Never mind the Barack, it’s mobiThinking
February 2nd, 2010 <...by Lucy LonghurstBirth of a thought leadership website
dotMobi is a mobile Internet services company and the registry for the .mobi domain name. It’s backed by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and Internet players, including Microsoft and Google. Essentially, .mobi is the only domain name that tells users, ‘This site will work on your phone’.
We needed to get brand marketers and their agencies to start using the mobile web and the .mobi domain name. Marketers didn’t seem to realize that the mobile web is different from the desktop web: users want different things, mobile devices do different things, and the staggering diversity of devices means that you can’t just squash your old content into a mobile-friendly site. It has to be thought of as a mobile experience from the start.
To add to the challenge, there was enormous confusion over the different naming conventions used for mobile websites. dotMobi needed to inject a little clarity.
Clearing some space
Our response to the brief was to differentiate between ‘.com thinking’ and ‘mobi thinking’. We portrayed .com thinking as clumsy and heavy, compared to mobi thinking which is lean and agile. This image appeared first in some of our creative roughs, but the client liked it so it made it all the way through:
.com thinking just isn't as nimble as mobiThinking
What we did next
In order to get the show on the road we designed, wrote, and built a new website for marketers with plenty of the usual Velocity specialities: thought leadership, video, interviews and .mobi site tours. We also did a load of case studies, best practice advice, e-newsletters, eBooks and set up a mobile marketing blog, edited for us by journalist Andy Favell.
Andy’s editorial approach gave the site an independent tone, so users knew they could trust it. He got straight to the heart of the industry in record time, and built links with all the head honchos in the business. He’s got a genuine interest in mobile internet issues and it shows: he’s produced some great stuff.
We also created new identities for all dotMobi brands including mobiThinking, mobiForge, and mobiDomain, designed campaigns for mobiThinking, and created content that drove traffic.
The website is constantly evolving with new content, blog posts, interviews and short pieces. It’s built around key pieces of content that have proved extremely popular including The Best and Worst of the Mobile Web and The 2009 Top Ten MobiThinkers.
And it worked
The results were excellent. The press gave the site masses of coverage, vendors want to be part of it, industry people are queuing up to write for dotMobi for free, they got over 24,000 mentions on Google in the first few months alone, they’re invited to speak at events and they’ve recruited some big names to the .mobi fold: Coca-Cola, Sony, Amazon, and Reuters. The site also achieved the best indicator of success: Barack Obama created one of the most popular .mobi sites ever to track his presidential campaign (and he used the .mobi domain name!).
In a very short time, mobiThinking.com has become one of the leading sources of best practice advice for mobile marketers, with traffic topping 7,500 views a week.. From a standing start, that’s not bad.
You say tomato… copywriting for international audiences
January 20th, 2010 <...by Lucy LonghurstWe have a lot of international clients. Most of them are European or American, but occasionally they’re based further afield. This generates an interesting issue: how do you accommodate international English speakers in your copy? The politics of translation has interested me since my Master’s degree – how do you remain faithful to the original? Do you translate word for word or sense for sense? This isn’t quite the issue with copywriting. If anything it’s even more complicated.
Spelling problemz
For example, if there are going to be a significant number of Yanks in your audience, you’re going to have to steer clear of UK English spellings: colour, favourite, manoeuvre. Unless you want to sound all ‘Ye Olde Village Shoppe’. You also need to avoid certain words (we all know the hilarity that can ensue from the abuse of such words as ‘fanny’ or ‘bum’). Often our clients have a preferred way to approach American versus British English spelling, so the issue doesn’t arise so much. But not always. So then it’s a judgement call.
You’re having a Turkish, right?*
The ‘British versus American’ English argument is relatively straightforward. But what about non-native English speakers? Most, if not all, languages use idioms and common metaphors. But if your mother tongue isn’t the same as the copy you’re reading then you’re likely to come up against some confusion. Take ‘stick that in your pipe and smoke it’. What does that have to do with the price of fish, unless you really are talking about tobacco? Even if your language skills are excellent it takes an extra level of concentration to read copy that’s full of this kind of thing.
