INTELLIGENTCONTENT A magazine by G and C Media
2018
FIND OUT HOW YOUR BUSINESS CAN STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS? YES, YOU CAN CAPTIVATE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE!
Should magazines be part of your marketing mix? Magazines are trusted
Magazines are read
Magazine readers are more than twice as likely to trust what they read compared to social media users
(Source: Magnetic — A Matter of Trust)
Magazines build brand awareness and affinity As a brand building medium, magazines outperform social media, online display, online video and direct mail. But advertisers and agencies don’t realise this. (Source: Ebiquity — Re-evaluating Media)
(Source: Magnetic — Myth Busting)
Magazines support growth 60%
Brand Building
40%
Sales Activation
Splitting promotional activiy 60/40 between brand building and sales activation is best for long-term growth. (Source: Institute of Practitioners in Advertising The Long and The Short of It)
Customer magazines hold a reader’s attention
On average customers spend 25 minutes reading a customer magazine. (Source: Association of Publishing Agencies — APA Advantage Study)
Customer magazines trigger action
44% of all customer magazine recipients take some form of positive action as a result
(Source: Association of Publishing Agencies — APA Advantage Study)
Intelligent Content is published by: G and C Media Ltd The Studio, 7 Brampton Bank, Five Oak Green Rd. Tudeley, Tonbridge. Kent. TN11 0PN Telephone: 01732 358823 Editor Chris Callander Contributing Editor Suzanne Callander Production G and C Media Ltd The content of this magazine does not necessarily reflect the views of the editor or publishers. The publishers accept no legal responsibility for loss arising from information in this publication and do not endorse any products or processes mentioned within it. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the publisher’s written consent. © G and C Media Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTELLIGENT CONTENT CONTENTS
Introducing G and C Media
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t G and C Media we create content that helps businesses stand out from the crowd and which gets them results. For publishers and other media owners this often means creating and commissioning editorial content for their publications — content targetted to meet the needs and interests of their readers. For SMEs it could mean crafting blogs that demonstrate subject knowledge and opinion leadership to customers and prospects. It can include the creation of case studies that show how the organisation adds value for its clients. Or, it may encompass developing collateral assets that showcase the company’s products and services in the best possible light. When the G and C Media team brings its 60+ years of marketing and publishing experience together, is when we give our customers the biggest advantage. Producing customer magazines enables our clients to truly stand out from the crowd; engaging prospects and customers alike. In a world where the onslaught of communications is relentless, well-crafted content is essential if you are to avoid being part of the wallpaper. Putting that well-crafted content into a format that demands attention, that has a level of uniqueness and which captures the audience’s interest, will raise your profile above that of your competitors. Over the following pages, we share our thoughts on the importance of content and how you can make your content work harder. We also share some tips to help you on your way. And, as you’d imagine, we also explain how we can help you make content work for you. If you’d like to explore what we can do for your company, we’d love to talk.
OUR WORK
INSIGHT
4 Content: So, what’s all the fuss about?
8 Making content work for you
14 Magazines are dead, long live magazines
The content your business produces plays an important role. Find out why.
There’s more to content than blogs.
10 Content examples
From Q&As to technical features, see our content in action.
6 Captivate your customers and prospects Capturing customers’ attention often proves difficult. But it doesn’t have to be.
www.gandcmedia.co.uk
Don’t believe the hype, magazines are far from yesterday’s news.
16 The non-blogger’s guide to blogging
Make the best of any opportunity to write a guest blog — from the planning through to the writing
18 How well do you know your customers?
You can’t communicate effectively if you don’t know who you’re talking to.
CONTENTS
YOUR CONTENT
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YOUR CONTENT WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
CONTENT: SO, WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT? Content has been a buzzword in marketing circles for several years. In fact, as far back as 1996, Bill Gates declared ‘Content is King’. This has never been truer than it is today, but with the ever growing volume of communications bombarding the average consumer it should perhaps be evolved to read ‘Quality Content is King’. Chris Callander explains why.
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n a typical day over 650 million tweets are sent, four million hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, four billion facebook messages are posted and 22 million text messages are sent. Add to that the offline communications we are all exposed to — on TV, radio, print, sponsorship, (the list goes on) — and it’s easy to see why studies estimate that the average consumer sees up to 10,000 brand messages every day. So, it’s no wonder that getting your message to stand out from the crowd is becoming even more challenging.
What’s the answer? Plenty of organisations have tried to milk the situation by building business models around offering quick-win methods to automate content creation and sharing. But there really are no quick wins and, quite frankly, many of these ‘solutions’ have the potential to do brands more harm than good. Bombarding customers and prospects with endless, poorly thought out messages is a sure fire way to put them off. You may well gain followers or likes, but will they be the people you want to influence? I doubt it.
