CheezeDMG Blog

Twitter should be about customer engagement, not broadcasting

Twitter’s here. You can’t visit a website or turn a page, digital or otherwise, without reading about it. Whether it’s Jonathan Ross’ banter or breaking news stories - Sky has a Twitter correspondent and CNN has the highest following of any user; yet it’s the user who’s breaking news first - the plane dumping in the Hudson River being the most high profile recent example.

Twitter’s being used as a news channel, an information hub, but the user has more power than ever. Of course brands are keen to follow this trend and harness it to their own benefit. So how can brands make their voices heard in a world where the user, your potential customer, doesn’t have to listen? It’s a level playing field, so your brand has to operate at the consumer’s level; don’t simply broadcast offers and ‘news’ - become part of the conversation.

Some brands have been active for a while - smaller ones like eSpares are doing a great job of harnessing the channel, larger brands like Canterbury of New Zealand are just starting; and then you’ve got huge global brands like Dell that have already seen over $1m of revenue from the channel.  Charities are at it too - Dogstrust are doing a fantastic job engaging with their ‘followers’, and PDSA are starting to get involved off the back of their Facebook success. All these brands are seeing success through engagement – involve yourself, provide advice, respond to questions, ‘react’ to your customers, and the proactive nature of marketing becomes flipped.

However, the effectiveness of building brand advocates, raising awareness and ultimately promoting your products and services by ‘stealth’ is huge – subtle branding, who would have thought it?

Set to grow even further, Twitter may also spin out with the associated growth of similar ‘tools’ like www.Identi.ca, www.plurk.com and www.jaiku.com - owned by Google. Having a presence on Twitter now will help you understand the medium and benefit your brand and the consumer.  So, if you’re looking to harness Twitter, where to start?

Here are five tips to get you going:

1. Get on there! Get involved! There’s no better place to start than with yourself. Sign up for an account, follow some people - you can start with me, I talk about digital marketing, rugby and music - and get tweeting a little. Find some people or brands in your sector and watch what they’re doing. You can gain a lot from interacting and watching before you reveal a brand presence.

2. See what people are saying about your brand using http://search.twitter.com - grab the feed and watch it for a while. Is the conversation positive or negative? This will help you define what your presence on Twitter needs to be. It may also help you quickly find brand ambassadors who can amplify your presence. Don’t forget the detractors - connecting with them on Twitter and helping them may create a rapid turnaround in their opinion.

3. Work out what you’re going to say, and who’s going to manage it. In some cases an agency can help get you off the ground and hand over the running once you’re familiar with the process. You can stick to a content theme, or a reason as to why you’re on Twitter, but don’t use it as a broadcast channel. All tweeting and no listening will lose you credibility - very quickly!

4. Get your brand onto Twitter. Grab a name - ideally www.twitter.com/yourbrandname, set up your logo and a template design and start twittering. If you can reference your brand on your own corporate page that will help establish credibility for the brand on Twitter. At this time there are no regulations or checks - it’s up to you to manage your brand on Twitter. Connect it to your other channels - you can feed your Twitter stream into a Facebook Fan Page or your own website.

5. Start talking - follow people you find interesting, have a conversation. If you’re sending links to your site, think about adding tracking tags. URL etiquette in Twitter’s 140 character dialogue is to use a shortened URL via tinyurl or similar, so add your tracking in before converting the url. This can help you understand what value this channel is delivering for you, over and above interaction, enabling you to track traffic from conversation through to conversion.

www.twitter.com/TomGriffola

www.twitter.com/CheezeDMG

Thanks to David Armano for the funny pic: http://darmano.typepad.com/

Digital Marketing Group plc, parent company of Cheeze has been named as the UK’s top digital business in a new report compiled by top marketing services, media and entertainment financial specialist, Kingston Smith W1.

The list, to be published in full on Thursday was commissioned by Campaign Magazine.

Commenting on the placing, Ben Langdon, DMG CEO said,

Being named as the UK’s largest digital business is testament to the drive and ambition DMG nurtures and enjoys. We have built a team of dedicated and dynamic experts in a wide range of digital, data and direct disciplines, and created an environment which enables them to deliver our clients cutting edge digital marketing.

As we head deeper into a financial recession, so the amount of articles increases about ‘retreating’ media spend to safe havens, ranging from paid search to ‘tried and tested’ television advertising. However, in these tough times it is too easy to forget the consumer. (During these times) brands may continue to spend money attracting the consumer through paid search or may increase the frequency of their CRM activity, but may forget to actually connect with their consumer in other social channels.

The myth social media is not accountable will have an impact on the brand thirst for social networks. The fact that social networks can be incredibly accountable is important but worth a separate posting.

When consumer spending is tight, brands will need to work that bit harder to convince the consumer to spend with them. Whilst pricing can be a method to encourage spending, it will not work for all brands in all sectors - not everyone can be the cheapest. Moreover, the consumer needs reassurance that their money is going to the right place, they need help to understand why they should spend money with one brand over another; and they could do with some love.

Search as a consumer marketing strategy is a strong one - it is accountable, it can deliver volume and profit but will fall slightly short of achieving a deeper connection with the consumer. A social strategy - as a structured and accountable investment - has the ability to achieve more connection with the consumer , understanding what the consumer is looking for [which in turn can help define search strategies] as well as becoming closer to the consumer, ensuring their brand is top of mind for purchasing decisions.

Brands that successfully harness social media as part of a wider marketing mix will have a strong opportunity succeed.

Online aggregators now play an integral part in the media mix and for the most part, they are here to stay. The rise of the aggregator has many different implications on the insurance market and companies are adjusting their marketing to include presence of the likes of Moneysupermarket, Confused.com and GoCompare. Cheeze have put together an insight piece on the implications of online aggregators as the client demand for this media grows.

The presentation looks into the reasons why aggregators are so popular and the many different ways a client can feature their brands on the sites. Volume is perhaps the biggest benefit for including aggregators on your media plan but we also examine the aspects of Brand, Accountability and Control. There are both positives and negatives for building aggregator relationships and the future is somewhat of an uncertain one. In the short term how can clients afford to miss out on 2.7million unique users? But just how long can aggregators continue to prosper is a conversation worthy of another post.

This deck was prepared by Jenny Eaves, Group Account Director and Zoe Mason, Senior Media Account Manager who look after clients including AXA and PDSA Pet Insurance. Our work on aggregators helps achieve profitable insurance policy sales for our clients as part of a wider digital marketing mix. You can read more about our work with aggregators here.

In advance of tomorrow’s presentation we have been looking at the growth and fluctuation of the UK financial comparison sites, namely Moneysupermarket.com, Comparethemarket.com and gocompare.com.

Taking data from Nielson Netratings we can see that Moneysupermarket continues to be the largest comparison site in the UK with 2.7m unique users in September 2008. As the graph below shows, the site has had an interesting fluctuation in traffic over the past months, remaining down on its position last year but still leagues ahead of the competition.

The other two sites have both seen positive and steady growth over the past 12 months. The current recession crisis should be a good time for these sites to continue their growth.