L&S Unscripted

From travel and tourism to higher education, telecommunications to healthcare, 12 different Lawrence  & Schiller clients took home honors Saturday night, at the 44th Annual South Dakota Advertising Federation’s Addy Awards. The diverse collection of winners represent a 25% higher number of clients than any other marketing agency in the awards show.

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It is not often that we get feedback from consumers on the effect our advertising has on them.  And even less frequent that we get positive feedback.

We had the privilege of receiving a letter from a Midwest Living magazine subscriber regarding the ads placed in the publication for South Dakota Tourism this year.  It read:

“May I share with you how much I have enjoyed Midwest Living’s South Dakota tourism ads?  I have framed each one and have hung them on my knotty pine walls in my northern Wisconsin cottage.  How serene! Will there be more?  Thank you!”

Marilyn P from Wisconsin 

Additionally, she attached a Polaroid shot of the six ads she had clipped and framed for her home. 

Kudos to the team for developing such powerful copy and imagery to evoke strong emotion; strong enough to move the magazine reader to cut out, frame, and hang them in her home.  More powerfully, to move her to write a letter (not send an email) to the publication asking them for more.  

Now, that is marketing that will move the needle!

The Framed South Dakota Tourism ads

South Dakota’s Small Business Administration and the Small Business Development Center Network provides programs and services to help businesses start, grow and succeed. This month, the small business education series will venture into marketing and how, in today’s changing business environment, it can help your small business survive and thrive.

“Marketing Matters,” a four-week educational web series, kicks off July 9 to educate business owners on the value of marketing plans, social media and other ways to better position themselves in today’s economy.

As a leading regional advertising and marketing firm, Lawrence & Schiller is proud to support the: South Dakota’s Small Business Administration and the Small Business Development Center Network to help lend insight and experience to the conversation.

Thursday, July 9: Roadmap to Marketing Success: Simple Steps to Writing a Successful Marketing Plan

• Courtney Davidson and Micah Aberson, Lawrence & Schiller
• Wayne Wagner, CFGear

Thursday, July 16: Google Matters: How Does Your Website Measure Up?

• Krista Gussiaas and Eric Ellefson, Lawrence & Schiller
• Greg Jasmer, DAKOTACARE

Thursday, July 23: The First Impression: Building a Positive Customer Experience

• Natalie Eisenberg and Courtney Lotzer, Lawrence & Schiller
• Michele Slott, Prairie Berry Winery

Thursday, July 30: Social Media Marketing: How to Start Your Online Conversation

• Robin Temple, Lawrence & Schiller
• Paul Ten Haken, Click Rain

Sessions are free and begin at 10:00 am (CST) via webcast. Learn more and sign up by calling the SBA at 605-330-4243 and press 0.

@robintemple and @ericellefson lead our sixth webinar about the marriage between SEO and SMM – both strategies are equally important to making sure your website, and ultimately your brand, is visible and relevant to your core customers as they search online. As a site owner, you need to understand how the search engines of tomorrow will rank site content and give engaged sites/consumers the upper hand.

Here’s a brief overview of how build a great foundation to support your digital search strategy:

Make Your Website Relevant: Content is King

On-page Elements (Techie-details)

SEO – Understand that your title tags, headers, image title, bold text and use of keywords are all influential on search engine rankings.
SMO – Coding and tags are not so important, while visual attention grabbers make a bigger impact.

The Meat of Your Page: Rich Content

SEO – Quality content is important in order to rank well.
SMO – Quality content is important in order to hold the readers’ attention and win their approval.

Socialize Your Website: External Content

SEO – Trusted domains will have a positive effect on all pages, including new pages.
SMO – Power profiles on sites like Digg can keep traffic flowing with new submissions.

Relationships with the Right People: Targeting

Know Your Audience

SEO – Provide keyword-rich informational content
SMO – Starting/joining conversations that lead to building relationships.

Research

SEO – Research and Analyze to apply changes that will impact (positive or negative) site rankings.
SMO – Research and Analyze to know what types of content draws interest.

Defining Success:

SEO – Success can be achieved by applying the same practices every time.
SMO – Success lies in knowing the social media audience and engaging in a unique strategy every time.

Measuring Goals

SEO -  In-house URL tracking.
SMO – External content engagement tracking.

