Welcome back to our series of articles on the principles of better writing. In our first article we looked at process and motivations behind writing product reviews. In this article we take a step back and look at one of the foundations of writing any copy whether it is a product review, a business to business (B2B) communication, or a business to consumer (B2C) sales letter – the Consumer Profile.

When faced with a new project, some writers’ first reaction is, “Where do I start?” perhaps with a few expletives thrown in for emphasis.

A better question would be, “Who is going to read this and how am I going to persuade them to take action?”

In a face-to-face meeting, or when making a telephone call to a “warm lead”, you will usually have a fair to good idea of who you will be talking to and what would motivate him or her to take action.

When writing sales letters (printed or on-line), electronic direct mail (eDM), Facebook posts, Tweets – in fact most types of marketing “blast” – you don’t have that luxury. The best you can do is use the materials and information provided to create a portrait of your intended reader. I deliberately choose to use the word “reader” rather than “target” as it puts me in a better frame of mind to write an engaging, persuasive and conversational piece rather than something intended to beat the intended recipient into submission.

Different areas of the marketing industry and writing schools refer to this portrait by various names such as a “Buyer Profile”, “Buyer Persona” or some other name involving the words profile or persona. For the purpose of this article I will use the term “Consumer Profile” as the principle is applicable to many forms of communication, not all involving buying, that you want the reader to consume and take action on.

The Consumer Profile goes beyond the purely written Buyer Profile by giving you a visual portrait of the person you will be writing for. This visual portrait helps you stay focused on the copywriting fundamental that you are having a conversation with a person regardless of whether it is for B2B or B2C.

Your greatest tool for creating a Consumer Profile

Rudyard Kipling, author and poet, gave us a wonderful tool to help create a Consumer Profile in a poem that accompanies his “Just So Stories: The Elephant’s Child” written circa 1912 which have become known as the “Five Ws (and one H)”

I keep six honest serving-men ;
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

Have you spotted the discrepancy in Kipling’s words?

The first line of the poem states “six honest serving-men”. What are their names?

No, I didn’t make a mistake, check the original as digitized by Microsoft^®. One of them appears twice.

So, with due respect to Kipling, our “Five Ws (and one H)” become: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.

Kipling’s six honest serving-men are going to do some hard work to make our [writing] life easier.

Sources of information

The more information you can gather for the Consumer Profile the easier it will be to write something that will resonate with your reader in a meaningful and engaging way.

The sources of information available for you to create a Consumer Profile will vary from project to project and which market you are writing for.

Mailing List Data Card

Many businesses buy or rent mailing lists. Ideally these lists will be “clean”, i.e. the contact details are current, correct and have been collected legitimately.

The mailing list will usually have some form of data card which describes its contents. For example:

This example is for the B2C market. A data card for the B2B market is less likely to contain gender or age details and the profile information will be more business oriented such as industry and role or job description.

If you are using an in-house mailing list or an autoresponder database such as Aweber, GetResponse, ConstantContact or MailChimp you will be able to obtain similar information based on the segmentation criteria being used.

Existing Buyer and/or Consumer Profiles

If you are working on an existing campaign then you could be in luck, someone may have already created a profile based on customer surveys and questionnaires.

An existing profile should give you basic demographic details and may include more specific information such as education, personal beliefs, views, spending habits and net worth.

Your job is to extract the relevant information and add any new information you can discover that is applicable to the particular campaign you are working on.

Customer Support Letters and Email

These can be a great source of information about what concerns your reader and what problems he or she may be experiencing.

Even if these are for earlier, possibly different, purchases this can tell you about purchasing habits and what is important to your reader.

Customer Surveys and Questionnaires

These are raw sources of information which, hopefully, were analyzed and compiled into an existing profile. Depending on the depth of the questions you can gather a lot of relevant information that will help with your Consumer Profile.

Take these and get an overall view of the personal information provided (the demographics), yes/no questions and more open-ended questions where the customer has been able to express his or her opinions.

Past Promotions: Successful and Failures

Past promotions to the same or similar readers, whether they were successful or abject failures, are a great way to find out what appealed to the readers and what failed to capture their attention.

From the successful campaigns identify what captured the readers’ attention. This is a good indication of what is important to them. Conversely, the failures tell you what the readers consider irrelevant.

Census Data and other Research

Census data and similar reference data can help augment the demographic information available. Much of this is openly available on the Internet.

Do your research using your preferred search engine or even take a trip to the local library. Where results are not from a credible or citable source, use them with caution and discretion.

The Creator, Developer, Editor aka “The Champion”

Whatever you are writing about, someone had to come up with the idea in the first place and determined who he or she saw as potential consumers.

An interview, telephone conversation, email exchange, or chat via Instant Messenger can give you more insight than hours of research.

Creating Your Consumer Profile

You’ve gathered all the background information you can, now it’s time to put your “six honest serving-men” to work. It would be great if they were real sets of eyes and hands to help you with the task ahead but let’s roll up our sleeves and get going.

As discussed before, you will have different information available according to the market you are writing for: B2B or B2C. Where applicable I have indicated the differences, otherwise I use the generic term reader or consumer is used.

Who?

For B2C this is about the reader as a human being. For B2B this may be limited to the reader’s occupation or job function.

B2C:  Assemble the personal demographic information where available

• Gender – If not 100% male or female then identify the mix, e.g. 50% male, 50% female.
• Age – This is important. People have different priorities at different stages of life. The content, tone and language that appeals to a Baby Boomer may not work with readers from Generation X or Y. If not 100% from one age group then identify the mix and be prepared to adjust content, tone and language for more broad appeal.
• Relevant physical characteristics – Does the reader have health concerns? Is the reader physically active?

B2B: If possible assemble the same personal demographic information as for B2C

• Occupation or job function – What proportion are C-level, executive management etc.

What?

For B2C this is what we know about the reader’s lifestyle and accomplishments. For B2B this is about the reader’s organization.

B2C:

• Education/Qualifications – What proportion hold what level of academic/professional achievement, e.g. 75% have at least a Bachelor’s Degree, 40% have at least a Master’s Degree, 50% are lawyers.
• Income/Net Worth – This gives an indication of potential spending power or priorities.
• Hobbies – Indicates the reader’s interests, activity level and potential risk threshold (adventurous?).
• Personal beliefs/views – The reader may be mistrustful of, or disenfranchised from, authority.
• Spending habits – What products or publications has the reader bought in the past?

B2B:

• Industry/Marketplace
• Size – What is the organization’s revenue, turnover, number of employee
• Publicly listed or privately owned
• Level of technological maturity – Is the organization an early adopter of new technology, what investments have been made?

Where?

This is the reader’s geographic location. If not 100% from one location identify the geographic distribution, e.g. 30% from North America, 25% from Europe, 45% from Asia Pacific.

When?

When did the reader last make a related purchase?

When does the reader intend to make a purchase?

Is there an urgent need or problem that the reader needs solved – now?

Why?

What concerns your reader? What are his or her pain points?

What emotions will motivate your reader: fear, greed, pride?

Does he or she have an urgent problem that your product or service can solve?

How?

How does your reader prefer to receive information? Does he or she consume content on the move?

Whether B2B or B2C, this can be affected by demographic factors such as which generation your reader belongs to (Baby Boomer, Gen-X, Gen=Y).

Create different headlines to suit the various media channels your campaign will target:

• Direct Mail
• Electronic Direct Mail (eDM)
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google+

Creating A Visual Portrait From Your Consumer Profile

For some writers a purely textual Consumer Profile is sufficient. Personally, I like to go the extra mile and create a visual portrait. It gets the creative juices flowing and the act of creating the visual portrait burns the reader’s background, wants, needs and desires into my mind so I can “hear” the conversation as I write.

If you are an Adobe^® PhotoShop^® (or similar) wizard this should be a breeze. I’m far from that so I often end up going “old school” physically doing a “Cut and Paste” exercise with bits of paper.

Unless your demographic is a mix of men and women you should only have one picture of a person.

For B2B choose a picture of a man or woman in business attire. For B2C choose a picture that depicts the appropriate demographic.

The more accurate the base picture the better.

Try to take into account all aspects of the person: age, gender, ethnicity (if appropriate) etc.

In this context the ethnicity is only a representation of the “Where?” part of your Consumer Profile, i.e. your reader’s location. If you are not comfortable using an ethnically oriented picture, try adding a background image representative of the location such as the Eiffel Tower for France, Taj Mahal forIndia, Great Wall for China.

Now take each component of your written Consumer Profile and put it into a call-out bubble (or write it on a Post-It^®). Write it as though your reader is introducing himself or herself, e.g. “I am the CEO of a Fortune 500 company”. Keep each call-out concise so you can read it in a second or two whenever you want to remind yourself of each aspect.

Place the call-out bubbles around your base image so that the base picture representing your reader is at the center.

Now you can print it out, set it as your desktop wallpaper, whatever works for you. One of my current favorites is to use it as the wallpaper on my mobile phone so I can prop it up as a digital photo frame next to my screen. Look at it frequently as you write and it will help keep your conversation on track with the needs of your reader.

It’s only for your use so you can make it as simple or wild, wacky and colorful as you choose. Have fun with it!

Creating a Consumer Profile [Better Writing with Jeremy Ep II] is a post from: B2Bento

Today I had the pleasure to attend a webinar “8 Content Initiatives You Need to Seriously Consider for 2012″.
 
