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How can you effectively measure social media marketing?

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By Jenny Stanley,

Social media ROI is one of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) in marketing. It is often expressed as a percentage. KPIs allow you to compare and contrast different marketing channels to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of each channel.

Unlike measurements such as likes or shares, which are specific to social media, you can easily compare the ROI of all your social networks to that of your search engine advertising or email campaigns. This is because analysing your ROI across various channels allows you to rationalize the impact of all your marketing efforts with one clear concise single measurement. This analysis helps you identify immediately which social networks are most profitable as well as cost-effective for your business.

How do you measure customer engagement on social media?

Engagement is often considered to be one of the most valuable metrics for measuring lead generation on social media. However, you need to consider a multitude of factors when it comes to customer engagement. For example, are you addressing the right audience, how will your audience interact with your brand, and what does your audience do to engage with your brand and spread your content? A large follower base and many quality posts mean nothing if users are not genuinely interested in what you are offering.

To measure engagement, you need to measure user reactions. The reality of modern social media is that people see a lot of news and fresh content every day. If a consumer is interested in a piece of content, they will take a moment to comment on or like a post. Customer engagement on social media is a one-time thing. In effect, it shows that the user is interested in your brand’s publication in a well-filled community.

Measuring customer engagement

Retweets, likes, bookmarks and time spent watching your stories or videos can be monitored in real-time. To do this, you need to use social analytics software and web tools. You can also measure customer engagement using a specific formula: customer engagement = (amount of interactions/reach of posts) x 100.

Measuring negative customer engagement

Negative feedback is another form of customer engagement. You can know how a customer feels about your company, even with a negative comment. By taking the time to express themselves, the consumer is in a way showing that they expect a correction, which in turn can improve their experience.

How to measure the success of social media marketing?

As stated above, KPIs help in your company’s decision-making process. There are a few indicators that will be discussed in turn below. Each indicator should be monitored according to the objectives you have set yourself. For ease, we will group them into four sub-categories.

Reach

The reach metric lets you know how far your content reaches in terms of audience. In other words, it is an indication of the number of people who have seen your publication once. However, using reach as a metric for success should be done with caution. This is because the reach metric is often an estimated figure. However, the benefit of this is that it allows you to quantify the size of your potential audience. For example, a reach of 10,000 means that 10,000 people will see your publication at least once in their news feed.

Impressions

The impressions metric should be distinguished from reach. It corresponds to the number of times your publication has appeared on the screen. This content can be seen several times by the same person. For example, if your reach is 1,000 as in the previous example and the number of impressions is 10,000, it could be assumed that users have seen the publication 10 times.

Mentions

Mentions are the number of times your content has been mentioned by a person or influencer. This is one way to reach more people. Being mentioned often can mean that your content is liked for its quality. For example, when a person or influencer mentions you in a post or shares your content, they use the @personname feature. You will receive a notification that they have mentioned you.

Community

This indicator corresponds to your number of subscribers. You can follow its evolution. Its increase or decrease should be closely observed as it is directly correlated to the quality of your content. This indicator also allows you to learn more about the profile of your community (for example, their gender, age or location).

To measure the reach of your posts, impressions, mentions and your community, you can use social media tools such as Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights and Twitter Analytics. Each platform has its specificities. For example, with LinkedIn Demographics, you can learn more about the professional characteristics of your site visitors. Facebook Insights will allow you to know the hours of activity of your community.

There are alternatives to the integrated tools for knowing the results of your actions on social networks. This is the case of tools such as Hootsuite or CX Social, to name but a few.

How do I optimize content for social media marketing?

Ensuring an effective presence on social networks is a marketing challenge for all companies. Global login statistics show that potential customers are online more than elsewhere. This means that companies need to get involved in digital, which is now at the heart of marketing strategies.

Methods for social media and optimizing your marketing strategy

While all companies are now present on social media, not all have the same results. Information with high added value for internet users is needed, but the publication medium plays an equally important role. Even when communicating about your products, the approach must be designed to arouse the curiosity of the user.

Adjusting your brand to your audience

On social networks, you must adjust to the sensitivities of your community, depending on the medium on which you are communicating. As a rule, long texts are not welcome. The preferred format on social networks is images and videos, which may explain the growing success of TikTok and Instagram Reels.

When should I post on social media?

The timing, frequency and target audience of each post should be carefully considered.

Some platforms help you to automate your communication on social networks. From one interface you can control all your social media pages, plan and schedule up-to-the-minute posts, and analyse your marketing strategy.

One of the main advantages of such a tool is of course the possibility to synchronize your posts on all social networks. In addition, you can track your audience in real-time to measure and analyse the reach of each action.

Communicating on social networks to make money is a more demanding and complicated process than you might think. Having innovative tools at your disposal to automate and professionalize this communication can only help the company to achieve its objectives.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when approaching your social media strategy, it’s important that when considering all of the factors mentioned above that they are always considered in light of your brand’s marketing KPIs to determine the success of your campaigns.

By Jenny Stanley,

Jenny Stanley is managing director at Appetite Creative.

