International Digital Marketing

In the past few years the importance of social media in global digital strategies has increased exponentially. Around 70% of Facebook’s 750 million active users are not from the U.S and the platform has been translated in more than 70 languages. Youtube is localized in 23 countries in 24 different languages, and 70% of the Youtube traffic comes outside the U.S. What comes to Twitter, half of the tweets on Twitter are not in English.

For a global brand this brings great opportunities, since these three International social media platforms are already familiar and localization can expand their reach to new audiences. However, as with any type of marketing, the brand having social media success in their own country does not mean that same approach and tactics work abroad. This is why it is important to take in account the following best practices and tips, before launching an international social media strategy.

Tip #1 Run a market research across regions

The adoption rate of each social media platform and the way people use social media varies greatly in different countries and regions. Even if Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are used across the globe, these platforms may not have reached yet the same level of popularity than the local networks. While Facebook is not very popular in Asia and Russia, Twitter has encountered big success in Japan, because of its anonymity and mobile friendliness. In China, Twitter-like Weibo and social network Qzone with 150 million active users are the platforms of choice while in Russia V-kontakte is the local version of Facebook. What all continents have in common is the high usage rate of Youtube – used via mobile, tablets, PC or netbooks.

Therefore it is very important to do a proper market research across regions to find the right platform to invest in. Once you know where your audience is at, you are half way reaching your goal.

Tip #2 Get to know your audience

Once you have found your audience, listen what the general discussion is about and what the users are saying about your brand and competitors. See how your target is engaging with companies, how they use the platform and what the best practises in the particular country are. By understanding the cultural variations you will more easily be able to avoid pitfalls and identify the trends before entering the market.

Tip #3 Go global, but think local

Developing a cohesive, global strategy is important, but it needs to be customized based on your knowledge of the local behaviour and customs. Identify what are the global goals and objectives and what are the goals and objectives per region. Your brand might be highly popular in one country, which means one of your goal might be increasing brand loyalty, however in another country people do not recognize your brand and you might need to focus more on augmentation of brand awareness. Once you know what you want to achieve, you are able to set up tactics to best achieve those goals.

Tip #4 Localization does not mean “translation”

Against common belief, only translating your content or posts does not mean localization. A video that works in the U.S. might not work at all in France, a tactic that does miracles in Spain might be offensive in Argentina, a post that is very funny in Korea might not be understood at all in Japan, etc.

Understandably a brand might be tempted to have a general Facebook, Youtube or Twitter page to save in costs, or have different pages per region with the same, translated content. I have seen pages that use basic Google translation, which – believe me – does not work. I wrote an example of Red Bull a year ago: The brand sent in Facebook a link straight to a Japanese Google translated page without checking what the translation was. Let’s just say it involved alcohol and crack.

Point is: if you want to have localized content, do it properly. Involve local people and publish content and offers that are relevant for local consumers. By respecting cultural references and taking in account local trends, events and holidays, you can give users more personalized experience and help your brand to connect the audience on a deeper level.

But if you opt-in for plain translations, your reaction speed is slower, your message might not be understood and lack of local relevancy might make the amount of the “fans” or “followers” drop.

Tip #5 Involve, train and support local market units

For a global company with a network of market units across the globe, it is very important to involve local markets from the early stages of the process. They have the best knowledge of the local customs, user behaviour and trends as well as their local competitors’ activity.

By getting local markets aboard and supporting them with their local social media pages, the results will be much better than doing it alone or focusing on one global page. Please note that support does not mean control. Social Media is highly reactive and by putting barriers for local markets, the strategy is likely to fail. If you strictly control what gets published, by the time translation agency has sent you translations, the “news” is already old.

Instead, offer basic social media training and allow markets to pull content from your global channel. Market units will then translate and localize the content themselves according to their country’s requirements. Motivate and share best practices per country across the units. Publish links to local channels in your global page to promote local pages and direct fans to more relevant content.

Having worked in a global company, I know that the main issues while developing a global social media strategy are the cost and the novelty of the channel. Everything needs to be cost effective and since top executives usually classify social media as something for kids, it is usually argued that a basic Facebook, Twitter and/or Youtube page is enough.

However, an investment in these basic global channels and training for the local markets can really pay off. If the local markets are motivated and have freedom to act, they will be investing their time and effort to update the pages and engage with the audience. Keeping the social media page alive does not cost much money, but it can reach a larger audience than the old media or banner campaigns. It is a way to really engage with your audience as well as to encourage WOM and consumer generated media.

Everyone wants a cool website. Awards in this digital industry go normally to sites and concepts that are cool. Clients and managers come up to us, saying they want something innovative and cool or that they have seen something cool their competitor has done and they want to replicate it.

Yet the problem many websites are facing is that we concentrate so much in creating cool, avant-garde, up-to-date “stuff” that we forget the end user. When creating and designing a new webpage, strategy, usability, content structure and SEO are as important, if not more important, as design.

What is the point of having an amazing looking webpage if your potential customers do not know how to use it or search engines cannot find it?

Tip #1: Make your website useful for the end user

Design for your audience. Analyse and find out what kind of features, content and information are useful and attractive for the audience you want to reach. What could add value to their experience on the website, so they will come back and recommend the site for others? Whether it is useful tips, expert advice, social experience, consumer reviews, games, or up-to-date information highly depends on your audience.

