Communication – Veronica Stenberg

An action list to build the foundation for modern marketing for your business

Veronica — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 06:44:27 +0000

During April I put down some of my thoughts on what I would have done if I was a CMO or CEO for a small business during Covid-19, in regards to marketing and communication. (It’s available over here, no email etc required to download it).

To make it easier the PDF also included a summary of actions that if you haven’t implemented them already, you should do so now. As some of them contribute towards creating a competitive advantage for any business that incorporates these. As well as some Covid-19 specific action points.

DOWNLOAD ADVICE PDF

Each action item is associated with the specific section from the PDF in question and is explained in more detail. So if you want to access all the full picture and explanations just download the marketing PDF.

Even though some action items are specific to communicating during a more sensitive time or scenario, many of the action items in the PDF are hygiene factors that should be part of your foundation when working with modern marketing. As they allow you to save time, work more effectively and focused as well as provide you with valuable insights for your business.

Therefore I decided to include the entire list in text and as a separate PDF to download in the end of this document.

Data

Utilize UTM-tags
Identify a few KPIs you should follow up on for your business

Paid marketing

Identify low hanging fruits
Target basket abandoners
Build audience lists based on behaviour
Twins/look-alikes

Automate

Use software plugins & functionality
Identify autoresponders
Use HubSpot’s list building functionality
Test responsive display ads

Follow-up

Ask the right questions from your data
Build automatic reports and dashboards
A/B Test

Marketing & communication

Be mindful and stay current
Be mindful of choice of images
Focus on giving
Double down on communication with your online community

Work with purpose

Know your priority
Have a strategy
Act with purpose – don’t react

DOWNLOAD LIST PDF

Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash

Five business crucial cornerstones for your CRM department

Veronica — Mon, 07 Aug 2017 05:00:53 +0000

These are my five succinct tips for evolving your CRM department and data from “email” to a tool for insight and increased revenue for your brand and business.

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1/ Integrate CRM data with your digital marketing to increase relevance & cut markering costs

Both for re-targeting/markering and finding twins/look-a-likes. This article covers how you can use your CRM data to use your marketing budgets more effectively in more detail.

CRM is short for customer relationship management – and it’s is not email! CRM is relevant for all on and offline channels in some way and using existing customer data helps you be more relevant in markering and communication. Targeting the right customers in the right channels and finding ways to expand your customer base by using the look-a-like method mentioned above helps you be more effective in growing your business.

2/ Use customer life time value to identify the customer segments you should be spending your time and money on

Take note from the B2B business world, who are very skilled at identifying the value of each customer account. Even if you operate in the B2C or B2all business spectrum, calculating and assigning value to each customer based on average order value in relation to average customer life span with your company is key to ensuring you are targeting the right customers in your marketing. Also helpful in identifying if you spend other company resources in an effective and meaningful way.

CLV can also be used as a blueprint for building segmentation models for finding twins/look-a-likes of your most profitable and loyal customers – you want more of these!

3/ Eliminate customer churn

Reduce your attrition rate by identifying specific KPI’s to measure customer engagement and activity over time. For example you can use specific time periods and put automated actions in place using pre-defined actions, designed to initiate engagement or actions. But know where not to automate and when to use real human interaction.

Defining a easy to use model, for your customer engagement can be useful, such as acquisition, engage, validate, and re-engage.

4/ Design moments that matter – use data to help your customers in their path to purchase – and after – delight and be helpful

Use the customer data you have to be more relevant in terms of supplying the right information, at the right moment, to the customer when they are making a decision for a purchase. But it does not stop there. Let’s say you work for an airline company. How can you be of assistance after a purchase – but still there when a customer is having an experience with your company? you can help the customer find the airport, navigate to the right check-in and bagage drop as well as navigating to the taxi area or closest local transport service upon their arrival. The reason behind being helpful is that you take responsibility for the entire open customer journey, not just up to the actual purchase. Beyond that, you can reach out for feedback and the customers opinion of their experience and use the information in their next interaction with your company.

5/ Improve insight to customer service department

Your customer service department is key in supplying that effortless customer experience.

Ensure that if a customer contact your customer service team, that the customer in question, has to supply as little information about themselves as possible to get the assistance they require.

If you have purchase or booking data, even browsing data (for key pages on your website) and preferred way to be contacted – either it be text, email, phone or social media. Use that information to help your customer department to craft a better experience for the customers when they contact your company.

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Image borrowed by: CloudCherry – view the entire infographic over here

A crash course in social media crisis management

Veronica — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 05:57:14 +0000

Or – when a porn star stole my twitter handle and this is what I learned!

When I was young, I was a geek (in fact, I guess I still am) who grew up in a rural small town in Sweden. I played video games and spent a considerable amount of time online, dialling up through a 56 Kbps modem to connect with the world. During that time it was awesome to have nicks to hang around chat-rooms and upload sketches to deviant art. I had a new nickname almost every year.

