Categories for Blog

  • Digital Marketing Assistant: How to Apply

    To apply for the position of Digital Marketing Assistant email your CV and covering letter to kelly.henwood@tbicommunications.com before the closing date of 4th October.

    Job Description 

     

  • Digital Marketing Assistant

    Digital Marketing Assistant

    Location: TBI Offices – Oxfordshire (Long Hanborough)  

    Salary: In the region of £20,000

    Full Time

    Closing Date: 4 October 2019

    We believe big ideas need to be realized.For over a decade, TBI has offered strategic consulting and marketing services to increase growth for organizations across the scholarly communications landscape.

    TBI has an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic Digital Marketing Assistant to join our dynamic and successful team. This varied role is key to the team and would suit an organised, highly motivated and creative individual.

    Responsibilities include:

    • Implementing digital marketing campaigns using full range of tools, including pay-per-click, email marketing, social media channels and online advertising
    • Copywriting
    • Campaign analysis and preparation of reports
    • TBI corporate marketing
    • Assisting with other projects, such as market research data analysis or transcription, where required

    This is a full-time role based in Oxfordshire.

    About you:

    You will have previous experience in digital marketing, which should include campaign implementation.

    You will:

    • Have a marketing qualification
    • Have strong verbal and written communication skills
    • Have excellent copywriting skills
    • Have previous experience in digital marketing and/or analytics
    • Have strong IT skills

    How to apply:

    Please email your CV and a covering letter to kelly.henwood@tbicommunications.com before the closing date of 4thOctober.

    Documents:

    Digital Marketing Assistant Job Description

     

     

  • TBI Digital Marketing Assistant Job Description

    Salary: In the region of £20,000

    Location: TBI Communications, 4 Fenlock Court, Long Hanborough, OX29 8LN

    Role

    TBI is a strategic marketing and communications agency working with academic publishers, libraries, and societies to help them identify and meet their potential through the development and delivery of effective marketing strategies and campaigns.

    As a core member of the TBI team, you’ll implement and report on digital marketing activities for the company and our clients. Key responsibilities include:

    • Creating effective and imaginative digital marketing campaigns for clients – setting objectives, preparing copy, and implementing the campaign though appropriate channels
    • Monitoring the success of campaigns and implementing changes if required
    • Preparing client-ready reports on the results of digital marketing activities
    • Copywriting articles and landing pages that incorporate target keywords for SEO
    • Developing and enacting a social media strategy for TBI Communications
    • Build social media audiences for TBI and clients as required
    • Manage and prepare copy for TBI email campaigns
    • Maintain the TBI email campaign platform
    • Monitor the digital marketing landscape and keep the wider TBI team informed of any significant developments
    • Assisting with other projects, such as market research data analysis or transcription, where required

    Personal qualities

    • A passion for all things related to digital marketing
    • Ability to deliver work on-spec and to schedule
    • A logical, analytical approach to campaign assessment
    • A desire to grow your skills and experience
    • Rigorous attention to detail

    Required skills and experience

    • A qualification in marketing
    • Strong verbal and written communication skills
    • Ability to write captivating and persuasive marketing copy for various specialist audiences while considering SEO best practices
    • Previous experience in digital marketing and / or analytics
    • Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office programs

    Desirable

    • An interest in, or experience of, statistical analysis
    • Experience with marketing automation systems
    • Previous experience running PPC and / or paid social media campaigns
    • Experience with Adobe Photoshop or similar graphics packages

  • Insights 2019: Dark Marketing, research challenges, and more

    Each March sees the annual Marketing Week Live show in London, with its co-located sister show Insights being of particular interest to anyone engaged with market research. While many of the presentations at Insights discuss projects with enormous research budgets behind them, there were some interesting parallels to the challenges faced by associations, publishers, and vendors.

    The first presentation of the day was on the effect of so-called ‘dark marketing’ – highly segmented and targeted programmatic campaigns, conducted via social and web advertising, that are visible only to a small audience. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but the session highlighted the impact that dark marketing can have on your competitor monitoring efforts: as an example, Apple is one of the largest spenders on social advertising, yet their Twitter and Facebook accounts are devoid of posts, with all communications being channelled to highly targeted audiences. There are monitoring tools available that can shed some light on competitors’ dark marketing strategies, but the cost of these may be beyond the reach of many smaller organizations. The upshot of this is that your awareness of what your competitors are doing cannot always be maintained through passive means – you’ll need to talk to your customers to find out what messages are reaching them.