Tip #2: Make it easy for users to find your website

Do not make it hard for users to find your site. SEO optimise your webpage (title tags, headings, populate the content with keywords…), make sure that robots have found your site and the pages are indexed (make sure you unblock the search bots once you have published the site officially), and link to your webpage from other websites and social networks.

If you are using offline media, do not forget to add your page URL in the end of the commercial, press article, poster, video, display or whatever method you are using. Users can either search for it online or type it directly in the browser to find you.

Tip #3: Make it easy for users to browse through the website

Do not complicate things just for the sake of being pretty. An example of this is the hidden navigation. This means webpages that have hidden hot spots the user needs to hover over to find. Cool or not, it makes it difficult for end user to find content they are looking for.

Therefore it is good idea to stop and evaluate how your website is organized. Ask yourself whether the structure and categories make sense from user perspective and whether visitors can find the information they want quickly. Offer options such as back button, previous search and visible previous categories. Having the previous user journey visible makes it easier for site visitor to navigate. An e-commerce example: home -> women -> shoes -> high heels.

 Tip #4: Give different routes for users

Visitors come to your website through different channels (e.g. direct URL, social media, search, blogs…) and many of them do not land directly on your homepage. Visitors in different stages of purchase funnel also behave very differently and this is why it is very important to give them various routes to navigate through the website.

To help user continue their journey after landing to the page, use always visible navigation bar, site map, index page and navigation text links. Remember that this also gives more information for the search engines and helps search bots to navigate across the web platform.

Tip #5: Try to avoid flash

Flash is pretty, but complicated. Flash is not SEO friendly, flash is not mobile friendly and in some cases flash is not even user-friendly. Search robots do not read flash and even with Google visual search you only see an image of a puzzle instead of the flash site or video. Mobile phones do not read flash either, which means that you can lose the leads coming through these devices. Even a normal Internet user might get a barrier accessing your site if he does not have the right version of flash installed.

Of course, in some cases flash does add value to the website enhancing the user experience, for example by showing the product from different ankles e.g. car configurator. Yet before adding some nice animation to the page, think who does it really benefit. You and your managers, who see the page everyday and are bored … or the site visitor?

However, if you really want to have a flash site, create an html backup page and/or mobile site. If you really want to use an intro movie leading to your homepage page, use html5 instead (you can even add a like button if you wish).

Tip #6: Use text, not graphics

Search engines are biased towards text content and do not read the text in the images they run across. It means that even if the website seems to have text containing keywords, it may not be the case. Maybe the web designer is using image files to keep a certain font the same in different browsers or it is done to give the webpage cooler look and feel. Anyhow, the problem is the same: the search engines read nothing and the images take longer to download.

This also refers to graphic CTAs (Call-to-actions). They are very attractive and spotty, yet invisible for search engines. I am not advicing to ditch them, in contrary, since they encourage user to click, but it might be a good idea to also implement text links with long text into the normal html. By long text I refer to the links that are more than a single word and actually describe where the link takes you.

The importance of the SEO optimized text and content has increased especially after Google introduced a significant algorithm change, which puts more weight on fresher content and the text itself reducing the significance of the headers and title tags.

Tip #7: Create a custom 404 error page and redirect broken links

Website content changes constantly and webpages get unpublished causing broken links. It does not only mean that your site visitors might come across one on your website, but also links from other websites into yours get broken. That is bad news, since potential visitors as well as search engines cannot reach your webpage through these links.

This is why it might be worth creating a custom 404 error page, which displays in visitor’s browser if the server cannot find the page. An error page with links to the other areas in your site can help user and search bots find an alternative page on your site. Other solution would be 301 redirect for each link.

Tip #8: Make your website mobile friendly

What is very important to realize is that a standard computer screen is not the same as iPhone or Nokia screen and the PC website looks very different in mobile devices. It is essential to take in account the design and lay-out, the legibility and navigation, and the need of fast and efficient download time. For tips on how to create a mobile-friendly website click here.

Tip #9: Test the website with real users

Having designed and worked with the webpage for weeks or months, it is very easy to navigate across the site and find everything you need. However, pair of fresh eyes can point out the weaknesses and help you improve the user experience.

Tip #10: Do not make an ugly website

Useful and user-friendly are not synonyms for boring and ugly. Web-design is still very important, especially now when Google is using the visual search. Being number one in search ranking is worth nothing if people do not purchase from your site, because it looks … unprofessional.

Website can still be attractive and cool as long as the end user is not forgotten in the process. The point was: make the site SEO and user-friendly, then add the cool stuff on top and win some awards.

When first online supermarkets were launched … they were a flop. After a long silence, the online food and grocery shopping has started to evolve and increase its popularity during recent years, thanks to ongoing development of e-commerce, Internet and mobiles. However, despite of the potential they have, the online supermarkets still reach only a small niche market.

What could bring the online grocery shopping experience closer to the mainstream?

Constantly evolving market

According to International research company IGD, the amount spent on online food and grocery shopping will reach £7.2 billion by 2014. Currently 64% of UK users have done online shopping yet according to the Office for National Statistics, only 13% have bought groceries. In Spain e-commerce is booming, but only 10.7% of the consumers have purchased groceries online. E-commerce in Italy had an estimated value of 10 billion Euros in 2009, but the online food and grocery shopping accounted only for 1.9% of the total.