Given that it was February 2nd 1 PM EST which was 2 AM the following day here in Singapore, I had an ample supply of black coffee on hand. Not that I needed it as the content was gripping enough to keep me wide awake right to the very end.
 
The webinar was hosted by John Sonnhalter of Tradesmen Insights (@SonnhalterB2T) with  guest presenter Joe Pulizzi, Content marketing expert and founder of the Content Marketing Institute (@JuntaJoe)
 
Joe Pulizzi began by reviewing the history and practice of content marketing and why it’s one of the fastest growing areas of marketing today. He then went on to discuss eight initiatives that all marketers need to consider now when it comes to corporate storytelling and social media.
 
Here is my recap of the webinar.

Content Marketing has been around longer than you may realize

John Deere has been publishing “The Furrow” magazine since 1895. This publication can be viewed as one of the earliest representations of what is known today as content marketing or corporate story telling.

The purpose of the magazine was to educate farmers on, what was then, new technology.

Farmers were educated on the new technologies available presumably with the intent to get them into the mindset to buy John Deere’s farm machinery.

“The Furrow” still exists today, 117 years later, on the John Deere website.

Publishing

What we’re talking about here is publishing. Wikipedia defines publishing as “the activity of making information available to the general public.”

It is now both easier and harder to become an expert publisher.

Barriers to Entry are Gone

Things have changed since the early days of publishing. It took a lot of investment to be a publisher: targetting the right people, building the infrastructure.

These barriers are now gone. Customers expect and accept content much faster, as long as it looks good to them. There’s no need to be a leading newspaper or trade magazine to gain acceptance. It’s much easier now to find the talent to write and edit content whether it’s text or video. The technology is now readily available for anyone to create a blog in minutes, for example WordPress, Facebook and LinkedIn, and start publishing content.

Searching for Information

According to research by Google and Shopper Sciences, published in the free eBook “Winning The Zero Moment of Truth, the number of sources, i.e. content, engaged by buyers before making their decision has approximately doubled since 2010. This may increase to between 15 and 20 sources next year which represents a massive 300% to 400% increase on the 2010 figures.

Content Marketing

Joe Pulizzi defined content marketing as marketers being publishers who own the media, whereby the reader comes to rely on the marketer for information, rather than renting the reader’s attention by purchasing space in a third party’s publication such as a trade magazine.

It is the job of a content marketer to attract new, or retain existing, customers by consistently creating or curating content that is valuable, relevant and compelling. The end game of this is to get the reader to take action. What that action is depends on the desires and business aims of the marketer.

Corporate Storytelling

Corporate storytelling is at the core of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), lead generation and social media engagement. For these to work well you have to tell a compelling story.

SEO: to be found by the keywords you need to have compelling content that people link to and share.

Lead generation: whitepapers, webinars and eBook downloads are lead generation activities. If you don’t have compelling content then the lead is lost.

Social media: you have to talk about things that people care about and want to get involved in a conversation.

By being the best storyteller, i.e. content marketer, you become a magnet that attracts readers.

With the removal of the barriers to entry it has become easier to be a publisher. However, because of the increasing amount of content available, it has become harder than  before to get attention.  You have got to be the best storyteller in your industry and you have to make the on-line connections to get the story out.

Content Marketing Statistics

Joe shared a range of interesting statistics:

• Marketers Who Use Content Marketing
• Total Merketing Budget Spent on Content Marketing
• B2B Content Marketing Usage (by Tactic)
• Percentage of Marketers Who Use Various Social Media Sites to Distribute Content
• Content Marketing Spending (Over Next 12 Months)
• Biggest Content Marketing Challenge

Rather than repeat them here, head over to SlideShare where you can see them in all their glory (slides 20-27).

The Content Initiatives

The Niche Content Mission & Platform

When creating content, don’t be vague or try to go too large. Focus on your niche/persona, e.g. the mom/wife on the go.

Get SUPER NICHE

If you want to present yourself as the leading expert, you have to get as niche as possible to make an impact on your customers. Trying to be the leading expert on pets would be tough, but focussing on pet owners who like to travel with there pets is more achievable.

Define the Term and Flood with Great Content

Once you’ve figured out what you’re going do and flood that with great content.

“Defining the Term” – you can actually define the industry, e.g. “Workshifting” and, in fact, “Content Marketing”.

Produce consistent, relevant, very shareable content.

10 to 1 content … reimagine

Reimagine your content as you go, there’s not just one story, there’s not just one story platform.

Think “before” and “after” – What can the content become? A blog post, audio, video, Tweet, Facebook post, SlideShare, an eBook.

How do you seed it within your community? Share it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, RSS feeds, YouTube, Press Release  etc. There are more than 10 ways to sow your seeds.

Dominating a Category with Content Marketing and Social Media

Find your customers’ pain points:

• Ask your customer service, employees, sales reps.
• Use the Google Keyword tool to see what people are searching for, find opportunities in those that are being searched for but are not yet competitive.
• Take those keywords and use Google Trends to see if there is an upward trend, that will indicate an opportunity for your story ideas.
• Set a Google Alert to find out who is talking about the things that are important to your business. This will help build your “hit list”.
• Use tools like HootSuite or TweetDeck to monitor social media for your keywords.

Create content for key questions being asked.

Create pillar content e.g. eBooks, whitepapers and lists, which will attract people. This can form part of your lead generation strategy.

Social Media 4-1-1

For every 6 posts:

• 4 should be on other people’s content that you are sharing
• 1 should be your content
• 1 can be promotional.

Make sure that the influencer’s that you are highlighting know that you are sharing their content.

Have all the Sharing Buttons at the Top and Bottom of Every Article

Have at least the “Big Four”: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If you want your content to be shared, you have to set it up so that it can be shared.

Get Your Community Involved

Use your “hit list” and list of influencers. Ask them if they will create content for your site. If they do, then not only is your content shared with your community but also with the influencer’s community. This expands the reach of your content.

In Summary

Think Like a Publisher.

Whatever you want to sell:

• Choose a niche that you can become the leading expert
• Develop AND share the best multi-channel content
• Remove YOU from the story as much as possible.

Webinar recap: 8 Content Initiatives You Need to Seriously Consider for 2012 is a post from: B2Bento

With this post we introduce the latest member of the B2Bento team, Jeremy Tarrier (@JeremyTarrier), who’s joined us this year as the lead content manager. Deviating slightly from regular programming, we present the first in a series of posts on “Better Writing with Jeremy” . We look forward to your feedback.

Have you ever read a product review and thought “I could do better!” but didn’t know where to start?

In this article we will investigate the process and motivations behind writing product reviews. Our focus will be on product reviews published in the on-line media but the same principles apply to magazines and other printed media.

If you prefer to skip the what and why sections I won’t be overly offended, click here to jump to the how.

What can you write a review about?

To get you started on ideas of what you could review, here is a short list for inspiration:

• physical products such as a mobile phone, camera or book
• audio CDs or an album you have downloaded from an online store
• desktop software
• web application
• mobile application
• movies
• seminars and webinars you have attended.

Why do we write them?

There are many motivations to write product reviews from the altruistic to those that are more self-interested. Here are some of the more common motivations.

Establishing yourself as an authority

By writing and publishing a review you are an author, not necessarily an Asimov or Rowling, but an author none the less. Being a published author automatically makes you an authority but only establishing credibility will make you a recognized authority on a subject.

Once readers recognize and accept your views then you can become their “go to person” for product reviews. You can expand on this to become a recognized authority on other related topics.

To make money

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make money by promoting products. Unless you are fortunate enough to be financially independent then you need to make a living.

Writing product reviews is a long established way to promote affiliate products such as those on ClickBank.com and Amazon.com. If your product review resonates with the reader and he/she makes a purchase using your affiliate hyperlink then you receive a commission for the sale. A product review is like having a salesperson working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and you don’t even need to pay him/her!

Product awareness

If you use a product or service that you strongly feel could benefit others then you can write a review to promote awareness. This akin to making a public service announcement, however it does not preclude you from receiving compensation for your efforts.

Why do people read reviews?

Information

These readers are not necessarily motivated by the need to solve a problem or make a purchase. Many people skim read magazines or websites as they are generally interested in the subject matter and will pause to read an article if it is pertinent and provides information they consider useful or interesting.

Whilst this group of readers may not immediately appear particularly important, they do represent a significant audience. By providing a memorable review, readers may well return to your review when they have a more immediate need for the information or actively seeking your other reviews.

According to a survey commissioned by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, “the reach of consumer reviews isn’t limited to the online world; seven in 10 consumers who read reviews share them with friends, family or colleagues, thus amplifying their impact.”

Thus, writing reviews that appeal to this segment helps establish you as a recognized authority.

Research before they buy

When faced with a problem one of the first reactions is to search for solutions on the internet. Product reviews are an excellent opportunity to help your reader find a solution and provide valuable insight into how well and how easily the product can solve the problem.

Independent product reviews can sway a reader’s purchase decision in either direction. According to the 2011 Cone Online Influence Trend Tracker “research reveals four-out-of-five consumers have changed their minds about a recommended purchase based solely on negative information they found online. … Positive information has a similar effect on decision making, with 87 percent of consumers agreeing a favorable review has confirmed their decision to purchase.”

To justify their purchase decision.

People buy on emotion then justify with logic. After making a purchase there is often a sense of “buyer’s remorse” and a nagging anxiety that it was not a necessary purchase or that there is something better out there.

