A couple of weeks ago we reported on Foursquare, a location based social network you used to ‘check in’ at certain places. With a mere 2.5 million uses, we recommended that it was worth being aware of its marketing potential, although major growth still looked like being a couple of years away. Well, two days ago that all changed.

Almost out of the blue, Facebook announced the launch of its new application – ‘Places’. This new service has been launched in partnership with the field’s existing players (Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah) to bring location based social networking to its 500 million users. How Foursquare and Co will survive, now that Facebook has joined the party, remains to be seen.

Whilst it’s been out for less than 48 hours and is currently only available on iPhone in the US, many are already predicting that Places could change the way people use Facebook and evolve it into a platform for archiving daily life.

Bringing social networking into the real world

Rather than pitching it as an app for telling people where you are, Facebook is trying to steer Places towards being a tool for recording where you’ve been and what you did there. They envision that in 20 years time you’ll be visiting a beach and finding out on Places that it’s where your parents shared their first kiss (their example, not mine).

Once Facebook has found a way of integrating it with your photos, updates and conversations, Places could end up acting as an archive of your daily life. It will also help to bring social networking into the real world. You could, for example, use Places to find out who’s nearby when you’re at the shops and then arrange to meet up for a coffee, as you can on Foursquare now (if any of your friends use it!).

It’s still early days. But when you consider 150 million of Facebook’s 500 million users are already accessing the site on their mobile, adoption of people using Places will be rapid and, almost certainly, unrelenting.

Bringing location based advertising to your mobile

On launch day Facebook were careful to sidestep any questions on how Places would make money. But the data Places will capture on where people have been and what they did there is going to be a goldmine for advertisers. Remember the personalised advertising boards on Minority Report or Bladerunner? Well, you might be seeing something similar on your mobile with the data that’s going to be collected.

What does this mean for my business’ marketing?

Now that Facebook has pushed its mountain of chips onto the table, it’s a safe bet that location based social networking is going to be massive in the years to come. If you’re a restaurant or shop then we’d recommend claiming your place as soon as it is launched in the UK and using Places to attract customers with rewards and tips.

Even if you’re a B2B company selling paper, for example, Facebook Places still offers potential. Everybody uses Facebook these days and you never know who’ll be passing through your area and in need of your service. See it as a way of adding your business card to your local map for free.

Like I said, it’s still early days. But it’s going to be an exciting time for location based marketing in the coming months now that Facebook has brought it to the masses.

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

Ever since Old Spice stunned the marketing world with the success of its witty series of videos responding to people’s blogs, comments and Tweets, the marketing world has been bracing itself for a glut of copycats. After all, when a campaign generates 40 million interactions and skyrockets sales 107% in one month, it’s no wonder brands will be falling over themselves to rediscover its magic formula.

But whilst the Old Spice campaign might appear simple to replicate, the fact is that there’s a range of factors that contributed to its success. Miss any of these out and you risk your imitation campaign becoming a source of embarrassment rather than pride.

Cisco presents…Ted from Accounts Payable

Two weeks ago Cisco launched a campaign aping Old Spice, but with Ted from Accounts Payable answering questions instead of a chiselled ex-American Football player. The campaign consisted of a modest 18 videos, compared to Old Spice’s 180+, and attracted a similarly modest number of views.

Cisco’s in-house marketing team probably saw it as a fun, spur of the moment way of latching onto Old Spice’s success to generate interest in its brand. But based on the comments and feedback, people who’ve seen the videos appear to think otherwise.

Being the first brand to ‘do an Old Spice’ was always going to be risky. People have been waiting to see which brand will be first to try and jump on the bandwagon, and are eager to knock it off if they think the campaign is a ‘#fail’.

These are a few reasons why I think Cisco’s campaign annoyed people:

Parody doesn’t go far enough – Cisco made it clear that they were aping Old Spice, but they didn’t do anything that would encourage anybody to take notice. They didn’t add anything or take the parody far enough, leaving people scratching their heads and wondering ‘what’s the point?’

Lack of build up or promotion – Old Spice had been building momentum since screening their advert at the Super Bowl in February, whilst Cisco merely promoted their videos through their corporate blog and disparate Twitter feeds. The campaign might have been a spur of the moment idea, but it would have benefited from more planning and promotion before its execution.

