Originally published on

Having so many options in digital strategy and execution often means we falsely confuse the richness of a program or campaign with complexity, and in doing so lose the focus that will help us move our business goals forward. Simple in most things is usually better, and digital strategy is no exception. There is no badge of honor for including a ridiculous number of tactical elements nor does it make a program more effective. A highly fragmented digital strategy can make it more difficult to track, more expensive to maintain, more time consuming to optimize, and complicated to extract actionable insights. The rule of three is a good one in this instance. If a digital element does not satisfy one (or more) of these three primary goals then you should strongly question why it is included in your plan.

1. Selling something or moving the user closer to the sale.
2. Building something or creating future opportunities with that user including building trust or engagement and growing remarketing platforms.
3. Learning something, gaining insights, or testing an approach or hypothesis.

No. 1: Selling

Every brand or business is hoping to build toward a sale with their marketing or online marketing. Some just have faster and more direct routes. E-commerce businesses get minute-to-minute feedback and can use their digital campaigns and programs for many kinds of critical testing against a singular sales objective. Does this tweak create more revenue within my cost and profit parameters? Site conversion optimization, message testing, offer testing, landing page testing – the list is endless. The sales feedback for a consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brand is delayed and obscured, but with deliberate planning can be just as important in meeting healthy sales goals. Business to business efforts may have longer sales cycles and different issues but they are building toward a sale as well. Depending on the vertical and the decision and buying process, the road to a sale might include stops for branding or awareness efforts, educational commitments, trial offers, or many other defined events. You can’t narrowly define sales as just the end point of the actual purchase. If your plans are moving your qualified audience toward a sale in a timely and cost-efficient manner then that is a good investment.

No. 2: Building

If you can’t convert the user immediately you need to concentrate on extending the thread of that contact into future opportunities – at least until you can determine they are no longer a prospect. If you do successfully motivate a conversion you still want to gain permissions for future contacts while you deliver a positive experience and capture whatever you can about that user or transaction that will make future contacts more productive for you and more relevant and comfortable for the user. Remarketing platforms like email lists and social communities give you permission and opportunity to continue the conversation. This creates future chances to convert, upsell, get a referral, or to learn something. Scale is important here as some opportunities only become such when they reach a certain depth of user base or data collection. If your email list is only a few hundred people you are not going to invest deeply in it, nor would the return be there if you did except under very unusual, niche situations. Social platforms also give you the added goal of moving consumers along an entirely different continuum culminating ideally in a brand or product advocate or evangelist that takes up your marketing for you. If your programs progressively deliver a better and more relevant experience for users then this is a good use of budget.

No. 3: Learning

Sometimes the best use of budget or resources is to learn something that helps you hone your approach or program for better results. Setting learning objectives should be as much a part of your planning process as any other goal. This requires a deliberate and funded effort and may require a change in corporate culture and process as very few organizations place the appropriate importance on learning activities. Think broadly about the questions you would love to have answered, prioritize them based on their potential impact on the business, and set aside the time and dollars to get your answers. Schedule your learning activities and manage them just like any other important effort so that they return timely and actionable insights that help move your business forward. If your programs get smarter over time and you have institutionalized the need for critical insights then you have invested wisely.

Have you overcomplicated your digital strategy?

Originally published on

Most of you reading this column and many millions of others have a Google+ account. According to the studies following social behaviors, the vast majority of the Google+ account holders are ignoring those accounts. Google is quick to crow about the size of the Google+ base but refuses to share any stats on actual usage as Danny Sullivan ably recapped in his recent column. ComScore confirmed the site’s lack of stickiness just this week in a report that shows declining average time on Google+ – down to a paltry 3.3 minutes per user in January 2012. So, if users don’t care about and don’t use Google+, then why should businesses?

SEO

No one but Google can accurately define how a Google+ page factors into the ranking algorithms for organic results but it appears to have some impact on your placement. That alone is enough reason for most businesses to at least launch a page, if maybe not enough reason to devote resources to supporting growth in Google+. Google is not presently indexing Facebook posts, but does index Google+ profiles and posts so that they are included in search results. This definitely gives an advantage to businesses looking for better marketing via Google. Also, people giving a +1 to content can improve Google ranking and show other users that the posts are valuable, whereas “liking” Facebook content does not have the same impact. And, when a company has a brand page on Google+ and users put that brand page into their circles, when that user searches the brands page links will show in their personal search queries.

SEM

If you can create activity in your Google+ account you can leverage the borrowed endorsement of those users to improve paid search efforts. If you have 1,000 people in your circles, you can integrate your AdWords account with your Google+ account. For most brands, that is not an unreasonable threshold -if you devote time and resources to the effort, exactly what Google wants you to do. With that account linkage your +1 will show up on your ad results, lending, in theory, more credibility to the result and thereby increasing click-through rate and improving quality score – which in turn improves ROI. In order to take advantage of this not-yet-proven advantage you have to take a few steps for Google including linking Google+ from your brand or corporate site, linking from your Google+ page to your website, confirming the linkage in your AdWords setup, and getting your Google rep to confirm.