The British can’t lecture anyone about their fluency in languages since we only just manage one (on a good day) so we ought to make an effort to help out any international readers in our audience. But the danger is we could lose everything that makes the copy interesting and lively for the native English speakers in the audience. We could just invest in translators but that opens up a whole new set of problems. So it’s something we keep wrestling with: how to square that circle.
Some tips:
Use puns with caution There’s nothing worse than a pun that falls flat
Avoid specific cultural references Jokes about Marmite are only going to work among expat Brits
Keep sentences short and light Jargon, multiple sub clauses, obtuse syntax – it’s just going to give everyone a headache
If in doubt, go Yank Pedants may hate to admit it but American English is more widely understood than British English
Choose your idioms carefully They give a nice flavour to copy but they ought to be ones where the meaning can be inferred from the context. So ‘you’re on thin ice’ is probably ok, ‘you’re pulling my leg’ is not.
Hopefully we’re getting the balance right, but it’s something that maybe ought to bother me more, especially since I tend to write in quite a colloquial style. And it’s not just me who’s interested in this – there’s a useful blog devoted to it from Cindy King. But I have the feeling that the issue will continue as more and more people all over the world use the internet on a daily basis. Perhaps eventually we’ll get a whole new dialect of international English. Or perhaps we’ll all be implanted with a babelfish by then anyway.
*Not a reference to the country, but Cockney rhyming slang: ‘Turkish bath’ = laugh. ‘You’re having a laugh, right?’ = ‘Surely you can’t be serious!’
Photo credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões
Our New Year’s B2B Marketing Resolutions
January 8th, 2010 <...by Lucy Longhurst
Inspired by Neil’s resolution “to eat breakfast every morning”, I got everyone at Velocity to give me their B2B marketing resolutions. So here are the new year’s resolutions from the heavyweights (especially after Christmas) at Velocity:
Speak at more B2B industry events - To get the message out there that the old way of marketing is running out of steam
Target prospects that are really right for Velocity - Work with great marketers that really value what we do and how we approach marketing problem solving
Grow (sensibly)! – To meet demand while keeping service levels up.
Do more web video - This is a great way to get complex stories across quickly and clearly. We already do a lot of it but we will do lots more.
Spend less time (but better time) on social media - It’s not really social, it’s for work*. But it can really eat up the time.
Write a smash hit follow up to the Content Marketing Workbook - We’re approaching a thousand downloads! Next time we’ll try to beat that.
Put more time and effort into website conversions - Otherwise what’s the point?
Use more lead nurturing tools i.e. Marketo - Better bait for catching clients
Create effective ROI metrics for social media campaigning - So we know what to focus our energies on
And mine:
Write one great headline a week
So Doug doesn’t have to keep grimacing like that
Be able to explain cloud computing to my mother
If I can make her get it, I’ve arrived…
This year we’re going to stick to them. Definitely.
*He says ‘work’ but I’ve seen him playing Scrabulous on Facebook.
Quick Case: when content goes social
September 30th, 2009 <...by Doug Kessler
Gotta love Twitter...
It’s been about four months since we published the B2B Content Marketing Workbook and we thought we’d report back on how the campaign has worked so far. It was the first time we’ve used social media as a vector for our content marketing and so makes a nice case study.
The Campaign
The above tweet is Exhibit A. We ‘pimped’ our recent B2B Content Marketing Workbook on Twitter, in LinkedIn groups and with some judicious (and always relevant) comments on blogs we like. We also blogged about it ourselves, put out an online press release and featured it in an email newsletter to our own list.
The tweets got lots of re-tweets. One of these got us invited to guest blog on Savvy B2B Marketing and to do an interview on Connect the Dots by ClickDocuments. And David Fideler, founder of the B2B Lead Nurturing group on Linked In, gave the book a rave review — (“The single best overview I’ve yet seen on strategic B2B content marketing…”).
All this activity then got us on the B2B Marketing Magazine radar. They invited us to do a Webinar on Content Marketing with them (with hundreds of attendees) — you can watch it here (it’s about half way down the listings). And a followup article (out soon).
The eBook itself took a few days to write (but a few years to be able to write). Design took less than a week (not counting Stuart’s faffing around) (bloody Stuart) (worth it though). Pimping took about 10-15 hours over the course of a few weeks.
The Results:
- Over 600 downloads to date. About 60% are from other marketing agencies or freelancers (never a bad thing). But lots are from B2B marketers we didn’t know before and are happy to be connected to.
