Marketing

THIS Is How You Do Brand Storytelling

One of the current buzz terms being bandied about by businesses today is that of “brand storytelling” – how brands can use storytelling to share their core values, win more customers, and outstrip the competition.

Never mind the fact that brand storytelling is as old as the first advertisement (not that that’s ever stopped social media hijacking old and proclaiming it as new), everyone’s talking about making the business human through stories.

The problem is, too many brands use storytelling poorly – the McDonald’s “Writer” ad being one such example where you were left questioning what the brand values were (a ?key part in successful brand storytelling).

Get brand storytelling right, however, and you connect not just the dots between customer and brand, but the audience overall. Which is why the “Moments of Warmth” ad from Duracell Canada is so successful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mQZqKLiMIg

Why Moments of Warmth Works

This winter has been one of the harshest, coldest winters in recent memory for a lot of people, and the term “Polar Vortex” became mainstream.

Recognizing this, Duracell Canada played to everyone’s weariness of winter, and – for a moment – brought a little warmth into peoples’ lives. The trick, though, was that moment wasn’t just meant to be for the duration of their stay in the bus stop.

Instead, by playing out a bigger message – “we all need each other” – it says even when things are at their toughest, we can make it through if we stick together.

By promoting human connection as the glue that makes everything tick – versus individual actions – Duracell Canada not only shares their corporate values, but also how they see world around them, and our ability to work together to make a difference.

Best of all, it’s not even a hard sell on behalf of Duracell Canada – instead, it focuses on the people (customers) and how Duracell can help (by being there when you need them). It’s a softer sell, but still effective – I know which batteries I’ll be stocking up on next visit to the hardware store.

Kudos.

5 Ways Business Owners Can Optimize Their Ads for Mobile

Seventy-two percent of small-business owners planned to increase or maintain their?mobile ad spend, with 65 percent of these increasing their spending by up to 30 percent, according to a study by Borrell Associates of 1,300 small-business owners.

Add to that the fact that?Google and Facebook are shifting more of their revenues to mobile, and it?s clear that mobile marketing, advertising and purchasing is more than just a trend?it?s a key factor in how consumers prefer to do business in today?s marketplace.

So how can your business maintain relevance and competitiveness within this new paradigm?

1. Create A Native Mobile Ad

One of the newest buzzwords currently doing the rounds in social media is ?native advertising.” This form of advertising complements the website it’s running on, or the content it?s displayed beside, by being relevant to both the topic and audience.

Instead of the usual Google Ads that may or may not be related to the content on a page, a native ad by a phone accessory retailer, for example, will appear on a blog that has mobile phone reviews, which? encourages a warmer lead and better click-through opportunities.

A recent report highlights the?increased engagement enjoyed by mobile native ads:

By finding and partnering with relevant blogs and news sites in your niche, you can create relatively low-cost ads and target a more receptive audience.

2. Use A Mobile Display Advertising Partner

If native mobile advertising doesn?t appeal to you, the immediate alternative is to partner with a mobile display advertising partner.?(These include solutions like?Jumptap,?mMedia?and?Mojiva.)?The benefit of these partnerships is that you can create an inventory of products for a fairly low cost; the hosting is taken care of by the partner.

These types of advertising partners can help ensure your ad reaches a wider audience than traditional forms of digital advertising by placing your ad across their communities.?Additionally, features like contextual ads work much like native advertising and ensure only the audience that would benefit from your product or service sees your ad, offering a higher chance of click-through and activity.

3. Build A Foursquare Ad

Geolocation mobile app Foursquare allows users to ?check in? at a physical location. This could be a restaurant, bar, gym or car dealership. By checking into the business, a customer has the option to share their location and buying preferences with their online connections on Twitter and Facebook.

This type of additional revenue from potential customers has resulted in many businesses joining Foursquare yet using it ineffectively. Companies reward ?Mayors??people who have checked in the most?as opposed to rewarding the wider customer base, and increasing loyalty in return.

A solution to this is?Foursquare Ads. Instead of relying on your customers’ check-ins,Foursquare Ads are more akin to review sites like Yelp, and helps personalize local searches for consumers looking for the types of products and services your business provides.

Similar to Google?s PPC (Pay Per Click) model, Foursquare Ads only charge you when a potential customer takes an action. The difference is that it only counts when that person visits your store, thereby driving more foot traffic to your storefront.

Additionally the ads will appear for nearby users who have either visited a similar location to yours, or are searching for related services (pizza restaurants for fast-food diners, for example).

