Traditional Marketers Now Being Poached by Tech Companies

Not surprisingly, traditional brand marketers from legendary companies including Gap, Unilever, Virgin America and Nike are being sought after and ultimately poached from their current positions to head over to less traditional shops such as Lyft, Twitter, Snapchat and Apple. These tech companies endeavor to use the experience that these traditional marketers have to help create and build out their marketing strategies and generate new revenue streams.

The bottom line is that tech companies are looking to these traditional marketers to help guide their marketing and digital strategies. Perhaps because of their unmatched experience on large-scale, public campaigns, or because these tech companies want to keep their clients' close for future hires. Recently, some interesting brand marketers made headlines for their transition to tech companies.

For example, Snapchat recently hired Eric Toda of Nike to help them build out their sports business. Toda was hired to lead Snapchat's business and partnership efforts, having previously worked on Nike's social media, mobile and content strategy. Another interesting move is Jesse McMillin's transition from creative director at Virgin America to creative director of Lyft, the ride-sharing app. McMillin was tasked with implementing Lyft's first integrated marketing campaign.

It will be exciting to see what other executives transition from traditional roles to the start-up tech environment.

SOURCE: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/7-brand-marketers-poached-tech-companies-160311

The New Wave of Social Marketing

According to it’s website, Niche is “a community of relevant and influential social media creators, prominent on rising platforms like Vine, Instagram and Tumblr.” The company, founded last year in New York City, matches social media stars with marketers and advertisers.

Brands and advertisers are always looking for new ways to reach audiences beyond print publications and television screens. Now, they’re turning to social media stars—paying them to pitch products online to their massive, “cult-like” followings. According to Niche, it’s not just the brands that win in this scenario. Niche endeavors to give these “campaign creators” a new way of making income doing what they love to do.

For example, Niche connected the start-up, Blue Apron, to a handful of creative photographers, videographers and animators, who have impressive social media followings across various platforms. The influencers then created small, personal marketing campaigns for Blue Apron, and posted them on their own accounts. This generated a tremendous amount of chatter and buzz for Blue Apron.

A 60 second advertisement on Vine can be worth anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000, according to Rob Fishman, co-founder of Niche. Some brands that have already used this model are Gap and GE, and startups such as Lyft and BarkBox.

SOURCE: http://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/niche-next-wave-social-advertising.html

Small Business Spending on Social Media

Small businesses, defined as companies with less than 100 employees, are seeing a few noteworthy trends (BIA/Kelsey survey for Q3 2014):

1. 74.5% of small businesses use social media to advertise or promote their businesses - this is up from 71.7% last year.

2. Small businesses spend, on average, 21.4% of their total media budgets on social media - this is up from 18.9% last year.

3. Print and outdoor spend is down to 18.5% from 20.9% last year.

As shown in the chart below, we have now reached a point where small businesses are spending the highest share of their budgets on social.





Facebook pages are most frequently used (55% usage), followed by LinkedIn ads (31% usage). Facebook ads and Tweets/Retweets on Twitter tied for third (20% usage).

What is interesting to note, however, is that less than 1/3 of these small businesses say that social is "Extraordinary" or "Excellent" in terms of ROI. The top 3 channels providing the best ROI were:

1.Online banner or display ads containing video (59.3% of respondents giving "Extraordinary" or "Excellent" rating)
2. Streaming audio advertising (57.7%)
3. Offers distributed on smartphones or tablets (54.0%)

Looking at conversion rates on social, another study by Convertro and AOL Platforms suggests that paid social ads have much higher conversion rates than organic content. This may tell us why small businesses are spending a larger portion of their budgets on social. However, this varies depending on the platform as you can see below:

Sources: http://adage.com/article/digital/small-businesses-spend-social-media/294988/http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Paid-Social-Ads-Convert-More-Customers/1011188

What the JOBS Act means for aspiring entrepreneurs

           The highly anticipated JOBS Act takes effect on Monday, and represents arguably the first major formal commitment to startup funding by lawmakers in the US. The Jumpstart Our Jobs Act focuses on eliminating the 80-year ban on solicitation of accredited investors. In layman’s terms, start-ups are now allowed to market themselves to investors in a public forum. This may sound like a minor improvement in an already highly saturated and growing market, but it has opened significantly valuable channels to companies down the long tail.

            Prior to the JOBS Act, crowdfunding was essentially the only form of public solicitation of investors. Sites like Kickstarter blazed a trail that led to the inevitable need for lower barriers to entry for entrepreneurial ventures. Now, companies can seek out investors by any means necessary (within boundaries) including physical advertisements and digital marketing. The question is, how does this change the focus and priorities of up-and-coming companies?

            Start-ups will now need to focus their efforts not only on IP, but also on scale and reach. Not to say that they shouldn’t be already, but awareness and positioning have now become a crucial factor in pre-revenue status. Social, search and display advertising will now have a dual-role, to focus both on acquiring customers and attracting investors. I am curious to see how these organizations walk the line between the two segments.