In France, with a turnover of 250 million Euros, the online supermarkets represent only a small part of the French e-commerce (25 billion Euros). The amount of cyber buyers (24 million in 2009) is increasing, even though the “cyber-markets” are considered to be too expensive with 13% Internet price premium.

Online grocery shoppers

The report Online Shopping 2009 by IGD states that 30% of the online grocery shoppers purchase less often than once a month and 61% visit more than one online supermarket. 49% would like to try alternative store, yet half of users have not done so because they believe it takes too much effort to do . 34% of the surveyed wants to shop only in supermarket and 7% prefers online purchasing for food and groceries.

Convenience is the main motivation for online grocery shoppers to buy online, since it takes less time and physical effort. Overall it is perceived as a more organized shopping experience and means avoiding the queues. 61% of the current and potential online shoppers also stated that having free delivery would definitely increase their motivation to buy groceries online.

The main concern blocking the online grocery shopping is quality. Consumers do not trust companies to deliver them the freshest products and newest sold-by-date if they purchase online.

Best practice – Digital supermarket

Tesco supermarkets in South Korea decided to take it a step further to reach number two position in the country. Instead of opening more physical stores, Tesco concentrated on virtual shopping by creating digital supermarkets called Homeplus in metro stations.  The objective was to bring virtual shopping directly into consumers life. The decision was made after market survey revealed that many consumers concentrated on journeys to and from work without having time to do grocery shopping.

The company designed big screens that looked exactly like physical store shelf where users could use their Smartphones to scan the QR codes and put the products in their shopping cart. When the shopping was done, the groceries were delivered to user’s home once he returned from work.

Online shopping between November 2010 and January 2011 increased 130%, while the number of clients increased 76%. Homeplus itself became the number one online grocery store.

Multi-channel shopping experience

There is great potential in online grocery shopping, since it represents currently only a small percentage of e-commerce and there is a lot of space for growth. Consumers are already using different channels and technologies to shop online and this can be extended to online supermarkets. By offering consumers a possibility to use mobile technology, they are able to purchase on the go, and by bringing online grocery shopping into the physical world, like Tesco did in South-Korea, companies can increase awareness and offer consumers a digital in-store experience.

The future of online grocery shopping looks bright if users are given an online shopping experience that brings them the most perceived value. By offering online shoppers different purchase channels, consistent quality, free delivery and greater choice of products, companies can turn online supermarkets from a niche into mainstream.

“In three to five years, 10 percent to 15 percent of total consumer spending in developed countries may go through sites such as Facebook”

Mike Fauscette, Analyst, IDC Consulting

There has been a lot of debate whether Facebook can be used for pure sales purposes or if brands should only concentrate on increasing brand awareness and engagement.

Dr Paul Marsden, Syzygy’s Social Media specialist, published recently a very interesting white paper ‘F-commerce; Selling on Facebook, The Opportunity for Consumer Brands’. The report is based on an 18-month study tracking the emerging trend of f-commerce and provides an overview of consumer brand f-commerce identifying the key risks and opportunities setting up a shop on Facebook brings.

Interestingly the report does not only focus on ‘social consumer’, but talks about ‘SoLoMo consumer’. A consumer who connects with brands not only through social, but also location-aware and mobile technology. With emerge of these new technologies, the way consumers engage with brands has changed during years. Users want information in real-time, on-demand and on-the-go. Taking advantage of different channels, SoLoMo consumers have built their own trusted networks of friends and experts and are less likely to be influenced by advertising or marketing messages. This is where F-commerce kicks in – it offers brands a way to move away from the pure marketing messages towards building a real brand advocacy.

However, only setting up a large e-commerce store on Facebook would not work. Instead, by focusing on the three key ‘advocacy activators’ ( Experience; Involvement; Incentives), brand can reach SoLoMo consumers and use f-commerce to drive sales and activate brand advocacy.

I would recommend downloading the white paper  – it gives a great insight and information on the f-commerce sales and brand advocacy (and it is free!)

Gamification and G-commerce, gamification of E-commerce, are creating a lot of buzz across the globe. According to M2 Research, a gaming and technology researcher, gamification industry revenues will increase from less than 100 million dollars in 2010 to 1.6 billion dollars by 2015. Google on the other hand has invested recently 100 million dollars in the social gaming company, Zynga, and is planning to launch Google Games in the near future.

 Gamification means using game mechanics for non-game apps and mobile/web sites to increase user participation; however “gamification of your brand” does not mean creating a new Farmville. It is not just about making things more fun or turning them into a game. It is about motivations, rewards and engagement.

#1 Set up your objectives

Before jumping into gamification, think thoroughly what exactly you want to achieve. Do you want to increase brand awareness, engage users or loyalize your existing consumers?

#2 Do research and get feedback from best customers

Gamification is cool, but it is very easy to get it wrong – especially if you are gamificating an existing service with an established user base. Do research and ask your best customers what motivates them. Some of them might be motivated by physical awards, some of them by social recognition and some of them by accomplishment only. It is important to get it right to avoid negative or lame reaction. If you really are not sure, test first with a small budget gamification project to see the reactions.

