Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been offering suggestions on engaging with customers using social media. Now, giving advice is easy. Following through on it is the tricky part. So to prove we’re not just hot air at bda, here’s a rundown on our social media marketing strategy:

1. How we engage

As you might have guessed, our primary tool for engaging with social media, and the online marketing community, is through our blog. We publish a variety of posts to share our views, offer advice and give readers some insight into the thinking behind the work we do. The types of articles we write include:

• Discussing what’s happening in the fast paced marketing world
• Sharing the results of marketing surveys and commenting on their significance
• Advice on implementing modern marketing strategies, notably email, PURLs and integrated campaigns
• And the occasional post about who’s pulling the levers at our agency

As well as sending weekly posts to subscribers, we repackage our blog posts into an email newsletter which we send to existing clients. We also occasionally pull articles together to create a ‘Greatest Hits’ eBook, which people can download and share without a pesky email signup box getting in the way.

2. Contributing to our networks

With our blog the engine running our social media marketing campaign, we like to ensure our posts get spread around and shared with as many people as possible. So you’ll often find links to our latest articles featured on a variety of marketing websites, including:

Internet Marketing News Watch

Marketing Service Talk

Business Week’s Business Exchange

Junta42 Content Marketing

UTalk Marketing

You’ll also find the bda team active on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook as well as taking part in discussion in a variety of online marketing forums and websites.

3. Earning positive attention

When writing blog posts, we always aim to provide readers with practical advice they can actually use and apply to their own marketing. We also like to offer fresh opinions and to challenge hype (which, let’s face it, can be fairly common in the Web 2.0 marketing world). It’s through being useful and offering practical advice that we earn the positive attention that we do.

With Twitter being the yardstick for measuring interest these days, a couple of recent blog highlights include:

When Social Media Backfires - Tweeted 53 times

Conversational Marketing – Should You Believe the Hype? – 36 Tweets

What someone should tell Tiger Woods about marketing in a crisis – 27 Tweets

4. Gauging success

It’s no secret that blogs are great for improving website rankings and attracting links from other sites. In the month prior to starting to blog regularly our website received 360 visitors. Less than two years later and our visitor numbers have nearly quadrupled to over 1200 a month. We’ve also amassed 212 comments and links from other blogs sharing our posts with their readers.

How these figures translate into sales is a conundrum that’s still baffling social media experts. However, we like to approach its value in the same was as any type of marketing: does it boost our reputation for thought leadership, build credibility in our expertise and make our website a more useful resource to potential clients?

When choosing a marketing agency clients also want to know whether you’re switched on to what’s happening in the marketing world and plugged into the new ways of engaging with customers. We like to think that’s what our social media marketing strategy achieves for us, and helps spread the bda brand name at the same time.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Knowing what to do with social media has a lot of businesses scratching their heads: Should you be creating a Facebook fan page? Tweeting? Pasting links in forums? Or not bother with social media at all (because it’s all just hype)?

Well, as my recent experience of buying a tent shows, the fact is that people are sharing opinions on all sorts of products, services and brands online. Someone somewhere might be writing about your business right now, this very second. So you need to be able to engage with the online conversation if you want your voice to be heard.

Here are four steps for engaging with social media:

1. Join the conversation

Rather than go to the library or pick up the phone, the internet is now the first port of call for many people when hunting for information. They want answers to problems, not sales pitches; your marketing can feed this hunger for info. This is one of the reasons why you always hear marketers preaching all the time on why you should be blogging.

Instead of writing about what happened in the office, your blog should focus on providing customers with useful information. This can include product guides, industry insight, case studies and as a forum for answering the questions that regularly crop up when customers place an order.

Similarly, Twitter is another tool you can use for sharing relevant links, product tips and other useful titbits of information.

2. Find your networks

With a bigger population than Russia or Japan, you’d think Facebook was the only social site worth bothering with. But the fact is people are visiting all sorts of forums, review sites and social networks to discuss their shared interests and passions.

