“Get your bloody feet off that seat!”

Well that’s one way to encourage young people to be more considerate when using public transport. But London’s Transport Commission is harnessing the power of Social Media Marketing to get the message across.

They have created a new social networking site - ‘Together for London’ - an open forum for Londoners to share their ideas of how to make London a better place, starting with behaviour on public transport.

The site features:

- live discussion pages where Londoners can join or begin a their own debate; - the facility to create personal campaigns around their own pledges - ‘I’ll keep my feet off the seats’ or ‘not shout in to my mobile on the bus’; - See where discussions are taking place across the capital; - vote and have their say on particular issues; - shop on-line to buy T-shirts with your own campaign pledge.

It’s interesting to see that the approach has the support of groups across the age spectrum.

Esther Thompson, Head of Training London Youth said: ‘London Youth wholeheartedly supports Together for London. The social networking site is a forum which allows young people to make their voices heard on issues relating to considerate behaviour on public transport’.

Samantha Mauger, Chief Executive of Age Concern London, said:

‘…the internet offers many older people the opportunity to get connected. The launch of Transport for London's social networking site “Together for London” will give passengers of all ages one way of voicing their experiences of how inconsiderate behaviour has affected their journeys in London without fear of consequences’.

This is yet another example of organisations’, both private and public sector, use of Social Media Marketing to influence behaviour.


http://www.juicedigital.co.uk/

Juice Digital is a leading exponent of Social Media Marketing

Video content is essential for Business Websites

Most people shy away from any sort of camera let alone a video camera, so why would you want to be the star of a video about your own company and its products or services?

Well the answer is twofold. In the fast moving online world, video content is recognised as being the future business tool essential and secondly and more importantly, websites with video content attract more customers and get better sales.

The British are the world's worst for joining a queue, but after a few minutes people get bored and in their minds think they will call back later when it is a bit quieter… it never is and you don’t make the sale.

It’s a similar story when people first go on a website. Look at your own statistics and see how many people visit for less than 30 seconds. It’s the same scenario, if they cannot see immediately how to find what they are looking for, they move on - with few ever returning!

Video content offers a human aspect to any website and believe it or not, customers do still like a personal touch and it makes a difference to their purchasing decision.

In a recent survey regarding business websites, 75% of internet users in the US watched an online video during a sample month. We know that when people are on the web, they watch videos it is a natural part of what they do, and its not just pornography!

Youtube is the classic example. Go to Youtube and put in some company names and you will be amazed what video information is available. It has always been acknowledged that people buy more when they are sold to using all the different senses, rather than individual senses alone – visual (press), audio (radio) or a combination (TV & Video). Rich content like video or the alternatively known podcasts can provide this for your website, so don’t miss this major opportunity.

In the same survey, it was found that people were now watching 3.25 hours of online videos a month, that’s a 30% growth year on year, from a product that has only really been easily accessible online in the last 3 years. With these changes happening so quickly and the wider video programming choice online, how soon will your computer screen replace your TV?

However, it is important to remember that the way in which people view video online is very different from TV. People at their computers lean forwards, intensely focused on their screen. They are surfing the web, clicking on bite size chunks of content, if they are interested by what they see and hear they stay with it, if not they click out and move on. Business websites should acknowledge this and break down their content into easily digested chunks.

As for the sales impact of video content on a website, recent case studies showing up to 300% increases in enquiries and sales through using online videos to support the sales process are commonplace.

The reason is for this success is reasonably logical, video is more compelling, immediate, and less demanding than reading traditional web pages. A video presents your product, services and benefits in seconds, saving the viewer precious time. It therefore follows that this sales performance gets better results…. It's quick. It's precise. It's simple. As the Internet Advertising Bureau says, "Web videos are... the catalyst for keeping customers online for longer."

For information on developing video on your website as part of a digital marketing campaign, contact:

www.juicedigital.co.uk

E-commerce - still a parochial pastime?

Although e-commerce has taken off at national level, cross-border e-commerce is failing to keep pace. The share of EU consumers that have shopped across border has hardly increased since 2006. Consumers are increasingly confident about shopping cross-border but the number of retailers offering them this opportunity is failing to keep pace. Perhaps surprisingly, 75% of on-line retailers sell only to consumers domestically.The demographic of cross-border shoppers is generally younger, well-educated people in higher professional positions. Cross-border shopping still does not sufficiently engage the larger "middle" group of consumers.

