The Engagement Principles

I write several blogs, and not necessarily from a viewpoint of “enhancing my online brand” or generating leads for my business.

That’s why I felt it necessary to shutter The Engagement Principles for a short time; my professional life didn’t allow the room to write the articles I find interesting, though it wouldn’t have been hard to continue posting “keyword rich” but intellectually pointless posts.

That’s not adding anything to the online conversation; it’s simply gaming Google.

What Teaching Teaches Us

I can’t say the space to write has magically reappeared, but after teaching an online marketing boot camp – to a bunch of micro-entrepreneurs who grasped the logic of engagement marketing very, very quickly – I realized it was time to beat the drum once again.

Engagement is a term much bandied about these days, though many now view it as simply a measure of how engaged someone is around a particular site or campaign.

By contrast, my definition of “Engagment Marketing” remains focused on brand equity, long-term connection, and the lifetime value of engaged customers.

As I explained it to my class of eager entrepreneurs, I’m an experienced direct response copywriter, so I’m perfectly capable of selling their customers a widget, for which they’d make a widget’s profit.

Yet, if I can successfully engage customers – bind them to the brand around shared passions, values and interests – then I just potentially made them a lifetime of widget profits.

They understand that logic just fine.

Engagement is Personal

Most of the entrepreneurs in my class are not in the content-generation business, and reject the idea their primary goal in starting their business was to sit in front a PC and lard the Internet with SEO content or manage huge keyword lists.

Most of these entrenpreneurs are enamored with simple, proven channels like email/e-newsletter lists – which are rapidly merging with newer media channels like blogs and social media.

Show them the flowchart on the whiteboard, and they instantly see the beauty of leveraging content across multiple media channels, and providing return channels of communication for those customers and prospects in the process of engaging with their brand.

In simple terms, I showed them The Engagement Principles in (crude) graphic form (my drawing skills beggar belief), and they showed me it made perfect sense.

I plan to fire up a couple posts every month on the Engagement Principles; a grievously low article count in the age of “publish daily or die” content generators, but a reasonable schedule for reasonable articles from a working professional.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

engagement, engagement marketing, marketing, online marketing boot camp

Writing about engagement marketing has been almost as edifying as making it happen, but one of the hazards of success is that it’s time consuming.

And fortunately, my focus on engagement marketing has been successful; I’m developing and writing a pair of engagement marketing projects for clients (both under non-disclosure) and pursuing a couple of personal projects.

Time is short, and staring at a dusty blog is a terrible thing, so I’m officially taking a hiatus from The Engagement Principles blog.

I plan to finish up a couple of personal projects, stockpile a few longer, more thoughtful pieces on engagement marketing, and look at new ways to advance what I believe is marketing’s most interesting new technique.

So give me a couple months, though I might fire up a post here and there.

The Future of Engagement Marketing

I find engagement marketing interesting because it’s effective; I find it enchanting because it rests firmly on the pillars of authenticity, two-way conversation, quality content and a commonality of shared passions and values.

For a marketer with better than two decades experience in the field, it’s a godsend.

To customers growing increasingly jaded by ever-louder attempts to “grab” their attention, it’s a breath of fresh air.

To organizations possessed of the wit to realize the power of engagement, it speaks to a a better future.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

In a Chief Marketer Column, Grant Johnson examines the state of email marketing in light of today’s increasingly overstuffed inbox.

He cites the battles marketers face in their attempts to achieve and sustain high email opening rates (online marketers keep hoping RSS syndication and other media channels will solve this problem), and offers one solution in this passage:

The obvious take-away is that the subject line is probably the most important part of your e-mail and deserves quite a bit of attention.

The not so obvious take-away is that increasing trust is central to increasing open and conversion rates. That means your copy is the key to gaining and keeping a high level of confidence from your recipients. What length works best?

Johnson writes with a great deal of knowledge, though his “obvious” take-away isn’t so much obvious as it is traditional. Yes, headline length is critical, but fudging with copy length – while important – also has the taste of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

eMail volume is not about to start slacking off, and frankly, a lot of the low-hanging testing fruit has already been plucked.

Instead of mucking about with headlines for marginal increases in open rates, why not engage readers to the point where they’re eagerly anticipating your next email?

In other words, maybe it’s time marketers worried a little less about the immediate results of their efforts, focusing instead on the long-term benefits of tactics like engagement marketing.

