All Posts By

michael

Aug 16
0

Social media is maturing. Is your strategy keeping up?

By | Blog, Digital

Social media platforms are growing up. Channels that started off as repositories for ‘look at me’ broadcasting, aimed to appeal to a younger audience, now offer real-time conversations with your most engaged customers.

The most effective social media strategies are built around developing specific content for each individual channel. The overall goal is to reach the right people at the best time with the most insightful content.

But there is a further role for social media: demonstrating excellent customer service.

Social media gives customers an opportunity for a quick resolution of problems: some 81% of Twitter users now expect a same-day response to questions and complaints, according to a recent Oracle survey.

Social customer service can also give companies the best of both worlds: the ability to reach a wide network of customers while providing more personalized responses at the same time.

In order to achieve this, retailers and shopping centres need to listen carefully to social media streams, keep on track with customer opinion and be ready to inform followers about specific products and services that are being discussed or brought into question.

Listening or monitoring?

There’s often confusion around social media listening, a service that can be mixed up with social media monitoring. While they are somewhat similar and work best together, the two shouldn’t be used interchangeably.

Social media listening isn’t as simple as monitoring and replying to incoming questions and comments. It is the process of tracking conversations around a topic, phrase, industry or keywords and leveraging the insight to discover opportunities or create content for those audiences – to keep them engaged, turning clients and customers into brand advocates and ambassadors.

It’s more than merely watching @mentions and comments pour in via a social profile or blog. If you are only counting on the notifications, you are missing out on a vast number of clients and customers who are talking about your brand and your services.

Social media monitoring is a way of computing the popularity of a brand or company by extraction of information from social media channels such as blogs, news sites and video/ photo sharing on websites.

A quicker response

When companies are listening effectively, they can quickly respond to any customer requests and complaints. As many companies have learned the hard way, unanswered complaints can go viral, causing real damage to a company’s brand.

But the opposite can have a positive impact on your brand reputation. A powerful 71% of consumers receiving a quick brand response on social media would be likely to recommend that brand to others, compared to only 19% of customers who received no response.

Many larger corporations have invested in training and hiring extra resource to take care of social listening and customer service because it is crucial to retaining and creating an excellent customer service.

With smaller retail businesses or shopping centres with restrictions on headcount, many owners and managers are turning to agencies to provide this service for them.  This works well as an outsourced service, freeing up the internal workforce to run the business, and relying on the agency to focus on social listening, respond to day to day queries and escalate anything that requires senior management input.

At OnBrand, we monitor your social media channels through your customers’ eyes.  How they would prefer to engage with your brand, how easily they can find answers to their questions, and whether their overall customer journey has been a joined-up experience.

By taking their journey, we can make recommendations on how to simplify the process, build your brand reputation and improve overall customer engagement.  Happy customers spend more and stay longer, so let’s make sure they are being heard.

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If you would like to find out more information visit our website or email us at: sayhello@onbrand.co.uk or give us a call on 03333 220 022 to find out how we could help.

OnBrand | Smart marketing using customer knowledge for Digital, Audio, Social and Events.

May 25
0

Father’s Day Music & Messaging

By | Campaigns

Book in your Father’s Day messaging

Option #1 
We’re counting down to Father’s Day on Sunday 19th of June and we’re bursting with fantastic ideas for gifts to suit every taste and budget, so don’t forget dad whilst shopping with us today.

Option #2
Why not spoil your dad this Father’s Day and treat him to something really special to show him how much you care? Father’s Day is on Sunday 19th of June. Don’t forget!

Option #3
Don’t forget dad! Father’s day is on the 19th of June, so now’s the chance to pick the perfect present for your old man, and win some brownie points too!

Option #4
Treat your dad to something special this Father’s Day. Our mall is packed full of great gift ideas & cards, which are sure to put a smile on his face. Don’t forget Father’s Day, Sunday 19th of June.

Like what you hear? Then take a moment to schedule them in your client area!

Update my Messages

Book in your Father’s Day Playlist

We’ve put together a great Father’s Day playlist for you! Here’s a small selection of what’s included on the playlist. With catchy hits from AC/DC to Paul Simon and Queen to Fleetwood Mac.

Like what you hear? Then take a moment to schedule them in your client area!

Update my Music

Got a question? Simply sayhello@onbrand.co.uk or give us a call on 03333 220 022 to find out how we can help your business.

May 24
0
Simple customer experienee

Websites that say less engage more

By | Blog, Digital

Ever noticed that Google has the world’s simplest homepage? Or got lost on a website trying desperately to find a phone number?

