Resource
Managing your employment brand (the perception people have of what it’s like to work at a particular company) is essential the health of your business. Not convinced? Consider this:
A strong employment brand can enhance revenues, profits, and customer satisfaction.
Building your employment brand has an impact that reaches far beyond recruitment and retention. Studies have shown correlations between a strong employment brand and increased revenues and profit margins, higher levels of customer satisfaction, and a more consistent customer brand experience. These benefits are tied in some way to having the "right fit" employees at your company and having employees who are committed to the success of your business. Developing an effective employment brand has a direct effect on these factors.
It lets you stand out from your competition.
A strong employment brand positions you as an "employer of choice" by highlighting how you address the needs of prospective hires better than your competition. Time and again, studies show that salary is not the most important factor for prospective employees in deciding where to work. Instead, they’re looking for the place that appears to offer the best "value" — that is, the best overall collection of benefits (many of which are intagible). Being perceived as having better employer value is supported by the prospective employee’s educated perception of what you offer. In the talent acquisition arena, winning margins are often small. A fully understood and well-articulated employment brand keeps the focus on overall value, not just salary.
Mark Shevitz, Senior Brand Strategist
Resource
Your employment brand is the perception current employees and prospective hires have of what it’s like to work at your company. It’s the first impression you make on potential employees. It’s the expectations you set for new hires. And it’s the reason that your most valuable employees decide to either stay with you or leave for ostensibly greener pastures. But here’s the kicker: Whether you realize it or not, your company already has an employment brand –– one that’s likely been shaped by word-of-mouth from current and former employees and customer interactions with staff and media (whether employment-related or not). And unless you take an active role in shaping your employment brand, it will continue along the same path. By working to shape your employment brand, you can help attract and retain your ideal employees –– the ones you have deemed critical to your success. Fortune magazine’s list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” reads like a rundown of industry leaders: Google, Starbucks Coffee, Aflac, S.C. Johnson & Son, Network Appliance and Wegmans Food Markets. These companies aren’t great employers just because they’re at the forefront of their markets. Their success is due in great part to their ability to hire and keep the right people and manage perceptions of their work environments.
Mark Shevitz, Senior Brand Strategist
Resource
One final comment on video. Before jumping lens-first into B2B video, it is wise to learn best practices. For example, what is the best balance of substance to sales pitch? (The "Change Artists" series mentioned in a previous post walks this tightrope very adroitly.) Also, don’t try to produce a video on the cheap by forsaking a professional videographer and editing suite. While jerky camera motion and hot lighting may be the expectation from a YouTube clip, a B2B video should be held up to the standard of every other piece of communication your company produces. Keep those things in mind, and you’ll have Steven Soderbergh on the run in no time.
— Brian Davies, Managing Partner
Resource
I have a confession: I love grammar. As far as most people are concerned, this marks me –– at best –– as very odd. But I have good reason to feel this way. As a writer, communication is at the heart of my craft, and good grammar is at the heart of communication.
In my opinion, too many people have an irrational fear of grammar. Believe it or not, it’s designed to help us –– by clarifying meaning. Take, for example, the title of Lynn Truss’ most recent book, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.” As the cover (which depicts a panda holding a gun) illustrates, nuances of meaning are contained in the way we structure and punctuate our sentences. In this case, the mere presence of a comma can alter the meaning of the title. Without it, the title describes panda behavior. But with the comma, it MUST be read as a series of actions –– eating, shooting and leaving.
That brings me to my point. In business communications, clarity is particularly important –– not only for those creating the messages, but also for those receiving them. By following the rules of grammar, our communications have the best chance of being understood by the widest audience. So ask yourself: Are your communications as clear they could be? For a quick brushup, check out https://www.world-english.org/grammar.htm.
Irene Wescott, Associate Creative Director
Resource
One of the most common mistakes I have seen over the past two years when taking over an Adwords or Yahoo! Search marketing account is the lack of negative keywords. Negative keywords do the same thing in PPC marketing that they do in the search box.
For example, if I search for “Movéo” we are not the only things that come up. There is a band with moveo as part of their name in Canada. So I simply change my search to “moveo –band” and their results should disappear. IT works the same way for PPC marketing. If I am running a campaign I will take just as much time while researching the campaign to develop negative keywords as I do developing the keywords we will be bidding on.
One major source of negative keywords is other industries that share the use of very broad terms. Usually both industries use some sort of qualifying term; the other industries term makes a great negative keyword.
Negative keywords can be used at different levels in the campaign structure as well. In both Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search marketing negative keywords can be added at both the campaign level and the ad group level.
Using negative keywords helps eliminate junk impressions that would most likely not click on your ad, and definitely not convert into a customer. By eliminating junk impressions we are able to increase the click-through-rate, helping to increase the Quality Score assigned to the keyword or ad copy.
Resource
Corporate blogging is still fairly rare, with only a few big companies choosing to blog. When Movéo Integrated Blog began we realized that this was not just something we wanted to be Bob and Brian’s responsibility. For many companies blogging seems like something that only upper management should be involved in. Movéo began this way, opening up the blog to department managers. The plan has always been to slowly open up the blog to a larger number of employees.