The campaign didn’t resonate – People wanted to engage with the Old Spice campaign. They thought the ‘Old Spice Guy’ was witty, likeable and even celebrities clamoured for a brief share of his attention. Who cares what Ted from Accounts Payable thinks?

Who was the campaign aimed at? – Old Spice wanted to reposition a fuddy duddy brand as fun and trendy to a younger demographic. A sales increase of 100%+ would suggest that they succeeded. Cisco sells routers and computer networking devices to businesses. I’m not sure how Ted from Accounts answering questions in a towel will influence an IT manager’s buying decisions?

The lesson for any brand wishing to imitate Old Spice is that you need to think carefully about how you use social media. You need to consider which platforms your customers are using; how you can introduce your campaign to them and in a way that makes people want to engage with it. Posting witty videos on YouTube might have worked for Old Spice, but there are plenty of ways you can use social media to your marketing advantage.

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

Loved by many, irritating to some, Twitter hashtags are fast becoming an integral part of the internet’s vernacular. According to recent research, hashtags are now being used in blogs, forums and other social networking sites for highlighting key topics (and for witty asides). They’re evolving so fast, in fact, that you might soon be including them on your business cards.

The research, by Brandwatch, found that people were now using the hashtag ‘#fail’ throughout the web to highlight their dissatisfaction with brands (if you’re interested, Apple had the most #fails, with 1204 mentions on Twitter, followed by Facebook (153) and Nokia (107)).

Whilst these numbers might seem small and inconsequential, it’s inevitable that more people will start using the ‘#fail’ hashtag whenever complaining about products and services, and worth watching out for.

How to use hashtags in your marketing

Since its launch in 2006, there have been over 2 billion messages posted on Twitter. In this vast cacophony of noise, getting your Tweets heard can seem a daunting task.

You can, however, use hashtags to highlight your Tweets to those who might be interested. If you Tweet about car maintenance, for example, you could include the hashtag ‘#carmaintenance’ which will then be picked up by anyone actively looking for those Tweeting about that topic.

A couple of tips: with a 140 character limit it’s sensible to keep your hashtags short and make them obvious. It’s also a good idea to avoid using a hashtag that’s already being used.

tagal.us is a site you can use to check whether your tag is available. You can then add it to those being tracked on hashtag.org along with a description of what it’s about. Twitter Search, TweetGrid and TweetChat are other services you can use to search and monitor hashtag use.

Along with attracting followers, hashtags are great for pulling together Tweets of people attending a live event and to create a feed of people Tweeting about your company.

So after choosing your hashtag and checking it’s available, publicize it on your blog, website and even your business cards to attract followers and enhance your marketing activities on Twitter.

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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.

It’s not uncommon to feel embarrassed about asking customers for referrals. It’s normal to hope that they will occur naturally if you continue providing a high quality service. But referrals are worth encouraging because they can be marketing gold.

Having your customers tell their friends and colleagues about your business can generate leads that are already sold on your expertise. After all, who do you trust more? The helpful advice of someone you know or the sales pitch of a corporate enterprise?

Referral marketing tips

1. Ask – It sounds simple, but just asking customers to pass on your details is a straightforward way of creating leads. You don’t have to do this in person, but can add it into your after sales process. In your email or letter, thanking them for their purchase, you can politely suggest passing on your details to anyone who might be interested in your product. Hopefully, they’ll do this for free as a gesture of appreciation, but you can always offer them an incentive…

2. Coupons and affiliate schemes – In the ideal world, customers would refer you because they value your product and think it will interest their friends. But it can help to motivate them with a discount or free gift in exchange for leads that convert into sales. This type of marketing is rife on the internet in the form of affiliate schemes for eBooks and other digital products.

3. Form alliances – This is an underutilised tactic, but one that can be highly effective if your service crosses over with other non-competing service providers. For example, if you sell potted plants you could form an alliance with a local gardener in which you both agree to promote each other to customers. This can simply mean passing on their contact details or handing out each other’s leaflets. You could also sweeten the deal by offering each other a cut from the extra profits your alliance generates.