Businesses often fall into the trap of supplying too much information.  In their efforts to impress, they don’t realise they are losing customers through information overload. They forget that the goal of a website is to offer a great customer experience that helps make the customer fall in love with the brand or service they are selling.

We’re often told to write more content that contains useful terms for SEO purposes. And that for business efficiency the directors would like their customers to complete complicated purchases online, rather than talk to a human.  But it’s very easy to forget how the customer is feeling in amongst all these business goals and expert recommendations.

So when you land on your home page, ask yourself three simple questions:

  1. Is it clear where the customer needs to go?
  2. When they get there, is there a simple call to action?
  3. And will that help the customer?

Such is the scope of the digital world now that patience wears incredibly thin.

Such is the scope of the digital world now that patience wears incredibly thin. On average, people stay on a web page for an average of between 5-15 seconds, so if it’s not immediately clear where they need to go, you’re either going to lose them, or prompt a frustrated phone call.

When the customer does find the page they need, there is nothing worse than being given too many options for what to do next. In fact, for a best practise customer journey the most efficient call to action is often a single brightly coloured button displaying one or two words, such as ‘buy now’, or ‘read more’, or ‘confirm details’.  The customer can be confident that by clicking on that link they will go to a page they expect: either to complete a sale, find out more details or reaffirm what they are trying to do on that page.

With this in mind, say less and you’ll often find you engage more.

Your choice of call to action can then be adapted to suit your business needs. For example, if the purchase is actually too complex to be completed online, and you have an efficient telephony system, a simple ‘call this number’ will take the customer on to the best next stage in your process.

If, however, this might lead to a lengthy wait listening to on-hold music, then use your website to collect the customer’s query, and manage their expectations for a suitable response time.  A button with ‘Enter your details for a response within 24 hours’ will be a quick and easy way to let your customer know that you’re on it, but that they won’t receive an immediate response.

So why not go onto your website right now and take your own customers’ journey? Does every single word or page need to be there, are your instructions as simple as possible, and does your customer will feel good about your business at the end of their experience?

If you’d like us to audit your website, email sayhello@onbrand.co.uk or give us a call on 03333 220 022 to find out how we could help.

OnBrand | Smart marketing using customer knowledge for digital, audio, social and events

May 11
0

Central Thought Process. Local Message

By | Blog, In-Store

Shopping centre marketing and management teams never have a dull moment!  Between face to face customer queries, instant social media conversations and regular CRM communications, there are any number of messages being delivered at the same time.

A smart move can be to centralise your channels to ensure a joined up marketing strategy, delivered by either an in-house team or an outsourced marketing agency.

Your shoppers get one consistent message, with all channels being managed to deliver a universal view, and as centre managers, you get to reduce costs, limit time spent briefing multiple parties, and the result should be a marketing strategy that works for you.

you need to ensure your marketing agency are specialists in your industry

At OnBrand we did just that, bringing five companies under one roof to make things simpler for both ourselves and our clients.

However, it should be clear that this isn’t a “one size fits all” type of deal, and that you need to ensure your marketing agency are specialists in your industry, otherwise the content they provide can be wide of the mark as far as your customers are concerned.

At OnBrand we ensure we maintain regular local contact with both shoppers and centre managers.  We even like to be in touch with store managers, too.  Why? Because by having local boots on the ground, we see opportunities that create local news and messaging that matter to local people.

Customer knowledge is key when it comes to engaging with your shoppers and retailers. Knowing how your customers experience your centre helps us meet the needs of both locally-owned independent stores, as well as multi-national names, generally running offers through their head offices.

ask us to do the heavy lifting for you, and you’ll soon reap the rewards

If you personally find it a challenge to get around, talk, or engage with your retailers, it can sometimes work better to have a third party doing it on your behalf. A new face isn’t going to be saddled with the gripes of tenants in the same way, and the focus can be on positive opportunities, such as retailer participation with marketing, sourcing prizes for competitions, and quantifying ways to drive real tangible results back into your stores.

And that’s where OnBrand can make a real difference: ask us to do the heavy lifting for you, and you’ll soon reap the rewards.

We’ll manage your offers, make sense of the data you collect, and join up marketing across all of your channels, connecting shoppers and retailers and giving new life to your mall. Contact us today and sayhello@onbrand.co.uk

OnBrand | Smart marketing using customer knowledge for digital, audio, social and events

May 08
0

5 Tips for how to handle regulatory requirements

By | Blog, On The Phone

You’re sat there tasked with writing scripts for your company’s telephone messages. You’re not a writer – never have been, never claimed to be – yet somehow the responsibility has fallen on you to generate a series of messages that link together seamlessly and reflect your brand.