#3 Make sure your gamification is aligned with your brand/industry

There are many types of games, rewards, competitions, trophies, progress reports and other ways of recognition. If your “game” has nothing to do with your brand or your industry, it will only confuse people. Also, make sure it is suitable for your audience, since consumer and business customers and different age groups behave very differently.

#4 Use right gaming techniques for your users

Games are thought as fun, but they do not have to be. The point is finding a way to transfer the techniques that make games addictive for users to other things. By understanding what motivates the users and using the right techniques can reward them for doing things that ultimately help you to achieve your aims.

Fiat did this with the award winning eco:Drive. It is a fun, simple customer loyalty scheme where users could use USB sticks to analyse how they drive and receive suggestions for improvement so they could reduce their CO2 emissions and get better fuel economy. Also an online community called ‘ecoVille’ was created that was populated by consumers around the world using the ecoDrive technology.

Another example of this is the Nike Training Club, an app with an own personal trainer, which motivates users with customized work-outs and rewards. After first weeks of launch the app became iTunes App of the Week in the U.S. and reached the no.1 position in iTunes Health and Fitness category.

#5 Do not try to do it all

Like in Social Media, there is almost an unlimited choice of different and creative things you can do. But just like in Social Media – do not try to implement them all. Focus first on your goals (what behaviour you want to motivate) before you select the tools (which game techniques should you apply). Be selective and see what techniques would work best to achieve your goals.

#6 Do not make it too easy

People love completing a game and reaching the top level, but they love a challenge much more. It is much more motivating for users to really work for the achievement to reach it, than reaching it with a small effort. First level rewards and achievements should be relatively easy to trigger interest and get users engaged, but they should become more difficult to conquer closer the users are the end goal. Harder it is, more likely the user is going to share their achievement with the world.

#7 Do not focus only on extrinsic rewards

In gamification it is important to have extrinsic rewards such as prizes, position in ranking, badging, trophies etc. yet intrinsic motivators such as self-confidence, fulfilment, friendship and loyalty are equally important. Try to think a way to combine these two worlds to create even more satisfying experience.

#8 Use real-time feedback to improve the experience

Just launching a “game” is not enough. It requires commitment and as you start to see results, you may see potential for growth. A basic program may work as a novelty among the users, but in long term users will be asking and expecting much more than a simple trophy. Getting user’s feedback and ideas can help you to improve and offer your customers even better, engaging experience. Make extensions and enhancements to continue to evolve it for the most involved users.

#9 Take advantage of the Social Media

Use Social Media as a promotion, recognition, support and engagement tool. It is possible to increase participation in social media enormously if you get it right. For example, by allowing the user to publish the distance he ran in Twitter or Facebook or recognizing publicly the influencer of the day.

#10 Involve mobile

If the gamification has not focused initially on mobile site or apps, make it mobile friendly. With emerge of Smartphones, people carry Internet with them all the time and being able to influence and engage everywhere makes the user experience even more engaging. If the “game” is successful in the web, creating an app can enhance the program even further.

Highly-conscious opinion leaders

Typical gamer is not anymore the stereotypical “loner”, but can be anyone who wants to feel like an achiever. According to the report, gCommerce: The Gamification of eCommerce, gamers are actually highly-conscious consumers and opinion leaders, who are 50% more likely to be influencers among their friends. Gamers are also 20% more likely to be online shoppers than the average non-gamers. That is what makes the gamification so interesting for brands.

If the motivation is right and the techniques you selected encourage and reward the behaviours you want, you can give these users more reasons to spend time with your brand and tell others about it. If you do not listen to your users and get the motivation wrong, well that is another story.

After the financial and economical crisis, we are experiencing energetic crisis across the globe related to ecological crises such as Fukushima. The planet is heating up and environment is a hot topic all over the planet.

Faced with a more environmental aware consumers, some companies have started to reinforce their social responsibility and especially their environmental responsibility. This tendency, Green marketing or Eco-marketing, tries to bring companies closer to the market niche sensible to environmental issues, environmental friendly products and legal activities, which increase company’s value through ecologic conscience. The aim is to have a more ecologic friendly policies and processes and drive consumers to a more sustainable way of consumption.

However, many companies have decided to get on board of the latest trend and be “green” without integrating it to a real and sincere corporative social responsibility policy. These companies practice “green washing”, which consists of a ecologic “cosmetic surgery” only to improve their image. In these cases, only by scratching the surface it is obvious that these companies only pretend to be ecologic friendly and their practices are not sincere and in many cases even legal.

Top 7 Tips to Create a Believable Eco-Brand

Green-washing has made consumers suspicious of the real intentions of the companies. According to a BBMG study, only 11% of the European consumers trust environmental statements in product packaging and only 5% trusts eco-friendly company advertising. How to convince people your brand is not just green-washed, but is really environmental friendly?

#1 Do not lie.

If you are not environmental friendly, do not make false or misleading environmental claims. If or when you will be caught, bad news will spread fast in Twitter, Facebook and other media.

#2 Do not make promises you cannot keep.

According to a survey by Sustainable Branding Collaborative, 80% of the users claimed that it is worse for a business to fail to deliver on its sustainability promises than it is to not make any such commitments at all.

#3 Environmental friendly? Then prove it.

Measure and verify your sustainability claims with a third party certification. Make sure the certification is Internationally recognized.

#4 Associate your brand with environmental organizations.

