Leveraging Replicating Global Content is a key savings factor for global and regional companies.
You heard that “Content is a King” is a main slogan for 2014.
After 10 months I will fully agree with this statement.
But sometimes I feel overwhelmed with many newsletters and poor posts.
Simply some people think that it is enough to post something on regular basis with key words and it will help.
I noticed many online tools that monitor what is popular on twitter, facebook or google and suggest some posts.
Yes, it is true. There are specialized companies in such posts creation for very small amount of money.
Good content means many followers, many clicks and likes on many portals.
Good posts need attention and time.
You know that content management is really important element for any company.
It is important for small local businesses, as well as for mid-sized companies and especially for global companies.
We are in process of globalization. It means that majority of the same products are used in many countries. The usage is the same, the technical specification, functional specification can be used in all countries that our company operates with some local legal modifications and restrictions.
Only European Union has 24 languages. Our world uses over 120 languages globally.
It means that global companies have to prepare many operational and marketing materials for different markets.
What is a “content” for your company and your customers
It is the basic question you need to answer first.
Typically:
1. website information
2. whitepapers – services and product presentation
3. videos – tutorials, product presentations
4. podcasts – interviews with CEO
5. catalogs – product catalogs
6. internal communication
Leveraging & Replicating Global Content
next step is to find out the most common and neutral content that can be shared in different languages.
You should always remember about search engines optimization. It means that such content should be properly described with meta tags, alt tags, key words, microdata, richdata.
Translation systems
there are a couple of translations software, systems that can help you with majority of your localization tasks.
smartling.com – for smaler companies
Onesky.com
Crowdin.com – very good for websites
transifex.com- applications only
bttranslations.com
star-group.net – for global corporations
sdlintl.com – most known with huge experience platform ( over 10 years on market)
US shoppers behavior changes 2014 report presents a trend that I noticed a few years ago. We are using more and more mobile phones, smart phones and tablets in our purchasing journey.
I found a great report : Mapping the US Shopper’s Mobile Path to Purchase prepared by DNC recently.
Please find below the most important findings:
- In 2014, 29% of US consumers said smartphones were the most important shopping tool up from 23% in 2013.
- 42% of consumers consider a mobile device as the most important resource for a purchase decision just behind laptops and desktops at 43%.
- 60% of US consumers claim to have used only their smartphones when deciding which restaurant to visit.
- 40% of US consumers claim to have used only smartphones when deciding on their choice of entertainment.
- 35% of US consumers say they used only smartphones when deciding on which car to buy.
- 68% of US consumers conduct pre-purchase research on their smartphones at some point in their purchase journey.
- Among US consumers who research on their smartphones, 37% make the final purchase in a store followed by 35% who make the final purchase on their smartphones.
- 67% of US consumers conduct pre-purchase research on their tablets at some point in their purchase journey.
- Among consumers who use tablets for research, 41% end up making the final purchase on tablets, 33% make the final purchase in store, and 32% use the laptop to make the final purchase.
- 74% of US consumers conduct pre-purchase research on their laptops at some point in their purchase journey.
- Among consumers who use laptops for research, 52% make the final purchase on laptops followed by 37% who make the final purchase in store and 21% use their tablets to make the final purchase.
- 60% of US shoppers conducted research in stores.
- Among the store researchers, 57% end up buying from the store compared to 29% who buy from their laptops.
- 53% of US smartphone using shoppers accessed the device when inside their homes in 2014 up from 32% in 2013.
- 76% of tablet using shoppers accessed the device in their homes in 2014.
- 49% of entertainment shoppers used their mobile device to browse and see options.
- 48% of telecom shoppers and 47% of auto shoppers used their mobile device to browse and find options compared to 36% of restaurant shoppers.
- 58% of US shoppers prefer visiting retailer website for product discovery.
- 33% of US shoppers preferred to access retailer branded apps.
- Only 13% of US shoppers prefer to discover products and services through opt-in notifications and alerts.
- 72% of US consumers use their mobile devices to research electronic products.
- 57% of shoppers in the clothing category and 46% in the shoes & fashion accessories category use their mobile devices to research products.
- 46% of US consumers research household items on mobile devices and 45% research appliances to discover possible purchase options.
- 49% of telecom shoppers conduct in-depth research on mobile devices to narrow down their choices compared to 20% of restaurant goers.
- 61% of smartphone using shoppers and 50% of tablet using shoppers look up possible locations they can visit near them.
- 52% of shoppers access smartphones and 44% access tablets to look up directions to local stores.
- 41% of US shoppers accessed smartphones and 42% accessed tablets to look up reviews and decide on which store to visit.
- 38% of smartphone using shoppers and 32% of tablet using shoppers called local stores asking for information such as opening and closing times, availability of product, and on-going promotions before deciding to visit.
- 80% of consumers use mobile devices inside a store to enhance their shopping experience, up from 64% a year ago.
- The most popular way to use mobile devices while in-store is to comparison shop (59%) followed by searching for coupons (48%) and reviews (47%).
- Retail stores are the top business venue for consumer mobile usage accounting for 31% of mobile connections followed by restaurants (21%), service-related venues (19%) and financial institutions (15%).
- 28% of in-store mobile usage happens in clothing stores followed by convenience stores (18%) and specialty stores (12%).
- 52% of US consumers share retail related posts on social media.
- 51% of consumers visit social media platforms to post pictures of items they are interested to purchase.
- Only 18% of consumers visit social media sites to post videos of the products they are considering for purchase.
- On average, 62% of consumers who used a mobile device during the shopping process made a purchase. An additional 16% deferred purchase for a future date.
