5 Things That Have Always Worked For Digital Marketers, Until Now

This is the 10^th and the last blog of the course, thought I’d end it on an interesting article I read on Entrepreneur. The author listed 5 things that have always worked for digital marketers, but no longer work.

5. Twitter – the author claims Twitter might be more the problem than the medium itself. Boring tweets, low engagement with followers and over-selling (or only selling) products can all lead to poor Twitter returns.

I have always questioned the value Twitter adds, so I have to agree with the author on this.

4. SEO Technical Tricks – The author claims that SEO tricks such as adding keywords, links and content with no images, no longer work after Google updated their algorithm as part of Panda and Penguin updates.

Given that we spent 2 class sessions on SEO, and I took lot of notes on this topic during the class J, I am not willing to accept this without further research and testing to validate if this is true. Also curious to know what the professor thinks about this?

3. Coupon Sites – the author claims that coupon sites no longer work; he used Groupon as an example and claims that Groupon sales do not incentivize new customers and can lead to profitability issues for the business in the long run.

I think the author is correct about Groupon, at least when it comes to small and medium businesses. I recently interviewed over 50 retailers and consumers as part of customer discovery for a project and almost all small business owners said they do not like to promote on Groupon because the more Groupons they sell the more money they lose.  Consumers don’t like to use Groupon because of the restrictions and the bad experience they had when trying to use the coupons.

Having said that, I don’t agree that all coupons don’t work anymore and I think this issue is Groupon specific.

2. Fake Instagram followers – the author claims that digital marketing companies were taken for a ride by a personality who they believe has a niche following that they can capitalize on, but in fact were fake accounts. A couple of years ago, Instagram cleaned house and did a mass purge of all their fake accounts.

Ok, I have to admit – I did not know that there were massive numbers of fake accounts on Instagram; but it doesn’t sound impossible. It is certainly possible, so I am going to just accept the author’s view on this. Also, such a cleanup would only benefit digital marketers.

1. Batch and blast email campaigns – the author claims that blast email campaigns and boilerplate templates no longer work, especially with millennials.

We spent a class session on email in which we learnt that email is still the preferred method of digital marketing and that is where small and medium businesses are spending the most. I also think we talked about using boilerplate templates. I am not a millennial (as much as I wish I were), but based on my own experience, I think email marketing still works. I delete a lot of marketing emails, but I do look at emails from certain brands and companies.

Also, I think the author is missing the point on email templates – the templates do not have to be static, they can be dynamic and be customized for the target user.

We are at the end of the course and while I cannot claim that I have become a digital marketer, but based on the knowledge I gained in the course, I can say with confidence that I know a lot more now than I did before.

Harnessing The Power Of Influencer Marketing

As we work on our group project, we have to always be conscious of the budget available to us. We are working on coming up with digital marketing strategy for a fairly new start up with very little budget, which means we have to be very judicious about  where an how we spend the money and always look for ways to get the most out of each dollar we spend. A good marketing strategy that is relatively inexpensive is to leverage influencer's. After jogging my memory to recollect the lessons professor Kagan taught us on influencer marketing, I started doing more research on it.

Why does influencer marketing work? It works because we humans love a good secret; it is wired in our DNA. Which is why “Hey, have you heard about this?” gets our attention and we eagerly bend forward and listen, hoping to learn something juicy. We trust our friends in a way we don’t trust companies. Less than 30% of audience is influenced by traditional advertising, but when a buddy talks, 90%of us take their words at face value.

Social media influencers tend to have loyal and impressively large followers and connections. When they speak, those followers hear their words like you and I would hear the words of a trusted colleague. What happens when influencers bring brands into their active dialogues? Suddenly, the brand has tangibility and recognition, and that translates into economic possibilities you can take to the bank.

Rapid growth of social media has removed the middleman and media is no longer controlled by few companies. Every day, content is being commoditized by individuals who are content creators themselves. The appeal of influencer marketing is the built-in audience and the short time it takes to get the word out

Anybody looking for better ROI? The cost of a 30-second television ad is around $400,000. By comparison, influencer marketing campaigns cost a fraction of the cost for a TV ad.