The situation is similar in the B2B sector. Although larger companies are warming to the idea, there is still a larger middle group that have not fully taken on board the business potential that cross-border sales offer.

Companies considering moving into international sales would be ‘pushing on an open door’. A recent report by Eurobarometer shows that consumer confidence when buying products or services cross-border in another EU-country has improved - the proportion of consumers that are more or equally confident about shopping online from another EU-country is 8% higher than in 2006 – now 40%. The average cross-border shopper in the EU already spends €797 per year on these purchases.

So, in these challenging economic times when sales are under pressure, E - commerce retailers should be looking to target the widest possible audience for their products and services.

www.juicedigital.co.uk

E-marketing and the environment – a perfect partnership

Many organisations and local authorities in particular are under increasing pressure to improve their environmental performance. However, at the same time there is a seemingly conflicting pressure for cost savings in all their activities – marketing and communications included.

E – marketing, whether by email, SMS or IVM (Interactive Voice Messaging) is a solution which can help organisations achieve both these objectives. E marketing is inherently ‘clean’ and uses a fraction of the planet’s resources compared with other channels – direct mail and advertising for example. It is also considerably less expensive and delivers a higher return on investment.

A great example was an e-government recycling service set up in London during the tenure of Ken Livingstone to encourage more people to recycle.

The service enabled residents in London to request details of when their recycling is collected or where their nearest recycling facilities are, by texting RECYCLE and their full postcode to a number.

Users then received an SMS message containing a direct link to the user's local recycling helpline so they could order a recycling box or bag immediately if they had not got one.

Ken Livingstone said e-marketing was instrumental to the success of the recycling campaign. "With so many of us relying on our mobiles, the new text service is a quick and easy way to make sure you're putting the right things out for recycling on the right day, or taking them to the right place."


This relatively straightforward programme was paperless, dispensed with the need for call centre resources, was a fraction of the environmental and budget costs of a traditional leaflet or mailing campaign and delivered instant, measurable results.


This is just another example of how local government has embraced the latest technology to reach out into their communities.

www.juicedigital.co.uk

Gordon Brown joins Social Media Marketing Party!!

Whenever you look on the web or read marketing magazines the buzzwords "Social Media Marketing" are being talked about and making an impact all over the world.

For Juice Digital, specialists in this sector it was pleasing to see that Number 10 Downing Street have recognised the importance of this fast moving media and totally embraced it.

Excerpt taken from the No 10 website…Meet the PM. Gordon Brown

The digital world has undergone a revolution in recent years and continues to develop at a tremendous pace, and we have tried to include lots of exciting and innovative functions on the new website that make good use of those developments while still being easy to use.

The news feature will continue to be central to the site, allowing you to keep up to date with my work as Prime Minister. The new Number 10 TV channel will provide a wealth of video material, photos will be updated quickly to the Number 10 Flickr channel, and we’ll also be posting frequent messages through Twitter to keep you in touch with my day to day activities.

Most importantly, I want to hear what you have to say about the issues facing our country today. Our YouTube video channel now has a feature called ‘Ask the PM’, giving you the chance to post video questions to me on a regular basis. The e-petitions service remains a vital tool for communicating your thoughts on things that matter to you and your communities, and I hope you will also sign up to our regular newsletters so that we can keep you informed about everything that is going on. Conversation, after all, should be a two-way process.

So if Gordon the leader of the UK government has joined the Social Media revolution, it should be taken seriously by everyone else that wants to communicate with their clients and potential customers.

www.juicedigital.co.uk

Green marketing - do motives matter?

What undoubtedly does, is that the earth has limited resources but the world has unlimited wants. In societies like ours where we value "freedom of choice", we give the right to individuals and organizations to attempt to have their wants satisfied. So, as the enlightened company begins to accept it has limited natural resources, they must develop new or alternative ways of satisfying these unlimited wants. A green marketing strategy looks at how an organisation’s marketing activities utilise these limited resources, while satisfying consumers wants, both of individuals and industry, as well as achieving the organisation's sales and marketing objectives.

There are many motives for an organisation to adopt a green marketing strategy:

Ethical: Organizations who believe they have a moral obligation to be more socially and environmentally responsible.
Coercive: Increasingly, government directives are forcing firms to become more responsible.
Opportunist: environmental marketing is seen as an opportunity that can be used for market differentiation.
Competitive pressure: Competitors' environmental activities pressure firms to change their environmental marketing activities.
Economical: Rising energy, waste disposal or material costs force firms to modify their behaviour.

