WHAT MARKETERS WANT 2018

Foreword2

85

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CONTENTS

Measuring ROI With Promotional Products

Virtual Reality - The Innovative Game Changer

Successful marketing all starts with the customer. It always has.

Creating Connection with Games

How Facebook’s Latest Update Will Impact Businesses

The Importance in Keeping Your Brand Up-to-Date

How to Close the Loop Between Offline Sales from Online Leads

Why PR Needs to Be a Valuable Part of Your 2018 Marketing Strategy

How to Get More From Your Google Shopping Ads

2

FOREWORDOnce again Prolific North Live brought the region’s premier marketing and communications talent together for two days of inspiration, innovation and insight. Now in its third year, Prolific North Live has become the biggest marketing expo outside of London.

Prolific North Live featured leading exponents of marketing, communication, media, broadcast, content and engagement. This year also featured new zones like Immersive Technology and Marketing Platforms alongside TV and film companies, media suppliers and some of the best business brains from across the UK.

To support this year’s event we have created an official eBook that aims to capture some of the leading ideas and products unfurled over the two day expo. The options available to Marketers in 2018 are vast, and this eBook looks to dig deeper into the methods businesses are prioritising over the next 12 months and how it has changed since 2017.

In this resource you will find guest articles from companies that lead the way in areas of Branded Merchandise, Immersive Tech, SEO, Gamification, Brand Development, PR & CRM Integration.

Special thanks is reserved for our four event partners: Channel 4; Steamhaus; The Landing & Bing, in addition to the teams that contributed toward this eBook: Team Cooper; 72Point, Halston Marketing; hedgehog lab; CTI Digital; Ruler Analytics; Fluid Branding; Click Consult & iThinkMedia.

Prolific North Live was delivered by Prolific North - an independently-owned publishing company based in Manchester - and Don't Panic Projects, an event management agency that specialises in delivering events for the digital, marketing and PR industries.

Martyn Collins, Expo Director

To complement Prolific North Live 2018 all exhibitors were invited to take part in a survey that aimed to get a real insight into the products, services and software that Marketing teams across the UK not only used in 2017, but are looking to prioritise for 2018.

The survey was made up of 17 multiple choice questions that covered 9 of the most common products or services available at this year’s expo: Video; Branded Merchandise; Immersive Tech; SEO/PPC/Display Advertising; Gamification; UX Research; Brand Development; PR & CRM Integration with Sales.

In total 52 businesses participated in the survey, the results of which will be displayed throughout this eBook.

The questions for the survey are available on request.

Contributors

Shaun AllanChloe ChadwickMartyn CollinsJune GilGeorgia HalstonKatie HolmesMark KingCari KirbyMark McGonigleJack PeatNathan OuriachGemma Richards

3

% of respondents to tick 'Yes'

100%50%0%

In 2017, which services/tools did you utilise in your Marketing Mix? Tick where relevant.

Video

SEO/PPC/Display Advertising

Branded Merchandise

Gamification

Immersive Tech (AR/VR)

UX Research

Brand Development

PR (Offline or Online)

CRM Integration with Sales

When it comes to Marketing, last year saw a big reliance on PR and Video - 77% and 73% respectively - with Marketers relying less so on relatively new products like Gamification (8%) and Immersive Technology (17%).

4

Return on Investment (ROI) is a way to measure the effectiveness of forms of advertising. It analyses the profits against the costs or the financial investment. Learning about ROI in different forms of advertising can help businesses to make informed choices when deciding where to effectively channel their marketing budget.

Advertising can be very expensive so it’s really important to understand what works for your business and brings you the best “bang for your buck” so to speak!

There are several ways that we can start to think about measuring ROI on promotional products. Here we’ll explain a few of them in further detail.

COST PER IMPRESSION

This basically means the average amount of money that is spent for a campaign against the number of times that someone sees the advertisement.