While influencers may be working for your brand their audiences see them as authentic, fresh, real and passionate. Create a genuine relationship with an influencer, and anything the influencer says or does on behalf of your brand will come off as genuine

Cheap, passionate, genuine message, quick turnaround, direct access to built-in audience – need I say more about the power of influencer marketing!

Digital marketing on the rise in India

I am currently visiting India and thought it would be interesting to see what small and medium businesses in India do for marketing. I was surprised to find that digital marketing has been rapidly increasing in India. According to Morgan Stanley, India’s digital marketing industry has grown 33% annually between 2010 and 2015 and consumption of online video content has grown almost 20% in just 1 year. Content has become an important tool for digital marketing. Small and medium businesses that traditionally relied on local advertisement, newspaper, billboards and word of mouth, are now implementing digital marketing strategies and are increasingly leveraging social media – Google, Facebook and Twitter – as part of the digital marketing strategy.

One of India’s leading digital marketing training companies outlines the following 7 steps to build a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for small and medium business

1.       Define goals & metrics and identify tools to measure success

2.       Research target audience to identify relevant channels

3.       Create content that addresses buyer persona pain points

4.       Build a content library for various channels

5.       Allocate a paid advertising budget

6.       Create a timeline and an action plan

7.       Evaluate results and improve your strategy

I see plenty of evidence that small and medium businesses in India are implementing a digital strategy, which was non-existent not too long ago

Digital marketing for voice activated devices

Amazon is Google’s biggest rival for online Ad dollars. Over the past few years Amazon has ramped up its business of selling search and display ads on its own and others' sites, putting it in direct competition with Google's ad business. According to eMarketer, Amazon will pull in just over $1 billion in online ad revenue in 2017 in the U.S.. Contrast that with Snapchat, which is expected to generate $800 million next year in the U.S. Google’s U.S. ad revenue in 2017 is expected to approach $34 billion, while Facebook’s U.S. revenue should be north of $15 billion.

While Amazon continues to build out its advertising services and tools for its own network on the Web and by using voice-activated searches on its artificial intelligence-powered device, Echo, it also purchases advertising on Google shopping to broaden the reach for advertisers.

While it might seem that Amazon is far behind Google and Facebook in advertising, it could legitimately challenge the behemoths. How? One word – data! The data Amazon collects from a variety of services is mind blowing. Shoppers use Google to search for information, but they use Amazon to search for product information to make a purchase, including groceries. Currently Amazon’s voice activated device is more popular and accurate then Apple and Google’s voice activated devices. Amazon’s Alexa not only gives information but can also order products, groceries and communicate with other connected devices in the home. This has enabled Amazon to build a database of information on the way people shop and use its services such as Amazon Prime, which gives the company insight into the ways that people watch television and view movies.

What does this mean for digital marketers? To quote prof Kagan  - “you have to go where the consumers are”,  digital marketers will have to go where the consumers are; and consumers are increasingly going to Amazon. As Amazon becomes the primary marketplace for consumers not just to buy products but also for searching information using Alexa, digital marketers will have to think about advertising thru Alexa; when Alexa responds to a consumer’s request, you need to make sure your product is the one Alexa recommends. 

Programmatic Creative – future of creative?

Read an interesting article that Bloomberg now user programmatic creative. When Bloomberg writes a story about a public company or commodity, it brings market information dynamically into the adjacent Ad. Provides financial information of interest to Bloomberg’s readers in the right rail. Bloomberg’s data is married with an advertiser’s message to drive relevance and Bloomberg does all the work on behalf of the advertisers to eliminate the burden on advertisers to build creative variations; creative variations are built in automatically.

Here’s an example of Ad displayed by Bloomberg’s programmatic creative.

This raises an interesting question about the future of creative in advertising. I did a Google search on the role of creative in advertising and found this description – “Creativity is the soul of advertising and branding. It is what gives life to messages about products and services that may otherwise be boring or insignificant in the hearts and minds of target customers.”. - sounds like something only humans can do. Will programmatic creative change that? Can Programmatic Creative based on Big Data + Artificial Intelligence + Machine Learning replace the human creativity in advertising? Can machines one day possess human characteristics like imagination, inspiration and ingenuity and eliminate the human role in creative part of advertising? As I think about this question, I am reminded of some famous quotes from history

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.”