It’s not surprising that the two most compelling reasons to commit to a Google+ strategy are search related but there are other reasons as well.

Never Count Google Out of the Long Game

The web’s social elements are evolving quickly and are too important for Google to ignore. Google has the resources and smarts to redefine, respond, and react quickly to user needs until it gets it right. When it does, users will not only “upgrade” to Google+ but will begin to actually spend time in the layer, activating what is already a large installed base.

Google is unveiling a Google+ redesign that it hopes to draw users in with more functionality and more flexibility. The new Google+ “ribbon” will allow users to conveniently place and change out apps they frequently use. Some suggest that Google+ may be opening up to third-party app developers, which will increase functionality and motivate users to return. The redesign accommodates more and larger visual imagery and videos. It also highlights Hangouts, and makes invites to Hangouts more prominent – a smart move as this is arguably one of the few differentiated features that Google+ can claim among pure social platforms.

My company’s social media team noted an interesting paradox in that Google+ is important simply because it’s not Facebook and people who try it out often don’t stick around because of that. It’s different, but not different enough. Trying to shift a user base of 845 million active users (Facebook, December 2011) is a time consuming and costly task and Google+ may never see the mass adoption it’s looking for unless Google creates a truly compelling reason for the masses. Is integration with all the other Google offerings enough? Only time will tell.

People will continue to connect where their friends are. Right now that is Facebook and Facebook makes it near impossible to compete since it fairly quickly adopts the best features of the best channels by building: status updates, subscriptions à la Twitter; friend lists à la Google+; or buying: photo sharing à la Instagram. So Google+ is important because as of today, it reminds us just how much we still love Facebook.

How are you using Google+?

Originally published on

Request for proposal (RFP): The mere phrase makes some cringe. And while we all have somewhat different perspectives, there is some universality in the RFP experience that we share. And I regret to report that overall, it is not very good.

A general consensus among folks that I reached out to is that the RFP process is broken and does not align with the dynamics of our industry. It is an antiquated mechanism that supports laziness and suboptimal results.

However, very few have a solution or a fix. But there are a number of factors that we can agree on that make for either bad or good practices. And rather than just kvetch and complain, here are some guiding points to make things better.

Set the RFP goals

The very first and most essential step in developing a successful RFP effort is to define your goals. What is the purpose of the process? What are you looking to achieve? This will not only help you focus on your requirements, needs, and objectives, but will also drive the nature, form, and content of your RFP to help facilitate a successful outcome.

Not taking this first critical step can lead to a lack of good direction and information for responders. In order to evaluate an agency and get the most effective responses, you must know your own needs, establish criteria, and share relevant information. This is especially true in a transmedia world where the options are myriad — the best ideas and solutions cannot be determined without a certain level of insight. This happens due to a number of potential variables such as laziness, lack of expertise, or — in some cases — a misguided notion that leaving agencies in the dark will reap the best ideas, rates, and proposals. This is a huge fallacy and will not produce the best outcome for anyone. 

Responders will be evaluating the RFP as well. They will be assessing whether they can succeed not only in terms of their services and the fit, but also if the RFP equips them with the ability to respond effectively to demonstrate their capabilities. If your RFP does not provide the forum to do so, you can lose out on highly qualified candidates. How can you possibly evaluate if a responder can meet your needs if you don’t tell them what they are and give them relevant insight into your business? 

Effective RFPs typically reflect the strategy, short- and long-term business objectives, and outline requirements, while providing detailed insight so responders can offer matching perspectives. This also includes a budget, or at least some level of budget parameters.

To a responder, an RFP that does not include a budget indicates that you are not prepared to invest in the effort, not experienced enough to effectively evaluate the responses, or the budget is not there and you are fishing. If you cannot provide some budget guidance — along with outlining your objectives and how you are going to measure success — then you will never come to a clear, optimal decision regarding a solid partner for your business. Furthermore, if a respondent is working with a budget, they can more effectively align their ideas and solutions to your objectives to maximize your budget. Don’t you want a partner who can do that?

As to the structure of the RFP, that depends greatly on your needs. Things like scoring, closed versus open questions, presentations, and so forth will flow from your criteria, goals, requirements, and purpose. But the investment upfront to determine this is essential. Some of the better RFPs break down questions into sections and give a weighting to each section. This requires some real thinking into requirements.

If you don’t know what you are looking for, what you need, what your criteria are for good partners or resources, and you are not prepared to invest a level of time, thought, and resources into the effort, then you are not ready to put out an RFP.

