I read a timely blogpost on the forbes.com website today, titled “Welcome to the Era of Design.” The premise of the post is that we are living in an era in which the value of design both economically and socially is becoming indisputable. Successful global businesses founded on design principles, such as Apple, and social juggernauts like Pinterest are at the top of our collective mind. Innovation, the creation of new businesses based on well designed business models, and selling sleek products and services, benefit from well designed supply chains. The concept of well-designed user experiences and easy-to-use navigation are understood by practically everyone.
At its heart, good design leads to competitive differentiation, which begets greater customer loyalty and higher profits. And now with social media, well-designed brands can quickly go global, because people like to share good things. Thus, the article’s call-to-action for businesses is to design great customer experiences as this is proving to be the route to greater business success.
As a designer, it’s gratifying to see the growing awareness of design in this country. As a student I studied global design movements and styles and recognized how design challenged the US was. With the maturing of the web as a global medium and the availability of easy-to-use tools, the power of good design has never been more accessible to so many.
In this world of better tools and higher expectations, our role as designers has been elevated for those ready to take the challenge, because in spite of constant change, one thing remains the same, great design is about inventing and sustaining a vision.
It seems counter-intuitive but the easier online tools get to use and the more options there are for creating content, the more our clients depend on us to demonstrate long-term vision for their brands, websites and marketing, and weave the best tools together in the realizing of that vision. We’re psyched. Or as my sons would say, “we’re down for that.” Or is it “we’re up for that?”
On Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to put on a webinar with our partner, Launch In US Alliance; a company that helps international technology companies looking to expand into the U.S. market. The webinar, What You Need to Know About Social Media When Expanding Into the U.S., allowed me to connect with B2B professionals here and overseas who share my enthusiasm for social media.
In doing so, I met Andrew Rudin of Outside Technologies, Inc., a firm specializing in social media and sales strategies for information technology companies, associations, and non-profits. We briefly discussed having a comprehensive company social media policy, and he shared with me an article he wrote on the subject: Human Talent or Party Animal? When an Employee’s Social Media Content Becomes a Legal Liability.
Do you need a company social media policy?
It's an interesting read, tying together how social media, employees, and company policy work together. One thing that's becoming clearer as social media usage and marketing grow is the importance of establishing a written company policy that addresses company social media use and also private employee social media use.
Creating a plan for company social media usage is the clearer of the two; having guidelines for social media posting on behalf of the company through company accounts is a great way to involve more employees in your social media marketing with a clear voice and message. Employees here should have a clear understanding of what the company wants to say, how to say it, and how to interact with consumers.
A gray area, however, is personal employee posting. Consider this quote from the article:
“The key point to note is simply that it is possible for employers to be held liable for employees' social media statements that cause harm, even if made ostensibly off the job. But whether liability actually will be imposed in any particular situation is hard to predict. Employers need to be aware of the risk and take steps to mitigate that risk by setting up appropriate policies to guide their employees' online actions.”
You don't want to overstep your bounds as a boss by enforcing strict standards in an employee's personal social media usage. However, when it's public, employee social media posting can pose a threat, so creating and understanding with your employees when it comes to personal posting is necessary.
And you definitely need central company profiles.
Also, this shows that it makes sense to ensure that you have established company social media accounts rather than having several people post company info from their personal accounts. This eliminates any consumer confusion in trying to access your company online, and provides a branded online presence for maximum marketing impact:
"Personal accounts create confusion with customers because it’s unclear whose voice is behind a post. Would your prospects understand why there are consecutive Tweets announcing your new product release, followed by one ranting about the long line at the dry cleaner?"
So, are you liable?
Potentially, yes, although it is still a matter in question:
“One of the $8 million questions that courts are wrestling with now is whether statements made by employees in social media can be attributed to the employer, and there is a lot of gray area.”
It may come down to what is posted publicly versus privately, and on which site. People are often more private when it comes to their Facebook activity, but tweeting is largely public.
In the meantime, Rudin recommends posing it to employees this way: “don’t post anything that they wouldn’t want to see on the front page of The New York Times or hear on the witness stand.”