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The answer is quality; creating content that catches an intended audience’s attention and provides it with interesting, useful information which adds value. You don’t have to take my word for this either. Google’s approach is a great example. While exact details of how its search algorithms work is closely guarded, it is widely accepted that Google assesses the value of a web page and its content before deciding how high up the search rankings to place it. Re-share content from elsewhere, try to ‘game the system’ by publishing something multiple times or do nothing more than aggregate content from other sites and you will get no benefit in Search Engine Optimisations (SEO) terms. You may even find your site penalised. Facebook and other social platforms reward good content too. The more a post you publish
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT YOUR CONTENT
is shared by others, the more likely it is to appear organically (without you paying) in other people’s feeds. And as these applications become more sophisticated they become able to tell genuine shares from automated ones.
Because the way buying decisions are being made has changed. Today, purchasers are moving further along the buying process before directly engaging with potential suppliers. They are gathering information from a range sources — both on and
“Today, purchasers are moving further along the buying process before directly engaging with potential suppliers.” And it’s not just online where quality is paying dividends. While many print-based magazines have struggled in recent years, the titles which are coming out on top are doing so because they offer their readers something they can’t get elsewhere. And many are growing as a result. In fact earlier this year (2018) the Spectator recorded the highest sales of printed copies in its 190 year history. But why does it matter? Why does an organisation need to compete for the attention of their customers and prospects?
offline — to inform themselves. Purchasing decisions are still being made on the basis of knowing, liking and trusting a supplier. But the ease at which information is available enables buyers to do some initial research in a less pressurised way. Think about your last big purchase. I suspect you did online research into the options, and I also suspect you built a shortlist from brands you had some knowledge of, or perhaps already had some affinity with. That knowledge and affinity will have come from content you will have
previously been exposed to. And all this will have happened before you went into a shop to see and touch the product. As you are reading this article, you are forming an opinion of G and C Media. Of course, we hope it is a good one and that you finish this article thinking, ‘that was interesting, these guys know their subject and are happy to offer useful advice.’ If it does, then hopefully, when you need help with your content, we will make it onto your shortlist! The same principles apply to your organisation. If your business doesn’t have content which can give prospects the information they need to develop that sense of trust and affinity with your brand, or to answer those questions that are stopping them pushing the buynow button, you could be at a disadvantage. Focus on the content your business produces, either yourselves or with the help of a third-party, and you could be at a real advantage.
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hen developing content there are three The Channel. Knowing your audience will help key areas to consider, each of which must you identify the most effective channels to to use influence the end result. and will inform your content decisions. The Audience. You have to start here. You must understand your audience. You need to know who they AUDIENCE are, what matters to them, INTELLIGENT CONTENT the issues they face, how they make their decisions and anything else you can find out about them. The Objective. You need to fully understand what you are trying to achieve. CHANNEL OBJECTIVE Are you trying to trigger a purchase, or just form an opinion.
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INTELLIGENT CONTENT
5
YOUR CONTENT ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE
CAPTIVATE YOUR CUSTOMERS AND PROSPECTS
In today’s era of information overload, capturing your customers’ and prospects’ attention is tougher than ever. But it doesn’t have to be, as Chris Callander explains.
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arketeers face a constant battle for attention. On social platforms, you can be competing with thousands of tweets in a prospect’s timeline. While in your customer’s inbox there can be hundreds of emails alongside yours, hoping to win that elusive open. So, how do you stand out from the crowd? You need to do something different — like creating a magazine, specifically targeted at your customers and prospects. There are many reasons why the time is right for the magazine format. First, there is the issue I have already mentioned with capturing attention. For businesses in most sectors, receiving mail is a rarity now. When you do receive something, it stands out. If what’s received has clear value to the recipient then your chance of getting read, of capturing the recipient’s attention, is much higher. Another positive development for magazines is a shift in the way customers and prospects are influenced today. Gone are the days of bombarding people with ads and wearing them down until they bite.
