Integrated Branding Blog | Movéo

Brand Transparency in a Social Media Age

Internet access provides consumers with endless amounts of information at their fingertips. To put this in perspective, let's compare our process of collecting information today to that of 15 years ago. Imagine a grade school student in mid-90's. If this person needed information they would probably start out by asking their parents or another family member. If that proved insufficient, the next stop would an encyclopedia or perhaps a trip to local library.

Image courtesy of flaivoloka on stock.xchng

Now compare that to today. You want to know how to tie a knot, cancer research, book reviews, etc. - it's all a search and a click away. And since this information has become available, we have become much smarter consumers. We care more about what's in our food, what effect our actions have on the environment and so on. If a brand is unethical in any way, we are going to hear about it and hear about it fast. It's the new word-of-mouth and it's much more accessible and viral.

This is why brand transparency has become increasingly important. Brands can't hide behind walls and tell us who they are. We decide who they are by how they act and the quality of their product. Our purchasing decisions will be made with more information at hand. To succeed brands will have to be open and part of the discussion so that consumers are aware of the value their brand has on issues we care about.

We've always been social, we just have the technology now to easily connect with others on a massive scale. Word-of mouth has never traveled so fast. Brands need to remember that with every decision they make.

Query Parsing Explained

If you're running a geo-specific AdWords campaign you may have wondered why you sometimes receive, and thus pay, for clicks outside of the area you are targeting.

For example, you may be running a campaign for a local business in downtown Chicago. And to make sure that your ads only reach local searchers, you've indicated exactly which ZIP codes you want associated with your ads. However, when you sift through the analytics, you see that some of the users that are clicking on your ads are from outside the pre-determined ZIP's. They might be coming from New York or San Diego or a nearby town in Illinois.

The reason for this is query parsing. Google explains query parsing well in their AdWords Help forum, but we'll attempt to explain it here as well. The best way to do so is by demonstrating what it does.

If you are bidding on "chicago grocery stores," someone in Oklahoma could see your ad, even if you targeted the campaign toward people living in Chicago. This is query parsing. Google looks at this searcher in Oklahoma as if they were in Chicago because of their intention with the search.

Query parsing is part of Google AdWord's algorithm for matching searches with relevant ads and you cannot control it. It makes sense, as someone in a different city could certainly be looking for products or services in Chicago for any number of reasons.

Hosting videos on your Site vs. YouTube

Many marketers are already aware of the benefit of using video in B2B marketing. But once you’ve decided on this strategy, you still have to decide where you’d like to host the videos - your own Web site or YouTube. There are pros and cons to each, which I explain below.

The benefits of hosting videos on your site are that the user will be spending time on your domain and that links to the video will empower your domain and not YouTube.com. When a user is on your site, you have the added benefit of promoting your brand. YouTube does allow you to customize your channel, but control is limited.

Some companies may not have the time, bandwidth or resources, however, to implement videos on their site. There is a level of programming involved and you will have to embed some type of video player. If the technical issues are too much of an obstacle, you might strongly consider the YouTube route.

Creating a YouTube Channel and uploading videos is very simple and can be accomplished in a matter of minutes. You can also optimize your videos by giving them appropriate titles and tagging each one with related keywords.

It’s important to remember that YouTube is currently the second biggest search engine in the U.S. as far as volume of searches. Using YouTube allows your videos to be found by users who are searching within YouTube.com, as well as those who are using Google or Bing.

B2B Videos for Search are More Important than Ever

Image courtesy of Search Engine Land

As search engines and social media continue to evolve, it has become more important than ever for B2B companies to use videos for search.

What does this have to do with search engines?
In today’s world, which is heavily influenced by social media, search engines return results that include Web pages, blogs, products, images, videos, maps, local businesses and more. It’s called social, universal or blended search. Because of this, it’s important for companies to create content in these ways so that they might have more visibility. Not every form of content is appropriate for every company, however, so it’s important to find which are relevant.

Why is video generally a good option for content for B2B companies?
This one’s pretty simple, if you think about it. In many cases a B2B purchase can be very technical and research intensive. Videos make it easier to explain content and give the user a break from having to read an extremely long document. In addition, it gives the B2B company a chance to show their product in action. This does not in any way mean that written content shouldn’t be available as well, just that having the extra option can make the process much easier for you and a potential client.

So, whether you create a YouTube channel or host the videos on your existing site, make sure to consider this option if you are a B2B company. Not only do you give the user what they want, but your videos have a chance to increase your brand visibility in search results.

Just because your email was not opened does not mean it was not effective

For years now, many of us e-marketers have worked under the assumption that an unopened email means your subscriber is disengaged and uninterested-- until now. A recent study by Alchemy Worx has revealed that unopened email communications have measurable impact on brand awareness and can lead to increased conversion activity (sales) across other communication channels.

How you ask? Through the "Nudge Effect."

What is the Nudge Effect and how does it work?

The Nudge Effect is a way of influencing people's behavior without telling them exactly what to do. Alchemy Worx puts it this way,: "when sorting their emails, your subscribers will see your brand impression first in the 'from' column and in the subject line. What you need to do is provide the information in the subject line that encourages the subscriber to retain the information you've provided. It's a subtle yet powerful opportunity that makes even an unopened email a source of potential success across all your channels."