- About seven new business conversations – that came straight off the back of the workbook. Some are rather exciting (and all are warmly welcomed).
- An invitation to design an eBook for Marketo – we’re big Marketo fans and Laura Mishima was a pleasure to work with on The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing. Our work on this also generated interest from other companies.
- A tangible piece to use in new business meetings – it’s nice to leave something behind that captures our approach to what we do best.
- Proof that we take our own medicine – it’s hard to recommend content marketing to clients if you don’t practice it yourself.
So, all in all, a successful campaign built on the exact principles that we discuss in the eBook itself: create something that your prospects will find useful; present it in a clear, compelling way; promote it all around the Internet, especially on relevant social media; and stand back.
(BTW… Got the eBook yet?)
It’s Time For The Corporate Galactico
August 17th, 2009 <...by Neil StonemanIn 1992 Sky won, after a cheque signing competition, the rights to show live English Premiership football matches. The deal changed the game and, arguably, British culture forever.
Football tittle-tattle is now, unbelievably, hotter news than serious military dispatches from Afghanistan.
We watch football differently now. Today cameras focus on individual players and the modern soccer superstar or, as they say more poetically in Spain, Galactico has been born.
These superstars have led a dramatic shift in power from the boardroom to the pitch in a way unthinkable before Sky’s revolution.
The top teams know financial success depends on surnames that make grown men go weak at the knees from San Diego to Shanghai. Today there’s more than one ‘I’ in team.
The Corporate Galactico
The growth and impact of social media means a similar swing in corporate communication power is near. The corporate Galactico is coming.
A corporation is the ultimate team - in fact its raison d’etre is to draw an indelible line between an organization and its people. Corporate communication has never cared for individual opinion – it’s the corporate voice, managed by rules and training, that counts. Mavericks need not apply.
But the way we’re using the internet to learn about corporates and their products and services is changing.
Google’s search system obliterated the competition by, put simply, favoring sites with the most reputable links for a specific search term. Its long-term view suits the corporation.
Facebook, along with other social networks, uses a different methodology based on followers (fans) and fast debate. Such measures are, as the Guardian’s Charles Arthur writes, fleeting and random, but powerful and, crucially, not suited to Google’s ranking method. It’s not easy to learn from Google what’s hot on these sites.
Facebook’s search model suits the outspoken expert more than the consensual organization, and will force a re-evaluation of the management of real-time corporate communications. Companies will be forced to seek out glamour signings to lead their frontline communications.
Recruiting Galacticos
Organisations will start to recruit and empower individuals to join the debate with, by necessity, reduced levels of corporate control. A new breed of communicator, with license to build personal brands on the company buck, will be primed for superstar status as the intelligent, high-value company ‘face’ ready to debate complex, fast-moving industry issues.
It will not be an easy or comfortable corporate experience. Premiership football teams have quickly learned that superstars bring their own problems: new contract demands, transfer requests and drives for autonomy are now a common management issue.
If it goes well, everyone’s a hero, but if relations fail, they’re off to competitor taking their precious followers with them.
Welcome Alcatel Lucent!
July 6th, 2009 <...by Doug KesslerHere are some things you might find helpful:
Why B2B Marketing Is So Boring
The deck presented on 8th July.
The Content Marketing Workbook
Content Marketing is probably the most powerful weapon in the B2B marketing arsenal. Here’s our view on how it works.
The Hierachy of Benefits
A quick discussion of how features and benefits relate to credibility and value.
The Holy Trinity
Three questions every B2B marketer needs to answer.
Enjoy!
Any queries please contact Doug Kessler via doug@velocitypartners.co.uk
The Content Marketing Workbook
June 16th, 2009 <...by Doug Kessler
It’s here. The book of the webinar of the movie: The Velocity B2B Content Marketing Workbook. Over 45 breezy pages of good, solid advice about thought leadership and content marketing for B2B marketers like you.
In the era of information overload, Content Marketing is probably the single most important thing a B2B marketer can do. You can have lousy brochures. You can be conspicuously absent from Twitter and the Facebook Widget Group. But if you can get content marketing right, the world (or a highly relevant subset of it) will beat a path to your door.