How do you monitor your employee's social media presence? Do you have a social media guide?
Mobile: Mobile queries have grown 500% in the past year and 40% of people will turn to a competitor for a mobile experience that gives them a good user experience
Ever had a frustrating experience viewing a website on your phone? Well, chances are your clients have, too. This statistic represents two key concepts: mobile search is an undeniable beast, and potential consumers will turn to a competitor if your website is not optimized for mobile to a point where it makes browsing difficult.
Mobile can be a daunting task to approach; it entails a few different potential tactics, and can be as important format- and content-wise as an actual website redesign. The three strategies at your disposal are:
- Creating a separate website optimized and designed for mobile
- Creating a responsive website design that works across desktops, tablets, and smartphones
- Creating a mobile app
Each of these options can suit your mobile visitor’s needs, and the first step is deciding which one is most appropriate for your current situation. Is it creating a website from scratch that is responsive to each technology, or building a mobile-specific website that smartphone and tablet visitors get directed to?
Evernote, a popular organizational software company, has the
perfect service for a mobile app, as most customers use it on-the-go.
Image courtesy of BusinessWeek.
For more details on selecting the best option for your business, consult the three posts in our responsive design series (above).
There is an effective way to kick off your company’s internet marketing efforts with first steps that address these statistics: take baby steps. Take the first step in creation and integration, and create campaigns that you can build on and develop in the coming years.
Stay tuned for future posts in which we’ll address some of the other enlightening industry statistics and how you can harness them to reach your modern consumer.
A couple of years ago it became quickly evident how ubiquitous the iPad had become amongst our C-level and VP clients. I recall making a critical first website design presentation to a new client only to find the CEO disconcertingly playing on his iPad while I was presenting. After a few minutes of this, the CEO looked up with a grin and showed us his screen on which was our website design in perfect proportion with great resolution. He was quite pleased, and it confirmed to us that the device criteria on which we tested our work had officially expanded.
The new iPad presents an interesting twist. With literally four times the number of pixels – on the same size screen – resolution literally twice that of the previous model, there has been nothing but raves about the clarity and sharpness of images and text.
However, one consequence we’re also hearing is that because of this clarity, websites designed for the standard screen resolutions for laptops, desktop monitors, iPads and other tablets, now appear grainy and dull on the new iPad. This is especially true of web images that contain text.
In order to compensate for Apple’s advanced technology, we can recreate each image at a higher resolution and thereby take advantage of the crystal clarity the new iPad affords. However, in creating the higher resolution image, the file size naturally increases, which will affect the time it takes to load a page and its images.
However, the new iPad, despite its popularity, only accounts for a miniscule share of internet viewing. Should all users have to “pay the price” of higher resolution images?
Consider mobile phone users, a much larger audience than tablet users; they will not see any difference on their low-res, small screens. And chances are they would not like to see their bandwidth usage skyrocket as a result of higher resolution images.
Apple itself has taken to replacing it’s old images with high resolution versions when delivering to the new iPad – and only on selected pages. Reportedly, their home page blossomed from about 500k to over 2MB (4x!) when being delivered to a new iPad. This might give pause to people using their iPad over a bandwidth limited 3G/4G connection.
This approach may be a reasonable interim solution for those who feel the need to deliver an iPad- optimized experience. But it requires additional coding and image manipulation work to be done.
Clearly a better solution is necessary as the world of devices, screen sizes and resolution expands. A variety of work is underway in the areas of responsive design, browser support, HTML and CSS. But the cat is out of the bag now, and we will be faced with dealing with this until such solutions are generally available.
What do you think?
Social media: Levi's had 40% growth in Facebook likes by adding individual like buttons to their products on their website
Social media can be daunting for B2B companies: how do we use it? Who monitors it? and what's the purpose? are common questions in getting started. But social media has proven itself time and time again as an awareness builder, a platform for client interaction, and an ROI-driven.
