What Is The Future Of Digital Marketing?

History has a tendency to repeat itself, and with digital marketing in particular, there is a pattern of disruption.

After finding that B2B organizations are not getting the most value out of the old digital marketing playbooks, new frameworks are being put in place, which should be visited at least once every 12-24 months to ensure relevancy, are a guide to help prepare for periods of disruption.

We're entering into the fourth digital marketing framework — the first was in 2000 — and there are things a business can do to prepare for the next disruption.

What Is Digital Marketing 4.0?

The prior framework includes websites, email campaigns, digital advertisements, basic social media management and basic blog publishing. It only focuses on increasing visits to websites but has no focus on lead conversion and proper online lead qualification. This most recent iteration, though, includes: 

More Integrated Global Marketing: Inbound and outbound marketing should now be combined. In comparison to cold-calling, consider this "warm-calling." For example, after someone reads a blog article on your site, follow it up with an email sharing more meaningful content.

A Cohesive Marketing Technology Stack: No one software tool can save the day. Marketing is not about the creative aspect alone anymore. Marketing technology infrastructure needs to be designed and integrated correctly. One social media tool alone will not save the day, nor will one CRM tool be the solution to a challenge anymore. Consider your full stack and how it can work together.

Evolving Marketing Roles: Digital transformation is no longer limited to the CIO. Your CMO now needs it more than ever. The CMO needs to know more about the possibilities of implementing marketing automation to not only help execute on the marketing playbooks but also to help CIOs measure a full, end-to-end ROI.

Omnichannel Marketing Strategy: This includes deep analytics and data mining, such as AI and machine learning. Omnichannel marketing brings a diversity in mediums when it comes to communicating your brand and value-add. Focusing only on one medium can be limiting, especially if your buyers don't exist on that channel.

A Focus On Account-Based Marketing (B2B): Account-based selling should be an integrated part of your digital marketing process even if you are a B2B SaaS or a modern managed service provider (MSP). This will be the key differentiator between B2C and B2B organizations in 2017 and beyond.

Understanding What Drives Disruption

While working at a Fortune 100 company for nine years before moving to lead my current team, I became fascinated by customer behavior. What kinds of digital offerings most deeply engage customers in their digital lives? I started by looking at some case studies of the products, services, communications and experiences that had been embraced and adopted by customers during the first two decades of the internet. Over a period of seven years working on inbound marketing campaigns, what I found was a recurring pattern of three behaviors that drove the adoption of new digital experiences, which I call the three core behaviors of a network:

Access

Consumers are looking to interact with digital content and access digital data as quickly and as conveniently as possible. Any offering that enhances this access is incredibly compelling. Think of text messaging on early mobile phones, which revolutionized communications with the ability to receive and send messages from anywhere at anytime.

Engagement

Once consumers can access this content, they want to engage with something that fits their needs and is sensory and interactive — from the early popularity of web portals to the spread of online video, to the next generation virtual realities. Their digital desires are marked by a thirst for content. The old media adage that “content is king" is correct. There is no question that the desire to engage with content is a key driver of customer behavior.

How are you transforming mass online marketing to one-to-one interaction and engagement in your online marketing plans? How do you become a source of valued content for your customer? Always focus on the customer care. Be consultative in your online conversation. Seek to ask and go deeper into a prospect's business challenge, and be very honest in your marketing campaigns to ensure you are progressively qualifying the prospect.

Customization

Consumers seek to customize their experiences by choosing and modifying a wide assortment of information, products and services. In a generation, customers have gone from having a handful of television channel options to a digital world with more than a trillion web pages. They have been trained by their digital networks to expect more options for personal choice, and they like this. From Pandora’s personalized radio streams to Google’s search bar that anticipates search terms, consumers are drawn to increasingly customized experiences.

In summary, whether you are a B2B or B2C business, building the buyer's journey is very critical when building your marketing engine.

Unique popularity of Twitter in Japan Market

Twitter is an important social media in Japan. In fact, the country is the 2nd largest user network region outside U.S., following Brazil. In Japan, the network is well competing with Facebook, and eMarketer reports Twitter's 27 million users outstrip that of Facebook which is 23 million aside from the largest network of LINE having 50 million users. (in 2017, before removal of fake accounts in Twitter)

Why is it so big in Japan? One of the reasons must be cultural fit of Twitter. 
First, Japanese language has advantage in tweeting, where it had limitation of 140 characters in one post. In English, the word "SUMMER" consumes 6 letters, but in Japanese, it's "夏", just a single character, so users can put lot more information in one post.
Also, anonymity of user account encourage users to utter a opinion freely in Japan, where arguing politics or criticizing something openly among friends is not very common.

