Social Media in the South African Local Government Elections
By the looks of things; some South African political parties are finally waking up to the digital revolution and are beginning to embrace online marketing and its integration with offline media. From having a functional website, through to using social media like Twitter and Facebook – the times they are changing!
Of course as with everything; there needs to be a balance and there needs to be integration between everything that is being done offline and everything that is being done online. Added to this in politics is the fact that different parties are trying to attract different sections of the market so we cannot look at their marketing strategies and assume that they are both targeting the voting public. So let’s look at arguably 1 of biggest horses in the Local Government Elections, 2011: The Democratic Alliance and their entrenchment with new media.
Website.
The DA website has a decidedly Barack Obama feel to it; especially compared to when he was running his last electoral campaign.
The site is light and dynamic; it invites you to interact and most importantly it highlights the critical campaign messages of the DA :
- Donate to help the campaign
- stamp out corruption
- build the country together without discrimination.
Social Media.
Helen Zille has thrown herself into social media and opened herself and The DA up to the public. Allowing the public to interact, to ask questions and to most importantly voice their opinions. This social approach has definitely done the DA good as they have ensured that their campaign messages have been heard by a very important voting demographic : The Young South African!
These social media users are literally the future of the country and it is a very strategic and brilliant move; in my opinion; that The DA have realised that this is where the elections will be won or lost.
There are a number of DA Twitter profiles and personalities who are taking advantage of the media. There are Twitter profiles such as : DA News; DA_SA; votetowin and DA_parliament. Each of these profiles is pushing out information relevant to either the local elections; what impact the DA is having in government as well as general party news.
Engagement is the name of the game in politics and social media is the perfect medium to completely engage with an audience in a way which has very quickly become second nature to young South Africans.
From Facebook to Twitter and from Flickr to YouTube; the Democratic Alliance has ensured that they have not left any popular social media platform unattended.
Integration.
Online marketing and by extension social media are merely one channel of communication though and it is the integration between each of these channels which truly makes for a powerful campaign. once again the Democratic Alliance has echoed the last Obama campaign and has ensured that the offline voter has been catered for as well by using TV, radio, print and outdoor media to adequately enforce and repeat the major campaign messages.
Good luck to all the political parties on voting day! But most importantly; good luck to South Africa! Remember, you can’t moan, comment or pass judgement unless you do your part and vote!
Landing Page Optimisation : physical shops understand the concept
Landing Page Optimisation and indeed Website Optimisation make up what I believe is the most misunderstood and ignored part of online marketing to date.
What is Landing Page Optimisation?
It’s the process of ensuring that your specific landing pages convert as many visitors into customers as is possible. Landing Page Optimisation involves taking layouts, colours, calls-to-action and various other elements and testing how best these elements work together.
Officially it is defined as :
Landing page optimization (LPO) is one part of a broader Internet marketing process called conversion optimization, with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers. A landing page is a webpage that is displayed when a potential customer clicks an advertisement or a search engine result link. This webpage typically displays content that is a relevant extension of the advertisement or link. LPO aims to provide page content and appearance that makes the webpage more appealing to target audiences.
What’s not to understand?
Both web designers and clients (bless their cotton socks) are guilty of this. They believe that they know the audience and therefore the layout better than anybody else does. However when it comes to Landing Page Optimisation, there is no 100% correct answer. There are so many subtle variances that can be (and should be) tested, that theoretically you can never get to the perfect page.
Putting it in context.
Simply put; think of your landing page like a physical shop. Shops test their layouts all the time. They are always moving things around to ensure that they are getting the products they want to push in your face as quickly as possible. You walk through the entrance and immediately in front of you as clear as day, is a big display with the weekly specials on.
The important take out there is that the specials are large, in your face and very compelling. Just like they should be on your landing pages.
Another lesson to learn from physical shops is that everything is categorised. Things are easy to find. You don’t walk into the tinned food goods isle and find yoghurts. It’s just not done. The same things should be said about your landing page. Don’t over complicate it by adding in additional items that are on offer. Keep it simple and keep it focussed.
Lessons Learnt.
The basic take outs from this are that :
- Testing is good. Continually test layouts to ensure that you are converting as many visitors as possible.
- Test everythign within reason on your landing pages.
- Don’t complicate the issue. Keep it simple and focussed.
- Don’t make your visitors think about what you want them to do on the page.