The key takeaways from the Levi's case are creating ease of sharing and using integration: consumers share what they like, and this goes for B2B content as well as B2C products like Levi jeans. Making it convenient for your site visitors to interact with and share your content will build your reputation on social media sites and drive traffic back to your website.
This doesn’t have to mean elaborate social media campaigns designed to gain Facebook fans, or a hashtag (#) campaign on Twitter. The first step is to integrate share buttons on every page of your website, and certainly every page and post on your blog. Doing this requires choosing a type of share button (such as “follow us on Twitter” vs. “share this on Twitter”) and placing a small code snippet into each page.
Once you have basic sharing capabilities in place, you can integrate further and create an intricate web of social links:
- Integrate share buttons into email newsletters and announcements
- Have employees include follow buttons in their email footers
- Optimize white papers, eBooks, and other PDF content with share buttons
- For content behind a form, add share buttons to their corresponding website landing pages
When we revamped our popular B2B whitepaper, Eight Steps to B2B Website and Marketing Success, we built a landing page with social sharing capabilities to encourage content sharing. It's always better to make sharing easier than to have a prosect give up on spreading your valuable content because it would take extra time.
Some of the most common buttons in use are the Facebook like button, the Twitter follow button and share a link button, the LinkedIn share button, and the +1 Google button.
Having the buttons in place across your website and online materials is a great way to get your foot in the social media door.
RainCastle is pleased to be collaborating with Harvard Business School professor and Innosight cofounder Clayton Christensen to create his new website, to be launched in May. The web design process incorporates Clay's famous "Jobs-to-be-done" theory.
Briefly, the premise of jobs-to-be-done is that rather than inquiring of a client or prospect about what product or service they want to buy, the more important questions are "What problem do they need to solve?" or "What is the job they need to have done?" And which product or service should they "hire" to do the job?
For businesses trying to understand their customers' motivations, employing the jobs-to-be-done concept causes them to look beneath the surface at what the customer is trying to accomplish — instead of toward the expected end product. The result is a product or service that addresses a customer's true motivations rather than a preconceived notion.
In taking a jobs-to-be-done approach to Clay's website, we're not looking ahead at how to fill a 50-page website with lots of video, plenty of pictures of Clay and the coolest interactive tools and techniques. Instead, the job-to-be-done is to relate the value and impact of Clay's thinking to a global online audience. The form of the website will follow the function.
So, our web process is built around answering these questions:
- What is the situational context driving a visitor to Clay's website, i.e., what need is that visitor seeking to fulfill?
- What content will motivate people to visit the site and return time and again?
- What are the emotional drivers for people coming to the site?
- How can they interact with the site to fulfill those needs?
- What are the impediments that make the sites of some other great thinkers unsatisfying?
The answers to these questions will form the blueprint of our job-to-be-done. In breaking it down this way, I feel very comfortable in this approach since my own design training utilized a strong "form follows function," Bauhaus influence, which has similarities. How do you think the jobs-to-be-done idea applies to your website and marketing?
Stay tuned for our launch of Clayton Christensen's website in late Spring!
Last week’s post featuring illuminating statistics from the NEDMA Marketing Technology Summit brought on a slew of questions: how do you turn today’s marketing numbers into actionable campaigns?
To help make internet marketing seem less daunting, this is the first of several posts in which we will explore a few ways to kick off your efforts while addressing the pressing needs of the online consumer.
Email: 294 billion emails are sent each day – 90% of email sent out every day is classified as spam
Many small B2B companies are making their foray into internet marketing by starting with email marketing. It’s proven to be an effective tactic acquiring continuing business, and can be a great way to inform current and prospective clients of company updates and new services.
But what’s the best way to utilize this medium (which you absolutely should) without being included in that 90% spam?
- The first step is to always comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, which means including opt-outs in every email and honoring each opt-out, avoiding deceptive subject lines or misleading header information, and using a credible third-party email service platform.
- Once your email is compliant, make sure you have a clean list of current and prospective clients with up-to-date email addresses. A high hard bounce rate is an indicator of spam email, and is often associated with email lists that are purchased instead of organically grown.