Let’s take a look at a promo product based example, and break down the steps to arrive at the cost per impression (or CPI):

You buy 100 umbrellas with your logo printed on them. They cost £10 each. That makes our total spend £1000 (100 x £10). So far, so good.

As part of your latest promotion, you give each of your 100 umbrellas to a client.

Now, consider that on average, it rains 156 days in every year. That means that your client is going to reach for their umbrella (complete with your branding) an average of 156 days per year too. Furthermore, the average lifespan of one of these umbrellas is three years....so three years worth of rainy days equates to 468 (3 years x 156 days) impressions for each umbrella. And you sent out 100 of these umbrellas. So that’s approximately 46800 impressions overall! Boom.

Now we have our overall cost and total number of impressions, we can use them to work out the CPI. You spent £1000, and got 46800 impressions. Divide your £1000 by 46800 to get your cost per impression:

£1000 / 46800 = £0.0213675

That gives us a CPI of 2p each (this is a conservative estimate, based on one person seeing your branded umbrella per rainy day). Nice work! You can now measure this against other forms of advertising.

CALL TO ACTION

If you ensure that all of products are branded with a definitive call to action, then ROI and effectiveness can be

MEASURING ROI WITH PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTSGemma Richards, Marketing Manager at Fluid Branding

measured by the number of people who respond to the call to action after the launch or product giveaway.

So, make sure you include a website, email address, social media page link or link to a competition as part of the branding on your promotional merchandise - you can then measure your ROI on how many people respond.

Research shows us that a whopping 50% of the UK public say they have taken action after receiving a promotional product, compared with only 19% for TV advertising, 11% for online ads, 10% for print and 9% for direct mail*. Also worth considering is the fact that in terms of long-term marketing there’s nothing better – over a third of all recipients revealed that

they still had their free promotional gifts a full four years after receiving them.

Promotional merchandising can be a useful and effective part of your marketing toolkit. However, care and consideration should be given to how its use fits into your overall marketing and business strategy to ensure that you always get the best return on your investment.

*Stats from Independent research carried out by BPMA

(British Promotional Merchandise Association) - 2013

Fluid Branding are an established, experienced and highly professional promotional merchandise supplier, with offices across the UK, Ireland and Europe.

5

In 2018, do you intend to utilise Branded Merchandise in your Marketing strategy?

Yes

No

Maybe

If you are not planning to use Branded Merchandise in your 2018 Marketing

strategy, why not?

it’s too difficult to determine ROI"

10%

VR’s ability to educate, engage and communicate with users certainly makes it ‘cool’. This, however, isn’t enough to guarantee its future. As Adrian Leu, chief executive of Inition, has pointed out, users still are bound to ask questions like: “What can this new technology do for me? How can it enhance my life? How can it make it better?” They want reassurance, in other words, that once the novelty has gone, the benefits will still be evident. This article explores some innovative ideas about how VR can be applied across different occupations, beyond entertainment and the gaming industry.

Coaching Sports athletes

Imagine a technology that could enable football players to improve their passing techniques. A programme tested at Stanford University, which incorporated VR, has already shown some success in helping teams boost their performance.

Assisting stroke patients to re-adapt

One major challenge often faced by stroke patients is loss of limb movement. Recent research, however, indicates that VR could assist in this regard. With the help of Microsoft Kinect sensors, stroke patients can control a virtual body that corresponds

to their own, the VR experience encouraging them to use weaker limbs through ‘tricking’ them into believing they are more responsive than is actually the case and thus improving motor performance.

Overcoming fears of public speaking

Many people experience some degree of ‘stage fright’, impairing their ability to speak publicly; according to a recent survey close to 2/5th of Americans suffer from ‘stage fear’ syndrome. VR, however, can help such individuals gather the courage required to speak in front of an audience, with recent apps placing would-be speakers in packed-out virtual rooms, helping them prepare for the event itself.

Helping courtrooms deliver justice

Within courtrooms, VR has the potential to dramatically change the means by which justice is delivered through enabling immersive crime scene reconstructions. In this case, each side would likely present significantly differing virtual environments, enabling jurors to get a clear image of the evidence they must assess.