Japanese users love to play in Twitter. With presumably help of it's homogeneous culture, a big event among Japanese users is tweeting a magic spell of "balse" all together at the same time when their favorite anime movie "Castle in the Sky" is shown on TV roadshow at the moment hero and heroine utter the word. This posts topped the Twitter's record of 11,349 tweets per second in Nov 2017, exceeding the 2nd record high posts when the news of Beyoncé's pregnancy came out. Users are so excited to report about Twitter's server capacity tolerates this heavy flash stress every time after this anime is on TV. (Twitter CEO Seemed Unaware Of Japan's Most Famous Twitter Meme) In addition, not very often but some times people play with posts by creating vertical sentence, which could be familiar for Japanese as vertical writing was the traditional style of the language. such as 
  At noon in a day before summer,
  People go to a park,
  Play the guitar,
  Lie on the grass,
  Eat apples there.
This is not a great example (I know), but people can make these wordplays in Twitter, because unlike Facebook which hides a part of a long post, Twitter doesn't fold the posts and shows the whole post in a glance.

Even though these days there are no big growth of user size in Twitter and young people prefer LINE and Instagram, this social network has still vigorous presence in social network in Japan.


Reference:
http://www.emarketer.com/m/Article/Japan-Sees-Surge-Instagram-Users/1016576
http://www.humblebunny.com/japans-top-social-media-networks-2018/
https://kotaku.com/twitter-ceo-seems-unaware-of-japans-most-famous-twitter-1820703599

IOT and Digital Marketing

Internet of things is having a profound impact on how the digital marketing campaigns are run.

1. Personalization: IOT can allow the marketer to run highly personalized targeted campaigns as it provides very specific individual details of the user.
2. Instant Service: IOT enables easy access to product/service/information when wanted and wherever wanted. Today’s customers expect services instantly, and even a tiny delay can mean the loss of opportunity.
3. Advertising Opportunities: Being able to connect any device to the internet offers a plethora of advertising opportunities, and almost any object can be used as a channel to engage customers.
4. Analytics and Attributions: Data generated through IOT will drive test data to feed machine learning algorithms thus eventually driving artificial intelligence to drive targeted campaigns.

Source: https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/iot/5-ways-iot-is-changing-digital-marketing/

Memes

What is a meme? One of the most famous memes is a small square photo of a toddler in a green and white shirt with a determined look on his face, clenching a fist of sand, labeled with a single word: SUCCESS. The meme went viral and became known as the “success kid.” The image was such a hit that it was ultimately licensed for commercial use, and was even used by the White House to promote immigration reform.

This demonstrates why memes can be such a powerful marketing tool. They grab attention. Shareable with just a click, and highly personalized and relatable instantaneously. Usage of memes in my marketing campaigns, primarily in email marketing tend to have higher click-through rates.

Thus Memes are quite potent to make a digital marketing strategy a success by themselves.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2018/08/10/memes-a-digital-marketing-tool-for-every-industry/#2cd7fab72664

What Does Virtual Reality Mean for Brands and Advertisers?

Thanks to the constantly changing digital landscape, advertisers have been forced to get more and more creative with their advertisements, all while looking for the next great advertising idea. Now that virtual reality headsets are rising in popularity, the next step seems clear: VR ads. Virtual reality users are a captive audience: they’re fully immersed, and they aren’t going to take a headset off until they’re done—not even because of an ad.

Unfortunately, like any other new and shiny piece of tech, a decent VR set has a hefty initial price tag and doesn’t have the most sophisticated features or the largest following right now. These headsets range anywhere from the $20 Google Cardboard, to the $100 Samsung Gear VR and the $800 HTC Vive. Despite the costs, publishers and advertisers are already buying in. The New York Times has a VR Editor, CNN has streamed political debates in VR, and USA Today Network has produced over 40 pieces of VR content since 2014.

