Skimming through the news I ran into this interesting article on what digital marketing activities should be done in-house or outsourced to digital marketing agencies. The article covers a series of activities like content creation, digital marketing strategy and design. I wanted to highlight and make some emphasis  on the main points done by the author on what activities should ALWAYS be kept in-house.

The author first of all says that content creation should always be done by your marketing department. Design and how you lay it out online can be outsourced, but there is no one out there that can better know what you want to pass through to your customers.

Another good point the author does, is in differentiating between digital marketing strategy and its implementation. He says companies should always develop their strategy in-house, as it makes no sense to go out there to look for someone to help you with digital marketing if you still do not know what you want to achieve and who do you want to reach through it. Once this is define, go look out there for someone to implement it, but never let a third party establish what you should be looking for.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sajeel-qureshi/what-digital-marketing-ac_b_5548675.html

China's digital transformation

As individual companies adopt web technologies, they gain the ability to streamline everything from product development and supply-chain management to sales, marketing, and customer interactions. For China’s small enterprises, greater digitization provides an opportunity to boost their labor productivity, collaborate in new ways, and expand their reach via e-commerce. In fact, new applications of the Internet could account for up to 22 percent of China’s labor-productivity growth by 2025.

Yet the Internet is not merely a tool for automation and efficiency; it also expands markets rapidly. Greater adoption of web technologies in China could lead to the introduction of entirely new products and services if government and industry take the right steps to maximize the potential (exhibit). A new report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), China’s digital transformation: The Internet’s impact on productivity and growth, projects that new Internet applications could fuel some 7 to 22 percent of China’s incremental GDP growth through 2025, depending on the rate of adoption. That translates into 4 trillion to 14 trillion renminbi in annual GDP in 2025.

That 10 trillion renminbi gap between the two numbers represents the economic growth at stake. The low end of the projection assumes that the country’s current trajectory continues, with adoption of Internet applications increasing at a moderate pace, under existing constraints. The upper end assumes that China builds a supportive policy environment, individual companies move decisively, and workers adapt to the demands of a more digitized economy.

The MGI report focuses on a set of Internet applications that could penetrate more deeply across key sectors of the country’s economy, including big data; improved demand forecasting, online sourcing, and marketing; Internet banking and payment systems; the Internet of Things; and e-commerce. The six sectors analyzed in the report are already beginning to undergo sweeping changes.

In consumer electronics, for example, the critical factors will be growth in connected devices (such as smart home appliances and Internet TVs) and online media content. China’s fledgling used-car market has enormous room for growth if powered by e-commerce. Chemical companies can use the Internet to enhance their R&D capabilities, enabling collaboration with customers and external experts. In financial services, online money-market funds, discount brokerages, and third-party online marketplaces have already begun to emerge. Chinese home buyers and renters increasingly search online to find the property that’s right for them. More broadly, the Internet is reshaping the market for commercial real estate as e-tailing decreases the need for retail space and increases demand for modern warehousing. And in healthcare, web-based tools such as electronic health records and clinical decision-support systems can elevate the quality of care and play a critical role in making the system more efficient and cost effective.

Increasing digitization is forcing companies across all industries to rethink their operations and become more customer-centric. Owners and CEOs will have to be deeply engaged as they make decisions that can radically affect how their companies do business. Industries will face increasing talent shortages, and larger companies may respond by making targeted acquisitions of tech firms.

From a policy perspective, China’s government faces multiple challenges in harnessing the Internet for economic growth. Building out networks is crucial to bringing more of the population online and facilitating the adoption of new Internet applications, while a balanced set of regulations for data sharing could remove constraints on the adoption of big data. Increased business usage of new Internet applications is likely to have a neutral or slightly positive impact on the total number of jobs—but a more striking effect on the composition of the labor market. The economy will need fewer workers for routine activities that can move online, while demand will increase for workers with digital skills. Government and industry can ease this dislocation by ensuring that training programs are available to help workers continually refresh their skills. China can also adapt school curricula to build digital literacy and create a true education-to-employment pipeline.

Source: McKinsey Quarterly

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/chinas_digital_transformation?cid=other-eml-alt-mgi-mck-oth-1407

Adobe Survey on Digital Marketing in Asia Pacific

http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2014-07-24/21399515251.shtml

According to a recent a recent survey conducted by Adobe, companies in Asia-Pacifc region with best marketing practice are taking much robust growth than their competitors. Research has also shows that a good digital marketing has a lot to do with revenue growth and business success.

