Apple Watch: a new digital marketing channel?

It seems like all eyes have been on the Apple Watch this month. There has been a flood of articles and blog posts about how Apple is executing luxury marketing strategies to promote the Watch and how this wearable technology is going to be groundbreaking. 

We must accept that, and at this point in time, it's probably not worth it to speculate if the Watch is going to be a fad, because it's Apple-approved. Apple's approval stamp in the modern society means real legitimacy.

So what we must think of now is: how can the Watch be a new digital marketing channel? This forward thinking will get us far, and in fact, PSFK advises us to not crowd the content. Read the whole article here.

Is Wearable Tech the Next Digital Marketing Frontier?

Wearable tech isn't new, but the Apple Watch may be the first product to actually take off on a large scale.  If so, what are the implications for digital marketers?

• Understanding physical reactions
• With the ability to literally read your pulse, marketers can register your reaction to different ads and adjust accordingly.  
• Hyperlocal Targeting and Timing
• Phones with GPS already provide the ability to track your every movement.  Building off of the previous bullet point, now marketers will be able to track your reaction to specific ads in certain locations and track if it prompted an impulse purchase.  Marketers will be able to provide much better metrics on conversions, ROI on ads, etc.
• Keywords and Clearly Audible
• With the Apple Watch's microphone, users will likely use voice detection to search, rather than type out queries.  Marketers will need to perform audio and verbal keyword audits so that harder to spell (or weirdly spelled companies) are properly detected and show up in search queries.

I'm a huge fan of classic timepieces, and personally think the Apple Watch is pointless (I need my watch to look nice and tell time).  However, I wasn't considering any of these marketing possibilities or how the Apple Watch will provide all sorts of opportunities for companies/app developers.  It will be interesting to see if it catches on and how it unfolds.

Marketing on the Apple Watch: terrible idea?

I’ve yet to be thoroughly convinced about the importance of wearable tech in our everyday lives. I think it’s far more niche than developers and marketers would have us believe.

However the application of wearable technology in the world of health and fitness is huge and is genuinely making a massive difference to the lives of a wide range of people. From athletes needing a convenient and accurate way to store data to regular people who just want to improve their everyday fitness with a pedometer. 

Outside of this though there is very little to convince me that the Apple Watch is little more than a device for people who are too lazy to take their phone out of their pocket when they receive an alert.  

There’s nothing that can be done on the watch that can’t be done on an iPhone. The difference is that on an Apple Watch it will be much smaller. Is anyone really going to look at Instagram on a 38mm screen?

As for advertising on the Apple Watch, imagine how irritating it would be if the basic function of a watch, showing you the time, is obscured by an ad too tiny to read.

That’s probably an extreme example, as the Apple Watch is notification-based and hopefully marketers have learnt from experience that an ad format served successfully on one device will not necessarily work just as well on a different one.

On a smartphone, marketers use notifications to advertise. These notifications only occur of course if the user has the specific app downloaded. If the notifications are too intrusive or frequent, the user will delete the app. 

Now translate that to a screen which is 81mm smaller and that you carry on your wrist all day long.

I’ll keep my old Casio thanks. It's got a calculator on it.

Source:https://econsultancy.com/blog/66181-one-of-the-more-sarcastic-apple-watch-articles-you-ll-read-today/

Apple Watch and Digital Marketing

I am writing this blog less than 24 hours from one of the most awaited moments of this year in Technology, the launch of Apple Watch on March 9. There have been so many rounds of discussions speculating about the Apple Watch.
I read couple of articles related to Apple Watch and its launch.

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/apple-march-9-event-what-to-expect/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/watch/11454514/Apple-Watch-latest-rumours-and-facts.html

But what really is an Apple Watch? Apple’s CEO Tim Cook calls it the most personal product the company had ever made. It would be a smartwatch with a rectangular sapphire-coated display which can be paired with an iPhone through WiFi or Bluetooth. Apple’s products have always created revolution in the world of technology and its close competitors especially Google would be more than eager to learn about it and also ensure they have a better answer.

