The different levels of online communication. Creating your own maze at a new Westworld.

Posted On January 24, 2017 By l7copro In Content Marketing, Online Marketing Tips, Social Media, Strategy /

Robert Ford creates this strange fictional world when people can do anything at all, with no judgments, and no law. Finding who we really are is the objective. And Westworld allows people to solve their maze in life. This also happens in the real world. It happens to you, to us, to everybody. We are all looking to find our path. But what happens when we live more in the online world than in the real one? At Lis7o, we think everybody starts walking through their online maze too. So creating different online mazes for different targets must be the key to making content relevant and engaging nowadays, right?

When the mysterious man dressed in black wants to find the maze, he tries to go deeper in the Westworld game. Well, in our world we don’t really have to because we are already swimming in the game. The game is all around us. It’s like a matrix, but a real one. And we are all blinded, searching the internet and the networks for our true meaning.

Just a few are searching for their way out, but they continue to fall in the same matrix all over again. Our lives pass by day after day navigating on social media, collecting likes, and giving away all of our personal data and our private moments, and so on. So, why won’t brands take advantage of it?

The new communications paraphernalia opens a lot of opportunities for creating mazes in different channels. A Facebook maze, an Instagram maze, a Snapchat maze, and so on. And of course, they should all be interconnected. Social media is substituting real life, so the digital experience should be that real. We need to become the masters of the game, we have to play our role of creative directors of this Westworld, like Anthony Hopkins’ character does.

So what does all of this mean? How do we become the masters of this game? There are at least two levels in online communications. If you just publish content but you don’t have a real strategy you’re playing on the first level. If you assign a more profound meaning to online communications, creating a “real life experience” for your clients, then you’ve solved your own maze.

You’ll have an army of content managers, online strategists, and marketers available to fight, but you’ll have to keep them up to date and trending, or the story will be old and nonsense and nobody will want to play with your brand anymore. They’ll just choose another story, another maze.

Create appealing and compelling stories that engage your customers like if they were in real life, get real life insights and work on them until you’ve turned them into an online experience. Sometimes, like Dolores, we’ll have some blanks, but nevermind, on the next day, we’ll continue to play again the same game, with a happy smile on our faces.

As William once said: “this world is exactly like the one outside. A game, one to be fought, taken, won.”

5 keys to success with content marketing: the power of a good story.

Posted On January 20, 2017 By l7copro In Content Marketing, Online Marketing Tips, SEO, Social Media, Strategy /

Surely you’d prefer to follow a story, rather than the same classic advertising email marketing or “call now” ad. At least, we do. That’s the main reason why content continuum is the key to acquiring some marketplace advantages. And what if that content is generated just by a regular user like you? The power of a good story is so much stronger than any other traditional content. Great content with which the reader can connect is even better than the generic one generated by brands. If you can achieve that, you’re all set up.

Compelling stories told by great brands serve both readers and marketing departments. If you read about content marketing you’ll find out that the 5 keys to success are the following ones.

The 5 keys to content marketing success

Relevant and useful content, easy to share and deploy across social channels, email marketing, blogs, etc. Your strategy should be 360°, a holistic way is required.
Customer-centric personalized content. Personalization will make your audience feel they’re being valued by your brand, and to get an experience that will not equal any other content at all, ever. At least if you do it well!
User-generated content. We talked about this previously. If you see a friend of yours, or a friend of a friend, or even someone to whom you will likely feel identified, you’ll be more impacted than with any other content.
Effective trending publishing techniques. That means you have to consider what’s positioning better for each channel in which you’re sharing your content. For instance, videos and streaming perform better on Facebook and Instagram. Same happens with a gif format. New innovative formats are also welcome, like triptychs on Instagram (content that is divided between three pictures and posted individually, getting as a result just one complex image).
Content should be continuous. We talked about a continuum because you have to build a relationship with your clients. If you stop talking to them, they’ll forget about you, or worse, they’ll feel betrayed.

A good content strategy will also help you in many other aspects, like performing better on SEO, in order to gain more traffic and better position on Google or to reach more new prospects. We’ve seen statistics that talk about content generation as the most successful strategy to improve SEO (57% of the brands that took the survey).
The goal is engaging your consumers so badly that they’ll be looking forward to hearing from your brand, not as much as from their friends, but at least more than from your competitors. It’s all about taking care of the digital experience they’ll get, that finally will be far more important than the product itself, or even its price.