Your mind goes blank, so you do a little research on the Google machine to get the creative juices pumping. This backfires when you learn that the telephone is still most customers’ preferred means of communication. You also discover that if callers aren’t satisfied by their experience on the phone, they’re highly likely to take their business elsewhere.

Whew! Is it hot in here?

You take a walk to clear your head and see Julie preparing to read your scripts into an old answering machine. Unable to drown out the noise of your busy call centre, some bright spark suggests that she reads the messages under her desk to provide some form of sound barrier.

You sit back down at your desk, the weight of the world now firmly on your shoulders as your boss insists you need to start recording like now! “Oh, and by the way, you absolutely must say this,” says your boss as he slips you a list of bloated phrases that could make an insomniac sleep for a week.

Sullenly, you ask yourself how life came to this.

Believe it or not, this situation arises in offices all over the UK every single day. We know because we’re the ones people call to fix their problems, often after many customers have fled due to poor customer service.

So how about some good news? Here are 5 top tips to help you structure your regulatory messages so they don’t sound quite so gloomy.

1 Understand the importance

If you hate what you’re writing and you script the words begrudgingly, your audience will be able to tell. It’s a magic truth of writing that the author’s feelings somehow come through, and if you write feeling bored and angry, then poor Julie is highly likely to sound that way, too.

2 Seize the opportunity

Any great writer will tell you that no word on a page should be wasted. It’s a chance to convey an emotion and deliver a precise message to your audience. You’ve been given a stage, and your words are your instrument, so knock ‘em dead!

3 Show your callers you care

It’s a given that you’d rather write just about anything else other than tell your callers that your messages have to be recorded because of blah, blah, blah. But what if you highlight your reason for doing this: to offer them the best possible service? Suddenly, the caller will start to feel a little warm inside.

4 Timing is everything

Take a look at how many regulatory messages you have. Is it a lot? Does everyone need to hear them? Might it be easier to subtly slip one on the tail end after the customer has chosen their option, than bored to tears in the welcome message? Put yourself on the receiving end and ask yourself not only if the message sounds okay, but that it’s definitely in the right place.

5 If in doubt, cut it out

The first thing your caller will value is being given accurate information. The second thing they’ll value is time. As beautifully as you may be able to construct a Shakespearian sentence, this is not the time for a work of art. Be direct, cover your points in a way that sounds like your brand, and keep your options as succinct as possible. Never is this more relevant than with your regulatory messages.

If you ever become the unfortunate soul who is forced to write against your will, we recommend you grasp these little nuggets of advice with both hands. Or better still, get your boss to give us a shout so we can do it all for you.

To make sure you’re up to speed on your regulatory requirements, e-mail us on sayhello@onbrand.co.uk or give us a call on 03333 220 022.

OnBrand | Smart marketing using customer knowledge for digital, audio, social and events

May 01
0
Improve the on hold experience

Reduce that age-old perception: ‘I’ve been on hold for ages’

By | Blog, On The Phone

When trying to get through to a company, there’s the amount of time actually spent on hold, and then there’s the time you feel like you’ve been on hold. Believe it or not, these are generally two very different numbers.

As an agency with a ‘customer first’ ethos, we have developed the art of seeing your channels through your customer’s eyes. And in response to our findings, we’ve developed specialist ways of working that leave your customers in no doubt about how important they really are.

Here are five top OnBrand tips for making those calls feel a whole lot quicker than they sometimes are:

Nobody likes their time wasted. If you pre-warn them of this and they hang up, they’ll feel they haven’t wasted any time at all.

1 Be transparent

For many callers, clarity is key. If they’re calling with twenty minutes left on their lunch hour and it will take fifteen minutes to get through, it’s better to activate a message that informs them the wait is long and that it would be best to call back. Otherwise, you risk making a caller wait on hold, and then still not being able to resolve their issue. Nobody likes their time wasted. If you pre-warn them of this and they hang up, they’ll feel they haven’t wasted any time at all.

2 Get to the point

With today’s advances in IVR technology, getting your options right is non-negotiable.  If your system reels off nineteen different options, most people will have zoned out after five. Clunky options lead to people selecting the wrong choice, just to get through to someone, which doesn’t help anybody. Therefore, you’re better off having five options and then providing some music for the caller while they wait. At least this way, you all know they’re in the right place for resolution.

