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The rise of UGC and the race to reflect the ‘new normal’ in marketing

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By Cat Davis

The ‘new normal’ is a phrase that we are all currently being bombarded with from many sources as society starts to adjust to life under lockdown and people consider how life may be different once we come out the other side. As the everyday realities of their customers experience changes (some significant, others more subtle), brands are faced with the question of how, or indeed whether, to adapt their marketing to reflect these changes.

For many brands the idea of showing slick, aspirational advertising content in a time of global crisis is just not an appropriate option. Then of course there’s the more practical question of how new content is actually going to be created when most of us are confined to our own homes. The days of exotic location shoots and ensemble casts for TV ads are, at least temporarily, gone.

In its place we are seeing a seeing a significant rise in the use of user generated content (UGC) in marketing, featuring raw, hand shot footage from staff or customers which is designed to reflect our collective new reality and create an emotional connection with audiences. Examples include the likes of Apple, TSB, Tesco and Co-op, who recently replaced their original Easter campaign to promote the sale of Easter eggs for a new staff-led advert to highlight their support for food redistribution charity, Fareshare.

While many of these campaigns have been positively received, is UGC a form of content that is here to stay? Will it continue to be valued after this crisis has passed, or is it merely a temporary trend?

Here’s what two Mission Agency leads, themselves working with clients to adapt their marketing to the current climate, have to say on the subject:

Kate Cox, chief executive officer at Bray Leino:

”Creative comprising of user-generated content is clearly a practical way of getting around the physical filming restrictions during lockdown. Currently there is also an acceptance for ‘rough and ready’ content (be it commercials, programming, schooling, podcasts, radio shows). Plus, no brand wants to be insensitive creating extravagant production pieces or be seen to be defying official advice around social distancing, so UGC is a perfect workaround.

”Who knows what the future holds, but the chances are it will be a temporary trend. When the new normal comes, we will clearly have all learnt things, picked up new and effective ways of working and living, created new life habits etc, but we will also revert to some ‘old’ behaviours. Human nature and what drives us doesn’t fundamentally change, so it’s likely that marketing will continue to reflect this. The key is, we need great insight, variety in our ideas and our executions, one-size-fits-all is clearly not the way to go – it’s the opposite of standing out and having impact.”

John Quarrey, krow Group chief executive officer:

”UGC has offered a quick fix solution to the current production challenge for brands, but it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the only solution we find for producing new content in a socially distanced world. Stop-frame, 2D & 3D animation, professional stills, self-shooters, influencers, re-editing of existing content are all production approaches largely unaffected by the lockdown and offer a wide variety of executional styles.

”Just as we shouldn’t be restricted to UGC as a production technique, we also need to avoid making execution the defining factor at the start of the communication process. Rigorous insight that delivers stand-out creative work will always have the greatest potential to transform business performance.

”As for whether brands should reflect the new normal in their ads, there is no easy answer. For most brands, using ‘slice of life’ vignettes to reflect the lives of its audiences seems an obvious and logical way to establish an empathetic connection. But beware the ’brandwagon’ – brands that are too late to the show and lack originality run the risk of blending in and themselves becoming the new normal. And brands with strong advertising equities or fluent devices might find that more of the same is better than a quick attempt to join in. Aside from that, I’d imagine most people are well ready for a break from the omnipresent Covid-19 coverage. Aligning too closely could see brands being screened out, not standing out.

”As the veil of global lockdown is slowly lifting, advertising will continually evolve to reflect our new social norms. The big questions being, what will those norms look like and which brands will be doing it best? It’s an exciting challenge for our industry.”

Now, more than ever, brands are having to evolve their products, services and communications to suit the shifting tides of consumer behaviours, demands and expectations. While UGC is undoubtedly a popular way to engage with consumers at this time, as marketers maybe our task right now should not be to hold a mirror up to the people of the country, but to take time to understand how the world around us has changed in the past few months. And how what people want to hear from brands has changed too.

By Cat Davis

Cat Davis, group marketing director at The Mission Group & Krow Group

Sourced from The Drum

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Greta Thunberg is schooling us all, says M&C Saatchi CCO Ben Golik

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By Danielle Gibson

M&C Saatchi’s chief creative officer, Ben Golik says that great ideas are those that travel and that one word says it all, Greta. “A seventeen-year-old woman is schooling us all.”

Ahead of The Drum Chip Shop Awards 2020, of which he is the chair of the jury, Golik talks to us about breaking the rules of advertising, why the industry is afraid to take risks, the effect social platforms have on creativity and what the future holds.

Is there a lack of ambition from the agency/creative community to break the rules?

Wow. That’s a negative start. But perhaps not an unfair one. It’s true that much of our work passes through the world unnoticed. So maybe we need to break some rules to bust that collective ennui?