The Business of Buzz Words
Going forward let’s be sure to space bank the Web 2.0 technologies that we are currently utilising and ensure mind share and top of mind awareness. This will allow our social media to gain traction and stickiness with our top line strategy.
How many times have you come across most of the buzz words in that sentence!? (With my personal favourite being “going forward”…. Well we sure as hell aren’t going to time travel and sort it out now are we?!?)
The point that I am trying to make with this post is actually 2 fold and a personal bug bear of mine as well as that of some notable copywriters. The 2 guilty groups of people are.
Sales People maskerading as marketers.
This one has caught all of us out from time to time. Buzz words get thrown around as a way to trick and confuse us. Think about a car salesman who has sold you a car with SDI; VVT or HDI. They all sound incredibly awesome and we nod our heads and agree that we must have these things! But the truth of the matter is that we are too embarrassed to say that we actually have no clue about what we are being sold.
The trick here is to ignore the buzz words “wow” value and ask what it means and how it really adds value to what they are selling you and what it actually means. Very often the sales person has learnt that they can get by with only learning the acronym and as such don’t learn what each letter stands for.
Copywriters trying to fill out their content.
My other favourite is when copywriters use impressively fragrant and superlatively impressive words (see what I did there?) to fill out the space that they have to fill. These are buzz words as well. They might not confuse you – but an unnecessary adjective is there to fulfill the same objective as a normal buzz word : confuse and trick.
Turn The Buzz Off.
When looking at copy (as a copywriter or a consumer) cut out all the flowery language and get down to the real message behind what is being said! As a copywriter your copy will be far more compelling and easier to read. As a consumer you will quickly realise how often you are being lied to!
So the next time you are being bombarded with buzz words by a over zealous sales person; get them to stop and repeat everything that they are saying in plain old English; you will be better off because of it.
Your brand : how strict should you be?
A rather topical issue of late has been branding and ensuring that you are staying on brand and communicating your brand properly. Rather predictably I have a view on this…
What is a brand?
A brand is a name, sign, symbol, slogan or anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service, or business. A legally protected brand name is called a proprietary name.
Loosely put that means the product, service or company name and the things that are associated with it in order to identify it. It’s the Nike swoosh; the Audi rings and the bite out of the Apple.
All of these things are very much part of those individual brands; when they stand alone they are immediately known to be part of the “mother brand”.
The question I’m hypothesizing this soliloquy around though is : “how far does the brand go?”.
The place of the brand guide.
Every brand has a brand guide (or at least should have) and this brand guide governs every aspect of the logo. How it gets used, where it gets used, when it gets used, etc. The brand guide also links in the particular colours that form part of the brands “colour palette” . (Now this is where it gets interesting).
Before I go any further, I just want to state that I do understand the importance of a solid brand and branding guidelines; that I recognise the place of a colour palette and primary and secondary fonts. Before the brand custodians of the world tear this article to shreds – I appreciate your points of view and abide greatly to the rules that have been set in place.
But what about when your brand guide is not working for you. Let’s move this online and look at calls to action on a website as an example. The website has been beautifully designed with the corporate identity and brand guide being used as a Bible and followed to the letter. The unfortunate thing is that the entire website uses the colour palette of 4 colour variations.
This use of colour and text size looks perfect and makes the site incredibly pleasing to the eye; unfortunately it does not convert for sweets. There is nothing to draw them in to a specific location. There is nothing compelling to entice the user.
If there is nothing there to entice the user your website is not functioning properly as a business tool and you are doing your business material harm. This is a clear cut case where the brand is holding the business back! Now the obvious solution from a branding point of view is to say “let’s design a brand aligned call to action”. While this makes a lot of sense from a branding perspective; this will take a lot of time to implement and all the while the website is not converting optimally.
Ideally I think that these calls to action should be particularly off brand. They need to fly in to the users face as being different; not just for being different’s sake; but rather because it draws attention and attention is the first step to getting interest which means conversions and ROI at the end of the day!
Is a template website right for your business?
This is a topic that I have been toying with writing for a while. The main reason for it is because it touches on a lot of disciplines and needs to – as a website does. The question here is what is a template website and who is it best suited for?
Let’s first start with what I mean by a template website. What I definitely do not mean is a CMS site like WordPress or Drupal. These site platforms are not template websites in the way I mean it. I am talking more about purchasing themes to install on these sites or literally using a system such as Yola or Web Inn.
So let’s look at 2 of the many disciples that is touches on then we can examine who a template site might benefit the most.
