As lockdown restrictions ease and businesses begin to open their doors once more, it’s time to focus on the road to recovery. Customers will want to be reassured of your brand’s actions and precautions, and businesses are reassessing how to communicate their plans.
It’s important to remember that many brands are still communicating, including your competitors. Customers want to hear from you now more than ever. People will be missing your products and services due to restrictions and changes in circumstance. Many companies are seeing higher open rates than before lockdown due to a captive audience (source: Campaign Monitor).
Here are five things it is important to bear in mind on your business’s road to recovery.
Start to think about how you reacted to the changes during the route to lockdown and reflect on that. How did you play it? Did you get it right? If you did not react as quickly as you would have liked, then think about what you would have done to keep customers informed from what you now know. You can use this to inform all of your choices moving forward – particularly in planning flexible communications like emails.
Think about what customers want to see from you. Remember to strike the right tone and support them. Customers are likely to want to be assured that they are being kept safe. They will also be looking for good value at a time when household incomes have decreased for the majority (source: Savanta). Ensure that you resonate with key consumer concerns at every stage of the process.
Loyal customers should be your priority so be sure to contact them first. These are the customers that provide you with the most value, and who in turn will receive the most value from you. This is a good time to think about your first party data and how you may be able to draw on what you already know.
In a world of three-hour queues for garden centres, manage communications carefully and avoid hype. You will never be in a position where it is acceptable to let the customer down or underperform. Now more than ever people need consistency, compassion and exceptional service from the brands they turn to and trust.
Scenario planning is key. Think of as many possible scenarios you can and how you could react to each as a business. Imagine it as a road map. CRM allows you to efficiently prepare different communications and templates that can be ready to deploy depending on the outcome.
It is also important to think about your competition and how this has changed. People may have found your product elsewhere during this period so it’s key to establish where customers have gone and ask yourself the question ‘how do we win them back’? Can your early communications remind customers why they choose your brand in the first place? This is also a great time to consider if you have any new customers as well. Ask what drew them in and how can you ensure you retain them?
It’s important to keep in touch with the general mood of the country at this time as news updates and situational changes are constantly happening. It is also key that you maintain your brand tone of voice and bring your brand personality to every piece of communication. Lockdown has seen diverse businesses all sending out similar messages of sympathy. It will be impossible to make an impact if you’re blending in with the crowd.
This article was written by Armadillo Client Partner, Jo Penn, and first appeared on Digital Marketing Magazine.
We caught up with Steve Richardson, ECD at Mr B & Friends, to gather his thoughts on the most effective ways of running Creative teams remotely. Here, our chat as part of our Ask the Expert series.
Steve: On this scale, as in everyone in the team – it is. We have flexible working, enabling people to fit work around their lives, but this time with CV19 it’s fitting lives around work funnily enough. Generally, though, we all find certain parts of projects WFH can be better. No distractions, turn off notifications and get creating. We often work from home to either get headspace or when life gets in the way.
Steve: Drive and energy. It’s very easy to get distracted. So by setting timers, switching off the phone, getting space to focus this all helps – but you need to have a sense of achievement in each working period – this comes from a good internal drive. It sounds a bit too much, but making progress is important, either professionally or personally. I’m constantly amazed by what we’re achieving during this time.
Steve: Tough one. Slack has tried to replace email for me, just in smaller bites. I sound a bit of a luddite there for sure. I’d go for your video-conferencing tool of choice – ours is Zoom. It helps hugely to see faces, get connected and share screens. If only we’d all bought shares in that 2 months ago. As I’m sure many agencies have, we’ve learnt new ways to work – running large brand workshops and programmes all virtually, all through Zoom.
Steve: As soon as CV19 became a thing, we set up two meetings every day. A quick-fire morning stand-up where we go through tasks and everyone can share where they are and what’s still to do and then an evening check-in to see what help is required, what still needs planning. We have since loosened those as it was too much, with project check-ins, team catch-ups too. Personally, I feel walking and talking on the phone, away from the home set-up has been refreshing too. Some air, a quick chat off-piste – helps to talk around a project, and make sure there are no crossed wires.
Steve: Get creative with it. Right now, everyone has different home-life situations with young families or individually feeling quite isolated. Let your team know they have personal space and they should make time for themselves. Equip them correctly at home, with chairs if need be. Health and wellbeing is important – we’ve set-up Zoom quizzes (yes, I dress up like a lunatic), Friday beers, team gatherings and online fitness ab-lab sessions to enable virtual interaction in different ways.
Thanks so much for sharing!
This article previously appeared on the ADLIB Blog.
