Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Looking at news with through viewers eyes


Recent research suggests that text is more important than images on the web. "The web is primarily a text-driven medium and will remain so despite the rise of video," says New Thinking.

According to the article, "In traditional print media it has long been established that images are more powerful than text in getting attention. But the opposite is the case on the Web. Text dominates." Information derives from an Eyetrack III study that logs where subjects look on a web page, in this case news sites, where they look first on the page, what they spend most time viewing and what they ignore. Interestingly Google AdWords rely exclusively on text and it is true that some very successful print advertising such as poster campaigns work with just text, thanks to powerful headlines. The news study also noted how people scanned headlines, so whether designed to get people to read the rest of the news  story or to  learn about a product or service, the headline can be a deal breaker in getting attention and engagement.

Headline writing is an art, whether to encapsulate the story, to intrigue, to amuse or otherwise grab attention few words work best. Getting viewers to stop long enough to engage is essential whether promoting news stories or reading advertisements, both on web sites and in print. Flagging up something of relevance and interest to an individual within a sea of messages and information is where the combination of effective headline and strong visual image has been accepted wisdom in the news and advertising businesses. The same wisdom applied to designing press releases to gain the attention of a news editor by accompanying the release by an interesting image that the editor would recognise as in turn helping sell his publication.

Unlike Google AdWords, Facebook does include a meagre 110 x 80 px image along with 25 characters for headline and 135 characters for body text. Interestingly the Eyetrack III research found that "a postage-stamp mug shot was viewed by 10% of participants" and "images that are at least 210 x 230 px were viewed by more than half the testers." Many news sites routinely use small images the study observes. The Virtual News Office cleverly uses 4 different sizes of image - a small index image that is displayed alongside headline, dateline and story summary, a larger image that can be enlarged with a click to 300px and a high res option for downloading by picture editors. Interestingly the study signed off with a research tidbit: " We noticed that people often clicked on photos."

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Aggregating news


Not so long ago news was delivered only through a few specific channels and at defined intervals - now news is accessible 24 hours via many channels.

 Yet many b-2-b companies still approach the issue of news about their companies, if they produce any news at all, just as they have always done and without regard to the changed media landscape. Traditionally a press release has been sent to the editors of trade press journals with a view to providing some stand out content, maybe an eye catching image to help being selected for print.  More commonly in the industrial press the response is from the sales team who sell editorial space for a price.  To some extent this is vanity publicity that has become an extension of advertising because the managing director likes to read about his company in print.

Good value is to appear on an industry news web site that aggregates news from many companies. Because such sites focus on an industry sector they can rank quite high on search results for a generic product enquiry and the more stories you have about that type of product you have posted, the better chance your name will appear. Plus each story often has a useful link to your web site, a factor thought to be rated importantly by search engines. 

For most companies publicising their products and services, there is a finite and fiercely contested amount of  editorial space available in printed media. Rather than a stream of news a few knowledgeable articles strategically placed in the right publications can be a more effective goal in building credibility for the brand. But with most b-2-b publications being monthly, at most they are not a vehicle for current news and information. The Internet offers this immediacy and although as already noted industry portals and news aggregating sites have an important role to play, the real opportunity is now for the company to be the publisher itself and feed news not only to the print media and industry web sites, but direct to customers and prospects.

At the heart of this strategy is a Virtual News Office that not only allows news to be published on the company web site, but also provides tools for news distribution. The VNO generates a custom style press release that can be e-mailed to the media with links to high resolution images, contact and company background information for journalists. It also provides a searchable news archive that can be a useful resource for sales as well. Interested parties can subscribe through the VNO to receive e-News, RSS headline feeds, or link to social media such as a blog, Facebook or Twitter.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Marketing this week



Week 37 - week commencing 13th September - a varied week in the life of Technical Marketing and a different type of blog entry this week.


Tuesday a visit to the annual PLASA trade show at Earls Court - now reached by a direct train service that stops off at West Brompton, conveniently located directly across the road from the entrance to the show. No tickets or queues any more, simply key in your pre-registered code on a touch screen and your badge is instantly printed out for immediate scanned entry. Difficult to assess the real success of the show. No doubt the organisers will claim record attendance, but the large areas of screened off and presumably unsold space and thinly populated wide aisles between stands failed to convey the buzz of hectic business activity. Difficult to read the audience profile, more suits in evidence, less of the casually dressed techies of yesteryear and the aging hippies with bald pates and pony tails from the show's disco origins, almost, but not quite a vanishing breed. Sat down with a couple of companies to discuss the differences in marketing collateral that might help successful American brands gain acceptance in the UK. Highlights of stand 'traffic-building' were the aerial artiste (see blog 15th September) and the frequent burst of real flames, the heat from which was apparent on the next stand. See pictures.

An article in IET -'Challenging the establishment' - reported that "normalisation of deviance" was behind the loss of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and of the RAF Nimrod over Afghanistan in 2006. What on earth does that mean? Well apparently people - typically managers - get so used to things going OK that have basic flaws, they actually believe they are OK. Or more eloquently, "Normalisation of deviance means that people  within an organisation become so accustomed to a deviant behaviour that they don't consider it a deviant, despite the fact that they exceed their own safety rules by a wide margin. People outside see the situation as deviant whereas the people inside get accustomed to it." Bit like an outside marketing consultant trying to figure out how despite doing all the wrong things, some companies still go on.

Marketing Week today speculates that Google will usurp Coca Cola as top brand, asking  "How long can a 19th-century medicinal tonic head the list of the world’s biggest brands? Or, to put it another way, surely Google’s exemplary brand associations combined with its stranglehold on search in many parts of the world make it a far more valuable asset than a fizzy beverage whose best days are behind it? If you could pick Coke or Google as a future bet, which one would you prefer?" But apparently Google happily breaks the rule of messing around with its logo which changes or is embelished on special days like a shamrock for St Paddy's Day, or last week's dotty display prior to the announcement of Google Instant but that's OK when you are heading for top brand.

