The Must Read Tips Series

Each week I write a weekly Must Reads newsletter, over the last few weeks I have invited many smart people to share their top five tips.

This post will be kept updated weekly from the weekly updated Must Read Tips. So bookmark and sign up to Must Reads Newsletter.

Photo by Frame Harirak on Unsplash

5 SEO Tips — From agency leader Carl Hendy

Connect with Carl on LinkedIn or follow Carl Hendy

1. Google has made it easier for you to get your company announcements regarding COVID-19 directly into the search results — Google Webmaster Link
2. If SEO resource is low use content/product/customer support teams to rewrite and improve existing content that will help improve SEO. Adding basic Q&A to product pages can improve organic visibility and improve UX. You do not always need to be creating “new” content. Trim the excess fat from your current website.
3. Need to pause your business within Google because of stock issues? Do not turn your website off. There are many actions you can take to maintain organic visibility whilst being kind to your users — Google Webmaster Link
4. Do not make any knee jerk reactions to changes in your long term SEO plan. SEO can take many months to work therefore changes implemented previously may not be rewarded yet, therefore, do not let that effort go to waste by making hasty decisions.
5. Not directly SEO related and Mark (Ritson) is not everyone’s cup of tea but the thinking within this post does heavily apply to SEO “The best marketers will be upping, not cutting, their budgets”. SEO is a zero-sum game.

5 Marketing and TikTok Tips from Paula Holmes

Follow Paula on Instagram, subscribe on YouTube or follow Paula Holmes

The fact that over 50,000 people have watched me hold up a bag, pretty much sums up why I love TikTok. If you are not using TikTok for yourself or for your brand then I highly suggest starting now. TikTok isn’t just dances and silly antics, in fact there is a handful of helpful content on there. The amount of things I’ve learnt in the small time I’ve been on there is amazing.

Here are 5 of my favourite tips and tricks I’ve picked up, enjoy!

1. Stuck for content ideas? Try these — Link
2. How to create custom Instagram stickers — Link
3. Spy on anyone’s website — Link
4. Did you know the iPhone has a magnifying tool? See how it it works here — Link
5. Write better social and blog titles — Link

5 Marketing Tips from Marketer and Podcaster Beth Gladstone

Connect with Beth on LinkedIn or follow Beth Gladstone

1. Get (virtual?) coffee with people in your company. It’s not enough to be good at your work, you also need to be good at building relationships and letting people know what you’re working on.
2. Need content ideas? Do a customer tour or interview. Brands that make great content (Netflix, Glossier, YouTubers) rely on data and insights from their customers.
3. In content creation user experience (UX) is your best friend. If people can’t consume what you’re producing easily, they’ll leave and it’ll be a waste of great content.
4. For everyone preaching video is the future, social distancing has got us there a lot faster. People are now used to consuming and creating audio/video — this should change what you’re producing.
5. Paid spend is great but never stop investing in your strategy to get found in organic search. Long-term, you’ll get a much better return — and it’s not affected by budget cuts!

5 Digital Tips — From Agency leader Paddy Moogan

Connect with Paddy on LinkedIn or follow Paddy Moogan

There is a lot going on in the world right now and being totally honest, no one really knows what’s going to happen next. We all know that customer behaviours have changed massively and some of them will change back to how they were before whilst others will be changed forever. In times like this, we need to firstly stay calm and take stock of the situation as objectively as possible. Secondly, we need to invest in the things which we know are as likely to be “right” as possible in the next few months. If you’re working on digital channels, here are five tips which hopefully illustrate what I mean:

1. When it comes to SEO, customers are always going to want pages that are easy to navigate quickly, fast loading and responsive — invest in improving these things.
2. Of course, related to SEO, we have link building. My tip here would be to focus heavily on producing link-worthy content which remains link-worthy for as long as possible i.e. avoid one-hit wonders or campaigns that are tied to a specific day or event.
3. For paid search, many brands are understandably cutting back budgets right now. This can be the right thing to do, but be careful not to cut too deep. Paid traffic can offset drops in organic search, so concentrate spend on filling organic search gaps so that they sync up as much as possible.
4. Content creation is still very important and whilst many copywriters have been put on hold for new content, now is a great time to refresh your existing, older content to try and get more from what ranks already. A good copywriter doesn’t need loads of time to refresh an existing page which means that you can cover a lot of ground with less overall budget.
5. Finally, email marketing is a huge channel right now. Don’t get caught up addressing COVID-19 if you don’t really need to. Instead, focus on sharing what your company are doing to help and try to be as upbeat as you can whilst being sensitive to what’s going on in the world.