3 Music to their ears

The general expectation of your caller is to be forced to listen to elevator music.  Dull at best. Outright infuriating at other times. However, with the right phone technology, you could provide your own jukebox, and give your caller their own choice of music.  Quite a way to make an impression.  Just by opting for up-to-date music, you can catch your callers by surprise and even change their mood. Good music choices are often referred to once the caller has been put through to an agent.  For one client’s complaint line, we even provided a particularly cheeky track. This delivered a positive result: having listened to the track, callers engaged with friendly banter with the agents, a welcome difference to the frustrated tones the staff had generally been used to dealing with previously.

The pace and tone of the voice on your pre-recorded messages can make a great difference in keeping the caller engaged

4 Promote self-serve options

Often when we analyse our clients’ data, there are callers waiting in line who are able to help themselves, but they’re just not aware of it. Therefore, by inserting pre-recorded messages informing of what can be done online, or by answering any other questions your callers ask historically, it can lead to positive abandonments. This also lessens the waiting time for callers who genuinely need an agent. It’s just a case of being in tune with what your agents are telling you and creating short, informative messages that play at certain points of the callers’ journey.

5 Be interesting

There are simple things that can be done to make the call more interesting. The pace and tone of the voice on your pre-recorded messages can make a great difference in keeping the caller engaged, but we’ve also found there are often interesting bits of trivia about a company that are rarely told. For example, a DIY company we work with originally started out in the trenches of World War II, with two men who agreed to form a company together when they returned to England. We created a message around this story, which we felt callers would be interested in, and would even inspire brand loyalty. All the while, we were also disguising the fact they were on hold.

To get an expert opinion on your telephony channel, simply e-mail us on sayhello@onbrand.co.uk or give us a call on 03333 220 022, where we’ll be delighted to hear from you.

OnBrand | Smart marketing using customer knowledge for digital, audio, social and events

Apr 23
0

Amazon know their customers. Do you?

By | Blog, In-Store

There’s a reason that Amazon are doing so well: they know their customers. And although it’s easy to say they let algorithms to their work, the fact is, they know what to do with data when they collect it.

So ask yourself, with more opportunities available to collect shopper data in the mall, are you doing more than relying on footfall counters and bi-annual demographic surveys? If not then the information your collected could be pretty wide of the mark.

The better you know your customers though, the most cost-effective your marketing efforts will become. For instance, do you know how your shoppers like to be rewarded? If not, how can you expect to excite them?

Maybe you’ve collected mounds of shopper data, but with no time or knowledge to do anything with it?

If this is you, we can help you understand the data and use it to inform you of the best strategy to reach your customers in the future.

By managing data correctly, you build much stronger relationships with your customers

How do we do this?

We ask questions like: are your channels joined up to maximise every touchpoint? If they are, it helps build customer profiles.

Customer A

Parks every week, uses centre WiFi, visits the website, signs in to get grotto access at Xmas.

Customer B

Came in just once in the last 2-months, so must be shopping elsewhere. But what tempted them in? Where did they go? What did they buy?

Do the above customers get the newsletter? Is it the same newsletter sent at the same time, or is the approach different? Does Customer A get rewarded? Does Customer B get told you miss them?

Our belief is that your focus should be on messaging rather than footfall, and by managing data correctly, you build much stronger relationships with your customers, and the understanding of their behaviour can help create more loyalty, increasing dwell time and spend.

If this sounds exciting but is a little over your head, simply e-mail sayhello@onbrand.co.uk or give us a call on 03333 220 022.

OnBrand | Smart marketing using customer knowledge for digital, audio, social and events

Apr 17
2

A winter wonderland for Russian Standard Vodka

By | Branding, Case Study, Events

The Challenge

We love a challenge and transforming a popular London bar and club 10 days before Christmas was just up our street. The bar in question was Babble’s City of London flagship bar, the brand Russian Standard Vodka. The brief – to transform the space into an Ice Bar ready for Christmas and New Year guests.

Key was ensuring an on brand experience and brand activation to elevate the Russian Standard Vodka brand, create positive social media traffic and help build and boost reputational value.

Enter OnBrand

With no time to lose our creatives eagerly bought in a few of the vodka bottles (brand immersion they called it), turned off the heating and started watching re-runs of “From Russia With Love”. Some hours later they emerged, and a mood board began to take shape.

Site visits followed, and we began our measurements, sizing up which parts of the fixtures and fittings of the bar could be branded, removed, dressed or masked – especially an immovable 18 metre deep red Chesterfield sofa. A needle and several threads later resulted in an elegant, comfy and chic place to unwind.

As with any project, brand association and linking the theming to the client was key. We successfully balanced signposting, lighting and soft furnishings with a cocktail of icicle lights, white light-up cubes and tables, and winter inspired accessories.

Prime locations for the Russian Standard Vodka logo and branding were identified around the venue, to help bolster the presence of the brand.

