The Future of Export in a Digital Age

I have been meaning to share the notes I made at a very interesting event that I attended last month in Gloucestershire.

The keynote was presented by the fascinating David A Smith of Global Futures and Foresight. He's a futurologist, which all sounds a bit mystical, but I can assure you his talk was very relevant.

As with all future predictions, there is guesswork but the trends seem reasonably likely.

Your first question may be "why am I going to something like this?" Well, half my business is now in digital marketing. My background in commerce means that my remit with clients can often expand beyond the original brief of designing a website or social media support. I have helped develop export markets for a couple of businesses in recent months. So it helps to have as wide a knowledge as possible on issues that may impact future business strategies.

Below are some interesting points made during the day. I know there are "lies, damned lines and statistics," but I think these statistics are worth thinking about when developing new strategies for your export markets.


1) "We do the old things using new technology." The point being, recent inventions are often used for existing activities, but their convenience is not established for a number of years. For example, tins were invented in 1810 but the tin opener wasn't patented until 1858!

2) Is the world economy going full circle? In 1820, China was the world's biggest economy and India was second....

3) The world middle class continues to grow. By 2020 it is estimated that 52% of the world population will be middle class. This will have a massive impact on consumption. Further more, by 2040, it is estimated that Africa will have 2bn more people in the middle class.

4) The top 75 cities in the world will generate 30% of world GDP by 2025. 40% of these cities will be in China, 13 in the USA and 3 in Europe (London being one of them).

5) 24% of people currently live in countries where Islam is the main religion. This is estimated to grow to 33% by 2050 and 37% in 2100. Are your products suitable and available in these markets?

6) The population is ageing. Mature economies will have a third of their population (up from 22%) above retirement age by 2025. In the developing world it will increase from 9% to 20%. This means we have to think about how we communicate with older people - is the font on our websites large enough for people to read?

7) Internet usage will double worldwide by 2025 - to 2.5bn people.

8) Mobile usage will surpass desktop usage this year. It's time to ensure that your website is optimised for the mobile web. At present, only 33% of websites are.... The internet and mobility will converge.

9) Consumers are changing from a transactional model to an engagement model. Social media is central to these changing dynamics.

10) Game theory and behavioural science will become more and more important. People will become more and more used to 'game playing' with retailers, service providers and Government. This shifts the dynamics to stopping telling people what to do; to encouraging them to do something. For example, in a recent test, cars were filmed speeding. All those that sped were still fined, but the difference was that the fines were shared out between all those who had not sped!


I hope that you found the above as fascinating as I did.

We have an interesting and challenging future ahead. Things will change, as they always have done, but it is those people and businesses who embrace change who will benefit most from it.

How can you use your various online marketing platforms more effectively?

With the variety of online marketing platforms available, it can sometimes be difficult to decide how best to use each one.

How do you differentiate your use of social media, your website and email marketing? How can you use them to support your overall business objectives? What function does each of them serve?

These are difficult questions to answer because the function and benefit of each platform will be different for each organisation. 

However, Econsultancy ran a recent article that provides a useful pointer.

Brand awareness

Essentially, Facebook and Twitter can be used to raise brand awareness. They can provide bite sized chunks of information or headlines that attract your customers and encourage them to engage with you and explore your proposition further. 

Facebook and Twitter not only help to attract new customers but they help build loyalty with existing customers. They can provide an ongoing conversation with them.

Interest

Your website is there as your online hub. The customer is already interested in you and is now exploring further. They want to know the detail behind you. They want to be encouraged to do something. Perhaps to buy something, to visit you, to contact you, to sign up for your email newsletter.

Loyalty

Finally, email marketing are for those customers who have built up a more loyal relationship with you. They like what they see and they will permit you access to their inbox. 

With this in mind, such loyalty deserves a more personalised approach to emails your email newsletters? But that subject is for another article!

The importance of clear objectives

When developing new business strategies, social media campaigns or new websites, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the objectives. How else can you measure the success of each new project?

And what makes a good objective?

Well, I suppose it must involve an acronym, so let's use RAM... I learned this on a course many years ago and it has stayed with me so it must have some value (to me at least)!

Objectives should be:

1) REALISTIC

2) ACHIEVABLE

3) MEASURABLE

So when I start work on a new website or social media campaign, my first question is always "what are the business objectives?"

We then prioritise the objectives and decide which are the one or two that we must focus on.

This allows us to concentrate on the key requirements of each project and ensure that we do not get sidetracked with extraneous items.

No blur, just absolute focus on what is required on delivering your core business objectives.