But if the end result of green marketing is to preserve more of the planet’s precious resources, does it matter what the motives were?

juicedigital.co.uk

The impact of Social Media Marketing

In today’s fast moving digital environments, it seems that the management in many companies still do not believe in the power of the Internet and in particular the changes in marketing and customer relations that have happened as a result of web 2.0 and the advent of Social Media Marketing.

"Social Media Marketing is emerging as one of the most important, if not the most important source of information for the consumer."

With over 120,000 blogs written daily and thousands of online forums where customers are openly discussing their satisfaction and dissatisfaction with products and services, we still see company management hiding their heads in the sand and not engaging in conversations with their customers. For many companies this is simply an area that they are not comfortable with as it sits outside their own “zones of expertise.” Management need to realise very quickly that once a story is on the web, it stays on the web for many years and potential customers doing a very simple search can find out a lot about your company. 

Technology is now available to trawl the Internet for any mentions of your company or brand and monitor the conversations going on. We can even categorise these conversations by "Sentiment" as to whether they are positive, negative or neutral mentions. In fact, a simple search on Google for your company/brand name and obvious keywords on the main search and blogs search, will give you some idea on the volume of information people can find out. But then what?  Well in today's world, if you know people are talking about your brand, then it follows that it’s imperative that you must enter a dialogue with them.

 "Social Media Marketing is highly persuasive because the writer apparently has nothing to gain from the reader's subsequent actions." 

Lets look a scenario that could and does happen to companies regularly.

An unhappy customer sent an email to your Managing Director last week, asking for a refund on the basis that your company had not performed against their promise. The MD did not reply personally, he simply forwarded it to customer services, which had many other things to do as well that day. With email being an instant communication tool, the customer at least expected something from the MD, they got no reply ... nothing….nada!

As a result, they believed that they had been treated shabbily. In the good old days, they may have thought about the small claims court, watchdog or some such redress. But in today's computer savvy world, the first thing they want to do is express their anger quickly and in particular, let every other potential customer know how badly they have been treated and that they didn't think that they got value for money from your company. So they write the whole story in their blog, comment on other peoples blogs, start a forum thread on a consumer watchdog website, take a video of the problem and post it on YouTube ….. in effect they create what's known as a “Blog Attack” on your brand!

"Building a traditional communication strategy and internal process to ensure a positive customer experience is hard work for any company. It's always been easier to run another good advert, issue a ‘testimonial success’ press release, or hold a press conference to tell people how good you are. It's always been a lot easier for a company to talk, than to listen to its clients. However your customers simple “Word of Mouth” communication habits have become more sophisticated, they are now blogging and twittering about you, so the burning question today in many boardrooms is “what’s that?”  The answer is… It’s Social Media Marketing!.... How are you going to react?"

Every company now needs to contemplate how they should manage user feedback on their products and services in this very public arena. The power has since the creation of the “blog” shifted to the consumer and there needs to be high recognition that to protect your brand you need to do something…...and quickly?

It is now very important for companies to be transparent and have open conversations with their customers. Other customers will then not only see the negative comments, but the fact that you are doing something about the complaints, this is majorly important for your corporate image as you are being seem as a very responsive and responsible company to do business with now and in the future.

This is hugely attractive behaviour for the consumer and your brand will gain respect. Through Social Media Marketing, we can assist you to engage your customers in a blog or a forum (or both) and even where necessary reach out to the complainants with an old fashioned face to face meeting, if that is what’s required.

Customers need to feel appreciated, and when they do they write about the great experiences as well.

www.juicedigital.co.uk

Welcome to Juice Digital

Welcome to Juice
Juice is not another marketing agency
Juice is something special

Juice is a new breed of agency that supplies the expertise and power to drive your business forward in the digital age.

We have the marketing communications skills any client would demand. But we also have a specialist Digital Marketing Team that delivers cutting edge online marketing strategies. We can combine Digital PR, Social Media Marketing and email marketing into a powerful integrated e-communications programme which will give your business a competitive edge.

Few organisations are harnessing the real power of marketing in the digital age.

With Juice you can. www.juicedigital.co.uk