Plan and proceed with respect

There are some horrific stories about the lack of respect for the time, effort, and cost involved to respond to an RFP. And this is not sour grapes, nor is it new or unique to the digital industry. In some ways, the complicated, fragmented media market as well as the economy have added additional pressure and stress to make the dynamics here even worse. Responding to RFPs is an investment of time and resources. Depending on the nature of the RFP, it can cost an agency thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in hard and soft costs to respond. If you are issuing an RFP, you must respect that. 

You can demonstrate that respect in a number of ways beginning with balancing your “skin in the game.” A good, effective RFP and process requires a significant amount of time and commitment to develop and manage. More often than not there is an imbalance where the burden falls more on the responder. So, while the position of power is clearly on the buyer side, not investing the appropriate amount of time upfront and during the process communicates a lack of respect not only to the responder, but also for the needs of your own business.

Along the same lines, you should respect how much time it takes to respond with intelligent, creative solutions. There have been RFPs where we were asked to respond to dynamic challenges in four days.

And while it is rare, there are times where a responder receives a stipend for their time and effort in responding to an RFP. This happened at Netplus once. And while we didn’t win the business, this gesture demonstrated a respect for the value, time, and resources we brought to the effort. It also reflected that this was an effort that was important to the company and that they were willing to invest themselves as well.

If you expect responders to bend over backwards to earn your business, you should bend over backwards to get the best outcome for your business.

An effective RFP must come from a place of mutual respect for a successful outcome.

Work more closely with procurement

More and more procurement is involved in the RFP process. Ok, almost all the time. It can be of varying degrees, but more often than not they are not equipped to evaluate agencies. Somehow, someway, we must find the means to partner more with procurement — their needs reflect the needs of the business as well. Their goals and your needs should be aligned and integrated to serve the overall business objectives. And there may be some necessary education as to the nature of your specific needs to help empower them to be more effective to help you determine the right resource.

While the guiding points above are some things that you can do to help improve the RFP process, there are some industry movements afoot as well. Brian Morrisey recently wrote about a number of current efforts on the media side of the business looking to re-align the RFP practice. According to Morrisey, “Nextmark wants to turn it on its head. The idea behind its ‘request for consideration’ is rather than sending out RFPs to dozens of publishers, media planners would simply post the specifics of the campaign (budget, campaign dates, target audience) to a site that would match it to likely publisher candidates.” What was particularly interesting was that Morrisey noted that Nextmark is looking to balance the burden a bit and is planning to charge publishers from $50 to $75 to submit proposals.

So, while there might be heightened awareness of the problems, the solutions are not readily apparent or directionally agreed upon. What is clear is that there are things we can do as individuals and organizations to improve the overall experience and outcome. What have you done to help effect a successful RFP? Are you ready to make a positive difference? 

Originally published on

We all know about the rising tide of tablet purchases fueled by the recent release of the Apple iPad 3 and the multichannel surfing behaviors that consumers display now that they’re armed with a portable, convenient consumption device. It appears to be a bigger and more transformative shift than just the consumer world of surfing, chatting, and shopping, though. Tablets are also changing the business world.

A January study by IDG documented the rise of tablet devices in the workplace with some astounding stats. This global study found, in part “A relatively high proportion of professionals in North America say that they ‘always’ use their iPad for web browsing (87%), work communication (67%) and personal communication (63%). Fewer North American respondents find themselves using their iPad as a substitute for TV and DVD players than in other regions.”

While this seems pretty self-evident – get more tablets in the hands of people and they will begin to use them more often – where I started to take notice was in my own behavior in the workplace. The convenience, speed, and portability of the tablet have forever transformed my desk and workplace habits and those of my colleagues as well in significant ways.

Speedy boot allows for productivity in small-time windows. First thing in the morning I load up my email on my tablet, delete 50 percent, then mark the ones that I need to respond to while I wait (and wait and wait) for my laptop to finish booting up. My laptop is brand-spanking-new with power and speed to spare, but it’s also weighed down with all the software and other productivity tools that make it my go-to power tool for business use. But the complement of the tablet increases my efficiency. Its speed makes it easy to use those precious minutes productively.

Ultimate portability. While I rarely took my laptop from office to office or conference room to conference room, I carry the tablet to meetings and presentations for quick reference or note-taking. The difference in size and weight even from my ultra-thin laptop is significant. I easily slip the tablet in my stack of files or portfolio and it doesn’t create a cumbersome addition. The battery power allows me to run it off and on all day, as needed, while the laptop wouldn’t unless I constantly put it into sleep mode then turned it back on.

Covers most business uses. While I wouldn’t give up my laptop if I expected to be gone for more than a night or two or if I had any significant document creation or analytics to perform, with the right apps, the tablet does a nice job of communication, review, and limited editing of business documents during a quick trip out of town. It’s absolutely freeing to travel so light, and the tablet is the perfect conference device to support email or IM check-ins with the office, note-taking during sessions, video-chatting, and other conference needs.

Desktop third screen. Many of us are already using two monitor screens and sometimes a third one comes in handy, especially one you can pass around.

