Marketing that just focuses on grabbing people’s attention doesn’t work as effectively as it once did. The media landscape has changed. The customer is in charge of the media they see and how they see it. They are skipping, blocking and turning off ads. Permission marketing, or inbound marketing is different. It is about developing a relationship with your market, seeking their permission to communicate with them, and using data to make those communications as timely and relevant as possible. It’s about generating value for your customers.

The majority of brands are not used to thinking in this way. They are used to being big and loud, and getting lots of attention. It’s not easy to focus on the customer when the company culture has been developed around the brand story. But in today’s environment it is necessary. So how do you do it?

A good place to start is getting to know your customers. Social media analytics tools like Radian 6 can give marketers incredible insight into what their customers are saying. This information can be used to develop a content strategy that is engaging and consistent across social media, websites, blogs and other digital touch points. Once your market is engaged you can offer something in exchange for their data, and you can then use this to surprise and delight them. You build their trust and in return, you will be rewarded.

Any kind of brand can become inbound focused. In the US Oreo cookies created a social media campaign, celebrating their 100th birthday, that generated over 5 million Facebook “Likes” and lifted the engagement numbers by over 100%. The content they created was so interesting that the media began to write about it, which ended up generating over 231 million media impressions. There are many more stories like this. When a brand’s marketing and management teams “get it” the results can be amazing.

If you are a business leader, what is important is to understand is where the conversations are taking place and develop a view of the potential opportunities. If you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, get past your fear, or put aside the thought that it will be a “waste of time” and dive in. Develop an opinion and listen to your market.

The world is changing. The companies that will win in today’s digital environment are the ones who know their customers the best and communicate with them effectively. If your company has developed a culture around the more traditional outbound marketing approach then becoming inbound marketing-focused will not happen quickly. But it may just be the catalyst for the change you have been looking for.

The post Becoming inbound appeared first on Working Three.

Not so long ago social media platforms were meant to make us all more connected and be the catalyst for customer-centric change in behaviour that would sweep the world. Communication had become more democratic than it ever before and now everybody had a voice.

But some members of the business community simply don’t understand how to use this technology, and they are busy ruining it for the rest of us.

Facebook has become a social platform with around a billion users because it is genuinely useful. Stop and think about it. People are able to connect and organise social, community and work activities in way that has never been possible before. What’s more, Zuckerberg has made the platform open, meaning that for brands and app developers the data is available to use if your customer gives you permission. Facebook’s mission is “to make the world more open and connected” and they are doing everything they can to make this happen.

The problem is advertising. It’s not that there is anything wrong with advertising on Facebook. When done right it’s actually pretty entertaining and can even be helpful. But most brands are not getting it right. They are used to “dumbing it down” and targeting the lowest common denominator. They’re using outdated metrics and old-school marketing techniques. And when these don’t work they blame the platform.

It’s not Facebook’s fault brands don’t know how to connect with their customers. Their advertising products and targeting tools are incredibly sophisticated. If people aren’t engaging with the ads, there is probably a good reason for it.

People are having conversations on platforms that make them feel good. The value they get is in the connection. Most of the time they are treating each other with respect and talking in a human way. As the cartoonist and author Hugh MacLeod wrote back in 2006, “if you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face”.

Brands are busy saying “where’s the ROI of social media?” and it is important to be results driven. But make sure you are also asking “are we creating experiences that people will actually want?”

So listen up brands of the world. Stop trying to change the way that people behave and think. Stop trying to position your brand at the centre of a relationship. Stop writing irrelevant ads.

Talk to your customers and listen to your market. Treat them like individuals. Start thinking about the experiences you can offer that will make a difference to your customers lives. Think about how you can use data to make someone’s life better – not just to spam them. Help make the internet a better place for all of us.

The post Dear brands. Stop ruining the internet. appeared first on Working Three.

The digital analytics company Experian published a report (http://bit.ly/19EoT9c) in April this year that analysed internet usage in the US, UK and Australia. Across all of these regions 27% of all time spent online is spent on social networks, far and away the largest category.

Australian users are one of the highest users of social media world wide. For every hour an Australian spends online 14 minutes are spent on social sites, nine on entertainment and four minutes shopping online. Four minutes of online shopping may not seem much but the report also showed that time spent shopping online grew year-on-year for all regions, and that trend will continue.

Overall the actual proportion of time spent on social networks has dropped slightly. In Australia time on social dropped from 27% to 24%. However these numbers should not be misconstrued as waning interest. Instead it simply highlights the rise in access via smartphones as consumers become increasingly mobile device-orientated.

Figures have also been published by Hubspot (http://bit.ly/15Cmf13) based on the survey of over 3,300 participants from 128 different countries, including CEOs, agencies, and marketers. They show that companies are realising the return on investment from social media activity. In fact social media lead conversion rates are 13% higher than the average lead conversion rate and are producing almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing or direct mail.

The survey also found that 85% of fans of brands on Facebook recommend brands to others, compared to 60% of average users. But the figure I found to be the most telling was that approximately 46% of online users rely on social media when making a purchase decision. This clearly points to social media usage becoming firmly entrenched into customers’ buying journey.