5 types of social media content that will perform perfectly

Posted On December 5, 2016 By l7copro In Content Marketing, Online Marketing Tips, Social Media, Strategy /

If you manage your own social media, you’ll surely run out of ideas at some point. Of course, if you check your insights you’ll find out some posts are performing better than others, and you’ll realize some types of content are better than others. But when it comes to really crack social media, you need to renew your content at every step.

Drivers to sales will not remain always the same, and innovative content will guarantee your engagement rate powers remain up.

So here are some ideas for you to try next time:

Snapchat stories. We’ve already talked about Snapchat tactics in a previous post. Your aim should be user generated content. And how could you start working towards that objective? Filters, stickers, and of course real-time video. If you’re not already working on Snapchat, take into account maybe you’ll have an advantage being one of the first in your field to get into. According to a New york-based research firm, L2, only 70% of businesses have Snapchats accounts. Just picture your strategy and start trying. Geo-targeted filters, drawings, behind the scenes content, the blend you like the most. It’s all matter of trying in a new social media network.

GIFs. They are a fun alternative to static content. Performing very well, they’ll allow you to easily tell a story, educate your clients about anything, and add some dynamic to your brand image. You can take a look at some of the brands that are already using a .gif strategy, like https://twitter.com/trello. If you want to create your own GIFs (and that’s our suggestion) you can do it using lots of web tools, like http://giphy.com/create/gifmaker.
Infographics. Less is more. If you want to publish lots of data, you’d better don’t post just text. You know the saying: “An image is worth a thousand words”. Sometimes an image is not enough either. But you can mix them together, and you’ll get more attention. Images + text = infographics! Try canva.com to build your own.

Cinemagraphs. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll find this kind of GIFs, that will show a static image with only some part of it moving. It’s a more artistic kind of media, that will require a more experimented designer, but it’s worth the effort.
Streaming. Everyone is streaming right now! At least many, many users are, so we are positive it will work for brands too. It’s a more intimate experience and people we’ll feel they are getting exclusive content. Also, people spend more than 3x more time watching a live video compared to a traditional uploaded video. And of course, Facebook is rewarding this by prioritizing streaming on their feed. So isn’t it worth trying? Streaming via Facebook or Instagram. Try it out!

Let us hear your experience when you give a chance to these 5 types of social media content. Try – measure – and retry with something else. You know this is an ever evolving context. It would be good if you follow the wind and evolve yourself, right? No more BS!

For marijuana businesses. How to market your cannabis brand?

Posted On November 22, 2016 By l7copro In Content Marketing, Online Marketing Tips, Strategy /

Everyone knows the news about marijuana for recreational use, that has been recently legalized in 8 states + DC in the US. And even when marijuana for medical use has already traveled a long journey since it’s healing abilities were discovered in ancient China, there’s still the stoner stigma. That prejudice implies that if someone uses marijuana, then he or she is a stoner, or a junky. Most of us are already beyond that stereotype, but lots of people aren’t.

In a now easier-to-navigate environment, overturning those stereotypes shouldn’t be that hard for marketers. In fact, every brand in the USA is thinking of the advantages they could get from the new regulations. Marijuana has been legalized for recreational use in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada, and we believe that if you’re selling to people in those states, whether you are a marijuana business or not, you should be wondering what to do, how to make the most of this.

Take Constellation Brands (Corona beer and Svedka vodka) and what they are doing as the perfect example. They are thinking of including cannabis in their alcohol beverages, trying to jump in an industry that’s about to explode.

So let’s see some tips so you too can make the most of all the buzz:

Make negative associations to marijuana go away. Don’t you ever use marijuana slang. Words like “weed” and “pot”, or phrases like “getting stoned” or “getting high” are not suggested. If you’re marketing cannabis products for recreational use, build your message around a certain type of lifestyle, not about slang.
It’s not necessary to show a leaf. Perhaps you’d be more likely to share an image that reminds of the experience that you could get consuming your marijuana product. There’s no need to show the old image we are all used to. A more sophisticated approach can go a long way.
Participating in conferences and expos in the field. You’ll learn a lot and you’ll be able to exchange practices with other businesses like yours.

Of course, you should be careful when it comes to marketing cannabis. As we said before, marijuana has been legalized in most states, but not at a federal level. We’ve come a long way, but up to date only 59.3% of people in the US lives in a state where cannabis has been legalized, according to MJBizDaily. So certain laws and regulations against marijuana selling and advertising still apply.

Here are our suggestions:

Focus your communication on adults. Segment your target for 21+.
Don’t target people out of the states that are pro marijuana.
Be aware of Google, Facebook, and Instagram regulations.