4. Harness social networking – People are constantly recommending products and services to their friends on Facebook and Twitter. With messages potentially being shared and forwarded amongst 1000s of people, encouraging customers to post positive Tweets and Facebook updates can generate significant exposure. Consider emailing customers and subtly ask them to Tweet about your product if they found it useful.

Hopefully these tips have got you thinking about how you can integrate referral marketing into your marketing strategy and harness the power of the best salespeople around – your customers.

Measuring customer loyalty

If you wanted to gauge customer satisfaction, and the likelihood of them recommending you, then you can try calculating your Net Promoter Score (NPS). This is a simple metric calculated by asking customers to gauge out of 10 the likelihood of recommending you. You then simply deduct the percentage of those scoring 6 or less from the percentage scoring 9 or 10.

(Disclaimer notice – One of our clients is Satmetrix which supplies software around the NPS concept)

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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.

It’s tough for graduates out there: we’ve just come out of a torrid recession, 1000s of public sector jobs are to be axed and there are 70 of you competing for every role.

It’s certainly a challenging time to be looking for work. But you can boost your chances of getting an interview by using the internet to promote your personal brand to employers.

Blogs, Facebook and Twitter give you the tools you need to project the image of a proactive, passionate and enthusiastic up and coming professional that employers should be fighting over to get in their organisation.

How to build your personal brand

Facebook – It’s no secret that employers now use Facebook to screen candidates. But before you rush off to lock your profile from prying eyes, Facebook can be used to your advantage. Update your public details to give employers a positive impression, such as information on your work experience, hobbies, interests and qualifications. In the ‘About me’ section write a positive, inspiring branding statement that reflects why employers should give you an interview. Replacing your profile photo of you wearing a traffic cone with one in which you look smart, responsible and sober is also a good idea.

LinkedIn – Your old school and university friends are a good starting point for building your professional network. In particular, connect with those who graduated in previous years and are already active in the workplace. You never know who’ll be able to point you towards a job opening or can put in a good word for you. Join discussion groups related to the industries you’re interested to get some insight into the hot topics and to ask astute questions – you never know who might have an opening for a proactive graduate.

Blogging – Blogs are great for expressing your passion and interest in the profession you’d like to get into. You can also use it as an online resume, with pages on your employment history and interests. There are plenty of sites where you can start a blog for free (e.g. Wordpress.com) which enable you to be up and blogging in minutes.

Twitter – Sharing links to your blog, reTweeting experts in your industry and posting links to relevant news stories will help to build your exposure amongst professionals in your targeted industry. Following experts in your field to get you an insight into the key trends and if they follow you back, you never know, it might lead to a job opportunity.

Whether you’re a graduate, school leaver or have recently been made redundant, finding a job at the moment isn’t going to be easy. But social media can give you a platform to demonstrate the enthusiasm, passion and proactive attitude that will tick all the right boxes with employers and push you further to the front of the queue.

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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.

Foursquare can be a lot of fun, but try not to get lost

People have been predicting big things for location based social networking site Foursquare for some time. And it looks as though those predictions could be coming true after it received $20 million in funding and ramped up its marketing by sending out 1000s of ‘Clings’ (stickers to you and me) to businesses to slap on their windows.

With Facebook and Twitter already on the ‘to do’ list, is messing around with yet another social media site worth the hassle? Does Foursquare have any real marketing value to offer? Or is it just a creative use of GPRS for people who like playing games?

Big brands are experimenting

Foursquare might have a modest 2 million users compared to Facebook’s mahoosive 400 mill, but it’s already attracting the attention of big name brands.

It’s not unusual for brands to want a share of the spotlight when a trendy new ‘craze’ comes along. In this instance, Star Bucks, Bravo TV and the Financial Times have all been attaching their names to Foursquare’s rapid rise by offering rewards to users for ‘checking in’ at specific locations.

At the moment it might be a ‘niche’ service compared to FB and Twitter. But as more phones become GPRS enabled and awareness spreads, brands know it’s a safe bet that Foursquare’s 2 mill users will grow. The site also has great potential for evolving into a valuable source of local product and service information provided by real people, and being more than just a ‘game’.