Brand
When you use a company that just installs template sites or when you use a template website as your company website you are not doing your company brand any favors. Template sites by definition are very generic. Your brand is not. Your website needs to convey who and what you are in as short a space of time as possible. Very often cookie cutter templates cannot do that and you are left with a site that cannot support the visual language of your brand.
Products and services
Template website are exactly that, a template to which you can customize 20% of the design and layout. This does not always service your need as your business is unique in its offering and product layout. This means that you are left with a sit ethat does not satisfy your business needs and to which you need to conform.
So why do template sites exist and do well?
Now I have been trashing template sites up until now, but this is not 100% fair. There is a very large and needy market out there for template websites out there. Bloggers (like me) don’t have to go through the expense of getting a site designed; because it is not 100% integral to what they are trying to convey.
The questions that you need to ask yourself when looking at a website & deciding if it can be a template are :
1. What if my competitor has the same site design as me? How am I going to differentiate myself?
2. Can I afford to struggle with making a template website fit my business or is my business generic enough that it will fit?
3. Can I afford anything more than a template website at the moment and can it grow with my business?
These 3 simple questions are but a few of many that you need to ask yourself and your web company when they propose a template website design or a themed website design to you. If they are charging you a premium price for a template site or a theme which they have downloaded then they are not working for you, but rather against you as they are damaging your business long term.
Marketing and Sales : Business Strategy Channel Surfing
Effective strategies are born out of more than just an excellent idea! There needs to be action and a certain amount of follow through to ensure that your stagnant piece of paper, which has the best strategy in the world right now for you and your business, actually lives and breathes.
There are particularly 2 main areas where business strategies fall short. Those are :
- Marketing Channels
- Distribution Channels
Marketing Channels.
A lot of the content that I write about on this blog is mostly around Online Marketing. But that is just one marketing channel. There is still a place in the world for offline marketing & it is rather the mixture of each of these channels which truly makes for a winning strategy.
The key to getting this balance right is to research exactly where your exact target market are consuming their media as well as effective ways on how to reach them.
Online marketing as a channel is becoming more and more effective as it is head and shoulders the most measurable and innovative of the marketing channels out there.
Distribution Channels.
Distribution channels are from where your wares are peddled. In other words – if you have an online shop, your website is a distribution channel (it’s also a marketing channel). It is the vehicle that gets your product to market, it can either be directly, through retailers, etc.
Typically you would have a different sales strategy for each of your distribution channels as each distribution channel may have a different specific criteria or target market.
Where Business Strategy Goes Wrong.
Where a lot of businesses lose their way is when they are not effectively optimising each of these independent strategies as well as the cross over points between these strategies.
Each of these individual marketing channels needs to be looked at first in isolation and then as part of the whole. Each of these will work with different strengths and intensities and drive different qualities of visitor to your site. These need to be looked at critically to return the highest ROI.
Simply put, using the online marketing strategy as an example.You embark on a grand online marketing strategy. This strategy succeeds and sends thousands of visitors to your site. This means that your marketing strategy succeeded with which ever channels you used to drive the traffic with.
This is where your marketing strategy and sales strategy cross over. As soon as they land on your site and begin to interact and are funneled into taking action they are skipping across the line of sales and marketing.
Should your sales strategy not compliment your marketing strategy and vice versa then there will be a breakdown in your overall strategy and your sales will be negatively effected.
Make it work.
Looking at each and every part of your business strategies; from sales and marketing to distribution and everything in between cannot be done enough. Many businesses today suffer 1 of 2 fates, either they didn’t spend enough time working on their strategies, or they got consumed by them and forgot that they still actually need to conduct business.
Get the balance right and make it work!
The Marketing of my site worked! Now what?
Online Marketing can be broken down into a few different areas which all have their place in the online world.
First there is SEO (search engine optimisation) which is perfect for getting visitors to your site. But this is all that SEO is concerned with.
Then there is SEM (search engine marketing) which utilises PPC (Pay Per Click) methods such as Google AdWords to essentially buy traffic on to your site by bidding on certain keywords which your site is relevant for.
After that comes website optimisation which is geared towards really making your site convert. It is solely concerned with making visitors click the right buttons and fill in forms on your site so that you can contact them with regards to their enquiry.
Don’t make them think!
The basic premise with website marketing or indeed any marketing is that you cannot allow yourself to make it too complicated. You have got to always be focusing on the lowest common denominator and ensuring that your marketing mesages can be understood by whomever that might be in your target market.
