How to engage your customers? Social Media, UX, Content Markerting - all of the above please!

From time to time I am asked to present at conferences on topics on anything from the newspaper industry to digital to marketing and media. I like to think that I am asked because of the high quality of content and presentation style that enthrals my audiences, at least that’s what I tell myself. Next week I am hosting an event for the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce entitled “Engaging Customers - Using technology and social media to grow your business through content marketing and customer care”. Under this expansive title will see speakers from local agencies to national brands such as Dell and King of Shaves share experiences of how they have used social media and technology to grow their businesses and businesses they work for.

As I was creating my introduction presentation it struck me how different customer engagement is from 10 years ago and even 3 years ago and how much of that is down to speed of change. If you are eating at a national chain restaurant and have an issue how many people have not just complained to the local staff but also tweeted the chain to complain at the same time? How many people now use the airlines twitter feeds at airports as a more reliable source of information about delays and issues than the information boards?

Customer engagement however is much more than dealing with complaints. Engaging with your customers to create and build customer loyalty is far more important to brands in the longer term. Understanding that consumers now have more complicated needs that include the desire to be recognised, share opinions and form groups around those opinions and interest all facilitated and grown by the rise of social media brings new challenges to businesses both big and small.

Some businesses have reacted to this by engaging with customers via social media, others by making their online presence more user friendly and others offering value add in the form of useful content for their target consumers. The really clever businesses of course do all of these things within an integrated strategy targeted at delivering growth through customer engagement and retention.

Many companies are already doing this and some are going further by rewarding customers who actively engage with them. Tesco for example have recently run a trial where users could get double clubcard points when they liked, shared or bought products on its facebook page.  Likewise online retailer play.com is looking at how it can reward customers who promote it and its offers on social networks.

Of course to any business there is a difference in value between simply sharing or consuming some of your content related to your product offering or following or liking you compared with actually parting with hard cash. The effect though is the same, that customers can and want to engage with brands and now can do so in more complex and instant ways that businesses need to understand and react to.

That pace of change is not going to slow down and will increase as customers push harder and businesses look to exploit new ways to engage and build loyalty and ultimately growth. Sharing experiences on how to exploit these new trends will become even more important so I suspect next week will be busy!

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on twitter @timyoungman

Brand GB – capitalising on the Olympics and TeamGB

A strange thing has happened to me over the last two weeks. My eyes on repeated occasions have had grit magically appear in them and cause tears. This complaint started during the Olympic opening ceremony and was at its worse on Super Saturday but re-occurred often while watching all manner of sports. I of course am not alone and the whole country has been taken along on a journey that I don’t think anyone outside of Boris and Lord Coe imagined.

Now the flame is close to being extinguished, big questions will be asked of who has made the most of the games and how brand Great Britain can capitalise on the success of the games and a positive worldwide reaction.

The biggest winners are of course the athletes, in particular the medallists. Even those who didn’t win a medal will have increased visibility which will help in the search for sponsorship. For the big names though, big numbers are possible.

Jessica Ennis’ current earnings have been estimated at £1m from sponsorship from brands such as Aviva, P&G and Addidas. Her gold medal and increased media presence could see this rise to £2m over the next 2 years according to sponsorship experts.

If you just look at cycling, Victoria Pendleton already has various beauty deals and also a range of leisure bikes with Halfords. The other big name cyclists from Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and the upcoming Laura Trott, will be targeted as potential sponsorship opportunities. From Mo Farah, to the Brownlee brothers all could, and probably need to, seriously capitalise on their success to help support future efforts.

The big Olympic sponsors themselves will also be evaluating whether the millions spent delivered. Although defining ROI on this activity is difficult, ultimately shareholders expect some form of bottom line return from this level of activity. From McDonalds to Cadbury and BP, all will be reviewing how they performed and what value it delivered.

But what about Brand GB, will we be able to emulate the commercial success of the Sydney games? There have been plenty of stories about the supposed ghost town of central London. This changed and even Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber has had to go on record and apologise for doom mongering and happily admit that bookings were up in his theatres. All of this is short term gain; the real money will come from long-term investment from overseas and export of product and expertise.

