Presentation delivered at MLC / nab wealth, North Sydney on Friday 28th November 2014 by Alisdair Blackman, Digital Rehab to Corporate Superannuation Advisers to help them communicate more efficiently with prospective members.
13. The Future State
Outbound marketing is
being gradually but most
definitely challenged by
inbound marketing
channels which offer far
greater transparency and
reporting of ROI
AIM: Provide MLC Corporate Super Specialist Network members with an overview of ways you can better market yourselves to attract new members for your corporate clients.
I have been in digital marketing for over 18 years during which I have run numerous marketing agencies, I have also worked client side to deliver marketing campaigns and initiatives across a large number of industry sectors including Superannuation.
Today’s webinar will focus on ways you can deploy marketing tactics to improve your access to members, gain more traction when periodically on-site and more generally aid in the acquisition of new members.
Marketing is all about getting attention! You can shout to grab attention or be more subtle.
Marketing can be broken down into two areas: outbound and inbound marketing.
Outbound marketing channels include TV, radio, newspaper ads, flyers, brochures, tele sales making cold calls, bulk email sends etc and relies on pushing out your message onto audiences with the hope that your message strikes accord.
On the other hand, inbound marketing requires brand to make themselves attractive, so attractive that it creates its own demand. Examples of Inbound marketing include: Google Search, Social media, Content marketing and such things as enewsletters where you provide content that rather than being outwardly salezy instead provides valuable insights, tips that is not too heavily branded. Inbound marketing largely pivots around digital channels rather than above the line channels ie. TV & other mass media
Of note: Ernst Young State of Digital Nation 2014 released on Monday this week shows:
enormous opportunity for brands to mobilise their content and ensure content is disseminated to consumers on their preferred medium / device of choice i.e. Mobile and tablets
Given that 77% of Australians have smart phones
Average time spent on mobile consumption of media has grown 40% over the last 2 years! Compared with radio that has grown by only 2%!
Irrespective of outbound or inbound tactics, Marketing boils down to attracting and acquiring leads using a range of channels from which sales can then be realised. Marketing is often referred to as anything pre-sales related
Marketing revolves around the need to:
understand,
pre-empt,
proactively attain leads and
then qualify them into sales opportunities
In your respective businesses, marketing should be used to open communications, attract, engage, acquire and educate:
New employees wishing to join their Employers super fund
HR teams to become product evangelists and help in the onboarding of new hires to join the Employers super fund
Provide the ‘hard truths’ and facts around the costs of retirement – there is a reality check most need to have around preparing and planning for their retirement
Trigger referrals from existing members to new members
Retain & increase loyalty
Impart knowledge around retirement
Be engaged for advice and financial planning services post client questionnaire and letter of engagement
So, how and where do we start, I hear you say – well, in order for marketing to be successful and yield results – we at Digital Rehab believe that:
Strategy (Determines needs, wants and method)
Marketing (Tactical activities across Acquisition, Conversion & Retention)
Technology (Data Capture, Analysis and Tools to be used to underpin Marketing Activities)
Once you have your strategy, marketing tactics and technology fundamentals in place, you can then venture into the world of marketing.
Don’t be overwhelmed – just appreciate that marketing and in particular digital marketing is growing so rapidly. The face of business is changing rapidly to stay up to speed with digital.
Digital Marketing is so pervasive - it now offers more opportunities than ever before to more effectively communicate, engage and interact with your target audience.
Thank you for all those that have taken the time to complete the pre-webinar survey. The results of this survey indicate that you are all engaging in multi-channel marketing (web and print) and this is good. Many of you have said you want to learn more about Email, Google search, Social media and content marketing (particularly video).
Please then allow me to respond by providing you small insights on each of these
EMAIL – This is one of the most commonly used method for communicating on-masse BUT rarely is this done well. It allows the one transmission to reach your entire audience.
Here are some Tips on email marketing:
Take care in the procurement or ‘Opt-In’ of email addresses – SPAM enforcement is improving and they are casting a broader net around what constitutes SPAM activities
Ensure your email template is appropriate to your audience – make sure it is not too cluttered, frantic and confusing. KISS principle applies
Be sure to include a series of call to actions that achieves the goals and objectives of the communication ie. Drive traffic to your website, download a whitepaper, view a video etc BUT LIMIT the number of call to actions so that your messages do not become diffused/diluted
Factor in metrics like – reporting of open rates, click throughs etc and also
consider choice of day and time each week,
provide a clear Unsubscribe function BUT ask them why they are choosing to unsubscribe,
frequency adjustment where users can nominate how frequently they wish to hear from you
Be sure you are considering mobile – as this is rapidly becoming the primary method we view our emails – try responsive design!