Try to associate your brand with well known organizations such as ONG or other associations, which guarantee your social responsibility and give you credibility. For example, Armani with Green Gross, Carrefour with UN, etc.

#5 Be transparent

Do not only talk about being transparent, but publish data openly. Say what your brand does for the environment and what you will improve in the future.

#6 Let users participate

Do not only talk about your company participating on environmental activities. Ask the consumers what they would recommend your brand to do and what they would like to see your brand improve. Take part in local events if possible.

#7 Be active also in the Social Media

Social media activity creates more buzz than a simple, and usually boring, section in the corporative section. Users see that your brand is actually ecologically conscious and participating in green activities, not just claiming it is.

#8 Do not only focus on environmental attributes

Environment is “in” and it is bad for company’s reputation not to participate. Yet forgetting the environmentally active niche – how to make our green products more attractive to the majority? Many of the consumers declare it is important to buy ecological products, but in reality most of these consumers buy the product based on other values. To be believable, do not only preach about environment in marketing communication, since people might think you are fake (especially if you have never spoken about environment before).

Forget the melting ice and disappearing rainforests and make it personal. Marketing messages should focus more in enjoyment than guilt. A product that is enjoyable … and environmental friendly helps you to go beyond the actively green niche and capture lmore mainstream consumers. For example, Tesla has done a great job. It is not known only for being an environmentally friendly electric vehicle, but for being innovative, amazingly fast and wonderfully designed car.

Being sustainable is great and it is even necessary to have environmental credibility. But do not forget that a brand does not have to be boring to be ecological.

We all want our brand to be attractive, exciting, trendy, sexy and … young. Our society adores youth, we want the young generation to buzz about us, brands and campaigns winning awards are aimed to youth. Facing declining sales, we cannot help hearing that we must rejuvenate, rejuvenate, rejuvenate…

However, many times there is a big conflict between the people we want to buy our brand and the people who actually buy it. Too many times the marketing and communication target is 20-30 years younger than the loyal consumers forming the grand majority of the database.

Cosmetic “brand” surgery?

Some brands tackle this by going through a long process of changing their brand image. More or less successfully. Ford experienced this problem in Spain with its upcoming launch of the new, young, trendy Ford Fiesta. In Spain this particular car model was perceived as a car for 40-50-year-old women, but few years before the launch, Ford Spain started creating a community especially for youth www.maskedummies.com. The booming trendy community changed slowly the image of Ford Fiesta and made the marketing message more believable in 2008. Another example of successful change of brand image is of course Old Spice.

But is it really so bad to be a brand for “old” people? What if the sales are declining, not because our brand is getting older and new generation does not buy it, but because we are ignoring the older generation who does?

Aging global population

With the declining fertility and improved health and longevity, the population aging has become the biggest demographic trend globally. In 2009 the global population of +60-year-old people reached 680 million, 11% of the world’s population. It has also been predicted that by 2030, the amount will increase to 20% in 55 countries.

By 2050, Europe will increase its elderly population from 40 million to 219 million, China will experience a growth of 30% from 109 million to 350 million and India will increase the number of elderly from 62 million to 240 million. Japan, with the largest percentage of +60 people, will increase the current amount from 27% to 44%.

While number of youth decreases across the planet and the number of older people increases, does it not make more sense to take advantage of the “older” brand image instead of investing resources and money to desperately rejuvenate the image? Older people are more loyal to the brand than the new multitasking and impatient generation. Besides – they have also more money and time to spend.

Aging Social Media and Blogosfare

Yes, but young people make more noise in the Internet you might say. Not true.

In January 2011, +55-year-olds represented 7% of the global Facebook users, however the amount of 45-54-year-old users reached 12% and the percentage of 35-44-year-old users increased to 18%. What comes to Twitter, +55-year-olds represented 9% of the global Twitter users, while 45-54-year-olds reached 17% and 35-44-year-olds 27%.

Meanwhile, the older generation is also getting more comfortable with blogging: 11% of the over 30-year-old adults blogged in 2010, compared with 7% in 2007. Also, during the last two years blogging by the 34-45 year-old Internet users has increased 6%  (up to 16%), 46-55-year-old bloggers saw an increase of 5%  (up to 11%), and even 65-73-year-olds blogged 2% more (up to 8%).

But how to reach the increasing older generation?

#1 Stay cool, but use more mature marketing message

Older generation wants to remain cool, but also see people and situations they can relate to – people little younger they are, well aging and sophisticated, such as Meryl Streep and George Clooney. What comes to the situations, if you know that 90% of the people in your cruise are +55, do not show images of young people and babies in your advertising – it pushes older generation away. Instead, show older generation having fun, flirting, enjoying life in a cool environment.

#2 Aim advertising for the right target

In advertising we are so youth focused, that we often forget that the hopes and dreams are different in each age group. They change as people get older, handling more relationships, family experiences, health, happy memories and personal fulfilment. If you are too young to know what your target group dreams about, ask them. They are happy to share their opinion.

#3 Listen and influence in consumer forums

Age makes us more wise and careful. Older people do a lot of investigation before spending their time and money. Older generation compares prices, goes to consumer forums and listens what people have to say in social media.