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Today’s decision maker is more sophisticated. You need to build affinity and trust with your prospects. A relationship needs to form and you must to give them the chance to learn what they need to make a decision for themselves. The longer-form platform offered by a magazine is perfect for supporting this. It allows you to add value with thought leadership and insight that helps the reader in their role. It will enable you to demonstrate your capabilities and showcase your excellent work with case studies. It allows so much more than is possible to convey in a few hundred characters of a small banner ad. This is exactly the reason why video has grown in popularity as a marketing medium. It offers more than its digital alternatives. But there is no one size fits all solution. It would be naive to say a magazine is ideal for every marketing scenario, any more than it would be to say social media, video or email is. Effective marketing is about
understanding your audience and how best to communicate with them. Different markets and different target groups can require a different approach — often one that combines multiple media. And magazines deserve a place in this mix. This is because many assumptions held about magazines today are wrong. For example, a recent survey by the independent marketing analytics specialist, Ebiquity, showed that while advertisers and agencies thought that magazines were the least effective channel for brand
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ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE YOUR CONTENT
building, hard evidence showed they were more effective than direct mail, social media, online video and online display advertising. And we all know marketing decisions should be based on evidence. There is also an assumption that the younger generation has moved away from printed media, but this is also a myth. Another survey shows that 77% of millennials consume magazine media every month. To bear this out, you only have to look to marketing-savvy brands such as Red Bull, Sky and all the major supermarkets. They all have hugely successful customer magazines which engage their customers and prospects with
Well, again, it doesn’t have to be. You are, in all likelihood, not competing with Red Bull, so you don’t need umpteen staff to produce your magazine. You probably already have the makings of some great content; blogs, case studies, comment pieces and press releases. But producing more does not have to cost the earth (if you work with the right partner, cough, cough). Print and production costs have come down significantly in recent years. Digital printing means the days of needing to print vast quantities to get anything close to a competitive price are long gone; smaller print runs are now very economical. And you don’t have to publish
“Many assumptions held about magazines today are wrong.” the type of content they know they love. These are organisations that have done their research and never waste their marketing budgets. Thinking about these major brands and their approach may raise another misconception; that producing a customer magazine is expensive.
monthly. Frequency should be driven by the content opportunities you have available and the pace of your customer relationships. You may find one issue a year — to tie in with a major trade exhibition, perhaps — is plenty. Then there is also the distribution to think of — how
70%
of magazin e readers tr ust the content th ey read, but only 3 0% of social med ia users trust the c ontent they read.
you get the magazines into the hands of your customers and prospects. There are plenty of options beyond merely posting them. If you already go to exhibitions and events, they make excellent giveaways. You could add them to new orders as they go out, or include them with quotes. Or, your salesforce can carry copies with them on their travels. Next time you are thinking about how to captivate your customers and prospects, perhaps you should consider this. What would you rather spend £3 on? Drawing a random visitor to your website with Google AdWords or sending a magazine featuring your best content to a carefully selected prospect.
MAGAZINES IN ACTION
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hen tax reclaim specialists, Breakthrough Funding, wanted to launch a magazine showcasing the innovative businesses they work with, they turned to G and C Media. We helped them develop an editorial strategy and then took over the creation of up to 20 detailed case studies for each issue. Covering a wide range of topics — from equine saddle pads to AI generated music — the articles were crafted to bring out the stories behind the innovations and to inspire other businesses to drive their innovations forward. The magazine is at the forefront of their marketing activities in the manufacturing and engineering sector, through multi-channel distribution to a wide range of prospects.
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OUR WORK SERVICES
MAKING CONTENT WORK FOR YOU
Content, and the potential it has to support an organisation’s wider marketing objectives, stretches much further than simply blogging. If you are not taking a structured approach to utilising your content across all of your customer and prospect touch points then you really are missing opportunities. Here are 11 ways we support businesses with their content; are you maximising the power of your content in all of them?
1 3 4
Content strategy Whether it’s a one-off article or a full campaign, understanding your objectives, the audience and the channel you are using is key to creating and presenting successful copy and content. If you go in blind, you may be wasting time and money.
2
Website copy Your website could be the first experience a prospect has of your company. So you need to make a good first impression. This requires useful content that is well structured and professionally presented.
Feature writing The opportunity to write a feature for your trade press can be extremely valuable. But if you are to be published, and even asked to supply more feature material, you have to produce something that fits the publication’s editorial style and adds value to the reader. Understand this and you can even be proactive and pitch ideas to the titles that best serve your market as we know that trade press editors are always interested in good articles.
Press releases PR offers a perfect opportunity to raise awareness of your business. But it is also an area where understanding the audience and channel, and carefully selecting your objective, is key.
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Reports Reports don’t have to be dull. They can be exciting and engaging. A good report will take the messages it needs to convey and turn them into a captivating story that brings a narrative to life.
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SERVICES OUR WORK
6 7 8 9 10 11 Customer magazines
If you really want to stand out from the competition and capture your audience’s undivided attention, a customer magazine is perfect. Combine all your great content into a quality publication that demands attention and captivates an audience with a wealth of value. All without worrying about adverts from your competitors getting in the way. Oh, and it is not as costly as you might think.
Blog articles
Case studies
Writing blogs is easy. Writing blogs that people want to read is another thing altogether. Done well, blogs can help build reputation and trust in you and your brand. And blog content is one of the most powerful tools for attracting visitors to your website — and bringing them back again and again.
Happy customers are your best salespeople. If they have great stories to share and are willing to tell them, case studies allow your prospects to see what you can do for them. Their versatility also means that they can be used and presented to potential customers in many different ways.
Native content
It was called advertorial copy when the G and C Media team started out, but under its new name it’s going through a resurgence in today’s digital world. Paid for content in traditional and online media should be as well crafted as traditional editorial, possibly even more so. Otherwise readers are likely to distrust what they see and recognise it as a sales pitch.
