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Like most of the world, I’ve been working from home since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the planet back in March.

Again, like most of the world, this has meant that I’ve spent some serious downtime shopping online and considering various quarantine spending sprees while the doors of the physical high street remain firmly closed.

My latest purchase? A sweet pair of red, white and black Air Jordan 1s.

Like these:

As marketers, we know that consumers will rarely (or never!) visit a website just once before purchasing a product. I was no different. This blog offers a quick anecdote that will sprint through my simplified customer journey, and its various touchpoints over a couple of weeks of consideration that have resulted in me sitting down to write this with a fresh pair of sneaks on my feet.

Step 1: Netflix

Not many marketing blogs would start an attribution journey with Netflix; however, without the recent release of The Last Dance, a fantastic basketball documentary revolving around Michael Jordan and the 1997/98 Chicago Bulls season* I’d still be sitting in a battered old pair of Vans right now…

*If you haven’t seen it, it’s a must-watch!

I’m a big basketball fan, and despite having lived all my days within a tight radius of my home city of Glasgow, from a young age I had chosen to pledge my allegiance to the Chicago Bulls.

When MJ donned his original pair of red, white and black, iconic Air Jordan 1s for what could have been his last game at Madison Square Gardens, I decided that it was time for my very own pair.

As digital marketers, we love to measure things at as granular a level as we can. We need to know the value that each channel we invest in contributes to the big picture. We like to put things in boxes and report on the return on investment from within those boxes.

However, including Netflix as an important first step here reminds us that, for a long time (and in many cases, still), marketing didn’t always have a conversion attached to it. Although we can measure the halo effect that such exposure has on brand search, etc., sometimes product placement, billboards and TV ads are all about starting a story that is ultimately finished elsewhere.

Step 2: Paid search

What do you do when a product catches your eye? You Google it of course!

As Head of Paid Search at BIG, I’ll always have a natural (biased) interest in the role this channel plays in any purchase journey.

As a bottom-of-the-funnel digital channel, PPC can feel the pressure to drive an instant return. This causes all sorts of performance questioning when ads are switched live, but the tills aren’t subsequently lighting up immediately.

Yes, PPC ads are triggered by user intent, but when I plugged ‘air jordan 1s’ into Google, what was the likelihood that I’d go ahead and click on the first ad I saw and make that purchase? Slim.

Consumers like to research. We like to get the best deal out there. And as digital marketers we need to remember this when it comes to the approach that we take to PPC keyword targeting and measurement strategies. Paid search isn’t always the closer.

Step 3: WhatsApp…?

Curve ball…

No, I wasn’t targeted directly by any form of ad on WhatsApp. But it definitely merits a shout out.

When making purchase decisions online, we’ll bounce products off friends and family to get the validation that what we are about to buy is a sound investment. We want peer approval. Affirmation. We also like to return the favour and recommend products that we think our WhatsApp contacts might like.

I know I certainly did this on my recent online shopping escapade when considering various retailer websites, Jordan colourways, alternative styles etc.

So how do we factor this value into the customer journey from an attribution point of view? Well, we can’t really.

Unless we’re sharing messy UTM tracked links in our WhatsApp group chats when our friends send us links, or vice versa, this will be picked up as direct traffic in Google Analytics.

This ‘dark’ traffic can be important to understand when establishing the different routes that consumers are taking to discover and engage with your product and brand. Although there are no perfect workarounds for reporting on this, creating custom segments in Google Analytics to pinpoint this traffic can be a valuable exercise. Specifically, isolating direct traffic to deeper website content (e.g. a product page for a pair of Air Jordan 1s) that a user would be unlikely to type into their browser manually is a good starting point.

Step 4: Remarketing

Remarketing and online retail just go together. It’s an age-old, digital love story.

All paid media platforms now offer brands the opportunity to retarget prospective buyers when they have engaged with your website. You can get creative with audience segments ranging from all previous visitors, views of product pages, shopping cart abandoners – the list goes on.