For advertisers, the appeal of VR is clear. In a world of ad blocking and ad blindness, VR offers a fully viewable and entertaining experience—if it’s done right.VR also offers unique features that allow advertisers to track eye movements in order to know exactly what parts of the screen viewers are looking at and the parts they’ve chosen to interact with.

However, while VR presents a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach a completely immersed audience, it also means they have to create ads that people don’t mind watching or interacting with. After all, there are no ad blockers for VR (yet). With VR, consumers are going to be much less forgiving of an invasive or boring ad than they would if they saw the ad elsewhere and could easily click out of it. If VR is done right by advertisers, though, it could lead to much higher forms of user engagement by offering consumers more opportunities to interact with content.

Mobile Apps Are Musts for Most Brands, as Long as Users Like Them

How important is a mobile app for brands? Shoppers in the United States were expected to make $118 billion in retail purchases through their smartphones in 2018, up from $13.4 billion in 2013, according to Forrester Analytics. So a mobile app will certainly be important. But this article from NYT argues that mobile apps have to be likeable to be successful. It also gives some fascinating insights about what makes a great mobile app.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/business/media/mobile-apps-advertising.html

How digital mkt can help a startup

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/10/how-digital-marketing-can-take-your-startup-to-a-higher-level/amp/

Growth Hacking: Science or Scam?

Growth Hacking: How to Boost Customers Exponentially Overnight

As digital marketing tactics improve to engage their target customer base, more firms are turning to growth hacking to increase their audience and potential customers.

According to Mashable.com, there's no one way to growth hack an account. It's an elusive set of tactics that are non-traditional and yet reliable enough to grow customers at exponential rates. Like a set of meme laws that guarantee sponsored content in the form of an article, photo, or video will be shared so widely that it goes viral.

"Growth hacking is not an exact science, but it's science all the same in the sense that it requires continuous experimentation."

What are some examples of growth hacking, you might ask?

SURPRISE - this article is really an ad from Mashable about growth hacking services you can buy from them.

For as little as $220, your company can become a growth hacking machine

Read More Here:
https://mashable.com/2018/05/19/growth-hacking-class-bundle-sale/#iD12.CSqNPqX

Video marketing advice from Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club began its first marketing efforts with a single YouTube ad in 2012, claiming - "Our blades are f******* great!!" - an ad that brought in 12000 subscriptions within the first 2 days. Since then Dollar Shave Club has used video marketing as a cornerstone of its digital marketing strategy. The company successfully uses irreverence and humor as the cornerstone of its video ads and has hooked on millions of subscribers. Adam Weber, the CMO of the brand describes video marketing as the heartbeat of the Dollar Shave Club brand. Here are some of the key takeaways he offers to consumer brands starting their digital marketing campaign.

Takeaways:

1. Design for the channel. Context matters. Don't copy and paste your content.
2. Approach production with agility. Don't be afraid to improvise.
3. Tell a story, don't just sell. Ads are nature intrusive - videos should reward the consumer for giving you a moment of their time

Some of the metrics they use to evaluate success of a video marketing campaign are:

- Number of last clicks from video links that led to the website. Proportion of such clicks converted to subscriptions
- Video completion rates. If a user fully watches a 2 minute video ad. There is a higher chance of converting him to a paying customer.

Source: https://marketingland.com/cmos-view-adam-weber-dollar-shave-club-video-marketing-184234

How to Know if Your Social Media Marketing Strategy is Effective

How to Know if Your Social Media Marketing Strategy is Effective

A synopsis of Brent Csutoras article on Inc.

What is ROI in Social Media?

Social Media return on investment (ROI) may be less straightforward than expected, it is no longer just revenue minus expenses. In social media the ROI can vary and is not purely revenue driven and may include according to Csutoras:

• “Customer lifetime value: Transactions --  sales
• Customer referral value: Referrals -- leads, traffic
• Customer influence value: Word of mouth -- branding, reach
• Customer knowledge value: Information -- market research”

The most commonly used measurement for social media marketing success is engagement which does not necessarily equate to success in broader business goals

How Do You Determine ROI in Social Media?

First it is important to evaluate what channels your audience is most active on, and determine the resources available to your company as they begin to invest in social media.

1) Know Your Goal (Why are you joining social?)

Do you have realistic goals for joining social media? These goals must be clearly defined.

