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joi, 7 august 2014

7 Empowering Presentations and More from MozCon

Posted: 06 Aug 2014 05:15 PM PDT

At the MozPlex, we're all still coming down from the incredible energy, excitement, and new ideas that MozCon brings every year. Thank you again to all of you who joined us to make this year's MozCon the best ever. For those of you who couldn't join us, we wanted to share some of the best slide decks from MozCon (videos coming next month!) and also share downloads for all the decks from MozCon.

Additionally, for those planning ahead, make sure to buy your early bird ticket for MozCon 2015. We expect to sell out again, so grab this great deal now!

Mad Science Experiments in SEO & Social Media

by Rand Fishkin

Rand's put on his lab coat, literally, and dived into SEO and social media experiments. He looked at the correlations and causations for everything from how rapid tweeting of photos affects follower gains/losses to how clicks might influence SERPs.

You are So Much More than an SEO

by Wil Reynolds

Wil once again brought his A-game and his push that SEO is a growing field and we SEOs must grow with it. He brings us all together in a presentation exploring how with our colleagues in other marketing disciplines, we're failing to capture business for our brand or clients.

Bad Data, Bad Decisions: The Art of Asking Better Questions

by Stephanie Beadell

Stephanie taught us how to think about the questions we ask in surveys differently. Are we biasing our audience and leading them to answering our survey in a certain way? Are we collecting the wrong types of data?

YouTube: The Most Important Search Engine You Haven't Optimized For

by Phil Nottingham

Phil brought his video expertise back to the MozCon stage. This year, he tackled YouTube, the world's second largest search engine, but one often ignored by marketers. Phil puts you on track to stop being befuddled and make a YouTube plan for your brand.

How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas

by Dr. Pete Meyers

Pete surprised everyone this by talking about not the Google Algo. Instead, he dove into one of his other passions: creating great content. Pete shows you how to be brave and build out your big idea.

Scaling Creativity: Making Content Marketing More Efficient

by Stacey (Cavanagh) MacNaught

Stacey's presentation followed up Pete by diving into how to make the content process happen, especially if you have multiple clients or work at an agency. She addressed how to find the right audience for your content. And then how to throw all your ideas on the table and sort out the best ones.

How to Use Social Science to Build Addictive Communities

by Richard Millington

Rich believes in the power of communities. He walked the MozCon audience through how to build up a community through shared experiences and rituals. Rich also showed how to make a business case for community building.

Can't get enough MozCon decks? You can download all of them in the Agenda section on the MozCon page.

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Today at 2 p.m. ET: Join a Twitter Q&A on the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit

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Today at 2 p.m. ET: Join a Twitter Q&A on the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit

From last week's meeting of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, to this week's U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, there's been a lot going on here in Washington focused on strengthening our economic and diplomatic ties with Africa. So as the summit comes to a close, we're giving you an opportunity to chat with us about what this means for the future of Africa and the United States.

Today, at 2 p.m. ET, join Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and the ONE Campaign for a Twitter Q&A.

Ask your questions now and follow the Twitter Q&A live right here.

President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the "Investing in Africa's Future" session during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., Aug. 6, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Profiterol vision: how chocolatiers are making you buy online

Posted: 07 Aug 2014 01:42 AM PDT

We all know its easy to sell chocolates in a supermarket or corner shop to those shopping and influenced by their current state of hunger and desire for a sweet something. But is it more difficult to capture these customers online? Sure, you can still have those hunger pangs and need for a slab of chocolate when you sit in front of your computer, but does that translate to making an online purchase, or does it just make you head for the nearest vending machine?

In this blog post, I’ve looked at five boutique chocolate brands, who all have at least one high street shop in the UK, but also have transactional websites, to see how they are making consumers buy from them.

The brands:

Godiva – 10 stores in the UK
Hotel Chocolat – 73 stores in the UK
Rococo Chocolates – 4 stores in the UK
Artisan du Chocolat – 6 stores in the UK
Iain Burnett, The Highland Chocolatier – 3 stores in the UK (all in Scotland)

Tis the season to sell chocolate?

