Guerilla Marketing campaign

In a world where people have become almost completely de-sensitised to advertising in any traditional sense of the word, trying to infiltrate people's consciousness is an increasingly impossible task. Smart advertisers recognised that the way to combat this apathy was to get their message into places where people wouldn't expect to find them, making them impossible to ignore. This practice has become known as 'Guerilla' Marketing.

Guerilla Marketing is all about surprising people, breaking their concentration and making them have an unexpected and emotional reaction.

Pioneered in 1984 by Jay Conrad Levinson, Guerilla Marketing was originally intended to establish a new tactic for small companies to keep up with the big players. Since then even organisations like Nestle, BMW and Unilever have learned to appreciate the advantages of a well developed Guerilla Marketing campaign.

Enough of the theory; here are some of our favourite examples of Guerilla Marketing campaigns:

If you think the first image simply shows a woman carrying a crate of beer, you have been taken in by a successful Guerilla campaign! This crate, looking like it only weighs half a pound, is a shopping bag in disguise.

This should make you smile. Hundreds of people appear to be coming out of a Mini Cooper, when in reality it is a subway exit. Well done, BMW!

Vacuum cleaner producer Miele is proud that their products suck :-)

Mr Clean puts other zebra crossings to shame...

As you can see, Guerilla Marketing campaigns include giveaways so that on closer inspection people realise that they are being advertised to, but hopefully the pay-off in terms of entertainment means they don't mind. The key is to add something unexpected and exciting to a space, not consume it with a corporate and boring advertising message.
Now let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Here are 5 golden rules, which you should keep in mind when creating your own Guerrilla Marketing campaign:

1. Don't forget to define your goals
Although Guerilla Marketing is all about creativity and the element of surprise, it still needs to be planed thoroughly. You still need to know what to do, where to do it and what you want from it.

2. Know your audience
Guerilla Marketing is effective because it is provocative. This is why it can bypass the 'corporate' constraints of traditional advertising. However, you also have to carefully consider your audience's sense of humour, you want to be memorable but not offensive.

3. Provocative or offensive?

This carries on from the above point. Prompting a positive emotion is what any advertiser wants, but in the case of guerrilla marketing you don't have to focus on humour. Appealing to people's sympathetic emotions can be just as effective.

However, you do have to bear in mind that there is a very fine line between being emotive and being crude. This is a good example of a campaign that manages to straddle the line well:

4. Be brief
A Guerilla campaign should appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as quickly. The mysterious and temporary nature adds to the effectiveness. In a nutshell, don't let the joke get old.

5. Do your research
Don't be caught out by any unforeseen issues:

• Permissions: You're not Banksy. Contact the responsible authorities and make sure you have got all permissions you need.
• Law: Know and obey the law. There are some crazy rules out there which you need to be aware of. For example, in Switzerland you are not allowed to dance on bank holidays. In Maine, USA it is forbidden to display Christmas decorations after 14th of January. And in Illinois, USA it is illegal to whistle in public on Sundays. Those are just some of millions of unbelievable laws that might constrain you and your work.
• Protests: Check the animal and eco friendliness of your campaign.

All in all, everybody enjoys a little surprise, a thought-provoking impulse or a reason to smile in his/her everyday life. Guerilla Marketing can turn ordinary and mundane activities, like watching people leaving a subway station, into entertaining events. Advertising can be fun for everybody, who'd have thunk?

Congratulations! You have just convinced a potential customer to click through from your HTML Email, Google Ad, Banner, Social Network message (the list goes on) you have their attention and they are ready to read, buy or subscribe. So where next?

Sadly in many cases marketers are happy to link hot leads like this through to their home or product page in the hope the user will work it out for themselves. Where is the context? Is this what the user was expecting to see? Is the language consistent? Is that special offer you mentioned clearly visible? Probably not. Welcome to the world of landing pages.

Whilst good landing pages adhere to the core principles of user centred design such as strong usability, clear information layout and simple navigation they are also single minded in their push to convert, not generally inform, the user.

Here are a few golden rules:

Be consistent
It is really crucial to maintain a consistent tone of voice from the source of the click through. You could even consider having the same headline on your landing page as your upstream ad. Sure, it's repetition, but at least the user feels like they are in the right place.

If users are landing from a wide variety of sources then you should probably segment the messaging rather than trying to please everyone with boring catch all copy. The same rules should also be applied to visuals if relevant.