Plan Your Attack: Engagement

SEO – Success can be achieved by applying the same practices every time.
SMO – Success lies in knowing the social media audience and engaging in a unique strategy every time.

Integrate and Improve Your Content: Link Building

Be Linkable:

SEO – Inbound links lead to success.
SMO – Links are a result of success.

Capitalize on titles and descriptions by making sure they relate to the content. Doing so increases relevance and increased relevance = your message will spread.

Accept Failure and Try Again

The truth is, even after you’ve followed the rules faithfully, your first dozen (or two) attempts probably won’t work. It takes time to create the momentum you need to establish yourself in the various communities. However, once one of your message does resonate, you’ll understand what all the fuss was about and why social media optimization is worth all the hard work.

You also can’t let up once you get that first taste of success. If you want to maintain the traffic you are receiving, you have to continue to participate. Your success in search engine rankings will wholeheartedly depend on user engagement within social media spaces.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:37 — 1.8MB)

Talk about mobile marketing and most people will picture text messaging or web browsers on smart phones. But for the South Dakota Office of Tourism it has another, very literal meaning.

Full-size, semi-tractor trailers have been wrapped with South Dakota images. Now the rolling billboards are traveling from coast-to-coast raising awareness of the Mount Rushmore State.

Here is the story behind this unique form of outdoor advertising.

So you have started to monitor to the conversations and social activity after Week Three of our Social Media  Bootcamp, and you have an idea of what conversations are happening, where people are postings, and what the tone of the conversations are.

But like everyone else, you’re looking direction about how to engage and become part of a digital community’s conversation in an effective and acceptable manner that can help your business without alienating the passionate members of the community you’re trying to reach.

What is a digital community -   a communication system of social networks whose participants share a common interest, idea, task or goal that interact in a virtual society across time, geographical and organizational boundaries and where they are able to develop personal relationships.

Growth cycle of a digital community:  Tend to grow slowly at first – people are more motivated to provide content and contribute as the size of the community grows.  As potential audience increases, so does attraction of writing and contribution. 

Who are the citizens that make up a digital community?

• Peripheral  (lurker) – observes.  An outside, unstructured participant. Usually visits community in response to the prompting of others.
• Inbound (novice) – newcomer, just beginning to engage in community.  Starts to provide content.  Tentatively interacts in a few discussions.
• Insider (regular) – fully committed participant; consistently ads to the community discussion and content. Interacts with other users.
• Boundary (leader) – Recognized as a veteran participant.  Connects with regulars to make higher concepts into ideas. The community grants their opinion greater consideration. 
• Outbound (elder) – Leave the community due to new relationships, new positions, new outlooks; community may have moved in direction they don’t agree with. 

 Why you and your company should be engaging with Digital Communities:

1. Education

• Get the inside scoop – be the first to know what is going on
• Ask and answer questions – participate in the conversation
• Stay up to date on your industry trends

2. Networking

• Meet like-minded people
• New hires/staff
• Business opportunities

3. Public relations

• Know what people are saying about and how reacting to your brand
• Respond to press quickly
• Plant a story/lead
• Influence public opinion

4. Fundraising/Philanthropy  

• Tie into a cause – ask to join
• Special offers for those that participate – Incentives

5. Brand Awareness

• Around events and sales
• Reviews, ratings
• Tell your story

6. ROI

• Can track web traffic, click-throughs, RRS subscriptions, offer redemptions, digital mentions/conversations, downloads, customer surveys, subscribers, referrals, links

Some might say there are no rules of conduct within the realms of social media. And they’re right. Hard and fast rules haven’t been adopted.

At the same time expectations of etiquette clearly do exist. 57% of the people attending Week 4 of the Lawrence & Schiller Social Media Boot Camp webinar series say they consider etiquette every time  the post online.  The remaining 43% think about it occasionally.

What are the behaviors to avoid? What things must you do? And what workplace considerations should you take into account? Click on the player below to view the recorded archive of “Social Media Dos and Don’ts”. Or scroll down for a brief recap along with poll results collected during this webinar.