How do we foresee the growth of the market?

According to Facebook CEO, Mark

VIRTUAL REALITY - THE INNOVATIVE GAME CHANGER

Zuckerberg, VR sets a new paradigm for how we will interact with computers over the next five to 10 years and beyond. And, our in our view, it’s likely we’ll see faster progress with this new technology than we have done with its predecessors.

Computers, for example, have had to go through serious fundamental changes - starting with command lines and moving gradually to the point of near-seamless interaction with users; VR, therefore, has no such ground to cover. It’s also notable that a couple of decades ago, computer users would have needed training to operate the technology effectively. Today, by contrast, most can comfortably handle interactive screens with little formal instruction.

Such deeply embedded familiarity with gestures and graphic space, in fact, should allow VR to penetrate faster than any other technological advancement of recent years, its ease of functionality giving it a winning edge and ensuring strong growth for some time yet. With this in mind, it’s important to understand how this market will likely move, how great the demand for VR will be and who will contribute to its success.

Shaun Allan, Chief XR Officer for hedgehog labs

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According to our secondary research, demand will be driven by three specific groups - innovators, the early majority and the late laggards. When it comes to market size, content, as with previous media formats, is king. As far as more concrete predictions go, however, we must consider a number of possible scenarios:

Aggressive demand pushed by the innovators and early adopters

Should aggressive demand be seen, we predict the ‘innovators and early adopters’ will be the ones leading it. These are individuals who welcome innovation, possess financial capability, are educated to a high degree and have an appetite for risk taking. They are also opinion leaders, encouraging others to try out such innovative tech. In this scenario, the market - including both hardware and software - is expected to touch US$180 bn by 2025, supported by swift hardware development, improved user experience and strong UIs.

Standard demand pushed by the early majority

In the case of standard demand for VR hardware and software, adoption would be driven by ‘early majority’, who would push the value of the market to US$80bn by 2025. The industry

advantage in this scenario, however, would be that once this group have adopted something, they have a marked tendency to stick with it longer than their innovator counterparts, whom they would likely still rely on for opinions and suggestions. This group enjoys high social status and has sufficient income to invest in the latest technology. However, we envisage that in such a case, we would only see limited improvements in hardware, with few rapid developments in the likes of battery life.

Sluggish demand pushed by laggards

Should demand come predominantly from the ‘laggard’ segment, it is likely VR technology will grow at a considerably slower pace, touching around US $23bn by 2025.

The reason for this is that this section of society tends to remain focused on traditional technologies for longer and has little influence on opinion leadership. In such a case, VR may remain largely tied to the entertainment and gaming industries, with growth being thwarted by latent adoption, issues with displays, worries over privacy and other safety concerns.

Overall, then, market growth looks extremely promising - provided it is the innovators driving it. We expect,

however, that the early majority could also push the demand curve to decent levels. Certainly, it would be disappointing if the laggard-driven situation came to pass, allowing the hype to die and leaving commentators talking about the VR bubble that was bound to burst.

hedgehog lab is a multi-award winning technology consultancy, with offices in the UK, USA, India and Denmark.

This article originally appeared in a larger white paper. The full version can be accessed here.

8

Prolific North Live 2019The UK's largest Marketing expo outside of Londonreturns in 2019. Want to exhibit?

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This always-on, demand-led environment means you need to understand your audience’s objectives more closely than before and adapt your approach to focus on delivering the right message at the right time.

Fortunately, there’s now a wealth of information available that allows you to track and analyse consumer behaviour, providing you with a more in-depth understanding of your audience than ever.

You already have this data at your fingertips – but you need the right strategy to interpret the data and use it to drive real results.

This is where engaging an agency that specialises in search marketing - with the right expertise and with a track record of success - can be a cost effective and flexible option.

Today, optimising your online presence requires a sophisticated approach and a knowledge of more than just basic SEO techniques.