Grab attention and don't waffle
Keep the page to a single point and use minimal text to explain it. Then ask yourself "Does my copy answer immediate, obvious questions or concerns?"

Remove unnecessary navigation and keep refining the content as much a you can. Every item on the page needs to justify its existence. If you want to quickly test your page use the '5 second rule'. Show the page to someone fresh for 5 seconds and then ask them to explain what it was all about. If they can't or mention too many differing messages get back to the drawing board!

If you need a bit more help along the sales process and words, visuals and competitive pricing are not enough then sometimes giving away a limited free account, trial or sample can be effective conversion aids.

Learn to point
It is still quite important to keep your primary call to action (CTA) above the fold (no vertical scrolling) or to repeat the CTA throughout the page if it must be long. Arrows or oversized buttons are the usual visual metaphors for action online. Arrows can also be useful for breaking out of the standard grid lines of your design which will inevitably attract the eye.

If your design features people, face them in the direction of your CTA although resist the urge to be cheesy, authenticity is important.

Colour needs to be considered on CTAs. Red can evoke a strong emotional response although it does also represent "stop". Orange equates to an enthusiastic get-it-done attitude whilst blue is the default web colour for a link.

Use video!
Users are far more likely to watch a well crafted short video or screencast than read a long piece of text.

Only ask for the information you really need
As handy as it would be to know the age, gender and occupation of the user it is not always essential. The more you ask for, the less you will get. If you really do need to know personal information then turn it into a unique selling point e.g. "Tell us your birthday and we will send you a little present on the big day!"

Build trust
If the user clicking through is not already familiar with your brand then official accreditation or affiliation to organisational bodies, logos of well known brands you are partnered with or working for and testimonials (preferably not anonymous!) will support you in your endeavours to convert.

Don't stop the conversation!
Thank you pages are so often overlooked but why should we stop there? This is the ideal place to offer further incentives such as free ebook download or links to more information. A surprise bonus will leave the user feeling very good about the experience.

Likewise you have just converted your lead - well done! They are probably feeling at their most in love with your message at this point so add some social sharing functions here so they can tell their own community about this great product or service and help spread the word for you.

Track your results properly
If you can track the user journey you give yourself a fighting chance of learning from your mistakes as well as knowing what your conversion rate, bounce/abandonment rate and form completion rates are. How else can you tell if the campaign was worth while?

If you would like more information on tracking have a read of our blog article "Five Google Analytics tips you need to know"

I hope you have found this useful and please do leave any comments or other tips below. Also, I could not have written this article without some of the fantastic advice on http://unbounce.com/blog/

There should be no need to introduce you to Google Analytics, the most widely used web analytics application. The tool is powerful and FREE so it isn't hard to see why it is so popular. However, only a small percentage of users fully harness it's potential.

Google is constantly refining and adding new features to it's analytics service. Although you need to be a bit exploratory if you are going to make the most out of the 85 Google Analytics reports available. Lurking beneath the main dashboard Google Analytics gives you the necessary tools to analyse all of your website's data. Here are 5 under-used Google Analytics features you need to know.

1. Exclude internal traffic

Internal traffic to your site can skew your Google Analytics report. If you want to get a better picture of the traffic coming to your site, it is advised to filter out your internal traffic. Google Analytics allows you to set up a filter to easily exclude your own visits from the analytics results.

• On your Google Analytics dashboard, click on the Analytics Settings link.
  
  
• Then click on the Filter Manager link.
  
  
• The Filter Manager page will show you all existing filters for your site. Create a new one by clicking on the Add Filter link.
  
  
• In the new filter window:
  
  Enter the name of your new filter (ie: internal traffic)
  
  "Filter type" - tick the radio button "predefined filter"
  
  We want to exclude traffic from your IP address, so you will need to select "Exclude," "traffic from the IP addresses," and "that are equal to" in the three dropdowns.
  
  Enter your IP address (if you don't know your IP address, simply click on this link)
  
  Select which websites you want to filter by clicking on the appropriate website profile(s) and then clicking "Add"
  
  Finally, click "Save Changes"

Your Google Analytics report should now exclude your own traffic and you can get more accurate tracking data.

2. Set up goals and funnels tracking
(probably the most important tracking feature to set up)

Google describes a goal as a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download. Please note that if you have an e-commerce site, there is a more specific tracking feature for measuring your goals.