How to promote your business on Foursquare

You can add your business to Foursquare by completing their ‘Add this Place’ form. Make sure you complete it fully to give users as much information as possible. You can also add ‘tips’ to your location, such as where people can park , whether you offer home delivery or product recommendations.

Perhaps the greatest marketing value comes from offering Foursquare users rewards for visiting your business. This could include a special discount or a prize to the most frequent visitor (known as ‘Mayors’ in Foursquare speak). In exchange Foursquare can provide you with stats on your visitors, their frequency and a histogram of check-in days.

Should your business join?

So is Foursquare worth bothering with? Should you get an official Foursquare ‘Cling’ for your business and show your part of the internet’s latest hip new trend? Well, it only takes a few minutes to ‘claim your place’ and then add it to the Foursquare community. And with a cool $20 million to play around with, who knows how many people will be using Foursquare in a year’s 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.

And the winner is ....!

We’re all still buzzing from last night’s New Media Age Effectiveness Awards ceremony, where we won the category for Best Integrated B2B Marketing Campaign. We won for the Sage Taxation campaign which we worked on with the lovely Lisa Benner and Steve Porter at Sage.

The (still ongoing) campaign uses Personalised URLs (’PURLs’) and 1-2-1 direct marketing material to promote Sage’s suite of taxation software to current customers and prospects (over 7,000 of them). We were told on the night that we won the award because the judges were impressed not just by the high ROI achieved by the campaign, but also by both the precise level of measurability the use of PURLs provides, and the way we had injected real creativity and personality into a potentially dry topic!

The awards received over 500 entries and there were 23 winners on the night … we’re absolutely thrilled to have been one of them!

Andy’s still gutted that he didn’t take the opportunity to give Claudia Winkleman a peck on the cheek when she gave him the award, but we were more than a little gob smacked to have won, and hindsight’s a wonderful thing! Official photos, a video interview undertaken on the night, and a spread in the NMA Awards Supplement will follow …

Don't we scrub up well!

When was the last time you picked up the Yellow Pages to find a plumber, accountant or any other type of local service provider? If you’re like most people (76% make regular local searches), you’ll be using Google to find what you need and leaving the Yellow Pages as a door stop.

But whilst more and more people are conducting local searches (e.g. ‘barbers in Buckingham’), many business websites aren’t properly optimised to take advantage. Many continue to focus on targeting competitive keywords, lured by the chance to reach a global marketplace. But the fact is that most people would still prefer to do business with those they can meet face to face, or can more easily get hold of in the event of a problem.

Here are some tips for improving your website’s chances of showing up in the local search results:

1. Include your geographic location in your keywords – Instead of using ‘Chinese restaurant’ in your website’s copy make sure you include your geographic location i.e. ‘Chinese restaurant, Richmond’. This applies to your page titles and headings as well as your body copy.
2. Feature your address on every page of your website – As well as making it easier for visitors to find you, featuring your address in, say, the footer section makes it clearer to the search engines where you’re located.
3. Include a local phone number – Google can’t pinpoint your location from an 0800 number, so it’s wise to include a number with your local dialling code as well.
4. Add your website to Google Places –Google Places enables you to create a local search listing with your contact details, a description of your services as well as photos of you or your shop. You can also add coupons to your listing for customers to print off. Perhaps most crucially, adding your site to Google Places offers you the chance to appear on Google Maps and at the top of the page of search results. Bing and Yahoo offer something similar, but Google is the big daddy to focus on with the most traffic.
5. Ask for reviews – To improve your chances of appearing in the Google Maps section of local search results, you need to persuade your customers to write reviews of your service. Consider adding a request to your invoices, follow up emails and other marketing material. Customers can submit their reviews directly into Google Maps, and reviews are also collected from third party review site, such as TripAdvisor.
6. Add a page mentioning local towns and places – If your website has an faq section add plenty of local place names to describe the areas you cover and to give the search engines more local keywords to feed on.

There are other technical tricks you can try (such as adding your geo position to your websites code), but these 6 tips should give you a head start on your competitors at being found in the lucrative local search results.

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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.

