Can book publishers be app publishers?

Are apps failing publishers, or are publishers failing at apps?

According to Forrester (DBW 2012): US publishers’ “love affair” with book apps is “officially over”!

How can that be when the smart phone and app downloads markets are both forecast to grow exponentially? See the volume forecasts by Gartner and comment by Facebook CTO, Bret Taylor, who calls the explosion in smartphone adoptions “the most important technology trend since the advent of the Internet”

So, how can publishers be failing to capitalise on what is such an extraordinary digital publishing opportunity? I think the following business and organisational considerations are key to understanding that dilema.

Center of gravity  

Book and app publishing are not the same. In book publishing, the centre of gravity – the focus of activity – is located in sales and production. The bulk of the activity goes into managing print runs (production), authors, suppliers, distributors and retailers (a whole bunch of intermediaries). So in traditional publishing an inordinate amount of effort is required to manage and join-up both ends of the publishing spectrum: author and bookseller.

In contrast, the centre of gravity for app publishers is the user experience (brand) and customer relation with few intermediaries to manage. That’s because the model, its urgency (short product to market cycle) and pricing cannot support the complexity and management of intermediary relations. Hence, app publishers are not structured to manage relationships.

Instead app publishers are small nimble teams with a huge capacity for work and a love of authoring, graphic design and technology. The core business is quick and effective repurposing and refashioning of assets to suit small tactile screens and enhance the mobile app experience. In app publishing the focus of the activity is on the user and on ensuring the user will delight in navigating and using the app, time and again.

Types of marketing 

Sales of apps are transparent; they occur in realtime and the app publisher has a country-by-country sales record of every download and adoption almost the moment the  transactions occur.

Hence the app publisher can measure the effectiveness of every marketing initiative it drives within 24 hours of it being actioned. Viewed through this lens, marketing is less about campaigning (campaigns have a beginning and end) and more about on-going brand and customer interaction.

And it becomes the requirement of every app publishing business to reach and engage with its customers directly 24/7, 365 days a year. And this is the rub:to interact  INDIVIDUALLY and PERSONALLY. Online publishers of all ranks need to spend time here: managing the relationship with end users. That’s an investment in time and probably a organisational restructure, but it’s mandatory.

With digital giving consumers access to every kind of information anywhere, anytime, publishers must have complete mastery of how prospects access and consume content at every stage of their customer journey, from an early awareness to a readiness to buy.

Therefore, the crucial job of marketing in publishing today is to understand where prospects hang out, what sources of information they consult (online and offline) and what content most influences their purchase decision. They must also master the innumerable ways they have to facilitate this marketing intelligence program online, via email, surveys, discussion forums, blog posts and microblogs etc…

Evolution of app marketing 

With app publishing, the fundamental basic questions publishers need to answer for better app marketing are

1. How do my customers prefer to access information?
2. Do they attend events? In-person or online?
3. Are their organisations and emails listed anywhere, can I build a customer database and reach them with my direct mailing campaigns? (this is the most important single element of  e-commerce)
4. Do they get their information at work or at home? If so in what form?
5. Do they get their information through word-of-mouth from their peers, if so via which channels?
6. Also, does advertising play a role?

Gathering essential information for marketing an app

For the past eight weeks my colleagues and I have been focusing our efforts on a suite of apps destined to help boaters and sailors worldwide. Our starting point was to immerse ourselves completely in the world of our users and to experience what it is to be stood in the shoes of skippers, instructors and trainees. To that we had to reach out and dialogue with people in nautical training centers in our three biggest international markets.

This provided the information we required for effective product development, for testing the apps and for engaging our affiliate communities early in order to forge trust, acceptance and pass along word of mouth.

Getting the right mix of channels for app discovery

Knowing our prospects preferred some communications mediums and formats over others was another critical piece of the puzzle: we needed to know in advance how we would make our apps discoverable and for this we needed to know what they preferred: reading blog posts, following Twitter or viewing YouTube? This provided the clues we needed for our marketing effort (you can have the best app in the world but if no one knows about it, it might as well be the worst app in the world). Our marketing plan was a no-brainer: we cross-referenced the most popular search topics on the highest traffic formats and prioritised the these in our communications plan.

The best indicators of marketing performance were frequency of views, how often people commented on posts or tweeted or shared information. This provided the basis for measuring the conversion ratios.

Specifically to our project, we identified that video sharing, blogging, micro blogging with social network (Facebook) are the preferred channels in the boating and sailing world. Offline, boat shows and consumer magazines are were identified as key channels too but few and far apart. Ultimately, however, we discovered that 60% of our communications needed to focus on targeted mailing lists – the sort of lists that allowed us to generate 50% open rates and 40% CTRs. The channel was critical to rapid and sustained adoptions.