Throughout my quest to buy those Jordan 1s, I’ve been hit with many tempting ads across Facebook and Instagram and various Google Display Network publisher websites. Remarketing ads remind me that this is a product that I want. They keep the sneaks firmly on my radar while I wait for the right time, or mindset, to make the purchase.

Importantly, like Paid Search, we need to consider the value of remarketing beyond a direct purchase. Paid media platforms offer a solution for this via ‘view’ attribution metrics to let you know when your customers eyeballs met your ad on their way to sale – even if they didn’t click on it.

Step 5: Auto-fill URL (Direct)

Fine, I’ll buy ‘em (can always send them back, eh?).

So, after a couple of weeks of checking back on the retailer’s website that my size was still in stock and holding out for any discounts popping up in remarketing ads, I made the purchase.

At this point I knew where I was going, so simply started typing the URL into my browser before auto-complete took care of the rest and led me back to where I had left off. Perfect.

Traffic from auto-completed URLs will appear under Direct in Google Analytics’ acquisition reporting. And Direct traffic is often blamed for swallowing up all sorts of valuable data that has a deeper backstory than the surface level would suggest.

Thankfully, Google Analytics’ defaults to a last non-direct click attribution model and offers insight into the customer journey to sale via multi-channel funnel reporting. This means that those valuable twists and turns in my purchase journey, and numerous clicks to the retailer website, will not be forgotten when numbers are being crunched and channel value is being calculated.

So, there we have it, another fuzzy user journey to leave digital marketers scratching their heads…

My key takeaways for digital marketers when reflecting on my latest quarantine purchase:

Consider all touchpoints – not just the ones you know about…

Netflix and WhatsApp are just a couple of rogue examples in my purchase journey.

Sometimes you can’t measure everything the way you’d like to, and sometimes that’s ok.

Think beyond first-party, Google Analytics data. Step outside the box. Is there a reason, beyond your own marketing efforts, why one of your products is getting a lot of attention lately?

A quick look at Google Trends shows that I wasn’t the only one influenced by The Last Dance.

Simply being able to correlate spikes in website traffic and sales with wider behavioural trends can go a long way in joining the dots to contribute to wider marketing decisions. Or can even just help to explain bumps in the numbers a little better.

Think beyond what digital channels are supposed to be ‘good’ at…

Paid search can be an opener as much as it can be the channel that seals the deal in your customer sale. A display ad from an awareness campaign can convert traffic with one click. Digital channels won’t always perform the way you expect them to.

Consider using a holistic approach to your measurement strategy.

Report on ‘view’ sales within your paid media ad platforms and use Google Analytics multi-channel reporting to gain deeper insight into how paid media investment has played a role in that final click that led your customer to click ‘confirm’ on your purchase page.

Talk to our BIG digital team to understand more about the various paths that your customers are taking to your website on their way to sale.

Craig Edwardson – Head of Paid Search

In this blog we’ll look at the best ways to produce content that really makes an impact for your brand or business.

Minding Your Own Business

When it comes to creating content, there are millions of different types of things you could create, including infographics, videos, podcasts, collaborations, installations and so on. But if this content is not authentic or fresh (a little surprise and delight) to your brand or company then it’s really going to struggle to stand out in a world that already has an abundance of content.

What I mean when I say “mind your own business” is that you should not look to copy what your competitors are doing – look to the past or to the future but not now. Concentrate on one thing that you do better than anyone else and show the world. Matt Calderwood is my example here – this is a guy that says, “not everything unbalanced is unbeautiful.” He has become an artist – with his work exhibited in galleries around the world – and to put it simply, all he does is balance things. But he is the best in the world at doing it.

Matt Calderwood, Found Objects, www.mattcalderwood.com

Flow

After a certain time spent creating content you will get into a flow. You will be relaxed in the knowledge that what you are going to produce will be of a standard that will mean people will happily pay for your stuff. However, this can be a trap because if you’re not challenging what you’re producing then you can’t fail. And if you can’t fail, then you can’t smash it out the park. It becomes too easy to just stay in our comfort zone. The drive to create something new should never be relaxed.