Sourced from The Drum

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Hit them in the feels: how to generate emotive customer experiences

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By Hannah Atherden

It’s no secret that creating amazing customer experiences is a key component of all brands’ marketing strategies. If that’s not the case, then quite frankly you’re missing a trick. In 2021, where the majority of a customer’s interaction with a brand is online, customer experience (CX) becomes even more important. eMarketer’s 2021 Customer Experience report finds that 93% of US adults described themselves as very likely to make more purchases from companies across all industries that provided ‘very good’ CX. On top of this, the Global State of Customer Experience report tells us that three-quarters of consumers switch to a brand competitor after just one bad experience. In short, if you want to retain your customers and drive more sales, a positive customer experience is key.

Customer experience covers an extremely broad area, as it can be defined as every touchpoint that a customer has with your brand, from pre-purchase, to the purchase process (if they get that far) and consumption, to post-purchase interactions.

So, if you’re looking to improve your customer experience, where should you start?

Hit them in the feels

In my opinion, creating emotive experiences is one of the key considerations for driving exceptional CX. Customers respond well to brands when they feel heard and understood, or when they are surprised and delighted by the experience they have with a brand. A study conducted by Forrester and Focus Vision showed that the way customers feel during a brand experience (delight or disgust) has 1.5x more impact on the actions they take with that brand (for example, purchase) than the way they think about the brand (for example, it fitting in their with lifestyle). The study also found that increasing the average number of positive thoughts or feelings about a brand increases a customer’s likelihood to purchase in the next three months by 11%, and their likelihood to advocate for your brand by 15.4%.

Driving emotive customer experiences doesn’t necessarily come easily. I believe there are three key considerations to keep in mind to achieve this:

  1. Empathize with your customers
  2. Surprise and delight your customers
  3. Make your customers feel unique

Empathize with your customers

The best customer experiences are born from an outside-in approach: listening to your customers and responding to their needs. Collecting data from your customers (including from social media comments and product reviews) is a great place to start. However, it’s not just about listening – it’s about hearing what your customers have to say and empathizing with them. Sometimes they will tell you something you don’t like, or something unexpected; adapting your strategy based on their genuine feedback is the way to win.

Bloom & Wild demonstrated a great example of this in 2019. Despite Mother’s Day being the busiest day of the year for florists, for some Bloom & Wild customers persistent email marketing reminding them of the occasion was upsetting. Bloom & Wild heard this and were mindful of the fact that Mother’s Day can be a difficult time for a variety of reasons. In response, Bloom & Wild adapted its CX, giving customers the chance to opt out of Mother’s Day-specific marketing, while still receiving the same offers and discounts. This resulted in 18,000 opt-outs of the Mother’s Day campaign, and over 1000 responses from customers to thank Bloom & Wild for its thoughtfulness – a perfect example of pivoting your CX through empathy.

Surprise and delight customers

Many brands now offer a similar standard of customer experience, especially digitally, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Driving joyful, unexpected experiences for your customer is a great way of standing out among competitors. No one particularly enjoys having to interact with brands, and contacting brands directly is typically out of necessity or to complain. Using a direct contact opportunity with your customer to surprise and delight them can tap into driving up their positive thoughts or feelings. As mentioned previously, this could increase the likelihood of future purchases and brand advocacy.

Octopus Energy have done a brilliant job here. Max McShane, head of digital, recently talked at Econsultancy Live about their focus on “outrageously good customer experiences”. Its strategy includes treating customers to personalized hold music based on the year they were born in a bid to up their positive feelings about the brand while they wait. This has worked wonders, with McShane claiming: “Every week we get a comment that says, ‘can you put me back on hold, I’m listening to an absolute banger.’” Identifying even the smallest moments where your brand can increase a customer’s positive feeling can be the difference between a good CX and a great one.

Make your customers feel unique

Staying on the theme of personalization, making your customer feel unique is another way of generating emotive customer experiences. Spotify has always done this well. Ever since it started creating its ‘Daily Mixes’ for its customers, personalization has been inherent to its CX. However, it took this up a notch recently by launching its ‘Only You’ campaign. This campaign uses your listening data to highlight the artists, songs, genres and listening patterns that are both unique and important to you. With this campaign, Spotify doesn’t just make the customer feel special – although it has done the same for everyone, there is novelty in the idea that this is ‘just for you’ – the content that comes with it is also very shareable. Spotify’s retention rate is also benefited by this unique customer experience, as the creation of ‘Only You’ playlists gives customers ready-made content that would be a lot effort to replicate on a competing music streaming service.

Key takeaways

  • The importance of great customer experience is not going away, so brands must ensure CX is considered as an integral part of their marketing strategy.
  • With that in mind, creating emotive customer experiences can be extremely powerful, especially as research has shown the effect positive customer feeling has on interactions with brands.
  • Collect as much data as you can that helps you to understand your customer’s needs and desires, and pivot your CX strategy accordingly.

If you are keen to explore how improved CX can drive growth in your business, then get in touch with Capgemini Invent.

Feature Image Credit: Capgemini Invent provides tips for marketers looking to improve their customer experience

By Hannah Atherden

Senior marketing consultant at Capgemini Invent.

Sourced from The Drum

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Quick-fire tips for optimizing your Google My Business page

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By Sally Newman

Google My Business is the home of your local online presence and the information hub for potential customers in your area. In this article, we fire through all the key steps of completing and optimising your profile to bring more customers to your business – both online and in store.