A well written product review provides such readers with clear, concise and logical information that will support their purchase decision. A reader who, based on your review, is satisfied that he/she made the correct purchase decision is more likely to read your reviews when considering future purchases.

Characteristics of a good product review

It’s personal

Your reader is a person, you are a person. Readers are more likely to trust a review that reads as though it comes from a real person not a faceless organization. Treat your readers as real people, make good use of “you” and “I” to establish rapport and trust.

Conversational

It’s a sad fact that in the internet era people have shorter attention spans. Use a conversational style to engage your readers and keep them reading. Write in the same way you would tell a friend about a product you feel would be helpful to them.

Experiential

The plain facts about a product are readily available from advertisements, brochures, datasheets and the vendor’s website.

Reviews are the opportunity for readers to learn “how was it for you?” rather than having to trust what the vendor tells them they will experience.

This is where you get the chance to exercise your creative writing muscles and tell your readers about your experience using the product.

Objective

Your review should be factual and untainted by personal prejudice or bias. This appears to contradict the need for the review to be personal and conversational however your readers will appreciate clear statements about the capabilities of the product or service.

It is a delicate balance which becomes easier as you gain experience writing reviews.

Concise

People searching the internet for answers are expecting short, sharp, bite sized information on which to make their decisions.

Avoid long, meandering text that provides little meaningful information.

Based on personal experience

Hang on a minute, didn’t we just go over a review needing to be experiential? Yes we did, however that was referring to writing about what your reader can expect to experience when using the product.

Although it is possible to write about a product or service without ever having used it, your reviews will be easier to write and be more meaningful to your readers when you have personal hands-on experience.

So where do you start?

In this section I aim to equip you with a set of activities that will help you in preparing to write your review. Some of the activities here will not be appropriate to every product or review so use your discretion.

As you go through the activities you may find it helpful to record your experiences and findings. Use your notes when writing your review, it’s easier than trying to remember it all when faced with a blank screen.

Other tools that may come in handy include a digital camera, scanner, and image editing software.

Where appropriate I have included a number of questions you can answer to help build up material for your review.

Get the product

There is no substitute for personal hands-on experience when writing a product review. Buy it, borrow it, ask the manufacturer/vendor/dealer for a review copy (see FTC caveat).

1. How easy was it to get? – exclusivity, rarity, limited edition
2. How long did it take to arrive? – digital download, high street purchase, courier delivery, standard postal service
3. Is it available in different formats? – eBook, audio, video, large print

Unpack it

If it is a physical, boxed product (including digital products delivered on CD/DVD).

1. Take a picture of the box/packaging.
2. Did it arrive intact? – poorly packaged product may indicate an alternative supplier or delivery channel is necessary
3. Can the product put back in the packaging? – important for storage and for sending a product back for refund or repair
4. Does the packaging reflect the contents? – clear image, list of contents, “This way up”
5. How easy was it to unpack? – sometimes it can be physically challenging to unpack a product
6. Was everything included? – power cable with appropriate plug, printer or data cable
7. Are there instructions on how to unpack and prepare the product for use? – are they in usable language, do they make sense

Install it

Follow the instructions.

If it is a software product you may want to take screenshots as you go through the installation process.

1. Were the instructions accurate?
2. Was anything unclear or missed out?
3. Were there sufficient pictures to help identify what should be done?
4. Were there any special requirements? – some software require additional components not supplied with the installation media
5. Were there any unexpected messages during the installation process?
6. Did you experience any problems with the installation process?

Use it

This is the core part of your review. Actually use the product.

If it is a software product you may want to take screenshots as you use it.

1. What was the problem you used the product to solve?
2. Did the problem solve the problem? – was it a complete solution or was there something the product couldn’t do
3. How easy was it to use? – intuitive or did you have to perform metal gymnastics to figure it out
4. Were there any problems using it? – was the manual/on-line help sufficient, was there support available
5. Were there instructions or tips as you went through the process?
6. Were there any surprises, good or bad?

Gather your thoughts and prepare to write your review

If you followed the process outlined above and recorded your experiences then you will already have a reasonable amount of material for your review.

Now it is time to get your material organized and supplement it with facts, features and benefits, and a list of pros and cons.

You may need to use information from the advertising materials, product manual and other sources such as the vendor’s website.

Write a description of the problem you wanted to solve

This is a very important step. It will provide you with ideas for the headline of your review and start the conversation with your readers.

It could be a single sentence or it could be a whole paragraph. It all depends on the complexity of the problem.

Write a description of the product you are reviewing

Do not be tempted to copy this from the product literature, another article, or another review. Firstly, unless you have permission, it’s called plagiarism and it can lead to all sorts of nasty repercussions ranging from being black-listed by the search engines to litigation. Secondly, your readers will quickly notice if it doesn’t gel with the rest of your review. Remember: wherever you found it, they could find it too.

Write the description in your own words. Sometimes it helps to write down simple bullet points then talk to a friend (even better if it’s a stranger) about the product. If your friend gets the message then your description works. You will then have a natural way of describing the product that others can understand.

I am often asked, “How long should it be?” There is no fixed size for a description, nor in fact for most things in copywriting. The more complicated something is, the more words it takes to describe it adequately.

Keep the length within reason. If you find yourself getting bored writing about it, your reader isn’t going to enjoy the experience either. You have about 5 seconds to capture a reader’s interest so your description needs to be both appealing and concise.

Identify the most important features of the product

Products have many features, sometimes too many for a review. The trick is to identify those features which are important to your review.

Using your description of the problem, identify the features that were important in solving the problem.

For example, if your problem was taking clear photographs in poor conditions the the important features could include:

• waterproof design
• lens shield
• textured grip
• low light / night vision feature
• high speed storage
• rapid flash recharge

Convert the important product features into benefits the reader can understand

A list of features isn’t particularly interesting to read, what is interesting is what can be done using those features.

Alongside your list of important features write what that means to someone using the product.

Using our previous example:

• waterproof design – Keeps working in the rain. Can use it by the pool
• lens shield – Keeps the rain off the lens
• textured grip – Doesn’t slip in the hand
• low light / night vision feature – Clear photos even when it’s  poor light

Now you can convert this into a short sentence or two that encapsulates both the features and the benefits in a way that will make immediate sense to your reader.

This helps with not only your description of the product but also with your conclusion of why the reader should get the product.

Gather your list of pros and cons

Not all review writers like to include a list of pros and cons. Including a list does show your objectivity and can help establish your credibility as an impartial reviewer.

All products have strengths and weaknesses. These are important to your reader. If the strengths outweigh the weaknesses the reader may still choose to buy the product. Conversely there may be one weakness that is the deal breaker.

For example, a piece of software may have all the bells and whistles and seem to be the perfect solution but if it’s not available for your reader’s computer then it’s not a contender. If you have reviewed a similar product that is available for your reader’s computer you have the opportunity to suggest the reader goes to that review to find out more.

Write a concluding paragraph that sums up your experience with the product

This is the closing section of your review. You can draw upon your earlier material and condense it into a few short sentences.

If you like to give products a star rating, whether it is an overall rating or one per important feature/benefit, this is an ideal place to do it. There are readers who will read what is above the first fold (the first information shown) then hit the ‘End’ key to read the bottom. If you capture their interest then they may go back to read the rest.

Writing your review

Now you’ve done your homework it’s time to assemble your review.

Write your headline

This is your chance to capture your reader’s attention. The headline needs to be short and punchy. Grab your description of the problem you solved and turn it into a headline. This often will include the name of the product.

For example, if your problem was to take family photos at the pool without risking water damage to your camera

“Capture your family making a splash at the pool with the Kamra 1000DS”

There are many headlines that could be made from a problem statement. Copywriters can spend hours coming up with ideas and selecting the best. That’s a whole different skill that would take an entire article on its own.

State the problem to be solved

Remember drafting this earlier? Go ahead and do a “Copy & Paste”. Later we will check the overall flow of our review and can make any necessary changes.

Introduce the product being reviewed

You got it! Another “Copy & Paste” exercise.

Include an image of the product

This helps your reader identify what is being reviewed.

Include at least one product image. If you did not create the image then you may wish to seek permission to use the image to avoid copyright issues. (If you obtain permission from the manufacturer/vendor then there is always the possibility they will ask you to review other/future products – depending on how valuable they consider your review.)

If your review is to be published on-line avoid using technologies that are not compatible with your reader’s devices, for example iGadgets do not like Flash. It is better to use an “older” standard technology such as animated GIF files (which is visible on most devices) to display rotating images than using Flash which will not be visible on devices such as iGadgets.

You will find the logical places for images as your review evolves but generally you should include a cover image near your headline.

You can also include your experience obtaining the product, unpacking it, installing it.

Describe how you used the product to solve the problem

Take your notes from the “Use it” activity and write a description of how you solved the problem using the product.

This can be several paragraphs according to the process needed. Remember that your reader wants quick information so don’t be tempted to include every menu option and mouse click. That is your material for another article or “How to” guide.

The reader will be interested in “how was it for you?” so include appropriate commentary on how easy or difficult it was to use the product.

Add your list of pros and cons

Not all review writers like to include a list of pros and cons. Some review styles do not benefit from such a list. Hence, this is an optional section.

If you are including your list of pros and cons, put it here.

Bring your review to a close with your conclusion.

Keep this short and to the point. If it goes beyond one screen it’s time to reconsider what is in your conclusion. There may be parts that are better suited to earlier sections or can be condensed into fewer words.

