JupiterJasper’s recent blog competition was a terrific experiment. Here’s some of our thoughts and observations, starting with what our reasons were for having one.

Blog competition aims

(These were quite open, intended as a guide rather than absolutes – an open experiment was the most important aspect – see what happens if…)

1. Offer an  opportunity for a small business to talk about and share their marketing experience, in a way that actually markets their business. One of the difficulties with content marketing on social media and blogs, is knowing how to draw attention back to your ultimate goal, which is to sell more of what you are doing, without crossing that sales talk line. This was an experiment in seeing how easily the average small business blogger could talk about their business in the abstract and position it well, without being salesy.

2. Drive traffic to the blog.

3. Create an opportunity to engage on Twitter and Facebook.

4. Add guest blog posts to the Marketing Ideaology blog.

5. Draw attention to our specific interest in small business marketing.

6. Share common marketing experiences.

7. Provide a bit of a PR opportunity for entrants, especially if blogger doesn’t have as wide an audience on Twitter.

Some of our surprising (and unsurprising) findings:

1. Direct invites were more effective than general invites – even though most of the invitees had seen the tweets and various calls to enter, they responded to the personal call to act. Personalisation rules.
2. Many interested bloggers simply excluded themselves through lack of confidence in their own blogging ability. Why on earth? If you are blogging, you are blogging. You can only get better with practice.
3. Our entry guidelines were quite complex. This provided a barrier to encourage ‘proper’ entries, but was also an experiment in clear communication, whether people do take the time to read and properly respond to instructions for a competition of this nature. In the main, this was very successful, quite surprisingly. We added to the difficulty by referring to the guidelines in a follow up blog post, rather than repeating them, to see whether the extra step caused more problems. Negligible. I conclude that we’d have gotten more entries with simpler entry steps, but that the right target market is more than capable of following complex instructions if their incentive is right.
4. Many of the more accomplished bloggers we targeted didn’t enter. Despite being small businesses, the opportunity to enter was clearly not enough of an incentive (with enough prestige, perhaps?). We were surprised that it wasn’t viewed as an opportunity at it’s simplest level, having a ready-made blog post idea with the added benefit of potential additional reach to new readers (and a set of prizes to boot!). An accomplished blogger could have simply made a few adjustments to an existing or already written blog post, as long as they could answer the topic. This supports the view that many small businesses miss easy marketing opportunities, but also echoes that you can’t do everything, and you need to weight up which effort to work an opportunity to your best advantage will lead you to more business ultimately.
5. Most of the entries were ‘on topic‘. We did have a few lateral ones that were intended to be self serving but ultimately didn’t really communicate what their intent was, so no harm done.

Nice bonuses to the exercise

1. Traffic increase over the blog posts/ competition: New visitors to our site went up by 16.8% compared to the previous month, overall visits were up 27% over the period, and pageviews were up 54% on the previous month. The two main blog posts are in the top 4 best performing blog posts for this year, with by far the most time spent on each blog post by a visitor, the one with instructions has an average of 8 minutes spent by each visitor. When considering this impact, consider that our promotional platforms were Twitter, Facebook and Linked In, with Twitter being the most used. The most Tweets sent in one day was 5 about the competition.
2. Facebook engagement and likes: post impressions went up 1,400%. Yes, that’s right. Engagement went up 100% over the period. Bearing in mind that Facebook is not a core channel for us, this was a very interesting, and largely unplanned side effect.
3. Links back to JupiterJasper’s blog.
4. Increased reach with RT’s on Twitter to new audiences.

Please feel free to share your view on the competition in comments below. I’ll be posting some of the entries on our blog over the next week.

Bronwyn Durand writes Marketing Ideaology for JupiterJasper, the on-demand marketer service for small businesses.

Aims and effects of the blog competition is a post from: JupiterJasper's Marketing Ideaology blog

Cate Trotter, trendspotter and entrepreneur, is the Head of Trends for Insider Trends and Insider London.

Cate Trotter

Cate spoke with Bronwyn Durand about the excitement of building her businesses and the effect her marketing tactics have had on Insider-London (private tours of the best of modern London) and Insider Trends (the fast track to killer business ideas).

Cate and her team of passionate guides revel in showing businesses and travellers what’s most exciting in London:

‘Life. But better’.