But what are the rules of ambitious work? Let’s assume they stem from what we make, and how we make it.

What we make has never suffered so much innovation. Big data, bigger tech, countless channels. Park this stuff. The single most innovative thing we can offer, is insight. That unexpected prop, dramatised beautifully, is still the best way to add value to our clients’ businesses, and to our own.

As for how we make it, despite repeated calls for a “new agency model”, bright people bouncing ideas off each other still proves mightily successful. The ambition here has to be in achieving diversity throughout that process.

Work that truly understands the people it’s for? That’s ambition enough for me.

Who can break the rules and who can set them?

Another interesting question, because it’s really asking – where does the real power lie? The truth is, it’s never been with agencies. Or with clients. It’s always been with customers. With this view, I prefer to think that there is more opportunity than ever.

Customers are more marketing savvy than ever. So we must think smarter to excite them. Customers are more visually savvy than ever. So we must look better to entice them. Customers are more aware of the data we hold than ever. So we must respect what we know, and use it without entitlement. They’ve leveled up. So must we.

What is that one creative idea from the last decade that went way beyond advertising?

I believe that great ideas are those that travel. They enter the language. Other people claim them as their own. To do that, they need a handle – an easy way of being picked up, and carried forward. I’ve hated some of the best recent handles.

Make America Great Again. Four words. (Or one red cap.) But it smartly evokes a time when America led global culture, and their own suburban dream had not soured. Take Back Control; Get Brexit Done. Each three words. Each emotionally charged. Each totally intoxicating, and bang on for their disenchanted audience. Extinction Rebellion. We’re down to two words now. What a fucking great brand. Totally punk. Brilliantly British.

But, ultimately, I can get it down to one word. Greta. Thoroughly compelling. And without compromise. She stands by her ideas, and ideals, in a way that we fail to. Does everyone agree? Sadly, no. Has everyone heard? Hell, yes. A seventeen-year-old woman is schooling us all.

There are so many rules on social platforms that breaking the morale, the lines of creativity could have a negative impact. Could social platforms potentially have affected creativity negatively?

I do think social media has put new pressure on our output. Not because we were insensitive Luddites blindly abusing humankind, but because we haven’t always grasped nuance. A stereotype is an easy reach for a creative short on time. But it can also make the work fairly broad-brush.

How amazing, then, to have this newfound spotlight of social critique? We must actually understand people, include them, and respect them. Genuinely, our work now has permission to have all the quirk, nuance and specificity of society itself – which can only be a brilliant invitation for ideas that stretch beyond the expected?

Do you think advertising is afraid to take risks with its model?

I think individual agencies are desperate to take risks. With remuneration models, and to push back on the pitch process. But individually, we can feel powerless. We know that we’ll immediately be undercut, or over-promised, by an agency more desperate keen than our own.

So we toe the line. We give away too much, for too little. We devalue our best people, and our best ideas, in the hope of acceptance. That elusive ‘yes’. The only way to truly change the paradigm is to align. Agencies must work together for a system that better serves us all.

I see a brighter future where we don’t give away the farm, for the chance to plough a field.

Over the next decade, how can agencies/creatives be pushing the boundaries of creativity? How can they move the industry forward?

I’ll take the creatives option of the question for this answer. Creatives need to spend more time with planners, not with their briefs. Creatives need to spend more time with clients, not with their feedback. Only by driving the conversation, can we drive change.

What are your expectations for The Chip Shop Awards entries?

The best stuff in The Chip Shop Awards is never the work the client was right to swerve. It’s the work that was born brave but somehow didn’t survive the system. We’ll be looking for ideas that are smart, and sensitive, and suitable. But that sadly found their final media placement on slide 72 of the PowerPoint.

It’s brilliant and bonkers that we award work that might not even have been made. (No wonder people judge us.) But ultimately, that’s why we all keep turning up. To make great stuff that sometimes sees the light of day. (Maybe that’s why we’re so happy to give it away?) Big up the Chip Shop for shining some light into the bottom drawer. Let’s hope someone pays us to make it next year.

Feature Credit Image:Greta Thunberg is schooling us all, says M&C Saatchi CCO, Ben Golik

By Danielle Gibson

Sourced from The Drum

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I’m running an agency at 24. Here’s what I do differently

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By MJ Widomska.

I founded my content marketing studio when I was 22. I’d already been a full-time social media freelancer for about three years, and I thought I’d been through it all – highs and lows with clients big and small, stints at advertising agencies, meetings and tedious admin.

In early 2018 projects just kept coming, and I decided it’s time to expand. I thought it wouldn’t be any different, really (big misconception), and I can handle it no matter what (debatable).