If you haven’t heard, Bavaria beer has been basking in headlines, this week, after grabbing attention when it planted 36 women clad in orange mini-dresses in the crowd at Monday’s game. Bavaria tried something similar at the last World Cup (but with 120,000 pairs of orange lederhosen) and this is just the latest example of ‘ambush marketing’ – a tactic steadily growing in popularity and ambition as mischievous brands try to gatecrash major events for free.

The risk of brands piggybacking on the London 2012 Olympics, without being an official sponsorship, has already got its organisers worried. Ever since the bid was won they’ve been locking down advertising boards and getting laws passed to restrict what combination of words brands can say.

So is ambush marketing merely plucky opportunism? Or does it threaten the ability of event organisers to attract sponsors?

As Bavaria beer’s tactic demonstrated, ambush marketing can be an effective way of getting attention when it’s done creatively and people see it as a bit of fun. But it can also backfire and damage your brand’s image if you tread on too many toes…

Examples of ambush marketing campaigns

Nike causes an advertising exclusion zone

Nike has a long history of using mischievous tactics to steal the limelight from its rivals. Despite not being official sponsors, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics Nike built a huge retail outlet just outside the official Olympic village and covered the city’s billboards with their advertising. They repeated the same tactic at both Euro 96 and the France 98 before both UEFA and the IOC banned anyone from advertising within a 1.3 mile radius of stadiums, forcing official sponsors to buy up all the billboard space instead.

FHM hijacks the race for London Mayor

Back in 1999 lads’ mag FHM used interest in the race for London Mayor to promote its annual ‘100 Sexiest Women’ issue. It released a series of posters featuring popular FHM pinups with cheeky slogans mirroring those used in the political race. The campaign’s final touch was to project a naked Gail Porter onto the House of Commons. Suffice to say, the stunt earned FHM mainstream coverage and the issue featuring Gail Porter sold out within two weeks.

Red Bull tries to clip Monster Energy’s wings

Whilst this isn’t strictly ‘ambush marketing’, it does demonstrate how covert marketing tactics can backfire. After being replaced by Monster Energy as a drinks supplier to JD Wetherspoon, Red Bull hatched a plot to win the contract back. The plan was for ‘wings girls’ to smuggle cans of Red Bull into JDW bars and then leave them behind to suggest to managers that customers were unhappy with the change of drink. When the plot was uncovered Red Bull blamed it on ‘overzealous junior employees’ whilst JDW accused it of ‘behaving like a rejected teenager.’ Not the best publicity.

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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.

If you hadn’t noticed from the deluge of patriotic themed TV ads, the World Cup is upon us and is set to be the biggest cash bonanza ever.

In fact, its organisers hope to swell their pockets with a sweet $1 billion from TV rights, marketing and merchandise by the time the final whistle has blown. But it’s not been all plain sailing, with their choice of sponsors coming into question.

Campaigners say that having McDonalds, Budweiser and Coca Cola is counterproductive to the World Cup’s ability to inspire active, healthy lifestyles in our youth and combat childhood obesity. And I tend to agree with them.

Whilst the Cup’s organisers are well within their rights to secure the most lucrative deals, I think they should have considered the impact having sponsors with negative associations will have on the World Cup’s brand message.

The benefits of event sponsorship

Sponsoring an event can be marketing gold. It can:

• Raise brand awareness, credibility and prestige
• Link the positive associations people have of an event with your brand
• Reach your target audience in an unobtrusive way
• Gain social currency as being seen as helping an event to take place
• Capitalise on consumer interest in the event
• Influence people’s buying behaviour and increase sales

Whilst event sponsorship is great for brands, event organisers should consider whether their sponsors are relevant and support the image the want to promote.

Yes, the World Cup’s organisers will reap in millions, which can go towards improving the event taking place and fund future development projects. But will having unhealthy products associated dampen the World Cup’s image in people’s minds?

When people see the McDonalds logo emblazoned on posters of football’s greatest players will it inspire thoughts of athleticism, skill and determination? Or will it conjure images of couch potatoes sat at home gorging on fast food and beer whilst watching the football?

Developing a brand message is a complicated business. Careful consideration is needed of every facet and factor that contributes to how it’s perceived. I have to wonder whether the World Cup’s organisers considered this when choosing their sponsors, or just chose those waving the fattest cheque?

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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.