#4 Focus on emotional bond and quality

Older generation is more interested in quality and value for money than latest fashion. They do not like to be rushed into a decision, but have time to compare different options. However, older people are also more loyal and stay with brands they trust. If you success creating an emotional bond with older users, they do not hesitate to promote your brand to their friends and other users across the social media.

Old trends in young generation, new trends in older generation

To stay always ahead of the competition targeting older generation, it might be a good idea to remember that in the end young people are early adopters of the new technologies and communication channels and “old” people are slow to follow. It means that you can observe youth-focused brands while they try to exploit new trends and conquer new channels by trial and error, and once they become “hot” in your target age group you are well prepared to be “trendy”.

“If someone has 1,000 followers, for example, and complains about a company then that company needs to be seen to be dealing with the issue.”

Michael Taggart, head of digital at communications agency MRM

In Twitter bad news can spread very quickly. Re-tweets and complaint “hashtags” (e.g. #vodafail, #BTfail) have increased the importance of proactive and real-time Twitter monitoring and customer service.

Many companies are finally realizing, that to manage their online reputation they need to get involved and do something. Besides Twitter active BT, Alsa, Bank of Scotland and other companies, now the car brand Peugeot has launched officially a customer care centre in Twitter.

By setting up a customer Twitter service you may be able to solve problems before they become crises and close the deal before competitors even know there was one.  But how to make sure it will not just make things worse?

#1 Build a template/chart to help your CRM classify which tweets qualify as high, medium or low alert

There are so many tweets it is important to prioritize. Define tweet’s importance by building a chart that helps your customer Twitter service to classify the urgency of each tweet and see which requires immediate action. Read more details on which tweets/posts to respond, ignore or escalate here.

#2 Decide what kind of customer Twitter service you want to establish

It is important to decide from the beginning whether to establish an official customer Twitter service or simply surprise customers by tweeting. As mentioned before, there are few companies who have opted in for an official Twitter customer service. However, before establishing one, be realistic on your time, resources and budget. The customer who gets a sudden answer and solution to his tweet is delighted, but a customer who does not receive an answer to his tweet for the official customer Twitter service gets more upset.

#3 Establish a clear process

Brief and supply the person/team who handles the customer Twitter service with a clear process. Make sure they know how to classify and prioritize the tweets and who to escalate important issues. All the team should know each others roles in the process e.g. who searches, who classifies, who responds…

#4 Use tools to track the tweets

There is a lot of tweets out there – in 2011 Twitter reached billion tweets per week. Without proper tools, the quantity of information can be too much to handle.

The first tool to use is of course Twitter search to have an overview what people are saying about you, to refine your search and add filters go to advanced search. To monitor in real time what is being said about your industry, your brand or competitors, for example TweetDeck is a good tool.

#5 Act and respond fast

Tweets need to be responded to quickly, approximately within 10 minutes because of the speed they come, go and spread across the social networks.

#6 Assign the right person to answer

Make sure the person who answers is the right person to be handling the post/situation. To be sure, create a list for the people handling the tweets to help them to re-assign the post to an appropriate person e.g. leads to sales, dealer issues for person in charge of dealers, etc.

#7 Do not use a non-personalized automated response and do not Spam

Nothing annoys more an angry customer than an automatic cold non-personalized message in the time of need or anger. Occasionally people get even upset of you tweeting them, but remember not to take it personally. Best way to proceed is to tweet once offering your help or solution, but if you do not get a response and the conversation does not start – Stop. Do not insist, it will just backfire and you will be accused publicly of spamming.

#8 Do not forget the reporting and follow up

Ask the person/team to keep log on the happenings, classifying them by incidents, queries, opportunities and problems. Include the date, person’s “name”, tweet, response and status. This is how you can see end of the month how many tweets have you responded, now many tweets were escalated, how many satisfied customers you had and how many issues were resolved. Then follow up, follow up, follow up. See if these customers tweeted something positive about you, have a look around the web if the escalated issues are also in blog posts and customer forums and think constantly ways to improve the service and process.

#9 Use Twitter Favorites as real-time testimonials

After a while, it might be a good idea to use Twitter favourites to gather positive tweets from your fans and customers. It has its own RSS feed, which is a nice resource of short, 140 character, real-life testimonials for new potential leads – and top management of course to justify the investment. It is short, effective and works.

#10 Ask tweeters how you could improve your customer service

People in Twitter are more reactive and more likely to answer than in other medias. People also like to give their opinion and advice freely. Some of the feedback is quite obvious, but sometimes there are very good ideas as well. Why to guess, when customers know the best what they want?

Customer Twitter service can be a success or a flop. Remember that monitoring and responding tweets is a time consuming task and requires resources. Before going ahead, make sure you are able to answer and follow up the negative feedback, queries and opportunities. If there are unanswered queries or comments or if they are handled sloppily, the end result might be worse than the situation was in the beginning.

Also, do not stop investing in your call centre. BT has a long spread reputation of having a rubbish call centre and there is a big online (and offline) buzz going on saying that if you want to get you problem resolved without hanging on the phoneline for hours, you need to tweet negatively of the company and in 5 min you get a response. There is similar feedback on Alsa, Royal Mail and Bank of Scotland. Maybe it is me, but customers should not be encouraged to complain publicly to get their issues resolved…

Other thing us marketers forget sometimes is that most of the people are not in Twitter and especially older people do not how exactly to use it (or even see a reason to use it). Therefore it is important to concentrate on both call centre and Twitter service. If the call centre is good, quick and effective, there will be less negative tweets spreading across web to thousands of people  and if the customer Twitter service is good the crises are resolved before they even started.