The "goals" feature is a simple way of tracking your business objectives for your website. A goal must be a measurable action performed by your website's visitors (such as a page view visit to a thank you page). So a business objective + a measurable action = goal

Check out these common examples:

Usually between the initial click and the visitor's action, visitors are required to make multiple steps to complete the desired action. This creates the "goal funnel", with each step being a measurable action. Your visitor can take two routes: 1) follow the intended path, which means the goal is "completed" or 2) decide to leave the process along the way in which case the conversion chain is broken and goal abandoned.

Google Analytics allows you to track visitors as they go through the different steps of the goal funnel and shows you how many potential customers abandon the process, and at which point. The funnels feature is an amazing and very valuable tool that will help you detect issues with your conversion process. With this precious information in hand, you should be able to address the sections of your site preventing you from completing your business objectives, informing future updates.

Setting up goals in Google Analytics is one of the most important actions when it comes to configuring your account. Here is how to do it:

• First you will need to define your goal funnel – When you are on your website, ask yourself what are the steps required to complete the goal? Once you know, write down the URLs that will define your funnel (or ask your developer).
  
  For example:
  1. start_registration.html
  2. enter_shipping_info.html
  3. enter_subscriber_preferences.html
  4. finalise_registration.html
  5. thank_you.html
   
• On your dashboard, click on "Goals" on the left hand side navigation and click on "Set up goals and funnels"
• Enter goal information.
  
  
  
  Note you have the choice between 3 different types of goal: URL destination, time on site and pages/visit.
• Enter goal details
  
  
  
  Set "Match Type" to either "Exact Match," "Head Match," or "Regular Expression Match. This mainly depends on the type of websites you have (ie: static vs. dynamic). You can read more about the difference between Head, Exact, and Regular Expression Match on Google Analytics help page.
  Select if the goal URL is case sensitive and finally you can add a value to a goal.
• Define Your Goal Funnel - Specify the URLs and name each steps of your funnel.
• You are done! You can now analyse your goals performance.

You will only be able to see your goals data in reports after a few days of activity but please note this feature is not backwards compatible. Once the data is collected, go to your dashboard, click on Goals and open the Funnel Visualization Report. Google Analytics will tell you the following:

1. How many people enter at each step of the funnel.
2. How many people abandon at each step.
3. How many people make it to the next stage.
4. How many people make it all the way through.

The funnel will look something similar to this:

On the left you can see how your visitors enter the funnel, on the right where they leave the funnel and where they go. Finally the middle part shows you how visitors progress to the funnel, how many continue on to each step. In the example above, you can see 33,376 started the process and 25,434 go to another section but approximately 10,000 users leave the site at the first step. We can see something must be wrong with the first step. However, the abandonment on the second step is lower, which is good. Finally, you can see the overall conversion rate is 9.98%.

If you need a bit more information about goals in Google analytics, I suggest you check out this very handy tutorial: "Google Analytics IQ Lesson: Goals in Google Analytics"

3. Set up Analytics Intelligence & custom alerts

Google analytics recently launched Intelligence Beta which is an "algorithmic driven intelligence engine". What does that mean? It means Analytics Intelligence constantly monitors your website's traffic, detects any anomaly in your traffic patterns and sends you automatic alerts of significant changes over daily, weekly and monthly periods. Clever eh?

You can also create your own custom alerts, where you set the conditions for the alert depending on what you want to monitor. Go to the left hand side of your dashboard and click on "Intelligence Beta"

You have 2 choices:

1. Set up your own custom reports for specific things that you want to monitor.
   For example, you could have just launched a campaign in a specific location and wanted to be notified how the campaign is impacting traffic from that location. You could also create another alert to see when the traffic from that location is decreasing, so you can find out when the campaign starts to run out.
2. If you are not very familiar with setting up "customised alerts" then you can select one of the templates on the "manage intelligence alerts" page. Just click on "copy" and modify the alerts so it monitors what you need.

Once your intelligence alerts are setup and triggered you will receive a custom alert, posted in your Daily, Weekly or Monthly Alerts on your Google Analytics account or sent by email if you requested that option.
For further information on the Analytics Intelligence feature, visit the Google Analytics Help Center.