Understanding what makes consumers tick and what compels them to buy - then reaching them in a way that is relevant and engaging - has always been the key to maximising your marketing ROI.

Get inside the heads of search users, and you can mount an effective strategy that not only brings in leads, but also gets a sizable portion of them to convert.

Now that your audience is faced with more choices than ever, and more ways to access information – Google (organic search, Google Shopping and paid search), social media, messaging apps – the onus is on marketers to add real value to the consumer experience through precise targeting and personalisation.

Mobile and voice search is set to grow in 2018 and beyond, and machine learning is making Google’s ranking system more sophisticated.

Search is already part of your marketing mix – but you need the right strategy to maximise your visibility, impact and influence.

SUCCESSFUL MARKETING ALL STARTS WITH THE CUSTOMER. IT ALWAYS HAS.

The best agencies offer a range of integrated services, with a skillset that includes:- On-page and off-page optimisation techniques- Responses to Google algorithm updates and penalties- Online advertising (paid search, display, social, remarketing)- Content marketing, outreach, and social campaigns - Mobile and voice strategies- Data-driven planning- Tools and technologies

You need to be clear about what you want to achieve, which will tie in with your business and brand objectives. This should inform your goals and the type of results you want to achieve, for example, increasing your site’s position on Google, improving the quality of traffic or increasing conversions.

Marketing is evolving. Marketing has always evolved. And search marketing is no longer a subset of marketing - it is marketing.

Click Consult is a multi award-winning search marketing agency. Call them direct on: 0845 867 3995

Mark McGonigle, Head of SEO at Click Consult

In 2017, 58% of all respondents used PPC, SEO or Display Advertising in their Marketing strategy

In 2018, do you intend to utilise Paid Search (SEO/PPC/Display Advertising) in your Marketing strategy?

Yes

No

Maybe

Brands need to build meaningful, emotional connections with consumers. Trust is at an all-time low, across all of our institutions, and brands are not exempt from this crisis.

We know that marketing is a competition for people’s attention. We live in a world where we have more information than we know what to do with. But we do however have great control of what we see, with a click of a button we can stop seeing promoted posts and tweets, we can fast forward through ads and scroll past your well-considered content before you can explain who you are or what you do.

And we most definitely don’t want to be ‘sold to’ until we are ready to buy and even then, you better not be pushy about it! This is one of the reasons why content marketing has become so important; brands need to add value, to tell stories that are relatable and engaging, to do this we need to take a ‘customer-first’ approach.

Creating connections with games

If you want to stand a chance of engaging with consumers in any sort of meaningful way, brands need to entertain. One way brands have been entertaining their audience is through games.

CREATING CONNECTION WITH GAMES

Gaming audiences

Gone are the days when video games were the privilege of teenagers playing console games in their darkened bedrooms, these days following the dramatic rise of the smartphone, which in turn has led to casual gaming being one of the most popular mobile activities - the ‘gamer’ stereotypes have been shattered.

32 million people in the UK now play games, that’s half the population.

48% of those are women, half of them are over 40 and a quarter are over 56 years old.

Branded Games

Using branded games in marketing, or advergaming as it’s often called, is not a new thing. Coca Cola were among the first to distribute games on floppy discs back in the 80’s. Online Flash games became popular as the World Wide Web rolled out in the late 90’s early 00’s but the possibilities have wildly increased since the rise of mobile devices, social media and the advances in technology.

Cari Kirby, Marketing Manager for Team Cooper

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Positive vibes that go a long way

There is a game genre out there for most audiences and if a brand can offer a space to play, in a way that is already familiar to them and it’s done well, you can create a truly positive interaction to build trust and harbour loyalty.

If you can do that and have a little fun in the process – that’s most definitely a win.

Team Cooper is a BAFTA-nominated team working with agencies, brands, broadcasters and charities to create positive brand experiences, engage audiences and tell stories through games.

Sales generation

If that’s not enough, games can start to generate revenue too, with links to special offers or promotions that are unlocked only from collecting enough coins, or finding a specific item in the game.