So when I got myself a twitter handle, I conjured up a nick name as a handle. If I would join twitter today, I would use my real name as I now have a different focus then back in te days

So I had this handle for a very long time. And the social media magic happened, from Neil Gaiman replying to me on twitter (my favourite author) leaving me falling off my char, having to regain my senses, and arrive late for work that morning (I’m never late for work) to all sorts of other cool things and connections happening.

So, then when a new budding porn star, sharing my first name, came up with my twitter handle as her “stage name”, my twitter feed became very overwhelming. Both in inaccurate mentions and tags in photographs the contained all kinds of acrobatic moves, by a lot of nudie ladies doing things I didn’t even know you could do.

So I went off twitter for a while, pondering what to do. I was quite tired of the nude performance art and the sea of boobies my magical place had turned in to.

I was gone for quite some time actually but kept my account as I had a lot of memories on it that I’d like to keep and I was not about to give this up so easily.

So – heres is what I did:

1/ I wrote a polite tweet:

I was Veronica Vain before the budding pornstar @theveronicavain so please stop tagging me in your tweets all you porn connoisseurs. Thanks!

— Veronica Stenberg (@VeronicaVain) February 18, 2015

Which didn’t stop all the mentions, but they started to subside a little and also, other “porn connoisseurs” started to correct those who tagged me on twitter.

2/ Everything inappropriate my handle was mentioned in, I reported, blocked etc. It was quite tedious work. But worth it as the more I report, block etc, people start to mention my handle less in compromising pictures containing my namesake.

3/ I started to become more active again and first off I started to send out links to my articles, to bore the hell out of all those expecting naughty links, various kinks, pictures or tweets. Instead they received a hell of a lot of marketing and strategy advice

I’m still as I write this, working on the reclaiming of my twitter-handle. So it’s an ongoing work.

But I though I should share this as a tale for those of you who owns a business or represent a larger brand, that is fearful of social media and being active fully. As well as realising the full potential of social media marketing.

Modern marketing requires you to be part of the dialogue, because chances are that you already are talked about in social media by your clients and customers. So join the conversation.

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So in light of my tale, of what is the worst that can happen – well for me – that was the porn star confusion with with my twitter handle. Here are my advice for businesses and brands when the shit hits the fan in social media:

1/ Customer support – in addition to your phone and email – customers today expect support through Facebook and Twitter. Assign your customer care department or someone from it, to answer queries in social media.

2/ Don’t leave questions from customers unanswered. It’s like not picking up the phone when your customers are calling. Not good.

3/ Educate your customer care staff in what to do, create a protocol or a guide that helps them in their work when critical situations arise. For example – how to handle complaints, angry customers, critique etc.

4/ If your business and brand screw up – take ownership over what happened, apologise and rectify the situation. It’s as easy as that.

5/ Define the worst that can happen – and then you create a process and guide to deal with this. Who is responsible, what can the customer care department do, and when to involve your PR experts or even layers, if need be.

6/ Subjects and topics your brands stands for and owns. As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. If your brand has core values, then you should be able to stand for these in social media as well, without fear of repercussions!

7/ There is a common misconception based on fear among businesses and brands that if they join social media, and/or take a stand for what their business believe in, there will be a huge backlash. Well if that’s the case – then I would recommend you to:

a) re-evaluate your brand core values, because obviously you don’t stand for them.

b) stop being so narcissistic. Just because your brand and business join social media, does not entail a huge overnight following. There is work, even for some big brands to get their customers to follow them on social media.

8/ If the shit hits the fan in other areas, per say in the press because of a lawsuit or any other larger unfortunate event. Social channels are a goldmine to respond in a clever way and own the situation and get your customers support back to your brand and business. Using social media you can turn the public around.

Let’s take Oatly as an example. Otaly produces plant based milk alternatives in various forms available in Sweden (in some other countries too now). They where sued for writing “like milk but for humans” and so fort on their own product packaging on their oat based products. Arla who is the large milk corporation in Sweden sued for misinforming the public, to pay a huge fee as well as to force Otaly to discard their packaging and products. To simplify – pay Arla shitloads of money and pouring out all the products and wasting huge quantities of food for no reason what so ever.

(This is such a textbook example of both fearful business management and an excellency in stupidity from the people responsible for Arla’s brand, communication and marketing)

Of course this made people sympathise with the small company which Oatly is, as well as – you probably guessed it – the sales of Oatly’s product went up 15-20% the weeks after the lawsuit was made public.

Nothing says free advertising and that the majority till turn in favour for a small brand, in a situation as this. You don’t have to be a PR expert to figure that out.

So – lets say that your company is effected by a out of control event, like a lawsuit or similar- your social media platforms are a place where you can have a voice and own the situation. Answer questions from concerned customers and also respond to any negativity you may receive. Sp instead having people build up something behind your back, be precent and deal with it.

Executive summary:

As your social channels are platforms for your brand and customer interaction and care, there are three things that are the absolut

1. Join the conversation and take responsibility if you screw up

2. Never leave comments unanswered or responded to

3. Your social media presence should reflect your brand and business – both in values, in what you communicate, how you respond and react to situations.