Small meeting presentation alternative to projectors. If you’re meeting with one or two people or perhaps are meeting over coffee, lunch, or drinks, the tablet provides the perfect way to deliver impactful information in a compact space. No need to bring a laptop and no projector to set up.

My suspicion and my personal experience is that tablet usage steals from both smartphone usage and laptop or desktop usage and has pushed more of the population into multitasking mode. Were I a heavy gamer or videophile, it might be a slightly different shift for me, but no less transformative in my business day. The lack of Flash in the predominant iPad does impose some restrictions on browsing and video consumption, but consumers certainly seem willing to make that tradeoff.

As more tablets and especially as more iPads make it into the workplace as a tool, there are implications for digital marketers.

• Business app developers have a whole new frontier open to them and the bar is set pretty low in most categories. Good productivity and work apps get word of mouth at warp speed as tablet-toting businesspeople seek ways to improve their tablet productivity at work and on the road.
• Personal browsing and buying are an accepted or at least tolerated part of the workday in most work environments. If more people are on tablets during the workday, then your consumer targeting during work hours better include that population and your mobile experience better be optimized to meet consumer expectations.
• Brush up on your HTML5. Your Flash programming, while wondrous, is being viewed by a shrinking percentage of your target audience.
• Be ready for requests for tablet purchases over laptops in your office from tablet-conditioned workers. Will that work for your purposes? What do you give up? Is this an added device or a true replacement?
• Do the tablets represent any networking or security challenges in a networked and vulnerable business environment? Does the portability inevitably lead to lost or stolen devices, possibly packed with sensitive information? Are you cloud-ready to back up critical documents produced or saved in a tablet?

Businesspeople are consumers too, and behaviors first encountered at home bleed into the business day and get incorporated into new business behaviors at a very rapid clip. The tablet shift into the work world is already here. Are you ready?

Originally published on

In my last column, “The Digital All-You-Can-Eat Buffet,” we explored the necessity of discipline in narrowing your digital tactics to those that you can afford and support. We may long to incorporate every device, channel, and targeting program available to us now in our expanded opportunity set, but it’s rare that we have the required budget available or can pull off such a fractured approach successfully. There is another kind of companion discipline that marketers have to exercise and that’s in moderating their consumer touch points so that targeted audience segments are not uncomfortably or unproductively bombarded with messaging at all points in their digital day.

Without citing a million studies, let’s start with the premise that consumers are spending more of their day connected. They use multiple devices and are more reliant on them, have more usage occasions as tools and apps have become more relevant to more daily activities, and share more information over time as they trade some personal or contact information in exchange for the functionality or content they desire. Consumers use multiple screens at once, have new social patterns of interaction online, and generally consume more content online with each passing day. All of the trends are up and the impact for both consumers and marketers is a growing set of opportunities to reach and influence consumers online.

The trick for marketers is to moderate those touch points so that the consumer continues to have a comfortable online experience that also motivates desired actions at a rate that justifies the marketing spend that supports the ecosystem. Picture a ledge balanced on a razor-sharp point. On the one side, you have happy digital consumers weighed down with some ad exposures and information sharing. On the other side, you have marketers stacking up their conversions and spend. It’s far too easy to tip that precarious balance, and once you find just the right balance, it’s gone in an instant as new circumstances or sensitivities rock your consumers and your carefully constructed plan.

We need a few rules if we are to achieve a productive, lasting balance.

1. Protect your customers. Within your own microcosmic world of your customers, err on the cautious side. Factor in all of your consumer touch points in a conservative approach that limits contacts and treats consumers differently based on the relationship you have with them. Some consumers may have a higher tolerance for multiple contacts or contacts of a more personal nature depending on who they are, what you’re offering, and whether you have earned a deeper level of trust.

   Remember that it’s not just online ads. It’s also the emails you send and the catalogs they receive, and the time they spend in your social communities and all the traditional ad exposures they have every day. If you’re seeing email open rates decrease or opt-out rates increase, pay attention. If you see decreasing engagement rates in social communities or click or conversion rates decreasing in ad spend, consider frequency as an important variable that deserves scrutiny among the other obvious candidates.