One of the advantages of the increasing online marketing is the easier access to competitors’ information. The problem is: there is far too much of it.

Without specialists focusing on everything from SEO to eCommerce it is hard and time consuming to see and analyse really what is going on around you. Yet concerning the optimization of your online investment, analysis of your competitors may give you better results in SEO and online campaigns. This gives your brand bigger presence in the search engines, which will then increase the traffic to your site, which will then improve the brand reputation, which will then…you get the idea. So let’s spy…I mean “analyse” what competitors are doing.

#1 Search and find out who your competitors really are

Make a list of the competitors you want to follow and in which country you want to follow them. However, especially with the increasing globalization you might know your local competitors, but not your online competitors. They are the companies that appear in search  results when searching your industry, service or product. If you focus on a specific area or you are a SME, do not forget to include as well the geographic location.

Where to search?

• Google/Yahoo/Bing: obvious, yet remember that if you want to search for competitors in Spain, do not search with a different search such as www.google.co.uk. It will not show the results in same order.
• Facebook: Go to search and type name of your competitor, industry, service or product
• Twitter: Go to search.twitter.com and type in your industry or service or even the name of the competitor’s CEO.
• Youtube: Go to search and write down your competitor’s name. Then click search options and you will be able to select channels (official) or videos. You also can pick your industry in categories to have an overview and select the release date of the videos.
• Industry forums: Check which companies/products forum participants recommend.
• Local social networks: Not all is around Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Find out which social networks are popular in your country (or country you’re targeting) and check if your competitors have presence there

 #2 Get organized

Create specific folders for each competitor, your brand and industry news. This way every time you spot a post, article or an ad, you will have a place to archive it immediately for later review. If you put everything in one folder, after a while it will become time consuming and unpleasant to go through it all and try to filter which news/article/ad belongs to which competitor.

#3 Write down what you want to know

To compare your competitors and your brand becomes difficult if you do not have the same information of each one of them. If you have the list ready before you go through their online activities, it is easier to spot information you are looking for.

For example:

• What services they offer
• What is their price range
• Who their clients are (testimonials/feedback page)
• Who are they targeting
• How do they market themselves (quality of the website, professional…?)
• What is their brand position and what makes them stand out from others
• Are they present in social media (links in the website, social media groups…)
• Which keywords they use

 #4 Search if there are any keyword packed domains available. If there is – get it.

 While you are searching, check if any of the search words you used shows up as  a domain name. If that is not the case, it might be a good idea to buy one part of the search phrase or the whole search phrase as a domain name. It will prevent your competitors using it and it can be used for a blog, landing page or other additional website. Or if you are just starting, you may start using it instead and redirect the old link to your new page.  

 #5 Follow your competitors separately

 Biggest error to do is to receive all the information only to one inbox. Especially if it is a work or personal inbox, Twitter or Facebook account. This will cause information overload and it will be time consuming to separate even after few days which news/tweet/post belongs to each competitor and which belongs to your colleagues and friends. However, some emails have separate filters to organize mail automatically and there is a possibility to create private lists on Twitter to follow competitors, industry news, advocates and critics. This allows you to organize Tweets by category and pull information out effectively.

 #6 Sign up for the monthly/weekly newsletter

 It is a great information package of your competitors’ offers, news and strategy. Do not use work email though: if they notice your company name you will be unsubscribed.

 #7 Be their “friend”

“Liking” your competitors on Facebook or being their “follower” on Twitter does not mean you support them. Instead by being their “friend” you will have a direct access to their promotions, offers, branding and other social network activities in real time. It will increase your reaction speed.

 #8 Set up a RSS feed on competitors pages

 To avoid visiting blogs, competitors sites, twitter lists, social media sites etc. regularly, set up RSS feeds to your specific inbox(es). 

You can also track competitors with Google Alerts, which are free and allow you to filter news based on the search criteria. When Google finds a relevant post or article, you will receive an email with a link.

 #9 Take advantage of the social media tracking tools and see what your competitors do in real time

Competitors’ social media promotions and branding campaigns have become relevant also from SEO perspective now that Google and Bing have included social network activities into their search results. IceRocket, Addict-o-matic, Seesmic, TweetDeck and other tools can show you what competitors do and what people say about competitors in real time.

#10 Take advantage of the SEO tools and find out which keywords your competitors are using

For a quick look, you can use the page source to see the keywords yourself. You can see website’s html code by right clicking and picking “view source” (IE) or “view page source” (Firefox). Have a look at your top competitors’ homepages. No need to read the whole page, because the keywords are near the top. Check if you could “borrow” any of them.