As I’m writing this, I’m 24 and my agency is nearing its second birthday. We’re now a team of five residing in a small office in East London – not the biggest enterprise the world has seen, but I wouldn’t have thought it possible two years ago.

I’d always preferred to stay quiet about my age. I believe we should be judged by the quality of our work, and I suspect many people would equate my age with a lack of experience. Or, worse, take it as a sign I could be taken advantage of, offered unpaid – or underpaid – gigs.

Beyond ageism

Ageism in the marketing industry is alive and well. It tends to hit those on the other side of the spectrum than me the most, though. It is an industry where fresh ideas are valued above all, and fresh ideas are often unfairly associated with youth. I don’t want to participate in spreading that mindset.

So, I kept my age to myself, considering it nothing but a liability. But we all grow up in different times and circumstances, and as a result, end up with different worldviews. They are all equally valuable.

One day, as I was talking to a friend, I noticed how surprised he was to find out I supplemented my income in the early days of my career by building websites, designing flyers and creating illustrations.

Indeed, I spent so much time on my laptop in my teens that by the time I was 19, I was a junior social media manager, junior copywriter, junior web developer, junior graphic designer and a junior illustrator rolled into one. That’s because I grew up in precarious times, in a bad economy, with pretty bleak prospects. I knew I had to diversify my skillset from a very young age.

Turns out, growing up in the 2000s and early 2010s brought a lot of valuable lessons.

Seeing the potential in others

I was still a teen when I landed my first freelance gig.

I wouldn’t be where I am now without the clients who took a chance on me (just like Abba). My first client, who had a 19-year-old Eastern European me running all his socials, and who recommended me to other clients. A PR consultant who taught me to stop using emojis in emails (yes, I needed to be told). An agency that kept giving me more responsibilities because they believed I could handle it. Another agency which had me sit in on all the big scary meetings, so I had an opportunity to learn. A client who thought I had potential and allowed me to spread my wings — the same client who believed in me even if I messed up.

I like to extend all of the kindness I received to marketing juniors. When I need help on a project, I’m not overlooking people with little to no relevant experience, no matter their age — I’m looking for someone I could believe in.

Flexible working

The marketing industry is no stranger to flexible working. I don’t believe the future of creative work relies on a rigid eight hour working day.

Therefore, if a 9 to 5 isn’t your thing, I trust you’re able to deliver what’s asked of you within a reasonable timeline. I work with adults, I’m not running a daycare — I don’t need to know where you are as long as the work is done.

Be prepared for everything

Would you like to know how to set Gen Z and millennials apart? Since no one agrees what the exact cut-off year between the two is, follow this handy guide instead:

Have they grown up in the era of economic prosperity, and entered the workforce just before, or during the financial collapse of the late 2000s? Have they been surprised to realise they will most likely be financially worse off than their parents? They’re a millennial.

Has the 2008 crisis marked their childhood or teenage years? Have they grown up in a precarious economy and entered the workforce fully aware that they may never buy a house or expect a traditional career path? They’re Gen Z.

I was 12/13 when the market collapsed. Even though it didn’t affect me directly back then, I was aware something has changed for good. I was a teen when the political upheaval in Europe started, and I was in my late teens when environmental issues became a mainstream issue. Any illusions of a safe world I had as a kid were quickly dispersed. It became apparent that if I follow my mum’s (literature teacher) or my dad’s (radio journalist turned writer) paths, I will never buy a house. Hell, I will probably never buy a house anyway. And I may not be able to retire for a very, very, very long time.

If I live long enough for retirement, that is – given that most climate emergency projections paint a catastrophic view of the 2050s. My earliest retirement year is 2063.

So, my constant need for self-improvement is pretty much fueled by existential anxiety. Can’t think of a better motivation!

Everyone’s time is valuable

I coded websites for a living, so when the time came to let someone else code mine, I wasn’t cutting costs. I know how much of your time and heart goes into building a website.

I used to create illustrations for clients, so I wouldn’t offer the illustrators I commission an unfair deal. I remember how soul-crushing it was to receive negative feedback on your art.

My early freelance experiences in various roles helped me empathise with how valuable everyone’s time is. I’ve met freelancers-turned-agency-owners who charged the clients double the day rate they paid the freelancer. I’ve met people who never freelanced and charged the client triple the day rate while cutting the costs as much as they could.

If I believe a freelancer’s work is worth £500 a day and the client agrees, I’m not going to pay them £250 and pocket the rest. They get the whole thing.

The power of belief

Which brings me to my next point – I have opinions I feel strongly about. I don’t just talk about ethics because I heard that’s what the kids like now: I am the kids in question. If I don’t run my business ethically, I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror. I genuinely believe that we can all do our part in making the world a better place.

This translates itself to the work I do as well. I want it to be meaningful. I want it to be inclusive.