Make your NAP & business info 100% accurate

Accurate business information, especially your name, address and phone number (NAP), is one of the strongest signals in local search. So make sure your details are 100% accurate on your Google My Business page and that they match the business information you have listed on your website and third-party sites (directories, review sites, etc).

There are four pieces of basic business information that you need to specify right away:

  • Your business name
  • Your business category
  • Your business address
  • Your service area

You will have chosen a business category when you created or claimed your business in GMB but you can now add further categories to help Google show your listing to relevant searches with greater accuracy.

Provide opening times to encourage store visits

People searching for businesses in their local area might be looking for takeaways open late on a Sunday, shops that are still open on their way back from work or stores where they can look at a product before actually buying it. This means having accurate opening times on your GMB listings can win you customers.

Google My Business encourages you to add opening times to your listing and you absolutely should. Make sure you accurately fill these out and keep them up-to-date so people can always trust the information on your profile.

Capture web and phone leads from GMB

You can track phone calls from Google My Business by using a phone tracking service and entering your tracking code as your primary phone number.

Bonus tip: add your real phone number as an additional number and make sure it matches with the number you’ve got listed elsewhere (area code is important) to show Google that this is, in fact, your business number.

You can also track website visits from GMB by creating a UTM (Urchin tracking module) using Google Analytics Dev Tools.

Once you’re done, simply copy the URL and paste it into the website section of your Google My Business page.

Add products to your GMB profile

If you sell products online or in-store, you can add them to your Google My Business profile to drive in-store visits and clicks through to your website.

You need to name each product and select or create a new product category. You have the option of showing prices or price ranges for each product and you can add a product description, as well as an optional call-to-action button.

Make your business stand out with attributes

Attributes help users choose the ideal business for their needs and also increase the quality of leads you generate from Google My Business.

You can specify that your business has on-site parking or free wifi, for example, or show which Covid-19 measures you’re taking, such as staff wearing masks. You can also list services you provide, like free delivery, takeaways, in-store pickups and other options that could win the customer.

Optimise your business description?

Your business description is one of the few places in your GMB profile where you get to explain what makes your business unique. You get 750 characters to tell people why they should step through your door or buy from you over the other alternatives in the local area (if there are any).

The more competition you face, the more important your description could prove to be. Make sure you’re honest and try to focus on the characteristics of your business that appeal to your target customers.

You can find out what not to include in your business description on this Google My Business Help page.

Show the best of your business with quality photos

Google My Business allows you to upload images of your business and this is one of the most underutilised tools in GMB. These images, quite literally, shape the mental image users build about your business and you want to make sure these photos create the right impression.

Get yourself a professional photographer and upload high-quality images of the following:

  • Your business logo (this shows when you post a photo or reply to reviews, questions, etc)
  • Your GMB cover photo
  • Your exterior building
  • The interior of your business
  • Products/services
  • Covid-19 measures
  • Images showing the attributes in your profile

You can also upload videos to Google My Business so think hard about the kind of message you want to put across, such as your company’s history or a compilation of video reviews from a selection of happy customers. For more tips on optimising your Google My Business page, check out this video.

By Sally Newman

SEO specialist at Vertical Leap

Sourced from The Drum

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2021 is the year branded content will come into its own – here’s how CMOs can embrace it

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By Ottavio Nava

Though it got a good start in 2020, 2021 is the year branded content will truly come into its own according to Ottavio Nava, co-founder and chief executive at We Are Social Italy and Spain. To make a success of the medium, he says marketers should glean lessons from the likes of Ben & Jerry’s, Lavazza and Circles.Life.

Branded content reached new heights in 2020. Long seen as a valuable add-on to marketing campaigns, and particularly effective when combined with traditional paid-for models, we are at now seeing just how powerful the medium can be as a strategic brand building tool.

With all the smartest marketers paying attention, I feel safe predicting that 2021 is going to be a memorable year for this highly creative marketing technique.

The pandemic has forced more people then ever consume content digitally at home, which has let brand content has come into its own in recent months. This shift can be put down to the crisis accelerating a number of important on-going trends, just as much as it can be attributed to brands having access to a more captive audience.

Pre-2020, consumer habits were already changing as a result of the ubiquity of smartphones with content available to read, watch, listen to and interact with via a great choice of applications and in a wider array of different contexts than ever before. Brands, meanwhile, were seeking ways to engage in the face of declining engagement by many viewers in live TV advertising – just one result of growing fatigue with traditional media.

Both of these drivers have been significantly uplifted by behavioural changes spurred by Covid-19. People’s digital activity increased significantly, resulting in more eyeballs coming into contact with more brands online. In turn, this has cemented the increasingly central role branded content is now playing in the advertising ecosystem – a role which – when you consider how peripheral it once was – has now changed significantly and irreversibly.

Here are three lessons learned from those brands who have used branded content most effectively in recent months point to how branded content can, and will, evolve further.

The first is a mindset shift to creating content from the get-go to thrive in a more organic, long-term way, irrespective of platform or format. Ben & Jerry’s is a great example of this. It recently launched ’Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America’ – a podcast series comprising six 30-minute episodes about white supremacy in America, developed in partnership with Vox Media.

