Today is the second day of the Fusion Marketing Experience event here in Antwerp. Yesterday (of which you can find the live report with photos here) was great: the presentations were of high level quality and the speakers were able to captivate the audience. General recurring theme included humans, clients and customers: machine-centric, talking about yourself and talking about features have run their course.
Presenter Jim Lenskold at left, with event moderator Gianfranco Cuzziol at right
We will be starting at 9:45 with Bryan Eisenberg, who will present ‘Using Google to lift your conversion‘.
9:39 – Bryan Eisenberg
Bryan will start his presentation in a few minutes: everyone is getting ready take it all in.
The average PPC account is disastrous: badly managed (or not at all), no converting landing pages. Testing is done too little when it comes to AdWords: 61% do less than 5 tests per month.
Which is easier to change: an ad or a landing page? The ad of course, just change a few words. Testing ads can impact conversion quite a bit.
Two options on perfecting the pitch: conversions per ad impressions (cpi), and identify and deploy better messaging. It’s important to understand the prospect’s intent. Modeling a persona will help in building the ads.
Write an ad: what will be the punch line? What will drive people to click? What will be the body lines, the headline and the url?
Know your audience appeal: talk their language. What is appealing to searcher psychology?
Bryan shows examples from Google AdWords and Facebook ads. Audience is split between choices a lot. Small changes in words can mean a lift in CTR of 200% or more!
Making ads that involve the specific keywords that people use will make you more succesful with AdWords and Facebook Ads. Be sure to identify your intended audience, and follow up with a good landing page.
Bryan posts 10 ad elements to test:
Bryan goes on to segmentation on landing pages. The landing page should be a logical follow up to an ad, that impacts conversion rates.
Bryan finishes his presentation with answering a question about geographical location and its impact on ad conversion. Bryan notes that it’s very important: there are different ways of words for the same type of products and cultures define it differently. Spanish and Italian cultures are more emotional for instance.
Second question is about how to appeal to many types of people. Bryan notes the importance of testing: keep testing and keep refreshing ads.
10:25 – Jim Lenskold
Bryan has finished, up next is Jim Lenskold with ‘Lead Measurement, Management & ROI: from basic to advanced.
Jim puts out the following question: what profits can be generated with 10% more budget? The #1 answer is that people don’t know. They are used to getting the question of handling 10% less budget.
The lead process can be improved by increasing sales conversion % and increasing value per sale. Client retention, brand awareness, educating on solutions, differentation will all help in achieving those goals.
Another important factor is tracking results: know the cost of all types of campaigns and learn about engagement and reach. Cost per engagement should be as low as possible, but higher costs can deliver better ROI in the end. A higher close rate and profit per sale can be good reasons to invest more in a bigger campaign, like a multi-channel nurturing program.
Jim Brings up a few ROI scenarios and formula calculations: notes that it’s important to measure across the line: marketing, sales, follow up sales and revenue. ROI going down can be caused by several reasons.
10:42
Identifying those reasons are important: it might be marketing or sales not doing their job right in general, but sometimes it’s the sales team not even calling the leads.
Targeting helps a lot with ROI: applying the right targeting tactics can make marketing campaigns more efficient and effective, and have a company earn more because a client will buy more expensive products because of their specific needs. It requires more effort, time and money from the company, but will eventually bring in more revenue in the end.
One target tactic is screening: getting info out of leads to apply better sales, close deals faster and/or bringing in higher revenue deals.
Marketing is multi-contact: series of marketing contacts vary for each converted lead or sale. Tracking the path of all leads can bring in a wealth of knowledge to improve the lead process. True incremental measurement, and not just one marketing touch point, is very important: this way you can find out which lead paths are the most succesful, and the easiest to set up.
Shared attribution of credit to marketing touch points will be better at showing involvement into the end result.
10:55
What does marketing do to find out how a sale was closed? If marketing would change aspects of the marketing campaigns, how would that change sales, conversions?
Measuring incremental sales by tactic (including mass media, sales contacts and more) will bring out the best and the worst of marketing tactics. Which touch points were (very) successful, which weren’t?