5 Brand & Business Tips — From Beth James

Connect with Beth on LinkedIn.

1. Where can you deliver more value? The brands of tomorrow must look at ways they can play an active role in their community and serve needs greater than their own
2. Know your why. Brands must have a grasp on their purpose and deeper “reason for being”. Get clarity on why you exist and use this sentiment to guide your communications
3. Speak to someone in your customer service team to get an honest insight into the way customers interact and what their expectations are. Look for ways to brand the customer experience
4. Create a dialogue with your customer. Don’t be a brand that preaches at people, look for ways to engage in a two-way conversation
5. Struggling to differentiate? Don’t labour over finding a product USP, explore other factors that might set you apart e.g. personality, the way you treat customers, how you interact online, what you value as a brand, etc.

Beth is a brand & business coach and employee engagement specialist.

5 Marketing & Branding Tips — From Nestle’s beverage leader James Sinfield

Connect with James Sinfield on LinkedIn or follow James Sinfield

1. Marketers should focus on making consumers feel an emotional response to brands. Avoid trying to persuade people to use the product.
2. Unless you have a brand that can genuinely differentiate, marketers should prioritise on creating integrated campaigns that get people talking about their brands.
3. Media budget is as important as creative. Marketing plans should aim for the 60/40 rule (with some variance depending on the sector), but use relationships with the board or leadership team to get more investment to grow market share.
4. If you want your consumers to purchase more, drive more consumers into your brand. Better to cast the net as wide as possible rather than expect to get more from existing consumers.
5. Buyers of your brand are likely to be identical in the attitudes and demographics to your competitors. If a brand has a large base and product range then segmenting it is still important, but do not always tighten the targeting.

5 Marketing Tips — From Ecommerce leader Simon Swan

Connect with Simon Swan or follow Simon Swan

1. Take a step back from your marketing and assess what channels are delivering what?
2. Is your marketing strategy tied to the business vision
3. Pick up the phone and speak to 5 customers and ask them why they chose your company
4. Pick up the phone and speak to 2 customers who recently left your company and ask them why?
5. Go and arrange a WebEx/zoom with someone in your finance dept and ask what are the key business financial metrics that are important and how marketing can support?

5 Personal Creativity Tips — From innovation and consultancy lead Andy Reid.

Andy offers 5 tips to strengthen your personal creativity during the lockdown.

Connect with Andy Reid on LinkedIn.

1. Step away from all tech until 10:00am. Really, it can wait. Walk outside (barefoot on the lawn if you’ve got one). Breath fresh air, close your eyes, slow down your breathing and come down a gear or two. Notice the simple beauty in watching one thing move at a different speed to you; like a cloud in the sky, or a raindrop making its way down the window pane. This reminds coaches and trains your brain to focus in a different way. Something it can’t do by dancing from one email to the next or checking in messages on all your social channels.
2. Have a brain commute. Get up an hour earlier each day and sit in the chair and read, write, or draw in peace. This is not to get up early to carry on from where you left off the night before but instead invest in new connections. Notice what themes emerge when you’ve created 5 extra hours a week.
3. Avoid facilitating your own problems but instead, ask others to coach you. In return use your creative brilliance to help them. Problems shared lead to fresher stimulus and better ideas. It’s easier to be objective, impartial, and prevocational for someone else.
4. Ask ‘who else or where else has the heart of my challenge been solved before’ and it’s easier to do this once you’ve re-expressed your problem by completing this sentence “my challenge is a bit like…” by identifying the core of the issue, you’ll soon spot what needs to be tackled and who else has cracked it in the past.
5. Carry a note pad. A paper one. Nothing helps the subconscious power of the brain more than a visceral experience. Writing, sketching, doodling, drawing, and keeping different parts of your challenges and starter thoughts in one place becomes a creative canvas. A vast portable storage room of stimulus and starter ideas from which your inner genius will grow. It’s by the bedside table when you sleep and at the side of the desk as you read this. It’s on the sofa when watching t.v. and the coffee table in the afternoon. Within arm’s reach it saying “it’s okay, you’ve got this, go think freely”.