By MJ Widomska.

MJ Widomska, founder and creative director, YRS TRULY

Sourced from The Drum

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Four arguments why B2B marketers should spend more on brand building

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By James Wood

B2B marketers can be very focused on the short term, and who can blame them? Sales are putting on the pressure for a constant stream of leads and business leaders have quarterly targets to hit to keep the shareholders at bay.

It’s this short term thinking that means the majority of activity produced by B2B marketing teams is below the line, bottom of the funnel, sales ‘activation’ activity (call it the boring stuff) and not the bigger, fame and brand building advertising activity that the majority of B2C brands seem focus on (the glamorous stuff).

Now, couple this with the fact that the average tenure of a CMO is now just 43 months (and that new incumbent wants to shake things up and make their mark on the business), and it’ll come as no surprise that only 4% of B2B marketing teams measure impact beyond six months.

But a new report from the B2B Institute and LinkedIn, packed with research from Advertising Effectiveness stalwarts Les Binet and Peter Field, says this short-sightedness is damaging the growth potential of B2B brands.

According to ‘The 5 principles of growth in B2B Marketing’, in order to grow, B2B marketers need to start shifting efforts (and budgets) towards a 50/50 split between short term activation activity and long term brand building (the stuff that makes you famous).

However, it’s pretty clear we are starting on the back foot. B2B marketers are incredibly sceptical about the value of brand building and many have a misconstrued view of the effect brand building has on the business.

Just 30% of B2B marketers, for example, believe advertising has an effect on pricing power and only 50% believe reach is a strong predictor of success. It’s pretty clear businesses need to start thinking differently about longer term brand building. But as with any shift, there has to be a strong reason to do so.

So, we have distilled the findings from the report into four arguments you can take to your board/sceptical CMO to convince them to put more budget into longer term brand building, B2B advertising and fame defining campaigns and activities.

Argument one: “Look! You can’t argue with the facts – brand building will build our market share and our bottom line.”

Let’s start with a fundamental rule. The share of voice rule. A rule that has been known and stayed consistent for the last 50 years. The rule goes thus: brands that set their share of voice (share of all category advertising expenditure) above their share of market, will tend to grow.

This has been well known in B2C, but Binet and Field have shown the trend is true in B2B – a 10% extra share of voice, for example, will lead to a rise in market share of 0.7% per year.

Put simply: shout louder than the competition in a way that gets you noticed and you will expand. That alone is worth the investment.

Argument two: “We can kill two birds with one stone with this! Not only will brand building attract new customers, but it’s a great way to reassure our current customers they have made the right choice and feel proud about being our partner.”

Put simply, brands grow in two ways, either by gaining more customers, or by selling more to current customers. In B2B, the focus is often put on the latter thanks to new customer acquisition costs being high. But this piece of research shows us that actually the best way to achieve real growth is to acquire new customers, meaning more has to be put into activity to attract them.

But shifting budgets to attract new customers doesn’t have to come at the cost of current customers – putting money into brand campaigns also helps reassure existing customers they have made the right choice (and means they can show off to their mates in the pub about working with a cool, well known brand.)

Argument three: “Don’t trust me, trust Danny Khaneman! We need to be the brand that is the easiest to choose when a potential customer is shopping around.”

While everyone seems to think B2B buyers are purely rational beings, the truth is just like anyone else, many of the decisions they make are not made on purely rational thoughts or processes but on brands, products and services that are the most ‘mentally available’. As the economist Daniel Kahneman says, “the brain is largely a machine for jumping to conclusions”.

This is due to the Availability Heuristic – a rule that says given the choice between several options, people prefer the one that comes to mind most easily. It’s the reason that when you are shopping you are most likely to pick up Fairy washing up liquid and Kelloggs cornflakes, rather than unknown brands.

Maximising mental availability, or being the easiest brand to choose to buy, is just as important in B2B as in B2C and the best way to do this is to build fame through brand building campaigns.

Argument four: “A suit isn’t a shield for emotions! After all, Business people are people too, they just happen to be at work. So we need to use the power of emotion to ensure people engage with our brand. And guess what? The best way to do that is long term advertising campaigns.”

As a marketer, one of your key aims should be to make people feel positively towards your brand, even if they can’t say why. That comes from creating emotions and feelings around your brand and positioning yourself in a way that becomes more firmly embedded in a buyer’s memory than functional product messages.

This will translate into real business results, thanks to the fact that if we like a brand (or feel a positive emotion towards it) we are more likely to hold positive beliefs about its benefits. And it shows in the results – emotion based, fame building campaigns outperform rational ones by a margin of 10x. Even the tightest CFO can’t say no to that.

