That’s why we’re offering a fantastic 15% discount your place at eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit London 2010 on 17^th - 18^th May 2010.

Register now to secure your place and enter the code:

INSPIRATION010

Jim Sterne invites Inspiration Inc to blog for eMetrics

Business opportunities now come via many different platforms.

So when Jim Sterne, Chairman of the Web Analytics Association (and “founder of many things” according to Inspiration Inc MD Chris Turberville-Tully) asked us to become a blog partner for eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit London 2010 on 17^th - 18^th May 2010, we said yes.

What is eMetrics?

eMetrics formed as a concept when Jim hooked up with Matt Cutler, founder of NetGenesis.

Brought together by the belief that the internet holds great opportunities for business, they created the first in eMetrics Summit in 2002, a road show which, according to Jim was “the classic, half-day seminar where you trot out the ‘leading expert’, give a product demo and then jump on a plane to the next city to do it again”.

Proving a huge success with marketing managers, web analysts and business intelligence experts, eager to learn how to increase the return on online investments, its popularity has grown year on year.

Eight years on, eMetrics Summit 2010 promises to be an exciting and no less rewarding experience, where you can Learn how to Optimise the Value of Your Online Marketing.

How we made our connection

Our own Chris TT attended SES (Search Engine Strategies) Conference and Expo London 2010 in February this year, the Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Event of the year. There, he was lucky enough to hear Jim Sterne speaking about Analytics and Social Media Metrics.

Following on from SES, Chris was invited to guest blog for Wordtracker. Here, he created a popular post called Jim Sterne – The Godfather of analytics – at SES London .

Now Jim Sterne happened to read that blog post and apparently, he liked it. Soon after, Chris received a personal invitation to become an eMetrics London blog partner.

That’s a new and important connection for us.

Are you ready to make the connections that are important to you?

Attend eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit London 2010 in London on 17^th - 18^th May 2010, and you will:

* Meet the industry thought leaders and experts

* Discover the basics in WAA Workshops

* Explore advanced topics in Post Summit Workshops

* Compare insights with industry leaders, consultants, and peers

* Identify and realise your desired outcomes from this event

* See hands-on demonstrations of the latest tools in action

* Walk away with specific answers to your specific questions and specific solutions to your specific problems

Sound good? We think so.

Claim your 15% discount for eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit 2010 today!

Secure your discounted pass for eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit London 2010 on 17^th - 18^th May 2010.

Register now and enter the code: INSPIRATION010

Inspiration Inc Emetrics London 2010 Blog Partner

Learn how to get more out of your online presence, and start making the connections you need to grow.

Laura, Inspiration Inc

Social m’ dear

It’s friendlier than your aunt. But can it do more harm than good? As a good rule of thumb, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are great for engaging with customers as part of an integrated marketing approach. But when you’re busy chatting with your customers via the same channel you use to plan nights out and  with friends, it can be easy to let the professional persona slip. Think about what you’re saying, how you’re saying it and crucially, who else can see it!

Is sharing caring?

Youtube says ‘Broadcast yourself: Share your videos with friends, family, and the world.’ Meanwhile, ‘Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.’ With so many ways to reach out and interact with your customers, it can be tempting to post, post, post – post your reputation away. Before you hit the button on your next video of cat boxing adventure, or make a brash, politically explicit statement, think about it.

Too much information?

If your customers are interested in who you are and what you do, then you’re onto a good thing. But don’t destroy the credibility and trust you’ve built up by sharing too much. People are only ever two clicks away from finding what you’re up to – inside of work and outside of work.

Update your privacy options

There are some things you don’t want to share. Like what you got up to on the weekend. Or that trip away that no-one knows about. Google yourself, right now. See where you’re appearing what for – and don’t forget to search Google images. You mightn’t want that picture of you kissing your cousin there for the world to see.

Check back next week for a special Christmas blog, full of reindeers, mince pies and a dash of sherry…

Laura, Inspiration Inc

What Katy did

In 2005, Kate Moss was photographed doing something she shouldn’t have been. Within weeks, she’d lost modelling contracts and big advertising campaigns with H&M, Chanel, and Burberry. Boo-hoo. After checking herself into a clinic and coming back ‘clean ’, Moss enjoyed a resurrection as the fashion darling and pocketed even bigger product endorsement deals than before.

Why did it work for Kate? Let’s face it: no-one was actually surprised. Not when we’ve spent years watching her fall in and out of love with bad boys and rock stars, and bad rock stars. Kate‘s well known for her party attitude, so she never really fell from grace. She was already branded bad. Her comeback was achieved not because the brands forgave but because her party image was fully aligned with her party lifestyle.

