Nick Baggott's CRM and Digital Marketing Blog

Speaking at Social CRM Event in London in June

I shall be speaking at a CRM event in London on the morning of June 27th. To request a free place, click on this link: Making Sense of the Noise - The Business Case for Social CRM. It is being run by the excellent CRM specialists, Touchstone.

I have pasted more details about the event  below:

This half- day interactive seminar will walk senior project and business leads through the ways to execute successful strategy for Social CRM with specific focus on how to build the business case.Join TouchstoneCRM technology solution experts and industry expert, Nick Baggott who will talk through Marketing 2.0 and the correct metrics for measurability.Register for your chance to win a Windows Phone HTC 8X!

The hubbub of social media is often regurgitated without any real vision. The sheer volume of information can prevent B2B organisations from discerning a clear social media vision and disrupt efforts to create a realistic and measurable strategy.

If you are a business leader thinking about any of the following, this event is for you:

	Where and how does social media fit into business strategy?
	How should marketing effectively measure social activities to determine the real business ROI?
	How do we turn social media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Vine into powerful lead generation channels?

Social CRM isn’t just technology, it requires a clear strategy and a business case with defined business objectives. There are key steps your organisation needs to take to make your journey into the social B2B world successful

 

Guest Blogging for CIM

I have spent a couple of days writing a series of blogs for the Chartered Institute of Marketing. The blogs cover a range of topics from Vine & Google Hangouts to Social CRM and Integrating sales and marketing.

As soon as they are posted. I shall post a link here.

It will be interesting to see what affect these guest blogs have on traffic to my web site, blog and followers on Twitter and Google+

Most Expensive Adword is....

This is great...

The answer to my question is "Online Live Roulette". It costs a wapping £75 per click!

Who would have guessed these top ten. Particularly,  "Business Electricity Tariffs". Gambling and Claims compensation are the most expensive categories.....

 

Focus on what you like about yourself - Dove

Have you seen Dove's recent Campaign for Real Beauty Sketches film? 46 million people have already. It raises the question again about whether we prefer models that look "perfect" or prefer the more natural beauty that everyone has. 

I think it also makes a wider point. We all tend to focus on what we don't like, or what we'd like to change, or what we should be doing differently - rather than focus on celebrating what we are good at and what we are doing well.

How many times have you been to a staff appraisal where the good points were glossed over in ten minutes and 50 minutes was spent looking at how you could improve the one thing that you are not so good at.

I think there is a valuable point here for marketers. Focus on what your brand does well and highlight it. Or focus on what your team does well and perfect it. Or focus on what you do well and do more of it....

What are you better at than anyone else and why? Who would be interested in that? Who has a need for it? It is what you do best, so accentuate the positive.

From a Dove point of view, I applaud what they are doing. I think it makes the brand stand out. They have a voice, a viewpoint and I hope that it works for them. 46 million people are interested in their point, so surely it should gain the traction that they need to continue to build a strong brand with an attitude and an empathy for their consumers.

Aligning Digital Marketing with B2B Sales

I was searching for a white paper to send to a client today as a pre-read before an upcoming B2B Digital Marketing course. I found a really neat paper, called "The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing", published by the CEB Marketing Leadership Council on the Think B2B with Google web site. It was published in Sept 2012.

Here are some of the nuggets that I picked up from it: (with my observations in italics)

- B2B customers are typically 57% through their buying cycle before they have a serious engagement with your sales team (so you had better be using thought leadership content to drive the agenda & get on the tender list).

- Effective sales reps focus on engaging customers early and challenging a customer's assumptions (so you had better ensure that digital marketing provides an outlet for your views and your content disrupts conventional customer thinking)

- The key drivers that change a buyer's direction are: Teaching them something new about their own challenges and providing them with compelling reasons why it was necessary to take action. (so you had better show the business impact of your recommendations and opinions)

- B2B Digital marketing must be aligned. Each channel should be co-ordinated and integrated. (so you had better decide which channels are managed locally & which are done centrally and then you need to ensure that your corporate guidelines, best practice sharing and internal comms allow you to join up the de-centralised elements. Make sure someone is managing and co-ordinating the content across the business)

- The most succesful companies pursue fewer, higher impact ideas with a more concentrated execution (so you had better agree to focus on developing media neutral ideas that can be integrated across all channels rather than think of a good ad and hope that the other channels can somehow use the creative)

Zoomsphere - Manchester United are twice as big as Chelsea. Reading are "a big club"

Just been playing with Zoomsphere.  Hours of endless fun!

It allows you to see who has the most followers in any country on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest & GooglePlus. Adele tops the UK Facebook chart with 39 million fans.You can even track the growth of fans over time. 