B2B marketers need to need to take off those short term blinkers and start thinking about how we build brands that grow, become famous and build the business over the long term. While the short term activation activity is still key, we need to start readdressing the balance and we hope this starts today.

A big thanks to The B2B Institute, LinkedIn, as well as Les Binet and Peter Field, for their excellent research on which this whole article is based. You can download the full research report here.

Feature Image Credit: Building B2B brands

By James Wood

James Wood, head of Earnest Labs, the innovation arm of Earnest

Sourced from The Drum

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It’s not about length: SEO content trends to stay ahead of in 2020

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By Paul Melis

Hard as it may be to believe, it’s that time of year again – and no, I’m not talking about making Christmas lists, planning how best to avoid the in-laws over the festive season, and having mild panic attacks about how you’re going to afford all the presents and festivities that the coming months have in store. No, it’s the end of another year, which means it’s time to speculate about content trends for the coming 12 months.

Here are four trends that I think will have a significant impact on SEO content in 2020:

It’s not about length – it’s what you do with it that counts

As digital marketers, we sometimes get a little obsessed with hard and fast rules. It’s inevitable. We work in an industry based on understanding and algorithms, on following best practices, using fool-proof formulae, getting the inputs just right to achieve a precise result. A lot of the time, I think that’s what makes what we do rewarding. But I think one of the mistakes we make is to look for a right answer when there isn’t one.

The question of how long a piece of content should be is divisive because there really is no right answer. Actually, it’s worse than that. There are a lot of right answers. People have short attention spans, so writing concise, 500-word blogs is the way to go, right? But if you look at the top result for just about any search, you’ll find the word count rarely dips below a thousand. So longer must be better, then. Well, you can’t argue with the fact that most readers only get about halfway through a piece of content, and that many don’t even scroll to begin with. The reality is that there’s no ideal length for content, because length in itself doesn’t mean anything. What does matter is how well you’re answering the question, or addressing the needs of your reader.

In my experience, it’s safer to lean towards the longer side. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a great-sounding blog title, and opening the link to find 200 words of half-baked, keyword-stuffed content that doesn’t really say anything at all. It’s equally painful, though, when you start reading a long-form article and realise the writer is trying to draw out a 300 word idea into 3,000. Ultimately, longer content is good, but there are certainly diminishing returns.

Voice search will make you question everything

‘Always read your writing aloud.’ That might be the single best piece of advice I’ve ever heard as a writer. And, since voice search is expected to account for as much as half of all online search traffic by 2020, it takes on a new meaning: if you aren’t reading your own writing out loud, Google’s going to do it for you, and you’d better make sure the results are good enough to drive interaction or conversion.

The key thing to realise here is that voice search is fundamentally different from text search. The average text search phrase, for example, is around one to three words, while the average voice search phrase hovers more around three to six words. Voice searches are also far more likely to be phrased as questions. People talk to their voice assistants like they’re talking to a real person, so it follows that content should respond in kind if it hopes to meet the needs of the searcher.

For content to soak up the lion’s share of voice searches, it needs to be written more conversationally than you might be used to, and it needs to hone in on answering the questions that the user is asking. Content that answers questions head-on, shows a clear understanding of search intent and sheds as much of the unnecessary detail as possible is bound to perform better for voice search traffic, so expect this trend to become increasingly prevalent in the coming months and years.

Zero is greater than one

Another consequence of voice assistants becoming the go-to search channel is the importance of Position Zero: whenever a user inputs a voice search query, their assistant will read out the position zero result before delivering the rest. So, even if you’re dominating the search results for the entire first page, a competitor with the zero spot is going to soak up 100% of the voice search traffic and leave your hard-fought position one content starved for clicks.

Gartner estimates that around a third of searches will be done without a screen at all in 2020, which means that anything beyond the position zero result might as well not exist for voice search purposes. Expect blogging content and other written forms to include an increasing amount of structured data, rich data snippets, and content specifically designed to rank above position 1. This will be particularly important for content with a local element (since a large part of voice search queries centre around local search) and bottom-of-the-funnel searches.

This time, it’s personal

There’s no doubt that personalised marketing messaging works. We live in the age of the individual consumer: people are accustomed to their social media feeds, email inboxes and mobile experiences being tailored to their preferences and interests. So, it follows that expectations are the same for any content they engage with while searching or browsing.

For advertising the remedy is rather simple: serve ads that are targeted at specific factors and show an awareness of the individual customer’s context, preferences and their position in the sales funnel. But for ‘raw’ SEO content – that is, blogs, website copy, landing pages, etc. – it’s a little less straightforward. Depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go, you could include forms, quizzes and surveys to understand exactly who you’re talking to before serving them tailored content, or you could go the simpler route and profile your user base into different personas who are likely to respond to different messaging.