So while the Olympics have been running, a number of investment drives have also occurred. A British Business Embassy has been set up during the Olympics at Lancaster house to showcase British business with an aim to boost the economy by £1bn. Activities include investment conferences with speakers of the likes of Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, and Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design head. Engineering tours of the Olympic Park have also been popular especially with Chinese representatives.

To our athletes the Olympics is a chance to fulfil a lifetimes dream and years of dedicated hard work. To some, medal success will bring personal wealth from sponsors keen to piggyback their new found adulation. To Great Britain this really has been the chance to put Brand GB in the spotlight and all that we can achieve. The world has been watching. I hope they liked what they saw.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on Twitter @timyoungman

Don’t mess with the Olympic brand police!

By the time you read this the Olympics will have started. Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening will have happened. The world will have joined the 60,000 who witnessed the dress rehearsal mainly in awe according to twitter feedback. Many may have found the 24 dedicated BBC Olympic channels followed by the same again in HD making sure we don’t miss anything even if we want to.

My favourite description of the Olympics is that every four years the world's greatest advertisers get together and compete, and there also happens to be a sporting event at the same time. Now before anyone starts, as an individual I am an Olympic fan. I look forward to witnessing some of the superhuman feats I expect we will see in this country.

My issue is not with the event, it is also not with how it is sponsored. Lets be realistic, this thing costs a lot of money and even King Midas would run out of household furniture to touch to fund a modern Olympics. My issue is with the extensive actions the Olympics “brand police” are taking to protect sponsors exclusivity rights.

The first sight of this was in 2007 when a butcher in Tamworth, where the Olympic sailing will be held, was told to remove a sign showing sausages in the shape of the Olympic rings. That’s right, 5 whole years before the games started. As the games get closer this is getting worse. In Plymouth a café was told to remove its “flaming torch breakfast baguette” off the menu. In Stoke on Trent one florist had to remove an Olympic rings window display, made of tissue paper, or risk a £20,000 fine.

Evan Davies interviewing Lord Coe on Radio 4 asked him if he would be allowed to turn up in a Pepsi t-shirt. Lord Coe’s response? "No, you probably wouldn't be walking in with a Pepsi T-shirt because Coca-Cola are our sponsors and they have put millions of pounds into this project but also millions of pounds into grassroots sport. It is important to protect those sponsors” A Locog spokesman later went into PR retreat stating that you could wear one but if there seemed to be an “ambush marketing” activity with lots of people turning up then they would be stopped which is fair enough.

It was an Englishman, Michael Payne, former free style skier and the International Olympic Committee’s first marketing director who created the Olympic Partner programme. It was his savvy dealings and ideas that turned an almost bankrupt movement into the multi million pound operation it is today through long term big money sponsorships and TV deals. Unsurprisingly he now works for Formula One. However even he, in an interview in the Independent Newspaper, accused Locog and the IOC of taking the brand protection too far and that they may even create a backlash from sponsors worried about negative publicity.

However this will all now be forgotten for the next three weeks and the focus will rightly be on the athletes as they chase glory. I hope though that the lessons will be learnt and although the big sponsors are required, the draconian protection of their sponsorship is not.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on Twitter @timyoungman

Barclays, Natwest and the banking confidence crisis – PR disaster or PR opportunity?

I am going to start this column with a quote: “We need to recognise that you’ve got to solve it from the top down. If the leaders have the collective will to recognise that they have a reputational problem to solve, then its more likely to produce the right answer” That was Marcus Agius the then Chairman of Barclays Bank speaking just last October.

Consumer confidence in the banking sector is rock bottom. NatWest’s recent IT meltdown was followed quickly by Barclays £290m fine for fixing the libor rates leading its chairman and CEO to go. Barclays YouGov Brand Index score, a survey which measures the average of how customers rate the brand in terms of impression, quality, value and reputation slumped from -0.8 to -24.2 the day after the fine. Clearly it and other banks have a lot of work to do to repair their collective reputations in the eyes of the general consumer. The question of how to do this is probably high on the lips of the senior management team and especially the marketing heads. So for a professional opinion I asked two leading local PR agencies for their view.

Rachael Paddick is from Jungle PR and is Chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in East Anglia. Rachael comments:

“Barclays has already bolstered its PR resource (why wait for crisis point before taking the influential power of communications seriously?) and the first job will be to refocus its communications strategy. Serious questions need to be answered - were internal communications to blame? What sort of organisation does it want to be?”