If you are allowed to include affiliate hyperlinks you could include them here.

Other considerations

Always declare if you have received any compensation or sponsorship to write the review -  US FTC regulations.

Always declare if you will receive any compensation if someone purchases the product via a hyperlink – US FTC regulations.

Even if you are not in US jurisdiction it is better to err on the side of caution and declare any compensation. FTC regulations may still have effect if someone within its jurisdiction makes a purchase via your hyperlink.

Acknowledge all trademarks used in your review. For example, Flash is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries

Review your review

Now it’s time to look at the review as a whole.

Ask yourself:

• Do all the sections flow naturally into each other?
• Is the tone consistent?
• Does it make sense?
• Are there any spelling mistakes?
• Are there any glaring grammatical errors?

If you answer “No” to any of these questions, go back and change your review until you are satisfied with it.

Personally I find it easier to print my draft review and go over it marking any areas for improvement with a highlighter pen.

When you are happy with the results, get someone else to read it and make comments where things were unclear or where mistakes were found.

Publish and Promote

Once your review is complete it is time to publish.

Whether your review is destined for your own review site or elsewhere it will need to be promoted if anyone is to read it before the search engine spiders have time to index it.

Take your review headline and statement of the problem and get ready to promote your review.

Make appropriate use of social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to get the word out.

Facebook and LinkedIn are easier to use in so much as you can use a headline and have an abstract of what your review is about. This is where your headline and statement of the problem come in useful. Try not to use exactly the same words, keep the abstract relevant but not identical to your review.

Twitter limits each Tweet to 140 characters which is not a lot for a headline. Reserving space for a shortened link to your review and for possible Retweets further reduce the number of characters available to drive traffic to your review. Satisfying these constraints will give you plenty of practice crafting headlines.

Writing Product Reviews [Better Writing with Jeremy Ep I] is a post from: B2Bento

[updated with recap]

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the strategy for managing interactions with sales prospects, current and past clients. The growing influence of social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn has given rise to a new genre of CRM commonly referred to as Social CRM.

Both “traditional” CRM and Social CRM rely on a common backbone: the contact database.
As time passes the size of the database increases and there will inevitably be duplicate or obsolete information.

So how do you maximize the efficacy of campaigns using your database?

As the Chinese New Year approaches, in Asia, many families are feverishly cleaning their homes to get rid of accumulated clutter. Is it time to do the same for your database?

In this week’s #B2BChat, we are going to discuss -

1. How do you maintain your client / prospect database? Who takes care of data cleansing? How often?
2. How do you determine if your database is ‘clean’? What are the signs of ‘un-clean’ database?
3. CRM – Who is responsible? Who takes the lead: Sales or Marketing?
4. Social CRM – How important is it? Is it a real possibility or a mythical creature?
5. What tools are available? What are your top tips?

Join us as we talk about Herding cats – CRM, Social CRM, Data Hygiene and more in this week’s #B2BChat Thursday, Jan 19 at 5 pm, PST / 8 pm, EST (Friday, Jan 20, 1 am GMT).

Suggested ways of participating: via hashtag #B2BChat using your favourite Twitter client; or at tweetchat.com using #B2BChat.

Herding cats – CRM, Social CRM, Data Hygiene and more [#B2BChat] is a post from: B2Bento

The first year of this decade is about to bid us adieu. Time for work to wind down (ever so slightly at least) and festivities to take centre stage. Friends and family get together to forget misgivings and forge relationships anew. We take stock of accomplishments past, take charge of new responsibilities and set new expectations for the year ahead. Yes, it’s that kinda time.

B2Bento’s had an eventful year (quite literally). Beginning with Click Asia Summit 2011 in Mumbai and finishing off with SES Singapore, we’ve had the pleasure of covering several leading marketing events in the region through live blogs, field reports and event recaps. Check out the condensed versions of Click Asia Summit and SES Singapore, and pick up tips on how to be at the leading edge of marketing in this region.

We published the second edition (or v2.0) of our e-book, Social Media Marketing for B2B Marketing, and produced the second in a line of well-reviewed infographics: Lead Nurturing in Plain English. And inspired by RSA Animate we flexed our creative muscles with the Social Media for Business INKAST.

We revealed the secret sauce of dishing out  killer case studies and shared our own tales from the trenches.

Continuing our tradition of “what-the!” juxtapositions, we concocted 10 marketing lessons from the Beat Generation. And helped equip marketers and marketing technologists with a couple of tools and resources. And doled out some guidance while we were at it.

Thanks to all who chimed in with comments and feedback, and avidly followed our live blogs and Twitter feed. Your words of encouragement are highly appreciated. To our #B2BChat padres, thanks for your seasoned insight, ready wit and eye-opening ideas.

We admit we weren’t as prolific as we set out to be at the beginning of the year. We will do better in 2012. Till then, happy holidays!

(Yes, we are conspicuously avoiding predictions. For that go here, and here.)

Best of B2Bento 2011 is a post from: B2Bento

Integrated marketing is often referred to as a strategy to unify different marketing methods such as mass marketing, one-to-one marketing, and direct marketing.

But, what does it really mean to us B2B marketers? Does it work as advertised? Is there a clear ROI to be derived from it?

This week’s #B2BChat will attempt at shedding more light into this somewhat nebulous area. We discuss:

1. What does Integrated Marketing really mean to you? What are its objectives?
2. How do you put Integrated Marketing into practice? What goes into the mix?
3. What are the strengths of each channel? How do you orchestrate them to achieve your goals?
4. What is the role of content in integrated marketing?
5. How can you attribute ROI across various channels? What are the metrics you use?

Join us as we talk about Integrated Marketing: Myth or Reality in this week’s #B2BChat – Thursday, Dec 1 at 5 pm, PST / 8 pm, EST (Friday, Dec 2, 1 am GMT). 

Suggested ways of participating: via hashtag #B2BChat using your favourite Twitter client; or at tweetchat.com using #B2BChat.

Follow @B2B_Chat for more updates. Be part of the community. Join the #B2BChat LinkedIn Group today!

Integrated Marketing: Myth or Reality? [#B2BChat] (Updated with Recap) is a post from: B2Bento

The first ever SES conference to be held in Singapore was a resounding success. Kudos to the wonderful folks at Incisive Media for delivering yet another fantastic serving of the latest trends, best practices, industry insights and integration strategies in the fields of search and social marketing. SES Singapore 2011 was an exhilarating affair that had two frenetic days of presentations and executive panels by brilliant thought-leaders (there were more than 50 of them) from across the globe.

Check out the complete coverage of all sessions:

• Day 1: Keynote and Panel Discussions, Track 1 – Fundamentals, Track 2 – Hot Topics
• Day 2: Keynote and Panel Discussions, Track 1 – Fundamentals, Track 2 – Hot Topics

If that seems daunting and 10 minutes is all you have, here’s the Cliff Notes version.

Day 1 Highlights

Keynotes and Panel Discussions

Mike Grehan in his opening address, told the story of how search is about constantly organizing the world’s information to make it universally accessible and useful. He also touched on the “genesis” of social network analysis, the “taxonomy” of search, the importance of understanding user intent, the shift towards information seeking on social networking sites as well as the complexities of modern marketing.

Up next was the first panel discussion that centered on best practices for search marketing in regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals, gambling and the adult trade … or what Barry Lloyd fondly referred to as “Poker, Pills and Porn.” While customers continue to actively search and crave for information, marketers in the regulated industries have different approaches to sharing experiences and engaging online. David Garceran Nieuwenburg shared how the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC), facing several restrictions on how they can promote their activities, uses social media hubs under corporate brand control to bring traffic to their sites. That, coupled with SEM and SEO, produced fairly impressive results. According to Barry, social media works wonders for regulated trades as it improves visibility dramatically since social media sites are often highly ranked.

Marcelo Wesseler looked into how social media can assist in the lead generation process. Key learnings were:

• Understand customer and purchasing lifecycles
• Start with Search – first PPC then SEO
• Focus on SM campaign on customer centric value creation
• Don’t neglect onsite customer experience and lead conversion tactics
• Be diligent with traditional onsite web analytics – set up robust reporting mechanisms
• Use free tools (e.g. Google Analytics) before investing in expensive tools
• Build in-house expertise to complement agencies’ work

The special address by Arun Poojari shed some light on the continued shift from Paid media towards Owned and Earned media and how that would affect digital marketing campaigns. He discussed about best practices for digital effectiveness, digital investments, campaign planning, campaign optimization, etc. Next on the podium was Mandeep Grover, who spoke on Integrated Marketing as giving deeper insight and better predictability of preference (e.g. search analytics during American Idol). He enumerated 4 crucial steps to “Bringing it All Together”:

1. Have a deeper understanding of Insights
2. Know the media channels inside-out to assess how closely they can align with your objectives.
3. Understand and optimize the consumer journey
4. Have clear metrics that strongly demonstrate value

With the proliferation of mobile devices and the increasing data consumption attached with it, it’s no surprise that the last panel discussion of day 1 would talk about SEM for mobile. Christian Cadeo highlighted that Asia is driving the smartphone revolution that’s why it’s highly relevant to define your mobile campaign goals. With 61% of users taking some kind of “action” after ad attention, it is critical for marketers to be ready, be found and be smart. Adrian Tan and Samuel Goh provided 5 Tips for mobile SEM basics and optimization:

• Optimize your mobile landing pages
• Be mindful of keyword length
• Ad Position matters in mobile search
• Have a good and prominent Call-to-Action
• Track with analytics and optimize with targeting

Fundamentals Track

The track kicked off with Rich McPharlin and Barry Lloyd, both zoning in on how to maximize ROI from SEM. Rich talked about how top/bottom ads increase the importance of Quality Score, different kinds of keywords for different purposes (broad match, phrase match, exact match and negative), the metrics that really matter (bounce rate, conversions, ROI) as well as the search behavior of consumers. According to Barry, the Buying Journey goes like this:

“Someone finds you on PPC. They remember your Company Name. They type in your name and find you on organic. They buy something!”

