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Opinion Marketing is coming to terms with a new world order. Until last year, that looked like a gradual but fairly smooth transition. In 2019, two of its industries took a beating.
One was advertising. The other was SEO. While the advertising industry was being attacked, by and large, by aggressors outside its control – an increasingly fragmented media landscape, its own increasing fragmentation, budget and time pressures and a shift in the balance of power between client and agency – SEO was self-harming.
The bad behaviour of too many SEO companies was giving the whole industry a dire reputation. Self-harm isn’t smart. It’s not grown-up, it’s adolescent. Advertising, being a mature industry has been through its reckless stage. SEO, being younger has not.
When Guido Heffels, the internationally applauded founder of German advertising agency, Heimat, was asked in an interview this month how his agency had managed to keep producing brave and successful advertising for core client, European home improvement chain, Hornbach, for more than a decade, he replied, “trust, responsibility, honesty and deep-rooted love.”
Trust, responsibility, honesty and deep-rooted love are not the dominant adolescent qualities. SEO needs to acquire these qualities. SEO needs to mature to thrive.
Like adolescents, SEO behaves in mysterious ways. Badly behaved SEO companies have been using this to their advantage. In the new world order, a lack of transparency is not tolerated. When businesses ask, “Can you give me a breakdown of specific SEO tasks?”, they expect a breakdown. Answers like, “It’s too complex,”, “We don’t reveal our strategies,” or “We don’t give away our intellectual property,” are self-harm. Trust is lost and even a handful of badly behaved SEO companies can lose trust for all.
Like adolescents, badly behaved SEO makes big promises that it cannot keep. “Can you guarantee that my website will rank #1?” answered with “absolutely” is self-harm. It’s irresponsible.
Badly behaved SEO companies have been using a lack of transparency to their advantage – but in the new world order, this is not tolerated. They hide their results behind privacy pleas but ethical SEO companies are proud to show off their results
Like adolescents, badly behaved SEO plays fast and loose with truth. Calling its unethical practices Black Hat SEO gives them an allure they do not deserve. The black hat wearing “bad guys” in westerns have an attraction of sorts. But they tend to get shot dead in the end, often tangled in their own sticky webs. Dishonesty makes for a short life and ultimately, failure.
I have a deep-rooted love for SEO. Love its complexity. I even love that Google’s algorithms are not constants that can be relied on time after time. Love being kept on my toes. I’d love to see SEO respected. Recklessness does not deserve respect - and there are plenty of behaviours that SEO needs to outgrow.
Most businesses are approached regularly by SEO companies by email warning of problems in their rankings and promising to achieve spectacular results. Many are approached over and over again by the same SEO companies. Respected SEO companies don’t have to send spam email.
Most businesses only find out that their SEO company has been behaving badly, that their business is not ranking highly, when their results decline. A decline in business is not what companies pay SEO service providers to achieve. To repeat, recklessness doesn’t deserve respect. Nor does it get it. Published stories about badly behaved SEO companies (and there are far too many of them at present) tarnish the respect that ethical SEO companies have worked hard to earn.
Badly behaved SEO companies hide their real results behind privacy pleas. Ethical SEO companies are proud to show off the results they have fought to achieve for their clients and their clients are proud to be shown for their successes.
Badly behaved SEO companies make Google enemy, magnifying the difficulties (and the costs) their own tasks entail and blaming these platforms for poor results. Google is not trying to kill anyone’s business. In fact, they rely on businesses to succeed by using them. But they, too, are under pressure to be ethical and they have millions of business trying to rank #1. They are trying to manage badly behaved SEO companies. They are trying to stop cheats.
Ironically, I began StudioHawk as an ethical SEO company when I was an adolescent. I was just seventeen. StudioHawk has grown up with me. It has thrived and I have thrived. But my industry hasn’t. The well-behaved SEO companies are having to fight far too hard to win respect because of those who think they can get away with bad behaviour forever. Thinking you can get away with bad behaviour forever is adolescent thinking. SEO needs to grow up.
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Marketers are faced with a world of conflicting information, and it’s often supplied without evidence or an agenda. So, who should industry professionals trust when it comes to knowing exactly how to deliver messaging that works?
Not every marketing department will be utilising the powers of a great email campaign, but even for those that don’t, simple principles still apply.
When defining what an integrated campaign is, it gives meaning and purpose when providing a single focal message that’s conveyed over multiple direct and indirect channels to an audience. In short, it should follow the ‘PLUS’ principle:
However, before venturing into the steps that are involved in delivering a high-performing campaign, marketers must firstly understand the ground rules. They must be prepared to craft comms that are passionate and empathetic, of a high written standard and brimming with valuable content. The artwork should be visually engaging, yet simple as opposed to complex. Now it’s time to think about executing the six steps involved.