SEO – how to spread content and get backlinks to your website

Veronica — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 06:00:12 +0000

This article is the next step once you have got your most basic SEO groundwork done and focuses on how you can spread the useful content you have now produced and started to publish to get links to your website on specific topics and start to own them.

SEO and content marketing go hand in hand. Some of these channels requires modification of the content, in terms of image cards or similar, its a small adjustment that will have big impact.

But before you head into this remind yourself of your own company purpose and target audience in these channels, so that you don’t just push content, do it in a thoughtful way that aligns with your overarching strategy and of course is both useful and relevant for your target audience and on brand.

Note that this article is written in the beginning of 2017 and from what is relevant now, how these platforms are used now. This is definitely subject to change

So here is 16 ideas on how you can spread the word about the useful content you have now created, on topics you want to own that can help your customers.

Create boards that reflect the customer journey and keyword analysis. Lets say you have a interior design company. Then create boards such as; Bathroom inspiration for small spaces, Design ideas for monochrome kitchen and so forth.

Twitter

Do a search on twitter to find questions relating to the content you have. See if you can find questions that relate to the content you have, that answer their questions. Then respond to the people you find that have the questions with links to your content.

Tweet useful tweets with links to your content in popular hashtags. Do not try and invent your own, use existing ones.

See what is trending and use those hashtags if its relevant to what you have to say. Be creative here, by jumping on a trending topic.

Facebook

Groups – identify a few large groups where you can respond to questions in a useful way and with your response add links to your content to help someone further.

Your company facebook page – how can you post relevant updates with links to your content that is useful for your followers?

Sponsor posts – if you have something that you know is particularly useful and on brand for your business, add a boost on your post. (Don’t forget to add the facebook tracking pixel to evaluate)

Slideshare

This may be mostly applicable to B2B and consultants, however, before it was bought by LinkedIn, this can also be a useful tool to create presentation for yourself, your service, how something works (relating to your business) and add this to your profile and embed on your website.

Tag appropriately.

If you run a business, you should have a LinkedIn company page. Mix in updates with links back to your content, if useful for your followers and inline with your brand.

Google Image Search

Ensure that your images are appropriately named as per your selected keywords to increase visibility in Google.

Instagram

Can you use the photos from your content in a useful way, that also reflects your brand and business on instagram in an engaging way? or perhaps use quotes from content? use popular and relevant hashtags when posting.
Here a list on the 1500 most popular hashtags right now.

Youtube

Videos should be added to a Youtube channel for your company. This is the second largest search engine in the world where “how to” searches rule. Therefore your videos should be named accordingly as well as your playlists. The selected keywords from your keyword analysis should be used here to.

Google +

Groups – identify groups that you can join and again, answer questions.

Create a business page and profile – post content and tag it appropriately.

Issuu

If you have publications of some sort, you can either upload these here directly on to issuu or you can upload previews with links to your website.

Gawker sites

These sites are only if you have really professional photos. There is suite of sites to submit to:
craftgawker
dwellinggawker
foodgawker
stylegawker
weddinggawker

However, there are a multitude of these sites to submit photos and links to, the best way is to google to find these and set up profiles and start to submit your photos and links.

Specific forums

If there are any specific and large forums for your specific niche, identify them and become active in answering questions with links to any relevant and useful content in each answer.

Once you have enough content on your website. You can start to incorporate this to any newsletter you may have. Make it useful and relevant. Perhaps you own a travel business. Why not include a summer holiday checklist for someone who has booked a holiday trip with you during summer. Or you are a food blogger – why not start the new year to collect your most healthy recipes and email out a selection with tantalizing images and links to your website?

Collaborations

Is there any complimentary brands you can team up with. Can you swap content for newsletters? or write guest post or articles for each others websites? how can you team up and work togeheter?

Online PR

To ge featured on websites for magazines or life style magazines use prnewswire.com or similar to your country or if there are any industry specific PR distribution platforms and sites relevant for your business.

Niche social platforms

If you google your topic you may find even more social media platforms to join that are not known to everyone but still have a huge amount of activity and users passionate about a specific topic or lifestyle choice. Find one of these and you have plenty of opportunities to find your niche target audience and be both relevant and helpful to them.

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To structure your work – you can add (or make) a distribution plan to your content calendar (or plan).

Insights – if you need additional insights (and relevant traffic to convert of course) run an AdWords campaign. It will give you an insight on your quality score for specific keywords (i.e find more things to fix on your website), new keywords ideas etc.

Don’t have time?
Invest 6 months in spreading across all platforms, then evaluate the top performing platforms and collaborations, then focus on them and cut out the other ones from your plan. You can also automate some of the posting using tools such as Hootsuite and similar. However you can never automate a authentic response, dialoge or connection.

A Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Veronica — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 05:05:45 +0000

“Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.”

– Source = Google (!)

Who this article is written for:

This article covers the very basics of search engine optimization and is written for beginners, who already have a website that they need to optimize for their visitors and in doing so search.