The challenges are coming in waves. At first it was getting everyone set up to work from home. Then about detailed financial forecasting and planning staff resources. Now it should be about trying to shape your business for the longer term, while continuing to keep close to what’s happening every day.
Sadly, it’s likely to continue like this for some time to come, with uncertain timings and unpredictable outcomes creating occasional periods of optimism among those of stark reality.
In this situation it’s easy for agency leaders to become passive, particularly when faced with the day to day monotony of working from home and the energy sapping stress of almost continuous video meetings. It’s hard to blame anyone for just focusing on ensuring their staff are safe and well and on making sure the finances aren’t too far away from their predictions.
But this is a time when strong leadership really matters. When the differences between those that can and those that can’t become very obvious. And when the future winners and losers are created.
When the key decisions and pace of activity is driven by client demands good agency leadership can be relatively easy. But when those things need to be initiated – as in the current environment – the challenge is very different. Leaders need to set the agenda, focus efforts and create momentum.
We’re not saying this is an easy task, but here are a few tips that we hope will help you rise to the challenge:
1 LOOK TO THE FUTURE
Many of you will have learned new things about cash forecasting, virtual communications and Government schemes. But once you’ve got these in place you should have your head up looking to the future of your agency and what will make you succeed in the post-Covid era. Good cash management is important and will help you survive, but it won’t make you a winner and shouldn’t be your everyday purpose.
2 SHARE AND DELEGATE
In this locked-down environment it’s easy for leaders to become very insular, working alone or with just a couple of individuals. But the future success of your agency is important to many more people. And a lot of your team have ideas and energy to contribute to making your agency as good as it can be in both the shorter and longer term. You’ll have leaders in many parts of your business, make sure you’re using them.
3 MAKE SMALL STEPS COUNT
In the past you may have set objectives for your team on a 90-day or six-month basis. But faced with the current challenges and with people working at home, the approach needs to be very different. Leaders need to set objectives and tasks for their teams on a daily or weekly basis – with each being a contribution to moving to a much better place. The small steps ensure that people don’t lose their focus when working alone and they create a sense of momentum when achieved. They can also be a basis for celebrating success – rather than focusing on what’s been lost.
4 CHALLENGE YOURSELVES
Many people are claiming that the lockdown has increased their focus and efficiency. And on straightforward everyday tasks this is probably true. But this is not a time when this type of head-down productivity really counts. It’s progress towards being a strong business again that really matters and leaders need to push themselves, and their teams, to get on that track. Ask yourself at the end of each week whether you and your team have done everything possible to ensure your business will be at its best in the future. If the answer is no, you’ll know what next week’s challenge is going to be.
Just before Corona Virus so dramatically put the brakes on our industry, and indeed life in general, we were busy undertaking a round of 20-20 Ouragencyvalue interviews.
We were literally stopped in our tracks by the outbreak, and it became startlingly clear that a very different ‘agency world’ would emerge from lockdown, to the previous one our algorithm could ever predict.
Let’s face it, many things you can legislate for in this business but a global pandemic isn’t one of them.
Now, as the wheels of the economy start to slowly turn again, I am able to share some insights gathered from more recent discussions with Agency owners, particularly concerning valuations in a post-pandemic world.
A braver new world?
After months of remote working, online meetings, home education and self-isolation, we are now faced with the challenge of opening our offices, along with sending our children back to school and reuniting with family members, as far as the rules will allow.
As much as we yearn for a release of the lockdown, we proceed into the dawning light of this with utmost caution. Because the risks are still very much there – to our businesses and, indeed, ourselves.
Our willingness to take such risks, which can impact on all parts of our lives, depends on our confidence in the latest government advice and what we believe may or may not happen to the economy in the short term.
How brave are we prepared to be?
Cause for optimism? Or not?
Agencies and their founders are, by nature, smart ingenious people – always optimistic and highly responsive to changing scenarios, which makes them better able to safeguard their people and protect the best interests of the business and clients alike.
Decisiveness is an important part of it. However some decisions already made, or are about to be made, will have a long-lasting and fundamental impact on the value of the business going forward.
Can we dare to be optimistic?
Back to the office? Or not?
I spoke to 10 different Agency owners across the UK, all of whom were healthy businesses prior to the lockdown. All now facing a very different reality.
Unlike Wimbledon (who undertook pandemic insurance 20 years ago), none were expecting Covid-19, but some were better prepared to respond than others, including setting up crisis management teams and immediately looking at their cost base. All reported that they were quickly able to adapt to working from home.
So much so, in the case of the latter, that half the agencies spoken to are planning to make remote working a permanent option for roles that allow it. Although, the general feeling is that the purpose, size and cost of the office is certainly up for review.
Valuations re-evalued
Values and valuations in general have changed, almost overnight. You only have to look at global stock markets.