This has the added benefit of offering customers a retained image (previous high quality content) beyond the email subject line; if customers and prospects were engaged with high-quality content on previous communications, then the “from” line on the email promises more to the reader than almost any headline could.

We all receive emails from entities which are opened immediately – almost regardless of headline. We’re highly engaged readers, and email marketers looking to dramatically boost open rates should look for ways to tap into that level of customer response.

Engagement Marketing for Email

Admittedly, engaging with customers and prospects via shared passions and values is a hard sell to metrics-crazy online marketers.

Fuzzy, harder-to-define engagement metrics are still in their infancy, and aggressive online marketers have grown fond of driving a stake through the heart of any program not generating immediate results.

Still, the long-term perspective shouldn’t be ignored – especially once the lifetime value of customers becomes a part of the conversation.

Let me be clear; I’m not advocating an end to testing. It’s valuable information, and often acquired at very reasonable cost. And engagement marketing simply doesn’t apply to some markets or products.

Still, it’s time marketers looked beyond adding or subtracting 12 characters from their email headlines in an attempt to boost open rates.

Instead, engaging with customers (whenever possible) promises to deliver open rate increases far beyond the fractional – and often transient – increases offered by simple testing methods.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

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The Communities Dominate Brands blog has long been a favorite. As pioneers in the engagement marketing movement, they “get it” in a way that few others have – though their ideas weren’t always embraced.

That’s changing.

Alan Moore’s latest post chronicles the rising chorus of names who see the writing on the wall. Interruption’s not dead, but engagement is rising fast.

None other than Ogilvy (the agency) now thinks engagement is becoming an imperative instead of just another buzzword:

Ogilvy it seems have become Messianic to the SMLXL philosophy

To influence the engaged consumers of the digital democracy, push marketing needs to be replaced by engagement marketing

Said Patou Nuytemans – who I do know. So nice one Patou – thanks for spreading the word.

An aside I would like to make is that, the emphasis on pure digital
is a little cul-de-sac of straight line logic (Not Patou’s fault – I
can assure you) because we live not separate from offline and online -
we live in a world of blended reality.

That last paragraph is important. My career began just as typewriters were being replaced by computers, and my background remains heavily rooted in “traditional” B2B media (advertising, direct response).

Yet I’m still fully capable of ignoring existing media channels in favor of interactive digital media – an error in perspective shared by many of my marketing colleagues.

If Alan Moore and Tomi Ahonen look to be reveling in the growing acceptance of engagement marketing as a viable partner to traditional marketing techniques, then they’re entitled.

From their blog:

All Companies must learn to move from interruption to
inviting participation. For all marketing initiatives, this no longer
means communicating by interruption, but by engagement

Is what was written in CDB, waaaaaaay back in 2005 and in fact it was something I spoke a great deal about in 2002.

What we got back from the media, clients, – well you name them, was
something along the lines of a nervous twitch or a blank stare – or
some clever dickie leaning over the table and telling me his compliment
was a “double-edged” sword because I was a pioneer and they tended to
get shot.

As Moore notes, he’s still alive and kicking.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

Corporations are struggling with business blogs – at least according to a recent Forrester Research report mentioned by Ken Magill in his Direct Magazine article:

Business-to-business blogging took a nosedive this year, mainly because returns on corporate blogs haven’t matched investment, according to a recent report by Forrester Research.

However, analyst Laura Ramos, the lead author of the report, recommends businesses take a second look at corporate blogs.

“Rather than cross blogging off the marketing communications list, marketers would do better to embrace one of the four strategies prominently used by bloggers to attract readers, build conversations, and engage community members in sharing their experiences with their online peers,” said Ramos’s report, “How to Derive Value From B2B Blogging.”

Still, the number of new corporate blogs has dropped sharply in the last year and a half, according to the report, with 36 companies launching them in 2006, 19 in 2007, and just three in the first quarter of 2008, according to Forrester.

In my online marketing classes, I tell small business clients that engagement marketing is the great leveler; big businesses don’t engage well, but that small businesses do.

That’s a function of several elements, but in simplest terms, small business are often more “real” with customers. Corporations? They fall victim to their inability to escape boring, meaningless “corporatespeak.”