Whether email or SMS, direct mail or push, these are the mediums used to get the message out the door. Marketing departments should understand their customer base’s preferred method of communication – and focus on tailoring to those needs accordingly.
For many savvy professionals, this can often begin with a title – it could make for a brainstorming session where a concept starts to come to life. It’s important at this stage to also address why this particular campaign would help the recipient.
In addition, the aim has to come complete with the possibility of being multi-dimensional so that marketers can talk about it from several angles. Sense-checking the idea with the sales team can prove to be critical at this phase of the process – if they buy into it, the organisation is onto something!
A great tip at this point to is to ensure that the investment in artwork fits in with the brand – and always refer to the PLUS acronym for clarity.
With this being an integrated campaign, there’s no point in marketers saying exactly the same thing across each channel – that will cause customers to tune out immediately, and the messaging will ultimately fall flat.
This is where the plan really starts to come together as organisations each message is as powerful as the next to develop a seamless sequence that nurtures a customer all the way towards a conversion.
A recommendation here would be to apply a six-phase process, beginning with the first email or piece of comms. This should be the introduction to the product, service or offer. It’s a marketing departments chance to instantly engage the recipient and create a level of interest.
Next up is the social proof – which evidences why the customer should continue to be interested in what the enterprise is trying to sell. The third activity is all about gain – simply answering the question for the customer, ‘what will I achieve if I purchase this?’
The fourth stage of the sequence focuses on fear, playing on the consequences of what happens if the recipient doesn’t take up the offer. This is later followed up with logic – i.e. how this makes sense to purchase – before finally what the loss will feel like if the conversion isn’t acted upon immediately.
What’s too much in terms of comms output – and what’s not enough? This is where the ROI challenge comes into play and analyses how the campaign efforts are currently panning out.
At this point, it’s important for marketers to be efficient with budget spend, time and creating a journey that doesn’t break the bank or kill all hopes of managing to have a lunch break!
The worst thing here is to send out too much – so that organisations head into ‘spam’ territory – or that they do the bare minimum and risk a warm lead reverting back to becoming a cold prospect.
It’s highly recommended to gate certain pieces of content – such as low and high value downloadable PDFs – so that it keeps engagement high, but also figure out when social needs to be supercharged and when a piece of direct mail can create a conversion. Understanding a customer’s interests here is critical, this previous MarketingTech article should also help.
Where does the campaign sit and where is the traffic pointing to? If it can be homed via a microsite or similar, for example, that enables marketers to analyse the level of interest.
In addition, statistics have shown that dynamic landing pages can convert up to 20% more customers – if the content backs up the campaign. And don’t forget to automate!
Finally, evaluating how an integrated campaign has been delivered can truly tell organisations what has worked – and what hasn’t. There is a problem here in that each channel has its own set of marketing metrics, but there are ways to achieve this such as using Google Analytics and code utilisation.
However, many savvy professionals will be tapping into a powerful piece of data via audience segmentation monitoring – and that’s lead scoring. This allows organisations to understand how each group is evolving and ‘rate’ the most engaged audience members, enabling this information to be fed into the sales team for conversion.
Overall, it’s vital to revisit the basic principles that should come with any marketing campaign. For example, departments should immediately kill any complexity and simplify its messaging, create good quality artwork, and always think about the audience’s needs.
Once these areas are mastered, messaging can be transformed into high-performing integrated campaigns – that work!
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There are few things more difficult than starting your own business. Studies show that as many as 60% of firms close their doors within three years.
For those of us in the startup world, the same question often arises: what causes the downfall of so many promising businesses? Well, the relative strength of the core proposition is undoubtedly the most important determinant of success, with research showing as many as 42% of companies fail because their central product idea is weak.
According to the same research, cash drying up contributes to 29% of failures, and in my experience this can often be attributed to too much time spent focussed on extraneous things, like making an immediate profit, over-complicating the proposition by wanting to build too many features into a product, or simply just living the ‘startup lifestyle’.
That said, some blame ought also to be attributed to weak marketing. After all, what’s the use in an incredible product if no-one knows about it?.
In my experience, there are a few basic pointers to follow.
One crucial downfall that many founders make is wasting too much energy on the short-term payback from marketing. This is particularly true when we consider launch marketing efforts; many founders are under the impression that a single campaign will bring floods of customers to their doors. While this might be true in a limited number of circumstances, this is certainly not the norm. Building an audience, reputation and brand loyalty takes a considerable amount of time, and viewing the process as a one-stop-shop campaign rarely works.
Instead, startups ought to take a more patient approach, nurturing their campaign and marketing output and managing their cashflow accordingly. Converting a potential customer into a sale will often take a period of time, wherein the audience members will need to consider whether your product is worth purchasing or engaging with their hard-earned money, and sought-after time.