4. Tracking traffic from social media

With Google Analytics you can by default analyse traffic mediums such as direct, organic etc. It also automatically tracks referrals from other websites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other networking sites. However, in your Traffic Source reports, social network visits are grouped together with visits from all the other referral links to your site. If you are only interested in social network referrals there is a trick you can use.

• Select Advanced Segments from the lower left hand side bar in your Google Analytics Dashboard.
  
  
• Once in the Advanced Segment page, select Create a new custom segment.
  
  
• Drag the "source" box which is under "Traffic sources" to "dimension or metric" window.
  
  
• Select "Matches Regular Expression" from the "Condition" drop down. In the Value field, paste the following sources:
  
  digg|aim|friendfeed|econsultancy|blinklist|fark|furl|misterwongs|wikipedia|stumbleupon|netvibes|
  bloglines|linkedin|facebook|del\.icio\.us|feedburner|twitter|technorati|faves\.com|newsgator|PRweb|
  msplinks|myspace|bit\.ly|tr\.im|cli\.gs|zi\.ma|poprl|tinyurl
  
  If you wish to add more domains, simply add a "|"symbol between each name. However this field is limited to 256 characters.
• Name your segment (ie: "social network traffic"), click on "Create segment" and you are done! Then from your dashboard, click on "Advanced segments – All visits" and tick the box for the social networks traffic custom segment you have just created, finally apply the changes.
  
  
• Well done, you can now start comparing your social media traffic sources in relation to your overall site traffic.

5. Create annotations on reports

Google launched this very handy feature at the end of last year allowing comments on graphs regarding events that have happened. Users can either add shared or private notes on the dashboard graph. Every time you make a change to your site, be that technical, design, content or any other updates, make sure you add a note specifying what has been done so if the performance of the site improves/decreases, you can easily explain to your colleagues who see a spike or a dip the reasons why. Watch this video to see it in action.

The "annotations" feature is a great collaborative feature that brings intelligence to data and makes your stats understandable and shareable within your company. As Google explains "A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers."

If you want to go beyond the tips we have discussed here and learn more, here is a list of Google Analytics blogs:

• Google Analytics blog
• Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik
• Analytics Market
• Analytics talk
• LunaMetrics

I hope this post was useful and you will soon become a more knowledgeable Google Analytics user!

It’s not unusual that in a digital agency the producer will say to the designer “ just put in some Latin, and we’ll put the copy into the CMS later”. This got me wondering; by doing this are we relegating a very important part of our messaging to an afterthought in the creative process. Is Lorem Ipsum killing design?

We have all heard a thousand times, that “content is king”, but do we really believe it? Websites are information services  and as much as this may offend many designers, the User isn’t coming to the website you are designing to Marvel at your use of colour, or be impressed with your choice of typography; they are there to find the information they want. Don’t get me wrong the design is far from irrelevant, but it's role is to make the user feel comfortable and guide them to the CONTENT they are looking for.

Have a think about how “normal web users” use  websites. The people I am talking about are people like your parents, the type of person who uses the scrollbar to scroll, the person who uses the internet every day, but won’t know what a browser is. These people are more than happy to ignore the design and put up with cumbersome usability, as long as they can find the content they are looking for. Good copy is responsible for helping people find what they are looking for and good copy should be clear, concise, and informative. Throwing some copy in at the end will more than likely be none of these things. If the content is the most important part of any website,  why aren’t copywriters embedded into the beginning of the process of  all digital agencies? They are the ones who can make the real difference to the success of any website.

Have I offended all the designers reading this yet?

You shouldn’t be offended. We should encourage designers to be part information architect , part copywriter and of course part designer. We need designers to think about the user at all stages of the design process  and get them asking the two most  important questions “Where do we want the user to go?” and “ what messaging can we use to get them there”. From a user perspective the advantage in this approach is clear, but there is an added advantage to the designer themselves. By placing considered copy into your design your clients will better understand the messaging, making it easier to get sign-off. The other advantage to the designer is not trying to force the final copy, which is always twice as long as the Lorem Ipsum placeholder, into the keyframes. Everyone's a winner.

So before you hit cmd+c on the Latin,  stop and think about what you should actually be saying.

It seemed like 2009 was a Social Media land grab of contacts and connections. Hopefully you are all building your brand presence and conversing regularly and honestly with your new found audiences. (If not please give us a shout!)