Six months ago the revenues and multiple valuations of the agencies we spoke to were between 3 and 8.8. Now their current valuations are trading at significantly lower multiples, appearing cheap to some.
To compare the changing multiple patterns, we are assessing our Algorithm, examining the differences in our risk weightings, and the drivers influencing growth and profitability.
Since the lockdown, 60% of our Agency valuations are now sought by businesses in either a declining or distress state – with negative growth outlook, shrinking margins, declining revenues and increased debt.
The answer is to take a measured approach. That’s why we passionately believe in using data and insights to support decisions and help Agencies achieve their future goals.
Partnering with Ouragencyvalue in this way, will set you back on course to increase value.
Just how bad is it?
It can’t be sugar-coated. The overall outlook for the next 12 months is at best challenging, and at worst life-changing.
Most businesses are planning for a revenue decline between 25% and 60%.
In the latest LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Index, it was revealed that 45% of Directors expect their business to be worse off, with only 22% saying they will be better off (none of the agencies we spoke to believe they will be better off).
More concerning, not a single Agency in the report is prepared to invest in the business, apart from mission-critical IT workflow and internet-enabled services.
Risks have to be taken
OurAgencyValue’s Algorithm places a large emphasis on risks. And risk is more of a fact of life than ever, whether it’s intrinsic to healthy agencies with positive growth/profitability potential or a factor for those now facing a completely different outlook.
Too often the challenge(s) facing an Agency business in distress, is too much for them to survive. The obvious question posed during our discussions was whether the outlook is reversible or likely to be still facing them in 3 or 6 months?
Some of the Agencies were already in a temporary flux and hope they can get out of it with stronger leadership and by mitigating the risks, whilst others are more confident they will respond positively because they’ve successfully done it before.
It’s time to act – and share
After reviewing all our recent valuations there are several common factors emerging. Those agencies in decline are addressing leadership style and operational weaknesses, whilst those in a more distress state require new leadership, fresh investment and a strong recovery plan for the next 28 days.
Hopefully, these agencies have sufficient time to move quickly to a new way of operating and offering better digital and measurable marketing services.
We are intending to revisit our ten agencies for another review in 3 months. Over the next few weeks, we will be holding a similar session with investors and advertisers.
There may be no single vaccine to the potential crisis facing all agencies and advertisers but sharing industry knowledge and insights has never been more important. Therefore, a diagnosis seems an obvious starting point. As mentioned, we are reviewing our algorithm to reflect the altered climate, but meantime we have devised a diagnostic tool which is in effect a Business Risk Audit. The purpose is to identify specific risks to your Agency business through discussion and exploration, sharing insights around other agency’s challenges and assistance in mitigating those risks over the coming months.
Where to start?
Should you wish to discover more about the Ouragencyvalue Report, engage in a Business Risk Audit or have any further questions, we’d love to hear from you! We would be delighted to chat, email or Zoom etc. – whatever you prefer.
Contact: Shaun Cooper on 07802964777 or email [email protected]
For more info on our valuation report go to: www.ouragencyvalue.com
Nicholas Newman at nicnewmanoxford.com celebrates a decade of successful business providing a range of business communications services for many clients involved in the production, trading and use of energy worldwide. Instead of holding the planned party for all my business friends in Oxford, it was decided, due to the current Corona-virus outbreak to launch a series of free to video blogs.
These new free to view video blogs are aimed at examining and discussing various energy and technology issues facing businesses today, which are available to view on www.nicnewmanoxford.com. These videos are aimed at providing the hard pressed business decision maker with in-depth quality insights in to some of the complex and challenging problems faced today.
Here are links to the first free to view videos, so far published:
1. Solving the Texas gas flaring problem https://www.nicnewmanoxford.com/solving-texas-flaring-problem/
2. Madagascar has big plans to turn itself into an oil hub for Indian Ocean shipping https://www.nicnewmanoxford.com/madagascar-oil-has-ambitions-to-turn-the-country-into-an-oil-hub-for-shipping-fuel/
As for the planned celebration party, when this current crisis is over, it is still planned to hold a party to celebrate Nicholas Newman’s decade of success with his business nicnewmanoxford.com.
Editor’s Note: to arrange an interview contact Nicholas Newman T: 01865-762710 M: 0758 0469 514 E: [email protected] W: www.nicnewmanoxford.com
Nicholas Newman at nicnewmanoxford.com is an Oxford based energy business communications service provider, producing expert content in a range of formats including advertorials, blogs, features, videos, reports etc., focused on the energy business, but also covering aerospace, engineering, environment, logistics, manufacturing, transportation and technology for leading industry journals and corporate clients worldwide.
