The Magnificent Seven - Marketing touch points

 

The Magnificent Seven - That's the number you need to think of when considering how to get your marketing message across.

There is a well-known school of thought that states within marketing, a consumer must engage with your brand message at least 7 times before the point 'sinks in' and they are encouraged to take action. These engagements are called 'touch points'.

There are two main points to consider here, your 7 touch points can - and should - come across different marketing mediums. An example of this could be a consumer:

1 - sees your Facebook post

2 - drives past your billboard

3 - watches your TV advert

4 - is given a recommendation

5 - picks up your flyers

6 - reads a news article about you

7 - sees an Instagram advert

.... And hey presto! Becomes a customer. If only it was that easy

Research today shows that as we are so bombarded with brand messages every second of the day, it could be closer to 13 'touch points' that are required before a brand message sinks in!

The second point to consider is that the touch points need to be spread over a period of time, you can't just go crazy one day posting across every platform and then sit back waiting for the moolah to start pouring in. Marketing campaigns need to be planned over a period of time, this can vary depending on the type of campaign - if it is a time-sensitive event or a product linked to a particular season or holiday etc. You need to think about your goal 'end date' and work backwards from there.

Start too late and you won't give people enough chance to see your message 7 (or 13!) times, and start too early and your campaign will be too diluted with consumers forgetting about the initial touch points by the time they see the last ones.

Get in touch if you'd like to pick my brain about your marketing campaign!

Thanks for reading.

Melissa

Melissareilly3@gmail.com

Marketing tips that really take the biscuit!

What can a biscuit tell you about marketing? 🍪🤔 One of the biggest mistakes I have seen is a brand spreading itself too thinly by rushing into setting up multiple social channels due to FOMO (fear of missing out - should I be on Twitter, Insta, Facebook etc...) or external pressures - perhaps someone else within the organisation saying "we should be on X, Y, Z". 

What will likely happen is they'll get stuck in a rut trying to work out what to post across all of these channels then they'll inevitably leave some (or in some cases all) of the channels to go quiet - que a tumbleweed any time now.

A much better strategy is to really think about your audience, what channels they are using and go there. Better to do one channel really well than ten terribly. So back to the biscuit (feat Lanark's own Border Biscuits no less!), this is a wee trick to help you think about the purpose of the many different social channels...

📍 Facebook - I like biscuits! Please join my community group of fellow biscuit lovers and we can discuss all things biscuity.

📍 Instagram - Here are some super fancy (filtered obviously) photos of homemade, artisan biscuits placed neatly beside a steaming coffee mug. Designed to make your mouth water and make your hand reach for the biscuit tin! 

📍 Twitter - Let me update you on my current status of eating a biscuit. Perhaps we could get into a debate about the BEST biscuit ever. Do you have a biscuit-fuelled complaint? (not enough chocolate on your digestive) Head this way...

📍 Pinterest - Take a look at my biscuit recipe or why not try decorating your own biscuit tin. I'm very proud of my inspirational kitchen boards!

📍 LinkedIn - My skills include biscuit eating and for your perusal here is some information about my biscuit business. 

📍 YouTube - Go behind the scenes at a biscuit factory and see how these biscuits are made or watch me do a live biscuit unboxing.

📍 Google+ - Searching for information on my biscuit business? Here you go! 

📍 Snapchat - Want this biscuit? Sorry I ate it and it's gone! 

📍 Tiktok - Apparently there's a new biscuit eating challenge. Jenga with kit kats - all the rage.

So, who really fancies a biscuit now? Get in touch if you'd like to discuss which social channels you should be using. FYI a jammy wagon wheel would be fantastic, thanks!

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

melissareilly3@gmail.com

The 80 / 20 rule in social media marketing

Is it a cake or a meringue? 🤔 No you're right, it's a cake! 🍰 So turns out I'm using food for another marketing analogy, which seems to help explain the point and make me hungry in equal measure. 

I'm sharing a photo of this tasty looking swiss roll to help describe the 80/20 rule when it comes to your social media marketing. First of all, marketing is annoying. You are trying to invade someone's personal (digital) space to get your message across and encourage action. To do this well, you have to 'sandwich' your sales message between valuable content. Here is where the 80/20 comes in. 80% of the posts from your business social media feed should be *valuable content*, with only 20% being sales posts. 

Depending on your audience, there could be a huge variety of posts as to what is 'valuable' to them. This could be posts that:

- Entertain them (funny videos / memes)

- Inform them (industry articles / videos / infographics)

- Intrigue them (your story / behind the scenes, throwbacks etc)

- Inspire them (pretty photos, quotes)

- Excite them (competitions, giveaways)

- Shock them (topical causes / stats)

Basically, for every 'sales' post you share - you want to share around 3/4 posts of non-sales, valuable content that will appeal to your audience, make them trust/like your brand more and ultimately, be more likely to buy from you when they see the next sales post. 