4. Take Advantage Of QR Codes

One of the most misunderstood and maligned forms of mobile advertising is the?QR (Quick Response) code. Similar to the barcode on a grocery item that?s scanned at a supermarket checkout,?QR codes are simple and effective ways to drive mobile advertising?if used correctly.

The biggest fault many businesses make with QR codes is not optimizing the experience when you scan the code with your phone, either by a built-in feature of third-party app.

Instead of optimizing for the mobile user, businesses are directing people to standard websites or poorly designed landing pages, where it?s almost impossible to take the desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for offers.

To truly take advantage of QR codes, consider the following tactics:

Use real-time marketing with your ad.?When customers scan the code, offer an immediate discount or, if in a restaurant, a free drink or appetizer when they present the code.

Drive the clicks to a simple yet optimized microsite.?Have your offer of the week coupled with a simple ?Text me when new offers go live? call-to-action to encourage sign up and use of the QR code.

Complement the experience.?Recommend your favorite apps to enhance the user experience (a spa business could recommend the Spa Week app, for example). Provide a coupon or bonus discount for that week only.

There are several ways to take advantage of all the real-time and loyalty-building solutions QR codes offer. You just need to keep the mobile experience in mind at all times.

5. Think Local With Your Keywords

Perhaps one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to benefit from mobile advertising is to ?not advertise? at all and?use local mobile searches as your form of organic advertising instead.

As smartphone users increasingly use GPS and apps like Google Maps, along with search terms to find local services and businesses, being optimized for these types of searches can benefit your physical foot traffic exponentially.

To give you an idea of how important local mobile search is to your business, consider these statistics:

Mobile searches for restaurants?led to a 90 percent conversion rate, with 64 percent visiting within an hour of the search.

74 percent of?mobile users used their phones to get “real-time location-based information” directions, up from 55 percent the previous year, according to the Pew Research Center.

Mobile search will generate 27.8 billion more queries?than desktop search by 2015.

With these kinds of numbers, it?s clear that simple SEO isn?t enough for your business?now you need to optimize for local mobile search, too.?To take advantage of this shift in research patterns, your business needs to ensure your main website is optimized for these potential customers.

If your site is not already mobile-friendly, consider revamping its design now. Ideally switch to a?responsive design?that automatically resizes the screen and provides the optimal user experience for your visitor.

If you have an e-commerce section, adjust keywords and alt-tags on images to target local searches (?buy the best seafood in New Albany, New Jersey? versus ?New Albany seafood,? for example.) Also, ensure that smartphone users can make purchases easily.

Optimize your images by resizing them?and using them as lead first impressions for mobile visitors, with relevant alt-tags, to ensure your mobile site loads quickly, avoiding possible penalties by Google for slow-loading sites.

These are just some of the ways you can currently make use of mobile advertising for your business.

Budget, resources and implementation will determine which ones work best for your company?but even adopting just one is better than no mobile ad strategy at all.

How You Can Use Native Advertising to Complement Content Marketing

For many business owners, online advertising has traditionally meant banner ads and Pay Per Click campaigns with the likes of Google and Yahoo. While the online space was in its infancy for marketers, this approach was successful.

However, in recent years, consumers have become more discerning about how they’re marketed to, and this has resulted in banner ads and PPC campaigns taking a revenue hit. According to?a recent article at Smart Insights, global clickthrough rates continue to show unimpressive interaction, with “banner blindness” a key factor in consumers ignoring straight-up advertising.

Instead, social ads and content marketing have started to drive bigger engagement, with?consumers increasingly acting upon ads within the likes of Twitter and Facebook, as well as sponsored blog posts from bloggers promoting a certain brand or product.

Yet even these methods of advertising are beginning to be less effective, with reports showing consumers tiring of constant blatant promotion by bloggers, and?confusion around disclosure of a paid/sponsored promotion?via these channels.

With consumers looking for a better brand experience that doesn’t necessitate a barrage of ads, one area that’s set to break out in 2014 is that of native advertising.

What Is Native Advertising?

The problem with advertising is it can often seem out of place to the recipient. Mass advertising in particular?print ads or TV ads?is sent out based on attachment to a popular TV show or the reach of a newspaper or magazine. This leads to less relevance for the audience.

Online ads allowed marketers to become more focused, and begin to isolate target audiences based on age, demographic, browsing habits and more. However, this could still lead to irrelevant ads, with ads showing up based on a Web user’s browsing history, versus the ad matching the content being viewed.

