Companies Are Forgetting the Most Important Audience. – Employees!

Altimeter Group principal analyst, Brian Solis, recently wrote about “The Problem with Employment Engagement.” He looks at it from the technology disruption and leadership angles. There is impact from an integrated marketing communications (IMC) perspective as well.

The research and stats he cites from Gallup and Deloitte are staggering. Gallup found “only 13% of employees around the world are actively engaged at work, and more than twice that number are completely disengaged, toxic, and at risk of spreading negativity to others” that’s atrocious for companies. The Gallup and Deloitte findings should be a major concern for companies. Employees are every company’s first and foremost brand advocates. If a company’s employees are disengaged are they advocating the brand? – No.

Internal/employee communications is often left out or an afterthought in a company’s IMC strategies and programs. Companies can’t ignore this incredibly import constituency. It is critical that companies and CMOs/VPs of marketing increase the priority and efforts on internal communication and employee engagement. Companies need to keep employees informed and engage with them; foster these important contributors and brand advocates.

There are multiple benefits of proper and good internal communications that any exec suite will like: improved performance, higher morale, lower employee turnover, etc. Also, employees become more vocal brand advocates. And guess what??? All of these improve a company’s bottom line! Companies that don’t place a priority on internal communication will face higher employee turnover, lower productive and morale. Companies that get it will have the better talent and continue to thrive.

To illustration the point here is a great infographic from H&H Comms:

Infographic retrieved from: http://www.engageforsuccess.org/infographic-internal-communications-and-employee-engagement/#.U-T5XpWBHIU

 

IMC Is a Lifestyle

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is a lifestyle. Marketers and communicators need to live and practice what they preach. The thesis of IMC is to get the company’s message consistent across the communication channels. This has two roots: external and internal.

A lot of marketers focus on the external portion. Here are two graphics to illustrate that.

That’s great companies should and must have a consistent message across the outbound communication elements.

However, internal is a key component. Employees need to have the same understanding of what the company is about. The employees’ perception need to match consumers’ perception of the company. When these perceptions don’t align it fractures the brand identity and creates brand confusion. The point of IMC is to present a clear and cohesive brand identity and image.

That leads to IMC is a lifestyle. IMC needs to flow from marketers. Marketers need to convey IMC through their personal action, work and communications. Marketers need to keep team members informed and present clarity and a consistent message in the workplace. Working and managing in this style the company’s IMC campaign will flow naturally from the marketer leading it.

Images courtesy of Variable Data Printing and Business 2 Community.

Chilly Willy & Po — err Penguin & Panda

Google’s Penguin & Panda algorithm changes caused a stir among the SEO community and marketers. Google is trying to thwart SEO tricksters or companies gaming the system; trying to ensure searches are more natural and direct people to meaning sites and content.

The main focus of Panda is to combat content farms or content mills, pushing them down the rankings. Panda does a great job of eliminating shallow content, low quality and “spammy” sites.

What’s this mean for marketers: develop rich and unique content. Social and emerging media helps. Panda looks at how shareable and interesting the content is.

Penguin focuses on: authority, anchor text, advertorials and hacked CMS. The authority aspect of Penguin also has a social element, it looks at: social sharing, rich snippets, and Google+ activity.

The moral of this cartoon tale…sharing is caring. Make your content likable and more importantly sharable.

Also, marketers can up their content marketing game to improve SEO.

Most people will get the Po reference – Kung Fu Panda; Chilly Willy you probably need to be a Gen Xer – Google it if you don’t know 🙂 or use Yahoo or Bing. Do people say Yahoo it or Bing it?

Here’s a cool infographic looking at Penguin and Panda from Reload Media, via Mag SEO.

Chilly Willy image courtesy Upload Images 4 Free and PO image courtesy Kung Fu Panda Wiki

Measuring the Meaning and Success of Emerging Media

Outside of direct marketing, determining ROI and measurability of PR, marketing, advertising has always vexed executives and PR, marketing and ad professionals. Social media platforms add a marketing element that exec want to see tangible and measurable results from. At first glance, these emerging media platforms seem to offer handy stats (likes, followers, views, etc.) to provide useful measurement numbers to demanding execs.

Intel has over 20 million Facebook likes. A lot of large companies boast millions of likes on Facebook, millions of views on its YouTube channel or videos and hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. Without a doubt 20 million likes for a B2B company like Intel is successful. However, do likes, views and followers tell the whole story? Do those numbers alone tally success or convey ROI?

There are some ways to rethink measuring the success of social media. Finding ways to link to sales; Dell claims to have $6.5 million in sales as a direct result of its Twitter activity. Also, companies can examine consumer sentiment in social media. Additionally, companies can look at re-tweets and shares as a way to measure.

There are some nifty services and tools to help track and measure some of these items in the social media world: Sysomos, Viralheat, Spredfast, Sprout Social, UberVu and Sentinel Projects.

Image via Anthony Coppedge.

Here’s the Scoop

Scoop it is an emerging media platform. Scoop it is a publishing platform or can be referred to as a curation platform or content aggregator. It is a cross between a content management system, a web bulletin board system, and a blog.

Scoop it was launched in November 2011. There are many users of Scoop it: marketers, consultants, entrepreneurs, retailers, companies, etc. Scoot it can be used as an aggregator of content around a specific topic, for example: social media, digital marketing or integrated marketing communications.