Whether you are a marijuana grower, dispensary, distributor, or if you are part of the bigger ecosystem created by marijuana, (that involves lighting, fertilizers, hydroponic, etc), we are sure you have to make the most of the new regulations, and begin right away ramping up your efforts in marketing. So start your engines, and go!

Pic copyright: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/16343004819/

Snapchat is not for everyone

Posted On November 1, 2016 By l7copro In Content Marketing, Mobile, Online Marketing Tips, Social Media, Strategy /

Gone are the days when Snapchat was the go-to platform for teen running away from prying eyes. Now, more and more people are interested in the platform’s marketing capabilities – and its developers are working to make it easy for those people to get in. Last month, the company has changed its name to Snap.Inc, and launched their first physical product to the market: a pair of sunglasses with a camera that allows to capture video for 10 minutes, in order to publish it later on Snapchat.

The app now has almost 60 million of active users in US and Canada each day, and that amount is expected to grow by 27% this year. That quantity places it on top of Twitter, with a projected revenue for 2018 of $1.76 billion, according to a forecast from eMarketer.

Yet, even with such an increasing popularity, Snapchat can be tricky and confusing, even for its own users. And although Snapchat has been in the market since 2011, it’s still hard to crack by marketers. They see this social media network as a gold mine, because of it’s large millennial and Gen Z users database, but also as a very tough one, due to its interface and logic. In fact brand stories that only last 24 hours are a challenge for marketers.

So, Snapchat is trying to make it easier for marketers like us to use the platform for our marketing efforts. But how? The platform was not offering lots of advertising and measurement options as other social media networks do. This has all changed now:

They’ve opened and shared their API for programmatic buying, which includes targeting via email matching, performance analytics tools and A/B testing for ads, among other features.
They’ve launched three ad targeting tools: Snap Audience Match, Snapchat Lifestyle Categories, and Lookalike Audiences.
Although at first Snapchat was over protecting users from “creepy ads”, they are now about to cross the fine line, by introducing behavioral targeting, based on user’s activity on the app.

We want to join forces, and so we leave here a piece of advice and some clues for you to solve the puzzle:

Focus on filters. As tags on twitter, Snapchat users are crazy about filters. Special dates in the year and events could be a hint.
Engage users with polls or contests. Just try the traditional A/B screen that we’ve been using for Facebook and you’ll be fine.
Drive traffic into your profile. This could be done by adding your Snapchat account to your Instagram, or by email marketing with a QR code (that’s just an example, you can figure out your own way).
Get users to create your content. Of course user generated content is always better, on every social media network.

No one has really figured Snapchat out, and so leading brands are trying to market on the platform, because as always, the first ones will be the ones to get more revenues. And that’s what this article is about. It’s a matter of deciding if you’re between the leading ones, or if you’ll just wait for them to crack this. What will it be?

Pic copyright: https://www.flickr.com/photos/67683836@N02/16910572286/

The miracles we expect from digital marketing

Posted On October 6, 2016 By l7copro In Online Marketing Tips, Strategy / 1

As we work with different clients, we realize everyone is making the same mistake. They all wait for miracles. And cheap miracles. It’s weird to experience a miracle, and it’s even more weird to get a digital miracle.

Our clients are pursuing digital transformation, and that’s the first step. But when they assign a budget to digital, they automatically set an expectation for ROI. They hope each dollar they invest in marketing will be counted back in a while and will come back with lots of earnings, and they feel disappointed if that doesn’t happen quickly.

They complain to their digital agencies, they fire their CMOs, and they continue to expect miracles from the next ones. Well, buddies, that’s not the key to success. Miracles won’t happen this way. In fact, you shouldn’t be waiting for a miracle at all.

We are tired of explaining that, when you invest in digital, you have to think on your brand’s health on the long term and not just on your sales results for the next period. It’s an old paradigm that has been thrown away by the greatest advertising gurus: promotions vs branding. The lack of a true customer-centered strategy can’t take you to your gold mine. If you don’t care about the perceptions and attitudes the public is experimenting with your brand, you won’t be successful.

Some interesting statistics

Do you know 90% of sales are influenced by digital? Maybe you knew. But do you also know that 80% of sales are performed in real life stores? That must be a statement. Digital should be expected to influence, to impact on evolving customer preferences and behaviors, not to perform sales. It must be a continuous hard work, not just some alternative promotional focus in sales actions. It’s like keeping up with your couple. If you stop communicating, everything between the both of you will die at some point.

