Acquisition, conversion and social media

We’ve been working extensively in the field of social media in the last few months, across a number of verticals.

Without exception, we’ve been able to build large audiences of engaged friends and followers through consistent strategies of regular communications combining information and entertainment.

Unfortunately that’s not enough. While we can conduct surveys that measure changing perceptions towards a brand or service, the bottom line is … well … the bottom line. If we can’t persuade these people to buy anything, then it’s difficult to justify the activity – particularly when you consider how time consuming executing an effective social media strategy can be.

We’ve been experimenting with a number of different routes to conversion – offers and promotions, unique customer status etc. – and the one that seems to work best is an event.

Plotting an on or off line event gives us something tangible to work towards. You know when and where the event is happening, which allows us to plot communications and drivers of peer-to-peer activity, and insert specific targets for the campaign along the way.

Of course, we still continue with our regular mix of entertaining and informative updates. We need a solid base behind us if we are to generate sufficient momentum for the event. We also need to establish credibility with what will continue to be our hard core fan base.

But providing something that gets people genuinely excited and allows us to either get customers to try the product or service, or at the very least move them to a direct response arena, is the missing link in our social media strategies.

Recession and agencies – time to put your money where your mouth is

While talking to a number of our clients and agencies partners, it’s clear that many of them are viewing the ‘credit crunch’ not as a threat, but as an opportunity to carve out market share. 

But how should they approach this? The obvious answer is to offer a service or product that is so valuable and compelling that customers feel they can’t afford to be without it. But in the current climate, that has to be at the right price.

That got me thinking. For years, creative agencies across all disciplines have been united by the common complaint that clients think they know best about how to get the most out of the agency’s specific area of expertise. There are real dangers to this perceived meddling for everyone involved – the agency team become disillusioned, the project is riddled with compromises, tensions increase within the agency/client relationship, and the final project doesn’t achieve its objectives. This then culminates in finger pointing, mutual antagonism and the likely demise of a potentially beautiful and profitable relationship.

The reason that this story will resonate with people on both sides of the client/agency relationship is because of the inherent lack of facts involved. There are not enough facts involved in the process – we have poorly defined objectives at the start of the project, followed by woolly thinking in the strategy and no single decision maker with a clear vision of what must happen.

“How is this an opportunity?” I hear you ask. This is the perfect time for agencies to prove their expertise and value once and for all. In the current economic climate, clients are desperate to generate measurable response and quantifiable ROI and are only investing in projects that will deliver it.

They also have lower budgets to spend on achieving these objectives and want to reduce the initial risk in committing significant elements of their budget to unproven concepts.

So what can we do to help? Well, because each penny spent needs to be accounted for, clients have a much more focussed idea on what they want to achieve. And because budgets are so much tighter, agencies have the opportunity to take control: “If you want to achieve these results, you need to do these things at this time.” The only thing that’s missing is a compelling reason for the client to trust its agency.

That’s where the idea for our CPA deal came from. We’ve proved time and time again that we can deliver results for our clients, provided we are working towards a common goal in a relationship of mutual respect. By putting our budgets on the line, we’re showing our clients how confident we are that we’ll deliver on our promises. and by lowering initial costs we’re able to lower the risk to clients and give them the confidence that they will be able to do more with their budget – not less.

To find out more about our current CPA offer, give me a call on 020 7631 3278.

Email marketing for restaurants and bars

One unforeseen consequence of the restaurant industries current reliance on discount vouchers for its marketing activity is an apparent loss in thought and attention across other aspects of their communications.

This week is a case in point. With our history and client base, it’s obvious that we are going to have a keen and enthusiastic interest in restaurant marketing, and as such I receive numerous marketing emails, and, as with any industry, they vary hugely in quality.

But two this week really pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable. I’ve been following Gourmet Burger Kitchen’s efforts to build up an online members club over the last few months since its launch, as it struck me as a communications platform with the potential to escape the downward spiral of discount vouchers. I love the idea of making your customers feel part of the brand, and that you are treating them as members of your team, but their approach is both too hurried and scatter gun.

For father’s day, they sent out an email offering vouchers for families – appropriate and valuable (if they’ve got the targeting right) – but the effectiveness of the offer was reduced by packing the messages full of jokey references to kiwis. Maybe I am in a small minority of customers that didn’t know that GBK was owned by New Zealanders, but I can’t believe that I’m the only one that doesn’t care. It’s great that they are trying to get away from the business/client relationship – but it has to be done on a step-by-step basis, and you can’t make leaps using elements that are not important or interesting to me.

Meanwhile, the people at Bay Restaurants appear to have gone temporarily mad. This week’s La Tasca mailing promoted a special discount offer. What’s so strange about that, you ask? Well, the discount isn’t for La Tasca – it’s for another chain of bars that Bay owns – Slug and Lettuce.  It began with this confusing and inappropriate line:

‘We know how much you love our tasty tapas and Spanish cuisine, but also realise that you may sometimes fancy something a little different!’      