We caught up with Dan Healy, Head of User Centred Design at the Satellite Applications Catapult to gather the most effective ways of running user experience and design activities remotely. Here, is our deep dive chat as part of our Ask the Expert series.
Sam @ ADLIB: To start things off, it’d be great if you could give us an idea of what Catapult does?
Dan: We exist to make the world a better place and to grow the UK economy through the effective use of space technology. We work on projects where there’s an opportunity to use satellite data to gain insight into a whole bunch of different things. It could be observing activity in the world’s oceans to track illegal fishing vessels or using something called remote sensing to check and ensure the structural integrity of bridges around the world. Some exciting, important opportunities – things that you wouldn’t even imagine were possible.
Sam @ ADLIB: Incredible. So, in the context of that, what’s your specific role?
Dan: My role is Head of User Centred Design. My role is as much to do with coordination, facilitation and oversight as anything else. In practice, that means that my job is about making sure that we’re doing and prioritising the right sort of work. I’m also responsible for evolving our culture of user-centred design so that it allows the organisation to take a user-centred approach to all that we do. I’ve got a team of really talented designers and feel like I’m well placed at knowing who would be well suited to particular projects, especially if I know that someone’s got an ambition to work on something.
My organisation has a solid history of user-centred design. One of the things that attracted me to the job was the fact that I hadn’t seen many examples of a ‘Head of User Centred Design’ being advertised and I loved the specificity of that. It suggested a maturity of thinking around user-centred design and design thinking. That said, we still have room to mature and that’s where I think I can help. I want to celebrate the incredible work that we’ve done but also look ahead to the exciting stuff that we’ve yet to do.
Sam @ ADLIB: As we know, Designers can come from a wide variety of backgrounds including research, psychology, graphics, product… What sort of skills and backgrounds make up your team?
Dan: It’s an amazing mixture. We’ve got skills in service design, product design, immersive visualisation, industrial design, and design research. My background is in user-centred design and in particular user research and accessibility. I enjoy helping people who are working on projects that have more of a user experience focus to enhance their skills in that way. For example, I’ve just been working with a member of my team with the design of a usability testing study, which was conducted remotely. It’s something that I’d like to do more of with my team.
Sam @ ADLIB: It’s an interesting exercise and one of the reasons I enjoy working in this sector so much, because of that diversity in people’s experience.
So to talk about the current situation; in your role as a Facilitator, a Manager and also a key relationship for internal stakeholders – I’d imagine having to work remotely has thrown up some interesting dynamics and brought about new challenges. Has the business been used to remote work in the past and what has that looked like?
Dan: That’s an interesting question and one that I’m going to challenge. A few people have asked me “how are you adapting to remote working? Is that something that you’re able to take on easily, or is it proving difficult?” We need to be aware of the fact that, what we’re doing at the moment isn’t simply remote working. Someone on LinkedIn said something along the lines of “this isn’t working from home, we’re at our homes during a crisis trying to work”. When I saw it, it resonated with me. I thought ‘thank you for saying that and acknowledging what this is because it’s not just remote working’.
I feel like I have multiple working personas. What I mean by that is, there’s Dan Healy, Head of UCD, who works at the Satellite Applications Catapult office four days a week. That’s probably my most productive version of working me. Then there’s Dan Healy, Head of UCD, who works at home on a Friday – that’s me, usually in a totally empty house, with all the broadband I could possibly want and no distractions. I’m pretty effective in that context too – I can get my head down and focus. Then you’ve got this version of me, where I’m working from my daughter’s cabin bed desk. I can hear the kids downstairs running around like maniacs and my wife (who’s also supposed to be working full time!) is trying to home-school them and to help me out with my busy schedule. This is an incredibly tough situation. This isn’t remote working for me, this is coping with the situation we’re in and trying to make the best of it.
Sam @ ADLIB: That’s very well put, there’s a huge difference between what we know as remote working and our current situation isn’t there.
It sounds like you’ve been working on a semi-remote basis before with the team, how has that changed what you’re doing now? And what character traits do you think are most important when working with UX and design teams remotely?
Dan: I think flexibility and creativity are essential in this context. It’s not good enough to just say “okay, we now have Zoom and Teams, let’s do all of our meetings on those platforms” but we won’t change anything else. That doesn’t work. As you’ve probably found out yourself, doing video calls all day is intense and it lets people into your life in a way that perhaps you’re not used to or comfortable with. At times, I’ve quite enjoyed the opportunity that it gives for showing vulnerability and authenticity. I think it’s helped me to come across to my organisation in a way that is perhaps more representative of who I am. For people to see the messiness, the chaos of my life makes me more human.