Marketing communications
However you are communicating, always consider the audience, the channel and your objective. One size does not fit all and today, more than ever, every communication needs to add value to the intended audience.
Marketing collateral Brochures, flyers and other physical collateral need to earn their keep. They need to be relevant and of value to the audience, and they must be presented in a language they understand. Whatever you are producing, it must meet a need and has to elicit a reaction.
What if..? Your prospects were this far through reading your customer magazine. G and C Media can help you create a magazine your customers and prospects will want to read. Get in touch to find out more.
Phone-Square 01732 358823 ENVELOPE-SQUARE hello@gandcmedia.co.uk
OUR WORK Q&As Over the next four pages we share extracts from four very different examples of the work we do. Each piece is just a taster, designed to show you how different styles can work. To read each piece in full follow the link at the end.
MEET THE FOUNDER
ADAM FAGG: INNOVATION TRIBE
Innovation Tribe’s co-founder, Adam Fagg, has been in product development throughout his career. It was while working in his most recent role—developing a payroll giving product for a national charity—that he discovered that innovation support and product development ‘specialists’ were falling short.
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ealising that his frustrations presented an opportunity, he came together with his co-founder and business partner, Joanne Pullen—an expert in insights and behavioural research—and Innovation Tribe was formed. The business works with organisations in all sectors to support the development of innovative products and services through the application of Joanne’s expertise and Adam’s specialisms in areas such as design thinking, lean and agile project management. Unlike a lot of ‘consultants’, they are very much hands-on and can often be found with their sleeves rolled up acting as a pop-up project team for their clients. Breakthrough magazine caught up with Adam to find out more about Innovation Tribe’s approach and how Adam believes businesses can support their own innovations. Why is innovation so important to today’s businesses? It’s the lifeblood of all businesses. Industries and markets move so quickly today, much faster than at any time before. Consumers
“Every journey has to start with insight. Good reliable insight.” expect a constant evolution of the products and services they are being offered. Any business that is not innovating—in what it offers or how it offers what it does—is quickly going to get left behind. It’s something that could prove fatal. You only have to look at high profile examples, such as Kodak, to see the implications, even for highly successful businesses. So, it is critical that businesses get it right. What is the biggest mistake you see companies make when approaching innovation? The thing we see time and time again is a project team, or an entire organisation, losing sight of the opportunity. That may be due to missing the real opportunity in the first place, or because they are getting bogged down in the process and over complicating what is in fact quite simple. There are also occasions when egos and strong personalities somewhere in a project team can force the direction of travel away from the opportunity.
How can this be avoided? Every journey has to start with insight. Good reliable insight. Without it, huge amounts of time and resources will be wasted. OK, so how should an organisation go about gathering those insights? The critical thing is that they are reliable insights, as I say. So many organisations guess, draw assumptions or worse still listen to ill-informed views of self-proclaimed experts. It is essential that all information used to inform decisions can be evidenced: it needs to be backed up by verifiable research. If the information is coming from existing research, it is important to understand its background. In the majority of cases, though, dedicated research will be the best option...
This article first appeared in Breakthrough magazine. To read it in full please go to: bit.ly/innovationtribe
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CASE STUDIES OUR WORK
STOPPING THE AIR FROM TURNING BLUE! Suzanne Gill finds out how one dairy has tackled the problem of airborne cross-contamination of yeasts and moulds from one product to another during production.
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igh Weald Dairy has been producing a range of organic and conventional soft and hard cheeses from cow, sheep and goats milk, on its present site since 2003. Before then Mark Hard, owner of the High Weald Dairy, produced cheese from the milk of his family’s own flock of sheep on a nearby farm. When a yellow mould started to appear on the surface of some batches of soft cream cheese, a few weeks after vacuum packing, Hardy and the team at the High Weald Dairy quickly set out to
paperwork. They found that all the cheeses which suffered from the yellow mould problem only ever came from batches produced in the dairy at the same time as blue cheese. The air conditioning fan was moving air around the dairy and allowing the yeasts and moulds which are vital to the unique flavour of blue cheese, to contaminate the surface of the soft cheese. Having identified the source of the problem, High Weald
“Luckily we were able to quickly identify the cause. ” find where the yeast that caused the mould to grow might have come from. “Luckily we were able to quickly identify the cause. It was not, as we had initially been told, due to the dairy equipment not being properly cleaned between batches. Nor was it down to the packaging process as this involves gas flushing the container before vacuum sealing. “Because the problem only began at the same time that we added blue cheese products to our range, we suspected that this was somehow related to the soft cheese mould problem.” This theory was confirmed when the team looked more closely at the
Dairy needed to find a solution to remove these microorganisms from the air to eradicate any possibility of cross-contamination in the future. Fortuitously, Hardy read an article about a new air sterilisation solution in Food Processing magazine and was keen to find out more about the Bio-Oxygen system.