Indeed, Forester’s report speaks to the traits required to successfully engage customers:

Successful corporate blogs “talk openly with an authentic voice,” and are “humble and honest,” two traits that run counter to many corporate egos, said Forrester’s report.

Ouch.

Too many corporations see blogs as merely another pipeline into which they shovel PR materials, or worse – as Web-based showcases for preening executives.

The ugly truth is this: customers and prospects want useful information or thought leadership. While both are available inside your average corporation, the fear of transparency is a barrier most corporations won’t overcome.

Another trap lies hidden within the language itself; many potential contributors to corporate blogs aren’t very good writers, a fact which suggests the need for an editor.

Some organizations have shown excellent returns from blogging (like Patagonia’s Cleanest Line), and the benefits of engaging with customers (binding them to the brand via shared passions and values) are significant – and will grow more so as marketing costs rise.

The fact that growth in business blogs is slowing should provide additional fuel to those who are getting it right.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

I teach online marketing workshops for entrepreneurs, and a recurring mantra of mine is that “small businesses can easily out-compete big business on the Internet,” especially in the engagement marketing arena.

It’s meant to offer a ray of hope for the micro-entrepreneurs — who often feel defeated in their marketing before they even start – but it also happens to be true.

In my Engagement Principles executive white paper (I’d call it a manifesto, but that frightens people), I not-so-bravely suggest that authenticity trumps hype and corporatespeak every time.

And in markets where entrepreneurs — even micro entrepreneurs — bring a passion for their market or product to the table, they’ve got a leg up on those who don’t, a category which typically includes their larger (sometimes much larger) competitors.

They also have the ability to “Market Bravely” – a view espoused by Arthur Ceria in this Chief Marketer article:

Corporate bureaucracy drains the life out of marketing campaigns. By the time everyone at the table has had their say, an innovative idea is generally transformed into yet another iteration of the same old safe thing. Then everyone wonders why their “new” blog/widget/forum/flash demo flopped and resolves never to do anything that inventive again.

Rather than dissect each new idea to death, adopt a start-up mentality when launching a new product or service. Since you’re basically starting from scratch, capitalize on this fresh slate.

Startups aren’t afraid to be innovative. Their mentality is all about risk taking, customer engagement and honestly. One can go after the competition full speed ahead without abandoning logic or taking undue risks. Rather than burn money on trial balloons like big companies, a must startup rely on deep knowledge of—and consistent interaction with—their market to decide what risks make sense.

Big companies can (and are) enjoying the benefits of engagement marketing, but then again, so are small companies.

Engaging with consumers and prospects around shared passions and values doesn’t exclude larger companies from playing, but it does often tip the scales towards smaller, more aggressive organizations — especially those willing to risk transparency and authenticity while banning corporatespeak.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

Landing pages have long been the darling of the online world; they continue the dialog begun when a prospect clicked on an ad or link. Yet landing pages are rarely truly interactive — one of the cornerstones of true customer engagement.

It’s precisely the capacity for reader engagement that’s driving microsites to the forefront — and made them the darling of online marketers.

From a recent post on emarketer.com

If you build a microsite, they will come, they will engage and you can get the data to prove it.

That is the main finding of a newly released Keynote Competitive Research study conducted in October 2007. The company tracked reactions of consumers planning to buy an automobile within the next six months as they interacted with microsites for various car models, including the Toyota Yaris.

Keynote said the Yaris microsite demonstrated that "the more engaged people are with product and brand microsites, the more satisfied they will be and conversion rates will be higher than for people less engaged."

Engagement metrics remain hard to define, though most vendors seem to be cobbling together a mix of standards, including time on site, pages viewed, messages left, etc.

What’s fast becoming universal among brands is the desire for true engagement — and the recognition that quality content is the cornerstone of that engagement.

Microsites are often better suited to delivering engagement style content — and in engaging prospects in a conversation — hence the rapid growth.

User Driven vs Seller Driven

I’d suggest the success of microsites in a Web 2.0 world is largely a matter of user control; landing pages force a narrative on the reader, while microsites are user-driven, and can offer elements like two-way conversation, social networking features, etc.

In fact, the emarketing post cites a 2007 Marketing Sherpa survey on Viral Marketing Tactics that generated great results and — surprise — microsites came out on top (highest "Great" results with 37%; lowest "Dismal" results at 10%).