With just a few hours to spare, and some sweat and tears shed, a transformation that would have been worthy of “Stars in your Eyes” was complete, to well received plaudits from guests and the client alike.

Key Wins

The event was a real success, generating positive social media, Instagram hits and guests certainly assured of the positive values of the Russian Standard Vodka influence.

  •  A complete venue transformation
  • Positive brand activation for Russian Standard Vodka
  • Complete client satisfaction
  • Strong social media results

Apr 17
0
Easter Events

Egg-citing Easter activities at Baytree

By | Case Study, Events, Shopping Centres

The Challenge

The Baytree Shopping Centre asked OnBrand to organise a fun, community focused Easter event that would get young families in Brentwood excited for Easter and all things chocolate!

Enter OnBrand

OnBrand, of course, got egg-cited and set about creating an event that would encourage shopper participation, create a feel-good factor and increase dwell times in the centre, and ongoing loyalty.

Success for the client was delivered by OnBrand through implementing multi-channel marketing promoted by posters, radio advertising and a press release distributed to local media, paired with strong digital marketing.

As with many of our events, retailer engagement was part of the brief, and we set about getting retailers involved in our plans. This led to a bumper Easter hamper competition created with strong support from several retailers, and of course lots of chocolate for our winner!

Key to all our activations is driving traffic to the centre website, where sign up and further loyalty can be acquired resulting in a reduced cost to reach shoppers in further marketing efforts. To drive this, the competition was only available on the Baytree website and marketing via social media brought a spike in web traffic, supported by a geo targeted paid boosted Facebook campaign.

On the day we delivered an Easter Egg hunt that engaged shoppers further, driving them into participating retailer stores where clues (and large print eggs) had been secreted.

For those children a little younger we provided an Easter crafts station for kids to create their own dress up bunny ears, create hampers and decorate eggs.

Making Easter Baskets

In engaging the wider local community of Brentwood, the day was supported by Safer Brentwood, a local police partnership initiative. Entertainment was provided by a local youth dance troupe who used the centre as a perfect indoor, dry covered environment to allow their kids the ability to showcase what they do and give them a focal point for the finale of their workshops. Certainly, they kept shoppers very much entertained with their singing and dancing routines.

Lastly, and to ensure a lasting memory and ongoing post event promotion the magic of the day was captured on video.

Key Wins

The day was a triumph, with a number of key wins for the centre, shoppers and OnBrand.

  • A fun family day out with craft activities and Easter hunt
  • Retailers involved in the day, in online competitions, and shoppers driven into store
  • Positive relationship between the centre and its retailers increased
  • Local community engagement and partnerships brought into the event
  • Increased event anticipation due to the multi-channelled marketing approach
  • Happy shoppers and children, resulting in a positive opinion of Baytree Shopping Centre
  • The Easter competition garnered record-breaking entries
  • Social media channels were popular entry points to the competition entry page, proving the success of accurately targeted marketing
Apr 06
1
Mother's Day Event

Making Mother’s Day memories at Baytree

By | Case Study, Events, Shopping Centres

The Challenge

To help celebrate the mothers of Brentwood, Baytree Shopping Centre wanted to organise a Mother’s Day event that would get people excited and ready for Mother’s Day and help them show all the Mums in their community how much they are appreciated.

Enter OnBrand

The event aimed at encouraging people to come to the centre and participate in the day’s activities and had the added benefit of drawing in passing foot traffic. To help encourage interaction and anticipation of the event and Mother’s Day there was also a Mother’s Day competition sponsored by two Baytree Shopping Centre retailers.

Our plan to ensure success:

  • A multi-channel marketing plan was implemented
  • Visual and radio advertising were utilised
  • Social media marketing through Facebook and Twitter
  • Carefully targeted boosted Facebook posts
  • Free and fun Mother’s Day related crafts to drive families into the centre
  • Amazing free entertainment from local community partners
  • Free daffodils for all the mothers in the centre

OnBrand was on hand throughout the day’s activities to ensure the event went smoothly, and guaranteeing that a fun time was had by all.

Key Wins

  • Record breaking footfall numbers with more than 12,500 visitors on the day
  • Retailer involvement with the Mother’s Day competition
  • Community engagement and partnership
  • Multi-channel advertising resulted in increased anticipation of the event
  • Family involvement in the event

What They Say

“Another first event for Baytree, the centre received clear and easy to follow proposal that was tailored to the event budget. The event sent our social media channels into a frenzy with a number of positive reviews, compliments, and proud parents sharing their children’s happy day ”

Dan Foley – Manager of Baytree Shopping Centre