Insider Trends is a trendspotting consultancy, delivering trend tours, trendspotting reports and scenario planning workshops to businesses. The bespoke trend tours can focus on themes such as innovative retail concepts, new bars and restaurants, product innovation and point of sale. Most of its trend reports offer insights from around the world. Global brands and renowned designers have used its services to take the lead or remain at the forefront of their industry.

Insider London delivers tours of modern London for visitors and locals alike. Tours are created and led by its coolhunters who know the city like the backs of their hands, taking visitors straight to the best that this world-leading city has to offer. The tours include cutting-edge retail concepts, design and its intriguing and hidden secrets, revealing the most dynamic sides of the capital.

Cate has experienced the frustration and patience testing that comes with development of a business on a shoestring. Growing by investing revenue is a long journey. Cate’s team are an inspiring example of how a small business can develop customer relationships and understanding from 1-2-1 interaction and making the best of the opportunities you create.

Says Cate: ‘In a nutshell, other London tour companies are just not as excited about London as we are’.

What is Cate Trotter’s perspective?

On customers

Our customers have experienced the ordinary, now they are looking for something that shows them more.

• We provide inspiration for businesses. In a way that saves them time and is sometimes unexpectedly relevant.
• We are able to treat each interaction with customers as unique – thereby heightening the personalisation and experience for that individual or company. We respond to individual needs, one customer at a time.
• The devil is in the detail, and experiencing a trend or concept first hand is much more powerful than reading about it, and certainly more inspiring.
• Insider London is a tour by means of conversation, not presentation.
• There is a feeling of liberation when taken on tour by a friend, an insider, rather than a one size fits all guide. That is the experience that Cate and her team seek to create for you – professional friendliness.

Cate does view the journey of customer conversion as a funnel – offering an introduction at one end by means of something irresistibly free – like her hidden gems document (available from the Insider tours website). ‘This enables potential customers to try us out in a risk free way. Once on board, if you are doing your job as a guide, you are taking time to understand your customer and offer them any cross sell options that really will meet their needs (an emerging interest in eco would be a prime opportunity to sell a green tour of London, or a customer excited about the strangest of London may revel in a quirky tour)’.

On marketing

Observe the 80-20 rule. 20% Of what you do will give 80% of the benefit. 20% of your customers will bring 80% of the profit. Take the time to work it out.

Cate has a written down business building plan and believes everything they do is marketing.  Each customer gets to experience the brand for 3 hours at a time – so maximising the experience during that time reaps rewards of word of mouth or customers that become advocates. Cate’s strongest marketing action is in the delivery of her service.

• Do your search marketing – clearly describe what you offer in such a way that customers who want what you have can find you.
• Seek relevant PR coverage – a little in the right place can go a long way to bringing in customers.
• Test – try new things, experiment in small measured ways, achieve mini-goals and then do what works on a bigger scale.

Web

Being web literate is a considerable advantage to a startup entrepreneur or small business owner. It means that you can make best use of the free resources available to you, and best focus the ones you pay for.

Attend free classes – apply the 80-20 rule here too – learn 80% of what you need by paying for 20%.

Become an expert on search – help your customers to find you.

Inspiration

Read obsessively. ’4-Hour Workweek’ by Timothy Ferriss, anything by Anthony Robbins, ‘The E-Myth Revisited’ by Michael E Gerber, and ‘Get To The Top on Google’ by David Viney are some of Cate’s recommended reads. Cate believes that as long as it helps her to be happier or more focused and confident, then its worth a read. Don’t restrict your access to knowledge.

Become a master of free resources.

What next

Cate is going to set up a self-funding blog with invited authors on a profit-share basis.

Building relationships with customers is always going to be about their perception of how you treat them as an individual, understanding their needs, continuing a conversation.

Cate inspired thinking for your business

• Get to the top of Google. Obvious? Well do it then.
• Really understand where the most benefit to your business lies in deciding what marketing to do.
• Experiment on a limited risk basis so that you can find what works (and have fun while doing it).
• Spend the time with your customers actively understanding their needs and marketing your business to them in a relevant way, whether its face to face, over the telephone or interactively.

Contact

Insider London & Insider Trends

www.insider-trends.com

contact@insider-trends.com

www.insider-london.co.uk

contact@insider-london.co.uk

+44 (0) 844 504 8080

The full Cate Trotter interview and extra information can be found in the full article, here.

Bronwyn Durand writes the Marketing Ideaology blog for JupiterJasper Practical Marketing.

Building customer relationships 1-by-1, Cate Trotter is a post from: JupiterJasper's Marketing Ideaology blog