App store marketing

Some app publishers will say that the biggest wins for them come from having a great relationship with the App Store. This has been undoubtedly true for some publishers. But being awarded App of the Week wouldn’t make a lot of difference to our ColRegs project. That’s because the target group is too niche for “app of the week” to matter. We are long tail and we will soak up the sales over time, organically through search. So, we have to focus our energies on creating the best search marketing out there.

Search Results 

So far (and we’re only eight weeks into our activity) our search performance (SERP) has given us first page ranking with four spots out of a possible ten indexations (including #1 for non-paid search) on Google and top level ranking on YouTube. That’s not bad for just 60 days’ of trading!

The Title P&L

The title P&L for an app requires new data: consumer (not trade) sales, lower distribution costs, few production and no manufacturing costs, different channels to market and most crucially of all weekly conversion and download rates; set these to something realistic and exceed them, different time scales too, which are longer-tail, “evergreen” rather than “coniferous”, and price points and marketing costs that are realistic.

Conclusion

I hope that publishers’ love affair with apps is not dead, but instead that publishers will learn and adopt a new approaches to consumer app publishing and marketing.

To make an end is to make a beginning - lessons from 2011

I’ve written about the different facets of transformation and disintermediation in the publishing industry throughout 2010 and 2011 but I wanted to share a more personal angle and distil the lessons I’ve learned into ten key points that will guide me in 2012.

1. You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Abandon any attempt to make a horse drink water and focus on achieving something of less resistance.
2. All progress depends on the unreasonable man … Hence the reasonable captains of media will stay in their comfort zone until, like Charles Handy’s frogs, they boil to death.
3. Success comes from daring to begin. Daring to begin is not happening in the boardrooms of media companies. Instead the boardrooms of media companies are fighting to dampen the fires of legacy.
4. Like impressionism and surrealism, new media production is an art movement that is being reclaimed by creatives. Real change is being led by daring, curious and digitally minded individuals who have little to lose and everything to gain from digital progress.
5. From small beginnings come great things. As a creative taking charge, you don’t have to reinvent everything. Leave that to the masses. Instead, follow the demand, learn the ropes, plan assiduously and execute with precision. We all have the opportunity to reach an audience. Digital is a great leveller.
6. Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it. Even though it is often tempting to give up because things do not transpire in the time you’d hoped, push on past the objections, swim hard against the currents, and keep believing in your project. The end is much easier than the beginning.
7. Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. But trying to achieve things alone is a struggle. In business seek your sweet spot. It probably lies somewhere at the confluence of marketing, production and technical know-how. There is strength in the power of three.
8. You have to be ready to experiment and fail. Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. The best laid plans allow for change and sometimes you need to shift your rifle from one shoulder to the other.
9. Defining a clear vision is helpful. Listing your values is a foundation. Mapping your market and defining your proposition are good too. But you don’t have to see the whole staircase, to get started. The secret of getting ahead is breaking your overall vision into small manageable tasks and then starting on the first ones. Plotting and recording progress on a milestone planner and using a project management tool helps you to get underway.
10. Reaching the end is actually just the beginning. And the beginning is proclamation that the conditions are laid for the next stage of the journey that is change. What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. (Eliot)

I’ve gained these insights from working with my colleagues at iGlimpse . But what learnings have you taken from 2011?

Post inspired by the words and wisdom of:  ~T.S. Eliot~ ~Mark Twain~ ~Alan Cohen~ ~Martin Luther King Jr.~ ~Norman Vincent Peale~ ~Henry F. Amiel~ ~Goethe~ and ~Henry Ford~

Content Marketing Think Like A Publisher The Original Michelin Guide Rouge 1900

In a recent blog post for Smart Insights, the UK’s premiere digital marketing portal, I asked the question: “Why might a company that sells goods or services want to act like a media company?”

The point I was trying to illicit was that all non-media companies now have the chance to embrace content creation to attract, win, convert and retain customers.

Compelling content attracts and retains customers 

Yet most businesses plod on with old school marketing, churning our content that is neither compelling nor relevant to their audiences. Audiences have become adept at filtering out messages that are irrelevant to them.

I’m conscious that if thinking and acting like a publisher were easy, then more businesses would be doing it by now and the discipline would move into the mainstream. Instead content marketing, despite being the new marketing muscle, is only used by innovators and by a handful of very early adopters (visionaries) who understand that customers will more willingly be attracted and “pulled” toward a brand, product or service if the content is helpful.

Why do so many businesses fail with content marketing and which businesses succeed? 

The problem is that most businesses today are not resourced or structured appropriately to enable them to develop carefully crafted, relevant and timely content that supports prospects and customers along the buying cycle.

Yet some non-media companies have successfully used content marketing as their core marketing strategy for decades even centuries. In 1954 Guinness printed 1000 copies of The Guinness Book of Records. The book was a marketing tool or give-away, rather than a money making venture. Similarly, the first edition of Michelin’s Red Guide was published in 1900, originally to help drivers maintain their cars, find overnight accommodation, and eat well while touring France. The “Guide Rouge”, as it is known, included the locations of petrol stations, mechanics, and tyre specialists, along with tips on tyre and car maintenance. Michelin only started charging for the Guide in its twentieth year of production, when the Michelin brothers realised that copies of the Guide were being use to prop up workbenches in garages.