The SuperSimpleStuff app for Pfizer, which uses a series of micro games where players can fight coronavirus while finding out the best ways to prevent the virus spreading, is just another example of creative content execution. It’s also proof impactive brand content doesn’t just mean video. Elsewhere, Australian mobile network Circles.Life recently paraded a 1.2m sculpture of a hand giving 2020 the middle finger around Sydney as part of its ’Unfuck 2020’ campaign; showing how paid-for content can be funny, engaging and generate organic headlines of its own.

The second lesson for brands is to think and create like entertainers by embracing the rules of publishers and media companies, instead of simply working to a marketing playbook.

Publishers understand who their audiences are and create a product for them. To make effective branded content, CMOs must do the same. The best marketers understand what kind of brand they have and what needs to happen for it to grow.

The ambition here is to create campaigns on the same level as the entertainment people consume, as we did for Lavazza with Coffee Defenders: A Path from Coca to Coffee, which tells the story of a Colombian farmer from a region devastated by civil war who turns land formerly used to cultivate cocaine into a coffee plantation.

This 30-minute video documentary blends the sustainability and communities work championed by the Lavazza Foundation with top entertainment production values. And it was distributed through a carefully considered strategy built to extend brand reach beyond TV ad audiences by focusing on long-form content platforms.

The third, and final, lesson for brand content’s further evolution lies in the growing use of the ‘creative newsroom’ – an approach that allows a brand to blend brand marketing needs with what’s happening in the world and in pop culture.

For our film for Barilla, The Roof Top Match with Roger Federer, a creative newsroom approach informed the idea of bringing together Roger Federer with two girls from a Ligurian village whose rooftop tennis matches during lockdown had become a viral phenomenon. It also shaped a creative strategy that allowed what happened next to naturally unfold, rather than attempting to control it.

These last two examples of successful branded content, in particular, obeyed another publishing rule. For as well as helping to generate profits and hitting KPIs, both – like the best brand content – add real and tangible value to their audience.

While much of 2020 is best left behind us, this revitalised approach to branded content is something that marketers should embrace longer term.

Feature Image Credit: Australian mobile network Circles. Life recently paraded a 1.2m sculpture of a hand giving 2020 the middle finger around Sydney 

By Ottavio Nava

Sourced from The Drum

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Social commerce: transforming the online shopping experience

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By Josh Tilley

Social media has been a key marketing channel since its conception and has increasingly played a role in how people shop. But up until now, shopping behaviour was limited to discovery and consideration, with purchase taking place off-platform on a brand or retailer website.

Today, social platforms look poised to ’close the loop’, meaning users will be able to browse, shop and purchase seamlessly and entirely within one connected social media experience. This development has the potential to fundamentally transform the way we buy online.

Welcome to the future of ‘social commerce’.

To better understand shopper behaviours, attitudes and beliefs in this space, we polled a nationally representative audience of UK shoppers, discovering that nearly two-in-three people would be more likely to purchase from a brand if they could browse and shop entirely within a social media platform.

From this, the evidence is clear: the winners of tomorrow will be the brands that embrace social commerce as a real tool for customer acquisition and retention. For those that fail to act, loss of market share could become a tangible concern. In a social world, learning how to navigate these waters is no longer just a ‘nice to have’.

The rise of social commerce

According to the latest research, social commerce is a market with a remarkable growth trajectory, with analysts projecting it could be worth $600bn in the next seven years.

As we’ve seen in the past year, Covid-19 has accelerated existing trends in shopper behaviour. The latest figures suggest an extra £5.3bn will be spent via e-commerce in the UK alone in 2020 as the fallout from the pandemic has forced more people online than ever before. Early figures suggest this behaviour is set to stay as we emerge from the pandemic.

Although shoppers are flocking online, social commerce is still a fairly nascent market in the UK and US. In fact, studies suggest that only 6% of UK consumers have purchased directly on a social platform, in part due to the lack of in-platform purchasing options in these markets.

In more advanced countries like China, however, social commerce is an integral part of the online shopping experience. Tencent’s WeChat delivered $115bn in social commerce sales in 2019 alone, while Pinduoduo, a group-buying app where friends can purchase together on social media, has grown from an innovative startup to China’s second most valuable online retailer.

As US platforms look to replicate some of this functionality, China provides us with a model of how social will likely evolve for commerce in the west.

Shopper thinking will be crucial to navigate social commerce

Today, brands have more opportunities to interact with people than ever, across an increasing number of digital touchpoints. Digital and social platforms have succeeded at meeting new customer expectations, with values such as convenience, ease of use, customisation and control redefining the shopping experience.

It’s not surprising, then, that social media is uniquely positioned to deliver on these needs. Based on our research, however, social will remain a nuanced and highly intricate channel. Careful consideration of different shopper motivations and barriers, as well as brand experience across the shopper journey, will be key to maximising shoppability across brands’ social media channels.

Consumer behaviour in this channel is anything but homogenous; in fact, our research suggests adoption of social commerce will differ by age. Being able to buy within platform would encourage 75% of 21- to 34-year-olds to purchase with a brand, suggesting that demographic differences will necessitate careful persona planning.

Price also seems to be a determining factor in whether or not someone would purchase on social, with our research suggesting that big-ticket items such as travel and luxury are much less popular than more affordable items.

Different categories also differ in their appeal, with respondents ranking fashion, beauty, wellbeing and grocery as the categories they would most like to shop for on social.