It’s a common journalistic tool to end a story with a compelling quote, and this is ours: Keynote Senior VP Don Aoki said

"With interactive advertising, the consumer must be presented compelling content to draw him or her into the interaction. The consumer must be engaged," he said.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

UPDATE: Titleist seems to have discontinued the site, and new refers surfers to their product site, making Cleese’s NXTube.com a very, very interesting launch strategy.

Titleist plunged headlong into engagement marketing when it created the NXTube.com blog — a humorous blog spoofing its own NXT golf balls.

The site looks amateurish because it’s supposed to, but behind the effort lies the wit of John Cleese — legendary Monty Python comedian.

The blog’s concept is direct (and yes, hilarious): Cleese plays the role of uptight Scottish golfer Ian MacCallister, who contends Titleist’s NXT golf ball is so good, it’s ruining the game of golf:

Welcome to my blog. My on-line home and repository for all things anti-NXT. I must confess. It is certainly thrilling knowing that my wisdom will be transmitted across the World Wide Interweb for billions of people to see. So without further ado lets get to it.

Titleist is at it again. They’ve just introduced the new NXT Tour and the grotesquely named, NXT Extreme. Click here to view their propaganda. These new spheres of destruction are loaded with golf-wrecking technology – improved aerodynamics thanks to a “staggered wave parting line” and a little arrow printed on the side to help you line up putts. Let’s call it what it is: a cheater line!

Clearly Titleist will not be satisfied until every green is drivable and every putt is a tap-in. It’s depressing. Golf is supposed to be difficult. It’s a Scottish game for goodness sakes. There’s no place in the game for the uncoordinated masses. It was never intended for the hoi polloi.

Join my crusade against Titleist and their impure technology. You must resist the siren call of easy distance and effortless control. Watch this space for updates and to see what you can do to help. Remember, apathy is the enemy. Together we can derail the NXT Tour and NXT Extreme once and for all.

Interactive & Engaging

The public is invited to participate by submitting photos and stories detailing the “alternative” uses for NXT golf balls. It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s user-generated on NXTube.com, but golf enthusiasts appear to have embraced the blog; user-submitted photos of NXT golf balls used for target practice, decorations, etc adorn the site.

NXTube.com even offers up its own “live” Webcam (it’s not, but it’s funny anyway), crank-calling videos, and slide show.

And unlike the BravoTV blogs I recently wrote about, NXTube.com is wholly interactive; reader comments evoke in-character responses like:

Go ahead, test away. But I can see it now. You drive the NXT ball 297 yards, hitting some poor elderly woman in the head while she is feeding squirrels. The woman comes after you, hitting you in the kneecap with a cane. Next thing you know, you’re answering to a judge about charges of aggravated assault and a broken cane. I’m guessing PETA would also get involved once they find out you were responsible for depriving squirrels of life-saving food.

OR… you could just hit a feathery 58 yards straight as an arrow, finish the round at a respectable 145, hurt no one and probably get a lifetime achievement award from the AARP.

Your choice, either way.

The NXTube.com blog represents a sizable investment (a former client worked with Cleese, who isn’t cheap by any means), and it’s too bad they didn’t leverage some of the video better (I could only find one video on YouTube).

In fact, they seem to have overlooked quite a few viral marketing opportunities, which is a real blot on their effort.

NXTube.com is pure fun, and Alexa rankings suggest the average visitor consumes 11 pages of content. That’s not bad at all — a testament to the engagement power of humor in an interactive setting.

Titleist may be ruining the game of golf, but they’re doing wonders for engagement marketers.

Technorati Tags: engagement marketing,marketing,viral marketing,nxtube.com,john cleese,titleist,golf ball,humor in marketing

Bravo TV has ridden the reality TV wave with a long list of “reality” TV hits, including The Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, Project Runway, Top Chef and others.

“Reality” shows engage readers by offering them compelling characters struggling with real-life situations or competitive pressures (imposed by the programs themselves).

Of course, television isn’t interactive, and in an attempt to bind fans to the shows (which often suffer several months-long breaks between the broadcast of “seasons”), Bravo has embraced engagement marketing tactics; they’ve launched a long list of blogs authored by show participants and judges.

It’s an interesting engagement marketing strategy — one marred only by the poor technology behind the site.

Blogs Everywhere

As I write this, Bravo’s blog count is at 72 blogs and rising. That’s a lot of blogs, and more are added as new shows are released and others move into new seasons.