A quick chemistry lesson The Bio-Oxygen air sterilisation process works by compressing electrons inside a series of electron tubes producing an electron shower over a radius of around 2m. As air passes through this electron shower, its oxygen molecules absorb extra electrons
which makes them magnetic and they agglomerate into clusters. When engulfed by these oxygen clusters the body of any organism will become the earth point against which the clusters discharge their surplus energy in a rapid short circuit discharge. The organism will be continually bombarded with electrons until it eventually dies. While organisms are able to develop immunity to disinfectants there is no immunity to electron shots. This natural chemical reaction can effectively remove pollutants – including odours, gases, chemicals, bacteria, fungus, yeast, mould, spores, viruses, protozoa and other organisms – from the air in between two and 15 seconds without the need for any filters, perfumes, disinfectants, chemicals or catalysts...
This article first appeared in Food Processing magazine. To read it in full please go to: bit.ly/fpcheese
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OUR WORK TECHNICAL FEATURES
TAKING THINGS SLOWLY
Suzanne Gill reports on the use of mobile devices in industrial applications. It appears to be a slow-burn technology on the plant floor and there are some hurdles that need to be overcome before mobile devices become more widely used.
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he manufacturing industry sector is notoriously slow at adopting new technologies. However, as mobile device technology begins to mature, a number of opportunities are opening up for ruggedised mobile devices in this sector, although according to automation vendors uptake does appear to remain slow. Where they are being utilised
Visualisation will speed up this trend,” said Michael Albrecht, product marketing IPC/HMI, Control and Industry Solutions at Phoenix Contact Electronics. The technology can offer particular benefits to users who require only infrequent access to an HMI as it could help reduce investment in fixed hardware and can help to minimise the effects of equipment failure rates due
“We are finding that interest in mobile devices is growing every year.” most, is in applications for monitoring SCADA systems, which enables engineers to become more mobile within the plant. “We are finding that interest in mobile devices is growing every year and the current focus on HTML 5 and web
to dust and vibration, which is often present on the plant floor. Elbert van der Bijl, manager of industry marketing at Yokogawa, also believes that the industrial sector is moving towards the use of mobile devices. However, today the company is still seeing a reluctance to utilise the technology extensively due to perceived security issues. “To date the only applications we are seeing have been for second level applications – not control
related – for field service and maintenance tasks. We are also seeing some interest in the use of mobile devices in start up support projects, before the plant becomes operational, and also during plant shutdowns when staff are undertaking maintenance activities. However, we feel that fixed monitoring solutions will remain dominant in the process sector for some time,” said van der Bijl.
Mobile benefits Ian Langton, mobile product manager at Captec, a supplier of specialist industrial computers, rugged tablet computers and embedded computers, expands on the benefits of mobile monitoring solutions. “Having mobile monitoring solutions on the factory floor benefits the engineers. It means that they are no longer tethered to a single workstation. However, it is not yet commonplace. We are seeing less demand for tablets to replace HMI control applications on the plant floor as it is often desirable to maintain wired connections for reliability when it comes to issues relating to control...”
This article first appeared in Control Engineering Europe. To read it in full please go to: bit.ly/controlengeu
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BLOGS OUR WORK
FOR INTELLIGENT SELLING
GET SOCIAL
There is a fair chance that without even realising it you are doing some of the things that fall under the banner of social selling. However, there is much to be gained by truly embracing social media’s potential to support your sales activity.
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o help you turn social selling into a conscious activity, our sales superhero, The Closer, explains the strengths of social selling, what it involves, why it is crucial in today’s business environment and how you can develop your own social selling superpowers.
What is social selling? Let’s start with what social selling isn’t. It isn’t about grabbing as many followers, likes or connections as possible and bombarding them with special offers in the hope that someone may just be a prospect and will bite. It is not about tricking prospects into connecting and then spamming their direct
of digital transformation consultancy Zoodkiers— Kent Vision LIVE’s marketing partner—how she defined social selling. “Social selling is taking the work done through social marketing— the creation and sharing of great content—and leveraging it to support sales efforts,” she explained. “There is considerable crossover between the sales and marketing activities a business carries out over social media. Perhaps more than ever before, successful use of social media for a business requires cooperation and collaboration between sales and marketing teams,” added Katie.