The Workbook covers topics like these:
- What Content Marketing and Thought Leadership are
- Why you need to get good at them (and fast)
- Why you’re perfectly placed to do it really, really well
- How to pick a topic prospects care about
- How to go beyond the dry, stale white paper
- What we think ‘good’ looks like — lots of examples
It’s free, it’s fun and it’s as fresh as new-baked bread plucked from a hot oven.
A little bit of insight and inspiration never hurt anyone…
Velocity December Newsletter: Tech-speak, feature-talk or benefit babble?
December 8th, 2008 <...by Roger WarnerWe see this one all the time. A tech company that’s great at describing its technology but not so great at making the story compelling to prospects. Or a company that waves a big, bold benefit flag – that nobody pays any attention to.When we see marketing problems like these, we reach for one of our favourite powerpoint slides: the Velocity Hierarchy of Benefits.
And since clients never fail to throw flowers at our feet when we’re done explaining it, we thought we’d turn it into a new Velocity Paper free to the first thousand people to download it (and the next thousand too).
The paper identifies one of the most important phenomena in B2B marketing: the inverse relationship between credibility and perceived value… but we’ll let you discover that for yourself.
If you read nothing else today, read this new paper and put its ideas into practice by lunchtime.
Other things that might change your life…
Our Marketing Through the Hype Cycle paper
We mentioned this in the last newsletter, but Gartner has since picked up on it and, instead of suing our asses, they’ve recommended it in their blog. So now you really should download and read it.
The only B2B Marketing Blog you’ll ever need
Well, ‘need’ may be a bit strong, but more and more B2B marketers are finding it a useful challenge to conventional wisdom. Recent posts include:
B2B Web Marketing Tools Around Town
Roger’s excellent blog post that brings together all the online apps and widgets we use to pimp our clients’ SEO, pay-per-click campaigns and content marketing.
The importance of naming things
A quick post on why we like words with TM after them, like BosweloxTM, PentapeptidesTM or NutrilliumTM.
Microsoft’s baffling “I’m a PC” campaign
And why we think it’s a really, really embarrassing mistake.
Good Reasons to do Social Networking in B2B
Are you using social networks yet? If you’re in doubt, think ‘micro-facilitation’ and ‘macro-facilitation’.
The Power of Mobile Marketing
Marketing to mobile phones is taking off in a big way. We think it’ll be bigger than the desktop web. We’re also doing our bit to make that prediction come true by creating our blog to stay on top of it.
Meantime…
The Velocity family grows
B2B marketing heavyweight Neil Stoneman has joined us from his role as thought leadership supremo at BT Global Services. Need to lead some thoughts? Drop Neil a line.
We’ve also lured in a recent design graduate named Lee Hosford who’s working directly with Stuart Rothwell, our Senior Designer. Lee has oodles of talent and scads of enthusiasm. We like oodles and scads.
The Velocity client list grows
We couldn’t hire all these talented people if clients didn’t keep coming back for more. We’re excited about new projects for dotMobi, ipaccess, Econsultancy and ShipServ and thrilled to welcome some great new clients including:
Psion Teklogix - makers of rugged PDAs and mobile computers that make mobile workers more productive (and happy).
Secerno - the gurus of Active Database Control - an intelligent security perimeter around any database (very cool technology).
Plus a sexy annual report for Portrait Software, done together with RMA.
Thanks for reading. Until next time…
Branding as body language
November 4th, 2008 <...by Doug KesslerA friend of ours who also happens to be a God of Branding just sent us an article he wrote ten years ago but could have been written yesterday. He’s Axel Chaldecott, co-founder of HHCL, now the top creative on the global HSBC account at JWT.
The article is called Corporate Branding is Dead and its central metaphor is… well I’ll let Axel say it:
”Most CEOs don’t recognise that the way their company is visually represented is in fact the company’s body language.”
Any presentation coach will tell you that your body language speaks louder than your words. But for most B2B companies, the visual side of their communications is the last thing they think about (if they think about it at all).
As a result, the typical B2B brand slumps into the room, mumbles under its breath, looks down at the floor, picks its nose and scratches its genitalia.
No self-respecting company would hire a salesperson who gave this kind of impression, but thousands are happy to have logos, websites, brochures, data sheets and business cards that do.