Next, it  drove me to their fantastic new site that wasn’t finished yet. I don’t believe I ever gave permission for alternative brand messages to be sent to me, but even if I had I’d like to think that the messages would have stronger connections than ‘the people who own this brand also own another one’.

Come on guys – just because sending an email is simple, it doesn’t mean that effective email communications are easy. You have to think these things through and question why you are doing something, and whether it’s appropriate. At best you are leaving people confused – at worst, completely alienated.

Where has all the fun gone?

We’ve had a lot of success with the CPA campaign, and it’s great for getting under the skin of the client and breaking down the traditional barriers of mis-trust and doubt. 

However, some prospects have said that they are concerned that, because we’re so focussed on success and ‘the numbers’, we won’t have that traditional energetic and entrertaining relationship that clients like to have with their agencies.

I don’t believe this is true for a second – it’s just that we think that fun stems from success rather than as a default setting. And the credit crunch is bringing people round to our way of thinking.

We’ve had some great celebratory days and nights recently – our annual review of Ocean Florida was a great drunken day based on the fact that we’ve bucked the industry trend and continue to deliver exceptional sales growth.

For Travel Alberta we’ve delivered over 4,000,000 views for their brand awareness campaign.

Now these are achievements worth celebrating!

Are you really fully integrated? Yes… Here’s some recent proof!

As a testament to our self-proclaimed fully integrated title we thought we would boast about a couple of our recent offline achievements…

Firstly; the CBS Bus-Side awards. At the beginning of the year we designed two adverts to go on bus-sides for two of our clients; ‘GameOn Bingo’ and ‘Travel Alberta’.

Our ‘Travel Alberta’ advert featuring ‘Joe the Alien’ (a character we created to promote Alberta as a tourist destination) made it to the final of the competition after an online public vote. So Rich, Natalie and Toby braved the unpredictable rain showers on Friday 24th and headed to Battersea Park to enjoy CBS’ hospitality and find out the results.

Congratulations to the CHI team who took home the award for first place (an excellent piece of creative work for their client Anchor).

You can see all the top bus-side finalists (including ours) here:

http://upeveryonesstreet.co.uk/?page_num=2

Secondly; we recently delivered an excellent piece of DM for the Latitude Group (an SEO, analytics and affiliate marketing agency) which is currently getting them an excellent response. Cowan Group helped with the concept and designed the direct mailout which encourages the recipient to go online and to our client’s website.

Cowan Group are always happy to work with any marketing medium and we know that although a lot of our client work is online, we still love offline campaigns as well!

Can’t afford to outsource? Or can’t afford not to?

Given the challenging business climate we find ourselves in, it’s understandable that companies are looking to do whatever they can in house.

Simultaneously, marketers are also tasked with generating as much return as possible from their existing spend.

Given these contradictory demands, it’s obvious that cuts have to be made. But where?

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how everyone thinks that ideas and response are easy. I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of web projects where the client hasn’t wanted to flex their creative muscles to the detriment of the project.

Advertising is even worse – despite never having made an ad, some clients think they know more than the people that have been doing it for years.

But perhaps the most obviously effected area is DM and email marketing. With so many great fulfilment tools out there, it seems the obvious thing to take in house. But have you noticed how much more untargeted mail you receive from companies you are interested in these days?

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. If you aren’t learning something specific and useful from each mailing, then you aren’t doing it right.

And, in the current climate, can you really afford to leave the campaigns that drive sales in the hands of gifted amateurs?

Differences in US and UK bingo offers insight into good business practices

The difference between US and UK bingo is both cultural and physical.

In the US, online bingo is seen as an underground experience, where word of mouth the key driver to trial, and personal experience underpins loyalty.

 However, in the UK, perceived value is king. This has led to an environment of fiercely competitive advertising and offer upon similar offer, until we end upon a point where free bingo is the only effective call to action for new players, and 300% deposit bonuses are standard.

 But what does this mean for customer loyalty? Nothing. A customer bribed will have their loyalty bought by the next new offer.

 For bingo, read any new business. Earlier this year, Moonfruit (makers of website creation software) gave away 10 MacBook Pro to people using #moonfruit in their Twitter posts. The response was enormous, with over 39,000 people following Moonfruit’s Twitter posts. In terms of PR, it was incredibly effective. But in terms of data collection or potential customers? I would be incredibly surprised if even one of the signups had any interest in Moonfruit or their offer.

 By concentrating on getting customers to your site by any means possible, you lose sight of what made your business different in the first place. You concentrate on fighting on price at the expense of customer experience and the value of your brand. As you can see from the UK bingo market, this results in a generic offering where it’s impossible to tell one network from another.

 Our role as experts is to move beyond the great idea and ask ‘why are we doing this’, ‘what do we hope to achieve’ and ‘how will we measure success’. Even what seem like the greatest ideas must be challenged. If they are right, then the answers are clear and simple. But if they only appear to be good ideas, then justification is much harder.

 It’s all very well bringing in new customers and prospects with unsustainable offers. But what’s you next step? Without a strategy for customer retention, you might as well just be throwing money into the wind.