Responsive Design: Optimizing Copy for Mobile Devices.

 "Responsive design" seems to be the buzzword of the year.  And while there is a lot of talk about it from a design standpoint, very little is said about responsive, mobile-friendly copy. As you’ll see below, both design and copy are equally important considerations when it comes to the web experience on mobile devices. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in most cases, content is ultimately more important than the design—the copy, after all, is what holds the message. Mobile-friendly copy can also be a saving grace if your company is slow to adopt multi-device website practices. The design may have to wait,  but the content doesn't have to.

So, to make this easy, let’s take a little visual tour. For background, I did a random keyword search on Adobe Photoshop®*. Everyone likes Adobe Photoshop®, right?

First off, you’ll notice a difference in the meta data displayed on the desktop vs. the mobile phone:

[Desktop version, click to enlarge]

It reads:“The best way to get Photoshop is with Creative Cloud. Upgrade from Photoshop to Creative Cloud & save 40%. Join now.” (96 characters, no spaces)

Now, onto the mobile version.....

[Mobile version]

It reads:“The best way to get Photoshop is with Creative Cloud. Upgrade from Photoshop to Creative Cloud….” (It lost 17 characters)

 As you can see, in the mobile version the meta data message was cut off, leaving out the special offer. So, it stands to reason, if you don’t want to lose important messages or offers, put important information in the front or shorten your character counts.

Tip #1:

If you want to create “Mobile first” meta data, shorten your character allowances and keep your most important messages in the front part of the description.

Next, moving onto the main page (in the desktop view), you’ll see a large header image, headline and right sidebar for the main CTA’s. It's a pretty standard layout.

[Desktop version, click to enlarge]

In the mobile version, you’ll see that the page has been converted into a single column layout. The image has been cut on the right side and the once horizontal content blocks now run vertically in a linear display.  

[Mobile version]

In the image directly below, you see the main content was prioritized from left to right (content on the right was listed first and so on). It follows that hierarchy all the way down the page.  Notice, copy that looked like a few simple sentences now looks more like paragraphs—something that may feel overwhelming for some readers, particularly if they have to scroll for miles.

For this reason, it's important to keep copy and content modules to a minimum.  If a content module doesn’t have to be there, don’t include it.  Link to another page where you can house the additional content if you must, but don’t overcrowd your main page with anything but your primary messages. No one wants to go on a scavenger hunt through miles of linear content modules. They don’t want to go through layers of pages either—so if you do decide to house additional information elsewhere, don’t go deeper than L2 and give them an easy, fat finger-friendly way to get back.

A word on SEO- the reduced word counts may affect the number of keywords you are getting on a page. This means that in addition to your copy distillation, every word counts.   Make sure you are using as many keywords in there as you can (while of course balancing lengths….big sigh).

Tip #2 

Keep word counts low and keywords rich.  Also limit the number of copy modules and additional links to a bare minimum.

And what about the high-profile CTAs originally on the right sidebar?

This is where horizontally oriented layouts really become a problem for mobile. As you can see, the right sidebar was not included in the main vertical section and was therefore prioritized after it.  When I say after it—I mean after the entire section—buried below bottom nav. I’m not going to speculate on Adobe’s content strategy—for them perhaps the other information was more important than their CTAs.  However, for most companies, they put their CTAs in those sidebars for a reason—to get noticed. 

At first glance, this is more a design issue than a copy issue.  Sure, you could wait and leave it to the UX guys to solve…..OR, you can take the initiative and create safeties within your copy decks to combat these kinds of challenges now.

For example, instead of writing paragraphs and then having a separate CTA somewhere else on the page, combine them.  You want to capture your main message or messages up front in the header, any subheads and very first sentences. Also make sure to include your main CTA in the very first copy block. Then write and repeat, using this strategy over and over again throughout the page in a hierarchical order.

Tip #3

Get right to the point in headers and first sentences and always include your most important CTA in your first copy block/module.

Additionally, like designers that are designing based on grids, you too should approach your copy “block-by-block”.  Instead of writing paragraph-to-paragraph, write message-to- message (or bullet-to-bullet). Follow a hierarchy, putting the most important messages and CTAs first.