2. Accept responsibility for your role in the broader consumer experience online. “Your” ideal target segment has a bunch of other targets on their backs as well. And even if your small budget is a drop in the ocean of online spending, the cumulative impact of all the marketing exposure/noise needs to be factored into your approach. You have no control over the discipline, or lack thereof, exhibited by your fellow marketers or competitors in their approach, but it does impact you directly. If more marketers exhibited good citizenship in the online marketplace we share, both consumers and marketers would benefit.
3. Be judicious in using collected information. You can selectively use collected information for targeting without exposing the information in messaging. The “skeeve” factor for some consumers is high when they receive specific, retargeting information in ad messaging or personalized addresses in other communications, even email. This will vary by group, but tread lightly with older consumers or those with whom you have no relationship or only a casual relationship.
4. Be transparent and offer choice. Social media has heralded a new dynamic between advertiser and consumer built on expectations far different from the old school of manipulative advertising techniques. This thinking needs to be extended into non-social areas of interaction. Allow consumers to choose their level of participation and relationship with you wherever that is possible; for instance, through an email preference center or using ad choice ad units.
5. Give more than you get. Content is often the perfect way to get in front of your audience without creating fatigue. When devised and delivered strategically, content is naturally weighted in favor of the consumer as you are offering relevant, valued experiences or information. As the hunger for online content increases, your content strategy becomes an increasingly critical factor in your digital success. Make sure it’s part of your marketing strategy and is balanced against the more straightforward ad spend.
6. Think long term. Building any relationship takes time. Consumers need to be wooed along the way and will have different messaging and contact needs depending on where the relationship stands. You might be able to affect a short-term spike in results by dramatically increasing volume and frequency of contacts in a short period, but at what long-term cost? And what happens to the consumer experience when marketers decide to concurrently ad bomb?

Consumers are reacting to the sometimes overwhelming volume of messaging online and both overly aggressive online marketers as well as careful marketers are sharing the pain of the consumer response. Truly, customer-centric marketing places a priority on protecting the customer experience online. This is not only the responsible way to market, but the smart way that maximizes the impact of your efforts and builds toward long-term success.

Originally published on
Content Marketing Institute

At the office, at home, and on the go, consumers are digesting and interacting with content on multiple platforms in increasing numbers. As marketers and content strategists, we need to be able to anticipate and meet their needs to engage, connect, and motivate them — whenever and wherever they need information. At the heart of our ability to reach this goal is developing a consistent transmedia content strategy.

A consistent transmedia content strategy will not only help facilitate stronger and more meaningful connections with your customers, but it can also significantly extend the value of your content and amplify its overall impact.

While the best practices for content strategy are still evolving, there are steps you can take now to implement an effective transmedia content agenda that can be updated as content marketing practices continue to take shape.

Here are a few tips to consider as you get started:

1. Establish content strategy as a practice and discipline in your organization

While companies are starting to hire “content strategists,” the discipline of “content” itself is still evolving, and its practices vary — even the very definition of “content” is still under debate. Content can be audio, video, a logo, words, pictures, a button, meta data, tags, a tweet — anything that conveys meaning to spur action to achieve business goals. Or, said in another way, content is anything that is at the core of what makes and supports meaningful, interactive experiences.

Establishing a content strategy practice begins with a universally understood and accepted definition, so that it can be applied consistently to all your company’s efforts. Content strategy may very well exist in your organization already (even if it’s not defined as such). But establishing a universal company perspective, focus, and definition right from the start will help rally the troops to produce more unified and consistent efforts. Elevating its relative importance as a means to reach overall company brand and marketing goals is critical to gain the required support, buy-in, and participation for your efforts.

After you’ve defined what content means for your brand, your next step is to outline a process and methodology to standardize content development across your company. This will help bring clarity and drive the creation of more effective solutions.

How you go about this will vary depending on the nature of your business and how the organization is currently aligned around content, but it’s imperative that you start with one key concept:

2. Connect your content efforts to existing brand and/or marketing goals

To be consistent, your content strategy must evolve from the core, centralized, and overarching brand and/or marketing priorities that your company has in place. A consistent transmedia content strategy is not just about making sure you have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a website, a mobile strategy, a URL in your TV commercial or print ad, and so forth. It’s a common error that companies can integrate a content program by tacking on platforms or channels, or idly placing links across the web.

Forging a content strategy that flows through and supports your overall brand/marketing strategy will not only facilitate consistency but also helps encourage seamless integration. Furthermore, it will reveal superficial connections and identify wasteful or misguided content executions to help craft more productive solutions moving forward.

To make this actionable when developing your content strategy, ask yourself a few key questions:

• Are your content ideas consistent with your current brand personas and marketing goals?
• How will your content fit into, support, and advance your overall marketing strategy?
• Are your messages on brand?

Also look to develop content guidelines (much like brand guidelines) and style guides to help facilitate, guide, and direct future efforts for all your team members in content and marketing, so that your efforts will all speak to your overall branding and outreach goals.

3. Identify, analyze, and prioritize

Know what assets you have at your disposal, and what additional resources or materials you will need to do the job right. More often than not the work involved in content strategy development and deployment spans an entire organization, so it can require participation from multiple, cross-functional teams — even those that may not always be obvious.

For example, content can come out of IT, PR, marketing, advertising, and other departments or practices within an organization. So it’s important to determine, in advance, who is responsible for developing your mobile strategy, your SEO, your social media communications, your advertising efforts, and your website, and bring them in on your content strategy meetings and brainstorms. Many organizations haven’t yet taken this global view of the materials that already exist or have been planned. Consistent guidelines, processes, and methodology cannot exist in a vacuum, so it’s essential that you identify existing content, analyze its potential effectiveness, evaluate the quality, and map its importance and effectiveness to company objectives before developing new content.