This article will focus on anything you can do with your own website, or ask a website administrator and/or developer to help you out with on a very basic level.

What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization is a way to improve your website so that you will rank higher in the organic listings for Google, Yahoo or whatever search engine is important to you and your target audience, market and/or business.

The improvements you do, are all centered around a set or a specific keywords and/or phrases. The better you optimize your website for the chosen keywords and phrases, the higher up in the organic results listings for searches relevant to that, your website will appear. Thus you will gain more visitors to convert to customers or leads.

So how does it work?

There are five main parts of improving your website for search engines, they are as follows:

Technical – how the code is structured, how your URL’s are generated, server load and response time, along with meta descriptions and CSS and so forth

Mobile – that you have an adaptive/responsive design or a mobile version of your website, load time and user friendliness

Structure of your website – how you have create your pages and organize them, categories tags etc

Content – such as where you place keywords in your copy, alt tags on images, how you name images, downloads, inbound links on text etc

Amplification of content – link building, many times referred to as off page “optimization”. Which means what sites link to yours, what keywords they use in the link text and what page they link to. As well as social media counts. To simplify – see it as online PR.

This article will focus on anything you can do with your own website, or ask a website administrator and/or developer to help you out with on a very basic level.

The basic principles for improving your website for search engines is actually quite simple, see your website pages as a newspaper page, you have an appropriate titles with keywords and follow up with an intro text, usually slightly bolder to entice the reader and then your body text contains your keywords, strategically placed where this makes sense.

Your basic, beginners SEO strategy overview;

Selected keywords (from a keyword analysis with user intent and volume)

Content

Page optimization

Link building

Social media and other relevant external websites

Press releases and external link building activities

Time and patience

Can I do this by myself?

Yes you can perform some of the work yourself, based on what is important to rank high on for your business and the competition of course. There are plenty of basic improvements you can do yourself when it comes to search engine optimization and your website. A lot of the work (or should be if not!) is simple “best practice” when it comes to website management.

To establish what keywords that you want to rank high on – do a keyword analysis – I would recommend that you let an SEO agency do this, or freelance consultant, since this is tedious work and a experienced person does this much quicker.

From the keyword analysis you select keywords to rank high on, based on the search volume (in most cases, there is a waste of time to target to rank high for keywords that have low search volume).

When selecting keywords to work with, you should also take in consideration your customer journey to purchase and select a few keywords from each phase. (intent)

I use see, think, do and care since this is an easy model to apply and work with.

In this model I’ve used high waisted jeans as an example for on how the potential customer can use a search engine to find those perfect black, high waisted pair of jeans. And thus illustrate how you should think in terms of picking your keywords, optimizing and creating content for your website.

How to do a keyword analysis and evaluation yourself:

If you rather do a keyword analysis and evaluation yourself, these are the tools to use to perform one.

Google Keyword Planner – evaluate the search volume and competition, amount of searches on a local and global scale

Google Analytics – review existing keywords generating traffic

Google Search Console – submit a sitemap and gain insight on when your website is crawled etc (as well an enabler for you to be able to view some keywords and phrases that generate traffic to your website today)

Google Insight for Search – review trends and search volume in your country

Use your keywords

Create a document of your keywords/phrases mapped against your customer search journey/path to purchase, and make sure this is included in your marketing strategy.

Geographical location – if your company only supplies a service within a specific geographical region, make sure you consider including geographical location/s

The SEO checklist

Once you have your keywords, follow this checklist of simple changes you can perform yourself to use as a guide to your SEO empowerment and improvements. To search engine optimize your website pages add your keywords where appropriate:

(download the SEO checklist here)

Page Code

Meta description
Meta keyword

Structure

Navigation structure
URL to page
Page title and name

Page copy

Headings and titles (H1, H2 etc)
Intro text
Body text
Body text with highlighted words
Or in bullets

Page content

Link within your website on keywords (vote on your own website)
Copy, videos, images – alt text, file names and descriptions
Links
Links to key pages on your website

Social media

Pinterest – how your boards, images and content are named
Youtube – how you playlist are named, videos, description etc
Google+ – business profile, place and communities, if relevant
Twitter – use to spread the word about your content, in a useful way of course
Other relevant platforms and forums (yelp, tripadvisor etc )

Your pages

For each page make sure vital keywords are present in:

Page titles, name etc
Meta description
Meta keywords
URLs generated – should reflect your keywords in them (where relevant and logical)
Content (copy, images, videos, alt text, descriptions etc)
New content

Code

CSS files should be placed externally and linked in
JavaScript files should be placed externally and linked in
Image mapping code, should preferably be placed in the bottom of the HTML code structure if possible
Cookies – try to use an alternative solution or don’t use cookies on content pages (depending on your requirements that is)
Get Google Tag Manager

Url’s

Dynamic URL’s with parameters in them, use a URL re-write tool for this make sure the URL’s that are generated follow a neat structure like for example: domain.com/category/product_name.htm

Various

Have you created a sitemap?
Have you submitted your website to Google through Google Search Console?
Get a developer to help you out with any errors and warnings found by Search Console upon indexing your site
Load time and other server side tasks