The internet is, after all, a vast place. If you imagine the internet is like the sky at night then constellations represent the different groups of websites where your customers might congregate. To track them down, setup Google alerts to notify you whenever your brand, product or service is mentioned. You can then plot a course and zoom into where the most relevant conversations are taking place.

3. Earn trust and positive attention

Once you’ve found your industry’s online community, you’ll need to make friends with the natives. So make sure you’re engaging in a helpful, useful way, rather than assaulting them with sales messages the moment you arrive.

Answering people’s questions, objectively responding to criticism and offering useful advice in an authentic, transparent manner is the only way you’ll become a valued member of the community. The key is to focus on being helpful and contributing to the conversation, rather than tiresome self promotion.

4. Finding success

Some marketers might fear what impact the spread of reviews and opinions will have on marketing when people can sidestep your sales pitch to find out a product’s true value. But there are benefits to engaging with social media.

Feedback, and even criticism, can be harnessed to improve product design and find out which areas your services are lacking. The other side of the coin is that superior products, which receive better reviews, will be easier to sell, with customers acting as (dare I say it) ‘evangelists’.

Offering useful content, whether it’s in your blog or commenting in forums, will build closer relationships with your brand. People are inherently inclined to repay generosity, and the brands and businesses offering value in the way they engage are more likely to be regarded as valued members within social media communities and rewarded with increased sales.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

In this year’s marketing predictions (ours included) there’s no shortage of people preaching on how influence is being plucked away from the fingers of brands. No longer are people settling for what they’re fed in the sales pitch, but are now checking for reviews and real life experiences online. Well, I experienced this firsthand when shopping for a tent to take my kids away on holiday to the Lake District.

In previous years, buying a tent would have involved jumping in my car, heading to the nearest outdoor activities shop and then picking up whatever appeared most suitable. Whatever I chose would have been decided purely by the sales information I found in store.

Not so now. These days you can use the web to track down the opinions of other consumers in minutes, and find out all the nitty gritty details missing from the brochure.

Word of mouth is more trusted

Initially, I’d thought one of the cheaper tents would be adequate. Being relatively warm and, of course, waterproof seemed the only factors I needed to worry about. However, after reading a few negative reviews I discovered that whilst the cheaper tent was waterproof it was prone to leaking at the entrance. Not wanting to wake up with wet feet, I decided based on positive reviews to opt for the more expensive model.

What this brief example shows is just how important word of mouth is becoming in marketing. People are more cynical of marketing than ever; thanks to the web they can sidestep the sales pitch altogether to get the ‘real deal’ on a product’s true value.

This new age of transparency has some marketers worried. But it also presents an opportunity.

Harnessing word of mouth in your marketing

The ease with which people can share opinions means poor products and services can no longer be disguised behind clever copywriting and Photoshop. Complaints and criticism can spread in hours, undermining million pound marketing budgets in the process.

As my example shows, superior products (even if more expensive) will become easier to sell because of people’s trust in real life reviews. Customer feedback can also be incorporated into product design – no amount of testing is going to be as effective as the real life experiences of thousands.

So, as the transparent age approaches, marketers can choose to bury their heads in the sand, and ignore what’s being said about their products, or they can hail the rise of the consumer and incorporate the online conversation into delivering better products and more authentic marketing.

Next week: How to develop a social media marketing strategy

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

So was Monday ‘Mega’ for you? Well, apparently it was for 2 million Brits, who preferred the convenience of a few mouse clicks to fighting for a parking space on the high st.

A few Mega Monday facts:

• Online sales were up 14% on 2007
• £320 million was spent at online retailers
• £20 million more than last year
• £13.6 billion is expected to be spent online in total this ‘Clickmas’
• For the first time in 14 years high st sales have fallen for a second successive month

What’s amazing is that ‘Mega Monday’ was only the third busiest day of the year in terms of traffic to online retailers, because the web isn’t just a virtual checkout till, but is also a valuable research tool.