If you overdo the jam (the sales posts!) you run the risk of coming across as a pushy salesman, annoying, repetitive and users will either unfollow your brand, unlike your page or simply skim past your posts without any recognition. 

Get in touch if you're looking for ideas of types of 'valuable' content you can share with your audience.

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

melissareilly3@gmail.com

Social media content: don't be a copy cat!

 

When you're managing multiple social media channels and time is tight, it can be very tempting to create a post on one channel, say Facebook, and then simply copy and paste the exact same image and text onto other channels. We are all guilty of it and I'll be the first to hold my hand up and admit I've done this in the past!

There are two issues with this, firstly you may have completely different audiences following you on different channels - and the message that strikes a chord with one of them could mean nothing to the other. The second is that when you copy/paste posts on the SAME platform but through different account channels, it's extremely obvious to users as - if they 'like' and 'follow' both of your pages - they could see the exact same post coming in succession from both of your pages, which can appear lazy. 

Ask yourself - why does my umbrella (overarching) brand have multiple Facebook pages, Twitter accounts or Instagram accounts etc?

If the answer is that you have different audiences interested in different things, you need to step away from CTRL + V and tailor the message consistently across each individual channel. This can be as simple as tweaking the format of the sentences, or using a slightly different opening line - perhaps using a rhetorical question which piques the interest of that individual audience. Mixing up the emojis used (or removing them) can change the 'tone' of the post! Within the post's image, you could use a different lead image for each account channel or if posting a mini album of photos (2-4 images) mix up the order they appear in.

Thanks for reading! 

Melissa

Melissareilly3@gmail.com

HIT Scotland #EmergingTalent Conference

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to attend the HIT Scotland Emerging Talent at the lovely Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow. It was a really inspiring day with a host of fantastic speakers. I was ALSO lucky enough to be awarded one of the HIT Scholarships - with a specialism in Social Media. I'll find out more about what it entails in the next couple of weeks and I'm really looking forward to finding our more about it. I already have a lots of experience using social media as a community and marketing tool, but as the landscape is always changing I'd like to learn about all of the latest developments from the experts and learn how to use them in my day to day job at New Lanark - and as the (no official title) marketing / social media / promo person for Lanark Amateur Musical Society which I do in my spare time as well as dancing about on stage. 

Below I'm going to share some of the most inspirational quotes I heard from the speakers during the day...

David Cochrane - HIT Scotland Chief Executive "One thing you can't take away from Scottish tourism is the people"

Fraser Doherty MBE "A good idea doesn't have to reinvent the wheel"

Helen Vass "If you don't ask you don't get"

Rojan Kumar "If you don't try you'll never know"

Bill McFarlane "what we think about, we bring about"

Bruce Walker "Who made the rules and what are they? Why not break them?"

My certificate - yay!

Thanks for reading! I'll br writing another blog once I've completed my Social Media HIT Schoralship so you'll find out what it's all about.

Melissa

Getting to grips with Online Video Marketing

At a recent ETAG Conference I heard a very interesting prediction that by 2018, 80% of the world's internet traffic will be video consumption...(I sometimes feel like 2008 was two seconds ago, so it was a shock for me to realise that this prediction is talking about next year!). This prediction is also mirrored in a Cisco study published in 2015 which also states that by 2020 there will be 4.1 Billion global internet users with 26.3 Billion networked devices and connections. That's a LOT of people watching a heck of a LOT of video content - but what will they be watching? The range of video content readily available on the internet is ever expanding, from YouTube vlogger sensations with their own beauty product lines, to streaming of films and box sets at the click of a button. 

For advertisers the potential of video as a content marketing channel is absolutely huge in terms of engaging with your audience and promoting your product or service. This could be through vlogs, product reviews, interviews, webinars, tutorials, animations and good old fashioned trailers or adverts...the list goes on and on. 

There's also been lots of new ways to share video online recently with the likes of Periscope, Facebook LIVE, 360 video, Snapchat and Instagram Stories - to name a few!

In my current role of Marketing and PR Officer at New Lanark World Heritage Site we began dipping our toes in the 'video marketing' world last summer by creating a series of video adverts I suppose you would call them for various areas of our site such as the Visitor Centre, Mill Shop and Health & Fitness Suite. We found they were a fantastic way to convey our marketing messages in an engaging way and show so much more than an image or text ever could. We also found that sharing very short snippets of video on our social media channels (mainly Facebook and Instagram) also performed very well in terms of audience engagement. 