Links

Do you have a link building strategy for external websites?
Make sure your keywords are included in the link text
Make sure you are using the right pages of your website to build links to (that you link to a specific or specific pages (with the keywords in them))
Internal links, within your website, linking to other pages, the same rules for keywords in the link text apply for these

This is a lot of information in one article – so you can download a search engine optimization checklist over here

Tools:

Google Keyword Planner – you need an AdWords account for this (free anyways)
Website Grader – for a quick assessment of your website SEO friendliness
Majestic SEO – a quick and free backlink assessment
Google Analytics – review existing keywords generating traffic
Google Search Console – submit a sitemap and gain insight on when your website is crawled etc (as well an enabler for you to be able to view some keywords and phrases that generate traffic to your website today)
Google Trends – review trends and search volume in your country
A Thesaurus – thesaurus.com
Your competitions source code if you are curious to see what words they are using
traffictravis.com – PC only software which you can download and install, in the free version you can get a list of page errors to fix after initial set-up and you can see your current ranking for your particular keywords

A quick way to find out if and what from your website is indexed

Go to Google.com (or whatever suffix is relevant for you)

Type in site:yourdomainname.com

In my case:

site:veronicastenberg.com

gave me on the 7/01/2017 – 132 page results

or use your Google Search Console, if you have this for your domain – to find out if and what is indexed in more detail (listed)

For further reading

Twitter & Google: http://searchengineland.com/signals-twitter-google-care-219202

11 tips before getting started with Digital Marketing

Veronica — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 05:38:23 +0000

If you are new to digital marketing and want 11 swift tips before you get started. Here is a list with short and general advice relevant for someone just starting out in the field of digital marketing.

1/ Don’t be afraid of failure – that’s also a lesson learned on your way towards discovering what works and what doesn’t – for your business.

2/ You will learn new things everyday – however empower yourself with the basic
and essential information on each topic. Then add to it as you go along. You don’t need
to know everything on day one, just the basics – and buy the services from skilled people
who can help you.

3/ Test and measure everything – digital means instant and measurable results – if
something don’t work or generate the desired results after a valid amount of time – just stop it. Each activity should have a primary KPI and thats how you knwo if it’s working or not.

4/ Identify non-competitive complimentary brands to exchange services and work
with if you are on a shoestring budget.

5/ Don’t forget that your website is key – you can drive traffic to it – but you need to
ensure it’s strong enough to convert. Google Website Optimizer is free – use it and make
more money by optimizing your website content and design.

6/ Apply a goal to each activity, don’t just be on twitter for being on twitter – use it for
something. Make sure everything you do or invest either time or money in has a purpose and thought behind it.

7/ Be conscious about the value you can give to your customers, either it be through free
shipping, advice, content etc. Modern marketing is all about adding value
to other people’s lives.

8/ Increasing traffic and likes have no value in itself. It is what you DO with the
traffic on your website or the fans that matters. Connect, capture and convert. Apply goal tracking on your website with Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager.

9/ Do you need to convince upper management about getting decent online marketing budget? or a budget at all? then do your research and this template to create a an digital marketing strategy for your business and propose
a three month trial with evaluation of your plan. Back this up with research about your
target audience online and perhaps some useful statistics on the industry average ROI from
each channel you want to invest in. Show the potential and the transparency in terms of
invested budget. Digital marketing done right will enable you to evaluate each penny spent.

10/ Do you have a disaster you don’t want to deal with or have been putting
off for a long time? Hire someone temporarily to deal with it, i.e. to sort though your
customer database and divide up the information in a way which enables you to use this as
segmented database for newsletter campaigns or similar tasks.

11/ Unsure about what or how to improve your website to make it convert, hire
a freelancer to sort it out or use Website Optimiser. Your website is key since this is where you drive traffic and it should convert, as well as working for you in terms of SEO and aiding your customer through their path to purchase.

Image borrowed from: sbmarketingtools.com

How to grow your email marketing database

Veronica — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 05:22:51 +0000

Once you got your email marketing activities in place, you want more subscribers, and by more I mean relevant subscribers. There is plenty of easy and fun ways for you to increase your database. Here are a few suggestions:

Value for your subscribers – identify what type of information you could share withyour subscribers that would be of value for them. An online fashion boutique might offer styling tips. A marketing consultant might want to share free marketing tips & trix and worksheets. From your business perspective, what can you give which is of value to others?

Competitions – create competitions on your website where you collect user details and also ask them if they want to opt in to your list.

Download for email – create a workbook, or something that you can offer your target audience as a download, in return for their email and details. Once you have that, I would suggest that you add another opt-in layer on top of that, where you ask your potential subscribers, if they like to hear from you (could be in the download link email, or such)

Facebook – create an ad campaign on Facebook for people to sign-up to your newsletter. Use compelling image to enhance the ad. You can also ad an campaign page/tab for it on your Facebook page.

Twitter – create an ad for sign-up, or spread a link to each newsletter after you send itout, on twitter, to gain more subscribers.