Some goals suggested by Csutoras include increasing web traffic, leads, sales, and/or customer engagement. He also suggests reducing customer service costs, gathering information, and gaining exposure to a new audience.

2) Align Your Resources (What internal knowledge do you have?)

Look at your existing staff and see who has knowledge from active participation on a specific social channel, Csutoras suggests that a better ROI may come from using someone already in house- here I would begin to offer a warning as social media is often looked at as a less rigorous part of marketing and using your most active Pinterest user/employee will not result in the most effective Pinterest campaigns (the user and marketer knowledge varies greatly)

3) Reality Check (Are You Planning for a Declining Channel?)

Unless a channel is the only platform your audience uses, it makes more sense to prioritize growing channels or ones with greater campaign visibility. Csutoras offers Snapchat’s declining growth as a measure which may persuade one to campaign on the growing Instagram instead. Another stalwart he warns against is Facebook which has reduced the chance of Facebook Page content being seen in a user’s newsfeed. – my thought is that a key to understand here is true social campaigns will struggle to be effective without a paid component.

4) Analyze the Data (What’s Your ROI?)

Starting with a clear goal and designing a campaign to maximize that return is important. This allows you to establish tracking and assign values to these metrics, and only with this forward planning can we best answer if social media campaign showed an ROI.

Digital Tranformation

 Businesses Failing the Digital Transformation Test

A synopsis of David Murphy’s article on Mobile Marketing

Where do Businesses Stand?

Less than 40% and 35% of businesses respectively believe they have the digital and leadership capabilities to see out a successful digital transformation. Companies are improving their customer experience, but failing to improve back-end operations. Furthermore, there is a failure of culture to create an environment which brings employees onboard with these digital transformation agendas. (This data is derived from Capgemini’s report: Understanding Digital Mastery Today: Why companies are struggling with their digital transformations which surveyed 1,338 business leaders in 750+ organizations, organizations of considerable size as the majority reported $1bn in revenue.)

In comparison with a similar Capgemini and MIT Sloan report in 2012 business are less confident in leadership capabilities (35% compared to 45% 6 years earlier) and no improvement in confidence that organizations have the right digital capabilities (no change over 6 years 39% in 2012 & 2018).

Organizations have failed to create the right digital culture to succeed in these transformations. In fact declining percentages of respondents believe that there is a place for all members of the firm to partake in this discussion. The more complex the technology landscape become the more complex the transformation will be, suggesting that while these new technologies present new opportunities they also present new hurdles to full integrate.

Wayfair Ruling: 5 Ways It Affects Retailers

Wayfair Ruling: 5 Ways It Affects Retailers

E-Commerce has totally changed everything for retail; and it's been growing like a weed:

According to research firm eMarketer, for U.S. ecommerce in 2017, sales grew 15.8 percent, to $452.8 billion. And research firm Statista projects that ecommerce will comprise 15.5 percent of all global retail sales by 2021.

But now - there's a lot of buzz surrounding the South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. ruling.  And although it's super important and will definitely impact online business, it's also a little complicated to keep up with.  Here is my best attempt at an overview using the most straight-forward source I could find.

1. Supreme Court, June 21: The ruling supported imposing taxes on online sales across state lines.  Online retailers are now REQUIRED to collect sales tax from from customers per individual states.
• Not a big deal for big stores
• But is a big deal for small online businesses and entrepreneurs
2. Why though?
• States can now choose to tax online sales --> will mostly be executed in all 50 states
• Now small businesses will need to track taxes across all states (and make sure they're following all the standards & rules)
• That requires a lot of extra time, money, and manpower!
• As the taxes roll across the states, small businesses who currently use platforms (eBay or amazon) may not be able to make a profit on those sites anymore
• Big win for brick and mortar --> now that consumers can't go online to skirt state taxes, they might go back to visiting physical stores more.

Many are curious to see how this act plays out, and if they will revisit the issue to find solutions for small businesses that sell online.

Instagrammable Real Estate More than Just a Fad

Instagrammable real estate has proven to have lasting effects on real estate, transcending the restaurant industry and moving into retail, museums, and hotels. According to CNBC, pop-up museums that have unique colors and designs can charge between $20-$40 per person, yielding millions to investors. Because the backdrops look good on social media, visitors are more likely to post about their experiences, saving the pop-ups money in advertising.