What Tiger did or didn’t do 

When it comes to the marketeer’s dream, it didn’t come much better than the Tiger Woods proposition. Good looking, clean-cut, articulate, top of his game and previously scandal-free — $$$Chu-ching$$$ — brands like Nike have invested heavily in a close relationship with Tiger, an association which now may or may not pay off.

Rarely photographed out of his Nike shirt, cap or both, Tiger has become a bit of a Nike brand mascot. He even wears the swoosh when he’s pitching products from other sponsors including American Express, Accenture, General Motors’ Buick, Electronic Arts and Tag Heuer watches. With his recent behaviour so ‘out of character’ with Tiger Woods the brand - it’ll be interesting to see whether his brand tie-ups are more than fair-weather friends…

If you haven’t already see the Chinese CGI animation of the alleged incident, you can watch it here.

Baffled by celebrity endorsement?

Here’s how it works:

• Raising brand and campaign awareness

• Increasing media coverage

• Mobilising public interest

• Attracting new audiences

• Cementing key messages

• Contributing to brand repositioning

• Reinvigorating a long running campaign

Want to find the real advocates for your brand?

Every business can benefit from people who endorse their brand – and they don’t have to be celebrities. It’s about evidencing what you do. You can find advocates for your business in your customers, your staff, your partners – and a few words from the right people can help you carve out a unique position in the market.

Chu-ching, chu-ching, chu-ching

To find out more, give us a call.

Laura, Inspiration Inc

Let’s get one thing straight right now: recruitment is personal.

A new hire impacts on the people around you (your staff and your customers) and the work you do.  So it makes sense that the candidates you interview reflect the culture of your organisation, and the values of your brand.

Recruiting on brand

Your people are the face of your business. They have the power to enrich what’s great about your offering and with time they become your company’s greatest advocates – if you get it right.

Even if you get it wrong, you can look at the process and identify what needs to change in order to become better at finding and keeping the right people.

Think about what makes your company what is to your customers and what it aspires to be. Develop a recruitment strategy that reflects your brand.

Our policy? Working with individuals who are intelligent, nice and honest people. It really is that simple. Why? Because everybody wants to work with a combination of these things. Our customers. Our partners. Our people.

And of course it’s no coincidence that these are the characteristics that underpin our brand.

ii talent spotting

Right now, we’re looking for a bright graduate with an analytical mind and a thirst for knowledge to join our agency and become an SEO genius. Someone nice, intelligent and honest…

If you’re thinking that’s me! get in touch or send us your CV.

Finally,

The right person in the right role brings success but always, it’s about the best fit.

Laura at Inspiration Inc

Camilla Dallerup has quit I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! within a matter of days.

Oh no. Still, her ‘failure’ creates the perfect opportunity to talk about why you need to focus on the longevity of your brand, over more immediate and somewhat short-sighted gratification.

Dallerup who?

No-one’s arguing that reality celebrity programmes don’t ‘work’. Dallerup was known as a Strictly Come Dancing star before she waltzed her way into the jungle. Still, who’s going to remember Camilla come Christmas?

From a PR perspective, primetime series like Celebrity are a fantastic vehicle for the C- and D-listers –and that’s because the increasingly popular programmes offer the promise of a massive albeit temporary leap to list B by providing intensive exposure to a mass audience.

Still; where’s all this valuable PR going to get you can’t sustain it?

Evolving to survive – and win

Reportedly struggling with exhaustion and generally feeling under the weather, Camilla was seen sobbing, telling her fellow jungle dwellers: “I feel like I am struggling to speak properly… I don’t feel like anything. I don’t know what I need. I just find it really scary.”

Of course, the rest of the Celebrity contestants quickly rallied around to offer sugar and sympathy. Still, you can be sure that had she stayed and maintained that position within the group, their support and that of the public would have quickly dwindled - because she showed no sign of responding to their support by beginning to display strength.

What can we learn from Camilla? You need a marketing strategy that helps you exceed the expectations of your customers by responding effectively to their needs.

 Becoming an A-lister

On 16^th November, I’m a Celebrity scored 10.7million viewers at its peak – up from 8.9million last year. It appears that people can’t get enough — people.

But with the public appetite for a palatable persona and personality a little more longsighted, the trick to achieving star status with your customers is developing a strategy that keeps you visible and builds trust.