Content marketing is not new. Those non-media companies understood that people are willing to be ‘pulled’ towards a product, service or brand if they see that its providers are offering them something entertaining or of value which fulfills an informational need or desire for entertainment.

Content marketing: from specialty to ubiquity 

Those were companies with vision and publishing in those days was not core to their business. Today though, the tools for publishing are ubiquitous and are central to all integrated marketing communications. That’s because the obstacles of media production and distribution have dissipated. But to be effective and to win a return on investment, businesses which produce compelling content need watertight methodologies if they are to succeed in a crowded ad noisy marketplace. To be successful in content creation, businesses need to think in a joined-up way that ensures all their efforts and resources are geared toward providing compelling content that sticks, that is shared and which attracts (pulls) the bees (prospects) to the honey pot (brand). Achieving this outcome in support of sales requires both resources and process. What follows is a summary of both.

Content marketing: resources and process 

Content marketing needs to ensure both resources and process are leveraged to perform the following with consistency:

- Identify the needs and personas of its target audience

- Audit and categorise its content assets and sources

- Put the right people on the right task (sadly too often content creation and social media are pushed down to the most junior people in the business)

- Define the roles and responsibilities of the people in content creation, editing and production needed to fulfill the business objectives and maintain the editorial activity over the long term

- Understand and support the customer along their journey at the varoious touch points and negate their pain all along their journey

- Ensure content production is scheduled and fulfilled (editorial and production calendars)

- Provide the rules and guidelines for the team and the contributing authors, designers, editors etc.. to abide by

- Plot the above onto a milestone plan

- Create a content/editorial calendar – define the strategic orientations, formats and frequency of output

- Design the layout of content

- Copy edit and guide internal and external contributors, experts, authors

- Control production

- Provide keywords and ensure all posts are optimised for search (SEO)

- Metadata tagging and image selection

- Style corrections

- Resource and manage the production and delivery (video, webinar, ebook etc)

- Distribute the content though all appropriate channels and measure effectiveness

- Cost, budget and allocate resources for and to the above

- Negotiate terms with contributing authors/ experts/freelancers

- Develop customer relations via social content

This process  is no mean feat, and when content marketing fails, it’s mostly because process fails.

Ensuring the content marketing process works

Below I have reproduced a glimpse of a milestone plan I developed for a client in the technology sector.

Content marketing milestone plan

Content marketing  resources

The internal coordinator or manager of the process oversees this process from A to Z to ensure that all tasks and goals within the plan run smoothly and that the plan delivers the marketing goals. The same person manages the resources for editorial and production. In turn editorial and production manage content creation and production. Thus the content creators (employees and contributing authors) are given clear guidelines to work by so that their time can be dedicated to creating the content.

If you visualise this workflow as a critical path plan like the one above, you can begin to see how the workflow for the team is shaped and how resources need to be allocated in order to deliver the volume of content needed, with the frequency of output and to ensure distribution is achieved in all marketing channels.

Help with content marketing

If managing the content marketing process is something your business finds challenging, I work independently, and with some of the best digital agencies in the UK, to ensure your business develops the content marketing methodologies and disciplines needed to accentuate sales. If you’d like more information on my approach, please contact me.

You can also view my LinkedIn profile here 

How to Optimise Discoverability Of Mobile Apps. Photo Credit: gadget_media Flickr

As we prepare to launch a new series of branded mobile educational applications for ocean goers, we want to put everything we can on our side to ensure our mobile application does not get lost in all the noise and our discoverability is optimised.

To help ensure greater discoverability we’ve had to have a focused approach to product marketing throughout our creative process.

From kick-off: marketing and the process of creative app development 

Before we gather around the drawing board at iGlimpse, we like to start with the analytical stuff (just as we we did when considering a new books and their viability); first we look into what kind of app types and user experiences are currently being positively reviewed. We study rankings, user reviews both in the app store and across the web and we download and play with mobile applications. This enables us to better map the functionality, building blocks, coding and plan the critical stages of development and production.

Only once we’re happy a product matches the needs of a target audience and that there is a commercial gap do we begin storyboarding and wire-framing the application screens. Only when we’re sure we’ve scoped our project fully, do we get stuck into production, applying frequent alignment meetings throughout to ensure we stay track, to make corrections and improvements, spot bugs early and stay on course to hit the milestones in our critical path plan. With testing and bugs, rewriting code is no fun at all, so we aim to get everything right from the start.

What’s our mobile application?  

Our mobile application is an educational tool that helps sailors identify the types of vessel and the activities they are engaged in at sea, as specified by the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (Col Regs).