- 49% of smartphone using shoppers and 42% of tablet using shoppers complete their purchase within an hour or less of using their mobile device to start browsing for options.
- On average 65% of mobile using shoppers make a purchase on the same day they started browsing for possible options on the device.
- 23% of US shoppers who used their mobile device inside a retail store made a purchase on the device itself up from 12% a year ago.
- For both smartphones and tablets people are most comfortable spending $100-$249. Smartphones outpace tablets for purchases under $250, while tablets outpace smartphones for purchase over $250.
Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are two critical components of inbound marketing. Recently I read a few interesting articles about it. These is a summary of my findings.
The larger the organization, the more challenging it is to get approval and buy-in to build a sustainable content marketing program that will significantly move the needle in SEO
Your content marketing strategy will provide the biggest boost to your organic search visibility if you follow these four rules:
1) Know your key personas
2) Know and write to all stages of the buy cycle
3) Talk outside-in vs. inside-out
4) All write in the same direction
Know Your Key Personas
We all know how important it is to know your customers, core audience and key personas on the web. This applies directly to the content you create – especially for B2B companies – that usually have a limited content creation budget.
The clearer the picture of your personas are, the more targeted your content creation will be resulting in higher quality visitors that are closer to your ideal prospect.
Simply answer following questions:
• What are the main types of business problems the persona typically needs to solve?
• How does your product or service provide solutions to these problems?
• What are some specific tasks the searcher wants to accomplish?
• What are some sample search queries the persona might use?
• What can the site provide that will cause the searcher to accomplish this task?
• What is your business goal for the visitor? Lead gen? Newsletter sign-up? Sale? Inspiration?
• How will the searcher be motivated to complete this business goal? i.e., what’s the offer or incentive? What is the call-to-action?
With this intimate knowledge of your audience in hand, you can craft more relevant keyword and content topics.
Know and write to all stages of the buy cycle
Here are the four main stages of the buy cycle to build content for and the appropriate types of format for each:
Author: Scott Fasser, VP of Customer Experience at Optify
Talk outside-in vs. inside-out
Knowing your key words that web users use via a search engine can help you drive a new way of your brand communication as well as modifying your basic message.
SEO helps reach more customers in an inexpensive way. If you don’t like words your clients find your company via search engine, you can invest your time and money into the keywords more relevant to you. But a wiser thing is to use what you have and create different communication by using your current key words.
The lesson here it to review your current and future messaging from the point of view of a persona that does not know about your brand, focus on true differentiation/value proposition and create content that they will understand without needing an explanation. Finding that balance between pushing new concepts and terms vs. serving the market where it exists today is an important input into your content marketing planning.
Write in the Same Direction
Content creation and SEO is no longer limited to the marketing department and copywriters. Blogs, social media, press releases, video, podcasting, etc. has created many ways to easily publish content to your company and other industry related sites. Profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, SlideShare, Pinterest, Google + mean that there are MORE places to fill with content. All of this communication impacts your brand and visibility – positively or negatively.
One of the most important things you can do to amplify your content strategy is to get as many people in your organization to understand how their work can impact the SEO program and what they should to contribute. By giving them the education and the game plan for what key messaging and keywords are reinforces the central promise of your business.
Simply one voice and one direction = you are the king.
Do we need a strategy? Do we need to have a market intelligence competency?
Yes, it is really important nowadays:
- strategy,
- tactics,
- detailed plan,
- fast implementation,
- fast reaction on changes
- and most boring – process analysis, testing and optimisation, and once again implementation into real operations
Is it a something more difficult than commercial creation or any promotional gadget preparation?
The answer is YES.
Why is it so important?
Because it gives a short and long term strength for your company.
Why is it so unique and most marketing agencies don’t want to propose it to its clients?
Because they want to present fast solutions for marketing departments – a beautiful commercial on the first page in newspaper. But what about customers? What do they need?
Yesterday I read a great article about Generation Y born 1980-1996 and “Cool brands stay hot”
It looks that not only me and my friends are overloaded with information, the same marketing tactics and push sales.
Digideo’s marketing strategy process looks very fast:
1. questions and questions – Every industry has its own specifics. Every company has a different situation – internally and externally, its age and development potentials. It means every company is unique and needs unique solutions:
- what you did previously? how?
- what results did you achieve from specific actions?
- how much is the new customer acquisition?
- what is the retention?
- how much does your client pay you in average?
- what is the cost of serving this customer? – it is a very rare knowledge. Simply many companies don’t know this cost. I can analyse it as well.
- what services you have?
- what services did you customer use more often?
- did you try to contact your previous customers that used your services?
- who else is in your environment? contractors, subcontractors, the supply chain, etc?
2. meeting with key employees
3. clarifying the goal and the scope of strategy after interviews
4. analyzing the situation: including competitors, SWOT
5. building strategy for particular goal with measures and KPI for processes
6. creating the high level strategy implementation plan = like a project plan with measures
It will take 2-4 weeks for small companies. For huge multinational companies – 2-3 months.
Why is it important to spend a time for it?
1. it gives you a direction, vision and knowledge about yourself and competition, environment around you
2. it sets goals and plan how to achieve them
3. it can look at your processes from outside and help in better performance, cost cutting for example
4. it will help in analyzing you current activities – ROI, efficiency, quality and result for company
5. and many others
MINUSES:
1. TIME – yes – you need to find a time for me, for this job
2. COST – yes – it costs
3. changing environment – yes – it has to be reviewed after a particular period of time – half a year or quarter.