More staying power than your average celebrity

Much like a one-off advertising campaign, what a programme can’t do on its own is build a reputation that brings you new business in two years’ time. No: what you need is a highly visible long-term presence- a multi-channel relationship with your customers that makes you first choice, every time.

Online media and internet marketing that enables you to listen to your customers and respond to their changing needs: that’s the skinny on everyone’s lips here at ii.   

Laura, Inspiration Inc

How? By “integrating online and offline services and using social media and mobile to bring customers to stores”. And, no surprises here: it’s a model that appears to be working.

Smith reported that when M&S used to Twitter ahead of this year’s Penny Bazaars it not only sold 2m items for 1p each at its 300 main stores, but customers actually updated each other on the items available and length of the queues. (Which were painfully long, I’m told.)

Certainly, a multi-channel approach is something we’re striving for, wherever possible. In fact right now, we’re applying a healthy dose of SEO, PPC, search editing, technical tweaking and social media to bring the Steerwell Group (the UK’s only official Hugo BOSS watches aftersales centre and distributor) bigger business.

Combining social networks like Twitter, Facebook with online advertising and email campaigns – it’s about “using the distinct strengths of each platform in different ways.” (Smith, October 2009)

Check out the Hugo BOSS watches Facebook page, here

Jean-Claude Mighty, e-commerce communications co-ordinator for Aurora Fashions commented that “While Facebook works as a great driver before an event, Twitter is an effective real-time tool to engage people as the event is happening. Afterwards, they can go back to Facebook to share images and comment. It’s about using the different networks to complete the journey.”

Well said, Mr Mighty. And as the dialogue between business and customers/customers and business spirals into ever increasing sales figures, the investment in attracting customers via online communities will continue to grow, far beyond fashion and retail.

Here’s to the evermore fashionable multi-channel journey.

Laura at Inspiration Inc

Never at risk of being provincial, Mr Quinn’s CV reads like a marketeer’s dream. From Gucci to Alfred Dunhill, Eternal Silver and Raymond Weil, Diageo, Fosters, Lyons Coffee, John Smith’s and Ferrero…

Having set up his own advertising agency in Central London, you’d think Tony was all about the big city.

Not so. For now our Tony’s been shortlisted as a potential ‘Village Champion’ in an exciting £3m initiative from the Big Lottery Fund and the BBC.

Village what?

Earlier this year the BLF and the Beeb launched ‘Village SOS’, a challenge for villages all over the UK to come up with an outstanding business idea with the potential to bring new life to their community. 

Watch the Village SOS video ad here.

What’s great is that the villages with the best ideas are set to receive funding up to £400,000 – but only six can win. And their stories will be followed in a major primetime series for BBC One in Winter 2010.

Six to watch, as it were.

A match made in marketing heaven

With only 18 villages still in the running, the search is now on for six Village Champions to work with the final six, helping them turn their big idea a successful business reality.

Over the next few weeks, Tony and the rest of the shortlist will take part in a matchmaking event where they will meet with each of the potential finalist villages, and find their ideal match.

The competition may tough, but no-one’s tougher than our Quinn.

Go Quinny, go,

May have many big ideas this weekend.

Laura, Inspiration Inc

Located in the bosom of the popular Pink Bike community, Jumble’s blogging journey details the various trials and tribulations he faces in preparation for the self-inflicted challenge of competing in the Mega Avalanche 2010 – “a mass Endurance Downhill race over some of the toughest terrain the 33km course offers”.

Within just 14 weeks, “Project 52” has attracted sponsorship from Bikefood, Aquila, Pinkbike, Ripnroll Goggles, Leatt Brace, Knox, Action Cameras, Eat Natural, Haro Bikes, Dirt mx, Geax, New Life Derby.

Not bad. So what maked Jumble’s blog such a hit? The rise and rise of the underdog, of course.

This week’s blog is about how creating a compelling story, one full of risk and obstacles, can quickly win you the attention you’re looking for.

Challenge yourself

Create a task that is particularly relevant to the people you want to read your blog – and make it even more interesting by stacking the odds against yourself.

Before Jumble threw down the gauntlet some 14 weeks hence, it had been over 10 years since he’d ridden a Downhill bike or competed in a Mountain Bike event. Added to this, the last time he did, he broken his back. Now that’s a challenge.

Location, location, location

Don’t task yourself with the mission of creating a loyal following from nowhere. Find out where your readership congregates and get yourself connected. Your blog doesn’t have to be alone to be stand alone.