And it all starts by performing an overall audit and analysis of existing content.

An audit of existing content will not only help fuel your content strategy but will also help identify content sourcing resources and opportunities to maximize those resources. Consider how content might be redistributed and/or repurposed in other channels of delivery. Look to identify and mark content life cycles to create a system and processes that govern the development and management of content. Putting these processes and systems in place will help support consistency later on, as you execute on the content strategy you develop.

4. Make content findable, distributable, and extendable

While consistency in message, form, and voice is borne from connecting to overarching strategies, process, and practice guidelines, it is at the media consumption level where you get to truly savor the impact. So once you have your content, you need to determine where you will distribute it, how you will make it findable by your consumers, and how you will enable those consumers to share it across their networks.

The rapid growth of multi-platform media consumption and the rise in media audience fragmentation underscore the importance of understanding where and how our customers are consuming content. Most media strategies transverse platforms and channels to include both paid and earned media — including user-generated content. Your customers are seeking your content, distributing and sharing it as well as creating their own content that relates to your brand, so a consistent transmedia strategy may require you to modify or create new content so that it can be found, consumed, and shared across platforms.

Top brands, like in the Black & Decker example above, encourage and enable transmedia participation in their content campaigns. Even coupons, such as the ones offered by Airborne (below), can be re-purposed on platforms such as Facebook to help drive engagement, sharing, and email sign-ups. While some of these considerations lie more in the execution phase of content development, understanding where and how to implement your content strategy — and figuring out how everything will work together — will feed and inform your entire strategic process.

Did it work?

Even after you have your core content plan laid out, there’s still the very important consideration of measurement. A comprehensive transmedia strategy needs to establish the success metrics that will tie back to your overall goals, ensure effective consistency, and validate the results of your efforts.

Make sure you build in checks and balances, set benchmarks, and be prepared to apply a number of different measurement scenarios and tests to help you gauge how well your content efforts performed. Some common measurement guidelines you can use include:

• conversion rates
• engagement rates
• new customer acquisition rates
• cost per sale calculations
• earned impressions
• changes in the number of “shares” your content generates

To be sure there are a number of different ways to approach developing a consistent, transmedia strategy. Use the tips and approaches outlined here as thought starters and actionable insights that can help you advance and elevate your efforts. If you have additional ideas for maintaining consistency and quality across your multi-platform content efforts, we would love to hear from you in the comments.

Originally published on

When presented with 30 feet of sumptuous choices, the tendency for many buffet restaurant patrons is to pile their plates with a little of this and a little of that until their plate is overflowing. We are just not good at prioritizing, making definitive choices, and walking away from some that aren’t as satisfying. While the visual and other sensory inputs spur consumers to gluttony, the food is usually inferior and warmed over – and probably sneezed on a few times by the passing hordes – ick. Give me a quiet table in a nice restaurant where I can enjoy the company and choose my made-to-order repast with care. I don’t need to sample the entire menu to maximize my experience.

Likewise, our digital buffet of communication and marketing options is growing. One of the hardest jobs of marketers is prioritizing our efforts and matching them to business goals while letting go of some things that just don’t fit on our budget plate. Budgets, if they are growing, are growing at a fraction of the rate of our option set. Most digital strategies need time, budget, and attention to scale to a place where they can impact the business, and when you have multiplying and different options to review, manage, optimize, and support, you cannot do it all and still do it well. Video, mobile, apps, games, e-commerce, social sites/promos/advertising, email, and more are all competing with the foundational programs that have likely been honed over years in organic and paid search and display advertising across a bewildering array of targeting and technology approaches. We want it all. But unless there is unlimited budget and staff support, we can’t have it all without sacrificing quality, scale, and results and muddling the strategy in the process.

There are many factors driving this perceived need to be represented in all channels, across all devices. Some of it is the shiny object factor where your team or C-level wants to know why you don’t have a mobile strategy or whatever has not yet floated to the top of your list. That kind of pressure can lead to poor decisions and an artificial priority set that has nothing to do with results.

Competitive pressure is another factor. If your key competitors are racking up a huge social media following or just released an awesome app that is getting attention and lots of downloads, that is certainly something that you should be watching, but you can’t let competitor strategy drive your decision making or you will constantly be following their lead and playing catch-up. Their budgets, margins, priorities, and results are different from yours, and what makes sense for them may not be your best course, even if it kills you to watch their success. Carve out your own successes.