Correctly detecting media contribution is difficult, because all the data should be collected in a complete manner. Otherwise it’s very hard to see how marketing efforts have contributed to sales.
Jim finishes up noting that objectives and strategy should guide measurements. What to track and how to track: know how effective each touch point is, what its impact is on sales. The lead process should be completely thought out beforehand, including all possible lead paths.
Case studies:
Incremental lift
- Airport billboard advertising as primary sales driver (via modeling)
- Direct marketing effectiveness (via trend + market test validation)
- Advertising saturation levels identified
Customer value driver
- Ongoing purchaser conversion (market test w/ retention analysis)
Diagnostic Measures
- lead quality decline (via trend analysis or basic metrics)
- Late stage funnel leakage (via ehtnographic research)
11:05
Prove & Improve ROI
Why measure lead gen marketing?
- Show ability to drive impact beyond lead quantity
- Support higher cost initiatives for content / nurturing
- Deliver better resuts
- Identify higher performing alternatives
- Maintain and build marketing credibility
After the coffee break, Lee Odden is up at around 11:30 with ‘Setting up a winning customer-centric content marketing strategy’.
Lee Odden presenting at 2nd day of Fusion Marketing Experience
11:46 – Lee Odden
Lee Odden has started his presentation. As an example he shows a new company which is a B2B marketing saas. He proved them with questions like who is the customer, what do they care about, what formats do they prefer, what motivates them to act.
More content isn’t necessarily better: better quality content counts!
Lee brings up the hub-and-spoke model he spoke about yesterday: a deep collection of topic-specific content. Anything that your company wants to be known for, should be part of the hub.
Outposts are for developing connections, engaging prospects, customers, media, candidates. Also for publishing and promoting content.
Content marketing simplified: aligning customer and brand objectives through online content. Great content isn’t great until it’s discovered, consumed and shared! If you have great content, set it free. Search and blogs can be the ultimate content release tools.
Content should always be optimized: if it has a purpose, it has an audience. If it can be searched, it can be optimized.
There’s a big variation of content types, but priorities are important: not everything should (and can) be optimized. Optimize what you can, what will have the most impact.
Storytelling is important for content marketing: why should people buy your content? Customer focused optimization: people make decisions based on emotion, not logic. Optimize for their emotions. The cycle: Awareness, interest, consideration, purchase.
12:02
Consumer personas can help in developing goals: what are their characteristics? Provide content that fits their needs and interests.
A longer buying cycle could be awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, retention, advocacy. Having content optimized for all phases of the cycle (which is not linear) can help create brand and/or product awareness and grab a new audience’s attention.
There’s no tool dedicated to research social topics. However, Radian6 can be used to have some insight into brand status on social media, the positive and negative comments.
Thought leader interviews can be a great way to generate unique content, and work their ego. It can help in providing insight into your industry and related topics, use target keywords in the questions used in the interview. If the interview is good, people will discover, consumer and share it.
Preparing for repurposing content (not duplicating!) is important in the long run. Don’t do SEO for search engines, optimize for people!
12:16
Being specific is important for search engine results: it can result in higher quality traffic and better ranking. Page titles, categories, tags everything counts towards optimization.
Social object SEO: Process
- Identify topic/story
- research search & social keywords
- create an optimized social content campaign
- provide SEOm SMO guidelines to social teams
- promote via social channels, build links
- monitor social references, search traffic & KPIs
- benchmark & dashboard reporting
Video can demonstrate how a product works: it can help a lot in the awareness phase of the buying cycle. Think about keywords when creating a script for a video. Take screenshots of that video (the important parts): use those images including the transcript of the video, and make it into a blog post.
Webpages should have unique urls for store location / geographical searches, to provide good results. A store locator page won’t fit the bill.
What would your hub look like? The central repository, your company website for instance, should provide social sharing options and easy content access.
Social KPIs should be both social SEO KPIs as well as business outcomes. Both fans and revenue, links and increased order quantity and frequency.
Takeaways:
1) Research customer segments – what do they care about?
2) Align brand & customer needs – develop an approach to storytelling.
3) Monitor, refine, repeat – implement ongoing monitor for progress and identify ongoing optimization.