In terms of marketing and content your email should have:
- Valuable and relevant content, including links to articles, whitepapers, case studies, and other website pages
- A few appropriate images and graphics – too many become crowded and unrecognized by the browser
- Little scrolling and a clean layout
- Clear descriptions and calls-to-action to prompt click-through
RainCastle's quarterly email newsletter is separated
into sections featuring different content including articles, blog posts,
whitepapers, and case studies
This welcome email from Living Social
has a prominent unsubscribe button,
clear call-to-action for a featured deal,
and contact information
Bing's email newsletter also has a clear
format, valuable content, a mobile version,
and social media integration
Stay tuned for the next post, in which we’ll address enlightening social media statistics and what you can do for your business.
Last week, we attended the New England Direct Marketing Association’s Marketing Technology Summit, and were treated to presenters from Google, Overdrive Interactive, HubSpot, Eloqua, and more. The conference centered on ways to utilize marketing technology to promote your brand, engage visitors, and create strong online relationships with future and current consumers.
We came out with great ideas for marketing campaigns, technology integration, and the future of mobile and online ads, but also with a long list of interesting marketing facts and statistics.
Online Engagement
- The average American spends two months of his/her waking year online
- The 4 major screens that occupy our time: laptop, TV, smartphone, tablet
- Consumers spend 36% of time online – more than with any other media format
- Where B2B buyers get their information: 71% internet, 37% catalogs, 41% trade groups, 39% trade shows, 35% seminars
- People on average use 10 different sources of information before they make a purchase
Search
- 16% of searches everyday on Google have never been searched before: that’s 160,000,000 new searches a day
- 1 out of every 5 searches has local intent
Video and Ads
- 1 in 3 Google advertisers are using video platforms for ads
- Soon, over 50% of ads will be opt-in – consumers will choose to engage with them
- In a Google study, 9 out of 10 viewers prefer TrueView Ads – the ad platform that allows them to opt-in to viewing video ads
Mobile
- By the end of 2011, over half of Americans had a smartphone
- 1 in 8 requests to visit a site are mobile
- Almost half of Americans are on their phones or laptops engaged with mobile content while watching TV
- 79% of people with a smartphone use their smartphones to help with shopping
- Mobile queries have grown 500% in the past year
- 1 in 3 smartphone owners prefer using their mobile phone for web browsing or email – even if there’s a PC right next to them!
- 79% of large online advertisers do not have a mobile optimized landing page
- 40% of people turn to a competitor for a mobile experience that gives them a good user experience
- 11% of people yell at their phone if they are on a slow-loading site
- 1 out of every 3 mobile searches has local intent
- Over 50% of searches on Google Maps happen on mobile devices
Apps
- There were 18 billion downloads of mobile apps last year.
- By 2015, it is predicted there will be 182 billion downloads of mobile apps
- 15,000 new apps are released every week
Email
- 294 billion emails are sent each day – that’s about 43 emails sent per person in the world
- 90% of email sent out every day is classified as spam
Social Media
- It’s no longer 6 degrees of separation: you need to be connected to 4.6 people on social media to be connected with the world
- Levi's had 40% growth in Facebook likes by adding individual like buttons to their products on their website
In the next blog post, we’ll discuss what these statistics mean for your B2B company and ways you can implement supporting campaigns.
Are you looking for advice on how to enhance your internet marketing and don’t know where to start? Contact RainCastle for more information.
Many of our client’s businesses and sales processes are relationship-based so traditionally that they have not engaged in specific marketing or lead generation programs. As the B2B world, like the rest of the world, becomes increasingly digital, internet marketing — of which lead generation can be a subset — is becoming the new sales. But lead generation programs and relationship-based sales and marketing need not be mutually exclusive. Instead, they can help a relationship-based approach by identifying additional potential clients and enable your company to initiate a relationship rather than waiting for your potential client to reach out (which could take months, which is more like years in internet time).
In addition, there are easy ways to incorporate lead generation and analytics into your website in ways that benefit your company but don’t necessarily affect your sales process.