    A packed-out session with a focus on working collaboratively presented a case study of trying to break down the ‘silos’ of knowledge within John Lewis – the retailer has dozens of teams, each with disparate and expert knowledge of different aspects of the customer journey, but which previously didn’t communicate that knowledge to each other. (A striking example was that the John Lewis website’s wishlist feature was originally implemented in a way that didn’t interface with their checkout or gift registry functions.)
    The presentation walked through John Lewis’ concentrated drive to unite the insights each team had to offer, and successfully address business challenges. The key takeaway, though, was that a project of this type requires considerable facilitation to bring to fruition – either by a dedicated in-house team, or through external assistance if staff time is under pressure.

    Another interesting presentation discussed the first national research panel of farmers in rural India. The session highlighted the importance of expertise and flexibility in a challenging research environment with solutions including a mix of technical innovations, staff training, and education of participants. Not every market research project is going to be so demanding, but this talk illustrated some of the important considerations that successful research design needs to take in mind, and why in-house staff might not have the expertise to anticipate all the complexities involved.

    TBI has undertaken a number of market research projects for societies, associations, and companies from across the world. We’re well-versed in the complexities facing organisations working in the academic and learned publishing arena and have put our expertise to work for clients such as the Royal Chemical Society, the International Federation of Library Associations, the International Monetary Fund, and ORCID. If you’d like our help with your next market research project, please contact us.

  • The Power of Partnership and Collaboration in the Publishing Industry

    At TBI Communications we understand the challenges publishers and societies face particularly when it comes to keeping up to speed with new technological developments in our industry.

    Over the years we have forged close partnerships with many technology providers, which has certainly added to the spectrum of our marketing capabilities, strengthened the strategic partnerships with our existing publishing partners and opened the doors to many new ones. Understandably, we jumped at the opportunity to attend ‘The power of Partnership and Collaboration in the Publishing Industry’ seminar organised by ALPSP this month to find out how other organisations in our industry collaborate and partner with each other.

    Our expectations were exceeded with some very interesting presentations. Dr. Joris Van Rossum, Director of Special Projects at Digital Science was presenting on the very topical issue of blockchain. Blockchain is a new technology that could radically change many industries and this presentation zoomed in on its potential to transform scholarly communication and research, focusing on important initiatives in the field. Dr. Rossum discussed in detail how blockchain technology can impact many critical aspects of scholarly communication such as open science and reproducibility, and how it opens the possibility to share data in a safe, transparent way through new forms of partnerships. Many questions followed, and it certainly whetted our appetite to discover more. For anybody that wants to get a better grasp on the subject, Dr. Rossum has published a report entitled ‘Blockchain for Research – Perspectives on a New Paradigm for Scholarly Communication’, which is available to download on Figshare.

    We found the presentations by 67 Bricks Ltd and Wisdom.ai particularly interesting – both sharing ideas on how AI and machine learning can aid the longstanding issues in the global research landscape of discoverability and advance the future of scholarly communication by integrating these new technologies within publishers’ processes. David Leeming, Head of Client Services at 67 Bricks gave an interesting example of the Washington Post’s Robot Reporter that has published 850 articles within a year – helping expand their audience and freeing up about 20% of journalist time to do more high-value work.

    Refreshingly free of information overload and very enjoyable were the talks by OUP and Kudos. They gave examples of how they collaborate with other partners within the scholarly publishing sphere to achieve technological innovations and serve our community better.

    In our opinion, ALPSP has delivered yet again another well received, well attended and very informative seminar. The day gave an interesting insight into some great ideas for collaboration, promising to push the boundaries of traditional publishing and advance the future of scholarly communication.

    Here at TBI Communications, we have certainly seen demand from organisations that want to collaborate with us to upscale their marketing activities and strengthen their position in the industry. For more information on the type of strategic partnerships and projects we have been involved with visit our website or contact us at info@tbicommunications.com.