Lee finishes his presentation noting that new content works better than reworked content.
13:34 – Jamie Notter
Soon Jamie Notter will start with ‘The impact of the social consumer: changing your organization from the inside out’.
Jamie Notter presenting at 2nd day of Fusion Marketing Experience
Jamie looks back at the 4 human principles he described yesterday: open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous.
Behavioural change is at the root of organizational change, otherwise it can’t be done. Next to behaviour is the process and the company culture. Culture needs to be changed to to become a humanized organization.
Jamie returns to the social media hurdles he discussed yesterday: how can we in marketing do a job of creating a trustworthy, human organization. People hit roadblocks when doing social media because of company culture.
Different departments doing social media need to work together: a social media process that is aligned will prevent duplication of effort.
Why did one department create their own Facebook page? Because they don’t trust marketing. That department feels it knows the customer better. Truth is super-important in organizations: it can help in finding and solving roadblocks in processes and departments.
Tell me why you don’t like working with other departments? If you’ve never asked that question, start doing it. It can give new insights and improve the organization internally.
Trustworthy orgs need transparency and truth, they should be embraced and built into all processes – this way the organization can be more human.
A lot of organizations suck at collaboration: however it is necessary to become generative, to create.
Silo wars will involve fighting over control by several departments – people’s selfishness will make them not want to work together. Creating lateral collaberative networks will let people work across silos, giving colleagues more insight and teamwork feeling.
If strategy is clear, departments will work together better: this is too frequently missing in social media. People need to take ownership for their tasks, feel responsible: they will see the big picture better towards working to fulfill the strategy.
14:08
First way to build trust is to have people get together and talk. Get the conversation going, share information. Example: senior people vs junior people in an organization.
How to get them talking? Get started with incentives, simple reasons.
The second way to build trust is with experiments. Create containers to have people take risks, experiment. The marketing department should be a good start: they’re used to experimentation when it comes to marketing efforts: why not inside the company?
People aren’t themselves in orgs because they’re scared they’ll be judged by others. Building trust helps them be themselves, be more human.
You need cognitive diversity to grow innovation: if everyone thinks the same, the company and products can not be moved forward.
Jamie suggests the book Switch by Chip Heath, how to change things when change is hard. Change: direct the rider of the elephant – clarity is needed, but few organizations do it well. Step 2 is motivating the elephant: what motivates the elephant, focus on emotions.
Step 3 is about shaping the path: facilitate. Make it easier to get change done. Don’t define the road: it might be sufficient to plant the trees in a certain pattern/way.
Jamie has finished, the breakout sessions are starting. We have selected the master class: Content Marketing Success by AJ Huisman.
14:35 – AJ Huisman
AJ Huisman presenting at Fusion Marketing Experience
Show value upfront what engages prospects and existing clients. Don’t just say you’re amazing and stop shouting: be great!
Start with the correct mindset. To get content well done, be and think like a journalist. What will engage your audience?
What’s the recipe for great content?
- Credibility
- Added value
- Design
- Personality
- Entertainment
- Engagement
Start with a solid base of credibility: who are you, what do you do, what do clients think of you, show proofpoints like testimonials.
Next up is putting in value: answer questions, show in-depth knowledge. Turn a (prospective) client’s question or issue into content that excites, activates.
Third is adding design: visually atractiveness, tone of voice, no industry jargon, speak your clients’ language, not your own. Infographics when designed and executed well can provide information in an attractive way.
“Don’t just build a product. Build a story”.
Fourth: add personality. It helps people identify with the message, with a product, with your company. Make it human. Being authentic, real, blunt can help connect to the client.
Fifth: mix in some entertainment. B2B marketing does not mean boring boring, it can be fun and engaging.
Sixth: finalize it with engagement: modern content marketing is about engaging the audience.
Challenges: Time, work, customers, amount to produce, metrics involved.
8 steps to good content strategy:
1) use market research, permanently. No guessing, no 45 minute questionnaires, focus on top 3 business issues.
2) Look for hidden content gems. Articles, editorial positions, blog contributions, client newsletters, workshops, speaking engagements and training courses (internal & external)
3) Identify gaps in content and fix them.
