Archive for the 'marketing' Category

14
May
12

Basic proposal template

By Barry Dewar 2 Comments
Categories: digital strategy and marketing

I moved client side about 8 months ago. One of the things to most surprised me is how I miss writing proposals.

Honestly.

I even dug out my old proposal template to make myself feel better.

Then I thought, maybe people might find it useful . Maybe you have been asked to write a proposal. Maybe you write proposals all the time and you’re nosy to see what I put in mine. Maybe you are just wondering what a proposal is.

For whatever reason. Here you go. My proposal template:

Vision
An outline of the overall aims for the project and a description of what the end product will be and how it will function.

We will deliver:

  • Summary of Key Deliverables
  • Broken down into Bullet Points
  • e.g. a redeveloped website in line with new brand guidelines
  • e.g. A user friendly CMS
  • e.g. Social media sharing tools
  • e.g. Effective Search Engine performance and improved traffic


Introduction
Introduction to Mystery Co.

Project Description
Services
Deliverables

Project Plan
Roles and responsibilities
Timescales

Project Details
Front end
CMS
Additional Requirements
Hosting
Site Marketing
Social Media

Accessibility

Development Tools

Licensing

Methodology
Initiation
Scoping
Wireframing
Design
Build
Testing
Rollout

Costs

Appendix A – Hosting
Appendix B – Risks and Constraints
Appendix C –  Credentials

14
Dec
10

Mashable are doing it wrong

By Barry Dewar 1 Comment
Categories: facebook, marketing, musings, social media and twitter
Tags: , , , ,

When I started to take an interest in social media a couple of years ago, the concern most often voiced was that marketeers would get their grubby hands on it and spoil it for everyone else. I never really felt that would happen because of the permission based nature of the thing. You only see the updates of people or brands that you have chosen to follow. For me that was an important distinction between social media and all traditional media up until that point.

What I hadn’t banked on was the pervasive nature of underhand marketing tactics. There have been a few things recently which have annoyed me. I already ranted briefly about marketing types making recommendations based on nothing but loyalty to their own clients.  This time my hackles have been raised by The Mashable Awards. 

I have nothing against the awards in principle, or awards in general.

What gets my goat is the requirement that any vote in the awards is automatically retweeted or posted to your Facebook account. It can’t be turned off. So if you want to vote for a few things then you are actively spamming your own followers on behalf of Mashable.

It’s most annoying because Mashable are the ubiquitous social media follow. Everyone with any interest in the arena is reading what they say and this begins to look like an acceptable approach to viral marketing. 

It’s not. 

It’s insidious. Any vote I might make on the site is purely an endorsement for that brand, it is in no way an implicit endorsement of Mashable, yet if I vote I am promoting their content without consultation. The status updates that it generates are junk mail and should be treated as such.

It may not seem like a big deal. If we are all following Mashable anyway then we do kind of endorse them right? Maybe, but that’s not the problem.

Rather, if other hooked up organisations begin to adopt the same approach, our Facebook feeds or Twitter streams will quickly fill up with this crap.

Just as we do with spam we will learn to ignore it and software will be developed to automatically remove it from our lives. 

Our carefully selected, permission based social media networks will cease to be of value and we will move on to something else.

Marketeers who use social media. Don’t take a leaf out of Mashable’s book. If you truly value your customers and have respect for whatever they CHOOSE to say using social media channels, trust them to work out whether they want to tell the world that they have just clicked on your call to action.

02
Aug
10

Managing your brand online

By Barry Dewar 4 Comments
Categories: marketing and social media
Tags: ,

I speak to people a lot about branding at the moment. I’m fast realising that it’s a more effective way to explain social media than asking them to change the way they communicate with customers (potential or otherwise).

The internet, as it matures, is getting very cluttered. If you’ve been in business for any amount of time you will almost certainly have left quite a trail behind you which in most cases you won’t even be aware of.

When I started to look at the results for my own name I was shocked to see all the listings from the plethora of accounts I set up with various services over the years. That alongside comments I’d made elsewhere was giving a pretty muddy picture of who I am. Was I Barry Dewar the social media dude with a disliking of #followfriday? Or was I bavdav, the guy who led a mutiny on the official Championship Manager message board over 10 years ago? Maybe I was the Barry Dewar who blogged about screenwriting for a few years.

Truth is that I was all of those things over the years, and more. I’d never given any though to how that goes together until recently. It took me a while to get a handle on the clutter and present myself the way I want to be perceived on the internet.

And that’s what online branding is all about

It’s about making sure that you are in control of all the touch points between you and your audience. Everywhere that your name or that of your products and services appears, you have to make sure that it’s on your terms. That way you can ensure that it’s always on brand.

And remember, branding is not simply your logo and colour scheme. It’s EVERYTHING about your organisation. It’s the impression that is left on people after any type of interaction with it. Every shred of copy, every image, every tag, every phone call, the smell of your office, your recycling policy. Absolutely nothing you do is exempt from being part of your company and what makes it unique. That’s your brand.

So take some time. Look yourselves up, see what you find. If it’s off-message sort it out. Get branded!

22
Jun
10

Streamlining your LinkedIn strategy

By Barry Dewar 1 Comment
Categories: blogging, facebook, marketing, social media and twitter
Tags: , , , , , ,

LinkedIn used to be rubbish. Really. It was nothing more than a glorified spreadsheet of contacts that you could show off to other people. It was for salesfolk to get worked up over who had the most leads.