“The bank needs to engage with its customers on an honest and human level; after all, ‘sorry, we’re working on it’ is better than ‘no comment’. Values, ethics and codes of conduct need to be scrutinised, adhered to and then reflected across all communications. Restoring faith and showing a commitment to positive, ongoing change is the key.  And on the upside? If handled correctly this could be an opportunity for Barclays to improve perceptions of the banking industry as a whole, not just for itself.”

Liz Cooper, Head of PR at OneAgency in Norwich agreed adding:

“First and foremost, we’d be advising Barclays to put a revised crisis comms plan in place that considers all the mistakes made. Research into their reputation with their audiences will dictate messaging and tone going forward, both completely misread by the bank first time round.”

“Particular attention should be paid to timings. In a social world, which saw the news in 49 percent of twitter feeds by lunchtime on the day the news leaked, prevarication is not an option. You can’t be too proud to learn from your mistakes and an improved comms plan will provide the basis for better PR – for when a similar situation arises.” 

Public relations is often an undervalued channel, like many other undervalued marketing disciplines such as market research, with many dismissing it as simply writing the odd press release and hoping for a few column inches.  PR expertise though will now be at the forefront of the banks attempts to re-gain consumer confidence. Unfortunately it often takes a crisis for many business owners to recognise the value of such companies and their work.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant - follow him on Twitter @timyoungman   

Socks - check, pants - check, mortgage - check – The M&S bank, a brand extension too far?

You have picked up your new pants, found a nice pair of stripy socks and might even have bought a treat from the food section. Next would be paying your mortgage then. Yes, this is the new world for M&S customers after its announcement that it is launching 50 in-store banking branches over the next two years. So why is M&S, the bastion of the British high street, launching a bank? Well it’s a simple case of brand extension.

A brand extension is as it sounds, when a brand famous for one thing extends into another area, either product or service, to grow. M&S are another in a long list of companies and brands to do this. I can still remember when supermarkets used to just sell food, but my children will grow up thinking that Tesco’s has always sold toys, and spades and televisions and books. They will think nothing of a Tesco branded mobile phone service or credit card.

Brand extensions can be a good way to grow your business. If you are well known for one thing you may be able to take your brand equity, whatever you are known for to your customer base, and apply that to a new market and even take existing customers on that journey with you. Virgin started selling records and then took its reputation for customer service and innovation and moved into everything from air travel to banking. This though does not always work. You may remember Virgin Cola but you will struggle to buy a bottle today.

Brand extensions work best if they are linked to your current product or service. Also if you can take existing customers with you and use your brand equity in that market. Finally it helps if the competition in the market you are looking at are not dominant as Virgin found when they thought it was a good idea to try and take on Coca Cola and Pepsi.

In the case of M&S they know that their competitors are not dominant. A recent YouGov survey showed that 63% of consumers say that they cannot trust any bank and 57% not trusting any building society. M&S also has massive trust and associations with quality and service. It also has a loyal customer base of around 21 million shoppers. They also already have financial products from M&S money (owned by HSBC) such as savings, credit cards and loans but no physical presence for that brand.  So re-branding M&S Money to M&S Bank and extending to current accounts and mortgages with in-store physical counters is not that much of a stretch.

The new offering will be owned by HSBC but will operate as a profit share venture. No doubt both parties will hope that more of M&S loyal customers will use its new service and existing M&S money customers will take other products in its portfolio.  Whatever the result they certainly have followed the golden rules of brand extensions and with the current distrust of the banking system, have a chance of taking a share of a £10 billion market.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on twitter @timyoungman

Email marketing - is it unfairly unfashionable?

Fashionable is an interesting word. You can have fashionable clothes, fashionable hair, even fashionable food. Anything can be fashionable and if certain influencers or the media tell us so we believe it. By definition therefore when something becomes fashionable something else becomes unfashionable. So for every pair of skinny jeans there is a pair with an elasticated waistband. For every tight haircut there is a mullet and for every locally sourced, organic gastro pub meal there is boil in the bag curry.