Highest performance companies are measuring their digital marketing results in several ways: they take into account not just their revenue, but customer satisfaction, web traffic, content analytics and customer experience, among other statistics. Are you willing to open your mind and include all of those?
We could say digital is still new, and that it’s always changing. But as marketers, we know that advertising and marketing concepts are always changing. We can’t do anything else but suggest you to open your mind and try to think beyond that. If you can adjust your mindset to at least half the speed digital is changing, we’ll assure you’ll be a trending high-performance company in the long-term. And long-term nowadays means just about a year.

Pic copyright: https://www.flickr.com/photos/renaissancechambara/5408612857/

What Game of Thrones can teach you about targeting your audience

Posted On August 26, 2016 By l7copro In Analytics, Online Marketing Tips, Social Media /

Like Cersei says, “when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die“. In different words, Jon Westenberg talks about the importance of targeting, when he says “If you don’t know your audience, you won’t accomplish shit”.

This article that we’ve found last week, is about the relevance of listening to your audience, of knowing what they want and giving them just what they need. But how could you do that, if you don’t even know who your audience really is?

“Start by asking questions, ask for feedback” Jon says, and we agree. But to whom? Well, let’s see, as always in life, everything is about experience. As Littlefinger says “Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder”. So today we’ll assume you already have some clients, because if you’re about to launch, that is a whole different story. And here it goes.

This is your scenario

You have your first clients
You have an old website that you might want to redesign at some point, with little traffic going on.
You have a Facebook page in which you already have a couple of fans following your brand.
You’re thinking of growing, but hey! let us quote Tyrion: “A day will come when you think you are safe and happy, and your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth”. You should start moving, right now!

What could you possible do grow?

Google Analytics

“Turn us away, and we will burn you first” said Daenerys. And so should, Google says. If you ignore it, you are definitely not walking on your victory’s pursuit way.

Start measuring your traffic. Focus on your Demographics, but most of all on Interests, especially in the Affinity Categories field. Pay a little attention to find activities or interests your audience members might have in common.
Go on with their behaviors. Try to see where they stop in your website, and what sections are they interested in. Maybe this will give you a tip on how your next website redesign should be.

Facebook Audience Insights

If you still don’t know this tool, then “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Take a look to the Suggested Pages to Watch section. You’ll find similar brands suggested by Facebook. You can take advantage of this to learn what your competitors are doing right now, their strategy and their performance. And if you realize at some point someone is attacking you, just remember Tyrion again: “Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let’s go kill them!”
On the Page View section you’ll be able to differentiate where your audience is coming from. If they were performing a search on Google, they’ve found your fan page through your web page, or just through Facebook.
Posts section. In this place you’ll find out which posts are performing better. Real useful data when it comes to engagement content. If you’re going to make the most of inbound marketing, you should never ignore this section. Best schedule to post is also in this section, but this varies for every brand and product, so you should pay attention to whatever is working for you
And we’ve come to the most meaningful point: People. In this section you’ll get to know your audience. Who’s better than Google and Facebook to store information about your fans?

Let’s just hope that you’ll never have to use Ned’s phrase: “I learned how to die a long time ago”, but instead, you learn more than us, and feel compelled to say “You know nothing, Jon Snow”!

Pic copyright: https://www.flickr.com/photos/karenborter/24440965145/

Meet the 4 marketing trends that are about to go big

Posted On March 15, 2016 By l7copro In Online Marketing Tips /

We already made some predictions for this 2016. Yet, re reading them now, they seem incomplete. Given how dynamic digital marketing actually is, that perception appear as unavoidable. If you’re to win the marketing race, you have to keep running on the edge of all things and ahead of everyone else. So, even just a couple of months have passed since that article, we feel like you should be aware of some of the trends that are about to explode in the upcoming months.

Do you PPC? 3 reasons to start doing it right away

Posted On March 7, 2016 By l7copro In Online Marketing Tips, SEO /

You might not like and you may even refuse to engage in it but we’ve warned you already – paying for exposure will be insanely huge in 2016. That will mostly apply to content marketing but the old paid marketing tricks will remain under the spotlight, especially the star of today’s article – PPC. Pay-per-click has been a stable and popular marketing stunt for years – even for successful businesses.

Why so many brands use PPC? Well, exposure. And given the fierce competition for visibility in search results, many are using it because it works. That alone should have you already reaching for your wallet to pour some money on a PPC strategy. But if you still aren’t convinced, then perhaps these 3 reasons will show you why you should think of PPC for your small business.