Jumble decided to blog on a site dedicated to growing online community of biking bloggers who share opinion and advice on products, events and news. That’s why his readership continues to grow, and why the sponsors can’t get enough.

Expose yourself

If people are going to invest in your blog, then you need to invest in your blog. Share your failures along with your triumphs, and be open about your fears and concerns. If you’re feeling exposed, then you’re probably on the right track.

52 weeks is a close documentation of Jumble’s set-backs and achievements, regularly maintained with fresh content, combining words, images and video to good effect. It’s about making a blog that’s sticky and important enough to read, every week.

Finally,

Jumble’s success in blogging is proof that people love a good story – and none more so than the rise of the underdog. The harder the task, the more support you will gain. Because no matter what your health & safety officer tells you, people enjoy risk. Jeopardy is key to drama, and drama is key to engagement. So, inject a big healthy dose of dangerous and start the timer.

Laura, Inspiration Inc

Making radio much more than audio

Prompted by the NMA, I’ve just been taking a look round the BBC Radio 5 live site. I’m pleased to report it’s packed full of audio (no surprises there then) plus video, plenty of images and all the usual social media suspects. Nice. It seems that “Now we’re talking. Online, On Digital TV, On Digital Radio” is an appropriate tagline.

Making the real drama online

This week, the BBC announced that it’s launching Eastenders’ first spin-off series, ‘Eastenders: E20’ in January 2010. With one Google and one click, The Guardian reliably informed me that EastEnders: E20, is being created by thirteen young writers aged 17-22 and will focus on the lives of four entirely new teenage characters with crossovers with the regular Albert Square cast. What’s really interesting is that each of the thirteen episodes, which will immediately follow the televisual Eastenders, will be broadcast online – and in fact the whole series will only be available via the web.

Creating plenty of reasons to log on

To say the BBC’s onto a good thing with its use of online media is like saying, “That Richard Branson, he does alright for himself.” Needless to say, the EastEnders website promises “the latest news from the show, introductions to  new characters, access to exclusive behind the scenes footage and on set videos, plus all the episodes”. Good stuff. With heaps more online material, blogs, video, podcasts, mobile and doubtless much, much more, providing audiences with real incentive to visit and interact with the site regularly. Let’s hope it’s sticky.

With “arguably the biggest foray into online drama in the UK”, the obvious question is, who will follow?

Til next week, Digiteers. Much stickiness to you.

Laura, Inspiration Inc

Probably due to the fact that we’ve just had three days traversing Wales (and one short stop in Hereford), I am thrilled to announce that I have rediscovered my appreciation for the 1998 McCain’s chips TV ad, the one that goes:

“Sophie, who do you like best – Daddy or chips?”

Rather embarrassingly, it was over dinner with one of our more important clients that I recalled this ad and fell into a 90’s haze of nostalgia. Fortunately, I think they found my rendition of “Daddy or chips… Daddy or chips” charming rather than, er, awful.

This week, and off the road, it’s fair to say that a bit like Sophie, we’re facing a tough decision about what we like best. That’s because we’ve been talking about how we can better define our offering to our clients.

Sophie’s choice

First, we looked at what our ideal client base were searching for. While only 7 people typed our existing “Internet Marketing Specialists” tag into Google UK over a four-day period, on those same days, 288 searched for “Digital Marketing Agency”, 263 searched for “Digital Marketing Company”, 460 searched for “Internet Marketing Company” and 68 people searched for “Internet Marketing Agency”.

It doesn’t take an internet marketing genius to see that we needed to bring how we define ourselves inline with what our prospects are searching for. What’s more, the numbers told us that 3 people clicked Internet Marketing Company but 6 clicked Digital Marketing Agency.

For us, the decision was one for the team and it came down the right combination of keywords (particularly enjoyable for me, being in the occupation of preoccupation with words):

Digital/Internet/Online/Web Marketing Experts/Company/Consultants/Agency/Service/Specialists

The winner with us and Google is:

“Inspiration Inc, Digital Marketing Agency”

Have your chips and eat them

So we know who we are – but what do we offer? Well, more than you might think. SEO of course and PPC.  Internet Marketing, Email marketing, Copywriting, Websites and Analytics. PR, Branding, and Social Media. Marketing Consultancy, Business Consultancy, Internet Consultancy and Digital Project Management – even Video. And a cluster of niche services to boot.

Finally,

For those of you who remember, and those of you who don’t, here it is:

Daddy or chips?

Have a great weekend and for goodness sake, choose chips.

Laura, Inspiration Inc