This gives weight to the concept that SEM and SEO works best when used as a powerful combination as opposed to opting for siloed execution. Also, defining attribution value is very important.

Shei Wah Tan, Sean Rezel, and Rajitha Dahanayake gave an overview on SEO and the key principles on how search engines tick (e.g. search engine ranking factors, etc.). To achieve success, the e-commerce team, web agency and SEO agency should work hand-in-hand for: Visibility, Visitors, Conversions, and Revenue. 9 Golden SEO Rules were established, namely:

• SEO Tags: your website should be able to accommodate various tags
• URLS: static, no duplicate, absolute, re-directions
• Content: text/html, anchor text, social
• Navigation: breadcrumbs, linking to home
• Page-Formatting: H1 H2 tags
• Page Architecture: page structure, content visibility
• File Names: html names, image file
• Technical
• Site Maps

Despite the cliched phrase “Content is King”, search engines (especially Google) put a lot of emphasis on great content. The combination of good keywords and quality material provide the foundation for successful link building.

Joe Nguyen showed how to effectively use web analytics and how to integrate the resulting information with data from market research companies like comScore, Nielsen and the like:

• Optimize as much as you can from the bottom up
• It’s all about mindshare, so use both SEM and SEO
• “Pathing analysis” helps shed some light on what consumers do on your site
• Search usually gets the credit but consumers have already seen a display ad or heard about you from social channels
• Attribute some value to every aspect of your campaign

Nicholas Tay, Enrique Pinilla, and Blanca Menchaca showed us how to apply marketing skills and experience to social media. Notable best practices include the following:

• Find out if you a part of the target audience of your brand. Recommend Engagement benchmark – aim for 0.4%.
• Look at different kinds of matrices. It is not the same all throughout.
• Social Integration
• Community Management: Localize your message, Know your audience (especially in SEA where the market is fragmented), Customer Service (define responsibilities, establish guidelines, engage promptly, etc.), Different Network Different Strategy (e.g. B2B – LinkedIn, Company Blog)
• Social Advertising: Sponsored Ads, Promotions
• Approach to Social Media: Listen, Engage, Measure, Analyze & Optimize

“Hot Topics” Track

Kelly Choo and Hari Shankar started the advanced track of SES Singapore with their talk on Social Analytics. Both shared techniques for collecting massive amounts of social media data, how to identify subsets of content, analyze for temporal patterns and ultimately measure and track ROI. Some key challenges that were examined included automated sentiment analysis (handling sarcasm, slang, etc.), turning raw data into actionable intelligence, and determining what really matters for metrics and ROI.

The topic “Proven strategies and tactics for advanced paid search” was handled by Rey Ong, Janice Tan, and Sho Shimoda. They covered campaign expansion techniques, designing and running effective ad tests, advanced auction theory, the proper use of relevant analytics reports as well as bid rules and campaign automation. Sho gave search optimization tips on how to:

• Get more impressions by expanding keywords
• Get more clicks through testing and refining title/description
• Have a better landing page by building it systematically
• Get more conversions by using analytics segmented by paid search and natural search keywords, adding cost drivers (for paid), and segmenting between brand and no-brand search

Rey provided tips for keyword expansion and stressed on leveraging unused budgets for experiments, monitoring closely (“if it doesn’t work, stop”) and to measure and pay attention to analytics (conversion rates, bounce rates, time-on-site, etc.). Janice focused on broader optimization strategies (e.g. pre-click optimization, usability) and highlighted the following insights:

• Copy sucks, so be smart. Less is more. Use bullets. Avoid “Wall of text”
• Don’t give people crazy forms. Ask for minimum information.
• Continuity and convergence
• Use smart designs and graphics
• Clear calls-to-action (CTA’s) to ensure visitors know what’s next
• Think beyond the nitty gritty and look at the bigger picture – and how it all fits into an overall plan

With social connectivity, conversations, and content distribution changing the way people consider and consume brands, it is imperative that marketers change their approaches to brand building or else they risk becoming irrelevant. Pushkar Sane evaluated current brand building models and provided a glued audience with a fresh approach. Brand building today is not linear; it has multiple entry and exit points. Marketers should consider an inverse funnel and new ways of connecting (aside from mass or direct marketing). The key is to respect the power of the consumer in the age of social and to learn and evolve with the times.

With online advertising becoming more complex, it is now increasingly critical that advertisers and agencies recognize and understand the opportunities that display, search and social are providing. Cindy Deng, Kate Clough, and Arun Kumar shed some light on what’s in store for search, social and display in 2012. Arun mentioned about the “advertisers-publishing-audience ecosystem” is getting more complex (see infographic). He also noted that optimization is happening in silos (display, search, mobile, social and television). Cindy explained how moving from search marketing to synergy advertising (search and display) yields stronger results. Kate then talked about why performance perception and optimization rely on accurate and meaningful metrics. A few of the important things that she centered on are default attribution methodology, post-impression conversion testing and attribution adjustment.

Day 2 Highlights

Keynotes and Panel Discussions

Sarah Whyte spoke on the “Art of Content Marketing.” Through a selection of case studies (with highly entertaining video examples to boot), Sarah outlined the tactical approach to marketing activity with a focus on making engaging content shine inside the vast digital space. It is proven that fantastic digital content working hand-in-hand with the right marketing strategy (e.g. social) has the potential for solid online impact, regardless of budget constraints.

Monappa Nalyanda followed with “Maximizing your digital marketing mix through integrated marketing”. He stressed the importance of having a diversified media plan with tailored communication and content creation that leverage the engagement and reach quotient of media vehicles individually to maximize the overall impact of the campaign. He also discussed the elements of the integrated marketing mix (display, mobile, email, social and search) and corresponding strategies for each and every one of them.

The last panel discussion (and the closing segment for the whole event) was skillfully handled by Vincent Teo, B2Bento’s very own Anol Bhattacharya, Devashish Saxena, and Eddie Choi. They gave the audience valuable and actionable insights on B2B social media marketing, securing internal buy-in and budget, and the application of brand building and lead generation principles. Here are a couple of key takeaways:

• Decision makers in B2B are also consumers! So social marketing is critical for marketing in B2B, perhaps even more than B2C.
• Social media can help B2B organizations achieve their goals in the following aspects: demand generation, thought leadership, brand building, customer loyalty, and cross-selling/up-selling.
• 5 tips for improving social media ROI: determining where prospects are in social media, mapping influencers, igniting conversation with a content strategy, using benchmarking metrics and conversion tracking via campaign and URL tagging.
• If you don’t get buy-in, change the group you are talking to. Start small with those who are passionate about it. Work against the “normal distribution curve” in typical organizations.
• Members in B2B communities could convert with higher value transactions.

Fundamentals Track

“Coming up with excellent and share-able content is like catching lightning in a bottle.”

This is how Ricky Baizas summarized his segment on optimizing for YouTube. He enumerated the following as the key steps towards optimization:

• Have Fantastic Content - Check what Content you have in abundance
• Check with Legal – clear licenses (music, etc.)
• Get the Filename right for easy search. Fix it so that it contains all of your main keywords.
• Fill in ALL blanks: Title, Description, Tags
• Maximize the Features: Playlists, Subtitles, Annotations
• Embed Everywhere: Put your content out.
• Make the Right Friends: Check for people who are active and with a good amount of content and engage with them.

Is there a relationship between social insights and search? Where does the path to purchase start? In their talk, Rosemary Lising and Simon Ashwin noted that the usage of search and social media channels accelerates as consumers get closer to conversion. This “Late Kick”, as termed by the duo, indicates that even 30 days after initial search, consumers still haven’t fully decided and you still have the opportunity to influence conversion. They explained that earned media (that’s social) is an integral part of the decision since it refines the buying process through perception changes and brand elimination. They then advised that marketers should have an always-on integrated search and social program.

Jean-Marc Thomas presented KFC’s case study of managing their recent social crisis. The way KFC handled the crisis earned them significant positive buzz. Jean-Marc then showed what brands can do to manage social media crises:

• Take advantage of the power of search. Google’s new algorithm is heavily pushing YouTube video content
• There would always be videos, look out for hidden content that may negatively influence your brand
• Prevent and take actions immediately
• Own the digital shelf – your own content must be able to figure prominently in SERPs

On the topic of search for eCommerce, Jurik Auer, David McLean, and Omri Bril enlightened the audience on how to create a search engine friendly and appealing eCommerce site, how to ensure its scalability and how to track its performance. Keyword research, information architecture, index-ability, URL considerations and content are just a few of the things that David touched on. Omri expanded with the benefits of Long Tail Keywords to achieving the perfect product page. Jurik cemented the segment by stressing the importance of analytics and how continuous measurement and benchmarking can provide the basis for strategy.