Conversion

Ok, so you have read all about how content marketing can improve your conversion with lead magnets and the like – but how do you go about creating it? Well, this is how I would do approach it….

First off, I would not look at it as content, but as a product. This may be because I am a product designer in my core but it’s a process that works for me. So, if every bit of content we create must feel like a product – what does that mean? Well, in creating a visual product the only thing you need to consider is, what are people going to feel when they view it?

“Art is how we decorate space and music is how we decorate time.”

To simplify things, follow this rule – whatever you are producing, it should always generate awareness, consideration or conversion. Whether it is a video, book, podcast, or interactive piece, it needs to result in one of these three outcomes:

1.      Awareness.

Get people to know who you are. Find out where your customers are and the best way to show them your product.

2.      Consideration.

Get people to buy into who you are and what you stand for – people need to believe in what you’re doing. For example, if you’re selling a cool t-shirt you need to surround your brand in the coolest music, locations, attitude, etc.

3.      Conversion.

They like or love your brand and they buy your stuff.

Making Content

Over my years of pitching products (content) to clients, big and small, there have always been buzzwords that I have used; viral, disruptive, brave, fresh and so on. Now, these words work, but the one I think that works the best (and you can use this in your next pitch) is unexpected. Your clients will get it and there are no negative connotations. We are trying to sell but we also must entertain, and your customers love to be surprised.

Here are some things your product (content) also needs to give it a fighting chance:

Stories sell. Don’t underestimate them, even bad ones are better than none.
Start strong. People are lazy and have terrible attention spans so, for example, if it’s a video then make your first 2 secs count. Same with blog headlines.
Make it interesting – just do that.
Optimise that product (content) for search – MAKE IT VISIBLE. An old rule from the world of television says spend 10% of the budget on creating and 90% on make it visible (or marketing). In the online world, I would say this might translate to 25%/75%.

Risk

Sadly, there is no rule book on what works and what doesn’t. Try to keep in mind that the extraordinary has become ordinary. If it doesn’t feel UNEXPECTED then there’s a good chance that it’s not going to work.

P.S. – Even if it is UNEXPECTED it might not work either! Whoops, fun times!? Embrace the adventure. The truth is the more you try the better you will get, and your audience will grow.

We’re ready to help you find the UNEXPECTED.

The BIG Creative Team

Following our recent rebrand, we thought we would catch up with the architect behind it, BIG’s creative director, Steve Hill.

As we pursue our careers, we invariably learn what works and what doesn’t. Through trial and error we can often fall into the trap of habit; what worked before will work again, so let’s just stick with that. We apply mental shortcuts* – a path of least resistance if you like. This is particularly likely when you are under pressure and time is tight (and when isn’t it?).

As a creative agency, we recognise there are times when we need to be a little more child-like in our work. I don’t mean having a temper tantrum and throwing yourself to the office floor (not in front of clients anyway), but having the wonderful curiosity that children have – that we all once had. The desire to know how everything works, why the grass is green and the sky blue, and what happens if I…?!

For grown-ups, it’s difficult to unlearn learned habits. In our case, as creatives, it might be how we look at our clients’ challenges in different ways. That could be as simple as remembering to consider if the brief is asking the right questions.

Being curious is rarely the easy path. It’s not following our “route one thinking”* but means applying cognitive load to our already-busy brains. It can be a lot of fun though! Learning something new is said to help confidence and our ability to tackle all sorts of new tasks. The sense of achievement from learning something new has a positive impact on our mental wellbeing and, after the last few months, who couldn’t do with a little positive impact on their mental wellbeing? So, while we all have tried and trusted techniques and methodologies we know work, there’s always room for adding a little ‘Creative Curiosity’ to our thinking.

Steve Hill – Creative Director

**Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman – if you want to know why we have two modes of thought and what system 1 and system 2 are, then get this book.

After more than five years at BIG, I’m leaving. It’s the longest I’ve ever spent in any job, and that’s because it’s the best job I’ve ever had.