Tip #4

Skip the traditional long form.  Write bite-size pieces in order of importance.

Lastly, when you are working with a team and can have some influence over the end outcome, address the mobile aspect of web design early.  For example, instead of just handing the copy deck over to your designer and giving them control over how content is organized, work together and make sure the most important things will get top billing when it comes to the desktop and mobile devices.  Also weigh in to ensure other important things, like finger-friendly buttons, are included in the overall design.

Tip #5

When you can, work collaboratively with the entire team to ensure important messages aren’t lost in desktop-to-mobile conversions. 

A note to my readers: If you can offer insights or additional tips, please comment!

And as always,  if you find this blog helpful, pass it along to your friends on Twitter or Facebook. You can follow me @Kristenmarie2go

*Adobe Photoshop® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Images and examples are for illustrative purposes only and any views reflected in this blog represent the opinion of the writer.

Stop creative abuse: How to keep creatives focused without a whip, stun gun or cattle prod

If you are on the account or management side, you may feel like you’re the one being abused.  I mean, you keep kicking off awesome projects, yet round after exhausting round, the work leaves you feeling sucker-punched and dizzy. You’ve got deadlines to meet, clients breathing down your neck and other things to do, right?

You may feel up against the ropes, but I can guarantee you, on the other side of the conference table, there’s a creative that’s feeling just as beat up as you are. Ever pleasing, they are working hard (and staying late) to make sure they give you what you want and what you need. Yet, round after round, their hard work gets poked, punched and pulverized. Then, when the beating is over, they limp away, black eyes and all, and start the process all over again. Suckers.

While you may genuinely have a bad designer or bad copywriter, if poor quality projects are surfacing regularly across your teams, the problem may be bad communication (that’s my nice way of saying “you”).  So, before you kick off your next project, make sure you:

1. Have clear, unwavering vision of what you want.
It’s nearly impossible to hit a moving target, especially with creative work. Nothing will drag a project out or condemn it to failure like poor vision from the start.


2. Understand your company’s brand guidelines.
Kick-off projects that work within the existing messaging, voice, tone, look and feel. (I.e. If you work in a place that keeps things positive, don’t ask your creatives to create something negative or if your companies color palette is blue and green and you only use black and white photography, don’t ask for something orange with color photographs)


3. Write separate creative briefs for each deliverable.
If your project has multiple parts, such as a banner, email and web pages, write a separate brief for each part (keeping in mind how each piece will work together and build on each other).

4. Are very specific.
What is the single most important message for each piece? If the project has multiple sections- what are the key messages in each section? What is this deliverable meant to do?


5. State how the piece/pieces will be used/distributed.
If it’s a brochure, will it be used at a sales conference? If it’s a banner, where will it be placed on your website or someone else’s?

6. Explain to whom the work will be going to.
Is it going to prospects or people already familiar with your products? If you don’t talk specifically to your target, messages won’t be effective.


7. Provide supporting information.
Do you have research? Competitive information? Specific differentiators? If you want truly amazing work, provide them with some great proof points to work with. Only include relevant information.

8. Provide a clear call to action (CTA).
If you want your prospects to call, make sure you provide your team with the phone number and whom they will be talking to. If you want prospects to go to a landing page, include the URL and make sure your creatives (and you) know where they are driving traffic to so they can keep everything in context.


9. Provide legal disclosures up front.
Make sure those are included in the brief or attached to it. Not only will they need disclosures to finish the project, but depending on their length, it could affect the design work.


10. Use few words.
Stick to the specifics, wordy briefs are easy to misinterpret.


11. Include digital parameters.
Digital is different. Identify digital considerations such as templates, template word counts, etc. If a banner, denote whether it is static or animated, expanding or peel back, etc.


12. Give them adequate time.
Fast deadlines = mediocre work. Give them a reasonable time for each round and your revisions. Also know that your project is likely one of many in the pipeline. If you really need something done by a certain date, kick-it off earlier.

It’s great to talk to your team about what you want, but make sure everything is in the brief too. A good brief makes it easier for the creative, but it also gives you something to measure the work against when it comes back. If they aren’t adhering to the guidelines in your brief, well, that cattle prod might come in handy.