Founders needn’t get disheartened if a marketing approach doesn’t build an audience immediately. However, if it is effectual, the work doesn’t end there. Maintaining and building from a strong start is necessary to avoid losing momentum and fading back into obscurity.
Succeeding in tech requires a forensic knowledge of one’s own product, which most of the founders I have previously worked with possess. However, when it comes to approaching the audience with your offering, the focus ought to be on how your product can improve your customer’s life. The challenge that many founders face is assuming they know exactly what their audience wants from the product, which might not necessarily be true.
Market research and seeking constant feedback can certainly help. By understanding the aspects of your product that resonate with your target customers, and those which need to be improved, both your marketing approach and your product design can be refined.
Similarly, it’s important to make existing customers feel like part of your journey. Those who have been loyal to your business from the early days will no doubt appreciate being first to hear about new ventures or advertising campaigns that they might soon come across. Being directly involved in your startup’s growth will also organically nurture ambassadors for your brand.
After capturing the market that you know, it’s worth considering how you could reach further afield. Studio Graphene recently carried out some research which found 60% of tech employees think the industry has a worrying lack of diversity. If your firm does suffer from this, consulting with or employing people from other backgrounds may be necessary, and may also help you understand how to create a marketing strategy with broad appeal, rather than tailored to the narrow preferences of your immediate audience.
Once you have a keen grasp of your audience, and have devised the right kind of content to approach them with, you’ll need to decide which channels to utilise. Having a good understanding of which are best suited to your startup proposition is of most importance. It might be easy to assume that social media will form the centrepiece of your approach, and for firms with products with broad appeal, it is often the case.
However, companies with specialised or technical products might be better suited to Google Ads, Facebook, or email. Whilst these might seem less glamorous, if you are promoting a product that requires a particular kind of customer, it could be more efficacious. When your budget is tight, redirecting funds to more fruitful channels, and not simply the ones which seem socially important, can pay dividends.
There is also a risk of focusing on social media metrics that fail to translate into more sales or income. Whilst ten thousand followers may bestow some kind of legitimacy, and for some it might open the doors to brand partnerships, often it doesn’t necessarily mean your bottom line is improved. It may be better to have 1,000 loyal customers who understand your story and return to your product repeatedly.
Regardless of the many complexities of a successful marketing strategy, there is one thing that really matters: reaching your customer with the right message at the right time. These points will help you avoid certain pitfalls, and consulting with a professional can also help hone your approach.
Interested in hearing leading global brands discuss subjects like this in person?
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CMOs have a problem. Their role is changing, from exploring customer engagement and adding to the sales pipeline, to one of more consistent growth. Yet a new report warns that a potential recession has led to an overall negative feeling among marketing chiefs.
Chief Outsiders polled more than 50 of its CMO consultants – executives with senior experience at Fortune 500 level now working at mid-sized organisations – last month to give their verdicts.
According to the report, CMOs are increasingly collaborating with other organisational entities, such as research and development, sales, IT, and customer service, to meet their growth goals. Almost 40% of those polled said they were ‘somewhat’ perceiving the trend, with an additional 30% saying it was ‘significant.’
When it came to specific initiatives being focused on in 2020, organic searches, content marketing, and email marketing were top of the tree, while video content is seen as both a popular and effective choice going forward. The good news is there will be more budget to spend; four in five respondents said it was either likely or very likely that their clients would increase digital ad investments in 2020. Yet just under nine in 10 admitted it would be difficult to stay ahead of technical enhancements without incurring what the report calls ‘experience debt.’
Alongside a potential recession – not to mention the looming threat of the coronavirus – retail CMOs are likely to be concerned over Amazon’s continued domination of the eCommerce space. Some retailers, such as Kroger, are building their own solutions to provide greater and more transparent sales attribution. The Chief Outsiders report notes that direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategies are what many marketers are banking on. Indeed, retail, at around a third of respondents, is the industry most likely to see DTC or direct-to-business initiatives in 2020, the research notes.
More good news arrived in the shape of marketing for social good. When asked whether social good efforts will impact marketing messages in 2020, just under nine in 10 said it would, although the vast majority tempered their view by saying ‘somewhat.’
This makes for interesting reading when compared with a recent report from The CMO Club, alongside Deloitte. The study again focused on the evolving role of the CMO – and in some cases blurred lines. More than two thirds of respondents said they had profit and loss responsibility, yet only 16% said they had responsibility for the company’s sales force.
The Chief Outsiders report came to a similar conclusion. Overall, according to the report, 44% of CMOs believe business and economic conditions will have a negative impact on 2020 business performance, while 35% argued the impact would be positive.
You can read the full survey here (email required).
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