This pace of what is shiny and new and what is old and dusty is far worse in the digital world driven by the pace of technology. So your iPad1 is already old and useless compared with the new iPad. Likewise if you compare the column inches and web pages dedicated to the best practice for social media you would think that there is no other way to interact with consumers. In fact as a commentator and professional it often feels that unless you spend your time banging on about the latest trend you too will be viewed as unfashionable and out of date.

So I am going to put my mullet on and stand up for email, a marketing tool that many now view as run of the mill. 10 years ago email marketing was the sexy young thing in a marketeers toolbox. It was shrouded in mystery and some people made a lot of money telling others how to do it. Over time however new things arrive and email marketing moved from being shiny to becoming a stalwart of peoples marketing activities simply because done well it delivers.

A recent report from the Direct Marketing Association showed that half of the respondents stated that email marketing was driving 30% or more of their total revenues. So almost a third of revenues from an activity that is often neglected, and in some firms given to a junior while others try to fathom out how to get a return from their new Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Those companies, from large corporates to local restaurants that do get it, realise the benefits. They know that they can prove the return on investment in both time and money. They understand that compared to other channels it is cheap and you can truly build brand loyalty through regular contact if done well, something that all Social Media tries to do. Compared with Social Media it is also highly targeted, you can personalise your emails to named individuals and send highly tailored messages. Anything from solutions or products you know interest them such as a Friday night offer for a deal on a curry to announcing a new product line.

There are lots of shiny new toys out there and there are good reasons why you should pick them up and play with them to see how they work. However you also shouldn’t be afraid to put on your mullet and not forget those older toys that deliver results time and time again and give them the time, effort and attention they deserve and enjoy the returns that will give you.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on Twitter @timyoungman

What’s in a name? The re-brand dilemma - Yellow Pages, Yell.com or Hibu?

Nothing causes more comment and amusement than when a business decides to re-brand itself. The announcement by Yellow Pages that it is re-branding all its digital products worldwide to Hibu has achieved just that.

Now there is a clear difference between re-branding and re-positioning. Re-positioning is when a business tries to change what it, or its brands, stands for in the minds of its customers. Re-branding though is a change of position and also identity and is one of the most expensive and difficult things a business can do. Local examples of this are the re-branding of Norwich Union to Aviva versus the re-positioning of Bernard Matthews.

When Norwich Union wanted brand uniformity across the world it re-branded its entire business to Aviva. The universal use of “Aviva”, recognised now as a global group with a common brand, is testament to what Aviva achieved and the tactics it used to get there.

Bernard Matthews is still on the long journey of re-positioning themselves following a range of PR nightmares starting with Jamie Oliver’s Turkey Twizzler outburst in 2005,. Its actions over the years, changing to Bernard Matthews Farms and signing Marco Pierre White show that this is possible but can take time to change public perception back to being known for product quality and a healthier image.

Brands certainly should evolve over time or risk being overtaken by competition. Good brand managers know this but also understand that they are just custodians of brands that often existed before them and will do after them, our newspapers brands have taught me that.

For every Aviva though, with good reasons to take the difficult route, there are many more examples like the Royal Mail. It lasted 16 months being called Consignia before being forced to change back to the old name wasting millions in the process.

Yellow Pages is a big business, big enough to post an annual loss of £1.4billion with debts of £2.2billion. It is not just the yellow book but an international business who grew through acquisition (the massive loss caused by a £1.59 billion write down of businesses in the UK, US, Spain, China and Peru).

The change in Yell’s fortunes has, in the main, been caused by the impact of the internet. It is no longer the go-to place for directory listings and despite extensive investment in its online offerings, competition has hit it hard. It has tried to diversify, for example it now builds websites for its advertisers, building 337,000 for its clients worldwide in 2011 alone, but clearly this is not enough.

So to break with the past and try to revitalise its digital offerings, Yell is re-branding all its digital products across all countries, including yell.com in the UK, to “Hibu”, pronounced high boo. Products that have spent money and effort building up brand reputations and awareness are going to be changed. Of course having one brand across all your international markets and the consistency and savings it can bring can make sense, see Aviva for that.

But this is a very treacherous and difficult road to take with few making a successful change. Whether this works, only time will tell, something Yell is short on. Certainly this smacks of last throw of the dice rather than thought out strategy in good times. I hope they learn lessons from those who have done it well as well as those who now regret.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant - follow on twitter @timyoungman