Social Media Don’ts

• Social Media isn’t show & tell. Don’t use it to brag about, or worse yet, exaggerate your experiences and accomplishments.
• Don’t be pushy. No one wants to be spammed or read a post stuffed with keyword phrases or follow as your status is updated every five minutes or be invited to every Facebook group under the sun.
• Don’t be a headcase. Social media can be a place to vent (in moderation) but it isn’t therapy. Not a good place to complain about your boss or swear how much you hate your job.
• Don’t be sinister. Don’t try to hide behind someone else identity and be careful with the party pictures.  Snapshots uploaded after you’ve had too many shots will come back to haunt you.
• Don’t be offensive. “Funny” is subjective. Your sense of humor may not translate well online. Don’t cross the line into offensive. When in doubt, don’t do it.

Social Media Dos

• Do showcase your personality. This is what makes you interesting and fun to follow. Remember there is a difference between showing your personality and giving out too much personal information.
• Do consider limiting the number of groups you join. If you can’t keep up with all of them, it may be time to scale back.
• Do manage your tools. Take advantage of the applications which connect your blog or tweets to Facebook… IF your audiences are similar and the message is appropriate for all destinations. Learn more about Connecting the Dots in week 7 of our webinar series.

Workplace Considerations

• There is no privacy. Especially if you’re using a workplace computer.
• You represent your company online even if you’re posting on your personal account.
• If you work for a publically traded company, your tweets and blog pots can fall under SEC jurisdiction.
• The FTC is proposing guidelines for online marketing.

Bottomline, if you wouldn’t say it in person to your boss, you probably shouldn’t say it online.

Admittedly, we first have to ensure there is dialogue. If you participated in the third part of the L&S Social Media Boot Camp, then you know that we experienced a couple minor technical difficulties – but luckily @markmorgan was able to join the conversation for questions and answers at the end.  Thanks to @courtneylotzer who continued through like a champ and our participants who stayed with us during the bump and if you missed all the excitement, you can watch the updated version of the webinar here or use Twitter Search and query for #TheExtraMile.

Here’s a brief overview for those who missed Tuesday’s webinar.

Where to Start?  Listen. There are numerous tools and online resources to measure and listen to all sorts of conversations online. To start listening, to help filter all the noise, we suggested a few free tools that we find valuable.

• Trendrr
• Quarkbase
• SocialMention
• Technorati Search
• Google Alerts

These are all great tools for providing a snapshot of what people are saying in the online space. Trendrr is probably the most comprehensive (look beyond your initial confusion, just stick with it for awhileJ), Google the easiest and others are fun to play around with if your geeky like our team is!

Lawrence and Schiller uses these tools in addition to our subscription based tool, Radian6. As a company we looked at many different options for our social media monitoring tool of choice.  We debated between Radian6 and Sentiment Metrics. We liked Sentiment Metrics because it automatically assigned sentiment to each post. After researching it further, we came to find out that statistically, the sentiment metric was only correct up to 40% of time, so we chose Radian6 because of its ease of use and functionality.

With the Radian6 measurement platform, you can find your brand on millions of blog posts, videos, reviews in forums, sharing of photos, twitter updates. It is real time monitoring of mentions about your company, product, issues and competitors, and has the ability to quickly find the most important relevant conversations.

Free tools are great for initial competitive review, building broad insights of topics from a general audience and checking your “gut” instincts.  We prefer to use an in-depth tool such as Radian6 for trend analysis and quantifiable ROI measurement.

I’ve listened. Now what? Define your goal, then the tool. We can’t say it enough. Social media should always start with understanding, and agreement, of what you are trying to accomplish with your overall marketing and/or communication efforts.  Measurement of social media is the same. Understanding your goal is the key to defining and selecting an accurate metric for ROI.

And finally, start engaging online and offline (use traditional marketing to promote your online efforts). If you don’t engage on behalf of your company, someone else will. If there is a void someone will step up and fill this role when there is a need for it.

Deserved or not deserved a single negative review or mention can taint a brand for a long time. It’s important to take a more proactive role in protecting your brand before it’s too late. You have the tools, now you can start monitoring the digital space for mentions of your brand, either positive or negative, and it’s the best way you can actually cultivate relationships, too.

Would you be surprised that 40% of marketing professionals don’t use a formalized marketing communications plan? Maybe not…especially if you’re one of them.

When you don’t know where your brand is heading, it doesn’t matter which way you go. But when you have a defined objective, you want the most effective path there. That’s why marcom plans are such a valuable asset.

Personally, I like to think of them in terms of news.