4) Get the right people for the content team.
5) Begin with the end in mind.
6) Start, ty, test, measure, tweak, learn, repeat
7) Get help, hire externals, talk with clients, let them talk among themselves.
be bold, be original, be different, be winning.
Finishing up: Do or do not, there is no try! – Star Wars quote by AJ.
Coffee break now, another breakout session next.
We are joining the next session: social media, PR and crisis/reputation management.
15:35 Olivier Blanchard
Olivier starts with a story about an interview at a company which wanted him as a PR person – but during the interview they said he was the wrong guy, as they checked his blog. He noted that consumers control the message these days, PR isn’t anymore.
Message credibility has changed: there are now several sources of information for people. Don’t just put out a press release anymore: any type of content needs value. Furthermore, a message has to be adapted to specific channels and audiences. The message has to be credible as well: the dialogue depends on it.
Three fundamental changes in PR: velocity, control, new skills. Three roles of PR: create awareness for something. Manage a reputation. Manage crises lastly.
People are going to expect to interact with an event, product or brand. Who creates the buzz, who handles the events? This has changed for PR, they need to work together with other departments now, no autopilot anymore.
PR is separate of anything else, often even outside a company. We can happily say goodbye to silos: it doesn’t work (anymore).
New PR tasks include understanding community management, working across silos ‘live’ with customer service, event management, marketing and product management. Next to that there’s channel management and monitoring. Lastly active brand advocacy are part of these new PR tasks.
15:56
Also, blasting content across channels won’t work. PR needs to develop relationships with SME (subject matter epert) bloggers, editor, journalists and the community. PR pros are now part of the brand, they must be relevant and their identity matters.
Olivier now shows a video of a car company (Ford) promoting new tech. When they did the video, they did a market test to test people’s perceptions. The cars were without logos, which made people be impressed. After people found out it was Ford, perception dropped from the positive point.
Scott Monty is Ford’s head of social media. A classically trained PR guy who now goes out and connects with audiences. It sheds light on a new skillset: constant monitoring of conversations.
Star Wars reference by Olivier here (it’s international Star Wars day).
Companies need constant focus on eliminating dissonance, by adjusting the message and/or adjusting the product. If this is not done, you will lose credibility.
Three areas of conversation monitoring: share of conversation, shifts in mentions, shifts in sentiment. Report this to the brand managers. Negative mentions need to be addressed quickly and adequatly.
This no longer happens month to month: brand discussions happen in real time.
How to do crisis management? Don’t hire assholes, hire agile minds. Hire people who can think and act quickly. Don’t hire the private, hire the commando who can improvise.
Have a plan and test, update and train everyone to know the plan.
Don’t wait: act on the crisis (remember the plan?). Own the communications: be primary source of information, inform public often and be clear and factual. Do not spin, ever: your credibility is paramount.
Example of accidental USA Red Cross drunk tweet by employee. She wasn’t fired, it was treated with humor, showing we are all human.
Do not take the bait from haters. Every criticism is an opportunity for dialog. Invite that dialogue. Create spaces for it, and then change what you need to change.
Leverage your community: they can help you, they want to help you, give them that opportunity. – You have a community, right?
Don’t bury the crisis: see it through, curate it, write the final chapter, close the loop. Focus on lessons learned, and establish preventive measures.
Olivier finishes up.
16:36 Kristin Zhivago
Kristin is now presenting the last session.
Kristin Zhivago presenting at the 2nd day of Fusion Marketing Experience
The buyer’s ways are changing, but company’s ways haven’t changed yet. The customer community is now different.
Kristin shows a video of Michael, her autistic brother showing unconditional love to his family on his 50th birthday.
Customers are in a one-way communication hell: social media is changing that. They can talk to each other about problems.
What’s the problem?
- Marketing is broken
- Sales was sort of working
- Now it’s broken too
- Customers don’t need us anymore
What’s the answer?
- Marketers = become the customer advocate, protector, authority. That’s the way to become relevant to the customer.
Customers don’t want to be converted, targeted, segmented. They are human beings. Marketing and sales language is rude.
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Tnx all for a great time!