The app provides “iGlimpse” access to schemas, graphics and descriptions of the lights and shapes in the Col Regs and the rules that apply to them as well as featuring a “Test Yourself” section.

Using a single code base and a bridging mobile framework that supports 7 mobile platforms, our app will be platform-agnostic and ready for distribution in multiple stores simultaneously.

But, like new books, new music releases or new film releases, the app needs to be discoverable through search, promoted and priced correctly to ensure its sale.

Our application is launching into a crowded marketplace in which Col Regs are available in many formats including books, flashcards, videos, DVDs and apps. To stand out from the crowd our USPs are: iGlimpse access, ease of use, convenience. These elements coupled with our designer graphics will ensure people enthuse and review the app positively. Word of Mouth is probably the most important single piece of marketing we’ll achieve.

Who are our users, where do they hang out and what sails their boat? 

As well as the many existing sailors of small and larger vessels, our users include trainees on the RYA Day Skipper Courses and their trainers. There are about 155 000 new recruits annually. Our users are of mixed age / gender; they could be Apple, Android or RIM enthusiasts, they are online savvy, they like gadgets, they have disposable income and they actively seek content that helps them improve and grow in their preferred pursuits. We prefer to apply psychometric tagging rather then demographic tagging so are more interested in their likes and pain points than their income bracket or age. Outside the pressure of the Day Skipper Course and the exam, trainees read specialist sailing / motor boat magazines, they are on Twitter and Facebook, they like brands, they search on Google, YouTube, DailyMotion and VideoJug and they are hungry for material that will inspire, inform and entertain them. They also support the RNLI and attend events like the London and Southampton boat shows. London 2012 will be a big focus point for our community. Boating enthusiasts are fascinated and fearful of collisions at sea!! The metrics we’ve studied confirm all the above. Our customer persona is the best guide we have for our marketing decisions.

Routes to market

The app market is a tough and unforgiving place. The app store models are fundamentally optimized to drive pricing down and this is a hard model to build anything other than a hobby business around until you reach notoriety and critical mass.

Discoverability is a big challenge and we’re fully aware that the shelf life of an application, from a revenue earning perspective, is lower than it is for books and music. So the big question for us is: How do we get our application discovered?

We know we’ve got to enable discovery and trial so we can do three things:

1. produce a demo video to host on YouTube and embed in social media (blogs, FB, Twitter etc) that replicates the user experience
2. segment our product into a full ‘paid’ version and a lite ‘free’ version, so we maximise downloads and can focus on conversion to paid.
3. we can also create a storefront around our application, where the user downloads a base application that is free, and, via an in-app purchase, we can augment that users application by adding new content or new functions.

Promotion and PR 

With so much available content we’re conscious we need to support and manage our community of enthusiasts. We’ve already found the concentrations of users which means we can target the channels they hang out in online and offline.

We know who the opinion leaders are, who the influential bloggers and press reviewers are and we’ve got the marketing content assets ready to supply when they request them. This is where the video showcasing our application and our promotion codes will seamlessly integrate with our communications.

Mistakes and assumptions we must not make: 

We must not ignore paid-for-marketing and make the mistake of thinking word of mouth on its own will drive sales – it won’t

We must not assume that sufficient enthusiasts searching searching with keywords will discover our app – they won’t

We must not forget that there are several app stores we need to be visible in

We must not leave the marketing till launch or post launch – priming our market for readiness is key

Conclusion 

The app stores can be a casino for developers but we believe our decision to publish fora clearly defined community of users means that we’re better equipped to anticipate our product marketing. We come from media backgrounds and know the value of great content. Because we are starting our marketing early, we stand a better chance (but not guarantee) of getting our app and supporting marketing materials into the hands of the opinion leaders before we launch. And we will continuously nourish, moderate, manage and maintain buzz in our verticals.

What advice do you have for ensuring better discoverability of mobile apps?

Mobile applications and book publishing Photo Credit Ownipics (Flickr)

Failure and success in the creative media 

In a very short space of time mobile applications development has become fiercely competitive. The barriers to entry for app developers are very low and the stats prove it: for every “appilionnaire” there are thousands of developers whose game plans have been pixelated into nothing.

Book publishing on the hand is mature, some would say outmoded. There is no other business that works similarly on sale or return. It’s a lottery. The calibration of print runs and sales forecasts is chaotic. It’s a world in which 80/20 rules and where the top fifth of books contribute four-fifths of revenues and one title in four is a flop. The failure rate of aspiring novelists who never see their name in print is colossal. The failure rate of books that do make it to the printers but which are subsequently pulped is catastrophic.