Team up with other complementary brands and companies – create competitions or special promotions in each others newsletters, or offer advice. Whatever is relevant to both you and the subscribers, and swap of space in each others newsletters.

Forward to a friend – important functionality which even free email marketing software companies provide.

Share – your newsletter can be tweeted or shared in other ways spread in social media and as long as you have helpful, relevant content, you will attract new subscribers. Check with your ESP which possibilities you have available to you

Get testimonials from subscribers and use this on your website at the sign-up or as an incentive to get more subscribers. Communicate the value of your newsletter.

Create content for your newsletters – that are relevant and makes people want to receive them and share with their friends. Again, try to think of what you can give to others of value.

Collecting points – ensure that your collecting points for names and emails where appropriate.

Add information about your newsletter in other emails you send out.

Create visual promo-boxes/areas on your website for your newsletter, where the visitor can sign-up or click through a page about the newsletter and get more information. Where you set expectations through displaying an an example of the newsletter, a review from subscribers, talk about frequency and the purpose.

Photograph by: www.adrianapalanca.com

Pilot campaigns – global brands -several markets

Veronica — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 06:00:14 +0000

I’ve written a few articles on the global marketing subject before, this article includes a bit of repetition however it’s aimed at a company with a prescense in 4 or more countries, that want to start out with digital marketing activities but feel unsure of where to start and where to invest and how to prioritize a large batch of markets.

These are my key take aways from helping global brands who has never done any digital marketing activities to more experiences brands, this advice is suitable for both B2B and B2C to manage global marketing activities.

Starting out

Data – first of all you need to ensure that you have your analytics account in order. That you have goals and events set-up so you can track activities. You should also have one account where you can access all markets analytics accounts within it. And DO NOT set-up a separate analytics account for a campaign site, if you need a campaign site at all, ensure its located within your main domain and that your one and only analytics account is set-up to track it.

Pilot campaigns – if your company is new to digital marketing and don’t know where to start you can do a pilot campaign:

Choose one or more activities – such as paid search, youtube ads and paid social for example.
Choose 3 or 5 markets which has significant differences, such as size of the country, potential (growth), technological maturity etc (I do recommend to do this per region e.g 3 countries in APAC, Europe etc – but start in one region first). Ensure you have an uneven number of markets. Or you could do a pilot in each region.
Run your campaign and evaluate the performance – what conclusions can you draw from this?

CRM – If you dont have one, get one. This will help you understand your customer, as well as be able to target them better. Your CRM will help you cut costs for marketing by enabling you to build custom audiences, find look-a-likes (or twins), re-target existing customers with speific messages and more.

How to prioritise – Managing a company who are active in over 80 markets can feel overwhelming. However it’s easy to segment markets in terms of where you need to focus first. To help you prioritise ask your sales departments for help and map out:

Market size
Current sales revenue
Potential in the market (is demand increasing?)
Competition (high, medium, low?)
Technological maturity
No of services your company offers in that market
Brand awareness/recognition

Always focus externally – since your online presence should focus on your customer and not your internal structure. If you don’t have someone who is responsible for marketing in a specific market with huge potential for growth – then get the numbers, do your homework and talk to your board to invest in someone who can help you tap in to the potential in a region.

Do this with all your markets, then find a framework which you divide markets either into A, B, C etc, depending on what you prioritise the most, let’s say it’s sales revenue and potential in the market. Using this method its quite easy to find which markets to prioritise and plan actions for accordingly.

Workflow

You need to find an effective way of working on a large scale. Here are a few ideas:

Batch translate – then market adapt. English, French and German is spoken in more countries then England, France and Germany in Europe, Therefore batch translating using an agency, will help you save time – then market adapt.

Find global agencies with local offices if possible – this helps you to ease your workload in this process as well as helping you reduce prices for any digital marketing specialist that you need help from. Set-up one global agreement and get better hourly rates as well as enable the local markets to have local support and help. Also useful in terms of market adapting any creative material such as banners and copy if necessary if you cant do it inhouse.

Create frameworks from your global head quarter for: KPI’s, how to work with SEO, buying media, create landing pages, follow up and reporting etc. This ensures a set standard is met and that your digital marketing investments really pays off.

Reporting model – you need to find an easy way to get information to you – rather then having to ask for it, potentially 80 times. Set-up a template with what you need to know from the local markets and have them fill in this on a weekly or monthly basis. Perosnally I would use Google Docs to avoid infomation getting stuck in inboxes.

One account to rule them all – whether it’s paid search or analytics you should have one account which holds all the markets within it. This way you have all the data in one place and it’s easier to keep track of, benchmark markets against each other etc. Also this is the way you still regain control of a global presences and activities.

FAQ – use either wiki, Google Docs or your intranet to have one go to place for frequently asked questions, supporting documentation, checklist – make it as easy as possible to access and update – this reduces the amount of questions from the local markets which will come your way.