5 Marketing & Brand Tips — From C-Suite Leader Anat Sneh-Matalon

Connect with Anat on LinkedIn or Anat Sneh on Medium.

Today, more than ever, you should be focusing on getting more bang for your buck.

1. Pause channels which are performing less than others, or that your ability to measure their effectiveness is low.
2. Improve the performance of your ads through creative testing and frequent refresh. This is critical especially when advertising on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc.).
3. Test both targeted as well as grouped segments using tools like Facebook’s cross-border targeting and lookalike audiences.
4. Pay extra attention to CRO (conversion rate optimisation) across the entire funnel. You’ve already paid for this user so you might as well optimise the steps in the user’s journey to make sure he/she converts (purchases, signs up, activates — whatever is relevant for your product). Note, this includes all the communication you have with the user — type (email, push notification etc.), timing and frequency. Here too — test, test, test!
5. For brand awareness, try shifting ATL budgets to influencer marketing. It’s cheaper, more measurable and will help build your awareness among younger audiences who watch less TV (if at all). Besides, everyone is on social media — your brand should be there too. (The Goat Agency are doing great work — worth checking them out)

5 Brand and Marketing Tips — From Brand Consultancy Leader Harry Long

Connect with Harry Long on LinkedIn, Harry Lang or contact via email

1. Planning — To refresh your brand architecture you want to create a mission, positioning statement, personality, tone of voice and copy guidelines. These can feed into your logo and design style brief. The aim is for your brand to look, sound, and feel consistent across all communications and marketing channels so the audience is continually reassured, engaged, and excited about the brand as a whole.
2. Brand Mission — I advocate using five customer promises — things your brand can offer that no other brand can. Create, discuss, and debate these as they are the core of the architecture. Ultimately, these ‘Pledges’ should be things you can paint on your office wall as a reminder of what everyone should focus on every day.
3. Brand Positioning — once you’ve agreed your Mission, hone it down to one concise sentence summarising the ‘what, who, and how’ you want your brand to act over the coming two to five years.
4. Personality and Tone of Voice — influenced by your brand positioning and your gut instinct about how you want your brand to sound in all Marcoms materials, it’s worth imagining your business as a person and remember, this is for the benefit of your customers — not yourselves — so you must be objective.
5. Design and Image Style — the above elements form the headlines of your brand design brief. Give your design team the flexibility to shine and room to grow design beyond boring templates — you want your campaigns to evolve and shine over the period, not all feel like bland variations on a restrictive theme. Remember, customers see before they read so you want your campaigns to demand attention and resonate with your current and future customers.

5 Wellbeing & Wellness Tips — From Energy & Wellness Coach Joanna Redfeather

Connect with Joanna on LinkedIn or Instagram or follow Joanna Redfeather(Butler)

1. Pick something you truly love. Pick something you can see yourself loving at LEAST 3 months from now
2. Incorporate your core drivers — ask yourself what drives you? Are you driven by a sense of fun? Incorporate that. Driven by structure or seeing numbers grow? Incorporate that.
3. Start where you are NOW — Knowing where you are now is essential, and takes 100% honesty from yourself. There is no point starting where you were a few months ago at your peak, or where you were as a teenager!
4. Build it up in small increments using consistent efforts. Lock your focus on your end goal, knowing it will take TIME and that the journey must be all about persistence and consistency.
5. Track your progress so you can see your results over time, regardless of fluctuations. Remember that fluctuations happen along the way, life happens… yet encourage yourself to keep getting back on track