This is where native advertising comes into play.

By matching advertorial to content, the hope is the increased relevance to the viewer results in the desired action for that ad. For example, let’s say you’re a fan of Ford vehicles. You visit a site like Jalopnik and, while reading about the new Ford F-150, you see an accompanying ad for tonneau covers, or tire pressure monitoring hardware.

By providing complementary ads to an audience on a relevant site, and providing context for the purchase, the chances of the ad being more successful are higher than an ad for toothpaste, for example.

It’s this contextual relevance that’s making native advertising so attractive to marketers, advertisers and business owners of all sizes. So how can your business benefit?

Native Ads As Content Marketing

As consumer behaviour shifts from making a purchase after seeing a brand ad to researching and validating through reading blogs and trusted online media sources, businesses need to think about how they can be a part of that shift.

A particularly effective approach is to partner with bloggers in your industry or niche, and provide relevant advertising opportunities for them where they can also benefit. There are multiple benefits to this method:

Both the blogger and his or her audience are relevant to your products or services, offering a warmer lead opportunity.

The blogger is respected by their audience and, as such, offers a higher potential for actions taken (downloads, demos, inquiries, etc.).

By partnering with a blogger, your business can bypass ineffective ad partners and provide fresh, relevant content direct to the source (blogger and audience).

To help you identify which bloggers are the most relevant to your brand, as opposed to those with a larger audience but less relevance, you can use tools like?InkyBee?and?InNetwork?to help you filter out the best matches.

These companies also offer excellent support in ensuring the bloggers who are the best fit for you are the ones identified by their technology.

Once you identify the bloggers, take the time to review their blogs and how they traditionally partner with third-parties like your brand. Some may display relevant ads next to an editorial, while some may offer sponsored content.

See which works best for the blogger you’re looking to connect with and then reach out with your proposal, identifying your budget and goals to ensure the blogger is the right fit from a financial standpoint.

Native Ads And Mobile

As desktop browsing continues to make way for mobile browsing as the preferred source of content consumption, so marketers and businesses need to adapt their tactics to meet this diversifying audience.

Indeed,?ComScore predicts that mobile browsing will overtake desktop browsing?in the next year.

This opens up a host of different opportunities for businesses to connect with their customers on their chosen mobile platform.

Facebook reports that mobile ads have contributed more than $1.5 billion in revenue, with much of that coming from targeted, native ads in a Facebook user’s stream.

Social networks Instagram and Tumblr are enjoying profitable brand partnerships through?in-line native ads?that are part of the user experience.

For businesses already using social media as part of their marketing outreach, the mobile-readiness of these networks make it easy to create in-line ads that will go directly to a targeted customer base (Facebook Ads offer the option to be placed in both desktop and mobile feeds).

Additionally, there are dedicated solutions to help you create a mobile native ad. One such company is?Namo Media, which provides a seamless way for you to include in-line ads on mobile apps. Nano Media’s templates adapt to your brand’s design, keeping ads unobtrusive and a natural part of your customer’s experience.

If your business doesn’t have the scale to build apps, solutions like?Conduit Mobile?enable you to create inexpensive apps with multiple features and promotional solutions.

Whether you’re looking to partner with bloggers and media for native ads through content marketing, or offering a dedicated mobile experience either through existing social networks or a dedicated app, it’s clear that native advertising is growing in popularity and effectiveness for marketers and businesses of all sizes.

With?budgets increasingly being allocated to native advertising, now might be a good time to start considering how you can use it for your business, before your competitors leave you behind.

image: Maureen Flynn-Burhoe

How Readz is Aiming to Take Content Marketing to the Next Level

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Readz – however, all opinions are my own.

Mention the term “content marketing” and, for the most part, you’ll probably think of three things – web content, social content (tweets, Facebook updates, Google+ posts, etc), and good old fashioned blog posts.

You can also add video marketing and white papers into the mix. All things considered, content marketing has been the word on pretty much every marketer’s lips for the last 12-18 months.

The problem is, once you move away from the type of rich content found on blogs (written, spoken or otherwise) and native social updates, content marketing can get a bit sterile. Think of the last white paper you read, for example – did it leave you inspired or nonplussed? After all, there’s only so many times a straightforward PDF can grab your attention…

To counter this, as well as help brands and agencies (as well as bloggers) ramp up their content marketing efforts, software platform Readz is looking to make it easy to create the kind of content that’s shareable, measurable, and usable.

