YouDirectories Archives - YouCom

Review Marketing

Philip Wimbledon — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 08:00:32 +0000

Deloitte state that 81% of people read a review and check ratings. Consumers have more information available to them than ever before with specialist apps and directories.

To overcome this, brands have been using social media to pull consumers toward their products. But when it comes to trust, many people prefer to turn to their friends rather than communicate with brands.

This presents a challenge for brands because they do not control the sentiment being expressed online which will then be used by consumers to make purchasing decisions.

When consumers give their opinion on a brand or past purchasing decision by leaving a review, we see a demonstration of the power of the crowd. Enabled by technology and information overload, consumers can decide how engaged they want to be across the different points on their path to purchase.

This has changed the traditional customer journey and helped to create a cycle where one consumer’s experience feeds into another consumer’s decision process for whether to buy a product or a service. Review marketing then becomes quite important to a brand.

Quantity of online reviews is another important aspect of review marketing. Most consumers need to read on average four reviews, but this number can extend to 20 depending on the customer type (demographics etc).

As well as quantity, the quality of the feedback is a major element to review marketing. Some consumers will simply write “Great!” or write nothing at all and simply leave a star rating. That is a waste because a positive review has no keywords and a negative review doesn’t explain to other customers why your brand was rated so badly.

The way to gain high-quality reviews is simply to increase the quantity (numbers will win out).

The initial enquiry stage of the customer life cycle is now dependent on how brands manage online sentiment in order to progress to become a lead and ultimately a customer (review marketing).

This is the power of the online review and why every brand needs a review strategy. Our Direct Response team manage business directory advertising (think Yelp) which is heavily review focused. They are specialists in review marketing. It is no longer acceptable to only push brand messaging to consumers via above-the-line advertising. The age of the 5 gold stars review is here.

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

Data source:

Deloitte Consumer Review

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Dec 2018, London, ‘Review Marketing.’

The post Review Marketing 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.

Great Video Marketing

Philip Wimbledon — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 08:55:47 +0000

73 percent of people are likely to purchase a product or service if they’ve watched a video explaining it beforehand.

Videos are increasing in popularity every day and with more smartphone usage than ever before, they look set to see exponential growth. Yet many advertisers do not have a video on their business directory listings for example (contact our Direct Response team for advice from their content marketing ideas).

Secrets of great video marketing

Begin.

This is the hardest part for a brand, but if you begin creating video content, you’re already moving forward. Videos are a proven effective way for customers to remember your product and engage with your brand.

Graphic Savings

Animation videos look professional yet are a fraction of the cost of a top brand’s video budget.

Insertion.

YouTube and Vimeo are widely used. Others also exist which just like YouTube offer people the ability to search as they might on Google. Twitter is a great outlet for your video. Short clips work best using apps like Vine. More Info.

Popularity by association

If you can get a known celebrity to endorse your product or brand within your video, you gain instant access to their followers and fans. By that rationale it doesn’t have to be an A-list celebrity either (good luck with those), it could be a D-list celebrity. TOWIE stars are widely known within a particular demographic and will want the publicity that your product and advertising might bring.

Keep them short

People no longer have time for anything. Customers need to understand your marketing message within 2 minutes maximum. 30 seconds is ideal. Video is more an awareness and interest medium to direct traffic to your website or to call your company.

Social Media

Publishing the video on YouTube and Vimeo as previously mentioned is the first step, next you need to tell people about it. Social media with a Tweet link or on Facebook, is the ideal opportunity to do so and there are numerous advertising opportunities to promote your tweet or page to non-followers.

Cultural divide

Videos (particularly an animated video) won’t need a language option, anyone can view it. If necessary you could add local language captions later.

A.I.D.A

A boring video is just that, boring. How many customers are you likely to bring in if you only explain your product in the video? Create awareness, but most importantly create interest and desire to engage.

Life cycle

A video can last. Don’t be afraid to reuse it.

Copy cat

Don’t be afraid to copy something that’s working for another brand. Particularly if not in your sector. If The Priceless campaign emphasises MasterCard payment as the best way to pay for “everything that matters.” It is one of the most recognisable campaigns and has enabled MasterCard to build and maintain strong brand value and trust among consumers. Priceless ads run in 110 countries and in 51 languages, and focus on using a MasterCard card for what matters most in life. Has your sector got something similar?

Diversify

The MasterCard Priceless platform houses everything from their renowned Priceless adverts to consumer-based card promotions and competitions. Once you have a successful video, use social media to assess traction and then utilise it within other media and merchandising, signage etc.

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

Glossary:

A.I.D.A – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action

TOWIE – The Only Way Is Essex

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Aug 2015, London, ‘secrets of great video marketing’

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