Polar extremes: niche and blockbuster 

In truth profit in any traditional mainstream media tends to come from a tiny volume of super-successful titles. That’s because popular culture idolises the “hit” and media chases tribes that want to share the same culture. This is why media companies devote their resources to creating bestsellers, because they understand and can predict the psychology of tribes and followers. This “blockbuster” model has been the backbone of media commerce for a very long time. Yet the endless shelf space of stores like the app store and amazon means that the niche, the obscure and the specialist now have an equal chance of amassing fans. In this new media world, niche audiences can locate and cluster around esoterica and mass audiences can consolidate as they always have around blockbusters. It’s the middle ground that is losing out: the land of mediocrity that sprawls between blockbusters and niche.

Creativity: the big divide between geeks and publishers 

That’s why all creative enterprises need to function with robust marketing disciplines and none more so than mobile app developers who face a multitude of different platforms, discerning shoppers and complex business models.

In the last five years book publishers have been under pressure from basement and garage geeks. But unlike the untethered and nimble dudes in dressing gowns and pyjamas, publishers are strapped by legacy and liability, which means the hobbyists have been growing market share at the expense of the traditionalists, taking the risks and following their passion rather than being guided by what has become the dominant institutional decision making tool: the infamous title profit and loss (TP&L).

In this new media ecosystem successes like Tiny Birds, created by one-man-band Andreas Illiger, push billions of micro-payments from app stores in 80 different countries into the bank accounts of one man operations. Mobile users spend an estimated $250 million on apps every month and 10 billion apps have been sold through the app stores to date. In that same period it’s estimated that 80,000 developers have signed up to the iOS operating system.

In an ecosystem that incubates +500 app submissions a day it’s not difficult to see why the app failures are as apocalyptic as the successes are great. For every success in the app stores, there are several thousand failed app developers. Not unlike book publishing and its millions of failed and pulped titles, so much of the app development process is uncertain and risky.

The euphoria of media success is the same, the drive and culture are different 

The excitement of creating a success on the app store is no different from the excitement of breaking new ground and establishing a new brand or bestselling title in the book trade. The difference is purely that publishing was once gentlemanly, traditional and reserved, whilst app development is a moneyed business, cut throat and desperate. The barriers to entry on the app store are zero and the store is a magnet to brands with money to spend on getting their gadgets built. But, whichever way you look at it, there is pleasure to be had from both processes and that satisfaction in both cases comes from the simple act of creating a product that finds an audience.

As with book publishing there is risk in costing and building an app and the potential for making money. But savvy developers can mitigate against this risk and build apps for niches they can get to know the behaviour of. Publishers of bestselling fiction have always followed the mainstream blockbuster model that relies on advertising and promotion. Non-fiction publishers, on the other hand, have a very different approach to publishing: they cost and sell their titles based on lower volumes. In app development it is the same: the culture of game developers, who rely on brief and transient chart popularity for success, will always be very different from the culture of specialist niche developers who set out to create apps that are costed and designed for audiences they know and that will sustain sales over a longer term.

Entrepreneurship: Like Minds With Luke Johnson Photo credit: Adam Tinworth Flickr

Big business stifles creativity and innovation

At this year’s Like Minds Autumn Conference, I attended a talk by Luke Johnson @LukeJohnsonRCP chairman of Risk Capital Partners and a former chairman of Channel 4. Luke’s the guy who popularised Pizza Express, taking it from its origins as a fab and distinctive restaurant in Coptic Street (London) and turning it into a (sorry Luke) rather sterile but successful chain of 250 eateries.

Luke spoke from the heart and shared lots of stuff about what he’s done throughout his career, which he openly admits would have been harder to do without the benefit of education.

 A Spirit of independence, freedom, tenacity and risk-taking 

In his talk, Luke emphasised the entrepreneurial values of independence, freedom, tenacity and risk-taking; qualities most often found in people who own their own businesses (for example amongst foreign nationals who do not have the required qualifications to enter mainstream employment in the UK) and not very often amongst the leaders of large enterprise who are “entombed in the cosy, airless coffin of big business” (quote from Luke’s article describing leaders of big business).

Whilst I found myself not always being able to agree with the large, sweeping over-generalisations Luke made about entrepreneurial qualities, his point about how large corporations kill employee motivation, personal drive, confidence and creativity did resonate closely with my own experience of corporate directorships.

Robots not mavericks 

His talk was peppered with references to the sorts of vacuous and uninspiring directorships I’ve held myself within large international corporations, be they UK, French or American. At their heart one major cause is responsible for the problem: large corporations that are not founder-run, very often replace humanity with robotic and sterile management, and become compressor machines that clone people and preclude the sort of maverick qualities businesses need.

Furthermore, large corporates are rarely anchored in community, they have no affinity with place, region or country and only seek to impose standardised work and culture models that emanate from their own home markets, which means they end up ignoring the local differences that make a business unique, innovative, creative, differentiated, appealing, genuine, personable and successful.

Sheep not shepherds 

The trouble with the big fat corp model is that it breaks everyone’s balls (excuse my French) and imposes a skill set that is closer to that of sheep than it is to that of shepherd, making every employee tow the line, and not innovate. This breeds leaders that lick the bosses proverbial “a”, and it suits people who, in their childhood, spent their lives doing what their parents expected of them because this, not being free-spirited and different, was the only way they could successfully gain their parents’ love. How sad it is that these people end up in positions of leadership, stifling the motivation and innovation of their staff.