The Subscription Billing Model

According to the Q1 2018 benchmarking report on Digital Commerce Trends in Software & Online Services Sales published by 2Checkout, 76% sales have been for recurring purchases in Q1 2018. For comparison, 49% of software sales were for subscription-based products and services in 2012.

Nowadays, more and more businesses, both small organizations and large enterprises, are enjoying the flexibility and scalability that SaaS providers can offer them. It wasn't the case when SaaS model just emerged. Initially, SaaS offerings were considered as a niche software delivery model, suited better to small businesses. One of the reasons that the SaaS model gained tractions was because of how it reduced the financial risks associated with deployment. Therefore, IT procurement manager can account such costs as an operating cost rather than a long-term capital investment.

For more information, please refer to the below.

https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-economics-1/
https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-economics-2/
https://www.information-age.com/subscription-billing-software-123473062/

“Facebook redesigns biz Pages for utility as feed reach declines” KF Blog #10

Facebook redesigns biz Pages for utility as feed reach declines

Article: https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/06/facebook-business-pages/

The Facebook newsfeed is a coveted place for brands, and today, that space is getting harder and harder to penetrate, especially for businesses. We know that the newsfeed algorithm is designed with the user in mind, and in early 2018, the company made it a point to prioritize friend, family and group newsfeed content over posts from businesses, brands and media. Facebook pushed for advertising, and in return, brands want more followers. But will their posts even reach the followers they gain from paid ads? 

Now that this public content is being suppressed more, the focus has shifted to creating customer destinations in the brand pages. Facebook is redesigning the pages of 80M small business on the platform. Some updates include (1) adding a utility emphasis like appointment or reservation sections (2) "suggestions" section which was previously part of the newsfeed (3) review section improvement which limits the characters to increase quality and (4) business can post ephemeral Stories to their page. In addition to this, Facebook is adding in a “Local” section which could add local events for nearby businesses as well as a “Related Pages” option to increase discoverability for small businesses. This is controversial since most brands do not want to encourage consumers to leave their page or look at competitors. Facebook is also looking to launch and job application tab to the site. They just announced they’re entering into the online dating business, and now they’re ready to take on Linkedin. 

Now that the fight for the newsfeed is becoming more intense, Facebook is trying to hang onto their advertisers and offer business a way to increase engagement with their built-in FB communities. We shall see if they can hold on to their users by creating a unique business section that people will consistently go to when choosing products or services. 

But Have They Gotten it Right?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2018/08/07/how-brands-selling-on-traditional-retail-channels-can-harness-current-digital-marketing-innovations/#173e479a6880

As I was reading through the above Forbes article, preparing to write this week's blog post on digital marketing innovations and the blossoming opportunity for franchises and businesses to better capitalize on a digital audience, I couldn't help but think - it's still far from perfect.

Along my side bar as I read through the article appeared 2 ads:

1) Google Pixel Phone Case
2) Audit ad

Neither do I have (or want) a Google pixel phone, nor am I shopping for a car. In this case, advertisers got it wrong. My impressions were wasted and no revenue will be generated as a result.

A lot of work to be done, but they are certainly trending in the right direction. Maybe when it comes time for me to select a new phone - I'll go with the Pixel without even realizing why!

5 ways to integrate video into your digital strategy on a shoestring budget

5 ways to integrate video into your digital strategy on a shoestring budget

Mobile has become a key part of the marketing dialogue, especially with the high adoption rate among millennials. This year the star of the show is Mobile videos; 75% of the video viewing is on mobile. Its important to incorporate videos in your marketing strategy. The following are the do’s and don’t for video creation:

1.     Don’t adhere to strict definitions

With the advent of new technology, the whole definition of video is changing. The videos can be more creative, don’t have to adhere to any specific time duration and experiment with different interactive animations.

2.     Do keep it real

The videos no longer have to be a big production, real videos have a higher connection!

3.     Don’t drag it out

With a short consumer attention span, a 30 sec video is no longer the norm. the marketers need to keep it short and snackable.

4.     Don’t get your hands too dirty

Don’t try to create templates and invest in labor. With new technology, video templates are easily available and flexible to your needs.

5.     Do play around

Experiment and test your videos. There is a need to be agile and incorporate quick changes to your campaign.

Full article link: https://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2018/jul/26/5-ways-integrate-video-your-digital-strategy-shoestring-budget/