SES Advisory Board member Eddie Choi covered the intricacies of search advertising. Like most of the speakers, Eddie rallied behind the significance of analytics. He put things into perspective with the statement:

“Keywords talk to search queries. Ad copy talks to searchers and the audience. CPC talks to customers.”

Keyword research is important. You can understand the demand of a product through the keywords that people use to search. Eddie advised us marketers to understand our USPs, value proposition, brand attributes, product attributes, customer demographics and customer perception. He also gave wonderful insights on Baidu (which is highly relevant for Chinese markets) and PPC best practices.

Capping the Fundamentals Track was a panel discussion with You Teck Lam and Sally Wuu about innovations in mobile advertising. For them, marketers should keep things simple and don’t overload with clutter. The mobile campaign should have a clear offer and an even clearer call-to-action. Several best practices covered include:

• Maximize the reach of your mobile campaign because mobile devices are so pervasive
• Re-think what targeting means and be relevant in mobile advertising
• Optimize ad design for mobile
• Prolong engagement
• Know what works and re-allocate your budget from those that are not working.

“Hot Topics” Track

On the advanced side of the conference, Cuneyt Uysal isolated common problems companies face when profiling users. With the use of integrated online tools, Cuneyt showed how marketers can connect channels as well as enable engagement automation and analytics. By understanding the value of data and how to use it, marketers can improve web content and visitor quality. A good customer engagement journey is not just about promoting something (e.g. rock concert). You also need to ensure that people have a great experience and enjoy themselves as well.

Search has one of the lowest customer acquisition rates, simply because it is a “pull” medium, allowing people to find you when they need you. Mark Kum and Richard Mabey delved into how SEO can help marketers position their website in such a way that it would be found at the most critical points in the buying process. The 10 cyclical steps that veterans use are:

1. Identify your Targets – ask your top offline competitors
2. Market Analysis – use available statistics
3. Comparative search trends – how high do you rank, how often, and when searched for what
4. International and Local Search – use local search engines
5. Evaluate site assets – PageRank of 5 and above can get you to the top
6. Site foundation – 301 redirects are risky
7. Content analysis –  description and placement of keywords
8. Site Tags – keywords in h1 tag
9. Internal links – link to your home page from within the site as much as possible
10. Re-start and refine

Tom Skotidas took the attendees through some case studies of how companies are using LinkedIn Groups to sow brand awareness and generate ongoing B2B sales leads. According to Tom, marketers can enjoy the following core benefits from LinkedIn Groups: personal brand building, positioning, inbound lead generation, and outbound lead generation. But they also have to be weary of costs such as: reputation building, actual financial costs, personal time spent, content production, member engagement time, and the absence of thread depth. Best practices are:

• Naming – be relevant and appealing, don’t use company name
• Social sellers – choose the right people, create a plan for their contributions
• Invitations – be highly relevant, don’t use stock standard
• Member Engagement – plan ahead to time; topics must be interesting to target audience
• Approach group members individually and ask for contribution
• Ask your social sellers to help you create buzz

The panel composed of Lydia Ng, Adrian Ang, and Kelvin Quee presented the audience with a snapshot of the search landscape and how it has evolved during the past years when social media exploded. For search marketing to remain as a powerful tool for marketers, the search model has to evolve to incorporate social. Relevance (through listening, monitoring and optimizing), congruence (ad title and keyword matching) and search-ability of social content are absolutely paramount.

Mikko Kotila’s disarming humour in his segment on using social media conversations and statistical analysis to maximize community ROI, penetrated even the most skeptical marketer effectively enough to instill great wisdom and insight. Aside from emphasizing that guesswork and the “spray and pray” method does not work, Mikko also shed some light on three great C’s:

• Connect: the internet is empowering brands to connect with you and vice versa
• Contribute: the internet allows people to contribute
• Compete: the internet taps into human’s being wired to compete (e.g. Dell Swarm, FourSquare, etc.)

Here are a few more of our favorite moments:

• More people online doesn’t mean more are social
• Social interactions has to be about diversity – we may be losing it and actually getting less social if everyone is on the same platform
• It’s so 90s to “build” a community or groups

The advanced track of the 2011 SES Singapore ended with a panel discussion comprising Vikas Gulati, Andrew Tu, Jonathan Tilbury, and Arshan Saha. Remarketing (aka retargeting) is a technology that allows marketers to show their ads to former site visitors while they surf elsewhere on the web. The challenges with retargeting in Asia are: tracking and measurement, cookie pools, matching creatives and landing pages, and offering offline options to limit conversion drop-offs.

Parting Shots

The presentations in the inaugural SES Singapore highlighted the fact that SEM and SEO continues to thrive amidst the continued rise of social marketing. The talks also gave a recurring emphasis on the importance of analytics, combined SEM and Social, integrated marketing and the fact that mobile is a huge force to reckon with and is shaping up to be THE next buzz word after “social”.

Needless to say, we have gained a lot at this year’s SES Singapore and we hope that next year’s event would even be better (which is a tall order we might add). And on this note, we wrap up our B2Bento coverage. Hope to see you all on the next one! For feedback, comments and thoughts, chime in below!

Celebrating Search and Social Marketing: SES Singapore 2011 Cliff Notes (Event Recap) is a post from: B2Bento

Day 2 (Nov 23) coverage of what’s hot and how can you ride the heat wave – all set for a incisive look at the what’s shaking up the social and search marketing fields. See live report of the Keynotes and Fundamentals Track here.

[3.30 pm] Display 2.0: Retargeting and remarketing by Vikas Gulati, Vice President, Marketing & Business Development, Asia Pacific, Sprice, Andrew Tu, Vice President, Business Development Asia-Pacific, Brandscreen, Jonathan Tilbury, Regional Director, ValueClick, Arshan Saha, Regional Director, Innity. Moderated by Matt Harty, General Manager, Accuen APAC, Annalect

Andrew Tu

• Remarketing in Asia before starting – 1) Tracking infrastructure – ensure it’s in place with conversion tags not just GA; 2) Product fit – not one-size-fits-al, be product specific – windows, proposition, offer, creatives, etc.; 3) Audience Pools – organic data is key now. Embed remarketing tags onto pages with highest traffic to capture audience pools; 4) Legs to “Scale” – remarketing works best with audience pools and audience reach are scaled. It’s long term.
• eCPA of remarketing campaigns significantly lower than non-remarketing
• Lessons learnt from running remarketing: 1) Not the solution for lowest CPM; 2) No point in testing if no infrastructure in place; 3) About audience pools not just mechanical improvements to CPA – remarketing strategies work in parallel with non-remarketing; 4) No magic bullet; 5) Long-term commitment

[2.30 pm] Using social media conversations and statistical analysis to maximize your community ROI by Mikko Kotila, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Statsit

• Social media and the art of cherry-picking: bulls****ing with selected statistics and case studies
• More people online doesn’t mean more are social
• Social interactions has to be about diversity – we may be losing it and actually getting less social
• Social media is just a fancy word for “The Internet”
• Connect: internet is empowering brands to connect with you and vv
• Contribute: internet allows people to contribute
• Compete: internet taps into human’s being wired to compete, e.g., Dell Swarm, FourSquare, etc.
• Before brand conversations used to 1-to-1. Now, it’s part of the community, doesn’t have to be at the centre, but should be part of it.
• It’s so 90s to “build” a community or groups
• Building the community: “spray and pray” approach does not work
• The 3 Types of Influencers: 1) Gatekeeper (8%) 2) Elite (<1%) 3) Reactor (91%)
• Stop relying on Guesswork
• Most people followed users outside the community – watch out for affinities across interests
• Other stats – Klout scores across users, etc. – a lot can be gleaned from Twitter stats

[1.45 pm] Search in a social world by Lydia Ng, Digital Marketing Search Lead, Singtel, Adrian Ang, Business Director, AdVantage SEO, Kelvin Quee, Head of Partnerships, Jamiq. Moderated by Matt McGowan, Managing Director, Americas, Incisive Media

Is Search Relevant in a Social World by Lydia Ng

•  Many people with many opinions who all want to be heard. But Search only excels at 1-on-1
• The Rise of Social – majority of people have discussed or read brands on social networks
• Paid media investments are decreasing and earned media is on the rise
• More clutter, more voice
• But relax, customer journey is non-linear
• Search is a strong Validation tool – search and social makes people more confident about decision made
• People expect unbiased search results
• Social conversions in SG are assisted by Search
• A new Search model: OLD – silo-ed and NEW – integrated: relevant, sociable and congruent
• Be Relevant – buzz monitoring; buzz clustering of hot topics; Listen and act – keyword expansion, ad messaging, and  landing page optimization
• Congruent – customer journey is not linear. There is information overload, everyone is shouting for attention, multiple screens. If our message is fragmented, it’s easily lost in the clutter. Repeat your message in Search and Social – most conversions when Facebook ad title and searched keyword matched. Repeat the positive aspects in your ad copies. Refute negative sentiment – e.g., if not value for money, emphasize what the price premium gives in return.
• Be Searchable: Social content has a short shelf life, posts die down within the first few hours, and message is easily lost in the clutter. SEO for YouTube – extended air-time, video viral time is long