Some top tens for you that i have just found:

Top 10 Professional Sports teams amongst UK facebook users:

1. Man Utd

2. Chelsea

3. Arsenal

4. Liverpool

5. Man City

6. England footy

7. Spurs

8. Villa

9. Vodafone F1

10. England cricket

Man United have more than double Chelsea who are second. My beloved, Reading FC are 46th. Just ahead of supposed "Big Clubs" like Sheff Weds, Derby, Nottingham Forst, Wolves. Leeds and Leicester. Gloucester Rugby (my other sporting love) are #62 and are the biggest club Rugby Union side.

Top 10 personalities ranked in terms of Twitter followers is:

One Direction, Coldplay, Emma Watson, Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, Simon Pegg, Jonathan Ross, Richard Branson, Tulisa, X Factor. I only follow 2 of them, can you guess who?

Top 10 Companies on Google Plus in terms of followers is:

Economist, BA, BBC News, FT, Virgin, Food Revolution, Versus, Saatchi Gallery, Oxfam, Google. I guess this reflects the lack of focus on G+ by many of the leading brands. Funny that Google are only 10...?

Have a play. It is free and quick.

One last thing, you can search by company too. Look at BA's followers by site. they are doing better on G+ than on Facebook and Twitter...

 

Facebook	633 988 fans	759 fans	No. 4547	No. 322
Twitter	242 117 followers	209 followers	No. 3625	No. 386
Googleplus	1 661 469 followers	3 097 followers	No. 58	No. 7

 

This is so addictive......

 

 

Google Hangouts

If you haven't checked out Google Hangouts yet. Then check it out. 

It is Google's attempt at building video conferencing & social interactions via YouTube & Google Plus. You need a G+ account to set one up, which basically means you need a GMail account.

The idea is that up to 10 people can log into the live event as presenters. These people can be based anywhere with a web cam. Then an unlimited number of people can view the event via YouTube and G+. Hangouts came to the public's notice when the movie, "Lincoln" was launched with a Steven Spielberg live Hangout. 

Smart Insights have written a good summary of Google Hangouts, with links to the Spielberg video. Or you can watch the full 27 minute video on YouTube. Spielberg's Lincoln Hangout.

From my perspective, I think this is really exciting. Here are some of the uses that I can see for it:

- Staff internal comms / launch - this is a way of getting all of your employees all over the world to see an announcement and the discussion around it live. You could have the CEO presenting and the Regional Directors contributing from their own offices around the world

- Product / company launces - similar to the internal launch, but with consumers dialling in

- Technical Q&A - have a live session with your leading technical experts asking reader submitted questions. As per Lincoln, you could even get say 8 customers to ask their questions via video link live.

You can then record the session, edit and publish it for others to download via YouTube.

Why not check it out for yourself?

Nick

 

Working at Google, Mountain View, CA

I am at Google HQ in Mountain View, CA this week. I am running a 2 day course on how agencies buy media, to help them understand where Google fits and why clients put together schedules. It is a cool environment. Relaxed, fun but professional. Yes, there are computer games, table tennis tables, pool tables and vending machines everywhere and there are basketball hoops and badminton nets outside, but there is a feeling of people getting on and doing their stuff. It is a hive of activity and thers is a real buzz around the place.

One thing I do love is the free staff cycles that can be seen everywhere you go. Most people seem to take their bikes or the free shuttles around the huge campus. There is even a free staff shuttle to San Fran which is over an hour away. It is a lot less corporate than Microsoft, but people seem to be working just as hard. Here are a couple of pics to give you a feel for the place. Where is the coolest place you have worked and why?

Vine - Social video sharing from Twitter

Vine is Twitter's new video sharing site. It is an iPhone app where users can share 6 second videos. They must be 6 seconds and as they play in your browser, they loop every 6 seconds. It is really simple to use and allows you to quickly check which of your Twitter contacts and email contacts have opened an account, so that you can follow them.

I think the 6 second feature is really interesting. Most of the Editor's Picks and "Popular Now" selection are people larking about. So, it will be interesting to see how brands utilise the format. Maybe for testimonial vox pops, previews, teasers or tips. I can see the value in tech brands doing "tip of the day" or brands uploading vox pops live from events. 

I have been saying for a while how videos are much more convincing then text and pictures. This app makes the sharing of video so much more accessable to more people. I am quite excited by the opportunities.

From the brands I follow, it seems to me that the entertainment / sporting sector has grasped it the best for now. The UK Athletics Association posted some really interesting behind the scenes footage of the UK Indoors Champs this weekend and the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team have been posting training camp footage, which wets the appetite for the new season starting soon. 

If you want to find out more direct from Twitter, here is a link to their Vine launch blog.

 

eMarketer have written a good introductory article about Vine too. One stat from that article is shown below. 86.5% of US internet users have not heard about it yet. But, expect that to change soon...

Related articles

Twitter Launches Vine Video-Sharing Service For iPhone

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