            This act will also catalyze a series of digital marketing firms to specialize in attracting investors. These firms will conduct research and analyze data to outperform their competition on metrics such as total dollars raised. Adding these components to the digital marketing portfolio is a double-edged sword. Only time will tell if this becomes a valuable channel for digital marketers.

http://mashable.com/2013/09/19/need-to-know-jobs-act/

Blog to Network

Do you manage your online presence? If you want to work for a traditional corporation, you might want to keep your head down:

A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft found that 70 percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online. CNN

Embarrassing photos, stupid ideas posted to their Facebook wall in a drunken stupor and angry rants about a current or former employer can cost you a job at a new employer or even get you fired. So does this mean to hide your online presence through a fake name, as the CNN article above suggests?

You might want to reconsider: Steve Cheney, MBA '09, worked in finance after graduating from Columbia Business School. But as he reoriented his career towards the start-up and venture capital world, he found it difficult to get a footing without a positive online presence. So he took the challenge head on, started a personal blog and posted his thoughts and ideas online. In his own words:

In the few months since I've been blogging I've created as many key relationships with heavy hitters like Chris [Dixon] as I had during the prior few years (a time during which I worked on Sand Hill Road, marketed to Google & Apple, went to b-school, etc). No joke!!
steve's blog

He can now send start-ups and VCs he meets to his blog. Instead of just marveling at past accomplishments on his resume, they can now understand how he thinks. If it works for Steve, maybe it will also work for us?

Reid Hoffman - Angel investor and Internet sage

Yesterday, we had a very special guest at my company, Knewton.com. Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIN and angel investor to our start-up, met with us to discuss his thoughts ranging from viral campaigns and network effects to entrepreneurial investing and leadership. ANGEL investor (i.e., he invested before anyone thought they would be successful) in: Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Ironport Systems, Last.fm, Nanosolar, Ning, Six Apart, Socialtext, Tagged, Technorati, Tiny Pictures, Wikia, and more. His ability to foresee which start-ups will ultimately succeed is the stuff of legends. Witty, humble and (dare I say it?) nerdy (remember, it takes one to know one!), Mr. Hoffman was an exceptional gracious speaker and we felt very fortunate that he had taken an interest in our start-up. Here are a few key takeaways from the interview…

On website launches: Mr Hoffman made a very interesting analogy about website launches. He said “if you are not embarrassed by the first launch of your website, you waited too long”. As a company, we have struggled with getting a product up that was both functional and visually attractive. With our first launch in October 2008, the site was launched and honestly, it was quite weak - no fancy animation, no Ajax graphical elements, few videos (and our online GMAT prep course was based on video classrooms!). It was Spartan but at least it was operational. We still struggle with the website now, (it’s only been 8 months), but at least we have more videos up. So yes, the challenge of managing scarce resources torn between graphical and operational improvements still remains. But on a brighter note, our SEO efforts seem to appreciate the heavy emphasis on copy --- so there is always a silver lining.

On the start-up process: Another interesting analogy about start-ups: “Trying to get a start-up off the ground is a lot like building an airplane – in mid-flight. The ground is fast approaching and you have a very limited amount of time to get everything together and working before you crash. If you do get it together, you suddenly take off. And then it’s about staying afloat and ascending. ” It’s good to know that the frantic pace and chaotic atmosphere is to be expected… Often times there are fierce battles for IT resources between Product and Marketing or debates on strategy and direction. The passion that people feel for the product is remarkable but it also makes it hard for us to be objective.

There was a lot of great advice he dispensed (the obvious and amusing one is use LinkedIn.com) and I am thankful to the opportunity to shake his hand. After all, I believe the recruiting company that introduced me to Knewton.com found me there.

So how’s that for a customer testimonial?

Joining an Internet start-up during a Economic down-turn?

Are you crazy???

That is the typical response I've received from friends and colleagues after I announced my resignation as Online Marketing Director at Vertrue, Inc., a large and very successful Internet company about 4 weeks ago.

After working three years building up a strong and profitable business marketing "free credit reports" (I know you have seen the ubiquitous banners everywhere for Freescore.com or Privacymatters.com), I left a stable situation to join a tiny, but "up-and-coming" online education start-up called Knewton.com.

This shift may seem unnoteworthy to those unfamilar with the credit reporting space (i.e. Experian, Transunion, Exquifax). But for those in the field, the mass hysteria induced by the recession has proven great fodder for online conversion rates. And good conversion rates are backbone of any successful online marketing campaign. So this would be the equivalent exiting the Lycra business during the dawn of the Disco era -- hence the multiple "are you crazy?" declarations.

While the answer may be yes, there is some evidence out there to suggest that e-learning may be a good bet for future growth (see: http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/01/12-elearning-predictions-for-2009.html). And while start-ups are risky, the entrepreneurial experience I received so far has been tremendous. I now set my own marketing destiny - for good or bad. So if I want to test video ad Rockyou! or start my own affiliate program from scratch, that's is on my terms (see a recent PR from my company).

So wish me luck, I'm going to need it!

And the good news is that while I'm working out all the kinks, I have this unique opportunity to learn from this class and to share my experiences.

Plus, I get to post a nice keyword laden link to my website for online test prep for the GMAT and LSAT to improve SEO. I do love to multi-task!