 There are also various advanced SEO tracking tools available:

• Open site explorer: Free. Detailed reports on sites where your competitors are, which will be great use for you to see why they are there and if you should be there as well.
• SpyFu:  Paid. It lets you to access industry trends and allows you to download the keywords used by the competitors. For example, which are the top keywords your competitor websites rank for in search engines and which keyword they use in PPC campaigns.
• Quirk’s Search Status: Free. Small tool at the bottom of Firefox’s browser that allows you to see every meta tag directed at the search engines such as title, description, keywords, author, generators and robot instructions.
  SEOmoz Term Extractor: Free. You give the tool an URL, and it extracts the keywords it thinks are being directed to the search engines. You can see single words, double word combinations, and triple word combinations.
• KeywordSpy: Free and Paid. This browser add-on allows you to see the list of keywords your competitors pay for, keywords they are listed for organically and ads they are running on the advertising networks.
•  Market Samurai: Paid. Analyses the strength of competition in all niches, finds the right keywords for it, builds backlinks to improve your site rankings etc. There is a free trial available.

These little tricks are great way to find out what your competitors are doing, but the idea however is not to copy. By analysing the data you will be able to optimize your online campaigns, websites and search engine ranking, find your competitors’ weaknesses to exploit and react quickly to your competitors’ campaigns, promotions and offers. Learn from the best practices and errors, and see how to best differentiate your brand.

It is also good to remember that your competitors may very well be “analysing” you right now, so check your database. They might have made the error of using their work email.

According to the Google Mobile presentation I participated in December, in Q1 2010 mobile search queries from high end phones on Google grew 62% over the previous quarter. Concerning the e-commerce, Google mobile searches on shopping-related keywords have grown 2500% in the past three years. It is clear that instead of only focusing on desktop SEO, there are real possibilities in mobile SEO that should be taken advantage of. Companies are still strugling with the “normal” SEO and do not have time/resources/expertise to mobile optimize. It means that including mobile optimization into the strategy can improve considerably the campaign results with a lower cost, since there are less competitors bidding for the mobile search keywords. For now.

Mobile optimization in a nutshell:

1. Separate Campaigns
2. Optimize Your Keyword List
3. Create Compelling Ad Text
4. Bid and Budget for Mobile
5. Track Your Performance
6. Optimize Mobile Website
7. Test, test & test

Very interesting point that came up during the presentation was the difference between website SEO and mobile SEO. Even if the mobile SEO is still taking its baby steps, after trial and re-trial Google’s conclusion was that different strategy and separate campaigns are the best way to guarantee stronger results.

Why to use a different strategy:

• Location based targeting: Desktop is primarily used in one location, while mobile is used in multiple locations.
• More refined targeting and creation of personal experience: Desktop SEO is for the masses, but in mobile SEO there are different networks and devices that can be separated.
• More correct ad format to provide the best user experience: Desktop is usually used in times of leisure, while mobiles are mostly used in times of need (except games, social networks etc.)
• Best method to interact with users: With desktop only website based internet can be used, while with mobiles there are both website based internet and apps available.

Why to target mobile separately:

Separate campaigns mean you can isolate performance on mobile and then optimize keywords, ad text, bids & budgets without affecting your desktop campaign.

• More control: Set bids and budgets just for mobile, run separate reports to track results and optimize more easily.
• Relevant messaging: Include messaging with a strong mobile call-to-action and use relevant ad formats.
• Better targeting: With Google AdWords you can target different carriers and devices.

Examples:

• Location extensions – ads are relevant to the user’s location
• Click to call – users click the number to connect to your business
• Mobile site links – mention you have a mobile site.
• Click to download – users click to download pdf, free app, information…

If you are also using Yahoo!, one feature the company has is its new mobile oneSearch^TM service. For example, searching for ‘Cinema’ shows a list of cinemas close to user’s location providing him their address and phone numbers. When user clicks the ‘Call’ link next to a number, a call dialogue box opens on the phone.

Bid & Budget:

Ads appear on high end mobile devices as the default, but the competition in mobile search is stronger for fewer ad slots (5 on mobile vs. 11 on desktop). However, for now the price is still lower than with desktop, because of the smaller volume of bidders.

Competitive bidding:

• Ads appear above the search listings
• A maximum of two slots
• High visibility and higher CTR.

Non competitive:

• Ads appear below search listings.
• A maximum of three ad slots.
• Users have to scroll to see ads, lower visibility and CTR.

Get spidered and indexed by mobile search engines:

Mobile optimization does not work, unless you are spidered and recognized. Main issues that may cause your site not  appearing in the search results are:

Spiders may not be able to find your site

The spider must crawl your site before it can be included in the search index. If you just created the site, search engines may not yet be aware of it. If that’s the case, submit your site to major mobile search engines for quick spidering.

• Google Sitemaps (BETA)
• Yahoo! Submit Your Mobile Site

Spiders may not be able to access your site

Some mobile sites refuse access to anything but mobile phones, making it impossible for spiders to access the site, and therefore making the site unsearchable. For example with Google, the crawler for mobile sites is “Googlebot-Mobile”. If you would like your site crawled, allow any User-agent including “Googlebot-Mobile” to access your site. Please note: Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice. That is why it is good idea to verify first that it really handles Googlebot in here.

Search engines cannot recognize your mobile URLs

Once spider crawls your URLs, it checks whether the URL is viewable on a mobile device. Pages that are not viewable are not included to the mobile site index.  Make sure that your URLs’ DTD declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML.  Mobile search engines  have more trouble digesting invalid code, so to be safe use 100% valid XHTML 1.0 code. It will assure that mobile search engines will not have any trouble with your site. For more information, see the Mobile Webmaster Guidelines.

It is also a good idea to ensure that each of your pages has at least one incoming link.