In terms of my organisation, we’ve adapted remarkably well. Over 150 people have pretty much moved out of the office and are conducting their work in a new way. Where we still need to do more work is around challenging our virtual behaviours. We need to rethink what meetings are for, to challenge the length of meetings and the tools that we use to facilitate those meetings.
One of the things I love about my job is that, as a user-centred designer, I’m invited into a wide array of different activities. I recently contributed to a homeworking policy that was put together at pace to try and address what’s going on at the moment and to give people assurances around what they could expect, what their rights are, and what is expected of them. I was delighted to collaborate with our Chief People Officer on that.
One of the things I did as part of that process was put together some guidelines on virtual etiquette. For example, if you want to chat with someone in the way that you would face to face in the kitchen or next to the water cooler, then ‘Teams’ is probably the best thing for that, but you should check if the person is available before you launch into a full conversation because that can be stressful for them. If you want to run a workshop, then we’d recommend using Zoom and something like Miro or Microsoft Whiteboard. Also, consider reducing the duration of your workshop or break it down into a number of shorter workshops. A workshop conducted in person is very different from a workshop conducted online. Not least because, certainly in my situation, I can’t afford the luxury of three hours. This means I can’t help with childcare.
Essentially, it’s about being as kind as possible to people. That’s one of the things that I encourage. We need to be kind to people and consider what they’re going through and how different it might be to what we’re going through. Everyone’s got their own struggles, it’s just that some of them aren’t as visible as others. There are different ways that you can exhibit that sort of kindness, for example, if you see that someone’s diary is very busy, and they’re in back to back meetings, could you maybe give them five minutes back between your meeting and the next one? Could you reduce your 45-minute meeting to 40 minutes or your 30-minute meeting to 25 minutes so they can get a cup of tea, go to the loo, get some headspace? Simple, seemingly trivial steps that are important.
Good practice around meetings is more important than ever. Before you book in that meeting, check whether someone is actually available, check whether you’re not triple or quadruple booking them, because that causes people to stress and that affects their mental health. Be considerate because if you’re double booking them or triple booking them, they’re going to have to spend time getting out of that mess. Put yourself in their shoes, what does that feel like?
Those are the things that I’m encouraging my organisation to adopt. I’ve already seen examples of it and that’s great.
Sam @ ADLIB: It’s interesting to think about some of those. Like talking about the communication etiquette that’s involved when actually the dynamic has changed a lot. You are in essence connected to (in some cases) somebody’s front room and their home.
When you look at some of the tools you mentioned and some of the practices when you talk about meetings and workshops, how do they look now compared to a few weeks ago when the world was so different and what have been the key changes that you’ve had to make?
Dan: They are different and, in some ways, I would say they’re better. I was facilitating a workshop recently and, before the pandemic hit, we would travel to one of our other office locations to run the workshop. I feel that changing the way these workshops are held has challenged the status quo and we’re now doing things in a different, more valuable way.
For example, for this workshop, we needed to use video conferencing for the conversation. That was an easy part, we would just use Zoom but the whiteboarding part proved a bit tricky. We’d been using Miro from time to time prior to the pandemic and so this time around it was a case of committing to Miro and seeing how it worked.
When I ran the session, I brought up the Miro board and said to the people at the beginning of the call, we’re going to do this as a bit of an experiment and let’s see how it goes, then started to put up sticky notes as things were going along.
Initially, the session would have been three hours, but I recommended that we break it down into two halves and made sure that we had a break in between. That seemed to go down well. At the end of the session, I asked how people found it.
I was delighted to hear that people thought it was better than doing it in person. It brought the whiteboard to the focus of the conversation, whether I was capturing things accurately. The areas that hadn’t yet been discussed were very clear and it felt like we’d got somewhere – we could all see the progress of our conversation. That was unexpected but great. If anything, it’s probably going to help us to show the value and the importance of what we do in the UCD team.
Sam @ ADLIB: That’s really interesting. In terms of how you communicate, manage and get the most out of your team is there a particular rhythm you’ve settled into? Or a working practice that is much different from what you were doing before?
Dan: When the pandemic hit, I was very aware of the fact that my team were used to being in the office. I’d spent a lot of time getting to know my team in person and doing my best to try to bring us all together. Now, we’ve been forced apart and this could have changed the dynamic irrevocably. We discussed and agreed on an approach to keeping in touch with each other. We have a virtual coffee for half an hour each day, which is optional. We can’t always make it but importantly, it’s not work-related, just a chance to chew the fat. I’ve enjoyed the fact that we’re six-plus weeks in and we’re still doing that.