Lead Generation for Recruiting and Human Resources
One off-the-cuff idea for lead generation usage is if you have a particularly demanding or traffic-driving careers section of your website. If you’ve taken the time to build out a platform to collect job applications, then tracking each submission and subsequent conversation manually is a waste of time.
By building and tracking your online application forms in terms of lead generation, you can:
- Compile a comprehensive, one-stop list of applicants for each position
- Track the website statistics of each applicant (pages viewed, number of visits to the site, when they first found your site, etc.)
- Create a database of all applicant contact information
- Easily send out response emails to individual applicants or designated groups
- Funnel qualified applicants through an application and interview process
- Track HR conversations with applicants and the status of their application
Using this strategy, your HR department can cohesively work through a position application process, keep up with communication with applicants, and have all necessary information readily at hand.
Customer Feedback and Inquiries as a Lead Generation Vehicle
Some clients of ours have opted to add links to their site pages that open an email browser and allow the visitor to contact an upper-level employee or manager. This is sometimes done to discuss a certain product, service, or solution the company provides. Instead of doing this, why not put a personalized form in front of it? This lead generation tactic can be just as personal as an email (which will still go through to the identified person), but still captures these inquiries as leads for:
- Maintaining a clean customer database for future communication (including email and newsletters)
- Tracking response rates of employees to customers
- Establishing what actions visitors to the site are taking
- Establishing recurring customer inquiries and visits
Deloitte uses an online RFP to track inquries
through a lead generation tactic
Contact Us can be a Lead Generation Tactic
Similarly, many Contact Us pages provide email addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information, but not a form that can track contact us inquiries in a non-manual way.
As a first step, creating a form for your contact us page will lead to better monitoring of:
- Visitor reasons for contact or other inquiries not addressed elsewhere
- Number of contact requests from the website vs. other channels
- Repeat visitor contact requests over time
- Funneling the visitor through receiving the information they have requested
RainCastle and Innosight, an innovation consulting firm,
created a comprehensive contact us form for their
About Us section that also lists phone numbers
and office locations
Without changing the relationship nature of how you sell, you can use your website and analytics even more effectively to increase your flow of leads. The results of these efforts will engender larger discussions about potential lead generation campaigns to increase sales and expand your client database.
Is your company using any lead generation campaigns? Do you want to start? Contact RainCastle to discuss creating and implementing lead generation campaigns that align with your marketing goals.
Google announced yesterday that in the coming years the company will overhaul its search algorithm and results to incorporate “semantic search,” according to an article from the Wall Street Journal.
Using semantic search, a process aimed at determining the actual meaning of words, Google will change the top search results to display answers to search queries rather than links to websites. In doing so, Google would provide faster, real-time answers to search queries as opposed to providing the most valuable resource to find said answer at the top of the page.
This change will enable users to have better access to a “knowledge graph” of database information that connects different entities to one another; instead of different pages in the results, the information comes together in Google to form an answer, rather than just a list of resources. According to the article,
“If someone searched for an author like Ernest Hemingway, they might get detailed information about him at the top of the search results, including his date of birth and death, the best-selling books he wrote and where he lived, among other things. Google users might then be able to click to get more information about his books, such as ‘The Sun Also Rises’ or ‘A Farewell to Arms.’”
As the article states, Google is not currently advising webmasters in any direction. However, you can get a jump-start on following open standard semantic web practices with resources like the W3C Semantic Web and SemanticWeb.org.
However, other publications suggest that Google is constantly changing its algorithm, and that semantic search is nothing new, nor will it drastically alter search for users.
TechCrunch maintains that this announcement is merely a distraction from Google’s failing “Search Plus Your World” campaign, which favors Google+ updates over more qualified search results from webpages and social media sites:
“Bottom line here with the big, major, OMG GOOGLE SEARCH IS CHANGING news: Google Search is always changing. The company is constantly tweaking the signals it uses to rank webpages across the internet. Sometimes, enough of these signals are tweaked in a short enough period of time that Google gives the rollout of the new algorithms a name, like Google Panda, for example.”
What’s your take on the Google changes? Is it a pivotal moment for search or a distraction tactic?