The Alchemy Worx study showed how emails featuring a company's brand name and a subject line that communicates the email's contents and how it benefits the user (key point here being you need to communicate the benefits) can influence a purchase decision even when the recipient fails to open the email. They were able to correlate spikes over time in purchases from recipients who received emails but did not open them over those who received no emails at all.

Image courtesy of Alchemy Worx

So, shed those frustrations with unopened emails and low click rates and rest assured that even when your subscribers don’t open your email, its presence in their inbox leads to a tangible impact on brand awareness and sales via online and other channels.

Read the complete Alchemy Worx article here: Dela Quist on the Nudge Effect

A brand roundtable discussion for Amazon Basics

Image courtesy of FastCompany

Our branding guru, Kevin Randall, recently assembled a roundtable of branding experts to share thoughts on Amazon's newest venture - Amazon Basics. Kevin's colleagues included professors from Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Northwestern, along with strategists from Interbrand. The full list is below:

Jennifer Aaker - Professor of Marketing at Stanford's Graduate School of Business

David Martin - President of Interbrand New York

John Quelch - Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School

Mark Ritson - Associate Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management

Scott Davis - Senior Partner at Prophet

Alex Goldfayn - Technology Tailor

Tim Calkins - Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management

Jez Frampton - Group CEO of Interbrand

Martin Straw - former President of Interbrand

Scott Miller - Chairman Zyman/Core Strategy Group

Eric Joachimsthaler - CEO Vivaldi Partners

Get details about the group's thoughts by reading Kevin's article on Fast Company.

Integrated search engine marketing campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) marketing can benefit from each other when integrated. If you are currently running campaigns in both channels, or considering doing so, it is important to know how the two can feed off of each other to create a successful integrated search engine marketing campaign.

SEO is a process, just like PPC. One difference, however, is that PPC campaigns generally draw traffic to your site immediately, whereas an SEO effort can take some time. One way to jump start your SEO keyword research is to test out keywords on particular pages using PPC to see which produce the most conversions. This can shave of weeks or even months of time off of an SEO campaign.

One way to discover how relevant your PPC work has been is to take a look at the Quality Score (in Google Adwords) of each of your keywords. If a particular Quality Score is low, it often means that there is a low level of relevance somewhere in your mix of keyword, ad and landing page. All three of these usually need to have a high level of relevance to guarantee a successful campaign. In some cases, you might consider breaking up the Adgroups, but you can also use SEO tactics to optimize the ad and/or landing page to correlate with the keyword.

Each campaign is unique. But using an integrated approach can make sure your campaign is efficient in a smaller amount of time.

Customer service monitoring online

image courtesy of Patrick Thibodeau

Online discussions have revolutionized how businesses must serve their current and potential customers. Through savvy tools, companies can monitor what people are saying about their brand, which puts them in a position to have customer service representatives react.

One such tool is a product from Salesforce appropritately named Salesforce for Twitter. An interesting function of this program allows you to automatically turn Twitter mentions (@ replies that include your Twitter handle) into customer service tickets.

Rich Cherecwich explains this well in an article on iMedia Connection: "For example, if a subscriber had a problem with their Comcast service, they could simply tweet at a Comcast account, and that tweet would be turned into an active ticket, similar to phoning a corporate call center."

If you've used any of these products or have others to recommend, we'd love to hear about it.

Additional online monitoring/organization tools worth looking at:

Social Mention

Google Alerts

Seesmic or TweetDeck

Twitter Search

3 social media marketing tools that track your brand

As a company, it's important to know what others are saying about your brand. Thankfully, there are tools to help us keep track of what is being said and who is saying it. Here are three tools to help discover these online conversations:

socialmention
This site allows you to create alerts, just like Google Alerts. You'll receive e-mails of the latest mentions of your company on blogs, bookmarks, comments, images, events, news, videos, audio and Q&A.

TweetDeck
Download TweetDeck and you can keep track and organize conversation on Twitter and Facebook that involve your brand. You can also save searches and see who is replying to your Tweets. Best of all, it's all in one window that you can customize.

Keotag
Search for tags that mention your brand (or any keyword). It's simple to use - just type in the keyword you'd like to search and then click on the engine you'd like to search through. There are a number of engines available including Technorati, del.icio.us, MSN, Digg, Reddit, Yahoo! and YouTube.

Know of any others? Feel free to mention them in the comments.

Baby steps

The hot topic in marketing these days is how a company can use social media and social networking to their advantage. If you’re new to the scene, you might be wondering how you can get started without getting in over your head. The answer is LinkedIn.

You probably have your own profile and company page right now and if you don’t, you’re already behind. They're very easy to set up and if you have any problems, you can contact the LinkedIn staff for assistance. The company profile page describes your company's offerings and also allows current employees to link to and appear on that page.

Once you have a profile and company page setup, it’s time to move on to the good stuff. There are an endless variety of groups for you to join and become involved with. You can search by keyword to find groups that interest you. Some groups are open to everyone, but others require permission. After you’ve become a member, make sure to stay involved by joining discussions and starting your own.

Why LinkedIn? LinkedIn is the ideal platform for beginners because it is easy to use and it is a professional social networking site, which means it is relevant to every company. How much you get out of it depends on what you put in. Go ahead, give it a try.