There is a reason businesses now have to spend a hefty proportion of their marketing budgets on engaging potential customers (or acquisition marketing)…..and despite what the adverts may say it’s not because they love you so much. The key reason engaging with your potential audience is so crucial is simple… consumer choice. As a society, we now have so much choice and purchasing power that businesses must do all they can to capture their audience. In the heady marketing world every consumer unknowingly finds themselves as part of a ‘sales funnel’, this is made up of the stages a consumer reaches before purchasing a product or service… awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation and then finally the purchase.

Engagement should lead to sales, consumers are much more skeptical about cold callers and being spammed from brands they don’t recognise, so typically a company will make contact with an individual via 6 channels before leading to a sale. By actively engaging with your potential audience you can increase brand awareness and become positioned in your target audience’s mind.

Once people recognise your brand, they are more likely to listen to what you have to say as you gradually become more familiar and trustworthy. Even maintaining strong engagement with your current customers is important, it is much easier to sell to someone who has already purchased your product. Keeping them engaged and happy with your services is an easy way to improve their purchasing experience and increase brand loyalty. As the world becomes more and more digital, it is easier than ever to see reviews and testimonials from customers and gone are the days when false reviews were allowed, the easiest way to create a good reputation for your business is to keep your customers happy. Engagement itself is a powerful lead generation tool.

We can help you keep your audience engaged, contact us at hello@22group.co.uk or call 0161 672 7822.

When it comes to digital marketing, many business owners are extremely skeptical. It can seem like a huge and risky investment. We try and keep both our more traditional content-driven inbound marketing separate from more digital channels such as Google Advertising. Why? because our marketing retainers consist of hours. It is relatively easy to break down traditional marketing into hours; social media time, eshot time, design time for adverts etc… Digital marketing is a little more complex. The cost of many digital marketing techniques such as Adwords, Google Shopping, remarketing etc. are paid directly to the supplier, such as Google. This means that costs are completely transparent and it is only the admin fees that are paid to the agency (in our case the time would come out of the retainer).

So why are people so skeptical about digital marketing? Firstly, initial outlay can appear a little steep, in addition, administration time could lead to an increase in retainer hours. Let’s be honest, nobody likes increasing their spends, but as the world becomes more digital, companies must adapt. Secondly it is likely their competition is already invested in digital marketing which means bidding can be competitive and without the correct localisation and tailored approaches potential costs can be extortionate - don’t worry, budgets are set so your spends will never spiral out of control, you just may not get the most out of your efforts.

Despite the initial risks with digital marketing, it is absolutely worth the investment. Though the initial outlay may seem a little high sometimes, it is actually more cost-effective than advertising through traditional means. You can accurately calculate the return on investment and see which techniques are working for you and which need to be adapted, you can physically assign credits to each stage of the conversion. Digital marketing allows you to interact with your audience, rather than talk at them and you with the specialised techniques you are much more likely to reach the audience who are actually interested in purchasing your products or services.
Both digital and traditional marketing attract your potential customers and build brand awareness. When used simultaneously they can work together to power extremely successful results for your business.

For any help with your digital marketing contact us at hello@22group.co.uk or call 0161 672 7822.

Are you advertising your services on mobile? If not, you really should be.

There are as many mobile phone subscriptions in the world as there are people, and it has been predicted that over 2 billion people will have a smartphone by the end of 2016 as people are changing to stay connected and replacing desktops.

For the first time ever, spending on mobile phone advertising is over £1bn and mobile advertising budgeting has risen 51%, these are figures that you can’t afford to ignore for your business.

Social media has become a solid foundation for businesses to market their services, but on average 63% of their budget is mobile-targeted. This should be of little surprise when you consider how often you check your mobile in a day, compared with desktop.

The internet in general is the fastest-growing platform for advertisement and the spend for this is expected to rise above television by the end of the decade, this could be due to the advance in technologies that allows consumers to fast-forward through commercials, or that they can simply just have a scroll on their smartphone until their favourite program commences.

Mobile phones are rapidly taking over the world, and businesses need to adapt in order to stay ahead in the market place. If you need help with your digital marketing, give one of our team a call on 0161 672 7820

We are happy to help.

It's Back to the Future day!

21^st October 2015? Just an ordinary date to some, but to many it’s ‘Back to the Future day’.

In the famous time-travel movie Back to the Future Part 11, released 26 years ago, today is the day that Marty McFly travelled to in order to save his future son.

Social media has blown up over the past few days and even some of the leading brands have jumped on board to celebrate ‘Back to the Future day’ in their marketing campaigns.

Although we may not be there in terms of the flying cars and hover-boards, leading brands who used some product placement in the film are certainly making the most of this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Marty McFly blew us away when he put on his Nike trainers and they laced up themselves, recently Nike have created a trainer based on the model seen in Back to the Future (unfortunately they are still working on the technology behind self-lacing laces)

Pepsi are releasing a limited edition run of a few thousand bottles of Pepsi Perfect, just like in the film, these of course will still be made with sugar, rather than vitamins as in the film.