  • SSP 2018 Regional Event: Humans, AI, and Decision Making

    On the 5th July, TBI’s David Porter braved an extremely hot and sweaty train journey to attend the SSP regional event on Humans, AI, and Decision Making. Isabel Thompson, Senior Strategy Analyst from Holtzbrinck was the first speaker to give her insights into this area.

    Thompson made the argument that scholarly publishing has a strategy problem rather than an AI problem. The best results achieved by AI come about by thinking about goals rather than processes. Just because AI is developing rapidly, and is increasingly being adopted by publishers, it does not necessarily follow that it is the best solution to the problem you are trying to solve. Don’t invest in AI, invest in a business problem.

    One theme in particular ran through the whole event, which was the need for publishers to adapt and change their culture. Thompson made the point that the scholarly publishing workforce is generally highly educated – but that organisations are not spending enough on training and ups killing staff to meet the needs posed by the data revolution. Partnerships, and a more open culture are going to be key, as nobody has all the data that they need. We might start to see more and more cross-industry initiatives as publishers recognise that traditional methods of driving usage and revenue are changing.

    An audience member asked the question – “what does the next stage of AI look like?” According to Mads Holman, co-founder and CEO of Bibblio, and the second speaker of the evening, the answer is that it will actually be intelligent. At the moment, AI is good at understanding user data but there is still some way to go before it it truly thinking like a human. This feels particularly pertinent to scholarly publishers – as the same user often has many different hats, (reader, author, reviewer, teacher etc) and the suitability of recommendations will vary depending on which hat the user is wearing. At some point in the future, AI will be able to recognise and adapt to those complexities.

    As a marketer, there were key takeaways that the need to create engaging, personalised messages, and for organisations to have a clear and accessible website has never been so important for business success. Holman talked about how we are essentially in an attention competition. There is a great deal of choice for users – and as a result most websites have found that bounce rates have gone up and time spent on site has declined. Tech, editorial and marketing all need to be working working in harmony to deliver an optimal user experience that gives content a chance to be discovered and read. Your marketing strategy and messaging needs to be developed and implemented with this attention competition in mind.

    This was a fascinating evening on a vital topic. Roll on the next SSP regional event!

  • Approaches to member engagement: it’s a two-way street

    An engaged membership is essential in securing a society’s position in the future, but how do you develop an effective engagement strategy?

    Based on a recent presentation at the Society Street Conference last month, Lynne Miller talks about the importance of developing an emotional connection with your members, to drive engagement.

    (more…)

  • Membership research: harnessing insight from your society members

    Are we doing what’s best for our members?

    This thought is never far from the mind of society staff the world over, particularly as associations struggle with recruitment and retention of new members.

    Research is an important tool in addressing this question; it provides your members with the opportunity to feed back into your offerings, and for your organization to ensure that you’re demonstrating the maximum value for members’ investment.

    There are some key points to bear in mind when approaching any market research project: (more…)

  • Tiered pricing – an equitable approach for ensuring journal program revenues

    Online access to journals continues to grow significantly, and many presses have seen an associated decline in full-priced print subscriptions, and therefore their revenues.

    In situations such as these, tiered pricing can be of great benefit, particularly for publishers with a small- to medium-sized journals program and a diverse customer base. Adjusting your subscription prices in line with each customer’s size and academic profile can help arrest this decline, and in fact result in a more even field for institutions of different sizes and academic remits – scaling prices based on institution size and scope means that a small technical college would pay less than an Ivy League institution with a large research program, while ensuring access to the same high-quality content for their community of readers. (more…)

  • Content marketing solutions at ASAE15 for association leaders

    American Society for Association Executives (ASAE 2015 Detroit, August 2015) offered several sessions about content marketing. These full-to-capacity, large sessions offered attendees creative thinking and practical tips to deliver more value to members and reach broader audiences. Content marketing can spotlight your members and deliver key messages.  Below are practical examples about building a content marketing plan around your conference. Interesting examples and practical tips from “Stretching Your Conference Content.” Meetings are an enormous opportunity to capture content to reach audiences who aren’t attending the meeting. With planning, you can capture content more affordably and engage thought leaders, key association members, members and non-members who are attending. Asking them to contribute to a larger story makes them feel more strongly connected to and recognized by your organization. The content created – interviews, videos, photos, and more – can be released in a range of communications through the year to support many programs. Keynote speakers.  Make the most of the important investment in your keynoter. Careful thought goes into the message your keynoter will deliver. Your speaker has a shared goal of extending the visibility of the message to make the biggest impact possible. The ASAE offered a great example of extending key note content. Josh Linkner’s key note presentation on “creative disruption” challenged association leaders to think like innovators.  ASAE developed several additional communications to increase the reach and impact of this message.