Unlike a shop, people don’t visit an online retailer thinking that they have to buy something to justify the trip. Instead they might just visit to check prices, compare products and find the best deals, before clicking away to check their Facebook account.

Research earlier in the year suggested that 67% of shoppers research their purchases online before heading to a store. What this signifies is that consumers are using the web to become better informed about brands, products and services, rather than waiting to be told.

Consequently, brands and businesses need to realise that the web is now an extension to the in-store shopping experience. And if you’re not online than you’re nowhere as far as a sizeable number of people are now concerned.

Getting their information online is also actively preferred by many consumers to what they’re fed on the TV. In a survey of 30,000 people, by G2 Data Dynamics, 37% said they prefer to get information on brands and offers from websites and email than celebrity endorsed TV ads.

This could be a backlash against the fees paid to Donovan, Katona and their celeb chums, or it could reflect how people are weary of TV advertising in general, and value their attention more highly.

Giving away vouchers? Bar, humbug

With the economy continuing to sink into a quagmire, finding a bargain has never been more in vogue. And many shoppers are realising they don’t need to fight over the bargain bins in Woolworths when there’s so many offers to be found online.

Along with trawling eBay and price comparison sites, many people have been hunting down vouchers to help them cut the cost of Christmas. This year UK internet searches for vouchers have increased a staggering 133%, whilst visits to sites have nearly doubled.

Scrooge would have refused to giveaway discounts on principle, despising the thought of cutting revenue for the sake of spreading some Christmas cheer. However, vouchers are an effective marketing strategy for generating interest and holding onto existing customers. In the G2 Data Dynamics survey, for example, free gifts and discounts polled as the best way to stimulate brand loyalty.

One brand who can testify to voucher power is Marks and Spencers. Its recent 20% discount promo attracted one in 33 visits to retail sites this Xmas, and doubled visits to its real world stores.

Smarter Email Marketing in 2009

With competition for credit cards a matter of survival for many businesses, you need to ensure you’re taking advantage of digital technology to build customer relationships, maintain loyalty and taking a bigger slice of the shrinking pie.

69% of business in an E-consultancy survey enjoyed noticeable improvements in engaging with their customers following email activity. This reflects why email marketing is becoming more popular, because it offers a tangible ROI, better targeting means it’s more effective and it can be used to engage customers with valuable content.

So think about how you can reward your loyal customers by emailing them some vouchers and yuletide offers, because otherwise you might receive a visit from Scrooge’s three Ghosts this Christmas Eve.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

You might think the constant siege of inboxes by spammers has tarnished email’s reputation as a marketing tool forever. However, email still remains the workhorse of online marketing and integral to relationship building. Spam is merely its evil twin.

Email can start a dialogue, enhance your credibility and generate sales long after prospects have left your website. It’s even more potent when you’re smart enough to speak to recipients as individuals, rather than bellow the same speech to the entire crowd.

Relationship building

Capturing a customer’s email address when they visit your website should be your top priority. Because no matter how much flash animation and handpicked testimonials you throw at them, less than 5% (and that’s being generous) of visitors will be ready to buy on their first viewing.

So rather than hope they’ll come back on their own accord, you need to be able to maintain a line of communication with prospects long after they’ve left.

If you can capture their email address (e.g. in exchange for a free newsletter or eBook) then you can develop the sales process over time, because email can be a potent tool for relationship building and earning your prospects’ confidence.

Focus on the prospect

As any salesman will tell you, people like to do business with those they get to know and trust, which is exactly what email marketing campaigns are all about. Your strategy isn’t to force recipients into submission by mail bombing offer after offer, but to engage their interest with relevant messages that provide valuable and useful content.

Emails which offer to solve a prospect’s problems, help them sleep better at night and feel they’ve benefited from the interaction is how you can win trust, confidence and credit card numbers.