Permission based data capture

Games can also be used as a way of capturing data through a leaderboard based competition. With GDPR coming into force soon, brands need to offer relevant and engaging content to ensure compliant, permission based opt-ins to marketing databases.

If you can make that process fun and positive you’re more likely to gain quality data and leads.

Stand out from the crowd

Branded games are a great way to increase footfall to your stand, having a branded arcade machine or an iPad running a competition offers something interactive and fun on an exhibition floor, it can help you cut through the noise and be memorable when following up post show.

Why brandsare using games

Measured Engagement

Don’t expect to be surprised by average engagement figures of between 10 and 40 minutes per player when it comes to branded games. However, it can even be more - one of our clients ran a game with a daily competition throughout December and saw per player engagement in excess of 1 hour and 20 minutes throughout the campaign.

One of our games for DFDS delivered 340,000 brand minutes over a 4 week campaign – that’s a total of 236 days!

Community

Games are great way of building communities, with players sharing tips on gameplay, sharing their scores and engaging with the brand in a positive way on social media.

With the inclusion of leader boards and sharing functionality you can help your audience spread the word with their friends and networks and create online brand ambassadors from top players.

Yes

No

Maybe

In 2018, do you intend to utilise Gamification in your Marketing Strategy?

I don’t see the value in Gamification for our business

"42%

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The largest gathering of eCommerce companies, vendors and suppliers held outside London returns to Manchester on November 6th & 7th.

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Why Facebook advertising?

Facebook advertising pushes your posts onto the newsfeeds of the people most likely to buy your product or service. It offers a seemingly limitless number of advertising options from different campaign types to detailed user profiles including interests, household information, demographics and lifestyles.

Your Facebook followers can choose to see your organic content

If you’re not yet ready to give up on your organic Facebook activity yet, you can let your followers know that they can tell Facebook to still show your company’s posts if they want to see them. They just need to click ‘edit preferences’ under the newsfeed tab on Facebook to prioritise the pages and friends whose posts they want to see on their newsfeeds.

What should I do?

Continue to test the waters with different social media platforms and consider the move into paid Facebook advertising as a way to expand your reach.

For businesses with social-first

What’s happened to Facebook?

On January 11th 2018 Mark Zuckerberg announced that an update to the social media platform’s algorithm was imminent. This latest update to Facebook’s algorithm will have an impact on most businesses as it will be deprioritising posts from brands, businesses and publications in favour of more personal, meaningful content from friends and family.

What does this mean for businesses?

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has made it clear that they are a ‘social’ network rather than a platform for businesses. To that end, they have been gradually reducing the visibility of posts from business pages to the point where organic reach for smaller businesses may not be worth the time it takes to create new content.

What can businesses do about this?

Just because organic reach on Facebook is petering out, it doesn’t mean that you can’t use your business page and all of the data and following you’ve collected over the years to connect with your customers – you’ll just need to be prepared to invest in Facebook advertising.

HOW FACEBOOK'S LATEST UPDATE WIll IMPACT BUSINESSES

marketing strategies, now is also the time to start building up SEO and content marketing efforts to drive traffic from other platforms.

iThinkMedia crafts unique, cohesive, data-led strategies to engage users at every touch point of their search journey.

Mark King, Senior PPC Account Manager for iThinkMedia

The documentation kept around your brand, traditionally a brand summary, is a very useful tool in the briefing for any marketing. Regardless of whether it’s in-house or outsourced. If you’re looking at a huge job like a website redesign or something as simple as copy writing for an ad, your brand summary should be the main reference for inspiration.

Brand development exercises also tend to bring harmony to internal stakeholders. During the process, questions are generally raised about the direction of the company and the aims in general and in finding the answers, company leaders can identify any potential drift in perceptions and the company vision can be realigned.

All of the world’s strongest and most steadfast brands have remained that way because they know who they are, they remain faithful to their brand in everything they do and not just in communications but also in culture. But even the most famous brands in the world are constantly being worked upon to ensure that they stay fit for purpose and pertinent in an ever-changing world.

