Is Pleasure from "Gamification" a new dimension for marketing?
I've heard the word "gamification" many times this year; it's a concept that is undoubtedly getting more and more attention within marketing. Admittedly, I've previously felt that this could be just another fad, relevant in some markets, that gamification isn't relevant to most companies.
My perspective until now was that gamification is simply about badges and points, great for start-ups and hot new tech companies like, Farmville, Zynga, Foursquare but not useful for everyday marketers. Having spotted some information around the demographics of social gamers this week, I was really surprised. With a little more research what appears is a whole new world with an awful lot of opportunity for the right brands.
According to research presented from Social Games Observer: "The study confirms the strong appeal…
Be mindful of the content marketing trap
A lot of my recent posts, and indeed a lot of what I read at the moment, are focussed around content creation and content marketing. I for one have been promoting it as the last bastion of marketing, an area where you can really and genuinely create the inbound effect and be valuable to your customers and users at the same time.
A colleague mentioned Doc Searls (of The Cluetrain Manifesto fame) during a conversation yesterday and it prompted me to remember that content alone is a dead end for real engagement and it's an easy trap to fall into. Indeed, much of the content and social media marketing that we see and hear about seem to have a very linear goal, to end with a Facebook Like or a click, or for the SEO focussed…
An interesting infographic reminding that consumers that typically engage with brands, albeit few of them, will not only buy more from that brand but also recommend to others - so how can you be more interesting and engaging and also remember to remain that way?
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A useful report from Exact Target who have not only researched what consumers value from digital marketers, but also applied sound thinking to suggest what to do next, a mini guide of sorts. We've taken our spin on the report below.
1. In a multi-channel world, consumers still value email
Though of course Exact Target would say that, their research with 1,500 consumers helps them to justify it. Even logically, email communications remain the easiest way to receive updates from brands whereas social channels are not (yet) achieving the same levels of reach for most of us. So what's the advice?
The most important advice here is to have a clear purpose for each channel - why should the consumer connect on Facebook, follow you on Twitter or subscribe for email…
The only marketing left
"Content is the only marketing left", suggests Seth Godin. I think that statement has never been truer, if marketing is about respecting and teaching your customers to believe in you over other brands. I'd say it is, these days. Seth has argued for years that this is the basis of new marketing, a wave of other thought leaders have backed this too - David Meerman-Scott and Gary Vaynerchuck being just two of them. Someone becomes a fan, follower, lead or customer because you help them feel better about their world, it makes more sense and they are able to make decisions about something.
So, where are the marketers?
Thinking how we can apply this to our businesses, I wonder where exactly have the marketers gone, then! All we hear these days is how to leverage communications channels like email or social media, or exploit SEO… as if there's a…
Encouraging focus on conversion optimisation has to be the way forward
For many companies, driving traffic to their websites is still the ultimate goal.It's the way they measure the strength of their brand, and the the effectiveness of their campaigns.
There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as we understand that traffic is not the holy grail and certainly not the only purpose of interactive marketing. All kinds of marketing can be used for all business goals, depending on context, and sheer visitor numbers really don’t mean anything by themselves. For transactional sites in retail, travel and financial service the conversion points are obvious and there is much more focus on conversion optimisation. But many, many businesses don't fall into this category and they're not tracking the many forms of conversion. All types of sites have many micro-conversions that could be measured, but often aren't.
However, the excessive focus on traffic in…
Our interview with Richard Dennys, Marketing Director of Qype on how marketing drives growth at Qype
Founded in 2006, Qype is Europe’s largest site for user-generated reviews and recommendations of places, events and experiences. Qype has 18 million unique users per month and over 2.2 million user-generated reviews covering business categories in more than 166,000 cities with locations worldwide.
Qype allows users to search for and read reviews about a restaurant, shop, service or experience and, with the Qype App, which has been downloaded over 1 million times, users can read and add reviews on their phone and use the application as a personal sat-nav to find places nearby. Available in seven different languages, Qype is a pan-European local review site able to offer its international users a multi-lingual platform.
We talked to Richard Dennys, marketing director of…
According to content curation experts Curata, 48% of marketers are using content curation as a part of their marketing strategy. Are you?
As advocates of content marketing, we enjoyed this brief, but intriguing report on the adoption of content curation, it certainly adds fuel to the fire that content marketing must be taken seriously by marketers, and we're seeing more companies doing it according to HiveFire, the company behind Curata.
In case you're not 100% sure what content curation is, our definition is that
Content curation is the process of finding, organising and sharing content online.
It's important that content curation and content origination are both part of a content marketing strategy - it has to be a mix.
So this blog post is content curation! The key benefit of content curation…
I've had several meetings over the last week that have prompted this post - hearing misconceptions that getting into social media is somehow free, fast and a return is to be somehow expected. I don't think so. It's not that social media marketing is hard, I feel it requires more joined up thinking and, like any investment, it needs fore-thought.
Social media is cheap (if not free). This is the biggest one, I feel. Social media isn't at all free - there are simple a vast number of free tools to help you, a big difference. This is the classic problem now, social media seems to be about the tools, so in conversation we talk about Facebook, You Tube, Flickr, Stumblupon, Twitter, Wordpress blogs etc - but that isn't social media marketing. Social media marketing is people, real people with real interactions, albeit digitally. So - you need a plan, a…
Online Customer Experience and Branding - an example of integrating the website and social presence
Today, with so many prospects and customers interacting with you online, I believe your brand really is greatly influenced by the Online Customer Experience you develop. But I think many don't see how a website can support and especially enhance their brand. In this posts I'll share an approach I use with businesses and I hope you can adapt this model for your own business or your clients - it's classic brand marketing.
Brand value mapping
The first stage is to understand where a brand is right now. I was recently discussing this approach with my class for marketing students in Derby. As a starting point we did a brand mapping activity for different companies. The areas highlighted in red are the key review areas for your online brand.
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