Rather than talking endlessly about yourself and how much profit you made last year, relationship marketing emails need to be focused on the needs of your prospect and how your product/service can enrich their lives.

As well as earning trust with valuable content, email can be used in many other ways to foster loyalty, such as invitations to live events, timely promotions (such as a birthday discount) and getting feedback on what your customers want from you.

Don’t blast, listen and engage

Perhaps the biggest impact of spam on email marketing has been the speeding up of the demise of lazily blasting the same message at every customer. People now receive so many marketing messages that if your email doesn’t appear to be relevant then you’re only a mouse click away from being deleted or blocked forever.

Simply repeating the same offer to every prospect in the hope of seducing a small number is no longer the smartest strategy. People now want and expect to be treated as individuals, and I’m not talking about just featuring their name in the subject line.

Modern tracking and analytics enables you to capture an endless stream of data on prospects. Along with their buying history and demographic profile, modern one-to-one digital campaigns utilising personalised URLs are able to record data on your prospects’ interests, preferences and desires. You can then segment and customise future messages pitched to appeal to each prospect’s personal triggers.

However, the process of fine tuning emails to be as relevant and personalised as possible never ends. Even after campaigns have been launched, you need to run A/B split tests on every adjustable element, such as the subject line, layout and the call to action at the end.

Watching how people interact with every email enables you to listen to what they’re thinking and how your message can be more finely tuned in the future.

Email is about one-to-one dialogue, rather than bellowing a single message

As with every aspect of marketing, the more relevant, timely and personalised your email marketing can be the more chance of provoking the right response, or as the popular mantra goes ‘delivering the right message to the right person at the right time’.

Delivering mass untargeted emails is now more likely to get you blacklisted than welcomed into people’s inboxes. However, modern email technology means we can now build and fine tune personalised one-to-one email campaigns which are pitched to match the desires of each individual prospect, leaving lazy email blasts to the spammers.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Boxes full of literature piled high in your office?

Wasting marketing collateral because it’s full of old products and services?

Just think what that has cost you and the size of the footprint you are leaving…

Recycling may ease your green conscience, but why the need to recycle in the first place? – there is an alternative…

Print-on-demand (POD) solutions have been around since the late 90s and enable the production of exactly the right quantity of items, at exactly the right time, with no storage requirements and personalised (if required) to the recipient. Email and web (as we know it) have also been around since the late 90s and have dramatically changed how we communicate; so why oh why when the technology and capabilities are available, do we still do things the old way when it comes to printing documents?

Is it just because its the way we have always done it, are we just too scared to embrace the technology available, or is it still cost which is stopping us?

In the same way we can’t now do without the speed of digital print to hit fast approaching deadlines, I believe in a few years time we will also wonder how we managed our marketing collateral efficiently before POD. As production processes improve, technology speeds up, environmental pressures increase further and costs reduce even more this will become the norm, not the exception.

So go on get recognised as a innovator, POD is the future, get yourself involved in the action now!

Last thought for this week….

…Having had a series of meetings today and devouring numerous biscuits of all shapes and sizes. I was just wondering if there was a survey as to the most popular meeting biscuits, what assortment would win?

I think Bourbon.

Congratulations to our latest recruit Ruth on her phenominal achievement.

Ruth recently completed the London Marathon, all 26.3 miles in 4Hrs 22minutes. Coming from someone who failed at their first atempt to run such a distance, believe me this is a great achievement.

If this was not enough, Ruth also was snapped by a photographer and found here picture spread over the front cover of the Monday’s Daily Mail.

Had I known I would have doubled her sponsorship money and painted a bda logo on her forhead.

Any PR is good PR and all that.

bda speak out at an “Understanding Digital Conference” held by Williams Lea the print management giants.

As a result of some of bda’s ground breaking case studies we were asked by the Print Sourcing Director of Williams Lea to present our opinions and experiences in all aspects of digital technology.