News tells the stories of the day, and in the same sense, your marcom plan is how you’ll tell the story of your brand. It identifies the 5 W’s of your marketing strategy: the who (target audience), what (branding and creative), when and where (media planning) and why (research and overall strategy). But unlike news that’s printed and quickly becomes history, your marcom plan is a living document, adapting to the needs of your brand and the factors in flux around it.

Today’s newest plans are even more flexible. They’re measurable in real-time, so marketers can make adjustments and see results immediately.

Think about it. Without a dashboard in your car, you’d never know how quickly you’re approaching your target destination or how much fuel you have to get there. It’s the same with marketing. Without dashboards, you don’t really know where you’re going and how quickly you’re getting there…if at all.

At L&S, we’re actually measuring ROI as it relates to marcom plans through real-time dashboards.

This set of metrics can be defined by you and is displayed on an online “blackboard” where you can quickly evaluate the success of a marketing plan or campaign.

What they measure is up to you. But most dashboards include:

- Digital inputs, like web visitors, referrals or quality metrics

- Traditional and non-traditional media responses such as impressions, click-throughs, call center volumes or other inquiry types

- Sales metrics communicating how customers move through the sales funnel (online or offline) including leads, sales, product types, geographic and timeline sales trends

- Other engagements consumers might have with a brand during a campaign

By evaluating these measures, you can track ROI from the beginning of a campaign to any defined point in time, pushing you to set initial campaign goals and look at immediate benchmarks.

With dashboards like these, you can gain a real-time picture of what’s happening with your brand. Without them, you might be simply driving in the dark.

South Dakota Tourism’s “All Aboard South Dakota” campaign was honored as a finalist at the Minnesota Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Awards on March 27. The awards banquet attracted over 300 communications professionals from large-scale agencies, corporations and non-profit organizations.

Selected as a finalist in the Integrated Communications Services category, the “All Aboard South Dakota” campaign stood next to work from global organizations like Doremus (Omnicom Group), Fleishman-Hillard and Carmichael Lynch.

“All Aboard South Dakota” commercials, print ads, web banners and emails connected visitors with travel deals exclusive to Minnesota residents. Trains on the Minneapolis Light Rail were wrapped in stunning South Dakota imagery, and six authentic cowboy re-enactors roamed downtown Minneapolis, talking to commuters, attending local events and handing out sheriff’s badges to kids. Eventually, the Light Rail train conductors were shouting, “All aboard…next stop: South Dakota” and taxi drivers were humming the state’s jingle as they drove past.

The train wrap garnered an estimated 30 million impressions, and the campaign earned 1.6 million impressions from media coverage by MN Public Radio and the MN Star Tribune. As a result, vacation inquiries from Minnesotans were up 22% during the peak tourism season.

Minnesota PRSA is the tenth-largest chapter of the PRSA, the world’s largest organization for public relations professionals with nearly 32,000 members. Since 1978, the Minnesota PRSA Awards have honored the best in the public relations field.

A driver-side view.

At L&S, we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to market our clients. A good example? These gorgeous (yes, I used the word “gorgeous” to describe a semi-truck) eighteen-wheelers by the South Dakota Office of Tourism.

These seven trucks are currently driving cross-country, wrapped in  beautiful South Dakota images to show the majestic wide open spaces of our state. How’s that for a road sign?

Not only are the trucks getting attention from fellow drivers; travelers have even stopped to have their photo taken with the big rigs at truckstops around the U.S. In fact, the truck drivers have received such a huge response from people along their route that they now carry vacation guides with them to hand out, answering questions and getting people interested in a South Dakota vacation.

Our preferred Live Chat application, LivePerson, released a case study today stating that one of their online retailer clients experienced a 46% increase in sales over the holiday season due to live chat. http://solutions.liveperson.com/docs/casestudies/smb/SMB_Canvas_CS0209.pdf

We have experienced similar results. One of our tourism vacation clients, www.BlackHillsVacations.com, had 234 completed transactions in the second half of last year due to live chat, accounting for significant revenue – in fact a 112% return on investment on the cost of live chat. They were able to convert lookers into bookers by delivering customer service and sales assistance in the most convenient location for the web visitor.