Taken as a whole, these findings are representative of a shift towards social media as a new and growing e-commerce channel, but they also demonstrate a need for smart planning. For brands, understanding where, when and how to activate a social commerce strategy as part of a connected shopper experience will be key as we move into 2021.

Social platforms at different levels of readiness

Another consideration is that the platforms themselves are at different levels of ‘readiness’ when it comes to social commerce.

Instagram, for example, has beta-tested its Checkout feature, which allows users to search and shop directly within the app. The mass rollout of this feature will transform how people shop with brands online, making it more convenient to shop not only directly from a brand’s posts, but from influencer posts too. These platform changes will make the social shopping experience on Instagram feel effortless and seamless – all the way from discovery to purchase.

The rollout of Shops across Facebook, meanwhile, allows brands to create digital storefronts, with links to purchase products either on the retailer’s website or directly within Facebook itself.

Even YouTube and TikTok are experimenting with social commerce. YouTube Shopping allows customers to make purchases directly on-site by browsing through catalogues offered by sellers, while TikTok’s partnership with Shopify allows merchants to create and show shoppable content on the platform.

Even before these functionality considerations, each platform lends itself differently to the shopping experience and users’ openness to brand advertising. Instagram, for example, feels like a natural fit for commerce as its highly visual nature emulates a glossy magazine, where products feel native and premium.

This was validated in our research findings, which showed nearly half of all shoppers (45%) would prefer to shop on Instagram, with Facebook (41%) coming in a close second.

These two platforms appear, at the moment, to be far ahead in terms of delivering on shopper expectations, with YouTube (9%) and TikTok (5%) capturing a much smaller percentage of shopper interest.

The sophisticated targeting options available to brands through Facebook Advertising (which includes Instagram) and Google (YouTube) also present opportunities for personalisation and disruption along the shopper journey.

Moreover, social commerce is a particularly exciting development for brands that sell exclusively through retailers, since it presents an opportunity to provide shoppers with a more personalised experience (in lieu of a true direct-to-consumer offering).

We spoke with Joseph Harper, e-commerce marketing manager at Kellogg Company, who notes: “The way people shop in the future will be totally different – it will be completely interactive and personalised.

“We know that retailers are starting to see themselves as media platforms and media platforms are starting to see themselves as retailers. That, in essence, is the crux of social commerce.”

Creating a connected experience for consumers

For a marketing channel with considerable upside, social commerce looks set to have a significant impact on the way shoppers discover, browse and buy. E-commerce has already lowered the barriers to entry, enabling new digital startups to burst on to the scene while forcing legacy brands to rethink existing strategies.

Social looks set to do the same again, challenging traditional brand and retailer relationships and ways of marketing to consumers.

But for the forward-thinking brand, success will come from more than just taking advantage of new platform innovations. Brands need to build connected experiences across all touchpoints that deliver on the values of a new generation of shoppers.

Whether researching on Amazon, being inspired on Instagram, watching adverts on TV or unpacking an order at home, there’s an ever-expanding ecosystem of places shoppers can engage with brands.

Marketers need to focus on optimising the customer journey and include social commerce as a key touchpoint in this. In doing so, brands can take one step closer to delivering a truly connected omnichannel experience.

Feature Image Credit: Initials advise marketers to better optimise the customer journey using social commerce

By Josh Tilley

Josh Tilley, senior strategist at Initials.

Sourced from The Drum

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Why are businesses still taking a shot in the dark when launching a new website?

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By Rich Chapman

Since being in digital I have seen a standard timeline for businesses developing their websites. Make a new one every four or five years to experience an evolutionary leap forwards.

Is this still the right thing to do given the technology and options available to us today?

Basically no, it was never a great option anyway. Building websites, in general, is a difficult task and these days, websites are key revenue drivers for businesses, making it increasingly risky if it goes wrong. I still see cases where organic rankings plummet and conversion rates drop after so much hope has been pinned on a new site launch. It’s an emotional rollercoaster of stress, a sense of achievement on launch day and then panic.

Nowadays there is so much more available to us to mitigate the risk of launching a new website. Yet it is still untapped and companies are reticent to make the additional investment which is a small percentage of the overall cost. We all need to feel we are getting a good deal right so its an element regularly dropped from proposals.

So how do we improve this gambling situation? We need to be able to see into the future and find out how a new site will perform on launch. Good news! We can! Well, sort of…

No, we don’t have a time machine… but we can pre-test a website to see how it performs before exposing it to our entire user base and business to the new unknown. In my experience a lot of stakeholders want to have input on designs and battle for site real estate, this then defines how the new website is designed, from internal opinion alone and HIPPOs. To avoid this trap there are two ways which can give unbiased insight:

User testing

User testing outside of your own web environment can give you a level of feedback and information you simply can’t get from internal stakeholders and outside help. Even as an experienced CRO I can’t tell you for sure which new design is going to be better than your current one. We have to ask user testers what they think.

There are various techniques such as preference tests where user testers will vote for their preferred version, this type of feedback is great at the design stage of a website build.

Another is a click test, this involves finding out what a user would click on first upon landing on the new design. This ensures users are engaging and clicking the call to action most relevant for the business.