Team meetings are working well – we still do those every week. We also have a session called ‘Design Horizons’, which is once every few months where we take some time out (typically about half a day) to focus on some of the more strategic, visionary things for the team. That’s posed a challenge. We’ve introduced different ways of doing it using Miro boards and Zoom and running a much shorter session. I broke it down into just two hours with a 10-minute break in the middle, but perhaps that was too short. You could say that I’m taking a user-centred design approach to this, too. It’s all about experimentation and iteration, seeing how good we can get. Things have changed a lot, but I think we’re still managing to keep in touch with each other and we feel like a team.
Our informal channels in Teams and WhatsApp have become more important than ever. I always make an effort to say good morning to everyone on Teams first thing if I can. I like to encourage that sort of positive domino effect of people chiming in. We’ve started to introduce (sort of by accident) a joke of the day, though sometimes we have to rely on Siri and Alexa to help us out. It’s good fun and we’ve done that pretty much every working day for six weeks now – quite an achievement!
Sam @ ADLIB: It’s quite easy in this situation for everything to become about work in a lot of ways and it’s good to encourage some of those things and I imagine some of those will probably stick way beyond the current situation as well.
Finally, is there one key piece of advice for people who are looking to get their teams functioning at their optimum in this situation?
Dan: A piece of advice I would give to someone in my position is, make sure that the approach you’re deciding upon is a result of collaborating with your team. Work with your team to find out what works – ask them questions, listen to their answers. This can feel like quite a vulnerable position for a team leader because you might feel that your team is looking to you to be the rock, the person that has all of the answers. However, imposing an approach that doesn’t work for your team risks a long-lasting and negative impact on the team’s dynamic.
This article previously appeared on the ADLIB Blog.
Despite the current state of lockdown, SearchStar’s annual Analytics and Conversion Conference is returning for the third time, albeit in a slightly different form, from Monday 22nd June.
Analytics & Conversion, 2021 & Beyond will run online across 5 days starting Monday June 22nd, as a series of 40-minute webinars held at 4pm each day. We’d love for you to join us for a week of informative and actionable webinars focused on the cutting edge of conversion and analytics.
You can see the full lineup of speakers below, and register for the webinar series here >>>
What? Analytics & Conversion Webinars
When? Monday June 22nd – Friday 26th | 4pm Each Day
Where? Register Here >>>
Monday June 22nd | The Role of Media Buying in Conversion Optimisation | Harry Martin, SearchStar
Harry explains the benefit of involving your media buying teams in your wider conversion optimisation strategy. He will explore the fundamental techniques available to advertisers, ensuring their website traffic is already primed to convert. Above all, Harry will challenge conventional ideas of where and when businesses need to begin the conversion optimisation process.
Tuesday June 23rd | How User Testing Can Amplify Your Conversion Optimisation | Ryan McCourt, Userlytics
There are many wonderful tools out there that can be used to monitor user flows or to tell you which page is better, but none of the tools tells you why something is going wrong. Due to this, many CRO experts are turning to user testing platforms to see what their users are getting tripped up on and listen to expectations. In this presentation, Ryan McCourt explains why user testing is becoming more popular, what issues a user testing platform can uncover that other tools can’t, and give some examples of insights uncovered during a simple user experience study.
Wednesday June 24th | Understanding a Non-Ecommerce Journey | Jon Boon, SearchStar & Connor Goddard, Pure Planet
SearchStar’s Lead Analytics Consultant Jon Boon and Pure Planet’s Data Scientist Connor Goddard will look at how Pure Planet embedded Web Analytics into their website and started using Google Analytics Enhanced ecommerce to measure a non-ecommerce website journey. Connor will go on to talk about how Pure Planet has used the data collected by Google Analytics to deliver actionable insights.
Thursday June 25th | Conversion Optimisation Case Study | TBC
Friday June 26th | Q&A and “Notworking”
Q&A will be held daily following each keynote presentation, and during this final day’s more social session. If you have any specific queries or questions about anything conversion and analytics, you can let us know during the registration process.
The world for agencies will certainly be different in the future. Some of you are holding your breath waiting for things to get back to normal. Others are expecting a ‘new-normal’ that will require a little bit of adjustment. But for most agencies their world will be altered significantly. Think revolution not evolution and fundamental change rather than refinement.
However successful you’ve been in the past; you won’t have an automatic right to thrive in the future. Some agencies will come out very well, most won’t, many won’t survive. This isn’t a false alarm. There is a critical challenge to understand how the environment will change and adapt to find your new place in the world. It won’t be easy to deliver true value for clients, employees and agency owners and this will feel like a real threat for a lot of agencies. But it will be a great opportunity for others. So, whatever battles you’re dealing with today, it’s never too early to be working on how you can become an agency fit for the future.