I think that one danger with embarking on an extensive Social Media strategy is that, due to its immediate and noisy nature, it can accidentally replace a solid Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plan. In my opinion 2010 will be a time to pull our heads above water, take a deep breath and think how we are going to work these new channels and manage these relationships in an appropriate manner.

Firstly, what is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management references the symbiotic relationship between an IT System and a Contact Strategy. It is as much about the technology and integration methods you adopt as it is about actual message content and frequency of interaction. Sounds complicated? Not necessarily.

Imagine a small company of four people each using Outlook. Invariably that creates four different address lists all living separate lives under the control of individuals. There will be duplication, out of date information and a lot of value living in the heads of single employees rather than in a company-wide system. What if, on the company file server, there was a simple Excel spreadsheet that each person kept up to date? So when your good client Rachel mentions in a meeting that she is changing companies and gives you her new details you give your own colleagues back in the office (and future colleagues) a fighting chance of keeping in touch.

Sounds better already but what about the scenario where Rachel is already talking about a new opportunity with you and another person in the company sends her a cold sales email asking if there was anything in the pipeline? You're going to look stupid and disorganised. Or what if Rachel says give her three months to settle in then get in touch. How is that hot lead going to be recorded and actioned at the appropriate time?

At this point it's clear that Excel is going get a little stretched and someone internally needs to decide the appropriate times to contact your customers and for the message and delivery to be consistent so you don't look foolish. Nothing annoys me more than three recruitment consultants from the same firm phoning me on the same day. It happens quite a lot.

Let's bring this back to the web because the game just got tougher. Your contacts don't just live in Outlook, your mobile SIM and your business card box anymore. They are also your twitter followers, facebook fans, LinkedIn connections, newsletter subscribers, RSS readers and the list goes on. How are we going to manage all of this then?

It's clear we need to consolidate our knowledge, organise what we can into one repository and get our story straight!

'Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die'

So many briefs we get simply list out the contact functionality and platform presence that the client believes they need without much thought as to why they should be there and what they want to do when they court their potentially brand new audience.

With so many platforms to work on you must decide on where your presence is relevant and then communicate to the user your plan on how you will use them. One real life example of where we did this was with a high-end events client of ours. We decided on the most appropriate channels and then on the best use of each. We let our audience decide which suited them the best.

• Email Subscribers - I want to be marketed to about upcoming events and offers directly and in detail but in a consistent, timely manner via email.
• Facebook fans - I want to hear about new events, share and tag photos from when I go to them as well as RSVPing my attendance. NB We gave event staff a basic digital camera and told them to snap away to encourage the viral effect of tagging photos on this powerful platform.
• Flickr - I want to see the professional photography you have taken at each event and possibly use it in our press articles or for PR.
• Subscribe to the blog feed via RSS or Email - I am interested in your news and what you have to say as a company. I prefer my information more passively and I am looking for an industry focus.
• Twitter - I want to hear about your events and insights but not necessarily enough to be emailed direct. I might go to an event in the future if one catches my eye or take you up on a last minute special offer. Conversely I might be a very keen member eager to hear all the news immediately.

With these profiles in mind we developed a content and contact strategy based on frequency, date/time and weighting of message. Look at all these channels (and more!), experience them for yourself if they are not familiar and ask whether your audience is really here. If so, what would they want and expect from you?

The basics of CRM - what should you do?

• Get organised early in your campaign or company life-cycle and save yourself the pain and confusion of consolidation later.
• Try and store as much of your data centrally by integrating your systems - especially your website and your CRM or office management software. Software like Salesforce and all credible CRM packages have an API. Duplication of information is the ultimate enemy!
• Don't over complicate things. There is no need to become Big Brother and collect every morsel of information going. Concentrate on what matters to your business and make sure those priorities are communicated internally as well.
• Train your staff to use and believe in your IT systems. CRM solutions don't work if people do not use them consistently and regularly.
• Track now, analyse tomorrow - you may not have the budgets or resource to fully analyse your contacts and clients behaviour right now but one day you will. You can't work with what doesn't exist so insist on logging crucial data early. Just think of the critical touch points and store it in a database for future reporting when you have built up enough data to make the resulting information worthwhile.
• You can look smart with personalisation and segmentation but you can also look really stupid! When you begin to understand your audience better you can increase your effectiveness hugely by tailoring your message more to their needs. But assume too much and get it wrong and you are basically communicating the message, "We don't understand you."
• No dead ends - Great news, they converted and clicked on a link, signed up to your list or purchased something. Big tick in a big box. But what next? Never leave a contact with nowhere to go next. They will decide when the story ends.
• Be respectful - Let the contact opt out at any time or change their preferred method of communication and make sure all systems are updated to reflect that. For everything you can get right with CRM I would honestly say it's better to do nothing at all than rush in and get it wrong. Simply think to yourself, "If I were you, would I want to hear this?"
• Don't over complicate your strategy - I have seen clients get very excited about the possibilities of effective CRM. However they often make the mistake of taking on too much. My mantra is to keep it simple, understand it fully, give it time and then incrementally build. This is a continual conversation with your contacts so there is no need to throw everything at them all at once. The chances are they will be as overwhelmed by it as you are.