“A business needs to use the power of social media intelligently, to support its sales activities.” message inbox with everything that is great about a business and its products or services. It certainly isn’t a magic bullet or a way to push a few keys and sit back and watch the sales roll in. A business needs to use the power of social media intelligently, to support its sales activities. It needs to do so by leveraging both its social and traditional marketing efforts. I asked Katie King, founder
Is it worth it? Social selling has been on the map for a good few years—it’s not just a fad—but it does seem to have come into prominence in the last 18 months or so. “The last two years or so has seen social media usage in business extend beyond being a tool for promotion, into other areas of the organisation,” continued Katie. “This includes customer service and HR, but
the area where I think usage is growing fastest is social selling,” There is now some meaningful research that backs the argument for taking a social selling approach. As far back as 2013, an article in Forbes shared research which showed that over 78% of salespeople using social media to support their sales activities outperformed those who weren’t, and that social media users exceeded their sales targets more often than non-users. There is also data to show the impact that social media is having on buyers. CEB, a part of Gartner, found that a typical B2B customer is 57% of the way along their buying process before they engage with any suppliers. While Accenture’s State of B2B Procurement Study found that 94% of B2B buyers conduct some degree of research online before making a business purchase...
This article first appeared on www.kentvision-live.co.uk. To read it in full please go to: bit.ly/getsocialblog
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INTELLIGENT CONTENT
13
INSIGHT CUSTOMER MAGAZINES
MAGAZINES ARE DEAD, LONG LIVE MAGAZINES You will no doubt have heard tales of the death of magazines. You will probably have watched or read reports which explained how, despite efforts to bring the format into a digital world, their time has passed. But is it really the case that they can no longer add value to a marketing strategy? Chris Callander isn’t convinced.
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agazines have had a tough time of late. It would be foolish to try and deny that. But while many titles, some in saturated markets and some offering poor levels of quality, have floundered, many others are thriving. It is like any market, in its heyday plenty of opportunists jump on the bandwagon and it is (relatively) easy to be successful. But often greed sets in, investment remains low and when something in the macro environment changes, and things get tough, the cracks begin to show.
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When this happens you have a thinning out of businesses that probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Those that do an excellent job, serve their customers well and have a sound business model survive the challenging times, there is consolidation and then those businesses that have weathered the change begin to thrive again. More often than not you then have a period where fewer bigger operations dominate the market, but then another
period of change sees smaller businesses emerge again. Their ability to be agile, to be close to their market and to focus on what they deliver to their customers gives them an advantage over the established behemoths. This business cycle has happened across a diverse range of sectors.
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CUSTOMER MAGAZINES INSIGHT
Look at the historical dominance of Ferrari and Lamborghini in the supercar market and at the number of new brands like Pagani to have emerged in more recent times — following consolidation with brands such as Aston Martin falling into the clutches of Ford. Beer production has seen this cycle too. Breweries consolidated massively some years ago, but today we have more breweries in the UK than ever before thanks to the boom in craft beer. The magazine sector is in this cycle too. The trigger for the decline has been the massive growth in social media, and the ease at which news and content can be shared online. But this trust in the new order is now showing signs of being misplaced. Research by the independent marketing analysts Ebiquity showed that advertisers and agencies rated magazines as the lowest of ten media channels for their effectiveness in brand building. However, objective research showed magazines
DOES SOCIAL MEDIA DELIVER USEFUL CONTENT?
But why is this? I believe there is renewed recognition of the role that valuable content plays in marketing today. You can’t hile planning this article I conducted a trigger a purchase completely unscientific experiment. On by repeatedly a random day, I categorised the 100 most recent posts throwing an on both my LinkedIn and Twitter timelines. I didn’t count advert in front officially promoted ads, however. On LinkedIn 83 posts of a potential were promotional, three were news items and nine linked customer any to useful content. The remaining six were ‘inspirational’ more. You have quotes and requests for assistance. Twitter performed to create a slightly better with only 79 promotional tweets and 12 connection, news items. Only four linked to useful content with the build trust and remaining five tweets being requests for assistance. show authority I know this, in part, reflects my connections on to engage your the platforms and I can do something to control the prospects. You proportion of useful content I am exposed to. But imagine create trust and if when you watched television, over 80% of the time demonstrate was given to advertisements — 50 minutes in the hour. authority through Or, if your favourite newspaper only had 12% of its content; by pages covering news and features. That could mean sharing knowledge 44 pages of advertising in a 50 page paper. and expertise, Would you tune into that television channel solving problems and or buy those papers? Or more importantly, demonstrating empathy. would your customers? The platform offered by magazines, both in print and digital versions, are ideal for announced the impending launch of a subscription based magazine service similar to Spotify and their own Apple Music. sharing more in-depth, and in This is all good news for turn, valuable content. And, businesses because one of as a medium, it has far greater the fastest growing sectors trust levels among users. A is customer magazines. The survey by Magnetic showed distraction free format offers that, while 70% of magazine an ideal platform to engage readers trusted what they read, prospects and customers with only 30% of social media users content that adds value and trusted what they read. Other builds relationships. That may be assumptions about magazines sharing knowledge and insight, are also misplaced. For example, adding to the product experience many believe millennials to or going deeper into topics than be among those that have other media allow. There are abandoned magazines. But this endless uses for a customer isn’t the case. In fact 77% of magazine. them access magazine media And, as trust in social at least once a month and they platforms declines, clouded by make up 53% of the overall cries of ‘fake news’, perhaps audience for online magazines. customer magazines are a Perhaps this is why, at the platform your business should time of writing, Apple has just consider.