Broader insights 

These are my own views and I am conscience that, not unlike that which I accused Luke of: making generalisations about leadership qualities, I am in danger of making similar sweeping generalisations about working for corporates, which stem only from my own personal view.

Anyway, Luke’s engaging talk struck a chord and resonated deeply with me, I am thankful to him for providing me with food-for-thought on my walk today on the wild, windy moor.

However, if we’re to avoid stereotyping good and bad leaders, innovative and sterile businesses, I’m keen we open up the discussion and aggregate the views of others, so please share an experience you’ve had of working for a big or small business, or perhaps owning your own.

Century 21 Real Estate - sordid and unlawful staff practices. Photo By alissarosenhaft Flickr

I don’t normally write about companies that specialise in rental properties, houses for rent and lettings but my wife and I are so upset by the behaviour of Century 21, their customer service, their disrespect of the law and the unacceptable professional conduct of their managers, that we’ve decided to share our grievance, publicly and loudly across social channels in the hope that we will make the global real estate and property lettings company take notice, and force them to take remedial actions to correct the behaviors of employees who blatantly breach the professional code of conduct that regulates the profession of real estate and property lettings agencies.

The subject of our grievance, an issue we’ve communicated to Didier Andre (VP C21 France), involves the shameful and unlawful behaviour of one of their lettings managers.

In 2008 we signed a fully managed home letting agreement with Century 21. We then discovered that our tenant was the lettings manager. Great! we thought, a tenant with integrity who we can rely on for good behaviour.

The tenancy went without incident until October 2012, when, in their final month of tenancy, our lettings manager and tenant decided to withhold her last month’s rental payment.

This, we have it on authority from friends, is common and sly (albeit highly illegal) malpractice in France, and a well-known method of ensuring a tenant gets their deposit back fraudulently.

That may be, but is it acceptable that an employee of Century 21, a person we trusted and relied on, be permitted to get away with breaking the professional code of conduct of the industry?

When we asked her manager for his views and for him to correct her bad ways, he responded by saying that it was a “personal matter” between the tenant and the landlord and that he could not intervene! Hang on mister, we signed a full management mandate with your agency and your employee is shafting both of us!!

We can’t imagine this happening anywhere else.

Where else would an employee whose professional conduct is regulated by a professional code of conduct be allowed to get away with such unlawful and shameful behaviour?

Where else would an employee be permitted to bring her employer into disrepute and for the agency to be the focus of conversation among the bailiffs, legal people, estate agents, press and an entire network of people that are friends, and friends of friends and colleagues and colleagues of colleagues, of the landlords’?

Shame on you Century 21. When do you plan to correct these evil ways and to ensure other landlords are not the subject of similar misconduct by your staff?

This issue may seem like small fry to Century 21 when compared with their $5 Million “80 Cents” Lawsuit in the US, but stories like ours of sordid behaviour are mounting up and bringing their brand into disrepute. If you know of similar incidents, please leave a comment or post a link below.

Digital Marketing:Why brands need to act like publishers (photo credit Nils Geylen, Flickr)

When liking was as easy as a first date

Not long ago, everyone was talking about the power of “Like” and nothing seemed easier for a brand than building a tribe of followers (Godin, 2009); people who declared they liked your company, its brand or product.

This lazy approach to digital marketing led brands into thinking, falsely, that they had found a cheap and easy way to build a network of brand advocates online, the type of people who would enthusiastically follow a brand’s daily posts and pass these on, regardless of how dull or self-centred the updates were, to their friends and followers.

Then came the social break-up

Recent research in a paper entitled “The Social Break-up” (subscribe to download), shows that people are more fickle than that. The paper by ExactTarget demonstrates that social marketing with Tweets and updates that resemble press releases or ad copy (broadcast messages) doesn’t build tribes and that lazy, sloppy social media marketing turns people away in droves.

Part of the problem is that brands are using online channels the way they do broadcast channels, when in fact online channels are interactive.

It takes more than a like to build a strong, lasting relationship online 

In my work advising clients on best-practice in social content creation, I work using a detailed process that helps pint-point the needs of the audience, the brand’s differentiation (where it can make a difference) and on defining content that bridges the gap between audience expectations and brand messages, using content that is relevant, authoritative, timely and that employs calls to action (CTAs) that shifts interaction up a gear from casual acquaintance or occasional visitor to regular follower and ultimately brand advocate, ensuring content meats the needs of audiences and that items are passed on virally. In essence this intricate and detailed process of content creation and distribution ensures fans don’t just “like” a brand, but that they care enough to share it.