Adobe Digital Index is focusing on the key criteria to form comparison among 20% top-performing websites in Australia and New Zealand, Southeast Asia, India, Korea, China, and Hong Kong Region against the average one. Key criteria include traffic of mobile and laptop, affinity, visit of unique viewer, viewing time and conversion rate.

The research also finds out the gap between the 20% top-performing companies and the average one in Asia-Pacific is getting greater. Only in terms of conversion rate, the top one has a ratio doubling the average one. This shows that organizations committed to digital marketing can substantially increase revenues.

Key findings include:

• In Korea, optimized websites for intelligent cellphones has attracted more than 90% traction than the average. This gap exists in every country though.
• In Australia, New Zealand and Southeast countries, the growth rate of pads is the fastest.
•  Except in Korea, affinity with websites in all other countries is on the increase. India champions in this category, as top marketers can improve the affinity to over 14%.
•   Compared against the average, top marketers can attract over 25% of return viewers
•  In terms of viewing time for visitors, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia has higher ration while other countries are on decline. 

    Research shows that there is no such an offline concept. Seamless experience between desktop and mobile media can increase the organization’s performance, and lead to sales.

Responsive pages wholly Responsive?

Internet of everything is being watched on every resolution combination possible, with one's grandparents still on windows XP, their spouses on an iPad and their kids on iPod.

Technologists have been coming with ideas to tackle this issue in multiple ways. Starting with different application to drive on mobile and web. This was followed by a slew of crappy looking mobile website, which was ubiquitously hated by everyone except for the builder of that website.
Finally in last couple of years technologist realized it’s not worth trying to build multiple website/app. To keep sanity they had to build a single design that could be re-purposed for everyone’s need. This is where responsive web sites came into the picture.  

Responsive website change their layout based on the size and resolution for users device. The concept calls for page element sizing to be in relative units like percentages, rather than absolute units like pixels or points. Flexible images are also sized in relative units, so as to prevent them from displaying outside their containing element. Boston Globe was one of the earliest to adopt this technology with huge success.
http://responsivelogos.co.uk/ has taken this to a whole new level. Instead of resizing images to fit into the container on html and losing branding, replacing image with their minified version leaves a better taste in user’s mouth. BTW If you don't trust me, open the link http://responsivelogos.co.uk/ and resize your browser to see the magic.

This will open doors to advertiser who won't wait long before they use this technology for more effective marketing campaign. With new responsive image methodology looks like a true responsive page is within reach.

True Responsive = fluid layout + Responsive images

Sources:

• http://www.awwwards.com/what-are-frameworks-22-best-responsive-css-frameworks-for-web-design.html
• http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design
• http://responsivelogos.co.uk

The emerging importance of mobile

62% of Facebook’s ad money now comes from mobile. Could Facebook one day become a pure mobile company? 30% of its users already check the page exclusively on their phones.

Interesting read:

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-makes-62-ad-money-mobile/294295/

Best,

Bruno.

Pop Up Instagram Surveys

By: Alice Lam

Although Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, the app has hit critical mass and now it is time to monetize.  Facebook ads can easily track if the customer clicks on the link and buys the product. Even if I am on Facebook mobile, if there is an ad that I am interested in, I can simply click on the ad that will connect me to the website.  The link also shows the the website that they acquired the customer through Facebook and thus, the reference is there and the ROI is quantifiable.  It is a whole lot trickier for Instagram.  However, last year Instagram have been trying out ads.  Unlike Facebook, where the clicks through rate is easily trackable, the ads does not seem to be as intuitive on the Instagram app.  Now, Instagram are using tech surveys to ask the user if the ad actually did/did not work.  Although the questions are disguised as a kind of feedback to make Instagram be better, the app is actually collecting data to pitch to advertisers that their ads do work.  Instagram now have celebrities on the app that have thousands of followers.  Some of actors, and some are pets!  Marketers are approaching these influencers to get them to position their products so their brand can be more visible.  This seems to be a more organic way of marketing and costs them very few advertising spend relative to other channels of media. Though Instagram are not able to monetize the influencers, using a influencer seems to be a more nuanced and creative way to reach the younger consumers who are too smart to be duped into clicking on ads.  It will be interesting to see if Instagram's advertising will be as robust as Facebook's.  Though Facebook's mobile app has grown, many people still use the website version of Facebook and thus really have two channels of revenue whereas Instagram is mostly used through the mobile channel.  Instagram is definitely growing but what it can do is quite limited.