 --Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

-- Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), ca. 1895, British mathematician and physicist

YouTube Nixes 30-Second Unskippable Ads

In my blog 4, I wrote about why the current video Ad formats will change to shorter format; I used YouTube as an example and the fact that people don’t like viewing the Ads and usually skip them. Last week YouTube announced that they will nix the 30-second unskippable Ads by 2018 and replace them with shorter format. As much as I would like to claim that my blog influenced YouTube’s strategy change, exploding mobile video viewing is the main driver behind this strategy. Several advertisers have already adopted the short format video Ads; for example, Geico plays a 10 second Ad on YouTube and you see the brand placement immediately. I think Geico’s Ads are very clever, their advertisement actually says that you can’t skip the Ad because the Ad just ended. This is a great example of an advertiser that is aware of the fact that people don’t like to view ads. Most other advertisers on YouTube have not adopted the shorter version and product / brand is not even displayed before people skip the Ad. That’s just a waste of money with no ROI – they still have to pay to YouTube because the Ad was played, but don’t get any ROI because people skipped the Ad and don’t even what the product / brand was.

By 2021 78% of world’s mobile data traffic will be videos. Advertisers and marketing companies that understand that 30 second Ad, as short as it may be, is too long, and quickly adopt the shorter Ad formats like Geico, will benefit the most. 

Facebook’s mobile video strategy – opportunity for digital marketers

Facebook reported Q4 2016 earnings today – Q4 2016 revenue was $8.81 billion and 84% of that ad revenue was from mobile. Reading the earnings report and details of the earnings call, I found several interesting bits of information from digital marketing perspective

Facebook got rid of desktop advertising platform FBX in May 2016 in order to focus on mobile advertising. Which indicates that digital marketers and the digital marketing trends are seeing more opportunity in mobile and less in desktop.

Mobile video and mobile video advertising are going to be the biggest priorities for Facebook in 2017. Facebook will focus on shorter-form content which indicates that Facebook is going after YouTube. It would be interesting to see how Facebook implements video. As popular as YouTube is, nobody wants to watch ads on YouTube and everyone skips the ad as soon as the skip option is enabled. So far digital marketers have not adopted to short-form video advertising in a big way; most ads are still cross platform and tend to be longer in length; I often wonder about the ROI on them, if the users are skipping the ad before the product is even displayed. It will be interesting to see if Facebook will change that.  

Short-form video consumption is exploding and it looks like digital marketing is on the verge of another change. The companies and marketing agencies that can quickly adapt will win.

The 3 Big Problems with Personalization in digital marketing

I recently read an interesting article in Entrepreneur – The 3 big problems with personalization in online sales and marketing https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/288332 . This is interesting to me because the business concept I was thinking about was totally focused on personalization and the current lack thereof.

To quote the author “Personalization in the digital space is just like sex in high school. Everyone is talking about it, but few are doing it.”. Companies are increasingly making personalization part of their digital marketing strategy, but so far I have seen very few companies being able to accurately personalize. Accuracy is still questionable even with major companies like Google, Yahoo and Amazon. Most ads are displayed based on basic information such as past searches and inferences based on the “type” of searches; however search is not always a good tool for personalization for various reasons like I could be searching for another family member or it could have been a random one-off search. The most common personalization is when Yahoo or Amazon display ads or related ads for something after you already bought the item.

The article talks about segmenting the audience, keeping it simple, testing various data points and scale. I don’t think accurate personalization is an easy problem to solve. I think Google is making progress on this  - using one google account across many services and devices and unique advertising Id, but I do not believe that will completely solve the problem either.

I am reminded of a scene in the movie Minority Report where a person’s eyes are automatically scanned by digital display boards in malls and subways to display a personalized ad. Now that is personalization in digital marketing !

Digital marketing techniques for 2017

I was reading the “Digital marketing techniques for 2017” article (http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/marketing-innovation/digital-marketing-trends-2016-2017/) on Smart Insights and thought the following were particularly interesting

Big Data: Big Data marketing applications include market and customer insight and predictive analytics. Big data is expanding on 3 fronts at an increasing rate – data volume, data variety and data velocity. The 3Vs of Big Data show why this is a key trend selected by many, who have experienced the increase in volume, real-time data and data formats in their business and want to exploit the value to increase sales through personalization on websites and email marketing through predictive analytics.  It's also closely tied into machine learning where big data is mined to identify propensity to convert given different customer characteristics and behavior.

