Posts Tagged ‘econsultancy’
New second screen research points to huge opportunity for marketers
December 17th, 2012
New research from eConsultancy reinforces the trend and huge momentum towards second screen culture.
I use two screens most of the time, either laptop and mobile or mobile and TV, with the laptop at hand when needed for some data sources. Far from a distraction, the additional screens help with background, context, further information and knowledge.
That’s why it was a joy to read eConsultancy’s article, published this morning and written by Clair O’Neill from mobile business apps company mubaloo.
It is excellent, with a detailed exposition of the current cultural position and views on what’s next.
Clair advises, for example that Shazam, the sound recognition app, is one service helping brands to extend the reach of their TV adverts through mobile and therefore harness the power of second screening.
She writes: “As well as listening to music, the app now also listens to the audio from advertisements and uses it to launch relevant content on the user’s mobile device when it recognises the sound.
“This gives marketers the opportunity to send Shazam users straight to a relevant landing page at a time when they are already engaged and ready to interact further.â€
There’s so much more than this nugget but I’ll leave that decision to you.
Clair’s info builds on a recent Sky TV research project, led by Luke Bradley-Jones, Brand Director, TV Products.
Sky published the survey commissioned from YouGov with an infographic (link below) at the end of September. It shows that that three out of four people watch TV accompanied by another screen. It’s also now second nature for a third of people (34%) to use laptops, tablets and smartphones to talk about live TV while watching.
The research also shows  that, after eating, going online is the next most popular activity while watching TV, with 60% of consumers found to be using email, 65% surfing the web and 47% using social networking sites.
Like Clair and Luke, I believe that marketers should grab with both hands the opportunity to deepen engagement with consumers through the second and third screens. To me, it seems like a win-win, if campaigns are designed and deployed in the right way.
This must mean taking great care not to spam second screeners but individuate the engagement messages, making these useful relevant and worthwhile. Done the right way, these engagement tactics can bind the consumer closer but also improve conversion rates.
Click on the infographic image below to see full size version:
SEOs will slaughter careless PRs – some thoughts
August 22nd, 2012
Chris Lee’s eConsultancy post – “SEOs will slaughter careless PRs†is a bit of a shocker. His Biblical reference is powerful and apposite. Old stories always work well.
We feel comfortable with these tales because they reinforce our collective sense of self and are very useful. But behind this agreed unity there is a less coherent argument.
Chris’s argument, as I understand it, centres on the fact that too many PR agencies do not see the point of integrating SEO into their campaigns. I’d take us out of that equation and would also expand Chris’s viewpoint. Believe it or not, there are many PR agencies that still don’t embrace social media, let alone SEO.
We’ve been integrating social media with ‘traditional’ PR and SEO at Liberate Media since 2006, working with partners and client agencies. That’s why colleague Lloyd Gofton founded the agency.
We’ve been doing what Chris suggests for six and more years:
· Link building from diverse and authoritative sites.
· Social media signals.
· Optimisation of on-page content.
· Optimisation of URLs.
· Universal search (pictures, video etc).
· Domain-level brand metrics (affinity towards the brand online).
But we’ve been doing much more than this – delivering integrated campaigns that mesh social with traditional PR so that the SEO element of marketing can maximise returns. We engage with media and influencers at every point, online and offline.
That said, my experience of SEO is that it is, at best, an inexact science. Measurement parameters are imprecise. This lack of detail is partly a function of the continual development of search engine algorithms, and the desire of Google to maximise its revenues.
But there is a certain easy acceptance of SEO data that does not push agencies to move forward. From my personal experience, there is only so far you can go with “secret sauceâ€.
Sure, we can deliver reports that have a range of good-looking figures but whether these correspond precisely to what is going on is not proven.
My intuition is that the current SEO play is under sustained pressure and is seeking partners who can add significant value, through knowledge, connections and expertise, to the proposition.
Partnership with PR agencies might be a way forward but the measurement tactics would need careful attention on both sides.
We’re neither smug nor careless about our business, which is growing rapidly against the grain. As Chris intimates, the skills and nous involved in successful SEO and PR are a rare commodity, one that we will continue to develop.
You can read Chris Lee’s post here.
Social media marketing, Shel Israel’s fears and the suffocation of company silos
July 17th, 2012
Shel Israel was gracious and kind in his Twitter response to my post on his wake-up call to professionals who ply their trade through social media – ‘Will Marketing Muck Up Social Media?’.
I think it’s worth restating the basic ideas around social media engagement, in the light of his post and my, perhaps too comfortable, rebuttal. To recap, Shel writes that his recent experience is of a strategic change in marketing that now seeks to fully control social media campaigns.
This would be achieved by regressive tactics: one-way messaging, retreat from conversation, closer alignment with offline campaigns … a return to shouting at potential customers.
There is no technical obstacle in current social media platforms to this regression – merely the nature and current cultural norms that dominate these means of communication.
For sure, social media (which I accept as a febrile concept, an adjunct to web evolution) could be reshaped commercially but that action would destroy every practical, productive and creative element.
At Liberate Media, we use a range of top-level explanations to help strategic discussions with clients who want to learn more about this evolving means of communication.
The basic ideas that inform the way we work in social media echo these explanations and please tell me if you think they have changed recently.
Commercial engagement in social media starts with LLEGS:
· Listen
· Learn
· Engage
· Give
· Share
Listen to what’s being said online about the brand, product or solution.
Learn about the people saying it, the value of their ideas, where and how they are engaging.
Engage with these people, start conversations, build networks of influence around them.
Give as much as you can in the form of new knowledge.
Share freely your insights, and those of others, in the network and beyond.
The elements together form a virtuous circle and the benefits should be a more acute, evolving understanding of customers/clients.
Colleague Lloyd Gofton has a better handle on this than me and his recent eConsultancy post on ‘Earned Media’ takes the discussion to a whole new level. It’s worth a full read but I took one key point that resonated:
“Truly understanding what people want, and fulfilling that need must be a simpler path to success than telling customers your product is the best, and ignoring all feedback to the contrary to maintain some imagined brand reputation.â€
Perhaps the regressive marketing movement identified by Shel Israel is motivated by a lacuna between fundamental desire to engage and a lack of tools to provide combinative management of marketing strategies and tactics.
It may also be a function of the enduring presence of corporate silos, which are anathema to the open ideology of social media.
The tools should be developed and they should have the power to break down the corporate silos that are so clearly a block on rapid material progress.
And I hope that the understandable fears of social media among strategic marketing professionals will be replaced by an intensely creative period where new marketing forms will work within a more coherent global marketing culture.