Well, no in a word. Just take a look at the annual search trends around chocolate and chocolate terms below:

We buy chocolate in the winter months, for Christmas and for Valentines day, not when its hot outside. So how do our chocolate retailers cope from April to August when traditional demand is reduced? This blog post will discuss the tactics that luxury chocolate brands are attempting to use to draw in consumers over the summer months.

So what is the key to selling chocolate in the summer months?

Creating a need and providing a solution to the need

Consumers may not be looking for what you’re selling during the summer months, but that doesn’t mean they won’t buy. The cynical among us declare every February that Valentine’s Day was promoted by greetings card companies to profit from our feeling of obligation to buy a card for the occasion.

Of course this is a psychological trick as old as time but using this sentiment, chocolate retailers can promote an obligation towards events that occur in the summer, creating demand for their products in the same way as greetings card companies (may or may not) have done.

We can see in the image below that Hotel Chocolat has done just that on-site and in its email marketing campaign this July.

Hotel Chocolat responded to the lovely period of hot weather in the UK by convincing us that a bottle of cheap wine and a pack of Asda burgers buns is not a sufficient gift for your BBQ host these days!

Whilst browsing on HC’s site, you may also realise that you’ve forgotten to buy a card for your neighbour’s daughter, who’s just graduated from university. But oh! People buy nice chocolates for that these days do they? Oh okay, you’ll add one of those to your basket seeing as you’re already getting a gift for your BBQ hosts. Saves you going to the card shop!

So its fair to say that Hotel Chocolat has done a great job of creating the need for you to buy. Its summer promotions are timely and season-appropriate. Check out this email from 7th July for example:

Well timed, less than two weeks before most schools finish for summer, they’ve reminded you to buy gifts for your children’s teachers and they’ve used clever copy to remind you why teachers need rewarding. Plus a special offer for multi-buys. Winner!

Are the other brands doing this?

Well there are others who are creating a reason to buy, but they aren’t quite focusing on the ‘need’ bit enough in their promotions. Lets take a look:

Rococo – this is the email I received from Rococo on 18th July. While it did refer to ‘Summer Parties and Picnics’ it didn’t exactly draw me in with the product offering or copy. The best emails are those that do all the hard work for you and this one doesn’t. Fudge doesn’t exactly exude summer to me, so I’d need a little inspiration to link buying items from Rococo to a summer picnic or party.

Iain Burnett, The Highland Chocolatier – This brand does a good job of serving up some seasonal promotions in its email marketing. See its email below from 10th July, which provides tips on how to use its products in a summer setting. Whilst the brand has highlighted the opportunity to buy a ‘Thank You’ gift for someone, perhaps it should have directly attributed this to buying a gift for a teacher – taking out the hard work for the email recipient. It’s also unfortunate that the website itself doesn’t address the summer season, as the site has what I’d call quite a festive colour scheme.

And what of the other two brands? Well I didn’t receive any emails from Godiva over the period I investigated so I couldn’t comment on that, but I did receive this one from Artisan du Chocolat on one of the hottest days of the summer:

Just…no.

Thank god Godiva have acknowledged it’s Summer on their Instagram feed:

This seems to serve mainly to encourage consumers to visit Godiva stores to buy iced and fresh summer treats, which isn’t a bad thing. Godiva does have a small ‘summer’ selection on-site, but its very well hidden and doesn’t seem to be under much promotion, which is a shame.

So in terms of creating a need and selling a solution, Iain Burnett and Hotel Chocolat are doing the best this summer. It often comes as little surprise that the largest brand does things a lot better, but it seems that Hotel Chocolat are well and truly leaving the rest behind in this area. Do you know of any other chocolate brands who are doing well in digital promotion over the summer months?

In my next blog post, I’ll look at how these brands are engaging with consumers and how they are increasing average order values using some interesting on-site techniques.

The post Profiterol vision: how chocolatiers are making you buy online appeared first on White.net.