It was very much an in-house operation with us undertaking all of the filming and editing. As there was no cost outlay at the beginning this allowed us to experiment and feel free to be creative without having to worry about having to pay a video editor for just one more change. 

This year we're looking to continue to use video marketing to support our wider marketing campaigns, and also by creating specific videos to support the marketing of our growing programme of events and exhibitions. 

From working on creating and editing the videos I've learned a lot about what works well and what doesn't. As such, I've pulled together a list below of my 20 Top Tips for online video marketing. I'm definitely no expert, and always willing to learn so if you have any more tips or comments please feel free to email me at melissareilly3@gmail.com.

1. Videos shared on social media for advertising purposes should be 30 seconds max.
2. Use a simple backing track to keep the video lively (not too loud!)
3. Every video should have a easily flowing beginning, middle and end. 
4. People are likely to switch off, so have the essential info at the start. 
5. When editing use transitions sparingly! (if in doubt stick to a simple dissolve/fade)
6. Use a tripod for steady pans. 
7. Perhaps the most obvious - use a good quality camera or phone for capture. 
8. Natural lighting where possible is best!
9. When shooting capture a variety of shots (static, pan up down left right, zoom in out)
10. More is more - take lots of short clips that you can piece together later.
11. Always capture more than you need at the start and end of a shot then trim down
12. Incorporate your brand colour schemes and logo (but not right at the start as this will look very corporate - unless that's the style you're going for!)
13. Upload videos directly to Facebook for a higher organic reach (rather than sharing a YouTube link for example)
14. Use a relevant video title and searchable keywords in your YouTube video description
15. Try out Youtube's new Director App to help businesses create better video content
16. Export your video at the correct (and best possible) quality for your platform
17. Embed video in your website landing page (or any other relevant page) to increase the time people spend on your website. 
18. Include a call to action at the end of your video (so dedicated/engaged people who have watched the full thing know what to do next)
19. Try not to date content too obviously (if possible) as in most cases it should be evergreen content that you can share again and again!

This is an example of one of the first videos I had a go of producing! 

Thanks for reading!

Melissa

@_Melissa247

photo credit: Digital Adrian Capturing the fountains via photopin (license)

My Top 10 learnings from #asvaconf16

Myself and Gordon Morrison from Visit Scotland (plus my glitzy - and very pointy - award)

Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to attend the annual ASVA Conference for a third time at the beautiful Crieff Hydro Hotel. ASVA stands for the Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions and its members include all the well known faces of the Scottish tourism industry from Edinburgh Castle to New Lanark World Heritage Site *shameless plug for where I currently work*!

This year's conference was focused on 'Achieving Excellence' and there were some fantastic speakers over the two day event from tourist attractions in the UK, Europe and Canada! I always come away from events like this not with a fistful of dollars (I wish), but with a notebook full of ideas to take forward, inspirational quotes and random scribblings that I have to try and decipher afterwards. 

I had plenty to think about after this year's conference, and have just managed to sort out all of my notes into some cohesive thoughts. I've pulled together a list below of my top 10 takeaways from the conference, and although these were originally focused on the tourism industry there are many ideas or tips that are transferable across many businesses and organisations. 

Oh, I should also mention that at the conference's award ceremony I was chosen as the winner of the Rising Star award which is given to one individual under 30 from an ASVA member organisation who has shown real commitment to their role and made significant change within their organisation. Yahoo! 

Anyways, onto the learnings - here they are...


1. The customer experience is 50% emotional – focus on building the customer experience and not on the ‘thing’ (attraction) (Royal Yacht Britania)

2. Invest in your staff and show them appreciation in a way that appeals to them (this may be 121 time, rewards/gifts or a gesture)

3. Know your customers and create tailored packages and experiences to meet their needs and desires. (The Famous Grouse Experience)

4. Your welcome is extremely important, so use the right staff in the right place.

5. Trip Advisor is big business (Scotland pages had 66 million views in the last 12 months) so be as visible on the platform as possible and reply to comments.

6. You have to keep innovating / changing and developing new ideas to stay ahead of the competition. (The Famous Grouse Experience)

7. Video is a fantastic marketing tool to convey your marketing messages and brand. (Sumerlee Museum of Industrial Heritage)

8. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas! (Nova Scotia Marketing Board)

9. Be as authentic as possible. (Astrid Lingren World)

10. Be valuable to and for the community. If you look after your customers they will look after you! (Royal Yacht Britania)

Did you attend the ASVA conference and have any other key takeaways? Let me know!

Thanks for reading, Melissa
@_Melissa247