Directories Archives - YouCom

Store Opening

Philip Wimbledon — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 20:19:35 +0000

A store opening requires good balancing skills. Often the retailer is new and has no existing marketing content. Even for existing brands who have pre-existing content and social media channels, it can be difficult to create the PR for a new store.

After all, what is so exciting about a new premises where competitive markets mean there’ll be a similar business nearby?

Why should a competitor’s customers go and see your new store?

Take a look at this next video of our brand ambassador Raquel Freestyle. Raquel performs for store openings and product launches with outstanding football trick skills to bring in the crowds.

https://www.youcom.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/140-YouCom-Store-Opening-raquel_benetti_640x1138_1389159255341682692.mp4

YouTube Tag: @raquelfreestyle.

For some new store openings, hiring a celebrity such as Raquel Freestyle may not be viable.

Giveaways are traditionally newsworthy items for local media coverage or social media. You could offer an opening day discount. Or a free giveaway product. These will help attract awareness of your event.

You should also make sure all the relevant store details are on the promotion so customers can easily find you.

Add to this good online listings for those searching for that new store. We recommend Google My Business of course, but additionally there are about 20 other online directories where you can list your new store address and which crucially index into Google’s first-page search results.

Zoom in to the above tweet to see we achieved 61 retweets for our own brand (click on it to go to Twitter).

You can see just how much engagement we’re able to generate for our clients and publishers by the use of AIDA, principally from a good photograph.

Anytime you can include a photograph, you should do it. Tweets with visual content get 150% more retweets, 18% more clicks, and 89% more favourites*.

SMM use of influencers are another way to promote a new store opening and they have even better understanding of the powerful effect from a good photograph.

YouCom Media runs a mystery shopper program of over 500 individuals, many of whom write successful blogs and offer influencer services.

It seems obvious but your brand should become involved in the local community to where you’re having the store opening.

There will be lots of local charities and members clubs, all of whom would like to partner for some publicity and all would welcome news of a new business that for example offers their members some sort of local discount.

Write to the local council and perhaps try to secure the services of the local mayor (after all you are providing employment for local people).

Write an editorial for the local newspaper. Take our advertising in the local newspapers. Most importantly, ensure your business directory listings cover local search keywords.

The hashtag. This is useful for those of us who are getting a little older and need some memory assistance.

But jokes aside, we all need some memory help when we live in a world full of advertising noise. A Tweet with a hashtag is 55% more likely to be retweeted*.

Aim for an easy to use hashtag that is nice and short. Experiment with using humour.

A new bakers store opening for example could use #greatbuns or #hashbrowntag (we liked that one). Research to identify local hashtags that are trending now and see if yours can ‘surf that wave’.

Customised, relevant helium balloons are another great instant ‘awareness’ and ‘interest’ part of AIDA advertising when it comes to your store opening.

Brands can often treat their store opening like dipping a toe in the water but should instead view them as a diving board which could really launch a new store location.

A store opening can set the stage for not just your products or service but also the customer base that you’ll be able to build. You need something that can draw people’s attention for instant AIDA.

Someone like Raquel Freestyle attracts the younger audience to your brand despite many companies vying for their attention.

You should also think about placement before your store opening day to build that awareness.

The messaging you use will be of utmost importance and especially the colour and design used. Contact us for your next store event.

Follow the YouCom Media news posts to see the next developments.

Glossary:

A.I.D.A – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action [Marketing model]

Data Source:

* Alexandra Sheehan

Some images sourced from Pixabay incl. alexas_fotos & AirAdPromotions

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Jan 2022, London, ‘Store Opening.’

The post Store Opening appeared first on YouCom.

Virtual Tour

Philip Wimbledon — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 18:37:00 +0000

A Virtual tour of the pyramids is the best way to describe them and your brand is no different. Brands are increasingly using virtual tours / 360-degree tours to show their products and services.

On platforms like Google Places / Google My Business (GMB), a virtual tour has a direct correlation to sales enquiries making it a ‘direct response’ mechanism.