This same message hold true once your marketing campaigns have done their job. You have driven users to your site and they have “taken the bait” and asked a question or filled in a form, or whatever action you needed them to take.
Get the balance right.
The place where a lot of businesses fall over and disappoint their customers is in their systems and procedures and indeed their internal processes. (There is marketing relevance here)
Online marketing needs to be concerned with every part of the value chain – from the initial enquiry online through to the final delivery of the product which has been ordered. Each one of the following touch points are critical to ensuring that the customer is happy and comes back to your company again.
Business Process :
The processes that potential customers and paying clients are funneled through as they interact & deal with your company. If these are not properly streamlined; you might not just have a frustrated customer on your hands, but also revenue might be lost through to customers cancelling orders.
This gets worse from an operations point of view as you might be losing revenue due to incorrect ordering and even poor utilisation of man hours.
Business processes are vitally important to ensure that your company is running smoothly and efficiently. BizAgi is an excellent FREE process modeler.
Business Systems :
The business systems are the touch points that your staff and customers need to interact with when ordering. These need to be periodically assessed to make sure that you are using the correct systems for your needs. As a business, especially from a marketing point of view – a client and potential clients is hugely impatient! If your systems are clunky and take your staff too long to process orders or to source goods to supply, you are going to have to find new clients to service as the current ones are going to leave.
Marketing dove-tails with all of the above as a main function of marketing is not only to attract customers; but also to retain them. Sloppy & cumbersome systems and processes make this very difficult to do.
Large Advertising Agencies Still Not Getting Online…
I feel that I need to start this off with a disclaimer. This is not a personal dig, jab, poke or knife in for big agencies some of whom may be featured in this blog post. This is merely looking at what I feel large agencies are failing to notice and are still in my opinion; doing wrong! I don’t intend to piss anyone off (although I am virtually guaranteed of doing that). So with that out of the way; let’s get this started.
Full Service; Full Stop.
I’m specifically picking on agencies who call themselves “full service agencies”. In days gone by, large agencies were especially guilty of saying that they were full service agencies, this included advertising, branding, communication and everything in between. Unfortunately for them, digital no longer means that you can get away with a (say in Capetonian accent) “like totally awesome design, that contemplates the meaning of life!” That was especially cool when people gave a damn! Now there is a HUGE emphasis placed on what does my digital marketing do for me?! Where is my ROI (Return On Investment)?!
Websites in particular need to be found online and once they are found, what are the visitors going to do on the site when they are there? Are they going to give you a pat on the back for your ability to bring them to orgasm by looking at their design? No! They are going to leave if you cannot offer them what they are looking for in as short an amount of time as possible.
But this is true of EVERY digital medium out there as well, not only websites, but as I said large advertising agencies just dont seem to get online.
Let’s back this up with a few examples :
(click on each image to see it full screen)
The Father of advertising’s website.
Ogilvy‘s website is quite possibly the most difficult website to get to grips with out of all the ones I looked at. And may I draw your eye to the 4th line of text on their site which says “Digital Media & Search Marketing”. Erm… Did I miss something…!? The entire site is flash – which does not index and if you happen not to have a flash player – that’s one site you are not going to see…!
I know that everyone (and I stress everyone) is or was a fan of TIM (The Incredible Machine); but when did it become a good idea to design a website in a 90′s style PC game? Ebony & Ivory have designed a beautiful site – half of which you can see at any time as they designed it to be seen of a 52inch monitor as it doesn’t scale any smaller.
It truly is beautiful and the attention to detail is superb; but it is the perfect example of large advertising creative steam rolling digital sense!
This might just be my favourite of all. Network BBDO clearly had this designed in Cape Town! (in another Cape Tonian accent) “This site is like totally groovy, becaue as you move your mouse the perspective changes and that is like a metaphor for the work that we do. WE like totally change the perspectives of how people interact with your brand!” Crap! It’s kak to navigate, it plays some awful sound when you navigate over a highlighted button and it gives you a headache! The only action I wanted to take was to click “back” not make you my agency of choice!
The reason why I love this one so much is because they are a huge advertising agency ; both in South Africa as well as globally. But the real kicker is that they are a sister company to Gloo Digital (don’t get me started). Clearly they are not sharing digital ideas that convert and if they are, they are certainly keeping it a secret.
Wrapping It Up!