Elements of a creative-friendly brief:

Project name: (Overall Project)

Job number: (If relevant)

Deliverable: (Which piece-email, banner, etc)

Team members: (Writer, designer, project manager, etc.)

Round: (How many times has it come back to you/the client for official presentation)

Version: (Which stage between official rounds)

Main objective: (Project overview and basic background information)

Project specifics: (Email, banner, brochure, etc. Also where you’d state things like templates to be used, preferred palette and word counts)

How will it be distributed: (handed out, emailed from where, placed on a public website, behind a login, etc.)

Who it will be distributed to: (Prospects, existing customers, other peoples customers)

Key Message: (Above all else, what do you want to communicate?)

Support Points: (Research, differentiators, quotes, product benefits that support the main message)

Call to Action: (What you want the audience to do with URLs, phone numbers, etc.)

Disclosures: (List the legal or professional disclosures do you want to include)

Evaluating work:

Just a quick note on evaluating work as it comes back.  Sometimes it may come back exactly the way you want it or better (nice work you awesome communicator!).  Many times however, it may not come back exactly how you envisioned it. That doesn’t always mean you missed something, nor does it mean you have an inadequate creative team.  That is just the nature of the creative process and flushing out great ideas. Instead of casting judgment too quickly, take the following steps:

1.Match the project creative up to the objectives stated in the brief.
Does it hit your main points? Is it on brand? If so, you may be letting your subjective opinion get in the way. If something is missing, move on to the next step.


2. Identify what is missing.
Does it not convey your message strongly enough? Is it off-brand? Is there a disconnect between the copy and the design? Too many words? Too busy or not a logical hierarchy of information? These are common problems on first rounds when bugs are being worked out. Referring to the brief, go back to the team and communicate your concerns. Make sure there is dialogue with each team member. Then, send them back to work. If you did a good job of communicating with each other, round two should be really close.


3. Problems in round two.
Round two seems to be the round where lack of planning or communication really starts to show itself. By round two, work should be close and require only a few refinements, additions, etc. However, if the creative work is still really off mark, either your creative team does not understand what you want, your original vision may not have been as clear as you wanted it to be, or perhaps there is some dysfunction within the team. Start asking questions, perhaps one person at a time and see if you can identify where the breakdown is starting. One identified, mitigate.

The Evolution of Marketing: Account Based Marketing (ABM)

Right off the top I’m going to say Account Based Marketing has me more excited than just about any trend in marketing right now. Here’s why:

 

• Millennial research points to the power and necessity of more personal relationships.
• Social behaviors and consumers demand for more customized marketing approaches.
• The overbearing and overwhelming clutter of content prospects have to sort through to find the answers they want/need to arrive at a decision.
• Big data and social data and our ability to capture it, curate it and analyze it to know EXACTLY what our clients want, don’t like, are likely to buy, etc. 
• The emergence of more pointed marketing tools such as automation systems with robust lead scoring capabilities (i.e. Marketo).  

 In my opinion, we are at a unique intersection of business evolution. As I have shown above, not only do we have the ability to know what our customers want through our amazing technology and social platforms, we also have the ability to connect with them on a personal level and give it to them. In no time in our history can I think of a time we have had more perfect conditions when it comes to want and need fulfillment.

 Which leads me to this question: Why, if we have this ability to speak to prospects in such a personal and meaningful way are we continuing to market to the masses based on general personas?

 

To me, ABM is the evolution of marketing, particularly for B2B (B2C, don’t worry, yours is on its way) And I’m not talking about the type of ABM that has historically been reserved for only the biggest of the biggest clients (even then in a limited capacity), but to scale and apply the same ideals and strategies to smaller, but good-sized prospects.  