If you’re a brand who wants more Google reviews per store location, you should start with uploading a (good) virtual tour video to each store’s GMB panel.

To illustrate what we mean, here are some great virtual tours (including the Pyramids), for those of you currently stuck at home or trying to entertain/educate children.

London UK. National Portrait Gallery Virtual Tour

Click on the above image for our links to their virtual tour cameras and walk around the first portrait gallery in the world (1856).

You’ll see English Kings from the Tudor period, from 1485 through the reign of Henry VIII to his successors. Examples of 17th century and 18th century England await you in two separate virtual tours. Queen Victoria’s reign is along a corridor flanked by amazing sculptures of marble heads depicting the portraits behind them. And the Weldon Gallery of King George IV up to the death of King William IV in 1837 with its eerie centrepiece of marble heads forms the final virtual tour.

N.B. move the mouse slowly because they’re ultra-responsive.

Madrid, Spain. Virtual Tour of Man

Click on the above image for our links to virtual tour videos of Man (the Museo Arqueologico Nacional) in Madrid, Spain. Another old museum (1867), MAN displays pieces from the Iberian Peninsula with smaller collections from Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt.

Different to the National Portrait Gallery of London, UK, this museum has created one single tour experience allowing you to walk through the entire museum (or use the scroll bar on the left to ‘jump’ to an exhibit of interest).

It is also advisable to move the mouse slowly for their virtual tour and look for the orange arrows to move ahead.

Paris, France. Virtual Tour of The Louvre

Click on the above image for our links to one of the oldest museums, officially opening in 1793 it was a former royal residence first built in approx. 1300AD.

You can see the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo just like 2.7million other visitors did in 2020. The entire collection is divided into eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; and the Decorative Arts.

This virtual tour is far less sensitive to navigation making it in our opinion more enjoyable to operate. A good example to brands wishing to offer a similar brand promoting customer experience.

New York, USA. Virtual Tour of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Click on the above image for our links to the 1870 fifth avenue collection of art and sculpture.

Unlike our other virtual tour examples, this American museum has created videos of the tours. The objective is the same; to give customers the experience of their services and products before visiting.

From that perspective brands could do likewise. However YouCom has monitored response rates from both versions and would steer brands towards the virtual tour style of the European museums.

These ‘videos’ give a good experience of; Neoclassical architecture; views over the Hudson river; and the fabled Temple of Dendur (15 BC) donated from Egypt to America in 1968.

Berlin, Germany. Virtual Tour of Museum Island

Click on the above image for our links to a series of Museums referred to as ‘Museum Island’. This has been collated by Google’s Arts and Culture project.

After clicking on the above image, click on the menu option ‘Explore’ and discover who was history’s most beautiful woman.

Click further on ‘What is Museum Island Berlin’ to see the many virtual tours. These include the beautiful baroque building of the Bode Museum, designed by Emperor Frederick III’s court architect Ernst von Ihne (Kim Kardashian and Kanye West only wish they could have a staircase and entrance hall as spectacular as this..).

Also incuding The Pergamon Museum that has the legendary Ishtar Gate of Babylon. Click on the white arrows of each virtual tour to move around (the mouse allows you to pan left and right but the arrows let you move forward).

Amsterdam, Holland Virtual Tour of The Rijksmuseum

Click on the above image for our links to The Rijksmuseum that houses many beautiful pieces by Vermeer as well as the famous Night Watch, painted by Rembrandt in 1642.

The Night Watch painting when viewed in-person mysteriously draws you in and the hand of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (dressed in black, with a red sash) appears to be 3D in what must be the first example of such techniques (you feel you could shake hands!).

Take their virtual tour to see if it has the same effect for you ‘on-screen’.

Giza, Egypt. Virtual Tour of The Pyramids

Click on the above image for our links to the most impressive museum of all. The last remaining ancient wonder of the world has been captured by Google with their Google Maps technology but the result really is a life experience.