Facebook is still the giant in Australia. In fact, there are now over 12 million Australian Facebook users. What is clear is that internet users are now becoming very comfortable with social media being embedded in their lives. They are using multiple platforms and using them often.

The numbers shown in these reports strongly suggest that every customer- facing brand would benefit from a well thought through and executed social media strategy and content plan

So as the new financial year gets underway it is a good time to ask yourself if you are doing everything you can do to get the most out of your digital marketing efforts.

The post The state of social media marketing appeared first on Working Three.

High levels of consumer engagement with image based content is part of the reason that social media platforms like Instargram (now owned by Facebook) and Pinterest have had such dynamic growth numbers recently. A study published in the online publication Fast Company (http://bit.ly/115USYd) recently said that 44% of internet users “…are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures than any other media.” Even from a commercial perspective, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Clever consumer brands have been quick to pick up on this trend and take advantage of its audience engagement opportunities. The beauty retailer Sephora is a great example.

Sephora has been quick to adopt digital marketing techniques across-the-board. Social media has featured strongly in their marketing mix for years now. Fortunately for Sephora, its brand naturally aligns with the trend towards image based content. Given that Pinterest now generates more conversion focused referral traffic than Google+ and LinkedIn combined, it made sense for the Sephora marketing team to focus on the rapidly growing social platform.

Their focus on images and Pinterest is paying off. In a recent interview (http://bit.ly/18APzsD) Sephora’s head of digital, Julie Bornstein, said “The reality is that when you’re in the Pinterest mindset, you’re actually interested in acquiring items, which is not what people go to Facebook for.” The interviewee also said that “Pinterest followers spend more money than its Facebook followers, and not just a little bit more. In fact, Pinterest users spend 15 times more on Sephora products than Facebook followers.”

This doesn’t mean you should choose one platform over another. You cannot have an effective social media strategy that’s only focused on Pinterest. It needs to be part of your digital mix. But ensuring you can follow your customers behaviours and attribute interactions to sales figures means you will know how to optimise your content strategy.

For example Sephora has 4.7 million Facebook fans which they see as a “critical early-warning system.” Meaning they know very quickly if their customer base doesn’t like something, allowing the marketing team to pivot quickly. But as far as actual sales is concerned Pinterest is the driving force.

So if you have customer base that is likely to interact with beautiful, insightful or funny images (and who wouldn’t?) you may want to ensure your content strategy is taking that into account. If you want to actually see a return on what you invest on your social media activity then image based content, and the platforms that allow people to interact with it, is something you just can’t ignore.

The post Pinterest’s part in selling appeared first on Working Three.

That’s because they are hard at work trying to perfect the next big product launch which they hope will be even bigger than the disruption caused by the iPhone.

It might be a TV or it might be a new form of wearable tech, but you can be sure that proud giant of innovation is far from finished.

In the meantime however, other tech companies are using Apple’s deafening silence to great effect.

There have been some brilliant examples from Samsung and even Blackberry took a few clever shots, but nothing even comes close to this new tablet spot from Microsoft.

Think about it. That ad has been nearly ten years in the making.

I’m a PC.

And I’m a Mac.

And now, we’re making you sound like pompous douchebags.

Only a fool would argue that Apple are incapable of industry wide disruption all over again (albeit under very different conditions than 2007!), but this round definitely goes to the cheeky nerds at Microsoft.

originally posted at MurrayGalbraith.com

The post You win this round, Microsoft appeared first on Working Three.

In the U.S. Securities and Exchanges letter announcing the Facebook float, Mark Zuckerberg famously (at least in the circles I hang out in) wrote, “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected.” Billions of dollars, and over a billion account holders later, Facebook is now very much a company, and one that the whole world is watching very closely.

A focus on generating revenues is having an impact on Facebook the company. While Zuckerberg didn’t seem over concerned with profit before the IPO, pressure from shareholders has shifted the company’s focus. Advertising on the platform has evolved very quickly and there are other revenue generating products being tested all the time.

It could be argued that Facebook may have floated a little too early. As a developer lead organisation (the vast majority of Facebook HQ employees are developers) much of what Facebook does is driven by software updates. The Facebook advertising platform has evolved through this method. But the relentlessness of adverting-focused updates has made it difficult for many people, and brands, to keep up.

My view is that Facebook could have done a better job of educating brands about how to best use the social media platform to generate long term value. The data that brands can now access thanks to Facebook is simply incredible. However for many marketers what that data is, how to access it, and why it is so valuable to marketing efforts is simply not clear.

Of course educating the world’s marketers, many of whom are still coming to grips with all the digital channels at one time, takes time and money. The float of Facebook generated the cash needed to accelerate this process and the world is now beginning to catch up. Much of what I do day-to-day is focused on helping my clients make big leaps in this area.

The question that I just can’t seem to shake is “why is Facebook not focusing on education more?” Many advertisers are using the platform the same way they might use Google adverting – without realising that customers are in a very different mindset. While Facebook may be doing a lot to improve the technical aspects of the platform for both users and advertisers, it’s the way advertisers are using the platform that may be part of the reason Facebook appears to be losing account holders.

Facebook’s next big challenge to overcome may have nothing to do with software. It might just be helping the rest of world reframe their relationships with customers – and think like Zuckerberg.

The post The changing face of Facebook appeared first on Working Three.