Online marketplace Esty uses Scoop it as marketing/advertising/awareness platform to spread the word about the neat and interesting things one can find on Esty. Here’s look as Esty’s Scoop it page.

Scoop it has developed a video to help newbies figure it out.

The social media platforms are burgeoning. It will be interesting to see if marketers embrace Scoop it like Pinterest and Instagram.

Micro and Macro Marketing Videos

This past week Instagram launched a new video feature. This video feature allows people to create micro video clips of up to 15 seconds. Many companies have been successfully using the Instagram picture functions as a marketing tool; Virgin Airlines is a great example. At least 11 companies have already started using the video feature as a market tool.

Here’s General Electric using the Instagram video feature showing off a water test on a jet engine.

Quick hitting videos can be an effective marketing tool. A series of or several micro video clips are a good cadence for an effective frequency which can really help companies with brand recall and resonance.

On the flip side of the micro videos are short films. Brand entertainment is another way marketers are leverage video to promotion products and establish, maintain and/or enhance the brand image. Jaguar recent release a short film titled “Desire.”

Marketers have fully embraced digital/online video. Consumers can expect to see a lot more marketing type video over the next few years, whether it’s the micro clips or the brand entertainment short films. Since 2011 marketers spending on digital/online video has more the double – it’s only going to continue to grow.

Graph courtesy of eMarketer, via Marketing Land.

Digital Marketers – Tools of the Trade

Here’s a look at digital and online toolbox for marketers. The tools at marketers’ disposal are: online video, social media, mobile, text, email, banner ads, etc.

Infosys assembled a nifty infographic on the digital marketing toolbox.

The internet is of growing importance to consumers when making purchase decisions on new products. The type of products runs the gamut from electronics to food and beverages.  81% of consumers consult the internet when purchasing new electronics products and 62% for new food and beverage products.

Social media remains an area of importance to marketers and popularity among consumers.  In 2012 time spent on social media by consumer increase 63%.

Facebook remained popular however social media platforms Pinterest and Tumblr are growing rapidly in popularity.

What does this mean for marketers? Having a social media presence is still important as is interacting with consumers on these platforms. Mobile will grow in important throughout 2013.  There are emerging mobile media platforms like Snapchat.

Images and graphs from Nielsen.

Mobile getting Social on the Local Level – SoLoMo

When SoLoMo (Social, Local and Mobile) first emerged as an industry buzz word it was associated with local mobile direct marketing applications from retailers and online coupon sites e.g. LivingSocial. Direct marketing is certainly an application for local mobile and social marketing but the are other applications.

The So (social) aspect enables companies to move to real-time hyper local interaction with consumers shifting from local direct response to direct interaction (DR2DI). Also, it’s a chance for consumers to interact with their sphere of contacts.

For consumers, when someone gets to a location SoLoMo applications can provide more than Yelp reviews. It can connect consumers with their network and they can get real time feedback and interact with their network about the location they are at. They could also possibly locate friends and acquaintances nearby.

For live event venues, e.g. street fairs, it’s way for organizers and vendors to interact with attendees and provide information in addition to deals and discounts. Consumers can receive real-time parking information or interactive event maps.

Here’s a really good infographic from Nielsen and NM Incite on social, local and mobile via The Curve.

The first image in the post is from Social Media Today.

The Expanding World of Image Based Social Portals

For marketers there are ever expanding social media platforms to propagate a company’s messages. Currently, there is a lot of growth in the image based portals that are similar to Pinterest. For example, there are sites targeted: foodies, men, photographers, travelers, and so-on.

Food Gawker is a site that appeals to foodies. It’s designed very much like Pinterest – rows and columns of the various picture post. Users can post images for favorite food images. Food Gawker is part of the Gawker Verse which also has sites for: crafts, style/ fashionistas, and weddings.

Gentlemint is a site target men. As the site says a place to post “manly things.” Similar layout to Pinterest and Food Gawker.

For Photogs there is 500 px; it’s a site to post their work. It has a more whimsical layout and flow.

For globetrotters, there is Wander Fly. The Pinterest version of Tripadvisor. Slightly varied layout (a frame style) with a feed on the right and the images of the chosen destination filling out the rest of the page.

The upside for marketers is that these portals are targeted/geared towards specific groups or segments. Markets don’t need to be in all of these platforms to ones the reach their target audiences.

The Rising Tide of Content Marketing

Content marketing is definitely on the rise.

Well, what exactly is content marketing? Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. It also goes by terms like brand content, corporate media, etc.

According to a recent survey spending on content marketing rose to 43.9 billion in 2012. The more compelling number from that survey is that of the average overall marketing, advertising and communications budget, 39% of the funds were dedicated to content marketing. That is a significant about of budget allocation.

Content marketing comes in various forms: written, images, audio and video. The format can be case studies, infographics, research report, surveys, how-to’s and so-on. Content marketing is delivered via a variety of means and platforms: social media, email, blogs, newsletters, etc.

Here is a neat infographic on content marketing.

Marketers, advertisers and PR professionals need to understand and learn how to integrate content marketing into their campaigns or see their budget go to another organization or department that gets content marketing.

Also, content marketing falls into the sphere of native content/sponsored content/native advertising but that’s another blog post.