5 Wellbeing Tips — From COO Keith Williams

Connect with Keith on LinkedIn

1. Have your “active” whatever being active is for you
2. Break down silos and empower everyone to build their plan to hit your plan
3. Be human in every difficult situation
4. Be consistent in making decisions — I make nearly all difficult/important decisions on a) customers b) employees/team c) financials
5. Focus! Focus on a max of three things at one time — be led by the most important and the essentials that drive success
6. Be yourself, thats not to say don’t evolve, develop, gain feedback. However, be you and only work in environments where “you” is great for the org and you

5 Review Site Tips — Shane Forster Country Manager for Reviews.io

Connect with Shane on LinkedIn

1. Simultaneously collect shop and product reviews. Google has been testing a lot of new Shopping Features in the USA, such as Popular Products in organic search and free listing in Google Shopping. Both tests have shown that product reviews help visibility. These new features will be coming to Europe by the end of 2020, so get ahead of the changes now.
2. Connect your reviews platform with your ticketing system. When was the last time you were proactively contacted by the retailer after an online purchase? Probably never! By simply connecting your review platform to your ticketing system, your support team can easily address any issues which arose directly with the customer within the current workflows. The bar to impress customers is set so low here, because very few companies currently do it. Be the exception.
3. Use review content for social media. Consumers trust the opinions of other consumers much more than the marketing messages from brands. So put the voice of your customers front and centre! This can be easily powered by collecting both photo and video reviews from customers reviewing products.
4. If you are spending any money on Google Ads, make sure you are collecting Google Seller Ratings with a licenced Google Partner. Once you are spending more than £500/month on Google Ads, the cost savings you’ll gain from lower CPCs should result in the investment paying for itself.
5. Be mindful of diminishing returns. The influence which additional reviews have are very different if you have collected 75 or 875 reviews. As such, the long-term value proposition of review collection is more about what value can be extracted from that new review — can it be used as marketing collateral? If it’s a negative review, can that customer be retained? Does this customer have a large Instagram following and could be an influencer for your brand?

5 Omnichannel Tips From Trevor Gordon, Director of Global Omnichannel Retail @ Sodexo

Connect with Trevor on LinkedIn

— As we move towards reopening much of UK non-food retailing over the next 2 weeks, there will be talk that normality is around the corner; but while social distancing is in place, continuing to successfully leverage digital and laser focus on CX is key to help non-food retail stores trade profitably.

1. Care of Customers and Employees. Increased and continued focus on care of customers and employees is essential; make “community” a priority while staying true to your company purpose.
2. Ears to the ground. During the first few days and weeks of reopening, it will be important to understand quickly what is working, and not working. Utilise your customers and colleagues for “ears to the ground” insights, to adapt and move quickly as needed.
3. Leverage a broad range of channels. Retailers should be maximising value from your own ecommerce store. Focus on relevant, fresh and content frequently across your site (in an engaging but not invasive way); and utilising social to connect with your customers.
4. Optimise for mobile. Last year mobile has now overtaken desktop in the UK; so make sure your websites and customer journeys are optimised for mobile.
5. While traditionally seen as a “commodity” in Omnichannel retailing; with the need for contactless and soaring online spend getting the right payment mix is essential for retailers. Considerations include how to deal with higher fraud rates, returns and chargebacks are more common, customer loyalty is difficult to secure, and lower approval rates create a higher risk of lost sales. With so much to contend with, retailers must ensure they get the right set up in place early — or risk losing sales, customers, and revenue.