A fractured audience profile can also lead to a fractured strategy. Consumers have many more options and they are increasingly splitting their web time across sites, hardware, and experience types and multitasking to boot. Do you need to surround that target audience at all digital points? That might be appropriate for niche audiences of particularly high value, but in most cases that would be overkill, a poor use of budget, and a bit creepy and therefore counterproductive. Look to match your goals with the targeting options available, frame of mind of the consumer, and the overall results. Choose the right places to engage with the right frequency and concentrate on making that a quality experience that can be extended in some fashion or is sharable.

None of this is to suggest that a currently performing plan should be laid in stone and never changed. New opportunities will come along and testing should be a regular part of your plan, but “I want it all” is not a strategy unless you have truly unlimited budgets. If you can’t make the hard choices, if you sacrifice thinking and scale for a little bit of everything, you end up with a set of underfunded tactics that cannot get the attention and optimization needed to make them work for you. This is anything but strategic. Marketers who will thrive in this environment are those who can analyze, prioritize, and make hard, strategic choices that are reflected in their plans. It doesn’t mean you can’t choose a few new tasty items from the digital buffet. It just means you have to be discriminating and apply logical criteria to your planning process.

Originally published on

While many consumers are still paying off their holiday bills and dreaming of summer beach days to come, now’s the time for e-commerce businesses to be planning for Q4 – the final three months of the calendar year. The importance of seasonal sales to most online sellers can’t be overstated and should be a year-round effort starting well before the spring buds appear.

Here’s a quick list to get you started now toward success during the 2012 holiday online selling season.

1. Use the slower periods to shore up your technology. If you are planning a site migration, social extension, or redesign this year, do it now while the impact of any possible disruptions is minimized. Smart online retailers (who have sufficient scale) take the Amazon approach. That includes regularly testing incremental changes in the site experience or sales processes to a small group rather than a complete overhaul that has the potential to confuse customers or create obstacles to a quick sale.

2. Get mobile. Check the trending percentage of mobile/tablet usage on your site and get your mobile game in shape if it is not already.

3. Do a deep dive of last year’s Q4 efforts and results. It’s better to take a hard look at what worked, what didn’t, missed opportunities, and competitive efforts while all the ad hoc moves and feints are still fresh in your head. Hopefully you had a Q4 plan to compare to Q4 actuals and can document the wins and misses. It is often helpful to employ an objective third party in efforts like this.

4. Hone your messaging. Q4 messaging tends to be more promotional in nature but promotions work harder and more efficiently when the brand is well known and universally understood by consumers. Ensure you know what your brand stands for in the marketplace. If you don’t like what you see, then get to work right now to change it. What looks like a brand investment in the first nine months of the year could be a sales advantage during the final three months.

5. Test your landing pages and conversion funnels. Actually, test everything, all the time. Document baselines and trend out SEO results.

6. Review offline efforts and integration points. If your business has an offline component, connect with the overall marketing plans for the coming year as early as possible to impact key digital integration points for consumers and to ensure you are all striving toward a unified objective.

7. Simplify. Look for all possible avenues to simplify and streamline the user experience from first touch point to sale. Simplicity translates directly into sales and revenue down the line and requires a disciplined approach. As technology improves and more opportunities are presented to online marketers, they tend to layer on technology and experiences for the user in their selling environments without culling out those that have marginal or negative impact. Think of your selling site(s) as a closet. To maintain any sense of order as you add new stuff, you need to take some out that you rarely wear, are out of style, or no longer fit. Be ruthless but come armed with full information.

8. Build your audiences. If you haven’t stepped into social media or have done so in a half-hearted fashion, now’s the time to create a healthy community that you can communicate with all year long so you are top of mind in Q4. Look at some of the newer opportunities like Pinterest or Google+ to add dimension and breadth to your current social efforts.

This is definitely the time to be strengthening remarketing platforms like your email database so that you have more touch points during critical selling periods. If you are doing any display retargeting or plan to in the heat of the season, you may want to choose your partners now and place pixels that collect site visitors in your retargeting pools for later use.

9. Understand your customers and your competition. This is a great time to do some profiling and survey work to return consumer data and insights that will help you segment messaging and offers to maximize relevancy and sales, as well as preserve profit margin. Sign up for competitive email lists, join competitor social media communities, and do a complete competitive analysis. A social media listening tool is a good investment to help understand consumer perceptions about your category, your competitors, and your brand.

10. Plan for ways to embrace and coddle your core audience. There is nothing worse than taking your current customers for granted. You can be sure your competition is not. You need your core customers’ continued sales and loyalty throughout the year and you need to groom some of the so-inclined to become vocal advocates for you. Consider loyalty or ambassador programs or potential extensions.

11. Do some small scale testing. To push the business forward, you should always be reaching toward those big ideas that have the potential for significant impact. This is a great time of year to be testing those ideas in smaller scale either geographically or with some subset of your audience to determine if results merit roll-out when consumers are in peak buying mode. Start to develop those underserved or ignored audience segments to establish their potential. It need not be a big investment to test the waters.