Source: http://adage.com/article/digital/instagram-pop-ups-feel-advertisers/294344/

Another One After YouTube

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/25/twitch-google-gaming-video-site

Based on this Guardian report, Google has closed a $1bn deal to acquire gaming video streaming site Twitch. This is the biggest acquisitions by Google since the 2006 YouTube purchase.

It is often easy to forget the existence and need of the video game player. Yet, this is a really big community. Twitch is born in a right time and right place with providing a method to video game players to watch how "gosu" plays.

Compare to YouTube, Twitch users have an amazing average video watching length of 106 minutes per day. It is certainly that Google will benefit a lot from this.

Contents marketing and its measurement in B2B context

As B2B marketers only have a limited number of potential customers, marketing activities should focus on generating leads rather than on increasing brand awareness which is costly but expected evident result.

Traditional marketing plays as a hook to attract people to get to know about the existence of a certain type of products or services. In contrast, content marketing is like paving a long way to build a relationship with potential customers through persistent communication.

Measuring the effectiveness of content marketing should be based on how many stakeholders are consuming contents regularly through blog, webinars etc. Therefore, providing consistent messages is the key and it cannot be measured by the same way as traditional marketing’s effect on revenue generation.

Source) http://marketingland.com/successfully-measure-content-marketing-get-friend-zone-91908

How Mobile is Taking Over: Evidence from the Worlds of Social, Search…. and Film

Social: Facebook

This week Facebook reported that its revenue more than doubled, due in large part to its mobile advertising, which comprises 62% of its revenue.  Facebook is projected to collect 18% of the US mobile ad market this year with Google at number one in this category projected at about 40%. As a whole, mobile advertising is expected to eclipse ad revenue from newspapers, magazines, and radio for the first time ever in the United States.

Facebook has expanded its advertising efforts through its April 2014 launch of a mobile advertising network. It has now started to gain traction in this area through selling ads on non-Facebook apps and analysts wonder whether or not this trend will bleed into the desktop ad space as well. Many analysts see Facebook’s stronghold in mobile advertising as its competitive advantage against Google and other search-based advertising networks. In June mobile users spent 157 million minutes on Facebook and nearly one-fifth of the world is estimated to log on to Facebook atleast once per month.

Search: Baidu

China’s largest search engine, Baidu, also has experience stronger than expected earnings in the second quarter largely due to mobile. Revenue increased 59% from a year earlier and mobile advertising contributes to 30% of that revenue. Baidu also reports that on some weekends and holidays, search traffic on mobile exceed search traffic from desktop computers. Recently Baidu has been investing heavily in mobile. These investments have included paying mobile phone makers to pre-install its app on phones. In addition to the revenue Baidu earns from search-based advertising, it also earns revenue through an app store which it operates as well as a map-based service.

Film

Smartphone films and shorts are officially an industry. Many argue that the popularity of the smartphone has helped to unlock the creative capacity in many individuals. The emergence of smartphone films is a testament to this trend. Popular smartphone film festivals, such as the Toronto Smartphone Film Festival and the Mobile Film Festival in Paris now exist. Some analysts project the emergence of a new genre of film and new style of moviemaking due to smartphone films. This is certainly one way that mobile (and technology in general) has helped to put creative individuals with good ideas on more equal ground than those with the advantage of access to more capital.

Too many apps?

Wanna launch the new multi-billion app?
Great! But first take a look at this...However, I disagree: there is always space for a new app as long as there is an unsatisfied need.
Positivism and optimism must prevail!
Andrea

http://valleywag.gawker.com/there-are-officially-too-many-apps-and-nobody-is-makin-1611128750

"How Readers Feel About Native Ads in 4 Charts"

Below in "How Readers Really Feel about Native Ads in 4 Charts"  we gain some valuable insights on what readers respond to and where they engage with native advertising.
Some valuable takeaways:
1. 27% who read general news sites say it adds value
2. Sponsored content resonates more within business sites than general news sites
3. Brands that already resonate with the site (trusted amongst readers) have more effectiveness with native
4.  Native is (therefore) less successful in raising new brand awareness.
5. The content still has to be engaging, the brand has to be a leader and trust with the reader is essential.
6. Tablet can yield higher engagement than desktop
6. The more educated the reader, the harder it is to engage
----

http://digiday.com/publishers/readers-sponsored-content/

Publishers may be having a love affair with sponsored content, but what about their readers? Three recent studies provide new insights into how readers perceive the native ads that publishers are so enamored of. Turns out, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Here are four charts that describe reader sentiment about sponsored content.