Halston Marketing are an experienced B2B Agency based in Leeds.

Your brand should be at the very core of everything you do in terms of marketing but it’s very easy to forget this on a day to day basis. It’s also easy to forget that your brand is a constantly growing and moving entity, one that should reflect and mirror the continuously changing nature of any business and its aims.

The idea of brand development may have been tarnished by the preconceptions of the process, that it’s a long and drawn out affair that necessitates things like focus groups and target audience canvassing and is ultimately, expensive.

Brand development though, can be as simple as checking in with your brand, reviewing your values, your tone of voice, your position and your raison d’etre on a regular basis. You need to ask the questions: does your brand still make sense, is it still relevant to your (potentially changing) target audience and industry? Is it still relevant to your offering or has your company pivoted slightly?

The longer you leave your brand to go stale, the harder it will be to develop in the long run. Frequent check-ins are the best way to ensure you’re on top of your brand development.

THE IMPORTANCE IN KEEPINGYOUR BRAND UP-TO-DATE

Georgia Halston, Founder of Halston Marketing

15

HOW TO CLOSE THE LOOP BETWEEN OFFLINE SALES FROM ONLINE LEADSKatie Holmes, Content Marketing Executivefor Ruler Analytics

Whilst most people track form fills, other leads can also come through mediums such as phone calls and live chat and go unattributed.

The Solution: Optimise For Revenue, Not Leads

Evaluating your campaigns the same way you evaluate business: by the amount of revenue it generates.

To find out if leads are turning into real sales and creating revenue, you need a process to track them and then match them with the marketing campaign or keyword that created them.

The Process – Tagging, Tracking, Matching & Integration

Step 1 – Tagging – Identifying the Traffic Source

The first step is making sure the traffic coming to your website is tagged correctly so that you can see the exact source and any other variables associated such as campaign, keyword or advert reference.

This commonly done using UTM tags which allow you to add specific labels to the landing pages. It is also recommended that you capture fields specific to the products you are using such as GCLID for Google AdWords.

Do Any Of The Following Sound Familiar?

• You’re driving plenty of leads but want to turn more into business?

• Your boss or client asks you how real sales you have generated – not how many leads?

• The number of leads you get doesn’t match with what Google AdWords or Analytics says?

• Your leads are high value and expensive to get, but you don’t know which campaigns or keywords are driving them?

• You are struggling to measure the ROI of your campaigns so you have to estimate?

There Is The Fundamental Problem With Marketing For Lead Generation

Leads, by their nature, are not sales. At least not yet. Your leads could be high value, or worthless.

Your analytics might not even be telling you a true picture of where your leads are originating from as people will visit your site on multiple occasions from different channels.

The industry standard for tracking online marketing methods is Google Analytics which does a good job of tracking E-Commerce but can only count the number of form fills as Goals.

Once you have this process in place it allows you to see where the real conversions and revenue come from, measure ROI definitively and optimise your campaign accordingly.

Ruler Analytics is a visitor level marketing analytics product that tracks customer journeys, conversions, phone calls & companies looking at your site.

Step 2 – Tracking – Capture the Lead

The next stage is to ensure that the data captured is at visitor level so you are able to match with the marketing source and to a closed sale later.

Most leads come in the form of an enquiry form, live chat or phone call so you may need some additional marketing analytics or call tracking software at this stage but you can also pass UTM tag values in your forms.

Step 3 – Matching – Match the Lead with the Source in CRM

Once you have captured the lead with the applicable marketing source there needs to be a feedback loop to see which leads closed into business and just as importantly which leads didn’t.

This can be done manually in a spreadsheet, to begin with, to get used to the workflow and prove the business case. However, this could be cumbersome at higher volumes so ideally they should be automatically matched where you handle leads, for instance in CRM.