Marketing Automation: This includes CRM, behavioral email marketing and web personalization. Businesses will increasingly rely on predictive analytics to automate marketing and personalize content to consumers. As businesses progress up the learning curve, more businesses will be putting lead scoring in place, or refining it and learning the best places on to feature content through predictive analytics.

Mobile Marketing: Mobile first strategy does not fit all businesses; it works well for some businesses but may not work for others. Research shows that retail conversion rates are significantly lower on smartphone compared to desktop. So a better vision for mobile strategy is treating it as part of a multiplatform or multichannel strategy.

Internet of Things (IoT) marketing applications: IoT is one of the most important marketing technology applications of the last 2-3 years, but it is of most relevance to devices makers and retailers, so it is relatively high-up in this ranking of priorities. There are expected to be 75 billion connected devices by 2020, meaning there will be ten times as many devices able to talk to one another as there will be people on the planet. The implications are huge and far ranging. All this sharing of data will transform the way we live our lives. 

A good example of IoT is Uber – Spotify link: Uber and Spotify have linked their services so that customers can connect their Spotify account to their Uber app, and then when taking a ride in an Uber you can use the Uber App to play music through the car’s speakers via your Spotify account. This is two Apps talking to one another, and then talking to a car! It improves the customer experience and helps retain customers by getting them locked into their product ecosystem.

Digital marketing trends for 2017

According to a recent Forbes article, the top digital marketing trends for 2017 are

1.  Artificial Intelligence Solutions: Artificial intelligence will play an increasingly bigger role in digital marketing. Data analytics and AI solutions are a way for consumers to navigate the increasing complex digital world from advance electronic application to predicting consumer needs, AI will be used in a big way
2. Niche Curation Of  Information: Humans now have more information available to them than has ever been, and we simply can’t process it. As a result, we’ve increasingly come to rely not just on curated information, but on the people we most trust to curate this information for us in a way that resonates with our lifestyle, interests, and values. In 2017, consumers will find peer specialists with niche expertise to filter recommendations that meet their needs in a customized way.
3. Mobile devices enable on-the-go consumerism: With mobile devices getting faster and better, we will see emergence of electronics evolution. As these devices offer smarter, faster, and more intuitive information, they will become even more ingrained into our daily patterns and connected culture and dramatically influence consumers at the point of purchase. Mobile devices will emerge as shoppers’ most valued shopping partner, as consumers check them for recommendations from their network of trusted advisors while fact-checking product attributes and using online coupons.
4. Influencer Marketing as a Fundamental Brand Strategy: Many brands now recognize Influencer Marketing as the industry’s hot “go-to” strategy, but they struggle on how best to leverage it and measure it from the perspective of business results and attribution modeling. As we head into 2017, influencers will entrench as defining voices in consumer marketing, as brands concede advertising control and look to passionate brand advocates to sway consumers on social media.
5. Consumer Resentment of Intrusive Marketing Deepens: Pop-ups, banner ads, and disruptive brand messages are all falling out of favor. Today’s consumers don’t want brands aggressively pushing their way into social media feeds, whether on Facebook, through promoted Pins or Tweets, or paid-for Snapchat stories. As consumers seek to learn more about new products on their own time, expect continued resentment over intrusive marketing to deepen in 2017. Consumers will continue to walk away from social platforms that inundate them with brand marketing. Similarly, the tone and content of ads needs to be geared to the new Gen Z paradigm: fast, smart, sassy, and relevant.
6. Mobile device usage increases: This year consumers will continue to ratchet up their mobile dependency as more usages emerge. Retailers that do not consider the impact of this sea change, and deal with it intelligently, will be left behind on shore.
7. Images and Videos will rule: Visuals and videos have truly surged over the past six months, and consumers – particularly those in the Millennial and rising Generation Z cohorts – have truly embraced pictures and videos as a way to gather and share information.  Look for new visual platforms to roll out in 2017 to accompany existing ones as consumers gravitate toward authentic, live-action, visual storytelling.