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“One the the fastest growing sectors in publishing is customer magazines.” were fourth most effective; behind TV, radio and newspapers. Social media was rated by the advertisers and agencies as third most effective but the evidence showed it was seventh. Are we seeing a case of the emperor’s new clothes? There are real signs that the tide may be turning. Procter and Gamble, who have one of the largest advertising budgets in the UK, are moving away from social platforms and back to more traditional media. And there was a strong sense of irony in Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to run national newspaper ads to apologise on behalf of Facebook for the situation surrounding Cambridge Analytica.
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INSIGHT BLOGGING GUIDE
THE NON-BLOGGER’S GUIDE TO BLOGGING You have been asked to write a guest blog. It’s a great opportunity for you and your company but you haven’t got a clue where to start. Chris Callander offers some advice on how to approach the task, to get great results from your blog and to increase the likelihood of being asked to do it again.
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n any content creating task there are three key areas you need to consider; the audience, your objectives and the channel.
The audience The audience should be the first area you look at. Try and find out as much as you can about the individuals you are writing for. You need to try and establish what challenges and pain points they face. See if you can discover what their areas of interest are. Also try to work out what tone
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of voice or writing style they are most likely to respond to. This will help you decide what you write about, and how you write it. In nearly every blogging situation you need to add value to the reader. Your content must be relatable, solve problems, share useful knowledge or give advice. This is the most important point I will make. If you want your post to be read, and the time you spend writing it to be worthwhile, then you do need to write for the audience. It doesn’t matter how well written a piece is, if it’s not
relevant to the audience it will not have any impact.
Your objective There are a number of objectives you can aim for. You may want to demonstrate knowledge and thought leadership to build your organisation’s reputation as subject experts. As part of your brand strategy, you may be looking to gain the audience’s appreciation by sharing helpful information. You may decide you want to build trust and demonstrate transparency.
BLOGGING GUIDE INSIGHT
With the understanding you have of your audience and an objective in mind you can then start to shape the framework of your piece. But whatever you do, never write a sales pitch even though there will be a strong temptation to do so. I guarantee it will do you more harm than good. There is every chance your piece will be rejected — especially if you’re writing for a reputable blog. But
In the case of blogs there are some universal factors which I will come onto. But there may also be requirements which are specific to the blog you are writing for. You should always ask the blog owner what they want in terms of style, format and length. If they are not specific a good starting point is to look at other pieces on the blog for guidance. Find out if you need to supply images to support your copy.
“Whatever you do, never write a sales pitch even though there will be a strong temptation to do so.” even if you do get published, engagement with your content will be low and your chances of being read in the future will be diminished.
The channel More technical considerations are needed here. This is about making sure what you supply fits where it is being published.
Don’t send cheesy headshots unless they are in keeping with the blog’s style. And don’t just grab any image you fancy from the internet — it’s a sure-fire way to fall foul of copyright laws. There are plenty of places you can access images that are copyright free, such as Unsplash or Pexels. Regardless of which blog you are writing for there are some
key points to remember, mainly because they affect search engine optimisation (SEO). If you get no guidance on the blog length make sure you write at least 350 words. Less than this and you will not rank well in search engine results which assume content less than this can’t be long enough to add value. There is no maximum word count to aim for and current research suggests longer posts perform better. So aim for 1000 words as a minimum if you can. Finally, take the time to write an original piece. Do not try to pass off a blog you have already published elsewhere. Google’s algorithms will assume you are trying to trick the system and can penalise sites which run duplicate content. So a reputable blog editor is unlikely to accept this and will be less than happy if they find out after the piece has been published. If they do publish your copy it will be flagged to tell Google not to index it — meaning neither you nor the blog gain SEO benefit from the content.
PUTTING PEN TO PAPER — WHERE ON EARTH DO YOU START?
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good starting point is a working headline. It will probably change as your blog develops, but get one down on paper (or screen), and you have achieved something — which is a great motivator. You need to catch the reader’s attention so consider the benefits you are trying to get across and the challenge or opportunity they meet. Then reflect that in your headline in a way that leaves the reader intrigued: “Your staff don’t need to be unhappy”, “There’s an hour in your day you didn’t know you had.” Next, draft an introduction designed to reel in the reader by summarising what you will be covering. It should let readers see, very clearly, what they will gain from taking the time to read the rest of your blog. Then draft a conclusion that succinctly reiterates your key points and reminds readers of the value you have given them.