Step 4 – Integration – Passing the data to other products

Finally, now that you have the leads and marketing source matched, once the sale is completed you are able to pass this into your products. Most products have an API or a manual CSV upload.

For instance, Google AdWords supports uploading the GCLID along with revenue value.

Yes

No

Maybe

In 2018, do you intend to intergrate your Sales Activity with a CRM system?

In 2017, only 57% of respondents

integrated Sales Activity with a CRM

17

stand out is becoming increasingly difficult. PR can return a bounty of positive business benefits, but only if campaigns are orchestrated successfully, which returns me to my initial point.

The art of PR is about creating stories and empowering storytellers. Whether it be journalists, bloggers, vloggers or social media influencers, having a good story at the heart of your campaign is key to its success, and so a PR plan should always start with idea generation and stress testing.

Although journalists and other media professionals aren’t always on hand to judge a story before it has been created, plenty of agencies do have current or former hacks on their books, so seek them out and run your ideas by them before you get underway. After all, overcoming the first hurdle early on will ensure you don’t run into any bumps further down the line.

Then, make sure you develop the campaign with a holistic approach across all platforms and channels. Ask whether there is a natural linking structure to satisfy SEO objectives, whether the content is optimised for online media and social media and that it is sharable.

The beauty of PR as a 21st century marketing tool is that it has evolved into an all-encompassing method of communication.

Few, if any, comms methods in a modern marketer’s tool kit could claim to meet SEO, social media and brand exposure KPIs in one fell swoop, but thanks to the nature of the digital market that is precisely what PR can achieve.

In an age where content is king, creating stories and empowering storytellers has given brands oxygen on the web to stand out where others get swallowed up.

Little surprise, therefore, that 77 per cent of exhibitors at this year’s Prolific North Live carried out PR campaigns in 2017 and 92 per cent look to do it in 2018 as well.

But there are objections to utilising PR tactics among the marketing community, namely because confusion exists over how to implement a successful PR plan.

And who can blame them?

The market today is extremely crowded, which means the ability to

WHY PR NEEDS TO BE A VALUABLE PARTOF YOUR 2018 MARKETING STRATEGY

Crucially, make sure you have an effective means of distributing the story beyond your established circles by assessing how to make a big splash in the media and ways in which to infiltrate social media audiences that aren’t currently in touch with your brand.

With over nine in ten companies set to roll out PR campaigns this year, the reality is that PR is not something you can afford not to do.

72Point secures media exposure for your brand across digital and traditional media. We create, distribute, and land PR and branded news stories in mass-media publications including Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Sun, Daily Telegraph and Metro as well as mass-readership news sites such as The Independent and UNILAD. Content. Covered.

Jack Peat, Head of Digital for 72Point

92% of respondents intend to integrate either online or offline PR into their Marketing strategy in 2018.

When asked whether they intend to update their brand in 2018, 75% of respondents answered:

Not applicable, I'm happy with my current Brand Positioning.

"

If you’re an e-commerce business looking to attract and convert more customers, Google Shopping ads can be the fastest way to appear at the top of search results. Every size of online retailer can benefit from shopping ads, no matter how complex or simple your offerings may be.

Shopping ads pull through product photos and text into modules that appear at the top of Google search queries. Shopping ads often perform better than text ads for eCommerce. The visual nature of the posts gives users the information they require faster, leading to better conversions. This tool is especially useful for dates like Black Friday and Christmas when text PPC adverts can push normally high ranking pages down.

Here are a few things to consider when making your Google shopping ads:

Optimise your product titles to rank correctly

Although they may look fantastic, Google crawlers are unable to see your product images, therefore, having a strong product title and description can help you rank correctly. Use clear descriptors that consumers are likely to search for when looking for your product like ‘pink’ and ‘size 6’ rather than words like ‘great’ or ‘stylish’.