I hope this has been useful. I have kept this blog pretty simple and of course there is much more to CRM than what I have written here. However, before committing wholly to digital marketing I was a CRM Integration Consultant working in the mobile sector for clients such as Vodafone and Three. Even when we worked on massive systems and implementations the principles I have outlined above were still at the forefront of our thinking.

Let's get back to basics. Sometimes we get so carried away with the projects we are working on or the Next Big Thing that we forget that not all of our clients are web experts. Some are new to the web and need to try to make sense of the whole thing - once we have delivered a project there is a sense of 'well now what?!' They have their website but how do they drive people there? In the digital age of search engines, social networks and blogs, how do you get your business noticed and more importantly, how do you drive relevant traffic there? We’re going to cut through the digital jungle and give the rookies out there 5 crucial things that you should focus on when launching your website:

Search Engines:

Everyone with a website needs to have search engine presence at the top of their list of priorities when developing their strategy for driving traffic. Not just because 82% of the internet population use them for finding products and services, but also because it really is the one medium where global, blue chip companies and small, local businesses can compete on a level playing field as search engines prioritise the relevancy of a website to the search query over budget.

There are 2 sides to search engines: Natural Listings and Sponsored Listings. The Natural Listings are on the left, Sponsored are on the right (and sometimes the top 2-3). Only 30% of people using search engines actually click on the Sponsored Listings so getting into the Natural Listings should be your priority.

To do this you need to understand that, in order to rank you in the search listings, search engine ‘spiders’ crawl your website looking to understand what your site does and which search queries you are relevant for. Therefore think about what you want the spiders to see when they get there, what keywords should they see in your copy? Is the structure of your site clear and methodical? Is anything obstructing the spiders? There are various ways that you can increase your presence in the natural listings, and if you think about it early on it won’t cost you a penny.

Sponsored listings (also called Pay Per Click) are the revolutionary way that search engines have developed to monetise their businesses, in a nutshell you pay every time someone clicks on your listing, how much you pay varies depending on multiple factors.

There are many benefits to PPC listings over natural, they are instantaneous (unlike natural which can take months before you see results), you can control the ad copy and change it as often as you like. You can control your budget down to the penny and track every one of those pennies back to actions on your website. Every business should try PPC safe in the knowledge that you can see the results almost in real time and pause the activity whenever you like.

Directories & Local search

If you’re a business that services a particular area you need to get into the local directories, such as Yell.com. This is where the majority of people will find you now that the Yellow Pages is a thing of the past. You can also set up your sponsored search account so that you only target specific areas, this saves money and wasted time following up irrelevant leads.

Blogs

There is no point in starting a blog unless you intend to do 2 things. 1. Update it regularly, 2. Say something useful and interesting. If you manage these two things then a blog can be a great way of giving your audience a reason to keep coming back to your site. You can choose from many of the blog publishers available, such as WordPress. For something a little more impressive, consider having your own bespoke blog built to your specific needs, like Vikki Chowney did.

Social Networks

Unlike your blog, this isn’t about what you have to say. It’s about listening to what your existing and potential customers are saying and using this information to improve their customer experience and therefore your business. The trick is to know your audience and where they spend their time. A quick search of any social networking sites will give you an idea of whether or not people are talking about your brand, if not see what people are saying about your industry and join in the conversation. You should also see what your competitors are doing in this space and what they’re saying, this is one area where you always need to be ahead of the game.