Set up segmentation so that your content can be mapped against stated are of interest from your audience
Test your emails repeatedly prior to hitting send – there are terrific tools that can help you with Subject line creation, link checking, mobile rendering etc
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO) – There are two main channels for marketing in search – Google Adwords, and SEO.
Google Adwords enables you to bid for keywords to the place your ads in context with what your audience could be searching for.
SEO in contrast is concerned with the ‘organic’ methods you can gradually achieve improved rankings. Considering the first two search results command and attract over 60% of traffic, and 91.5% of all traffic is limited to page 1 of results – it is imperative for all businesses to invest in search so as to try to make it on the first page. This does take time and commitment – it can take 8-18mths depending on the competition.
SEO works to optimise a website’s fundamentals that strikes accord with the Google search algorithm.
For SEO purposes, your site needs to be architected in a way that makes content on your site accessible to the search bots, have dynamic, current and relevant content, have other sites linking back to your website to bolster your authority. You need also to strike a balance in content that contains keywords and phrases that you wish to rank for such that you can increase traffic volumes. Once you have satisfied the following, your traffic will gradually increase in direct correlation with your rankings improvement.
SOCIAL MEDIA – The rise and adoption of social media worldwide has been astonishing! Now, social channels play a legimate role in the marketing mix, particularly in areas of adding interactivity, brand extension, product launches, customer service & support, peer reviews etc
The reach you can access is enormous and increasingly these social media sites offer a great deal of targeting enabling you be very specific and targeted
Linkedin is a terrific source for you as you can create and run campaigns called InMail which can go out to current and or former employees of your employers clients to increase awareness, challenge perceptions and stigmas and better communicate on a personalised basis with your captive audience.
NB: rough estimate costs are about $4 per recipient but costs do vary.
CONTENT MARKETING – Many people associate content marketing with only BLOGS, Emails and Whitepapers YET there is so much more that makes up content marketing.
I shall not spend too long on this area as I shall leave that to my distinguished colleague Matt Taylor who I invited to speak more on this.
I will just say that content plays a pivotal role in unlocking huge opportunity or lead acquisition and qualification. Be it video, guides, infographics, webinars, white papers, case studies etc all specific/niche content has an audience and once in place – then needs promotion to be leveraged to unlock its value and to generate a return on investment
With an aging population on one hand yet growing consumption and take up of mobile/tablets and other digital technologies, we as marketers are forced to straddle both outbound and inbound methods.
As advisers, you need to do the same given the breadth of ages in your client base. So, may of you have told us that you produce flyers, brochures and other print marketing – this activity will need to continue BUT you owe it to yourselves to trial, test and appraise the value inbound marketing could play for your businesses.
Given that in a recent 2014 Australian Connected Consumer Report by Nielsen found that internet consumption currently stands at 4.5hrs per day across as many as 4 devices. It is predicted to exceed 8 hrs a day by 2020 – in only 5 years from now, you need to start sooner than later to embrace the Future state of marketing so as to capitalise on its boundless opportunity
So in summary, the key with all marketing, be it outbound or inbound is to continually test, measure & optimise. I recommend each of you keep the following in mind with your marketing:
Simplicity (in both concept and execution)
Be Memorable (visually or in the language used)
Clear Call to Action (tell your audience what you want them to do)
On-Target/On-Message (ensure you are targeted)
Learn from your experiences (don’t repeat and waste budget)
Understand that you need to trial a channel with a limited spend (be it $10k-$20k) then evaluate and appraise results. This is how most businesses determine which channels yield the best return and where quality leads can be generated. From this you can redirect more budget into those channels which yields the best results.
Marketing is not rocket science but it does take some carefully planning and continual analysis and fine tuning to deliver strong ROI.
Let me charge you all to review your member marketing practices to take heed of the need for a balanced approach across both outbound and to embrace inbound marketing tactics.
I would now like to hand over to Matt Taylor who shall talk on the role and importance of good content in marketing