Native-ad effectiveness depends on focus of the siteThe IAB and Edelman Berland’s July 2014 report on sponsored content shows engagement is higher on business- and entertainment-oriented sites than on general news sites.

The survey of 5000 U.S. Web users found that only 27 percent of general news readers agree that sponsored content adds value to their experience of a site, versus the average of 38 percent for overall respondents across categories.

General news readers consistently saw sponsored content as less favorable and less likely to result in positive brand uplift for the brand or publisher, as this chart shows.

Reputations count on both sidesNative-ad effectiveness depends on the reputation of both the brand and publisher. The IAB’s report shows news publishers see more engagement when they work with familiar and trusted brands. The corollary to this, however, is that native advertising is less effective for generating new brand awareness.

The chart below breaks down which factors are most relevant to readers of different types of content when it comes to native advertising — whether the brand is conveying important information, whether the brand is an authority or whether the brand is simply trustworthy. Turns out, content is still king.

Local attitudes matterBrits prefer longer headlines than Americans. According to Polar’s U.K. native advertising benchmarks, 60-80-character headlines achieve the best click-through rate, whereas U.S. readers prefer 40-60-character headlines. Another surprising statistic from the same report: Readers outside of London are twice as likely to engage with a native ad versus those in London.

“Engaged time” improves on smartphones and tabletsNative advertising performs better on smartphone and tablet devices compared to the same content on desktop. This is especially true for U.K. users, according to Polar’s benchmarks. A native ad on a smartphone has 64 percent higher click-through rate over desktop (compared to 31 percent globally), according to Polar. U.K. readers spend 3 minutes and 37 seconds on average engaging (measured as time spent) with a native ad on tablet, which is 30 percent higher than the global average. Specifically, U.K. readers have 39 percent higher engagement on tablet over desktop, and 45 percent higher engagement on smartphone over desktop.

Eggheads are less likely to clickA survey of 542 Web users conducted by Contently brought up a few interesting insights on how sponsored content is perceived by readers, broken down by education level. The research suggests better-educated readers are harder to get clicks out of — and gain the trust of – as the following charts demonstrate.

Buzzfeed: Fast and Slow thinking!

An article on Contently.com mentioned how Buzzfeed is harnessing both fast and slow thinking to increase traffic to its site and thus views to its ads.

To understand why this makes complete sense, it helps to know the difference between fast and slow thinking. Slow Thinking happens when users read more complicated stories — for example, from The Economist or The New Yorker. They savor the content and get involved with the story. They develop opinions on the topic at hand. Fast Thinking happens when you are skimming a newsfeed and looking at multiple headlines to get a gist of the general articles available and determine whether to invest "slow thinking" into it. 

For Buzzfeed to invest in content that promoted "Slow Thinking" makes complete sense, as they could only do the listicle articles so many times before people started to get tired of reading them. People need a mix of content that can fulfill their desire for instant entertainment, as well as their need to get further immersed in a topic they feel passionately about and want to understand  inside out.

I saw this happening quite clearly to me within the last few weeks with regards to the coverage on Gaza. I would initially start with skimming my newsfeed and seeing some general headlines such as "deathcount in Gaza rises," "Israel expanding ground attack," "3rd day of firing," among many other stories of beauty trends and hollywood gossip. However, the skimming has made me pay close attention to the Gaza situation, and when a Buzzfeed article highlighting US support for Israel would come up, I would angrily - and hungrily - open the article up, eagerly awaiting whether I will vehemently disagree or wholeheartedly agree with the author. Thus, the content that promotes fast thinking leads to 1) an exhaustion with skimming over time and 2) a desire for slow thinking, and hence complex content.

By capturing both sides of this, Buzz-feed has indeed won over the internet. As Contently states, "BuzzFeed’s greatest triumph, and most undervalued asset, comes from owning return reader engagement by keeping both the Fast and Slow Thinking parts of our brains happy."