MUCH MORE THAN THE RECENT CRISIS
History has shown that crises can significantly reshape beliefs and behaviours. New social policies, ways of working, marketplace dynamics and customer needs have all been fuelled by major disruptions. The Second World War, 9/11 and the SARS virus have all played their part in influencing the world as we’ve known it. And Covid-19 will similarly drive change. And all that’s apart from the financial pressures brought about by the deep recession we’re entering now.
But for agencies the pressures are more fundamental than just this crisis. The agency world has been at a tipping point for many years. Originality and creativity have been fading, client connections weakening, employee commitment waning and profitability shrinking. Many agencies have become too elaborate, rigid and predictable. The door has been left open for newer types of competitors and they’ve fared very well.
If you’re an agency that has managed to stay fresh and ahead of these challenges, your preparations for the future are likely to be easier than others – but no less important. If you recognise any of these symptoms, you’ll need to be thinking and changing more radically. But if you do this properly it could be just what your agency has needed for some time – and set you up for years to come.
WINNING AND GROWING CLIENTS
The stagnation in agency sharpness and effectiveness has been felt by many clients for some time. We’ve all seen the increase in pitching, switching, multiple agencies and in-housing as clients have searched for people who can really deliver clever, joined-up solutions across the media landscape. And during this locked down period, they’ll have been exposed to even more agency offerings. They’ll have recognised new requirements, seen new ideas and found quicker, cheaper ways of getting good things done.
Agencies will be under greater pressure to convince clients that their level and type of expertise can genuinely add significant value. This will put more focus on smart thinking and creativity than on just ‘doing’. You’ll need to stack up well against new criteria in terms of offer and impact, taking out the gloss and eliminating unnecessary activities and timings. Relationships and financial rewards can still be mutually beneficial, but your clients will need to be chosen very carefully – and these might not be the ones you’ve had in the past or worked closely with during this crisis.
INSPIRING AND EMPOWERING TALENT
Attitudes and expectations towards work were already changing quickly before the pandemic arrived. The demand for greater meaning and flexibility was already challenging traditional approaches and putting pressure on leaders to be more balanced, transparent and fair. Recent experiences have deepened these desires, added a demand for a greater sense of belonging and prompted more people to feel the same way.
With clients insisting on only working with the very best, attracting and retaining talent will be more difficult than ever before. As leaders you’ll be challenged to define your purpose and to commit to these beliefs in your work every day. And to maintain motivation, productivity and profitability you’ll need to think radically about new approaches to roles, structures, recognition, remuneration, progression and empowerment. These are just some of the many new demands that will fall on leadership teams who must now become more skilful and more consistent than they’ve demonstrated in the past.
CREATING BUSINESS VALUE
With profit margins and dividend streams already under pressure, Covid-19 will only have made things worse for shareholders. And with the list of potential purchasers already much reduced, the current interruption to growth plans will make the chance of a good exit feel even further away. But dreams of easy growth and big sale values have never been realistic. The optimum strategy has always been to build the best business you can and keep your value options open.
Good agencies manage risk well and that will be even more important in the future. Agencies with low profit margins trying to grow their way to better results will have learned the hard way in recent months. So, it will be vital to keep things tight and not add back costs ahead of securing the revenues to support them. Be prepared to fundamentally change your business model – what you provide, to whom, how and for how much. And don’t be daunted by having 2020 as the base year for your new high growth track record, with the right changes the next few years could be significantly better than you would ever have achieved with your ‘old’ business.
EMERGE STRONGER
To emerge from this period as an agency with a clear, distinctive place for the future will be no ordinary task. Bold, fresh thinking and a rigorous process are vital. It’s not about guess work, nor about waiting to see how things shape up. You’ll need to understand the marketplace in which you’ll be competing, decide how you can play to win, assess your current business and act to transform your game.
We’ve set up a framework to guide this process and we’ve been working it through with a number of proactive clients. It’s been an exciting time for them to gain confidence, set a new direction, see new opportunities and remove the barriers holding them back.
If you aren’t clear why the world will need your agency – you’d better get moving. If you’re already on your way to a good place, keep going. It’s not for the feint hearted, but if you don’t embrace the challenge you might just fade away.
Make sure you’re ready and if we can help just let us know.
There is no denying the fact that Covid-19 has had a big impact on businesses. The pandemic has been affecting different industries in varying ways. The event industry is trying to find innovative new ways to combat the impact of Covid-19, with the business event sector seeing 74% of all conferences and exhibitions postponed to the last quarter of 2020, with the remainder cancelled altogether. Meanwhile, a rise in homeworking has led to a 37% increase in cyber attacks with people turning to the tech industry for solutions. It might seem like an inopportune time to be focusing on search engine optimisation (SEO). Quite the opposite. SEO presents the chance to pivot your digital marketing strategy, turning adversity into opportunity.