As a student of Digital Marketing, I am keen to understand how Apple Watch would impact the Digital Marketing world. To answer that, I did some research to find how major technology innovations or launches have always made a significant impact in the world of Digital Marketing. Right from the launch of Google as search engine to the launch of I-phone and I-Pad, marketers had to adapt to the new technologies. Certainly, Apple Watch could be one of those major innovations for which the smart marketers should start preparing immediately.

One of the speculations is that the relevance and usefulness of ads would be even more important. In other words, it would be easier for a user to ignore an ad that is not relevant to him or her. This would mean that advertisers need to increase the number of methods and devices at their disposal through which to reach consumers making the relevance and usefulness of their ads much more important.

Another speculation is that location based marketing could be even more relevant. App developers could create some programmatic alerts that sense when an Apple Watch user is in close proximity. Accordingly, a store or restaurant can virtually “tap” the nearby user on the wrist to get their attention, and that person could be offered a promotional coupon valid for few minutes. It would promote the real-time location based advertising and also lead to some technological innovations on that front too. The digital content would need to be tailored to this new delivery method with short, simple messages and photos.

Last but not the least, it is also speculated that the smart watch would have the ability to continuously monitor a user’s heart-beat. There have been numerous studies correlating human behavior with the heart beats. This would be a completely new parameter that marketers never had information about and would further help marketers better understand consumer engagement with individual ads.

Still lots of questions related to Apple Watch are yet to be answered. I am eagerly waiting for the launch tomorrow to find those answers.

  

Reference:

http://www.launchdigitalmarketing.com/mobile/three-ways-the-apple-watch-will-change-digital-marketing/

Latest trends in Digital Marketing

I read the article

 http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/marketing-innovation/digital-marketing-trends-2015/

I agree with most of the part of the survey results conducted by smartinsights.com.

Survey results:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Content is certainly the king. Thus, it is intuitive that most of the marketers consider the importance of relevant, personalized, integrated content.  The excerpt from Venchito Tampon, Content Marketer and Link Building Specialist of Digital Philippines clearly indicates the importance of educating customers with the appropriate content: “Digital marketing in 2015 will definitely focus on caring customers/clients with all the available resources the brand could provide in its website. Content will make it easy for new and existing customers to locate and use the best products and services they intend to look for in various channels (search, social, paid advertising, etc.) Educating the target audience will now become the top selling point of many brands from whatever industry they are in.”

While Big Data may be the second most important trend as per the above survey, for me it is the number one. Let us take examples of the technology giants, Google and Apple. Google is already considered one of the leaders in data analytics.  Its acquisition of data driven performance platform in Marketing, Adometry (http://www.adometry.com/), has certainly proved the importance of marketing analytics. Apple’s recent acquisition of Semetric would bring Big Data to Music. Enterprise-level access to data on how listeners consume music, through both legal and illegal channels, with the help of Semetric could even catalyze the ascension of Big Data into consumer-centric markets. Data on this scale could likely revolutionize and change the way music is monetized, and could even shift value from the art and artists to the numbers. This acquisition would ensure Apple remains leader in the music industry.

Again, the above two giants are also coming up with some breakthrough devices which are yet to be completely revealed to the public:

Apple Watch - https://www.apple.com/watch/

Google Glass - https://www.youtube.com/user/googleglass

The world seems to be eagerly waiting for the above two devices. While Apple seems to have indicated launching Apple Watch in the first half of this year, Google has not declared the world wide launch date of Google Glass yet. In fact, it declared that it is still in progress (opposing the thought that it may be dead) which certainly raises curiosity amongst everyone.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/wearable-tech/3589338/google-glass-2-release-date-price-specs-not-dead/

These devices would certainly make it easy to collect even more data across different data points and understand customer behavior. While I am also waiting for the launch and the revelation of additional details of the above two devices, my advice to the digital marketers would be to focus on the actual data that these smart devices collect and also sift and mine through the data to connect the dots. The key is to understand new methods of data collection points which may have not been possible till date.