In recent months it’s come on in leaps and bounds. It’s now, arguably, the most focussed social media website out there. Not only is it a cracking way to present your online CV (although pretty much everyone still asks for a paper one!), it’s also grown a number of routes for some genuine business networking.

It stands alone in that it’s targeted at the world of work. You can join groups, share expertise, email contacts, upload news, etc. But let’s be clear, it’s commercially focussed. If you’re creating a voice for yourself, a brand image, then there are better tools. LinkedIn can showcase this brand but it’s not the place to perpetuate it.

Brand building involves a great deal of trial and error

If you’re fully committed to it then you’ll be tweeting a lot, updating your Facebook status a lot and trying to find ways to get your content on just about every social media forum there is. Every update is something of a shot in the dark, a calculated one, but a risk all the same. If you spend all day crafting a single comment on someone else’s blog, it might be a masterpiece. It might be loaded with crafty keywords, it might link to all the right places and it might have all the right bait to drive traffic to your site. But while you were doing that one of your competitors threw up 20 tweets, 5 Flickr pics, 7 Delicious bookmarks,2 blog posts and a YouTube video for good measure. Who do you think generated the most buzz?

Showcase the very best of what you are achieving in the social media space

Don’t link all of your accounts on LinkedIn. Especially not your twitter stream, instead handpick the tweets you want to include (by using the #in hashtag). None of your potentially useful network of business savvy people want to know that you’ve just farted. Instead, craft regular status updates just for LinkedIn, answer some pertinent questions and engage in some good group chat. If your blog is business oriented include that, ditto your Amazon reading list. What you’re trying to avoid is extraneous information overload.

It helps to think about LinkedIn as you would your old skool CV. Get the best stuff on there and make yourself sound awesome. Otherwise it goes in the bin.

26
May
10

10 tips for email marketing

By Barry Dewar Leave a Comment
Categories: email and marketing
Tags: , , ,

Given that this claims to be a Digital Communications blog, I should really be giving advice on more than just social media, so here is another in an occasional series of Stuff I Have Published Elsewhere. Enjoy:

Email marketing seems like a simple idea. You have something you want to say to your customers, you have their email address and you know how to write an email. Couldn’t be simpler right?

Well, on one level it really is that simple but there are some other things that you should consider:

How will you know who has opened it or read it?

Who’s going to respond to all the feedback you get if it’s a success?

Were your customers happy to receive it?

Were you operating within the law?

It may seem simple but when it comes down to it there are few things more stressful in online marketing than sending out an email to your customers. No, I can’t make it any less stressful but I can offer you some tips so that you know what you are letting yourself in for.

1/ Get permission
You may have a list from your sales guy of leads, or maybe you’ve archived emails of customers who have been in touch but that’s not enough. If you send people marketing email without their consent, not only is it annoying. It’s illegal. Whether you buy a list or make your own, everyone on it must have opted in.

2/ Belt and Braces
It’s lovely to be sending out image rich HTML emails, they are on brand and make you look sophisticated but the bottom line is that not everyone is capable of receiving them. There are a lot of different email applications out there on different platforms so make sure you offer a text alternative to whatever you send.

3/ Use e-marketing software
It’s vital that you are able to track basic stats such as how many customers opened the mail, how many addresses bounced and who wants to unsubscribe. There are a number of companies offering web-based services, just Google “e-marketing software” and pick one that you think looks good.

4/ Call to action
There is no reason for you not to encourage your customers to do something on receipt of your message. Make sure the copy and the structure leads them towards clicking that link back to your site or calling that number.

5/…and track them
And when they have been called to action. Make sure you know that they did it after reading that carefully constructed email you sent them. You can do this on your website by checking your logs for referral information. If you don’t know what that is, find someone who does.

6/ Test different creatives
The real beauty of direct marketing is that you can get to the bottom of what works very quickly. Use different approaches to the same message to send out 2 or even 3 different versions to different people on your list. Then use the analytics to work out which one was the most successful.

7/ Look after your list
You will waste a lot of money sending out messages if you don’t keep on removing those email addresses which consistently bounce, if it fails to deliver 3 times then bin it. Also, make sure your unsubscribes are definitely gone before you send out your next one.

8/ If you can, segment your list
Find out as much information as you can about your customers. It’s a good idea to use surveys to do this. Then, with this data you can send different messages depending on what you have learned. For instance, there’s not point in sending Vegas clubbing deals to your ‘more mature’ customers.

9/ Think about when you send it
Studies have shown that the best time to send your marketing email is midweek. Tuesday and Wednesday constantly show the best open and click through rates. This has been proven through research, don’t let that little voice which says “they might want to read it on the weekend” change your mind.

10/ Get the tone right
Similarly to when you are writing website copy; writing email copy requires a delicate approach to tone. Keep it friendly, remember you’re invading their in-box and they are giving up precious seconds of their own time to read it. Don’t bully then and never try to sell them anything.

And there you have it. Once you’ve sent a few the stress will start to dissipate. Much of the worry comes from knowing that when you press that little green button there’s no way to bring it back, it’s gone. Make sure you’ve checked the spelling, and when it’s checked, check it again. Then do the same with all the links. There really is no room for error. Get into the habit and your stress levels will soon drop from red to amber. Just don’t get complacent.

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