Design and visual communication is moving up the agenda at Velocity as we see the value it brings to our clients — especially in an increasingly digital landscape. As we help our clients present themselves to the world, it would be remiss not to work on the body language, too.
Velocity B2B Marketing Newsletter May 2008
May 22nd, 2008 <...by Roger WarnerWhat Your Sales Team Says About You Behind Your Back
Sales people think marketers are wankers.
Marketers think sales people are ham-fisted brutes.
This antipathy is a major reason that so much B2B marketing is so… mediocre.
Your friends at Velocity have just published a short, sharp paper on this topic. It’s called Marketing, meet Sales, and and it offers eleven ways to make your marketing actually drive sales. Follow the principles and you’ll create marketing that even the most churlish sales guy will credit.
So what else is new in town…..?
Where do we start?
Put Google Adwords to work.
Roger, our resident digital marketing avatar, has written a clear, compelling explanation of pay-per-click in B2B, called, How to PPC in B2B: Five Rules for Effective Lead Generation. We’ve done some strong PPC campaigns recently and this paper harvests what we’ve learned. You need to know this stuff.
Web Usability for the rest of us.
In case you missed Roger’s paper on Web Usability, we strongly recommend it. In a few pages, it boils down usability to the essential principles and includes a FREE photo tour of Clapham Junction station. A thought-provoking read for your next lunch break.
‘Web Motion’ - drive your web marketing to the next level.
You’ve got a great website. Now what? Velocity has developed a new approach to web marketing that starts with a thorough analysis of your site, your keywords and your search performance and goes on to harness social media, blogs, online PR and web analytics. We call it Web Motion and we’re using it to generate some pretty startling results for our early adopter clients. Want to know more? Then see here.
A web site is born.
We’re quite proud of the new site for ShipServ, the e-marketplace for ship supplies. Thanks to John Watton, marketing director, for creating the brief and the space to do great work.
Welcome Stuart Rothwell. Long Live Velocity Design.
He’s our new Senior Designer. He’s a Liverpool fan. And he’s already done some stunning work for clients like Forescout , ShipServ, Gartner, ipaccess and dotMobi. Watch this space. Tricking Stuart into joining us was a major coup. Whatever you do, don’t tell him what you know about us.
Agency seeks writer.
We’re actively recruiting a new copywriter. If you know someone who loves writing & learning about technology and business, give them our number or point them here.
Velocity wins new business.
If you don’t want any kind of help with your marketing, for God’s sake avoid meetings with Stan Woods, our intrepid MD.
Stan, voluntarily or otherwise, emits a pheromone that makes marketing directors roll over on their backs while reaching for their chequebooks. It’s kind of spooky actually. In the last 6-8 weeks, Stan has lured in some of the sharpest pencils in the marketing box, including:
Datanomic – the data quality boffins
dotMobi – the only domain name for mobile websites
Forescout – the Gods of network access control
Magus – and their fantastic Website Quality Management app
Shipserv – the only e-marketplace for ship supplies
VNL – changing the world through microtelecom
We’re more than thrilled to be working for such a great group of new clients – not to mention our equally lovely older clients (have we told you lately that we love you?).
If it moves, we blog it.
The Velocity blog is rolling nicely. It’s becoming a hot bed of insight and best practice guidance for all the important trends in marketing: SEO, lead generation, content and copywriting, social media, web relations, Pay Per Click and more…. If you haven’t tuned in already, we recommend you bookmark it or grab our RSS feed here.
Onward and upward!
Thanks for reading. Until next time….
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Speed x Direction = Velocity
RSS feedsThere are literally thousands of blog posts, eBooks and articles called, “The 24 Most Common Mistakes in Social Media Marketing”. But no one ever covers the really rare mistakes in social media marketing — the ones almost nobody ever seems to make.
Content Marketing is probably the single most important weapon in the B2B marketing arsenal. This eBook takes you through velocity’s approach to the art. Download it and see what you think…
London-based B2B marketing agency Velocity today announced its acquisition of a new, high-capacity teapot to support its growing team of B2B marketing professionals. The new teapot, a 10-cup, 3.2 litre Globe from the London Pottery Company will go into service…
Vents, vibes & voodoo
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Roger Warner
Stan Woods