The Readz Goal

The goal of Readz is simple. In their own words,

At Readz, we believe content marketing is more than a website, a blog, or even social activities. Content marketing touches every single piece of content that marketers use to communicate with prospects, customers and partners. We believe that PDFs are a poor tool to do marketing. They are not responsive, do not offer SEO, no detailed analytics etc. So many of the qualities we see in good website and blog management tools are lacking in PDFs. We believe better tools are needed to bring a better experience to customers and a higher conversion to marketers.

To enable this goal, the Readz process is pretty straightforward:

Create an account;
Create your content. This can be either articles or PDFs uploaded to your dashboard, or pulling in content via RSS;
Publish through Readz;
Share your Readz brand URL. This creates a responsive landing page that can be read on any browser and is hosted on the Readz site;
Measure using Google Analytics integration, optimize, rinse and repeat.

The solution itself is optimized for all browser settings, so it doesn’t matter if your customers are desktop-based or mobile-based (smartphone or tablet), the experience will remain consistent.

But as you’d expect from a company looking to boost your content marketing efforts, there’s a lot more to the Readz experience than simply creating a cool way to share content and measure its performance.

Branding the Experience

Because the Readz solution drives visitors to a Readz URL versus one that’s part of your existing website, keeping the feeling of brand continuity is key. Thankfully Readz offers various options to ensure your Readz landing page ties into the design, look and feel of your internal landing pages.

Better yet, the drag-and-drop interface enables all levels of expertise to be able to create a seamless transition (although, obviously, skilled designers will make the platform perform more than your average Joe).

Optimizing for Search and Performance

Perhaps one of the areas where Readz really shines is that of search engine optimization (SEO) and the analytics that can be gleaned from that. In addition, you can see how your campaign is performing, thanks to Readz’s integration with Google Analytics.

On the SEO front, any blogger or content marketer responsible for the SEO of their content will recognize the ability to optimize titles, descriptions and tags with any Readz-powered content. Because the content is hosted online, versus a downloaded PDF, the SEO juice from these options can help a brand find a fresh audience.

On top of that, running your campaign through Google Analytics will break down the performance of a particular piece of content, including views, traffic flow, demographics and much, much more.

This can either be set up as a special campaign in Google Analytics, or a brand new UA. This type of integration helps you optimize not only the current campaign, but give you insights into the type of content you should be creating as you move forward.

Other features include responsive design for all campaigns, no app downloads needed, and integration with your existing marketing solutions like MailChimp, Infusionsoft and other platforms.

The Readz Experience – A True Bigger Picture

However, while the features are comprehensive, it’s not until you start getting into the Readz experience that you really begin to see the benefits this platform can offer, compared to the static white papers and PDFs the company is looking to oust.

Because the platform enables rich media as natural inclusions, what was once a straightforward PDF now becomes a fully interactive and far more immersive experience. Take the 9LIVES “Town of Runners” campaign, for example.

Highlighting the story of the Ethiopian town of Bekoji, the Readz version of the original documentary takes the reader into the inspiring story of the incredible athletes from this part of the world.

As you scroll through the storyboard, you can click on certain action points, as highlighted by the image above. These can expand into little speech bubbles, or text boxes, or similar, to offer more information on anything you wish to have the reader interact more with.

As an education resource, you can see the benefits this option could offer – FAQs could become far more immersive, and cheat sheets could be more than just a line of text.

It’s not just these little calls to action that stand out, however. Because of the way Readz creates content (either from an existing web URL or a dedicated file upload), you can embed video directly into the Readz presentation.

In the example in the screenshot above, you can view the official trailer for the documentary directly within the Readz content. Not only that, but by clicking the call to action, you can buy your copy directly there and then, keeping the reader on your content while buying your product.

For any marketer using content to promote their services and/or products, this level of interaction is a great way to control the message while retaining your audience. It’s not just marketers, either.

For example, consider the benefits to an independent book publisher or self-published author. Let’s say you give a free chapter to anyone that pre-orders your book. In addition to the chapter, the reader could also receive a unique Readz piece, that has the author reading a chapter from the upcoming book, as well as a special thank you message, all in embedded video within the free chapter download.

Or let’s say you’re an indie singer/songwriter or band. Anyone that pre-orders your new CD could receive a free song download – but on top of that, you send them an exclusive Readz link, where they can read about the creation of the album, see an embedded video performance, etc.

As you can see, the potential is there for anyone that uses content to connect with their readers or fans, and not just limited to marketers.