One of my favourites is the five second flash test. Users are shown the new version for five seconds and then asked some non-leading open questions: “What does the company do?”, “What would you click on first?”, “Which page element stood out the most?”. The answers from this type of test tell us how scan readers interpret the new design. Businesses can also run this test on the current version and see how the answers compare.

Any of the above can settle design debates and give real information on what users will respond best to. Designs can be updated and retested until 90% of user testers prefer a version. Not so much a shot in the dark now.

A/B testing

The other option is to start testing new designs and website experiences on the live website through A/B testing software. The software enables us to send a percentage of live traffic (usually 50/50) to a new version which is measured against the original. So let’s say designers have followed an internal brief, come up with a new homepage design and some stakeholders like it and some don’t, that’s normal. To find out if the new design really is better (and who is right) it can be tested against the original.

These rounds of testing can be done piece by piece on different layouts, images, fonts, branding, journeys and more. Gradually this gives valuable information on how users respond to the new design and importantly, to change.

Top tip

If you have a large user base and a high amount of returning visitors you can let them know that you will be launching a new website. Send them emails with a launch date combined with a promotion maybe.

One step further is to create a beta site and get feedback from users before the big switch is done. Companies like the BBC and Facebook regularly use this technique. It is a staple in the gaming industry, gamers are invited to use a beta version knowing it might break. Their reward for giving feedback is early access and feeling like a VIP, the game producers get free insight and debugging, win win.

Round up

Adding user testing and a/b testing does make a web build a more lengthy and expensive process. However, from experience, it is worth it. Web site changes can be vanity driven and a “need” to be done at a fast pace leading to errors. Going with a user led approach may be longer but it will help safeguard the business.

It’s also a mindset change, moving from completely changing a site every three to five years to constant tested small changes and evolution. An iterative tested approach removes stress, big lump sum costs and keeps websites up to date.

By Rich Chapman

CRO consultant at Impression.

Sourced from The Drum

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Why every brand should be anti-capitalist

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By Mordecai

Advertising is an expression of consumer capitalism. Yet to succeed in today’s marketplace, brands need to become more anti-capitalist, believes Innocean’s global head of innovation and partnerships, Mordecai.

Consumers want a better deal, and they deserve it, too. Not just better products and better services, but better advertising. To deliver on this, brands must break free from established tropes that define how they do business. Or to put it another way, they need to start thinking anti-capitalist to be more pro-consumer.

This might sound contradictory, but as a long-standing anti-capitalist and activist who works in advertising – the communications of capitalism – let me explain. By anti-capitalism I mean not believing you must participate in the capitalist structure in which you were raised. Instead, it about is believing there is an alternative.

I fell into advertising rather than entering by a conventional route. I was already a storyteller, though back then I was working in digital TV production. But the budgets were small, so I went to brands to get funding. Then those brands asked me to start telling their stories too, and things grew from there.

As a storyteller, people have always been my focus. To be pro-consumer is to be in support of consumers getting a better deal. And in advertising, that can only happen when humans are at the centre of what we do – especially storytelling.

Yet how many brands today communicate in a human-centric way? How often can you see people at their heart of their strategies. How many demonstrate they believe in their consumers as nuanced individuals capable of making their own choices? Far too few, in my opinion.

To be more anti-capitalist, a brand must think and act differently, and it can start to do so by challenging business and marketing’s pervasive tropes – of which let me give you three examples.

The first is the winner-takes-all approach to doing business that leads many companies to let competition shape their strategies. I’m not saying a brand owner’s rivals’ competing strategies should not be analysed and unpicked, far from it. My point is, brands’ competition should not be used as a template for what they do, how they do business or their point of view.

You can look to Away, a luggage brand that set out to turn a relatively boring necessity into an enviable statement at an affordable price without structuring itself around a mission to compete with Samsonite.

Or the brands that rewrote the purchase and delivery rule book, such as subscription toothbrush Quip. Meat alternatives are also leading the way, like the once-scrappy start-ups Beyond Meat and Impossible. Crypto-currencies are also not out to compete with cash, but provide an alternative to it.

The next trope to challenge is established systems that all too often act against inclusivity. One powerful example is Anomaly, which put its own money into the business ventures of clients, such as beauty line Eos.

AdQuick’s advances in the out-of-home market disrupted a narrowly controlled sector and broke the system by offering more opportunity for smaller brands to engage in a system that was previously only for big hitters.

We’re also seeing this with storied industries disrupted by the influx of VCs and collective ownership, with, for example, the likes of Serena Williams, Jessica Chastain and Eva Longoria investing in the US National Women’s Soccer League LA team.

The third trope concerns received wisdom and established practices around building affinity through targeting. This is about celebrating not just one aspect of a person as identified by traditional segmentation, but the whole individual.

We see calls to this through the increased encouragement to honour intersectionality with, for example, the added option of non-binary as distinction and removal of such self-disclosure boxes on job applications altogether. The generational push for acknowledgment of trans women at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement is another illustration of this.

This is about a brand recognising it can’t reach every audience, nor can it appeal to all – not least while audiences are fragmenting at pace and growing increasingly diverse.

And it’s about brands re-thinking how best to build affinity. On-screen inclusivity is essential and should be a given, but more is needed. I’m talking about creative concepts and projects that don’t so much build affinity through direct identification but that are open and welcoming everyone to the table.

Think MediaCom’s ‘Inclusive Planning’ initiative, a self-declared departure from the status quo where diverse audiences are only considered for specialist briefs.