Advanced B2B Strategies for Hyper-Targeted Marketing Campaigns

There are many new ways to make your marketing strategy more precisely and more efficiently. However, generating comprehensive marketing ideas is still difficult for every advertiser. As the article reveals, more than 60 percent of all email opens are on mobile devices, and many people spend more than 12 hours in front of a screen per day. Obviously, mobile has becoming a more and more popular marketing tool. However, B2B companies haven’t seen the value of this advertising option.

This article addresses finding people and engaging with them, acquiring their email address, cookie-ing them for retargeting, and using lead scoring to determine their sales-readiness. PPC and SEO are widely used options but still exist some drawbacks. The author then recommends some campaigns which advertisers can try out.

Trade Show Hyper-Targeted Campaigns

Regarding B2B trade shows, they are not only expensive, but also inefficient. It is hard for companies to engage people or potential customers and is difficult to target the ideal group. Now, companies like “Marin Software” and “Criteo” allow for a new type of dynamic hyper-targeted advertising. Here are a few ways to use mobile for a larger impact at trade shows:

1. The Cheapskate: besides the expensive booths, companies could try a hyper-local, mobile geo-fencing campaign. At the trade show, most people are on their cell phones. By buying up the mobile advertising in a geo-targeted area, firms are able to meet the right person at the right time. This is a more cost-efficient channel than a booth.

2. The After-Party: In contrast to handing out flyers, geo-targeting via mobile allows companies to invite customers to after-party with the time and the place the party is on.

3. The Pre-Game: Another benefit is that users can narrow down the clients they want to hit. Through account-based marketing (ABM), advertisers can break into accounts you want and use tools like Demandbase or Bizo to advertise only to that account. Trying to use ABM before a trade show, an appointment or a call, advertisers can easily increase people’s interests and engagement.

4. Twitter Made the Video Star: On the basis of historical data, Video was the most-shared content on Twitter in 2013. AC Nielsen reported that 80 percent of all Twitter users access the site via a mobile device. The author suggests that advertisers use a video-hosting tool, such as Wisita or Vidyard, achieving greater impact of the campaign than using each individually.

Source: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2356919/4-advanced-b2b-strategies-for-hyper-targeted-marketing-campaigns

Most users share content via Smartphones despite the smaller size of images

The overwhelming majority of Pinterest sharing takes place via mobile, according to research. And despite their smaller size, smartphones are the mobile device of choice for pinning on the go. This suggests that mobility—not size—matters more for Pinterest users.

In Q2 2014 three-quarters of Pinterest sharing took place on a mobile device. In comparison, Facebook—which claimed the overwhelming majority of all social shares—saw just over half conducted via smartphone or tablet.

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Pinning-Bet-Youre-Doing-on-Mobile/1011027/1 

Are brands optimizing Twitter?

Are there any new trends on Twitter? Its been a while since Twitter made available the option to share videos and pictures through its platform. Has anything about the way companies are tweeting these days changed?

It seems that brands are doing a Twitter marketing about-face. In other words, brand communications on Twitter are notoriously improving!

In the last communications we've seen a huge shift in the way brands have looked and used Twitter in the past. Let me support this theory with some facts:

•     In 2010, just 10% of all tweets came from brands.
•   In 2012, when Twitter had 500 million registered users, major brands were buying in, but the       learning curve was steep and they made mistakes, especially in their interactions with         customers.
•   By 2013 brands were tweeting four times more than they were in 2012, with the 10 most-followed brands tweeting every six to 20 minutes. It seemed their transformation from skeptics to Twitter devotees eager to make an impact was finally complete.

All of this just to show that there might be an excess of great content, savvy strategies, and engaging ads that suggest brands are really hitting their stride.

Moreover, there are brands like Hyundai, which has not only mastered the art of the hashtag on twitter, but also built an entire World Cup campaign around it. They launched #BecauseFutbol on Twitter and it was a huge success. The automaker managed to inspire countless fan tweets honoring a love of the tournament that had the world talking

Companies like Hyundai, have found their social media marketing niche, and in so doing have helped to redefine the way the platform is approached.

Twitter is a customer service tool. Yes, and It can be used to broadcast company news. But it's also a conduit for digital creativity, and it's there that many brands are making their home.

To conclude, here are three ideas that might help companies to do so:

1.    Leverage Twitter Trends.

2.    Commit to More Visual Tweets.

3.    Link to Current Events and Give Your Custom Hashtags “Mass Appeal”.

Source: www.clickz.com