5 Product Tips — Head of Product at The Times & The Sunday Times

Connect with Lewis on LinkedIn

1. Understand your product and the problem it solves — You’ll often find yourself feeling as a triage for requests and a bottleneck between the business and the team unless you understand your product in depth and sell the direction of travel to everyone.
2. Empower your team — Communication and empowerment is crucial for a successful product. Make sure your team has access to all the insight from data and customers. A team engaged in the problem are more likely to help deliver a solution.
3. Stakeholders are members of the team — A common mistake is the ‘them and us’ divide between business and technology. The best thing you can do as a PM is bringing together one team who can build, market, learn and improve a product over time.
4. Show the thing — It’s easy to get to the ‘almost ready to show’ phase of a project before getting valuable feedback. Make sure you’re breaking things down to the smallest possible releases to get feedback either internally or externally.
5. Learn from failure — It’s inevitable that something you release in your life as a PM does not make the impact you expected. Every release (good or bad) helps you understand your product and the role you do as a product manager better — embrace failure and learn from it!

5 B2C Lead Generations Tips — From Marketer leader Simon Fieldstead

Connect with Simon on LinkedIn

1. Measure your CPA: A common mistake made when running a new lead generation campaign is to decide whether a campaign was a success or not by measuring the cost per lead (CPL). When in fact the most important metric to pay close attention to is how much did it cost to generate a sale (CPA). More often than not, by listening to user feedback and optimising the customer journey accordingly, we can produce a more informed prospect; that is more likely to convert to a sale. This in turn results in a higher conversion rate and a lower average CPA, thus rendering the upfront CPL cost irrelevant.
2. Optimise the good and the bad. When analysing the results of a campaign, we often look to increase our spend on ads or audiences that have generated the highest volume of sales. There is nothing wrong with doing this, we may however see our CPL increase slightly. A high proportion of us will disregard the elements of a campaign that didn’t perform. However, this data is just as valuable. By analysing and then tweaking the message or tone of your marketing to these audiences we can often elicit a better response, resulting in more leads for the same budget.
3. Integrate your lead gen strategy with your social CRM strategy. Brands spend a vast amount of time communicating and listening to the voice of the customer through social media. Leveraging this strategy to reach new customers or lapsed customer game be a game changer for lead generation.
4. Get a head start research the competition. We live in a noisy industry and more often than not someone has already tried or is currently running a similar campaign to the one that you are about to launch. By investing in ad spy tech like AdPlexity you are able to quickly search and find ads that are promoting the product or service you are promoting. All that is needed is a little research (by way of testing) into what is working and what isn’t; and there you have it, a head start!
5. Test Test Test. My final tip and probably the most important is to include and ongoing process of split testing. At any one time you allocate a minimum of 10% of your budget to split testing images, headlines, bidding strategies, audiences, scheduling. Essentially all the nuances of a campaign. But please bear in mind that testing too many things at once will make it almost impossible to identify the causes of fluctuations.

My Actionable Tips

Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me here Danny Denhard

Marketing

• Use Push notifications for most important updates only, reduce anxiety
• Reduce clickbait and punchy titles, will dilute you and your brand quickly
• Do not send mass emails, emails are being ignored and filtered by gmail, outlook etc.
• Double down on SEO and content, long term is vital
• Passive marketing is free marketing, especially at the moment, leverage all passive marketing, signatures, replies & “real estate”.

Advertising

• While others are stopping ads — keep going as sensibly as possible, cheap targeted clicks.
• Large brands have historically increased spends — if you are bold and confident in tough times you can improve performance for the long term
• Facebook usage has spiked, target organic posts. If the user shows real intent and drops out, then advertise (don’t go overboard)
• If you are in the B2B space, consider how you can offer trials for teams for a longer period of time — turn 30 into 60 or even 90days, good products will take longer to gain sign ups or longer to use in team environment
• Look at your internal data (Analytics) and compare how your data has changed, when, where and how — look to tweak and target “better targeting times”.

Growth

• Review your funnel and target education, awareness and re-use (retention is key right now)
• Desktops are being used much more and longer — leverage the phone as a second device or device to use while on a large screen
• Think o2o…QR codes — scan and go (always link to materials)
• Local is most important to people right now — find out what can be considered local
• Dive into your data — see how usage has changed, understand where people are dropping out or if they are responding to emails more quickly or validating more quickly.

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