Display & content advertising

And I don’t mean flashing banners on hotmail telling people they’re the lucky one millionth customer. Display advertising has come a long way from being just an annoying distraction. Now you can be much more clever about the ways that you target people, delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. The aim here is to create interest, rather than distracting people into submission. There are various networks out there that can help you set up a campaign.

Google even helps you to design and distribute your ad creative.

The web can seem like a maze at first and trying to develop a marketing plan feels like an impossible task. The key is to experiment and learn as you go, understanding what doesn’t work is an important part of the journey to a long term and prosperous digital strategy.

We have just launched our latest CBS Outdoor campaign promoting Bus advertising. You have probably seen promotional adverts for it driving around!

The 2009 Creative Challenge runs until July and features a different creative agency every two weeks. Each agency showcases their best work on some actual buses, in Campaign Magazine and our site. Users can review and vote on the designs and influence which pieces will feature in the "Grand Prix" final, where the winner will then be selected.

This campaign is the latest in a series promoting the benefits of bus advertising that we have worked on for CBS Outdoor and so far the results have been really encouraging with some great ROI for the client.

We are also busily working on a large international project for CBS Outdoor's main website so look out for that when we launch in the Spring.

Up Everyone's Street »

Last time, we looked at how the Social Media omnipresence is changing consumers' behaviour and concluded that marketers need to change their mindset and techniques to shift from traditional marketing to more of a conversation: a real dialogue with their audience.

It seems to us that most marketers and web users are talking at crossed purposes these days. Marketers are still broadcasting interruptive one-way messages, speaking loudly to target audiences and controlling the message. The video above is a good example of the traditional marketing model, reaching out to a large volume of consumers through messages without listening directly to the needs of the customer.

But forget about your monologue if you don't want to be abandoned. Instead let's create a dialogue between your clients and you. Dell finally managed to do this and have significantly improved their customer service, you should be able to as well!

Web users have fully adopted social media tools that enable them to create, share, discuss, and participate online. This results in empowered users who can say anything they like about brands: the good (Zappos) and the very bad (Taco Bell).

Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about these conversations happening online, on blog comments, on customer reviews, on feedback platforms... They are taking place with or without you and travel even faster and further than you think.

So what should you do? Don't ignore what people are saying about your brand, a bad customer experience leads to a bad reputation which loses you money! Furthermore, if you're not part of the conversation, other people, competitors, are.

The best communicators start as the best listeners (Brian Solis – Social Media Manifesto). It is no longer what you say about yourselves, but what they say about you! So LISTEN to what people are saying then analyse what is being said and why. Only then should you ENGAGE and PARTICIPATE.

Some tips:

• Think like a customer and talk to them with a real voice.
  Don't make them feel small!
• Be transparent and honest: if you are wrong, it's ok to admit it.
  Honesty is rewarded and it will bring back customer trust.
• Provide your customer with tools that they are happy to use and help them accomplish what they want (suggestion platforms, voting system, blogs, comments, video sharing...)
• Create opportunities to make them feel owners of the brand. They can become your strongest advocates!
• Think of Social Media as a long-term strategy not a one-off communication campaign.
• Remember this is a two-way communication so be prepared to relinquish some control.

If you engage people by building relationships, you can expect your customer service to improve significantly. In addition to helpful feedback on what you currently offer its also a great source of fresh ideas, free R&D!

According to a recent study published by Opinion Research Corporation for Cone, consumers are enthusiastic about companies involved on social media platforms as it opens new channels to interact with the brand. So what are you waiting for? Start now before it's too late!

This week we have launched our microsite promoting Bus Superside advertising for CBS Outdoor. The concept is pretty simple, whack whatever the hell you like on the side of a big ol' London double-decker and send it to all and sundry! The highest rated advert will feature as a Superside on a REAL BUS... the stitch up potential is immense!

Your "artwork" integrates with a real video of a bus rolling down Camden High Street so its quite a shock when you first see it. I can say that with authority after Jenny prepared this delightful number above for me (note to all: do not take her on at pool when there is a wager in the air!)

So far we have had a (possibly not entirely genuine) marriage proposal, a request to find Trevor Eve look-a-little-likies (Shoestring was class!) and a memo from the boss...

Check it out - www.talktothetown.co.uk

An enterprising student in an effort to raise funds for a new Mac book has decided to sell Advertising space on this Mac book, and with 7x10 cm going for $250 it sounds like a bargain

I wonder what the Mac purists say about defacing the lovely minimal Mac design.