While limiting the blog initially to department managers, those managers soon found that either they weren’t familiar with the technology or they didn’t have the time to write. So they asked their employees to either write the posts, and have them proof them, or they wrote them and asked someone to enter them into the blog.
Employees who normally don’t interact with clients started getting excited, the blog means recognition publicly of their expertise. Soon employees were communicating more across departments talking about what someone posted on the blog.
When a corporate blog is opened up to employees it benefits the business in more ways than just taking the load off of management to produce content. The corporate culture is given a boost.
Resource
With the vast amount of publishers and opportunities in the online arena, the ability to utilize multiple planning sources helps create a well-crafted media buy. Today, Google announced the introduction of a tool called Ad Planner, which gives media planners the ability to find Web sites based upon demographic attributes. The Ad Planner user enters demographics and sites related to the desired audience, and Ad Planner then gives information about sites the audience is likely to visit. Another benefit of the tool is that it shows, in detail, how many people visit a particular Web site. This offering will be a nice complement to Alexa Web Search, which gives Traffic Rank, Reach, and Pageviews for Web sites. The new Google tool is expected to be free, and will available only by invitation for now.
Dan Murray, Manager, Emerging Media
Resource
As I was driving to work the other day, I was surprised by a statement in big letters across the back of a truck in front of me. It stated, “An ISO 9001 Certified Transportation Company”. There was nothing else except for a logo, and as such, this particular company is missing out on a great opportunity to communicate its brand on the back of the truck.
Perhaps the company was sensitive about certification and forgot to mention how it uniquely addresses the needs of its customers. I am reminded of Seth Godin’s blog post entitled “Self Promotion.” He points out how companies tend to promote themselves in a way that doesn’t address the needs and desires of customers. The promotion is “me-centric,” or company-centric, rather than “you-centric.”
I understand that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification is important to communicate to the target audiences because it provides credibility. The question is how to use that important information more effectively. It should not have been placed solely with the logo on the back of the truck. The statement is not a substitute for brand positioning.
The ISO certification does not guarantee the quality of end products and services, and it does not communicate a competitive advantage. In fact, a competitor’s website states the following about itself:
“In addition to the fundamental ISO 9001 quality-management certification, the company holds:
> ISO 14001 certificate for environmental issues
> OHSAS 18001 certificate for occupational health and safety
> Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA) security attestations
> U.S. Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) certificate”
The ISO 9001 on its own clearly does not help a company to differentiate itself in the marketplace. By using only the ISO statement on the back of the truck, the company is missing out on a great opportunity to communicate who it is and why someone should care. The company should consider developing a brand strategy that considers its strengths and weaknesses, its competitors, the needs and wants of its customers and trends in the category.
Resource
A few more thoughts about enhancing brands with video. The truth is, B2B has bought into video, but tentatively. According to BtoB Magazine, "Online video is becoming the killer application of the Internet as B-to-B marketers embrace it as an integral part of their marketing programs." While this may be true in some quarters, the fact is that many B2B marketers aren’t quite sure how to leverage video because they tend to look at it as an advertising vehicle (which it can be), rather than a tool that can serve a number of mission critical purposes (of which advertising can be one). Companies like IBM have created "long-form documentaries" to use for demand-creation purposes. HP’s "Change Artists" series, which launched late last year, used video to help position the company as a thought leader in their marketplace. Movéo produces quarterly videos for one of our clients that help the company communicate with its employees worldwide. Another Movéo client uses video to enhance its clients’ employment brands. Industrial training and continuing education are also well suited for downloadable video on demand. And last but not least, there’s video’s potential as an advertising platform: It’s projected to reach $2.9 billion by 2010.
–Brian Davies, Managing Partner
Resource
YouTube. JumpCut. Joost. The Web is now filled with video. Driving it all is the nearly ubiquitous availability of broadband Internet connections that let computer users quickly receive the large files needed to experience "smooth" online motion and sound. If the explosion of video seems to you like just another example of B2C media moving faster than B2B media, you’re right. But that’s not the whole story. According to BusinessWeek, more than two-thirds of active Internet users had a high-speed connection as of early 2006. Two-thirds. If you look at the B2B subset of these users, virtually 100 percent of them have broadband connections, and have had them for a number of years. So why haven’t B2B companies embraced video? It’s not that they’re afraid of new ideas –– after all, the B2B world embraced CRM before knowing exactly what it meant. And it’s not that video’s effectiveness is in doubt. For dramatic and lifelike representations of people and products, it’s the most powerful medium out there. Consider this insight from a study by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann: "84% of Internet users said that online video enhances content related to technology product information and research.” And here are some other facts to chew on: A recent McKinsey survey found that nearly two-thirds of the respondents investing in Web 2.0 technologies (which include video) think they’re important for maintaining company market share, creating competitive edge or meeting customer demand. Meanwhile, 35 percent were either using or planning to use podcasts/video in 2007. It seems to clear that video is going to be increasingly important for disseminating B2B messages –– even if it’s not yet reaching its potential.
— Brian Davies, Managing Partner