Or Vice Media’s challenge to advertisers over blocklists – in particular, around blocking Black Lives Matter, Muslim, queer and related key lists which Vice has removed from brand blocklists.

To truly build affinity with their brands, the time has come for senior marketers to shift their focus from the more exclusive brand safe to the more inclusive brand suitable.

These are just some of the spaces in which brand owners can act more anti-capitalist.

In today’s world, if brands are to engage more effectively with the people they serve as individuals, the only way to behave is pro-consumer.

Feature Image Credit: The only way to behave is pro-consumer, says Mordecai, and brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are leading the way

By Mordecai

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To What Extent Are Large Companies Outsourcing Marketing Services?

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Sourced from Marketing Charts.

Merkle Outsourced Marketing Services Feb2020

There have been numerous discussions around outsourcing – and insourcing – including the agency vs. consultancy debate. But how much do larger companies outsource? Of course it depends on which work area, but a recent study [download page] from Merkle suggests that data sourcing is at the top of the list, with survey respondents estimating outsourcing almost half (48%) of work in this area.
The debate around which areas marketers should bring in-house or outsource to partners is a continuous one. On the client-side, the desire to achieve cost-efficiencies is a driving factor, while agencies have argued that their capabilities in areas such as customer insights and analytics will garner increased demand for their services.

This latest research by Merkle, based on responses from 150 marketers at companies with revenues of $200 million and up, illustrates that the balance between in-housing and outsourcing differs significantly between capabilities.

Which areas are the most heavily outsourced?

As mentioned above, close to half of data sourcing work is estimated to be outsourced, the highest proportion of all the services analyzed.

Following closely behind are call center services, at 47%. Given that consumers aren’t yet entirely convinced by entirely automated customer service options and their preference for speaking to humans rather than chatbots, this may persist for some time.

Again on the data theme, analytics is an area heavy in outsourcing, as some 46% of work in this area is estimated to be outsourced.

Separately, although the ANA reports that the majority of its members have an in-house agency, there are still many large firms outsourcing elements of their advertising operations. Large swatches of creative development (46%), programmatic media (46%) and other media buying services (45%) services are outsourced, per the marketing executives surveyed. But the future trends for these can vary.

Where has there been a shift to more outsourcing in the past 12 months?

Even though some of the key services offered by advertising agencies are being frequently outsourced, the changes between them in the past year are somewhat different. For example, while 39% of large companies say they have made a shift to outsourcing their programmatic media, only around one-quarter (27%) have done the same with creative development.

Other areas where larger companies are shifting to outsourcing include web development (40%), SEO (39%), and marketing technology (38%). This makes sense given that hiring skilled professionals is a key challenge for more than half of firms and that marketing technology now accounts for up to 30% of North American marketers’ budgets.

Towards the bottom of the list, only around 3 in 10 have shifted to outsourcing areas such as marketing strategy (31%), user journey development (31%), campaign operations (31%), other media planning (31%), and email (29%).

Where do companies plan to outsource more in the next 24 months?

Looking forward, it appears that there is desire to make some changes to outsourcing practices. Despite an already high degree of outsourcing right now, 31% plan to shift their programmatic media to external partners in the coming two years, as programmatic continues to see strong spending growth overall.

For other technical and data areas, it appears that more companies will continue to seek outsourced assistance, with around 4 in 10 planning to use external partners in services such as web development (41%), data management (40%) and analytics (40%).

The full report is available for download here.

About the Data: Figures are based on a survey of 150 executives at companies with a 2018 pre-tax revenue of at least $200 million.

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Why are mobile conversion rates lower than desktop?

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By Graham Charlton

Smartphone traffic now accounts for the majority of visits to retailers, but mobile conversion rates lag behind desktop. We take a look at the reasons for this.

A decade on from the release of the first iPhone, mobile shopping is massive. Much of this is thanks to Apple, and the many smartphones which followed, but there are still obstacles for retailers to overcome.

According to stats from Monetate, smartphone traffic worldwide to retailers is at 56.2%, and 34.5% for desktop.

However, this mobile traffic is converting at less than half the rate of that on desktop, at 2.25% compared to 4.81% for desktop. Even tablet fares better, converting at 4.06% on average.

We’ve seen the same pattern in our own stats. Around half of all visits to retailer’s sites come from mobile, but just 36% of purchases take place on mobile.

It seems that people are happy to browse on mobile, but many still prefer to buy on desktop, so let’s look at the reasons why.

There are several reasons why people prefer to buy on a laptop or PC. For one, it can be easier to navigate around the site and view images on a bigger screen, so some shoppers may browse on mobile and select products later on.

People are also more likely to buy on desktop when purchases are more complex. Travel purchases are generally more expensive and complicated – only 18% complete bookings on mobile.

Much of the issue comes down to checkout. Indeed, the add to cart rates shown above suggest this. While mobile conversion rates are less than half that of desktop, add to cart rates aren’t so far behind.

Even in sectors where shoppers are more likely to use mobile, such as fashion, mobile conversion rates still lag behind desktop.

Fashion sites attract a greater proportion of sales on mobile. In fact, this is the only sector to attract the majority of its sales from mobile shoppers (51.39%).