When taking the tour, imagine how capturing just a little of what you feel viewing it could transform the awareness of your brand. Contact our Direct Response team to learn more.

Follow the YouCom Media news posts to see the next developments.

• Our Facebook news
• Our Twitter news
• Our Pinterest news
• Our LinkedIn news

Required reference:
YouCom Media News, Dec 2021, London, ‘Virtual Tour.’

The post Virtual Tour appeared first on YouCom.

Media ROI

Philip Wimbledon — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 23:04:47 +0000

When you put in the effort, you want to see that it’s rewarded. You want Return-on-Investment.

ROI is an analysis of what is invested, how it is invested and what you gain from that investment. Marketing managers and brands who run marketing plans without full ROI analysis risk diminished or negative ROI as a result of lack of change.

Many big-name brands are guilty of falling into complacency. Proctor & Gamble on the other hand challenges its marketing executives to ‘build on their learnings’. They are asked to show what they have learnt from the marketplace. They then build those learnings into the next marketing plan and ROI inevitably goes up.

ROI analyses the profit generated from an integrated marketing communications plan as a percentage of the budget taken to produce it.

That profit can be in the form of extra sales generated from the marketing activity or may be something less tangible (but still measurable) such as brand awareness.

If increasing awareness is the advertisers goal (brand marketing) then the agency will calculate the correlation between brand awareness and market share.

If market research shows the brand’s awareness has increased, market share can be said to follow.

Each of these marketing tools within the communication mix will have specific ROI analysis methods;

Advertising

Includes ATL channels such as Television; Radio; Print and BTL channels such as OOH advertising. This also includes online such as PPC marketing; display advertising, remarketing and retargeting.

Personal Selling

Sales force; Tele-marketing staff; affiliate marketing

Public relations

Editorials; Advertorials; Newsletters; Viral Marketing; Press Releases

Sponsorship

Advertising via celebrities; TV shows; products; services; events

Event Marketing

Exhibitions; virtual exhibitions; webinars; conferences; roadshows

Direct Mail

post DM; email DM; Circulars; Leaflets; Inserts

Directories

print directories; online directories; link-building; review marketing

Retail

In-Store POS; Website (SEO)

Promotions

Incentives; Rewards; Data-marketing loyalty cards; Content marketing

Merchandising

QR Codes; Augmented reality apps; Virtual Tours; Package advertising

Each communication channel has the ability to measure the ROI from the activity. Some channels such as business directories are now highly ROI focused and therefore becoming a performance marketing channel rather than a brand marketing one.

In 2013, YouCom Media created a specialist business directory advertising team to bring our Japanese ROI focus to the channel. This Direct Response team were the first business directory specialist agency staff in Europe to deliver pay-per-call advertising for Yell.com at a time when all advertisers had to pay for 12-month advance tenancy advertising.

ROI was measured by every call and click resulting from the advertising.

The lifetime value of a customer acquisition can be difficult to calculate. But the short-term ROI isn’t. Event marketing for example divides the profit from sales orders by the total cost of the exhibition. Sometimes definitive sales orders aren’t known, or aren’t enough to produce positive ROI, but then it is possible to identify potential sales orders using a conversion rate for the sales enquires gained at the exhibition.

This is one way we produce pay-per-lead advertising campaigns at YouCom Media.

Some marketing managers (and some agencies) claim that certain channels cannot be measured for ROI. Social media is often seen as just such a channel.

But all channels can be measured if the marketing staff are inventive enough.

Social media has a wealth of data, follower numbers and frequency / recency studies can be made, propensity modelling applied, social sentiment correlated to sales etc.

Marketing managers must always remember that any activity made by a business has to show tangible added value to the bottom line.

Follow the YouCom Media news posts to see the next developments.

Glossary:

ATL- Above the line

BTL – Below the line

DM – Direct Mail

OOH – Out of home

POS – Point of Sale

PPC – Pay per click

ROI – Return on Investment

SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, April 2018, London, ‘Media ROI.’

The post Media ROI appeared first on YouCom.