    • Now Daily, the on site print magazine, featured an article on Day 2 that captured the enthusiasm and excitement for the presentation, featuring tweets and response from the audience.
    • Associations Now published an online article at the time of the presentation to reach ASAE’s subscribers, delivering value to non-attendees. A press release extended the audience to broader media outlets and the article is easily discoverable with key words.
    • A podcast interview, recorded ahead of the meeting, provides a more personal introduction to Josh and addresses the importance of innovation from ASAE’s point of view. This provides a post-show follow up opportunity to re-engage attendees and inspire action after the meeting.

    These assets will serve ASAE throughout the year to connect with broader membership about innovation. After the session, Josh was featured at a book signing for Road to Reinvention knowing he delivered his message well beyond the thousands packed into the room.

    Award winners. Awards mark significant accomplishments in members’ careers and strengthen their connection to your organization. Awards presented at meetings create an opportunity to showcase “what success looks like” to prospective and current members. Plan a multi-staged, multi-channel content marketing program to feature winners through the year and inspire future nominees to apply.

    • Prior to the meeting, assemble pictures and bios of nominees and create an ‘interview article.’ Make these live and feature in communications around the meeting leading up to the awards presentation and on social media during the meeting.
    • Include interviews for the awards program on the schedule for videographers and A/V specialists already at the meeting. Script the questions and interview segments to fit into several short 3-5 minute segments. Provide questions in advance so participants are prepared and rehearsed. Capturing  video on site will add excitement and ‘real-time’ context. Translated video interviews can be edited to feature as articles in other media, too.
    • Interview a past recipient and the current recipient to describe the work that earned the recognition. Share what the award means to each, and for the past recipient what it has meant for his career.

    More ideas for videos. Oral Histories are an excellent opportunity to connect senior members to early career members and tie past research discoveries to the future direction of the field. Oral history campaigns have been promoted throughout an anniversary year.

    • Use a green screen background so you can add compelling picture or other video ‘b-roll’ as background later. Schedule time in “sound proofed” zone.
    • Transcribe original video content and create an internal library of word documents for the interviews. This small investment is a timesaver later. Searching documents for valuable quotes and content to be re-purposed in newsletters, magazine and other formats is much faster than re-watching videos.

    Student Bloggers. The American Society for Nutrition has developed a successful student blogger program which provides visibility for millennial members.

    • Students apply competitively for limited positions. In the second year, ASN had more than double the applicants than positions from graduate and undergraduate students. Diversity is also consideration when selecting bloggers.
    • Students are given editorial direction, a content calendar and direction regarding use of research from ASN publications, and terms and conditions for their posts.  Assignments are staggered through the year across a number of bloggers so writing a post fits with other priorities.
    • In addition to posting through the year, some are assigned to “live blog” during the meeting about research presented and news to convey key messages to broader audiences. They also get special access at meetings to press room wi-fi and other technical support, especially helpful for video blogs.

    The bloggers increase their visibility to their professional community and can include their selection to the program on their resume.  ASN showcases early career researchers, and demonstrates a commitment to supporting new, younger voices in the community. And, early career researchers can themselves welcomed and involved at ASN.

    Association members have an inherent professional interest in your content. When it is valuable, they will share it with the professional networks you want to reach. You have expert and willing communicators among members, leadership and staff. When tactics like these are developed within a content marketing strategy, you can amplify your messages and serve your audiences. What content marketing tactics have been successful for your organization?

    Thanks to the presenters of “Stretch Your Conference Content”, Shawn Boynes, Paula Eichenbrenner, Jenifer Hamilton, and Jenn Waters.