The focus of our presentation was the utilisation of digital print to deliver one-to-one DM campaigns, and print-on-demand solutions (hence ‘now, now, now, now, now!’).

All clients want to add value, improve ROI, provide better response rates, better utilise their data and reduce wastage, but many don’t know how; we were there to illustrate how this is being delivering today!

We presented examples of; one-to-one direct mail where response rates hit 37%; an asset portal allowing personalised marketing collateral to be created online; and e-collateral, our print on demand solution delivering targeted, bespoke brochures minimising waste, eradicating bulk print and storage.

The 65 strong audience of account managers and directors posed questions on; the financial model; the effect of increased unit costs and how we are providing real ROI; deployment timescales and pitfalls in delivering such solutions; as well as where we see the print industry in the future.

To accompany our presentation we produced a personalised digital guide, swatch book and PURL allowing all delegates to download their own copy of the presentation and access additional information… So we got and idea of exactly how interested the audience was!

bda, always Strategic, Creative and Measured.

When it comes to selling or marketing, everyone needs an ‘in’. A means of distinguishing yourself from competitors.

These days, you face much competition in business so you have to get your benefits over quickly and succinctly – your ‘elevator pitch’ if you like – to be noticed at all.

Never before have customers had such a range of products and services to choose from. And with the web all pervasive, it’s incredibly easy to compare everything from price to quality.

So, how do you get the customer to choose you?

Much has been said about the need for businesses to have a USP (unique selling point) or ESP (emotional selling point).

The major problem with a USP is that it can be fairly easily copied, (how many truly original business ideas have you seen recently?) and psychologists latest thinking is that ESPs are not valid because people are incredibly complex, with both rational and emotional motivators mixed together within any decision to buy.

So what are we left with?

The Engaging Selling Point – EnSP
This latest school of thought can be defined as the engagement, interaction and INVOLVEMENT of the customer.

The Point of Engagement is the point when a message is no longer ignored but rather triggers a sense of interaction and involvement. This occurs where speaker and listener are completely and utterly connecting on the same wavelength.

The most successful products or services in today’s B2B/C marketplaces often rely on their EnSP.

Your EnSP: Create an experience to get customer buy-in
When we go to sell our houses, why do we ensure the kitchen smells of coffee or have the smell of freshly baked bread wafting around? It’s more than likely because we want to evoke a feeling of homeliness and comfort that everyone relates to. We’re trying to trigger a number of senses in the brain.

The engaging selling point works in a similar way; no longer are you selling AT, or marketing TO a customer, you are striking a chord to involve them and most importantly to elicit an action from them.

Viral marketing and the EnSP

Instead of traditional ads where the product or service is front and centre, viral ads are stories or narratives, sometimes told in episodes which are distributed over the internet, via email or other digital means. They’re often movies, games, or Flash animations whose aim is to engage and entertain as a precursor to selling.

If they’re funny or engaging, they’re passed on from one consumer to another – and so the legwork of promotional effort is done for the advertiser. Very clever and very cost-effective. Good examples have been produced by IKEA, Virgin Money, Mini and Trojan condoms, which were all very engaging and entertaining.

Viral ads use the Engaging Selling Point to great effect. They can be relatively cheap to produce, and are often more credible and believable than standard forms of advertising in the eyes of the public, as they are not forced on the individual but passed to them by friends, family or colleagues.

Applying your EnSP

You don’t have to invest in an online marketing campaign to start using your EnSP. The first step in discovering your business’ EnSP is to apply some lateral creative thinking to your product or service.

Then find an entertaining and memorable story to engage or involve your customers.

Choose your media – you can use your EnSP across all levels of marketing, in adverts, direct mail, print, viral campaigns, websites and e-marketing.

Your EnSP can be rational or emotional, or a mix of the two – but above all – it doesn’t talk at the customer – it INVOLVES them.