Mobile has already taken over most of the other devices. Thus, mobile analytics would be even a bigger factor in this year for digital marketers. Additionally, the traditional email marketing, which has been prevalent for years now is still continue to stay. The only difference would be that most of these email promotions would be tailored for mobile devices and PDAs.

Finally, I would conclude by stating that most of the laggards who are yet to adopt digital marketing will change this year and start adopting. Mel Carson, founder of Delightful Communications states: “Businesses will finally wake up to the fact that social media and mobile marketing are no longer new phenomena and should be integrated right from the start of any marketing campaign or inbound initiative. The future of digital lies in companies being social and mobile by design!”

Source / Reference:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2014/11/05/6-predictions-about-the-state-of-digital-marketing-in-2015/2/

http://www.dmnews.com/what-do-digital-marketers-really-want/article/395947/

http://www.dmnews.com/apples-semetric-acquisition-brings-big-data-to-music/article/393721/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wearable Devices – Just a Fad or Here to Stay?

Although wearable technology has become more popular over the last few years, it has still struggled to become part of the mass market. Until now. With the debut of the Apple Watch earlier this month, it seems that wearable tech has finally gone mainstream. Between consumer interest and investor attention, there is no doubt that wearable tech has been one of the hottest trends of 2014.

So what can we expect for the wearable tech space going forward? Can wearable technology actually cross over from being just a fashion accessory to being a functioning part of our everyday lives?

ABI Research’s latest “Wearable Computing Technologies” report states that wearable computing devices are expected to explode in popularity over the next year and that these gadgets could soon become the norm for most people within five years. ABI Research forecasts the wearable computing device market will grow to 485 million annual device shipments by 2018. Research firm, CCS Insight predicts that 22.3 million wearables (including fitness trackers and smartwatches) will be sold worldwide in 2014, up from 9.7 million in 2013.

Experts say that the Apple Watch will be a key growth driver in the market. "The arrival of Apple is so significant," said Jason Jenkins, director of content at tech news site CNet. "The company essentially defined what the modern MP3 player, smartphone and tablet computer looks like and what their functions are. Everyone is looking to Apple to repeat the same trick with smartwatches." "The fact that Apple are making [a smartwatch] will generate sales which will in turn lead to smartwatches and wearables in general looking normal and desirable," said Matt Egan, editor in chief at UK tech magazine TechAdvisor.

Apple is acutely aware of the many issues that have plagued wearable devices in the past – ugly designs, lack of functionality, cumbersome user-interface, battery issues – and has tried to distance themselves from the crowd. Unlike predecessors, the Apple Watch is smooth and fashionable (with a variety of different screen and band combinations), and has a highly usable interface with unique control mechanisms. It is a device that embraces apps and features beyond notifications, but in a way that makes sense for a small-screened device. However, TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington still has questions about, “how much time people will actually spend navigating on-watch interfaces, vs. using it more as a passive monitoring and notification device,” but thinks that, “Apple has done a lot of work providing genuine innovation for how users might think about exploring wearables that others to date haven’t seemed to put much thought into.”

In addition to Apple’s entry into the market, other factors such as key enabling technologies including low cost sensors and wireless connectivity; the ability to interconnect with modern fitness and social trends; and smaller devices have also converged to make wearable technology mainstream.

So what does this all mean? If research data is any indication, it means that interest in the wearable space and high and will continue to grow. SNS Research estimates that by 2015, wearable device shipments will surpass 90 million, and will account for nearly $20 billion in revenue. SNS Research also predicts that the market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 40% over the next six years. Personally, I believe there is huge potential for the wearable device market. I think that we’ve only barely scratched the surface and that there are tons of possibilities for both consumer and enterprise wearable products. The wearable era has finally arrived.

Sources: CNet, Forbes, Mashable, TechCrunch, The Guardian