Thoughts on the Visit Wiltshire Tourism Forum

Yesterday, I was invited to attend the Visit Wiltshire Tourism Forum and lead two workshops on using social media more effectively.

Prior to my workshop, there was a morning session which included four interesting and insightful presentations about tourism; its value to the UK economy and how to market it more effectively.

While it is still fresh in my mind, I thought I would share some of what I learned.

a) Tourism is the UK's third largest export and it is still growing fast.

b) France and Germany provide the most visitors to our shores. Then the US and Ireland; but the US is top in terms off spend. Australia is 10th in terms of the number of visitors, but fourth for the amount they spend. See more here.

c) Here is a video called The Sounds Of Great Britain, made by Visit Britain:

d) In times of recession, people look to the safety of the past in an uncertain world, and so the power of heritage becomes stronger. An alternative name for this could be The Downton Effect (or the Brideshead Effect in the early 80's...)?

e) At least two of the presenters encouraged the use of stories as a powerful way to communicate. I'm glad they did, as I had also included a slide on the same topic for my workshop. So, we were all in agreement. People relate to stories. They remember stories.

f) Everyone was encouraged to go and visit the Library in Birmingham. I intend to.

It was an interesting day and it was great to meet so many local tourist providers excited about future opportunities.

Google and Facebook Ads

A couple of things have happened recently that make me suspect that advertising with Google and Facebook will carry far more weight in increasing your company profile than was the case before.

The influence of organic results look like they will decline as a result....

Social@Ogilvy have carried out some research into over 100 branded pages on Facebook and discovered that their organic reach (in other words, their non-paid for reach), has declined by 50%. In 2012, brands could hope to reach 16% of the people who 'liked' their page. The research suggests that this is now down to 6%. Bigger brands with over 500,000 likes, suffer even more and are down to 2% reach.

So, if you want to be seen by your customers on Facebook, it seems that soon, the only option will be to pay for the privilege.

Here is a link to the original Ogilvy article.

With Google it doesn't seem to be quite so pronounced. However, you may have noticed that the Google search results have subtly changed.

Previously ads had a yellowy shaded background to all of the text, which made them more noticeable. Now, the only sign is that they have an Ad icon to the left and the background is the same white as the organic results. A small change but one that reduces the visual difference between paid for and organic search results....

Photographing Defenders

On Friday, Andy at Land Rovers UK, gave me the chance to drive a custom build 25 year old Defender.

Our task, with wing man Zach (whose DJ-ing skills were exemplary - the introduction to Goyte was most welcome), was to take the Defender out for the day and photograph it just before it is despatched to another happy customer in the USA.

I have worked closely with Land Rovers UK for over six years, but I had never had the opportunity to drive one of their very special Defenders before. I was given a quick lesson and drove it around the car park so that I could get used to its quirks (it has a manual choke!) before we were let out on the open road. It was surprisingly easy to drive and to manoeuvre. Stu, their head of the workshop, told me it is in fact shorter than a Mondeo Estate and no wider than your average car.

I had great fun driving this classic, well loved vehicle. It reminds me of Leica cameras - full manual control and lovingly crafted.

Here are a selection of photos from the day.

My photo challenge for 2014 - a film each week

A couple of years ago, I challenged myself to take a photo a day. I kept up with it most of the time.... However, some days just weren't conducive for taking photos and so I'd maybe steal one from another day.

The challenge did help improve my photography as it forced me to take my camera places where I had previously not bothered. 

So I have decided to try another challenge this year which is to take a different roll of film each week. 

As you can see from the photo, I have a pile of unused film some of which is going out of date. 

The majority is Kodak Elite Chrome Slide Film. I bought up rolls of the stuff when it was announced that they were discontinuing it. In the right conditions it produces beautifully saturated photos. 

So I intend to choose a film at the beginning of each week and a complimentary camera. They will be selected by a mixture of the weather forecast, what I'm doing that week and, most importantly, what I feel like. 

Given that it takes time to develop the film, I won't be able to show you the results straight away. However, I will try a keep this blog up to date with what I'm up to. 

I will be developing the black and white film myself, the Impossible Project film will do itself, while the colour film will take two to three weeks by Boots. 

Why do this? Using film is fun. It goes back to the basics of photography. There is the anticipation of waiting for the film to be developed. The tonal range of film is far superior to anything digital can offer. I also want to do my little bit at keeping analogue film alive.

So the challenge is set. I look forward to seeing how things develop and I hope you will be inspired to do something similar or at least follow my progress. 

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!

This challenge will unfold on my photography blog which you can find here.