What?  Launch individual campaigns for all our clients? Well, obviously that isn’t going work from an ROI perspective. However, it can be applied to those companies in the pipeline that are hot (high lead score) and identified worthy of such an investment (meets certain requirements). Those companies may not be the gorillas, but don’t tell me when it comes to meeting numbers (particularly when you’re behind) each and everyone of those you can hook aren’t worth the effort? And really, how much more effort is it?  It’s mostly just a matter of reorganizing and re-prioritizes resources. For example, how many emails really need to go out to an already inundated client base with a low likelihood of responding? Not to mention, the more existing clients you have, regardless of size (well, within reason), the more you stand to grow and benefit from up sell, referrals, etc. 

Over the years I have seen so many campaigns and content pieces created and churned out in a seemingly endless stream.   Sure, a lot of it has value and needs to be there for lead generation and nurturing, but so much of it is wasted on inert prospects.  Instead of casting all these wide nets, lets give our attention to more of those people who actually care about our products and stand to benefit from them the most.

Beyond retention & up-sell: Utilizing customers as part of your marketing strategy

I'll admit it, I’ve been a marketing flirt. At the various companies I have worked for over the years, I have been asked to attract prospects—aquire leads and, well, keep them entertained and interested throughout the buying cycle. Then, like a “player”, my relationship with my prospects ends when they transition from prospect to customer. Sure, I’ve played a role in a few longer-term relationships such as creating retention and up-sell strategies over the years, but it’s never been the main focus. In most companies, managing those relationships—converting customers to fans—has fallen on the shoulders of customer relationship managers, not mine.  

However, because of the emergence of social and how it has disrupted the buying cycle—becoming a crucial element in the evaluation stage, I find myself particularly interested in the customer on a more strategic level these days.  

You see, in our socialized world, customers are the people generating a lot of the content prospects are using to make their buying decisions.  They are adding to the content stream—writing reviews, sharing their latest purchases with their networks, posting pictures of their favorite things. etc.  In my opinion, beyond retention, beyond the potential for up-sell, customers, HAPPY CUSTOMERS, are incredibly valuable when it comes to bringing in new business. However, this valuable resource is rarely tapped for this reason and often not marketed to in a way that will drive new growth.  

 As social’s role is crystallizing, I think it’s a great time for marketers to leverage the “power of the customer” and create a new communication channel around them. For a simple example, instead of sending them up-sell emails meant to get them to buy more products, reposition the email and send them a social-friendly email that gets them to share a special “friends” deal (or associates deal) with their friends. You could further incentivise them with additional discounts of their own if they share it on Twitter  or Facebook, etc.   

This example is just the beginning. The idea here is to control the message and equip existing customers with relevant tools and incentives designed to get them to share or create content online.  This content will not only spread the word to your customers’ networks, but also puts fresh content out there—content that others will inevitably come across when they do their own investigating online. It’s a self-perpetuating strategy.  

Customers are a great resource when it comes to growing business. For starters, customers offer a much better ROI—it is less expensive to keep a customer than it is to find a new one.  Adding to that, they are already invested in your product—your success is in their best interest. When they are convinced of your value, even before becoming treasured “evangelists”, they can be a driving force in the marketplace, particularly when it comes to online content. It just makes sense to make them a part of your long-term sales strategy—and not just as an afterthought. Because of their potential to influence prospects across the Internet at little or no cost, customer-focused campaigns should have as much priority as lead gathering and lead nurturing campaigns. Together, all of these elements have the power to build momentum and drive new growth over the long haul.

 

 

Like this blog?  Please share it everywhere. 

Learn more at www.kristen-maxwell.com

 

Twitter: Search Engine For “Now”

Regardless of what search engine you use, you know when you punch in those keywords, you’re going to get a million options, and not all of them recent—even on the first page of results.  That’s a lot of clutter to sort through, especially when there is no guarantee you’re going to find something happening “now” or that is timely and relevant. As a result of these frustrations, users are finding ways to further filter their searches for better results.  One way they are doing this is with Twitter.  With approximately 340 million tweets per day and over half a billion active users, Twitter is a gold mine for things happening now. 

 

For example, if you want to find a trending topic, such as something news related, most users know someone or many someone’s will be using Twitter to send out Tweets, often in real time. If something is going on in the world, there is someone, somewhere tweeting about it and linking you to the most up-to-date information.
 