Expect increasingly tailored, topic-focused content to come to the fore even more so than it already has in recent years. Again, customers are increasingly engaging with content that makes real conversation with them and demonstrates an understanding of their context, preferences and what they’re looking for. The more granular you can get when it comes to understanding those factors, the better you’ll resonate with your readers.

By Paul Melis

Sourced from The Drum

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Preparing for the takeover: Google voice search SEO strategies

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By Jason Hall

Whether or not you’ve embraced it, voice search is here to stay and it looks like it will be the next biggest trend in social media. In 2014, 41% of adults surveyed said they use voice search at least once a day. By 2020, 50% of all searches will be by voice search.

Google controls the lion’s share of the search engine market and it is essential to optimize your website.

Speech and type patterns are different

Think about how you perform a search when you’re typing your query rather than speaking. When you’re typing, you’re more likely to use a shorthand and leave out superfluous words. Conversely, when you speak, you’re more likely to speak in a complete statement.

For example, when searching for the best restaurants in New York. In Google, you will type “best restaurants NYC”. However, with a voice search, you will ask “What are the best restaurants in New York City?”

Google and other search engines have been working on improving the programming and machine learning that pick up speech patterns. What this means is that while you may need to enunciate to get Google to understand you at first, it should soon become familiar with your accent.

Long tail keywords are crucial

While the days of short tail keywords are well behind us, voice search makes targeting the correct long tail keywords more important than ever.

Marketers can optimize both types of search by using conversational, long tail keywords. The new keywords are very specific because they are being searched by people further down the buyer’s journey.

Instead of writing a blog post called “10 Home Decor Trends for 2018”, write for a more targeted audience with the post “10 Vintage-Inspired Home Decor Trends for Small Apartments”.

How to use Google voice search SEO Strategies

With regular search SEO, being within the first ten results and displayed on the front page of the search engine results was enough. Voice search makes this game more competitive because now all SEO and SEM marketers are aiming to have their content returned as the featured snippet that is displayed above the first organic result. The featured snippet typically displays the text from your site answering the question and an image.

How is the featured snippet generated?

There are two parts to how Google builds the featured snippet to display at the top of the search results.

Part of it is based on the same elements dictating your position in a search engine results page regardless of the type of search being conducted. This includes your domain authority, backlinks, social media engagement and more. This is to say that building a high-quality site that is fast and secure is still important.

The other half is based on how Google reads the content on your website. It ranks the text on your website based on the size of the font. Titles are the most important and then subheaders formatted in H2.

When performing a search, Google is looking for pages with the relevant keywords in the titles, subheaders and URL along with an authoritative, speedy and secure website for delivery as the featured snippet.

Use trigger words in your long-tail keywords

Keep in mind that people who are searching by voice are either in a rush or on-the-go. To get your content into that answer box, you need to use these popular “trigger” words when creating content. These phrases should appear not just in your post title, but in subheadings, the URL and meta descriptions as well. The most popular trigger words in voice searches are “how”, “what” and “best”.

Use tools like Google Trends and Google Suggest for ideas about what content you can generate based on these trigger words and keywords that apply to your site. When creating your posts, try to answer a question up near the top of the post and then follow it up with a relevant, well-researched, easy to read and informative post.

Think about how and where you want Google to display your content

Google prefers that voice search results are short and easy to read. At the same time, it seems to prefer long-form content (over 1000 words) as opposed to short-form content. Confusing, I know.

It comes down to the type of questions that are being asked. For search queries that have a simple or clear answer, Google wants something that is brief and accurate.

In order to catch both the Google Home and Chrome users, think about how to structure your posts so that Google can find an answer users can click to find more detailed information. Stick with simple vocabulary and shorter sentences to maintain readability.

It may be daunting to hear all the digital marketing pundits talk about how voice search is going to disrupt everything we know about search engines. It’s important to remember that voice SEO is still just SEO.

Now you know what Google is looking for when choosing what to select for its answer box and how to use Google voice search will put you be in a better position to take advantage of this new trend.

By Jason Hall

Jason Hall, founder, FiveChannels

Sourced from The Drum

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How to maintain a healthy B2B marketing budget

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By Ruth Connor

Back in the land of B2C marketing, I could build a water-tight business case for TV using insight from Think Box, present a strong argument for redeveloping my e-commerce process by pointing to indisputable benchmarking data, and get under the skin of my target customers using a bucket-load of comms planning tools.

Best of all, I could prove the impact of my efforts to senior management.

“Just look at those numbers! No, seriously. Look. At. Those. Numbers.”

Before long I was up for a fresh challenge, so I jumped ship and embraced the B2B world.

Things were, shall we say, different.

My tried and tested methods didn’t land in the same way.

And it got worse.