12. Recognize that e-commerce in full scale during peak season is a different game than in other times of the year. Inventory glitches, customer service failures, or other inconvenient operational lapses that happen to stressed systems have a dramatic impact on end results. Have a plan in place and practiced so that line personnel across the organization know how to react quickly to obstacles you can’t define in advance but can bet will crop up.

13. Recognize that Q4 2012 will be fundamentally different than Q4 2011. Technology has advanced, new device, platform, and channel opportunities have evolved, new competitors came into the marketplace and some have left, the economy is in a different place, there are increased concerns and a continued spotlight on data collection and privacy issues, the U.S. presidential race will be in full swing and putting pressure on media costs and availability, and you have a whole new playing field to contend with this year. Stay on top of the trends that will impact your consumers and don’t automatically resort to last year’s assumptions when framing this coming year.

A huge percentage of e-commerce annual revenue is concentrated in a relatively short selling period, so sellers have to be prepped and ready for success in advance if they are to find it. What are you prioritizing right now to make sure you have a record Q4?

Originally published on

Call them advocates, evangelists, ambassadors, or something else, these vocal consumers are perhaps the most compelling reason that brands invest in social media. Finding that small percentage of the population that loves your product, service, or brand; is inclined to talk about it within their various social channels; and has some influence online is no mean trick. When you do find them, you want to cultivate them and equip them fully to do what they do best – talk you up! In order to get them talking, you have to give them something to talk about.

1. Give them product. Sharing existing or new products with a devoted fan is a surefire way to get (usually) positive product, company, or brand comments. Make sure you have mechanisms in place to leverage those comments and get them widely distributed. Make very sure that your bloggers follow guidelines to disclose any relationships or gifts.
2. Give them product to give to their readers/fans/followers. You’ve further ingratiated the brand with the primary influencer with your generosity, and those products become a wonderful third-party endorsement from a trusted source when they give them away. The odds are good that those that are gifted are likely to thank the source and praise the gift. If your product is too costly to give away in volume, say a car, then use a contest to give away one but surround it with a lot of media support and social attention to get the contest spread widely. You could also give away less costly but unique, desirable promotional items that appeal to those committed consumers or give away experiences like a chance to test drive the newest wheels.
3. Showcase them. Highlight and feature users’ personal stories/photos/videos/testimonials. Let them know that this will be recurring and collect content. “Bob is our Greatest Fan in the World in the month of February.”
4. Validate and empower them. Consider making an elite group of fans your semi-official spokespeople. Making someone a small time celebrity by naming them to “Team Brand” will certainly give them something to talk about. You can also give these users a specific task to complete and report on. That approach gives them a structured way to contribute to the ongoing dialogue that surrounds your brand and guides the conversation in a constructive direction.
5. Pit them against each other in a positive way. Hold a contest to find the biggest brand fan or the most committed or longest running customer. Highlight these users or find them by asking direct questions; for instance, posting on your Facebook wall a question like “Who remembers way back when our product X was first launched?” or “Does anyone have a picture of the special edition packaging for [event] in 1995?”
6. Hand them the reins. Allow your audience to submit content for the brand for your social channels. Solicit user photos or stories or ask them “If you were [insert brand spokesperson] what would you tell your followers today?” Showcase their creativity as it relates to the brand by asking “Would love to see your favorite recipes using [brand]!” or “What is the last thing you built using [brand] or [brand packaging]?” Pinterest is a great vehicle for this approach.
7. Ask their opinion. Make these valuable relationships work harder for you by soliciting input. Use the various polling and voting mechanisms available to ask about the best/next/new products, services, or features, or even what they’d like to see next. Real-time R&D at a heck of a cost savings but remember that you are talking to those already connected to your brand in some way and so this will not be a representative sample. No two people will ever have the same opinion, so this is a great way to start a dialogue online.
8. Test market. Use your social community to collect feedback with sampling and previews before doing a mass launch. This not only gets important, in-market reaction to new products but may create demand in advance of launch as word spreads.
9. Listen to them. Listening in through social media tracking devices is a must and is probably how you identified your influencers to begin with, but also consider moving the relationship into the real world. Invite select brand advocates to headquarters or have them do an in-person or online focus group. We’re excited to see how brands use Google+ in this capacity in the near future. You could also schedule a meet-and-greet with the brand team or any brand spokespeople.
10. Encourage a dialogue within the community. By giving them access to each other, you provide value and you get the listening benefit. Be prepared with conversation starters.
11. Be relevant. Your brand advocates don’t sit around in a bubble all day thinking about your products. By connecting with the real world, you encourage dialogue that is engaging and makes you more relevant to their world. Stay away from politics and other dangerous topics.
12. Thank them. Sometimes simple acknowledgement is enough. A company can be a cold entity. It is a warm and human thing to thank someone for their patronage and support. It’s also the nice thing to do.

What techniques do you use to identify or activate your brand ambassadors?