There’s some unfinished business, because there always is when working at an agency. Your work is never done. As one client takes a breather, another picks up the phone in a breathless panic. There’s a new packet of business cards under my desk that will never be used and a whole host of strange and wonderful (more of the former than the latter) ideas from brainstorms that have yet to become a reality.

Life is all about finding out who you are, and for people in the marketing industry, an agency is the perfect place to do it.

BIG was my first move into the wide world of marketing. I joined as a senior account executive in what was then BIG’s sports PR team. I said to myself I could always go back to scratch my journalistic itch, but for the time, a glamorous career in the world of sports marketing was worth a punt (I was hired mainly for my puns).

I leave, more than five years later, as an account director in a team which looks after two major sporting bodies, but mainly plies its trade outside the world of sport. I’ve worked on schools, gyms, accountancy firms, restaurants, hotels, energy drinks, architects, property developers, charities, manufacturing firms, food producers and more.

Pretty quickly I realised that although I loved sport, I didn’t want to be defined by it. I didn’t want to be a one-trick pony, or for fans of niche NFL references from the mid-noughties, I didn’t want to be a Wildcat QB. What I love about sport far more than the action on the pitch is the stories. I’m probably far more likely to read a book by David Halbestam about basketball than I am to watch an NBA game and after retiring from rugby, my tales of a legendary career are more indicative of my skills as a storyteller than a rugby player.

While this seems like a bit of a ragtag roster of clients, viewers of any good sports movie will tell you that often that approach can work better than a sleek, clearly defined group which makes sense on paper.

What remains constant with every client I’ve worked on is a willingness to tell stories, and that’s what I found I love to do more than anything else. What I enjoyed most about this job was getting to know clients and unearthing the little gems which best communicated their point of difference.

Starting with next to no experience in PR, I had the chance to learn at the feet of BIG’s founders Alex Barr and Neil Gibson, work on integrated campaigns with experts in design, creative, digital advertising and search marketing, and I was given the opportunity to lead a team for the first time in my career.

And that’s the beauty of an agency, this agency. You have the opportunity to work on a diverse range of clients, pick up skills from each sector and provide solutions by working together with experts in every area across the marketing mix, and you get to throw your own unique strengths into the melting pot.

I would have felt very guilty about the constant phone calls with pleas for help to specialists in PPC, SEO, social media, corporate communications, crisis management and public affairs if I wasn’t called upon every time rugby was within a grubber kick from a campaign, or any time a daft wildcard idea was needed to put the finishing touch on a proposal.

As I wind down from a very fun but hectic, demanding but rewarding five years on the job, my compulsive checking of email is slowly beginning to subside. I might use this time to build a fort or attempt a modern art project with my unused business cards. I might finally engage my colleagues with conversations about the weather (it is quite cold, in Scotland, in October, isn’t it?). I might sift through my 36,000 emails and compile a revenge list of all the people who called me Gregory or didn’t start an email by hoping I was well.

Or I might attach this emotional letter to an email as a way of trying to sum up my gratitude to an agency which gave a fairly rudderless former journalist freedom and guidance to develop his skills, learn how to build relationships with clients, manage people, and discover what he wanted to do in his career.

I arrived in 2014 clean shaven, wearing a suit, tie and shiny shoes, ready to get to work on PR and crisis management for sports clients and a few select others. I leave still clean shaven, mainly because despite five years having passed, I still can’t grow a beard, wearing jeans, trainers and a t-shirt, finishing up with a wide variety of brilliant, disruptive clients who I’ve helped across the marketing mix.

Big companies can take time to evolve, but in the reflective closing moments of my BIG career, I’ve been glad to work for a company that, despite its name, was never too big to change and never too big to take on board any ideas or suggestions from me, or any other member of the team.

When I left journalism, I was told over and over again that I was leaving to join “the dark side”. I can confirm, despite the fearmongering, the lights are on in here. And as I leave to join DARING Foods, a Scottish startup specialising in plant-based chicken as Chief Brand Officer, I’m very lucky to have the experience and lessons gained from five years at BIG in my locker.