Universal Studies joined in the fun, by releasing a trailer for the 3D film ‘Jaws 19’ as seen on an advert in the film.

If you’re struggling coming up with campaign ideas for your business, give our expert team a quick call on 0161 6727822.

Google’s algorithm is not as complicated as it may first appear to the average business owner. Google Panda 4.2 which will be phase-rolled out over the next few months is leaving many business owners feeling anxious as to how their sites will be affected, as a slight manipulation to search rankings can leave them with substantial amounts worth of custom lost or gained.

Google Panda 4.2 targets poor quality content, meaning sites with thin or substandard content will be ranked lower than those who provide regular and useful content, driving towards providing the end user with a better experience.

These changes should be seen as a positive as it increases the pressure to provide rich content, which should be something every business strives towards.

Daily Mail has suffered a 15pc print advertising drop as supermarkets have cut back their spend.

A significant deterioration has been seen in the traditional print advertising market which has resulted in a 15pc drop at the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. Despite this significant loss, their total circulation increased as competitors readership dropped at an even faster rate.

With more and more consumers going online the costs associated with print compared to digital advertisement are making the industry less attractive. The Daily Mail website enjoyed a 25pc increase in its global audience on last year, but revenue was up only 8pc which suggests a decline in advertising yields.

It is results like this that must make businesses consider whether their marketing spends for print advertisement are ineffective and would be better spent on digital means such as retargeting, where cookie-based technology that uses simple Javascript code anonymously “follows” the targeted audience all over the internet.

Google Shopping Ads are an online shopping advertisement that comes to the top of the screen whenever you search a product on Google. To be successful in the Google Shopping Ads it is recommended that your product comes up in the first 5 product ads.

Taking full advantage of Google Shopping can be a very powerful marketing tool, it is straightforward to do this but unfortunately very few people understand how exactly to use it. The channel is rapidly growing and perfect for ecommerce merchants who are looking to increase sales.

3 major factors should be considered when listing on Google Shopping:

• Your product data
• Your ‘buying’ keywords
• How much you are willing to budget for targeted traffic.

Google is in charge of determining which Product Listing Ads appear in a search depending on CPC and product information from your data feed, to match products as closely with the customer search as possible. Therefore the product information on your website (which you feed comprises of) should focus jointly on customer experience and on consumer search relevance.

Product descriptions in this are vital and should be targeted at what consumers are likely to be searching i.e. brand, product, purpose, category, price etc.

Once you have determined which terms to include in your product title and description, your shopping feed should then be organised into groups within Google Merchant centre in order for each category or product to be targeted correctly.

Still struggling to understand? Contact one of our experts, we’re happy to help.

Over the past few years big brands have become more reliant on social media than ever before. As we love all things digital, we know how important social media can be for your marketing campaigns so we have compiled what we believe are the Top 5 Brands Who Are Smashing Social Media

#5 Amazon

During the Christmas period Amazon used Snapchat to their full advantage by sending 10 second clips of their flash sales before Black Friday and their busiest shopping period. It was a great effort to boost their mobile sales and definitely worked. Amazon customers ordered more than five toys per second using their mobile devices.

#4 Oreo

Now we know Oreo aren’t renowned for their use of social media. However during the Super Bowl, there was a black out to which led to millions of social media users going into a frenzy, Oreo took full advantage of the power cut and released a campaign “Don’t worry. You can still dunk in the dark”. The campaign went viral immediately, including business posts blogging on how clever and fast thinking their campaign was.

#3 Adidas

Adidas are a brand who always have a new and innovative sportswear campaign. But during the London tube strikes, they took their social media campaigning to a new level. Their boost London campaign involved getting inhabitants of London to post their picture and tag #boostLondon to show they ran or walked to work instead of being delayed by the lack of transport.

#2 Dove

The Dove ‘real beauty’ campaign has been around for a while, but it still thrives on their social media. The campaign is mainly via YouTube and involved women describing themselves to an FBI sketch artist, then another person describing them to the same artist. It was to show that women are their own worst beauty critics and to make women feel empowered. As you can imagine women all over loved the campaign which is probably why it is still so successful today.

#1 Tesco Mobile

I think everybody knew that Tesco Mobile would be the winner as their social media campaigns are proving more effective than ever, especially their twitter account. Tesco mobile is regularly shunned as being “uncool” with the youth. So they have targeted the youth through their hilarious ‘banter’ over their twitter account. From dissing the users who insults with witty comebacks, to provoking o2 into  a rap battle, their twitter account followers just soars higher every day, and now so do their sales.

Although all of our examples are large brands with massive exposure. There is no reason you can’t make the most out of your social media. The key thing to take away from this article is not how many followers each of the brands have, it is how each brand has seen an opportunity arise, and either they or their marketing agency have been innovative enough to take the opportunity to social media and gain astonishing results from this. If you would like any help with your social media or marketing just give us a call.