Educating and activating markets – starting out with something which may be new, you need to both educate and activate. This can be done by creating an market activation program containing education on what is to be done, the purpose of and the desired effect/goal. The level of knowledge may vary so you need to offer a webinar or similar to help the markets increase their knowledge.

Find local ambassadors and create incentives – there are always people within your organisation which are passionate about marketing, find these and encourage them to be your ambassadors. Incentives is another way to help increase the speed of a change, highlight, reward and show gratitude towards markets who achieve results in adapting to the new way of working.

Communication – have a plan, this is what is going to happen, when, what is then required of them to make it happen and how. If they need assistance who do they talk to etc.

Marked adaption – is always necessary. Not just from a language point of view, but also the creative material, specific local laws or similar. Down to platforms/channels. In Asia Baidu is the most common search engine, in Russia you have Yandex. In Asia it’s more common with “social search” e.g people ask their social network to provide answers to their questions rather then a search engine. And so forth. Both platforms/channels and behaviour are local. So pin down platforms/channels, languages, behaviour and technology per country together with your local offices. (They know their markets the best)

Tools and technology – use technology to your advantage. From a CMS platform which assist in the roll-out of new content in different langauages, to using Slack for market communication and knowledge sharing to Google Docs or similar for documentation.

Follow-up – Following up on a vast amount of markets is easily done by simplifying what you need to know. Use a spreadsheet and track markets progress to get a quick overview of which markets who has what activity in place.

Want a nifty spreadsheet with all the countries in the world in alphabetical order with some example activities which you can customise? then download my market logging template over here. (you are welcome )

Use a KPI framework – to define success with the user journey as the base to be able to evaluate the entire process for the customer, view your website performance from a holistic perspective to find it’s strenghts and wekanessess to content gaps.

In Google Analytics you can set up dashboards – If you don’t need a more advanced dashboard you can set-up a dashboard with a few highlights from each markets in your global view. Help the markets by creating one on their level, with the most relevant metrics for them to keep track of in one view.

Share knowledge between markets and regions – encourage knowledgesharing from what worked to what didn’t, to solutions to challanges. Don’t spend time reinventing the wheel when you can join forces.

How to be in control

To recap, to be in control of a large number of markets you need to automise as much as possible:.

Forget reports – build dashboards.
Make information central and easily accessible
Inform, educate and have a conversation with your local markets – they know what works, what the local flavour and maturity is.
Templates enables you to quickly act, spread and roll-out banners, content, campaign structures etc
Always one master account holding the markets within it
Share knowledge and work effectively together leverage you against your competitors in the fast paced digital marketing landscape.

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Image copyright: www.purpleriot.co.uk/

10 ways to grow your email marketing list

Veronica — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 05:00:47 +0000

A resource for where you can collect email addresses and consent to fill your email marketing database with relevant people to talk to.

If you have brick and mortar store, you can start collecting email addresses there, however, simply don’t just ask for an email address and put someone on a list. Do it in a way that makes your customer aware of what their email address will be used for and make sure they want to hear from you.

I’ve had a few weird and dodgy experiences in the States with this, the staff ask for my email address at the till and the suddenly I receive newsletters that are almost impossible to opt-out from. (When I naively presume that my receipt will be emailed to me for my purchase).

Other collecting points can be:

Your website – a simple widget to collect a name and email, or through any lead generation activities, perhaps a form for download of a white paper. Investigate your website from a visitor perspective to find where you can add any newsletter sign-up form in a way that makes sense.

Avoid putting the sign-up form in the footer of your website only, it may not give you as many new subscribers because the main focus for visitors are most probably higher up on your webpages. (if unsure, test it though A/B testing or using a heat mapping software)

Your Facebook page – build a campaign page/tab, which allows visitors to enter their name and email address and view an example of your newsletter. The most common email marketing service providers have widgets for this. (Article to do so is available here in MailChimps knowledge base).

The checkout process

Account/website registration process

Twitter (using their lead generation card, MailChimp is one provider that caters for sign-ups through tweets using this feature) or use it as a channel for marketing the usefulness of your newsletter.

Your blog
The footer of every email signature from appropriate departments in your organization
Using the social integration – making your newsletter shareable in social channels by your subscribers.
Last but not the least important – focus on the usefulness and relevancy of your newsletter for your current subscribers. It does not matter how many people you have in your database, as long as you provide good content to them, they might actually help you build your database by using the oldie but goldie – forward to a friend button in your newsletter.

Links for further reading:

Email sign up forms: a look at how 16 fashion retailers collect customer data

50 Proven Ways To Grow Your Email List

5 Ways to Grow Your Email List With Social Media

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Image copyright by: www.getvero.com

How to optimise your business online presence or service (manuscript)

Veronica — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 05:30:56 +0000

If you are looking to improve your online presence, either it be through a website re-design or just to refine and improve your service experience and offering online, this is a manuscript you can use to help you in the process. Feel free to subtract, add and refine

Overarching questions & material

Information about your customer journey
Path to purchase
Internal purchase process – what internal touch points do you have for a sale to go through? who are involved?
How and when do you communicate with your customer during their purchase process? who does it? (department and responsibility)
Who are your biggest competitors? and how do your company differentiate from them?