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To develop the main content, start by breaking it down into a series of points that cover what you want to get across. This will help to organise your piece. You can then expand on each point, and the blog will develop from there. Once you have your main content, review your headline, intro and conclusion. They may need to be tweaked slightly. But that is fine. Give your blog a last read through. You need to check for any errors of course and if you can, ask someone who hasn’t seen it before to do this too. You also need to make sure you haven’t used jargon or acronyms that might confuse the reader. Just because you know what you mean, it doesn’t mean the person reading it will. Then finally, stop working on it. It’s easy to keep making changes to a perfectly good piece of content and never calling it done. Call time, send it off and congratulate yourself on a job well done.
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INSIGHT BUYER PERSONAS
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS? Knowing your audience is a vital piece of the puzzle in the development of any type of content, and yet it is surprising how many marketers don’t have a clear picture of who they are communicating with, or indeed selling to. To ensure you don’t fall into this trap, Chris Callander explains what a buyer persona is and how you can create one for your brand or business.
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henever you create content for your business or brand you have to write it for your particular audience. Gone are the days of pushing out promotional messages. Today’s customers are too savvy and nothing puts them off more than an obvious sales pitch — except maybe a poorly masked pitch. For content to be successful today it has to add value to the reader. It has to share useful information, to provide a solution to a problem, to elicit an emotional response. The only way you can confidently do this is if you know the audience you are writing for. This is where buyer personas, or customer profiles if you prefer, come in. A buyer persona is a research-based model of your typical customer. The model generally takes the form of a profile of a fictitious character that carries your customer’s traits. The traits should include who they are; their likes and
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interests. It should explain what they aim to achieve by buying your products. It should also outline how they think and how, where and when they make purchases.
What to explore There is a wide range of information you can aim to discover relating to who your customer is. This can include gender, age, level of education, occupation, hobbies and
independent approach could also be useful to know. In terms of what it aims to achieve, a profile needs to cover your customers’ aspirations, motivations, the challenges they face and what they may want to change about their role or industry. You will want to know why they purchased your products and which factors helped them make a positive decision. You should also try to establish what
“For content to be successful today it has to add value to the reader. ” interests, habits, and even religion and beliefs if this might be relevant. It may also be useful to understand typical personality traits shared by your customers. Are they risk takers and do they respond well to change? You may want to know if they are generally left or right brain thinkers, who therefore will be more creative or logical. Perhaps whether they follow the crowd or take a more
information they sought out before making the decision, and where from; was it peer reviews or technical information on your website for example? Where your typical customer sources information and engages with peers and communication is also important to understand. Do they use social platforms and, if so, which ones? Do they prefer digital information or other media formats?
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BUYER PERSONAS INSIGHT
GARY BUYER Gender: Male Age: 43 Education: Level 4
Occupation: Production Director Location: Rural Manchester Income: £55,000
Goals: To consistently produce products that stand head and shoulders above the competition. Motivations: Satisfied customers, low prices. Frustrations: Pressures placed on quality by the need to keep costs low. Personality traits: Outgoing, detail oriented, loyal. Biography: Gary began his career as an apprentice at Fictitious Foods and worked his way up to his current role over the course of 19 years. He has been Production Director for the last six years. He is passionate about the products his company produces with quality being his top priority. He measures the success of his products by the satisfaction of his customers. Gary is a customer of ours because he appreciates the focus we place on quality and customer service. He has been buying our products for four years having initially been introduced to our company by another of our customers. Favourite brands: John Lewis, First Direct, Virgin Trains
“I’m not happy until our customers are happy.” Gathering insights To gain some of this information you may need to interview your customers. This would give you the opportunity to find out why they bought into your solution and what made them choose you over the competition. You should also be able to establish what questions they sought answers to before choosing your solution. For example ‘can I afford it’ or ‘is it an ethical choice’? Depending on how your business operates you may have a wealth of this information already available. Can you talk to your sales team and find out what common traits they see when interacting with customers? Does your customer relationship database offer information about how and how often your customers like to communicate?
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What else does that tell you about their preferences? There may also be information about your target market available from secondary sources. Research may already have been carried out into groups you have identified as including your customers. Some desk research will quickly identify what is available.
Putting it together You do want to be as specific as you can. ‘Man or women aged 18-60’ is not enough. That said, there is almost no end to the levels of detail you can go to or the amount of information you can gather. The trick is to establish which areas are most relevant in your case. But do be prepared to find trends and traits you didn’t
realise your customers shared. As well as helping you tailor your content it may open up unexplored groups of prospects. Don’t try to fudge the exercise, or worse still guess or use assumptions. Wherever you can, the information you use to build your profile has to be based on data and insight that can be verified. Otherwise you risk your marketing decisions being based on flawed information. With all the information captured and verified, create a fictitious person with a profile and backstory to allow you to really visualise your ideal customer. Give them a name and even an image. Then, every time you create content ask yourself: Does the topic, style and method of delivery appeal to our customer?
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