reach our audiences.” n

“Crafting a unique brand message that creates differentiation in a highly commoditized market” “As a law firm, we are considered a commodity if we cannot clearly differentiate ourselves from our competitors. We realized that to stand out from the crowd, we needed to develop a unique, effective and consistently branded message, one that speaks to our strengths in a practice or industry and conveys how we add value to a client relationship.

Ultimately, our message had to demonstrate what the firm stands for and what clients can expect from us. After a lot of time spent researching our service and industry strengths, and listening to our clients talk about their business, we settled on three key factors – predictability, responsiveness and value.

The challenge now is formulating a message that enables us to communicate with our audience in a clear and concise way. We use tools like alerts, newsletters and seminars to inform our clients and contacts on legal developments relevant to their businesses.” n

“Three things give me sleepless nights: understanding what drives customers’ buying decisions; staying up to speed on social media and innovative ways to drive more revenue; and finding more solutions for our customers.

In our fast-paced online world, I see a paradigm shift where customers want to interact with companies on their own terms and in their own time.

It is harder than ever to get a customer’s attention. And when you do get it, you have it for just a few seconds.

Especially challenging for me is the fact that there are literally thousands of companies in our space, so we have to differentiate. With our inbound marketing, though, my focus is to improve the customer experience when they are ready to find us. I also continuously measure how we service customers.

Of course, we can send out weekly industry updates to show that we have frequent communication, but that’s not what the customer values. Relevant business impact is the foundation behind all of our communications.” n

“Finding a way to deliver meaningful and relevant communications to a time-starved consumer”

Calendar showcase

Featured Designer:

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Becca Baum

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Client: Nationwide Insurance

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printing by Hopkins printing • 614-509-1080 • printed on a Heidelberg Speedmaster CD, 6-color with in-line coating unit Design by Becca Baum, Graphic Design Specialist @ nationwide insurance

Each quarter, Hopkins Printing produces and distributes a quarterly calendar and notepad that has been designed for Hopkins Printing by one of our talented design clients.

We are pleased to showcase Becca Baum, Graphic Design Specialist at Nationwide Insurance as the designer of the 2013 Q2 calendar project.

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Want to receive the Hopkins Quarterly Calendar?

Printing by Hopkins Printing • 614-509-1080 Printed on a Heidelberg Speedmaster CD, 6-color with in-line coating unit. • Design by Becca Baum, Graphic Design Specialist @ Nationwide Insurance

1-800-319-3352

Contact your Hopkins Printing Account Executive today or visit www.hopkinsprinting.com/index. php/optimize/ to place your request.

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