Still, participation looks good; despite the lack of truly interactive blogs (blog authors rarely respond to reader comments), the more popular posts garner several hundred comments.

Clearly, Bravo is betting heavily on blogs — which makes their flawed implementation of them all the more confusing.

Get the Technology Right

Outside of a very, very cluttered appearance and sometimes confusing user interface, Bravo TV’s blogs have a problem.

Each blog entry is broken up across several relatively short pages, so reading a single entry can involve moving through a lot of pages — and every time the page is redrawn, all reader comments are loaded again.

That means viewers with slow connections (or gasp — dialup) could wait for several hundred comments to load in order to read only a few paragraphs of an entry.

Then they’d get to do it all over again when trying to read the next few paragraphs. It’s either a horrendous oversight, or an attempt to maximize the number of pageviews (usually for advertising purposes) — a shortsighted tactic given the value of engaged fans.

Active Engagement

An e-mail to Bravo TV’s press contact went unanswered, so I can’t speak to the traffic numbers or the network’s own perception of the strategy’s success or failure.

The fact that they’re adding new blogs — and basing so much of their site’s content around them — suggests they’re still happy with the choice of blogs as tools of engagement.

It’s an exceptional engagement marketing strategy; rather than fill their site with content generated by third parties, Bravo jams their online presence with content generated by the very stars of their shows.

Judging by the response from judges and participants, the stars are seizing the opportunity to promote their own brand.

Suddenly, generating arresting content becomes a win/win situation for both network and its emerging reality stars — not to mention the fans, who gain a measure of access they don’t enjoy anywhere else.

It’s an interesting — and compelling — example of engagement marketing on a grand scale.

You might believe engagement marketing is the province of big companies — those who can afford big-dollar social networks and viral videos produced by top-notch Hollywood talent.

Happily, nothing could be further from the truth.

Witness the industry dominance of Pyramyd Air — the retail leader in the airgun niche.

Airguns??

It’s not glamorous, but like any niche, as long as you’re in it, you might as well be in it to win.

Which is exactly what Pyramyd Air is doing.

Engaging With Customers – Affordably

I first found Pyramyd Air prior to teaching an online marketing class; they became a case study in the benefits of high-quality content marketing for my mostly small and medium-sized business owners.

Despite the fact I also trumpeted Nike’s glossy, high-tech running site, Pyramyd’s tactics became the focus of our discussions. Why?

Because Pyramyd is doing what almost any business can do.

For example, Pyramyd’s Web site is not exactly a thing of beauty, but they leverage engagement marketing techniques better than all but a handful of Fortune 1000 firms.

They engage customers with a wildly informative daily blog (written by industry expert Tom Gaylord), twice-a-month podcasts, numerous "how-to" and product review articles (in an editorial style) and even short video snippets.

Pyramyd’s site isn’t pretty, but to search engines and airgun junkies, it’s pure art.

The Blog Leads the Way

Tom Gaylord’s daily blog clearly taps into the passions of his airgun readers; most blog posts generate more than 100 comments, and the comment count on popular posts exceeds 300.

Those are startling numbers given the size of the airgun market (as a niche, it’s not exactly in the same league as celebrity gossip or technology).

The blog itself is conversational in tone, and though I don’t recommend this to my clients, it’s even hosted on a free Google Blogger account. (Really – don’t do this.)

Pyramyd offers a page of helpful articles and another filled with monthly podcasts.

Gaylord’s blog posts are crammed with information, and slaughter some of blogging’s sacred cows. They’re long (by blogging standards), and though he breaks up the text with frequent subheads, his subheads (and copy) lack hype or strong benefits.

It’s an excellent illustration of engagement writing; he’s not talking to an audience as much as sharing with them, and avoids withering his credibility with excessively amped copy. In fact, he recently wrote a blog entry largely condemning a new air pistol with: "As the Typhoon stands today, it has very little to recommend it."

His readers crave information and a demonstrated passion for the sport, and he provides both in spades.

In short, Pyramyd Air isn’t selling airguns or pellets; the product here is rampant, authentic passion for airgunning — which then translates directly into airgun and pellet sales.

Does it drive revenues? Consider this: despite taking over several nearby spaces, Pyramyd has outgrown its building and is moving to a newer, bigger building.

That, my readers, is a problem any business would embrace.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.