We’re implementing live chat for many of our clients. And I can say that when I’m browsing a web site and have questions, live chat is the first point of contact that I utilize. It allows you to connect with experts for advice or assistance in real time and it continuously impresses me how responsive customer service agents are to live chat.

From a business standpoint, your customer service agents can only talk to one person at a time on the phone whereas they can chat with multiple people simultaneously via live chat and still deliver outstanding service. Using live chat, an agent can see the exact web page that the web visitor clicked from to enable live chat, where the visitor is located geographically and a web page history to alert the call center agent of up sell opportunities. And that’s just a few of the benefits.

They’re browsing their site; they’re often ready to buy. Are you there to close the sale?

Conveniently chatting,

Robin

It’s amazing to think about how we used to make web site decisions. What looks good? What colors do you think the audience will best respond to? And eventually, after launch, we would dig through the analytics to see how visitors were engaging and converting on site.

NOW, we make intelligent decisions based on A/B tests. We recently launched an A/B test for a new web design for one of our e-commerce clients. We labeled the original design “A” and labeled the new site design “B”. We asked 20+ people and they all thought that design “B” was more visually appealing and that site visitors would convert at a higher rate. After a two-week A/B test, sending 10% of the site traffic to the new design, the results came in. And to our surprise, the old-school, very simple design outperformed the new, fresh design. The numbers speak for themselves.

So what’s next? We continue to tweak design and retest to deliver optimal results.

Eliminate the guesswork. Bring in the science.

Testing and tallying,

Robin

In e-mail marketing, think beyond a one-message-fits-all approach. Relevancy is key – placing the most applicable message in front of each consumer will produce the best results.

The old school way: one database, divided into multiple segments (based on geography, interests, date of signup, etc.) >>> different sets of creative for each database segment >>> multiple e-mail deployments >>> multiple sets of results = lots of time and difficulties pulling it all together.

The smart way: one database full of various record attributes >>> one e-mail template with dynamic content >>> one e-mail deployment >>> one set of results.

Compare ’smart e-mail marketing’ to form letters. In a form letter, you designate spaces where a placeholder, such as [first_name], looks in the database and finds the appropriate first name for that member of the audience. Same can be true for content… be creative. Example:

In a database of potential tourists, if:

• Visitor 1 is interested in mountain biking
• Visitor 2 is interested in shopping
• Visitor 3 is interested in casino gaming

Within the e-mail template, visitors 1, 2 and 3 above would received personalized e-mail content relevant to their interests. Within the same location in the e-mail template the visitors would see the following:

More to follow on e-mail marketing… stay tuned.

Efficiently e-mailing,
Robin

Sales calls and data mining? What do these two topics have in common? Interesting that you should ask. Any good sales person digs for information about their prospect before making a call, right? You know how it works: you make the call to find the right contact, and you ask probing questions to find out how the prospect business relates to your product or service.

What if you had the inside scoop? What if someone already “qualified” that lead for you and you knew you had the perfect product for their business need? It would make your job so much easier, well wouldn’t it?

Qualifying your prospect is the same as using database mining or other Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools to better understand your customer. Spending time up front to know your customer, or at least capturing some data related to the customer or their behaviors, will help your business better understand how to align your products and services to their needs.

Let’s look at a real-world example. Say you were trying to sell a pair of shoes to our agency president, Scott Lawrence. On the surface of his agency page, he seems passionate and aggressive in his approach to life, right? So if you were selling him shoes, you might talk about the shoe’s high-quality Italian leather, the functionality of the sole, or the firmness of its last … and you might make the sale.

But what if you knew that he loves Michael Douglas, loves the movie Wall Street and listens to his iPod each day. A little data mining would help you in your sales presentation. With this customer data, you would point out the fact that the shoes in question were similar to the ones worn by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street and that your customer, Scott, could walk around the office quite a few times each day with his iPod, in any weather, without worry. You would definitely sell the shoes.

Customer data drives the sale. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the collection and management of customer data, measurement of customer sales, and using tools to understand consumer buying patterns. With this information, you can better target your marketing efforts and see greater return on those investments in the end. In the next few weeks, we will be discussing various aspects of knowing your customer through a CRM strategy: data collection, database management, profiling, segmentation, and niche marketing. By implementing a customer-centric strategy to your marketing approach, you can target and deliver your message to your best clients and win in the end.

Passionately posting,

Billie Jo