Since lockdown began, internet usage has surged by between 50% and 70%. This means that your brand will be visible to a higher number of people, provided that you employ the right digital marketing strategy. If you’re in an industry that has slowed, this is an ideal time to focus on your web and content strategy. Why not try out some new tactics to engage your audience, or reach a new one. If you are working in an industry that has experienced a recent surge in activity it is important to employ strategies that will increase the likelihood of customer retention. Essentially, use SEO to ensure that your business is in the strongest possible position when we return to the new normal.
That sounds good, but how can I improve my SEO strategy?
Research is the foundation of your SEO strategy. The most experienced SEO experts still need to research keywords and algorithm updates because search behaviours and algorithms are constantly changing, even when there isn’t a global pandemic. Covid-19 has led to big changes in search behaviour so your research needs to be founded on what keywords and SEO strategies are being used right now. When you’re researching keywords, concentrate your efforts on websites that collect real-time data. Google Trends is one that we recommend.
If you’re an SEO novice, you might find that your research presents you with more questions than answers. That’s why we’ve defined some of the most commonly used SEO terms:
Now that you’ve done your keyword research, you’re ready to start writing content. But where do you start? If you have a blog on your website, this can considerably boost your page ranking. The reason why blogs are so effective at boosting page rankings is because Google’s algorithms value websites that have consistent content updates.
If you already update your blog frequently, you will need to make adjustments to the type of content you upload. First and foremost, ensure that you are delivering content in a way that is sensitive to the current situation.
Build keyword research into your content writing. If you’re in the education technology sector your research may have shown that people are using ‘at home’ keyword modifiers when entering search terms. For example, before Covid-19 people may have been searching for “French courses” but there may now be a higher number of searches for “French courses at home”. Build these keyword modifiers into your content writing by including modifiers such as “online”, “from home”, and “during lockdown” in your blog titles and headers.
When you are writing the main body of your content, ensure that you are peppering your writing with keywords. However, balance is integral. You should focus on using one or two long-tail keywords per blog post to avoid keyword stuffing, which is something that Google’s algorithms will penalise you for. If you want to stay on the good side of Google’s algorithms, focus on longform blogs (1000-2000 words) but be aware that the current algorithm also favours consistency, so when you’re deciding how many blogs to post, choose a number that you can keep up with.
The best SEO writing answers popular search terms and provides value to the reader. For example, if you are working in education technology, tips for educating children from home would be a good blog post topic. Don’t forget to let your social media following know that you’ve published a new blog post as this will increase traffic to your website. For more tips on social media, have a read of our blog.
Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool used by businesses to manage their online presence across Google and is a useful tool for improving your search ranking. Google gave advice to their GMB users to update their Google listings with any alterations in operating hours. Expanding on this, we would also recommend that you update your website with a coronavirus statement that appears on the homepage, informing visitors of any changes to services, such as delayed delivery times. If you have an FAQ section on your website, it is advisable to also update this in line with your current operating procedure.
Website speed is another simple update that can be made to improve your SEO. This is a tactic which will add value to your website in the long term. To improve your website speed compress large images and use the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool to get bespoke recommendations for improvements.
Links are another simple update you can make to boost your SEO. If you have previously written content where you have referred to some statistics, or mentioned an article you’ve read, link back to the original source. There are two types of links you can include on your website: internal and external. Internal links send the user to another page of your own website, while external links send them to a different website.
Remember that keyword research? Now is your chance to use it. If your website has a blog, go through old blog posts and update them according to your keyword findings. You can also do the same with the other pages on your website. Just be careful you don’t overstuff them with keywords.
So what are you waiting for? Go forth and optimise! If anything in our blog piqued your interest, get in touch to have a chat about SEO.
At POPcomms we have been working with our clients and event agencies to help them to continue to meet and connect with their customers even though they can’t actually meet in a physical space.
We have developed an online 3D virtual platform that allows them to embed any kind of model, maybe they already have an exhibition stand model or we can create an environment from scratch for them.
Within the 3D space they can then include other interactive 3D models, interactive presentations, video libraries, PDFs, seminars, live presentations, one-to-one video calls, networking – everything that you would expect at a physical event plus more.
Combining creative techniques from the worlds of architecture and video gaming with powerful Progressive Web App (PWA) technology they can run on mobile, tablet or desktop from within your browser and being PWAs they can be used offline as well.
Below is a video showing some of the features you can include in a 3D environment
If you’d like to know more please feel free to get in touch.
Damjan Haylor
07981 707 599
www.popcomms.com