Twitter is also full of new or recent content, making it a fantastic database for those seeking current information on a huge variety of topics.  For fast-paced industries, such as technology, having access to the latest and greatest can be the difference between edging ahead or falling behind.

 

Because a tweet can reach millions of users in a single blow and travels faster than cars, people and other forms of transportation—it’s also a great communication tool when you need to spread the word fast. For that reason, it was used to communicate and coordinate the protests in Eqypt—it truly is a powerful thing. 
 
For these reasons and many others, more and more people are starting their searches with Twitter instead of their stand-by search engines. This is something to keep in mind when you are contemplating your own content and planning your various marketing campaigns and social strategies.

 If you want to learn more about Twitter, its users and their behaviors,  I found this cool infographic.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

Simplifying SoLoMo: Consumer Strategies for Smart Marketers

Whether the term SoLoMo  or any of it’s variations will stick around, the ideology behind it—the cumulative power of social, local and mobile and it’s emerging strategies—is here to stay. Consumer behaviors are forever changed and we as marketers have the job of figuring out how to reach a new kind of prospect within the purview of our respective businesses.

Unfortunately, as we transition from one methodology from another, or as in this case find ourselves thrust into the middle of it, it can be hard to figure out what end is up. Particularly when everyone has their unique take, and often times, a product to sell. Sure, a lot of great ideas have emerged as a result of all this revolutionary change, but so has a lot of clutter.

Having worked at a number of ad agencies and corporations now in a variety of marketing roles, and having had the privilege of working with some brilliant minds, I’m going to take a stab at simplifying the new SoLoMo marketplace in an attempt to help you see where to focus your efforts right now and then build from there.

SoLoMo Behaviors and Strategies
As you probably already know, consumers no longer walk into a store and just buy things. For pre-meditated purchases, they do research and look for three things:

1. They look at independent customer ratings
2. They ask their friends for their opinions. (I’ve seen some indicators that this is trending down. In my opinion, many are starting to realize that their friends aren’t always the best source of information and they are relying more on experts)
3. They look into a company’s ethical practices to make sure a brand’s values align with theirs. For example, when faced with the choice of two brands, consumers will often choose things like “Local”, “Environmental”, “Charitable”, etc. over price.

Note: If you’re a B2B marketer, the buying behaviors are pretty much the same; just amplify everything. Consumers are looking at ratings, reading research, going to colleagues and doing background checks.

If you want to take advantage of these consumer behaviors, you need to have a social presence at each one of these evaluation intersections.

1. You need to have independent product reviews and testimonials where your customers are doing their research. Make sure you collect the review data so you can identify product issues early and make overall improvements.
2. When it comes to their friends, while you can’t always control what they may say, you can build widely spread consumer trust (trust is a very BIG deal) by keeping your brand out there and keeping your brand’s reputation in tact. Obviously, there are a lot of vehicles for doing this—this is branding101 stuff.
3. To address the “ethical evaluation” stage (also closely tied to trust), just put it all out there. What are your environmental standards? What charities do you support? Are you local? What is your financial track record (B2B)? Think of all the value questions your target consumer is going to have and provide them with a carefully crafted answer.

While most buyers out there do their research ahead of time, you can’t completely write off impulse buyers. Impulse buyers fall into two major categories:

1. They are there to purchase something else and an unplanned item catches their eye.
2. They are out shopping for something they need but didn’t have the time or the foresight to do any research and are counting on you to provide them with the information they need to make a decision.

Impulse buys are usually smaller purchases (why they didn’t take the time to research). Much like pre-meditated buys, when preparing to make a purchase, potential buyers are looking at key product features, quality standards, consumer ratings and evaluating their trust of your brand, just on location at a faster speed.