Optimise campaigns for user intention

Users can have different intentions when searching for a product. Structure your adverts with positive and negative keywords to show your ads for consumers searching for non-brand and branded products. You can then assign different level bids to these campaigns. For example, a non-brand advert for trainers is likely to be clicked on by a user collecting information but isn’t ready to buy. In this case, a lower bid should be applied as Conversion Rates will be lower. On adverts for the specific brand, a higherv bid can then be applied as visitors are more likely to complete a purchase.

Use Remarketing

The famous 80/20 rule states that brands receive 80% of their revenue from 20% of their customers. Remarketing allows you to present your adverts to users who have seen your brand before and are more likely to convert. Using the Audiences tool can generate a much higher Conversion Rate & ROI. This is ideal for campaigns run on a limited budget or for increasing your touch points with potential customers.

HOW TO GET MORE FROM YOUR GOOGLE SHOPPING ADSJune Gil, Advertising Manager at CTI Digital

We’ve worked with e-commerce brands of all shapes and sizes and found that google shopping ads can perform as well for fast moving goods as they do for luxury brands. We recently worked with a luxury online retailer on optimising their Shopping campaigns, and found a significant difference in conversion rates for brand and non-branded searches. Crucially, we also found the device users were on had a huge impact on campaign performance.

After optimising their AdWords structure to match users intention we saw a higher Click-Through Rate and Conversion Rate. But it’s not all about the ‘more’. By using brand campaigns we were also able to considerably reduce the Cost per Click improving the clients Return on Investment. Who wouldn’t want that?

Using google shopping ads can be the quickest way to improve your online visibility and conversions. Start with a simple All Products campaign to learn the basics and work your way up to more complex products specific and intention based campaigns over time. Or if you want to scale quickly, get in touch with us and have a chat with one of our experts for a free google shopping ads audit.

We are CTI Digital, part of global marketing services provider Paperhat Group, and one of the UK’s leading full service digital agencies specialising in open source web development and digital marketing.

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PROLIFIC NORTH LIVE 2018

DigitlDisplay WizardDMAFlipbook StudioFlow CreativeFluid AdsFluid BrandingForce24ForrestBrownGAS MusicGelato Visual EffectsGeneratorGreater Manchester Chamber of CommerceGroundbreak ProductionsHalston Marketinghedgehog labsHelmsBriscoeHolovisIAB UKIgloo VisionInternational Business FestivaliThinkMediaJean JuviniereJMWJourney FurtherJumpstartKlick N TapKnight Corporate FinanceKogan Page

72PointAds LabADYOULIKEAOAsh.TVAttolloBBCBlipparBIMABingBrazenBring DigitalBruntwoodBuffalo 7BulletproofBusiness Growth HubBusiness Marketing ClubCarbon DigitalCDSChannel 4CIMCTBFClick ConsultClicks + LinksClimb CreativeCorporation PopCrewzbox.tvCTI DigitalCyberScannerDigital Gurus

Lead ForensicsLiverpool Film OfficeLunar Aerial ImagingMabo MediaMadeByPiManleys SolicitorsMaster MindsetManchester Science PartnershipMarke Creative MerchandiseMarqetspaceMaven CPMediaCityUKMedia PartnershipsMetrostressMiranexMore InsightMosquitoMotionlabMustard Researchmilklab mediaM7 DigitalNetwork MarketingNimlokNorthern SoulNumoNu-HiOpenshadowPhoenix DigitalPink LizardPonderosa

PRCAPR Agency OneRabble PostRealtimeUKRenegade FortressRuler AnalyticsShoosmithsSilk GroupSoc-Med: Social MediaSQ DigitalStandby ProductionsSteamhausTaboolaTeads.TVTeam CooperTheBusinessDesk.comThe Juice AcademyThe LandingThe Sharp ProjectThe University of ManchesterThinkboxTouchSoftTrunkUKFastVST EnterprisesWavemakerYouCloudITWodehouse

What Marketers Want 2018 is the first of many publications we will aim to create and distribute in the future to support all of the events we have across the year.

If you are interested in taking part in one of our digital resources, please get in touch with Nathan Ouriach at nathan@prolificnorth.co.uk.