• More people are associating LinkedIn groups with lead generation
• Quick facts about LI groups: 1) Use Groups directory to find groups; 2) Groups are person-to-person: companies can’t own groups, only persons, and 99% of interaction is person-to-person just like in B2B world; 3) Group names are scarce – once registered, gone forever – every person can register up to 10 LI groups; 4) Groups give owners strong control – approve/reject, delete, moderate posts, kick out members
• Case Studies: Innovation in Health by Philips; and B2B Social Media Lead Generation by Skotidas
• Core benefits of joining LinkedIn groups: 1) Personal brand building (“mere exposure effect“); 2) Positioning – stand out and become synonymous with content, giving your greater credibility and trust in the market; 3) Inbound lead generation – be prepared for approaches, post new discussions, send free group email to link back to website, compelling and genuine content distributed in the group and embedded within site; 4) Outbound lead generation – approach group members and ask them for a meeting
• But beware of Costs 1) Reputation – be choosy in who they allow to join, train how to engage, and remove people who do direct selling; 2) Money – send hundreds of invitations, invest in LinkedIn media – InMails, Partner Messages, Ads; 3) Time – group admin needs to be rapid (approving, rejecting, moderating); 4) Content – source and distribute, content calendar, someone has to post; 5) Member engagement time – 3% rule – only 3 will become regular, 50% are lurkers, 50% have forgotten; 6) No thread depth = brain dead groups – start with a big promise of activity, but quickly flatline
• Best practices: 1) Naming – be relevant and appealing, don’t use company name; 2) Social sellers – choose the right people, create a plan for their contributions; 3) Invitations – be highly relevant, don’t use stock standard – LI profile of inviter must be highly relevant and credible to the target audience – will determine % conversion rate of Invite to Join (30% is good); 4) Member Engagement – plan ahead to time; topics must be interesting to target audience not you (have a process to determine the attractiveness of content); 5) Approach group members individually and ask for contribution; 6) Ask your social sellers to help you create buzz
• Lead Generation: 1) Selling – Never hard sell, never promote company brand overly, offer continual information and advisory value; 2) Inbound marketing – have forms in content that you share; 3) Tracking and measurement – add unique, trackable campaign link to each group post, record the click, capture conversion on website, integrate with CRM, analyse the results, and identify return on investments
• Q&A: Lead Generation: For short term quick wins – join groups where your prospects are; But in medium-long term, open your own and build your community there with your thought leadership content.
• Q&A: Inviting: okay to approach other group members one-on-one.

[11.30 am] SEO: A Veteran’s Tool Box by Mark Kum, Search Strategist, New Media Marketing Division, EC21.com and Richard Mabey, Managing Director, The Egg

• Step 1: Identify your Targets – ask your top offline competitors – use Google Trends
• Step 2: Market Analysis – use available statistics
• Step 3: Comparative search trends – how high do you rank, how often, and when searched for what
• Step 4: International and Local Search – use local search engines
• Step 5: Evaluate site assets – PageRank of 5 and above can get you to the top
• Step 6: Site foundation – 301 redirects are risky
• Step 7: Content analysis –  Description and placement of keywords
• Step 8: Site Tags – keywords in h1 tag
• Step 9: Internal links – link to your home page from within the site as much as possible
• Step 10: Re-start and refine!

[11 am] Online customer engagement by Cuneyt Uysal, Regional Manager, Southeast Asia, Sitecore

• Website launches typically entail Analytics, SEO, Lead scoring and nurturing, CRM , email marketing, etc. – integration of multiple systems is costly
• Sitecore integrates everything into a single platform – Customer Engagement Platform
• The typical Customer Engagement Journey – from Awareness  to Conversion to  Loyalty
• Generating traffic to your website is not just about mass numbers – it depends on what that traffic does, e.g., buy, ask, return, sign up for offers, rave and recommend?  Key is to get actionable data.
• Measure visitor value by weighting goals according to their sales value in terms of commitment to value (more the commitment, higher the value)
• Sitecore has “Executive Insight Dashboards” that give value per visit metrics – a Holy Grail of sorts
• Social ad spending grew nearly twice as fast as expected
• A good customer Engagement journey is not just about promoting a rock concert – you need to ensure people have a great experience and enjoy themselves
• Common pitfalls of customer facing websites: 1) Don’t see what customer is doing 2) Don’t listen to what customers are saying 3) Don’t speak to specific needs
• Reality: everyone’s journey is different: Track for Looking, Confirming and  Buying
• Provide unique customer experiences by tracking user behaviour on site – from IP,
• E.g., A telco’s customer journey: Motivate – Inform – Realize – Optimize – Support
• Random acts of marketing make it difficult for customer to engage with you
• Engagement Automation helps in Orchestrated Marketing
• Case Study: Heineken Star Player – HDTV, Web, Social, Mobile and Fan pages
• Success is measured using s scoring system for different behaviors over the customer journey, focus on “high scoring” customers (=> highly engaged)

SES Singapore 2011 – Day 2 “Hot Topics” Track – Live Blog is a post from: B2Bento

B2Bento brings you Day 2 of the Fundamentals track. Expect to have a good serving of the latest trends, innovations and best practices from the finest thought leaders in search and social marketing. Check out the main post for the opening address and keynote panel as well as the live coverage of Track 2.

[3:30pm] “Innovation in mobile advertising” – You Teck Lam, Consultant, ZOIBOX; Sally Wuu, Head of Marketing, SEA, INMOBI (Moderator: Anna Maria Virzi, Executive Editor, ClickZ)

Sally Wuu – (Brand Marketing) The Mobile Perspective

Mobile is …

• Immediate – deliver messages directly to consumers
• Intimate – people use mobile device the most
• Interactive – rich media
• Accountable – mobile is completely measureable

Don’t chuck out Marketing 101 out the window. It is still relevant.

Best Practices:

• Maximize the reach of your mobile campaign because mobile devices are so pervasive. Optimize for various mobile devices. Consider CRM. There is no harm including a form.
• Re-think what targeting means and be relevant in mobile advertising. There are other options we can use to target audience (e.g. devices people are using, the kind of content people consume, etc.). Target early adopters (devices that are recently launched). Once you have targeted them, remember to keep your ads relevant.
• Optimize ad design for mobile. Your real estate is limited. Limit the clutter by keeping your copy clear and concise. Make the font size generous and make the call-to-action really clear. Mobile users expect mobile sites to load faster than web pages on desktops.
• Prolong engagement. The creative possibilities are almost endless with rich media (movie trailers, etc.).
• Remember to track, measure and optimize your campaign. Know what works and re-allocate your budget from those that are not working.

[2:30pm] “Search Advertising Simplified” – Eddie Choi, SES Advisory Board & Founding Partner, Frontiers Digital

• Embrace Simplicity.
• Keywords talk to search queries. Ad copy talks to searchers/audience. CPC talks to customers.
• Keyword research is very important: you can understand the demand of a product through the keywords people use to search. Understand your USP, value proposition, brand attributes, product attributes, customer demographics, and customer perception.
• In multi-language international campaigns, semantics is critical.
• Understand the supply side value chain, especially if you are in B2B.
• Look at your competitor’s ads and get insights from them.
• Doing keyword research is a loop.
• Ad Copy: Funnel (awareness, interest, desire, action) vs. Brand Pyramid (emotional benefit, consumer need, functional benefit, product attributes). Ad copy can be so scientific.
• Brand or No Brand: no brand copy (in China) tends to work better than brand copy.
• CPC: Project a conversion number. Get CPA based on the budget. Assume a conversion rate. Derive the # of clicks. Get CPC based on the clicks.
• Analytics: The most important thing. The big picture: what is the function of web analytics: tracking, analysis, testing. Get a perspective: compare keyword performance vs. time change.

[1:40pm] “A-Z of an e-commerce website” – Jurik Auer, Manager, Online Sales, Marketing and Mobile Services, Lufthansa Airlines; David McLean, Head of Search, Skyscanner; Omri Bril, CEO and Founder, Podium Advertising (Moderator: Adaline Lau, Editor, ClickZ Asia)

David McLean – How to make search engines LOVE you

The steps to success

• Keyword Research: optimize for mobile and tablet. Understand what the keyword is under the niche that you are targeting. Google insights + competing pages. What else can give you the edge? Pick your winners.
• Information architecture and index-ability: User profile. How do users search for products? What is the funnel for searching? Make use of mergewords. Build your keyword track. Use common terms in navigation. Include filters for popular navigation.
• URL considerations: Since raters are typically “normal” users of Google, first impressions of your URL count BIG TIME. Make your URLs memorable. Don’t use parameters. Include the keyword. Use dashes, not underscores.
• Content and what can go wrong: Get user-generated content. Don’t copy from product descriptions. Unique titles and meta-data please. Get your landing page types right. Content drives conversion. Keep it unique!

[12:00nn] “KFC: A social crisis management case study” – Jean-Marc Thomas, Director of Search, Neo@Ogilvy

• Everybody is talking about social media today. Everybody consumes video every day on all kinds of platforms and devices. Now, people watch videos more on tablets compared to desktops.
• In July 2011 in Malaysia, 2 videos were posted showing people mishandling food in the kitchen. It got picked up in social media, went viral and basically the “fire” spread out. KFC (via Ogilvy) decided to use the social platforms to fight the fire. 2 videos of an apology were uploaded immediately (using 2 languages). Drive traffic to the Facebook page about the in incident as well as the YouTube video from KFC.
• The Search Strategy: driving traffic from search engine to FB and YouTube
• Paid Search Results: 44% of clicks on Google came from the Bahasa keywords
• SEO Optimisation: Ranking #1 video. The correct video optimization helped us rank above the videos KFC was fighting against on their main keywords! Due to the limited budget for PPC, video SEO was an important criterion to this success.
• The way KFC handled the crisis earned them significant positive buzz.
• Social Media Crisis Management: posts from other bloggers helped
• Challenges: In YouTube, you cannot target a specific country unlike Google AdWords.
• What brands should do: Google is pushing video content on search; people have more access to videos than before. There would always be videos, look out for hidden content that may negatively influence your brand. Prevent and take actions immediately. Own the digital shelf – your own content must be able to figure prominently in search results.