A book, " Driving down cost" - by Andrew Wileman identifies as a target for cuts "PR and marketing, or at least advertising and outsourcing", along it has to be said with hiring top firms of accountants and management consultants whose names in the company report impress shareholders and bankers. He asks, "Why not introduce a diktat that all promotional and advertising plans must be slashed by 20 per cent? Until you have tried it how can you tell what effect this may have?". Interestingly Amazon have slashed the price of his book by over 40 per cent from an already modest £14.99 to a bargain £8.47 - perhaps he cut his own advertising budget.

And finally a thought on how the word 'product' seems to have changed in marketing speak.It was prompted by a visit to the Post Office, a place I associate with buying stamps and mailing letters and parcels. So I was a bit surprised when after weighing and measuring a package I was asked if I wanted to buy life assurance. Not so long ago there were product managers whose job was to mastermind new product development and manage a portfolio of products. Products then were solid objects like television sets, light fittings, electric motors. Then the financial sector started talking about products, now the Post Office too it seems, but these were not actually tangible things you could take out of a box, plug in and switch on. No they were things like investments, mortgages, insurance and the concept they were a commodity that could be marketed perhaps led to selling 'products' to unsuitable people. But now it seems products have become things you put in your hair or a beauty treatment and something hairdressers talk about. Perhaps they are the new product managers who use hairdressing merely as a prelude to selling products. I have got a suspicion dentists are going down the same route.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Aerial artiste attracts attention at trade show








The Technical Marketing team have been at Earls Court this week for the annual PLASA Show and stopped by the Hoist UK stand to see aerial artiste, Isobelle putting the rigging to the test.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Does your target audience use Facebook?


Identifying your target audience is no longer just listing job titles.
When developing a market focus for a company it has been traditional to identify target markets and target audiences to then identify the media that address them most efficiently. Because in the b-2-b space the typical media has been the trade press this information drawn from their readership audit is usually job titles, or more helpfully job functions. Marketing communications delivered through these media - display advertising and editorial - can therefore reach the people interested in buying or specifying your products. But in the social media there are other key consideration such as age and interest.

Facebook announced in June that there were now 500 million users and some research suggests 50% check their Facebook account each day. So a massive potential audience. However, although popular with younger people (18-29 have 86% usage) there has also been a big growth amongst the 50+ demographic, doubling in the last year to 42% usage. Broadly user groups with time but not so much cash then and more importantly probably a bit thin on people who are  buying or specifying industrial products. The primary motivation seems to be people driven rather than product driven. It prompts the inevitable question of how people oriented is your product and will enough people in your target user group be so intrigued by your product to become fans. Interestingly the industrial sites that seem to be achieving some measure of success in attracting fans are the portals that are aggregating news. But checking on one such industrial site that also operates a Facebook account shows just 2.1% of monthly site visitors are fans. Of course there are other news delivery options including Twitter which is good for headlines as is RSS and of course e-mail.

In an age of media fragmentation social media needs to be in the marketing mix, but how much resource should be allocated to maintaining a Facebook presence that needs frequent attention? Indeed is there a sufficient flow of quality content to avoid descending into the realm of trivia? Using social media as additional news distribution channels can be managed within a PR programme but developing customer engagement and interaction is more time consuming and an on-going commitment too.   

Friday, September 03, 2010

Is social media a serious marketing tool?


Clients are divided on the role of social media in b-2-b marketing. Now it seems marketing experts are too.

 Marketing Week has thrown a new spanner in the works with an article titled - "Social Media is for people, not  brands". The article challenges whether social media is relevant to big brands and says, "The results, when compared to the industry buzz we keep hearing, simply do not stack up."  The article looks at the top 20 UK brands and offers the fact that some minor celebrity has attracted more followers on Twitter  than all of them together. Some top brands apparently have more tweets than followers and even the more successful  have attracted only around 0.5% of their customer base. The effort and marketing resource to interact with such a small group of customers tends to add support to those of our clients who see social media as at best irrelevant and at worse creating a frivolous image. After all names like Facebook, Twitter and blog hardly sound solid, respectable business ring to thems. Then again the same clients that laugh at the idea of blogs and the rest at one time saw no role for a web site either.

On the other hand a few clients are enthusiastic about Facebook and YouTube and excited about interacting with their customers, sharing pictures and discussing goodness knows what. They see the whole social media phenomenon as  heralding a bright shiny marketing future. These clients happen to be those that love gadgets - their Blackberries, iPhones, apps, net books, lap tops etc - who are avid Facebook users and get excited when they get a message from their favourite brand. Although hardly Luddites, the other group - at present a majority, regard a mobile phone as just that - a telephone - and if they are aware of social media at all do not see it as relevant to their customers. And this is really the bottom line. If even the top brands are pulling in just half of one per cent of their customer base it hardly suggests it is yet a mass marketing tool. Just who are these 0.5% anyway? Are they representative of the other 99.5% or a minority with an unreasonable fascination for a brand, are they the opinion leaders, or totally disillusioned due to poor product experience? Either way does this justify diverting a whole heap of marketing resource? Can we really expect professional buyers to avidly track the latest tweets about nuts and bolts products and bother to comment and volunteer pictures - are they that interested? Do they have the time?. Do these people really want to be 'fans' of a company anyway? 

The fact is we don't really know. What we do know is that using a number of marketing communications tools that are relevant to a company's target audience is effective and now into this mix is added social media. Technical marketing is about analysing the market, then pitching up with an integrated marketing communications plan that addresses the target audience using the most relevant and effective marketing mix.