Goodbye Gregor and best of luck in the future!

Language is evolving; there’s no question of that. New words are regularly added to the Oxford English Dictionary and all manner of colloquialisms continue to creep into common usage. But when it comes to workplace communications—both internal and external—being clear and correct is of utmost importance.

Whether you’re writing everyday correspondence like emails and staff notices, or important documents such as business plans, press releases and company training manuals, it’s imperative your final draft is not only informative, but clear, accurate and consistent.

I say final draft because it’s virtually impossible that any piece of writing will be perfect without some form of editing. I know of a few ex-journalists who can fire off an excellent press release in a matter of minutes, but it’ll still need a good going over to check for errors and repetition at the very least.

Writing is a creative process and as we mull over words and clauses in our heads, sentences can become confused or words end up being misspelled—or, missed out altogether. We all do it (even me!) and sometimes it just takes a pair of fresh eyes to pick up your slack.

However, when the editing buck stops with you, these top tips should help:

1. Make a consistent style list

If you’re proof-reading a document of 500 words or more, write a list of all the words and phrases that may trip you up. e.g. If you’re checking a training document that uses the phrase ‘member log-in details’, the first time you come across it, make a note that you’ve decided to spell log-in with a hyphen so you avoid an embarrassing mixture of log in, log-in, and login.

And it’s not just words. If there are amounts or measurements in your document, make sure they’re presented in a consistent manner throughout. Think of your reader – it’s not helpful for them to read about some of your firm’s financials in sterling and others in dollars. Keep everything consistent, and if you must mention different currencies or units of measurement, it’s worth referring back to one consistently in brackets after each mention.

2. If you don’t know, check!

Everyone’s brain has an off-day from time to time and sometimes we just don’t know the correct spelling of a word or phrase. I only found out ‘under way’ (as in, ‘the lecture is under way’) should be two separate words relatively recently, purely because I bothered to check. Unfortunately, I seem to be firmly in the fact-checking minority, hence ‘£50m project underway’ is an all-too-familiar (and incorrect) headline.

The same goes for brand names: if you don’t know, check.

Scotland’s railway provider is not Scotrail or Scot Rail—it’s ScotRail—no space. Your spell checker won’t like it, but we all know the red squiggly line isn’t always correct. That’s why it’s always worth taking a few extra moments to grab a copy of the dictionary or grammar guide, or at the very least do a quick Google search.

3. Go and have a cup of tea

Those who know me well will appreciate that this advice would likely feature on any top tip list I’m ever asked to write, since I am a firm believer that tea solves most problems. However, here there is another reason for it. Regardless of your tipple of choice, getting away from your desk—and your document—will do wonders for your ability to proof your own work.

Ideally, someone else will proof-read your writing for you, but you should at least give it a first check and the value of fresh eyes cannot be underestimated.

Once you’ve finished your tea, you’ll see errors and inconsistencies you couldn’t hope to notice before you boiled the kettle.

4. No errors aloud

For those of you who got excited and thought I’d made a mistake in this heading, get down off your seat and stop punching the air. My last piece of advice purely relates to reading aloud.

Once you’re confident you’ve spelled everything correctly and consistently and all the information you’re presenting is accurate, all you need worry about is clarity and flow. Read aloud any sections of the document you feel might be misleading or unclear and you’ll soon know if they need to be altered for your reader.

Regardless of whom your reader/s will be, don’t let them be distracted by sloppy or inaccurate writing—it’ll only detract from your point and undermine the authority of your message.

As writers, we must guard the usefulness of English. Yes, I understand our language is evolving, but some things are just plain wrong. Plenty people assume the word definitely has an “a” in it… does that mean we should just allow an alternative spelling with no relation to the word finite?

Accuracy is imperative and as professionals, what we write should reflect a duty of care to our most precious tool—language. Very few journalists will use my press releases word-for-word, but I strive to make sure the content is accurate and compelling enough that if they wanted to, they could.