[11:20am] “Intention marketing: Search and social” – Rosemary Lising, Managing Director, GroupM; Simon Ashwin, Head of Social Media and Production Services, APAC, GroupM

Is there a relationship between social insights and search? Where does the path to purchase start? 58% in the study starts with a search engine. When asked about search, 86% attested to the importance of search. 45% said that they use search all-throughout the purchase process.

Channel Used to Convert: search – 51%; Social – 1%; Search and Social – 48%.

Consumer Intention Revealed

• Usage of search and social media channels accelerates as consumers get closer to conversion – the “Late Kick”
• The “Late Kick” – even 30 days out, consumers still haven’t fully decided and you still have the opportunity to influence conversion.

Path to conversion: The shift between search and social is not linear. Consumers shift back and forth between search and social during the purchase process.

# 1 Motivator for Social:  33% use social media to persuade, eliminate competitor brands and of course to influence.

Earned social media reaches converters. Consumers want a social connection post purchase. There is definitely a correlation between the two channels (search and social), don’t treat both as separate silos. 25% – stimulus for jumping from one medium to another was the ability to learn more. Nearly 70% – search and social make people feel more confident in their purchase decision.

Enhanced Optimization Approach

• Paid Search Optimization Approach: Conventional – test, optimize, results; Enhanced Method: listen, optimize, results
• Delivery Model – what we do: listen, optimize creative messaging, and optimize keywords
• Enhanced Optimization – Copy: improved CTR and CPC results when we listen before acting
• Enhances Optimization – ROI: Improved ROI when we listen before acting

Benefit of Search and Social Optimization: Search and Social optimizations drives improved results 70%-80% of the time

Insights to Actions: consumers start with “intent”, they then go through a lengthy purchase process with many touch points; Social – earned social is integral part of the decision process, refines the buying process through perception changes and brand elimination

Rethink the opportunity: have an always-on integrated search and social program

[10:40am] “Optimizing for the Youtube search engine” – Ricky Baizas, Digital Marketing Executive, Philippines, Nestlé

Optimizing for that “Other” Search Engine: the second highest search engine is YouTube. Nestle Philippines came up with 90 commercials in 2010. So it was easy for them to shift to YouTube.

“Coming up with excellent and share-able content is like catching lightning in a bottle.”

• Have Fantastic Content
• Check what Content you have in abundance
• Check with Legal – clear licenses (music, etc.)
• Get the Filename right for easy search. Fix it so that it contains all of your main keywords. (e.g. nestle-philippines-tv-commercial-milo-olympics.avi). Don’t upload a file as is.
• Fill in ALL blanks: Title (same as filename); Description (use main keywords here. +links, script, cast, etc.); Tags (use main keywords here too)
• Maximize the Features: Playlists (organize by brand, format or theme); Subtitles (when crawlers go through YouTube, they can know what’s contained in the video); Annotations (link to related videos and playlists – keeps your audience in your channel)
• Embed Everywhere: Put your content out. YouTube is very social and that helps but best do it yourself to start the ball rolling
• Make the Right Friends: Be social with great people. Check for people who are active and with a good amount of content. Engage with them!

Q&A:

• The YouTube channel partner program started in Philippines: you can actually invest in media now to give you a boost. If you have the budget, go for it.
• Google AdWords can specifically target YouTube.

SES Singapore 2011 – Day 2: Fundamentals Track – Live Blog is a post from: B2Bento

And that’s end of Day 2 of SES Singapore 2011! This has been a wonderful inaugural session. Join us at next year’s SES Singapore! Catch the Fundamentals and Hot Topics tracks, brought to you by B2Bento, official media partner of SES Singapore 2011.

[4.30 pm] Executive panel: B2B Social Media Marketing Panel by Vincent Teo, Digital Planning Director, BBDO/ Proximity, Anol Bhattacharya, Consultant, GetIT, and Devashish Saxena, SVP, Global eCommerce and Social Marketing, Premier Farnell. Moderated by Eddie Choi, SES Advisory Board & Founding Partner, Frontiers Digital

Vincent Teo

• Significant role of social in marketing
• Decision makers in B2B are also consumers! So social marketing is critical for marketing in B2B, perhaps more than in B2C
• What is Current B2B Social Landscape – 1) B2B decision makers are the most social engaged users on the planet; they are far more motivated by social activities; 2) Business decision makers are significantly more active in social media, and continue to grow faster than the average users, and 3) Facebook does work for B2B; 4) Most marketers are fully onboard with social media; 5) Currently low budget allocation for B2B social media but contribute to 40.7% sales leads; 5) Social media priorities are mainly business driven not brand awareness; and 6) LinkedIn, blogging and Twitter are more effective for lead generation
• How is B2B different from B2C – 1) B2b buying is complex; multiple influencers involved in decision; 2) B2B buying has long sales cycle and 3) B2B professionals must lower purchasing risks – need strong justification to higher management; and could affect their very job
• Which B2B marketing objectives can social media achieve: 1) Demand generation ; 2) Establish thought leadership; 3) Brand building; 4) Build customer loyalty and 5) Cross-selling and up-selling.
• A lot revolves around content marketing. Valuable content works best.
• B2B social media: upends the customer journey funnel. From Advocacy and Loyaly- customer nurturing; to conversion – opportunity nurturing; consideration – lead nurturing; and awareness – seed nurturing.

[9:40am] Executive Address: “Maximizing your digital marketing mix through integrated marketing” – Monappa Nalyanda, Head of Digital Marketing, Citibank

The Digital Audience – Digital Penetration and Consumption Trends
Internet Usage Trends: more personal, more frequent, getting younger audience

• Mobile is now a rapidly growing trend in India.
• Consumption has become a lot more frequent through mobile.
• The demographics in terms of internet consumption is getting a lot more younger.
• Increasing number of Netizens and mobile subscribers are spending more time across more sites.

[9.15 am] Keynote case study: The art of content marketing by Sarah Whyte, Digital Marketing Manager, Tourism Queensland (TQ)

• TQ launched with YouTube as a distribution channel and got 2.5 million views of uploaded content
• Twitter gained 17.4k followers: engagement platform and gave important updates during Queensland floods (e.g., what’s open and what’s not)
• FourSquare badge promos provided useful tips to tourists across Queensland
• 418k connection in Facebook – focus on engagement and interaction: Creating conversation, Encouraging sharing, Relevant and targeted, Would I care? Would I share? Move from a “content calendar” to a “conversation calendar”.
• Everything from everywhere is tracked
• Audience engagement via Competitions, Targeted Facebook advertising, Media schedule and Supporting assets (website, email addresses)
• Building audiences through Cross platform promotion (e.g., “Find Us”), Allow unsubscribing (e.g., Unsubscribe newsletter? Follow on other channels), and Partner activities.
• Case Study – Roo Mail (a mockumentary): Objectives – 1) Trial response to entertaining contents, 2) Create organically shareable content, 3) Engage consumers with Queensland YouTube channel; Outcomes – 1) Increase engagement across channels; Opportunities – 1) Think bigger upfront (engage PR early); 2) Work owned assets harder; 3) Extend – episodic content.
• Case Study – 30 Days in Oz (video clips of UK youth working in Australia during their holiday): Channels – 1) Social channel distribution and CTA; 2) Media and PR activity; 3) Engagement with Partners; Learning and Recommendation – 1) Great for increasing engagement; 2) Acquisition of new connections; 3) Competition apathy; 4) Mobile use increased challenges and competition was not mobile friendly
• Case Study – Turtle Campaign 1) Evolution of content;  2) Small budget and 3) Increase engagement
• Case Study – Your Big Break – Tourism New Zealand – Capture the essence of world’s youngest country – Produced 5 short films
• Case Study – Bananas are Back – TQ – Jan 2011 cyclone caused loss of banana crop – counter negative sentiment as new crop comes out. 1) Engage those already in the conversation; 2) Establish Twitter channel follow a fruit, and 3) Grow the audience with Facebook and Twitter advertising; What they did – 1) Banana mass giveaway tagged with #bananasareback; 2) Launch of video content 3) Facebook and Twitter community to do the heavy lifting;  4) Extend the conversations
• What’s Next – 1) Continuing with social engagement and  entertainment strategy – test and iterate; 2) Get more mobile – key consideration for campaigns and competitions – use mobile optimized websites
• Learnings – 1) Content has to be great for sharing; 2) Engagement first, campaign second; 3) Targeting is key; 4) Have a conversation calendar; 5) Look for extensions – owned, bought, earned and shared; 6) Look beyond the desktop; 7) Follow the data; Learn from the community (people want to tell us something – exploit that)

• Singapore’s National Research Foundation has schemes in place to incubate startups in Singapore – the Technology Incubation Scheme. They have invested in Brandtology, ThoughtBuzz, and Adz – companies that are active in the fields discussed at SES Singapore. So if you are Singapore company be sure to take advantage of the Singapore government’s generosity.

SES Singapore 2011 – Day 2 Keynotes Live Blog is a post from: B2Bento