The finance director said the B2B marketing budget was discretionary.

And if that wasn’t enough, the sales team got all the credit for the revenue generated.

10 years down the line and again things are different – only this time in a good way. I still use insight and benchmarking to inform my marketing planning where I can – but I’ve learned other ways to convince the board of the importance of investing in B2B.

Fingers crossed you never hear the dreaded words: “The B2B budget is discretionary.”

But if you do, these seven tips will help you present the case that a healthy B2B budget is a must-have, not a nice-to-have.

Get closer to your business

Marketing shouldn’t be a silo. Get to know the various levers in your business – the things that influence the outcomes your business is trying to achieve.

For example, the marketing budget is an important lever as it influences how many leads are generated. The pricing of your product and the effectiveness of your sales team will influence conversions. While your customer relationship management will impact how long customers stay with you and how much they spend.

Understanding these levers will help shape your marketing strategy – and improve its effectiveness.

Know the magic number to ask for

It’s hard knowing what a realistic B2B marketing budget looks like, so it’s useful having some credible research in your back pocket. The CMO Survey Highlights and Insights Report 2017 from Deloitte, Duke University and the American Marketing Association found organisations spend, on average, 7.9% of their revenue on marketing and 11% of their total company budget. While according to the Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2017-2018, the number’s higher – organisations dedicate 11.3% of their overall revenue to marketing.

Understand buyer-behaviour trends – and make sure your spend mirrors them

Then you can justify exactly how you plan to spend your budget. Online is making its presence felt across every phase of the B2B buying journey – according to a study by Earnest and Imperial College London, it accounts for 49% and 58% respectively of the ‘research’ and ‘purchase’ stages.

No surprise, then, that we’re seeing an increase in digital marketing spend.

Check what you’re doing matters to people other than you

Do your metrics turn the heads of people outside of marketing? That stuff you’re tracking and reporting on – is it in sync with broader business goals and key performance indicators? Truth is, your board probably doesn’t care about the same things you do. So make sure your KPIs demonstrate your marketing is having an impact on the stuff they do care about.

Incorporate alternative measurement models

It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s not all about directly attributing sales to your marketing activity. Assists matter too. If your content marketing strategy aligns with your customer journey, you can use your marketing automation platform to see how the buyer engaged with it in the lead-up to the deal.

Be proud of your results – you worked hard for them

Don’t hide your numbers away. Make a visually striking dashboard or scorecard that makes it really easy for your board to understand what you’ve achieved. And don’t forget to highlight where your marketing successes align with the wider business goals.

Use the lingo being used right now

More and more we’re seeing the marketing department being relabelled the ‘growth department’. Who knows, maybe next year we’ll be relabelled as a chief growth officer. Or head of growth.

But that’s OK, because marketers are good at growth. We grow brand engagement. We grow customer bases. We grow revenue.

So choose your words wisely because sometimes it pays to use the latest buzz word.

By Ruth Connor

Ruth Connor is head of marketing at Earnest

Sourced from THEDRUM

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Digital Marketers Will Devote More Resources to Online Reputation Management in 2018

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Online reputation management is very necessary all of a sudden.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Businesses say they plan to allocate more resources to their online reputations in response to the growing popularity of social media and online reviews.

According to a new survey from Clutch, 40% of businesses will increase their investment in online reputation management (ORM) this year.

All this is due to the growing power of social media and third-party reviews sites, which impact businesses’ control over their online reputation.

Clutch surveyed 224 digital marketers and found that more than half of businesses (54%) consider ORM “very necessary” for success. As a result, 34% said they allocated more resources to ORM in 2018, and an additional 43% said they plan to hire a professional public relations or ORM agency in 2018.

Businesses already invest a significant amount of time observing their online reputation, Clutch found. More than 40% of digital marketers (42%) monitor their companies’ brand online daily, while 21% monitor their online reputation hourly.

According to public relations experts, businesses frequently monitor how their brand is portrayed online because they know even one negative media mention can quickly damage the public’s perception of their company.

“When people search for brands online, they tend to search for stamps of credibility,” explained Simon Wadsworth, managing partner at Igniyte, an online reputation management agency in the UK. “If potential customers find anything negative, that could end up being a significant amount of leads the business won’t get from people who are put off from using the service.”

Social media also has shifted the ORM landscape because it gives consumers free-reign to share their opinions and experiences quickly and frequently: 46% of businesses look to social media most often to monitor their online reputation.

By using professional agencies that have expertise in online reputation management, businesses can minimise losing new customers who may be dissuaded from purchasing their product or service.

To read the complete report, click here.