Readz – The Verdict

The features highlighted in this post are just a few of the options available to you. Depending on the type of content you create, Readz can be used to transform multiple publications into more immersive experiences:

White papers;
Magazines;
Brochures;
Manuals;
Annual reports;
PDFs.

In addition to the tools, Readz also offers a wide collection of best practices and guides to help you understand how to get the best from the platform, including higher converting white papers, guides on technologies for digital publishing, and glossaries of marketing terms for mobile consumers.?When it comes to support, Readz definitely has you covered.

However, there are some areas where I feel they could improve.

Native Analytics

As mentioned earlier, Readz can be integrated with Google Analytics to show you how your content is performing. However, this is another step to add and many smaller businesses may be uncomfortable using multiple Google Analytics accounts.

Instead, it’d be great to see native analytics within the Readz dashboard. This could show you not only the standard metrics from Google, but also the behaviours of subscribers to your Readz channel.

What kind of content gained the most subscribers?
What kind of content was the most acted upon for ROI, versus the most popular?
How do audiences behave when interacting via Readz versus comparative pages on your own web properties?

This kind of data would be hugely useful to have as an embedded part of Readz, versus relying on a third-party provider.

Embeddable Content

Speaking of embedded, currently Readz doesn’t support embed codes – it simply creates the URL for your particular campaign, and you drive traffic to that. While this is primarily to help Readz keep your brand experience consistent, it does still drive traffic away from your own domain.

Instead of just offering the current URL option, it’d be great to see the ability to embed a Readz campaign on your own landing pages. This would allow you to hook into your existing analytics package, as well as understand the changes you need to make to your own portal versus one operated by Readz (mobile optimization, for example, or rich media versus text).

In fairness, the CEO of Readz, Bart De Pelsmaeker, has indicated that the embed feature is already under development for the next update, which will be a great addition to the platform.

Apart from these current quibbles, there’s not really a lot to “dislike” (for want of a better word) about the Readz platform. While building your first campaign content can be daunting, the guides and support is excellent and helps you change your mindset on how a publication is created.

Pricing starts at $25 per month for up to two content pieces/whitepapers 10,000 page views, going up to $300 per month for 50 whitepapers with 100,000 page views.

There are also one-off payments as well as simple turnkey options. To see if Readz is right for you, you can request a free demo here, and there’s also a free, 30-day trial for brands and publishers.

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Readz – however, all opinions are my own.

Turning Prospects Into Customers and 24 Other Tips to Help Grow Your Business

Lately, it seems as if we, as marketers, have gotten lazy. We?ve stopped thinking beyond the easy, Marketing 101 prospecting that we learned when we started our profession, and happily hide behind numbers that don?t mean all that much.

Impressions;
Social proof;
Social shares;
Reach;
Awareness.

All good numbers, and useful if that?s the goal of your marketing endeavors.

But something that?s primarily missing from these numbers is the main reason we got into marketing in the first place ? customers.

Sure, having a lot of reach can help you get in front of those prospects you want to turn into customers. And yes, without potential customers being aware of your brand, the prospecting factor diminishes immediately.

But we?re so much better than that ? or we should be.

We have the most insane amount of data available to us that it?s almost criminal not to be utilizing that to market smarter. Today?s social web users are freely sharing their Likes, preferences, buying signals and, more importantly, who impacts them to make the decisions that matter ? so why are we not using this data more?

Build your archetypal persona based on transactional and archival data, and combine with today?s wealth of information;
Identify where they live online. More importantly, identify who they live online with, based on their current needs and situations;
Use weighted keywords ? placing more emphasis on the words that matter to your brand and that of your customer;
Filter the conversations around these topics and build secondary and tertiary filters around the people in your prospect?s immediate circle for these topics;
Drop your prospects into a CRM platform like Nimble, to connect the dots when it comes to the buying cycle and life events that impact their decisions;
Monitor, react, be pro-active, offer solutions;
Rinse and repeat.

Okay, so that?s a simple overview for brevity ? but as simple as it is, it?s a strong foundation for truly understanding what it takes to move your desired customers from prospects to leads to acquisition.

It takes legwork, but the results are worth it. Unless you prefer to wallow in the lazy marketing pool, of course?.

The above post is my contribution to Craig McBreen’s new eBook, You Don’t Need Fans, You Need Customers. It’s chock full of advice on finding the clients you covet from the likes of Gini Dietrich, Ann Handley, Chris Ducker, Shelly Kramer, Francisco Rosales and more. Best of all, it’s free! My sincere thanks to Craig for the invite – make sure you grab your copy?here.?