However, data from our recent Fashion Ecommerce Trends Report finds that fashion conversion rates are almost twice as high on desktop when compared to mobile.

Mobile usability on fashion sites has improved greatly, but some customers are still reluctant to convert via mobile devices.

The average mobile add to cart rate is 10.4%, compared to 12.9% for desktop. This implies that people are adding items to their cart at similar rates, but many more are bailing out during checkout.

The biggest issue behind lower mobile conversions is the checkout. So how can checkout be made easier? Here are three ways to do this…

People hate registering before they begin a purchase, and it seems like hard work for mobile shoppers, so providing a guest checkout option is one way to improve conversion rates.

It’s a barrier for customers, and one that isn’t necessary, as they can complete registration after purchase anyway. Streamlining forms makes checkout easier and faster, reducing hassle for shoppers, and removing sources of friction where people might abandon checkout.

Sites can allow users to autofill address and payment details saved on their phone’s browser, or postcode lookup tools to reduce the number of steps customers need to take.

Small details matter, such as defaulting to the most appropriate smartphone keyboard, like the numeric version for entering payment card details. It’s about making it easier for customers through marginal improvements.

Payment methods matter too, and providing alternatives can make it easier for mobile shoppers. Card details take time to enter, but PayPal and digital wallet options like Apple Pay can make payment fast and smooth.

Mobile is a challenge for retailers, but now that customers have shown they’re willing to browse and buy on mobile, it’s all about making the payment process smooth and easy for shoppers.

Feature Image Credit: Photo by William Iven on Unsplash.

By Graham Charlton

Graham Charlton is editor in chief at SaleCycle

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‘Who actually loves authentic content?’ Brands need to understand their value exchange

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By Ryan Reddick

A few years ago I was working on the Coffee vs Gangs content series. After a successful launch, which saw Kenco help young Hondurans out of gangs by training them as coffee farmers, l found myself in an all agency meeting. After some initial self-congratulatory backslapping, discussion of the ‘raw authenticity’ led to a new addition to the group confidently chiming in.

‘I loved the first series and was wondering if it might be possible to see some of the kids from the gangs drinking Kenco’.

Awkward pause.

We’ll come back to that.

Fast-forward a few years to The Drum Content Awards, of which I recently had the pleasure of sitting on the judging panel. To kick off the day all the judges took part in an ice breaker, where we were asked to share our thoughts on ‘authenticity’ in content.

A question like this is catnip for content professionals. And the 25 of us, all released from our respective agencies formed a warm cosy echo chamber. One which made us feel reassured that we are all saying the same things to our clients and none of us are doing it wrong.

I listened. But I contributed nothing. Because the only thought I had ringing around my head was ‘isn’t all this just bollocks?’ Which wouldn’t have gone down well at all.

That’s not to say that my fellow judges didn’t engage in an intelligent and considered discussion. But this wasn’t about them. It was about the concept of ‘authenticity’ itself.

Before I go on, I dare any current creative or content specialist to review their proposals, treatments and pitches delivered in the last three months and not cringe at overuse bordering on abuse of the word.

The truth is, it’s become a dog whistle we blow on in front of our colleagues and clients to try and sell ideas without thinking about it. But when you actually think about it, it means very little on the outside world.

When was the last time anyone saw a piece of content and said ‘I love it because of its authenticity’?

Never.

Because no one ever says that.

Alongside ‘disruptive’, ‘authentic’ has become a nonsense husk of a word that means nothing and everything to us in our comfy communications and marketing circles.

That’s not to say that Kaepernick or Patagonia Black Friday didn’t come from a truly brilliant place. In the same way that featuring a bunch of troubled kids from gangs drinking Kenco obviously comes from a hideous one. But let’s not over inflate the sentiment behind this too much. Or to bastardise the words of Scroobius Pip –

Nike. Just a brand

Patagonia. Just a brand

Kenco. Just a brand

When a consumer engages with any form of content made by a brand or business an unspoken contract is entered into. ‘I know you are trying to sell me something or make me like you so I eventually buy something. But I’m willing to let you do that in exchange for getting something back’.

And this is far more authentic than authenticity. Because authenticity may be dead, but the authentic value exchange is very much alive.

I am willing to engage with your marketing, communication or advertising in exchange for you entertaining me. Making me laugh. Teaching me something new. Helping me with utility that enables me to do my job better.

Authentic value exchange. Much better. Not hiding behind the fact that something is authentic just for the sake of it when we all know what’s going on. Consumers are not stupid.

And that’s what was great about judging The Drum Content Awards. To see so many examples of exceptional work that creates a compelling value exchange between brand and consumer.

Examples that used comedy in exchange for brand trust around online security (Santander), that answered fuel economy questions in exchange for consideration of an electric alternative (Nissan Leaf) and that showed future parents what having children really looks like to build market share of their baby wipe brand (WaterWipes).

And by the way, in case you were interested.

We never featured any gang member drinking Kenco.

Now that’s authentic.

Feature Image Credit: ‘Who actually loves authentic content?’ Brands need to understand their value exchange

By Ryan Reddick

Ryan Reddick, creative director, Edelman is a judge for The Drum Content Awards 2019. A full list of the finalists can be found here. The awards ceremony will take place in London on October 30 at The Marriot Grosvenor Square Hotel, tickets can be purchased now.

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