 

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How to Win at Marketing Using a Hashtag

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A travel company has managed to stir up a lot of viral traffic with their hashtag. Watch and learn, people.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

What do a dream wedding in New York, an adventure through the mountains of Sri Lanka and a family’s search for their roots in Scotland all have in common? All saw a hospitality professional going out of their way to make or save someone’s trip. And a holiday booking company use this mushy sequence of events with a hashtag to fire up social media views and get a great repsonse from them.

Booking.com call themselves the global leader in connecting travellers with the widest choice of incredible places to stay. Established in 1996 in Amsterdam, Booking.com B.V. has grown from a small Dutch start-up to one of the largest travel e-commerce companies in the world. Part of The Priceline Group (NASDAQ: BKNG), Booking.com now employs more than 17,000 employees in 198 offices in 70 countries worldwide.

So, what are they doing with their social media marketing? They are riding hastags like a showjumper would a prize horse.

They have had some great success with their recent hashtag #BookingHero. They asked people to share their travel stories using the hashtag. The best story won travel prizes and big kudos online.

Following thousands of submissions via social media, Booking.com selected the three most touching and inspiring accounts of hospitality professionals going above and beyond to create unique and unforgettable travel experiences for their guests.

The customers were then flown back to say thank you to the person who saved their trips. Here are the stories.

 

 

The point isn’t the stories though. The point is that real people’s journeys made the hashtag come alive and generate traffic for booking.com. In fact, the call out for submissions via social media has been so successsful that Booking.com is now using the hashtag to extend the social media campaign with long-form video content that extends the #BookingHero message, with TV to follow.

According to recent research conducted by Booking.com across 25 markets in 2017, a personal connection is essential for many travellers with 29% saying that an accommodation feeling like home is key and 24% sharing that a welcoming host is a make or break factor during the first 24 hours of their trip.

Said Pepijn Rijvers, Chief Marketing Officer, Booking.com. “These stories beautifully demonstrate that an amazing trip is about more than simply finding the right destination or the perfect accommodation– it’s also about the people you meet along the way which truly make for an unforgettable journey. And that’s what travel is all about.”

And for the company, it is about finding the right hashtag and getting it to go viral.

 

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Why Facebook Video Ads Should Only be Just Six Seconds Long

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Facebook is now the most popular places that advertisers are putting their video ads, even beating YouTube.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Top marketers know that digital video is one of the most powerful tools to increase consumer engagement and brand loyalty. In fact, according to a new study from Clinch, brand marketers are ramping up their production of digital videos with an emphasis on creating campaigns specifically for Facebook and YouTube.

The study found that 78 percent of marketers plan to increase their production of video ads in 2018, while only 43 percent of marketers plan to increase their production of static banner ads this year.

Social is Video

When it comes to digital video campaigns, Facebook reigns supreme, representing 46 percent of all video ads produced. When adding Facebook-owned Instagram into the mix, this number leaps to 74 percent. YouTube comes in a close second at 41 percent.

Says Oz Etzioni, CEO of Clinch, “It’s no secret that Facebook and YouTube dominate the digital media landscape and we don’t expect this to slow down, particularly with the Facebook algorithm change which requires brands to pay in order to be seen. In 2018 brands will increase spend and leverage the rich data that these platforms provide. However, the data and platform are just two pieces of the puzzle. Creative is the critical third piece. If brands aren’t uniquely tailoring their creative specifically for each platform and by audience, opportunities will be missed and ROI will be lowered.”

Nearly three quarters of marketers are adopting online video from their TV commercials. 44 percent indicated that they don’t shorten commercials for each platform’s suggested length. While TV ads remain a critical source of video content, the user experience of each social platform is very different than traditional TV. For example, TV ads are 15 to 30 seconds long but Facebook and YouTube recommend six-second videos.

Etzioni continued, “We were really surprised to learn that marketers were taking a one size fits all approach to video. In 2018, marketers will awaken to the fact that investment in creative will increase ROI and personalisation at scale, and will become the norm for digital video as it has become for static ads.”

Defining Social Personalisation

While 50 percent of respondents say they personalise their video campaigns, brands can be doing a lot more. Those that are personalising their creatives based on data are seeing big results. Nearly 90 percent of respondents who have customised Facebook or YouTube video ads reported seeing benefits. Furthermore, 70 percent of those who customise said that they have seen improvements in their key performance indicators (KPIs).

According to Etzioni, in the next few months, the definition of personalisation will change. “Rather than creating a handful of versions – one for men, one for women, one for the East Coast and one for the West Coast, we expect brands to be using data insights to personalise at scale. This means hundreds if not thousands of versions of videos where the message and creative is tailored to their specific needs and interests. This will create a more meaningful experience for the consumer and transform video campaigns from simply brand awareness to direct response opportunities,”

The full report, “How Leading Brand Marketers are Using Personalised Video to Drive Sales,” is available for download here.

 

 

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