When you are trying get the sale from impulse buyers, obviously placement is important, but there are a few other social and mobile- friendly must-haves for your products and POP:

• Customer ratings (stars)
• Customer testimonials/quotes
• Major product differentiators
• Quality statements
• Ethical statements
• Coordinating mobile product pages with FAQs

Now, while all of these “must-have” elements are important, mobile is the big story here. Before the days of SoLoMo, you had to rely only on your box copy and product placement. With SoLoMo, you have an entirely new bag of tricks at your disposal. Think branded retail apps that create urgency like offers with short expiration dates, side-by-side comparisons to facilitate decision making, picture apps that let consumers see how an outfit will look on them without having to try it on, in-store GPS to help customers locate products, short product demos that show how to use a certain kind of hair product or apply make-up, how a running shoe’s cushioning reduces impact, how a certain exercise will help you lose weight, etc. If you know what pains your target market, you can give them a solution on demand if you are prepared. You can’t put a value on that kind of targeted marketing.

While the platforms people use continue to change somewhat (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.), the buying behaviors remain fairly constant. Ideally, you can identify where your prospects are doing their research and be at those evaluation intersections, but you will likely experience a little hit and miss. Don’t be discouraged, that’s just the nature of the web and social trends. The most important things are to continually work at building consumer trust and to have the answers to consumer’s questions when and where they need them, as often as possible. Consumers are smarter and more resourceful than ever—as long as you have the answers out there, they will find them.

5-Steps to Building a Twitter Following- BASICS

First off, in no way am I a Twitter expert.  In fact, I was a very slow adopter when it came to this particular platform. Of the things I am going to list here, all of them I learned after sitting on Twitter for two years doing basically NOTHING. Eventually I decided to care and, although at the time of writing this I only have just over 2,000 followers, I have quadrupled my following over the last 8 months. So, while I am sure there are lots of other great ways to build a following, these ideas can help you get some results and you can build from there.

1. The Followback

This is the simplest, most effective thing I’ve done.  When someone follows me, I follow nearly everyone back.  The only ones I don’t are those that I find offensive for whatever reason.  Most Twitter users expect you to follow them, if you don’t, they’ll unfollow you. If you do follow them, you’ll not only retain them, but often win their favor.  This will result in mentions and retweets—which can help you build more followers.  

2. Following

Because other Twitter users know the follow back rule, it only makes sense that they will follow you back when you follow them. So, follow people.  Don’t just follow everyone though, follow people that are relevant to you.  If you are a marketer, follow marketing people.  If you are in the technology business, follow those in the technology business. You can follow Oprah or J Lo, but the odds of them or other mega stars following you back are pretty low. And quite honestly, unless you are in the entertainment business, they aren’t really going to benefit your business anyway. If you follow people that are relevant to you, you’ll be amazed at how targeted your list of followers will become overtime organically—people like you just find you.

3. Mentions

Every time I get a new follower, I publicly thank them for following. It’s good for relationship building and often times, it gets retweeted and more followers get onboard. If you ever find yourself in a mention with a list of other Tweeps, follow all of them and then retweet it.  This lets them know why you followed them and most times, everyone in that tweet will follow you too.  It’s pretty cool.

4. Lists

This is a new strategy of mine, but it seems to be working so far.  Of my followers, I’ve made a list of the most influential—those that have the most followers of their own that are most likely to retweet others.  Instead of always going into my main feed, I go to my list of influencers and retweet them. In doing this, I can focus on building relationships with those who are most capable of helping me build my audience.  This doesn’t mean I ignore everyone else—Tweeps with smaller audiences, those who like me, are still building their network, are often more likely to help.  So, when creating your list of influencers, I would caution you to go for those that have more influence than you, but that are still hungry for audience. Once one’s audience is ample, they don’t usually care as much.

5. Cleaning up

Not everyone will follow you back—some don’t know the etiquette, others aren’t trying to build audience and a few just aren’t that active on Twitter.  After awhile, you might want to clean up the list of people you follow to keep it all balanced. There are a lot of apps that can help you do this.  I personally use Tweepi.  It is a free app that analyzes my Twitter account and tells me who I am following that isn’t following me back.  About every 1-2 weeks, I go through and clean house. Tweepi also tells me who is following me that I am not following.  Early on, when I was still  figuring Twitter out, a few Tweeps fell through the cracks. Tweepi helped me identify them and eventually follow them back.  

Hopefully these tips were helpful. I am constantly experimenting and will keep you posted on the other things I discover about Twitter and everything else.  If you have a few good tips of your own, PLEASE SHARE!!!