Great content is all about great process 

If brands are to be successful with digital marketing they need to identify, plan, create and schedule the production and distribution of meaningful and relevant content that will engage audiences not once, but again and again, over time and in ways that are different at each stage of their journey: through discover, consideration and decision making.

Just as the ExactTarget research highlights, brands need to move away from posting one way marketing messages and focus their attentions and resources on tooling up properly for media production.

Why is acting like a publisher so key for non-media companies? 

Why, I hear you ask, might a company that sells products want to act like a media company? For that matter, why might a customer be attracted to a company that is creating content? These questions are good and they were debated at a this autumn’s Like Minds conference where I joined three fellow experts from the technology and media sectors for a panel discussion. In a plenary entitled “Is every company a media company?” we debated these questions and analysed the sorts of changes non-media companies need to make if they are to create content that attracts, builds and maintains relationships with their customers in social, email, print, in-person and a multitude of other communications channels.

The nitty gritty of content marketing 

If non-media companies are going to emulate media companies they need to embrace a number of core skills, including

1. Process

To deliver quality content media companies use process. That includes a forward planning process that plans 6-18 months out. This process includes inventory, gap analysis, graphics, layout, photography, outsourcing and the rigorous discipline of budgeting. If you don’t have a tight process, then content won’t get produced. An editorial calendar ensures the content you plan to publish fits with a key objective, matched a tactic (white paper, webinar, blog, newsletter blast, etc.) and gives the task an owner.

2. Skills

Producing content relies on specialist skills. It relies on people and is therefore a serious and disciplined management task, usually for a content manager, who will need to know writing and blogging styles, keyword selection, proofing, correction, tagging and much more. Bringing the skills in-house to project manage the content creation process is essential. Alternatively, agencies need to demonstrate they have seasoned publishing and editorial people.

3. SEO

Content needs to be search friendly or it won’t rank in SERPs. Journalists and editors are trained in SEO these days and they get feedback on the impact their writing has. Brands need to make their agencies have SEO as a goal and they will be judged based on this.

Conclusion

Marketing has to change if it’s to resonate with today’s consumers. The placement of editorial in marketing is not about adding another layer of content to persuade customers to buy things. The editor exists to help customers find information, get inspired and feel good. I believe that through this process, you help customers with the information they need and they will reward you with their business.

Please leave a comment if you share / don’t share this view or just to say hi, I read your stuff. Thanks for reading.

How to webinar?

Many companies are wondering what is a webinar and many brands are eager to master how to webinar more successfully.

Fortunately there are easy-to-apply practical solutions that improve how to do webinars:

1. The presenter shows a genuine empathy for their audience (they know their audience and clearly spend their time in customer-facing roles)

2. The presenter’s delivery is authoritative, well rehearsed (they don’t hesitate or read directly from slides or notes)

3. The content is relevant: the presenter uses material that engages the  attendees

4. The delivery is well paced; the expert works rapidly through the material in a disciplined and purposeful way

5. The presenter is dynamic and personable; he / she refers to participants by name (as they would on a good radio talk-show)

6. The presenter answers questions during the seminar and leaves ample time for a Q&A (enlivening the audience with a change of format)

7. The presenter summarises the key points before closing and provides links for attendees to follow up on slides/webcast

8. The webinar is purposeful and ends on time

Compare the above success factors with how to do webinars that cause attendees to switch off or bail out:

A. The presenter reads from slides and is slow, ponderous, nervous, unsure, unconvincing

B. The presenter does not integrate the audience / answer questions

C. The presenter begins with a formal presentation of their company (not relevant, not helpful and a waste of precious time)

D. The presenter presents information that is familiar or widely available elsewhere

In summary:

• Don’t promise something you can’t deliver: under-sell and over-deliver
• Aim to address the big concerns/questions (focus on key solutions)
• Avoid / remove content about the organisation – point to your website instead
• Get straight to the point
• Use real stories, anecdotes, examples, case studies that engage
• Provide tangible, actionable, practical tips / takeaways
• Leave plenty of time at the end for questions and answers
• Follow up politely on the phone to your sales leads, continue to offer help/ don’t sell

What else?

Research your platform options carefully to select the webinar platform that best suited to your needs. Compare the merits of the leaders WebEx or GoToWebinar and others like Bright Talk

Remember that other users have researched web conferencing options in their quest for the ideal how to webinar solution and provided their findings and recommendations in impartial webinar buyer guides online.

Final Tip

It’s  also a good idea to train presenters (experts are often poor communicators). An easy to implement in-house solution is to download some lecture recording and capture software which will help presenters refine their online presentation technique, familiarise themselves with the technology and improve their pace, delivery and the art of slide and sound interaction on one convenient, easy-to-use webcasting platform.

It’s worth checking out Panopto’s free 30-day trial

What are the things you do to webinar more successfully?