Most people like spending time with their families at Christmas, we do too, but one of our favourite times at Christmas is waiting to see what our favourite brands have in store for their Christmas marketing campaigns.

Take a look at what some of the big brands are doing this Christmas to win the nation's hearts.

John Lewis- everybody loves John Lewis at Christmas, their warm, fuzzy campaigns know exactly how to get people obsessed. This year involved the loveable Monty the Penguin and his human friend Sam, @MontythePenguin had over 34,000 followers on Twitter and was humanized through his tweets about his daily life giving him his own social presence, before launching their range of Monty merchandise.

Marks & Spencers - Another campaign that knows how to use Christmas spirit to its full advantage. The “two fairies” campaign used by M&S has not only been trending due to its wonderful TV advertisement, it has become a twitter phenomenon through its use of competitions and blog posts from the fairies, involving them sending a range of beauty and food products as Christmas gifts.

Coca Cola- Probably THE most famous Christmas campaign, the Coca Cola advert is always released earlier than most competing brands, meaning it leaves viewers thinking ‘yes! it must be nearly time for Christmas’ every cold November. This year their social strategy involved creating a Christmas jumper on their website and posting it to their social media account to get votes so that they could in fact win the real version of their custom made Christmas jumper.

Just because you don’t have the exposure or the budget to product such a mass campaign, ask yourself, What campaigns are you running to excel your business this Christmas?

If you need any help with your marketing ideas, just give one of us a call.

People try and create innovative marketing solutions on a regular basis to boost their sales and brand awareness. However many businesses fail to realise that market research is just as important as the overall execution.

We have compiled a list of what we believe are the top 5 biggest marketing failures.

#5 Vitaminwater their marketing failure came when they launched their marketing campaign based on the idea of playing off Canada’s bilingualism by jumbling English and French words on the bottle caps of Vitaminwater. Everything ran smoothly until the phrase “you retard” happened to appear on the lid of a young woman’s drink, a young woman who happened to have a half-sister with cerebral palsy.

#4 Jagermeister due to being a brand targeted at young party go-ers, Jagermeister decided to sponsor a rather large pool party featuring plenty of the bottles in the hands of the guests. To add to the “vibe” they wanted to create a cool mist coming from the water so they decided to add liquid nitrogen to the water. A little market research would have told them that when the substance is mixed with chlorine, it produces are harmful toxin. Safe to say the pool was cleared in no time.

#3 Mcdonalds this is probably the biggest brand to make such a big marketing mistake. Despite the success of McDonalds’ previous campaigns, they decided to launch marketing specifically to the Big Mac. The campaign pictured a dark background with a very distressed woman crying into her hands with the text ‘You are not alone.’ Followed with the much smaller print ‘Millions of people love the Big Mac too’. Now obviously making a joke of mental illness/abuse never goes down well, no matter how established your brand is.

#2 Dr Pepper Now this case is more of a social media fail, but marketing none the less. When the Guns and Roses announced their album Chinese Democracy in 1994, it still hadn’t been launched by 2008. Dr Pepper took an opportunity to portray themselves as cool music-lovers by stating if the album is released by the end of the year they will give a free can of Dr Pepper to every single American. Less than eight months later the album was released and Dr Pepper did not have the means to provide so many free products, or a way of claiming them. They hastily launched a website which crashed immediately. FAIL.

#1 Hoover This is by far the biggest marketing fail of all time as you probably know. Hoover was carrying a large surplus stock of vacuum cleaners and needed to sell them immediately to free up space. They launched an offer where if customers spent more than £100 on products they would win free airline tickets, first round Europe, then expanded to USA. Customer responses overwhelmed the company and Hoover had not anticipated the chaos that was to come.

At 22, we know how important it is to create a marketing campaign that not only gives you brand awareness, but is researched and executed in a professional manner that creates no back lash, or fiascos… Simply a brilliant marketing campaign.

The debate between which is a better advertising tool, digital or print, has been ongoing. Loving all things digital you’d think we’d biased but we’re not.

Previous research revealed that advertising impact can be just as powerful on a tablet as in print advertisement, but both must carry over the look and feel of the original news brand.

The pleasure and intensity of reading is fairly the same in both formats but it is more likely to portray ideas and originality in a digital format whereas print is recognised more for credibility.

One of the biggest factors that should play part in whether you advertise online or in print is the fact digital readers are more likely to interact with the ads, clicking through to another action to experience further content.

Online ads really can get the message across to your potential customers, offering the opportunity to interact with more information, and increase the likeliness of consumers purchasing your services. However readers who consume both print and online are more aware of the advertisements, and consequently have a better brand recall.

At 22 we believe you should be proactive in how you get your message across. Using a variety of advertisement means to suit your target audience is key. Sending out a copy of the same content both digitally and in print format, or even just with a printable download can increase effectiveness depending on who you are trying to reach.