The basic outtake from all of this is that when you are choosing a digital partner or even a stock standard advertising agency; be sure that their digital is not all about the creative; but that they are backing it up with hard core search engine optimisation as well as website conversion techniques – cos a pretty totally awesome design does not bring your business cash – no matter how many Loeries it wins!
More On Online Marketing To The Rich
After the post I made a few weeks ago about marketing to the super rich online; Ive done a lot more thinking about the issue and spoken to a few others about it to try and broaden my understanding of the issue and see how others are feeling.
One critical thing which came up – something which I did mention in my previous post – starts to touch on this point. The heading was “be where they are”. Basically what this means is that you need to place your brand or product in the spaces and places where the rich are spending their time. The part which I didn’t mention is that you cannot simply use the same kinds of marketing tricks to do this as you normally would.
If you think that “normal” (I use this term loosely) people are good at turning off to unwanted marketing clutter, then you have not even begun to explore the super wealthy. They are expert at weeding through the marketing gumpf and simply turning off to advertising speak.
Market without marketing at all! (cryptic huh?)
The trick with the super wealthy when trying to reach them – online or offline – is to appear that you are not marketing to them at all. To the super wealthy – who by the way are looking for exclusivity – an ad placed that looks like it is screaming for business, is going to get glazed over with the rest of the pile. They want to know that they are special and that the ad they are looking at is especially 100% for their eyes only.
Keep It Fresh…
The rich (celebrities and non-celebrities) are all keen on having and showing off that they have the best and newest of something. That they were singled out and because they are who they are; they were given something first! They are cool and trend setters.
This needs to be used to the marketers advantage and kept top of mind when planning and executing any sort of campaign to the super rich.
Whether they are captains of industry or the latest, greatest Hollywood star; they want to be exclusive and have their egos stroked!
The 2 points that I have mentioned here are probably the most important facts about marketing to the super rich! The others points hold true, but if you can get these points right, then the rest will follow suit.
Marketing to the super rich online
I have recently been asked to help a client of ours to look at new ways of reaching the super, obnoxiously rich online.
Now this presents two problems.
The first is : I am not superbly obnoxiously rich, so putting myself in their shoes is proving to be a challenge. (I am willing to take all
donations and I will willfully sacrifice myself for the greater good of having an answer to this question.)
The second is that there is very little difference at the end of the day between me and Cristiano Ronaldo. Ok, maybe there are a few superficial differences; and the slight little issue about him earning in excess of £120 000 a week.
Ok, so in truth there are a number of differences between the super wealthy and the average Joe in the street; but that should not affect the way in which a marketing campaign is put together. The following factors are things that you should be looking at in any event when putting together any sort of campaign no matter who the target market.
Time
The pace that the world is moving at today means that every single person out there is extremely pushed for time. This means that no matter how you are marketing yourself online make sure that you are taking as little of their time as possible. This does not translate into making the message less impactful, it just means that you need to ensure that you are giving them the relevant information that they need to make a decision about your product. The old adage here rings true : sell benefits, not features.
Relevance
This goes hand in hand with the previous one, make sure that you are being relevant to what they are looking for. In other words, don’t take out an advert for baby diapers on the FHM Magazine website. Again, this is not something that is specifically true for trying to reach the super wealthy. This is true for any demographic.
Pull, don’t push
Make your marketing messaging compelling enough to your target so that you are enticing them – daring them – to look at what you have to offer. Everyone is bombarded with a multitude of marketing messages each and every day that are geared to try and make them take action. Offering bargains here, specials there, etc. etc. These are so done! It is time to pull people in and stop pushing offerings down on them.
Be where they are
This one sounds a lot easier said than done, but in actual fact – it is pretty simple to work through. The super rich and the mundanely average are all consuming media on a daily basis. The first place to start is Search Engine Optimisation. Rich people use Google as well. Optimise your site and use PPC Marketing to reach them, just contextualize your site and ads to reflect your audience.
The social media wave that is sweeping across the world is an area where a lot of attention needs to be placed. The super rich may not have a lot of spare time available for themselves, but the majority are all using or at the very least watching and listening in on the social networks to see what is new and happening.
Taking their money
The super rich are rich because they know how to handle their money. The cardinal rule is to make sure that when you are asking them for their hard earned riches, you are giving them quality back in return. Again this should be no different to when you are marketing to Joe Bloggs from down the road.
If you feel I have missed some important points here about reaching the super rish online, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. I have some additional thoughts which I will follow up with another article later.