(Disclosure: I sometimes consult for Panopto Europe)

Where do publishers need to invest now to be future ready? Photo credit seanmcmenemy Flickr

I’ve been prompted by Korash Sanjideh, the Creative Industries iNET Broker, to think about a series of workshops that would strengthen the regions publishing brands and safeguard their future in the post digital age.

The Truth: Digital revenues will not be enough to compensate shortfalls 

Dan Franklin, Random House’s digital editor, says that the publishing industry is looking “into a void . . . heading into the unknown”.

It’s an uncomfortable truth, for most UK publishers revenue from their traditional revenue streams is tailing off and revenues from their lower priced digital products is not sufficient to compensate the shortfall in cash.

But publishing needn’t look into the void and a series of workshops that put the real dilemmas in publishing at the heart of the debate will help publishers be better informed and better equipped to refocus theirs businesses in the digital age.

Hence, a program of workshops designed to help publishers strengthen their businesses for the digital age will need to consider some of the following critical issues:

1. The value chain. Has your position in the value chain been altered? Are the critical success factors that once defined you as pertinent as before? Are your specialist skills in editorial, print buying, time to market, content editing, content creation, manufacture, distribution and marketing as valuable as they once were? Read more on this question here
2. Author needs. Are your authors or potential authors or subject experts still relying on you as an intermediary (connection to readers/users) or are they exploring their own direct relationships with readers via blogs and online social media? What bundles could you offer your authors to remain relevant?
3. Content for social community. Beyond traditional authored content, what other ‘user generated content’ could you aggregate and leverage into your publishing model to provide discoverability for your online community of interest? This content needs to be relevant, social and sharable.
4. Content affiliation. Which commercial stakeholders share content needs online? Are there any publishing partnerships to be forged with non-publishing companies seeking content for marketing and sales and to enhance their customers’ experience online? The budgets that brands are willing to spend on great content are significant and worth investigating. A high turnover of refreshed content is needed online.
5. Relations with online distributors. How should you manage your relations with the large online distributors? How can you grow these relations whilst building direct-to-consumer relations?  Now that customers are identifiable, contactable and trackable online, publishers need to build their businesses around customer knowledge and proximity.

Cultural shift

Undoubtedly the biggest and most powerful change in publishing needs to be cultural. The cultural shift involves moving the focus in the business away from product (book or magazine) to consumer / reader.

From a focus on content to a focus on community 

So, if you’ve been a gardening publisher for 15 years, you need to reinvent yourself as the provider of gardening know-how, expertise and solutions to all stakeholders in the world of gardening.

Refocusing a publishing business in this way means no longer considering ones business to be publishing but rather to be a key player in the industry of gardening and building and maintaining a brand community around gardening. That means focusing the key assets (human, IP and technological) on the brand community development. The Harvard Business Review looks at getting brand community right in more detail.

Viewing the core activity through the lens of community is the route to longer life expectancy. Core transformation in the genes of the business creates a new and essential vibrancy that breaths new life into publishing teams, providing much needed vital energy and dynamism to build a stronger business future. I’ve reported on my own experience of driving and managing this kind transformation in publishing here

Publishing businesses that transition to community in this way will discover that they have many new revenue streams to embrace. It means that dependency on their eroding books sales vanishes and is replaced by a new range of opportunities.

Evolving the revenue drivers in publishing 

Andrew Davies, a friend and colleague at idio Platform provides a useful “ABCD revenue driver framework” which I’ve used on several occasions to help clients think through strategies for their publishing businesses. Briefly the framework looks like this:

Audience revenues: This category covers revenues that are a function of the audience size: purchase price and advertising and sponsorship revenues.

Brand revenues: This category denotes brand extensions such as events and new products in which the brand name is strong enough to develop new products in other categories. A publisher specialising in photography can develop, promote and manage photography field trips.

Content revenue: This is the opportunity for supplying the asset to other stakeholders. Magazines and book publishers can use their writers and their specialist knowledge to create branded content for other companies. Air France commissions Gallimard to do this in France.

Data revenue: As direct-to-consumer relationships increase, data becomes a more valuable asset for every publisher. This might be in the form of selling on marketing lists to interested brands, building insightful research from aggregate data, or selling through ancillary products to the current audience.

If I were to devise a program of workshops for publishers in the South West it would look something like this:

The focus would most likely be on implementation rather than idea generation because participants would need actionable takeaways.

My Approach

I would develop a list of possible topics  and invite publishers to whittle down the list to three or four core subjects to be the focus of deeper debate and exploration. The list would most likely include the following topics:

• eBooks marketplace / impact
• New publishing paradigm
• Marketing and sales
• Getting and making use of data
• Exploring revenue streams
• Exploring paid subscription services
• Reuse and recycle content
• Build partnerships with Key retailers
• Online community management
• Develop new distribution channels

Putting detail around the topic and asking businesses in the target group to rate the topic for relevance on a scale of 1 to 5 would help shape a program of workshops relevant to the needs of the target group.

What other topics would you expect to see on a workshop list of this kind?