Organisational questions (for internal use – meant to be answered by your company)

What is your biggest challenge/s today? and why?
Why do your business have a website?
What role does the website have in your business?
How can and should your company website can support your business?How do you measure the success today? (with the website and also your business – what is success)
What are your KPIs?
How can we measure success in the future?

Target audience

Who are they? define target groups (i.e working moms, business owners etc)
What do they need? what motivations do they have? What do they want? (Contact, book, buy, ask questions or answer to questions, learn more?) Define the pain points.
What “problem” solves does your business solve per target audience? (how do your business ease the pain or remove it completely?)
What information do you have about the existing customer today? surveys / studies?

Current site
Evaluate it against your current service offering with your customers in mind. Focus on their needs and questions and how the website can cater for this – within seconds:

What pages are important in their journey/path to purchase (if you are unsure, see the previous article on content audit)
Geographically – where do they come from and the service is available in their city?
Contact – who should they call? When? How? Are the contact details obvious and easily accessible if you offer your service in more then one location?
Can you offer price calculations for your service (if its a service that needs to be quoted individually you can ask for certain information beforehand and offer a rough pricing)
How do your company win your customers trust? (Testimonials from current customers, photos of people in environments they help in?)

Current customer
What is the goal of the website for a current customer, what should they do and what want to have to to do that? How do you take care of your customers today? Do you want them to buy more services from you? And how do they want to take care of them? what information do they need?

Your current customers – what do you know about them?
What percentage of today’s customer portfolio returns and purchases services from you again?
How long is the life cycle of the customers?
Why does a customer leave your business and choose another provider? (is it location, service offering? availability?)
How happy is your customer with your service and business today?
When a customer leaves you for another service provider – do you know which competitor they choose over you?
If you have more then one service and target audience – are there services that overlap between the different target audiences? Ie are there are solutions/services that different target audiences can buy from you?

Potential new customer – what should they do? Call? Fill forms? Book a time? Depending on the service you offer online – pin down what you want a potential new customer to do, i.e a person evaluating different options prior purchase – what do they need? and how can your website cater for this?

The sales process – applicable even if your website is generating leads for your sales reps or department:
What is your conversion rate today?
What is a lead? call / fill a the contact form / calculate a price / book or download?
How many leads do you get from the site today? And what happens then? and do you track how many leads are converted to customers?
What is the process? How do I book a time? How the process works today?

Or if your website sell gods or services – what is the process? before and after purchase?

Quick questions for your website analytics;

Where visitors come from?
Where do they leave the site?
What primary pages are important in the purchase process? investigate how they perform
Conversion rate? goal?
Geography – where do they come from?
Devices (in relation to mobile first)
Average time, pv / how long they stay? (on key pages)
Bounce rate on key pages
Exit rate on key pages
What keywords do your visitors use when searching and ending up on your website?
What exit rate do your lead form or sales pages have? (the pages that close a deal?)
What content do the visitors engage with? (download, forms, click to call, external and internal link clicks, etc)

Other digital touch points (not only your website)

What other digital touch points do your company have?
Social channels?
Newsletters?
Paid media?
How do they tie together? what purpose does each channel have?
Do they deliver? and what?
Are they on brand?
How can they support your company better?
Do you measure traffic and conversions from these?

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Communication – Veronica Stenberg

An action list to build the foundation for modern marketing for your business

Data

Paid marketing

Automate

Follow-up

Marketing & communication

Work with purpose

Five business crucial cornerstones for your CRM department

1/ Integrate CRM data with your digital marketing to increase relevance & cut markering costs

2/ Use customer life time value to identify the customer segments you should be spending your time and money on

3/ Eliminate customer churn

4/ Design moments that matter – use data to help your customers in their path to purchase – and after – delight and be helpful

5/ Improve insight to customer service department

A crash course in social media crisis management

Or – when a porn star stole my twitter handle and this is what I learned!

So – heres is what I did:

So in light of my tale, of what is the worst that can happen – well for me – that was the porn star confusion with with my twitter handle. Here are my advice for businesses and brands when the shit hits the fan in social media:

Executive summary:

SEO – how to spread content and get backlinks to your website

Pinterest

Twitter

Facebook

Slideshare

LinkedIn

Google Image Search

Instagram

Youtube

Google +

Issuu

Gawker sites

Specific forums

Newsletter

Collaborations

Online PR

Niche social platforms

A Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Who this article is written for:

What is search engine optimization?

So how does it work?

Your basic, beginners SEO strategy overview;

Can I do this by myself?

How to do a keyword analysis and evaluation yourself:

Use your keywords

The SEO checklist

Tools:

A quick way to find out if and what from your website is indexed

For further reading

11 tips before getting started with Digital Marketing

How to grow your email marketing database

Pilot campaigns – global brands -several markets

Starting out

Workflow

How to be in control

10 ways to grow your email marketing list

Other collecting points can be:

How to optimise your business online presence or service (manuscript)