Experts Share Trends to Jump On

Video appears to be the strongest format for content creation moving forward so brands should focus on moving away from stills to different formats that could be used in stories, or on facebook live as well as youtube. For these videos they could use user generated content which is more relatable to create a more meaningful customer connection.

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Warren Buffet once told Forbes, “Ultimately, there's one investment that supersedes all others: Invest in yourself." Clearly, he knows a thing or two about investments, so this is great advice for all entrepreneurs.

So what is one of the best ways to invest in yourself? Knowledge. And you can’t stop with what you may have learned in school. As Jim Rohn said, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

Conferences are a great way to gain this knowledge, but the travel and costs involved can sometimes be prohibitive and have a negative impact on that fortune you’re building. SEMrush will solve both of these challenges during Global Marketing Day on Oct. 30. I'm excited to be a part of this 24-hour streamed conference which will feature some of the top minds in marketing. Olga Andrienko, Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush, explains, “Be it from pioneers of the industry from such brands as Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Canon, Walt Disney and Condé Nast, an array of professionals will be able to offer insights to their knowledge, skills and success.”

I’ll be speaking, but as usual, I’m really looking forward to the learning opportunity. To jumpstart the experience, I interviewed a handful of my fellow speakers. During these conversations they shared marketing trends to look out for in 2020 and things you can immediately do to increase the impact of your online marketing. 

Know the value of personalization

"There is still a tendency to apply principles of mass communication and broadcast media as if digital was a channel. It’s much easier now for marketers to personalize and get closer to one-to-one communication than ever before. If you have thousands, even hundreds of thousands of customers and potential customers, why talk to them all as if they were the same person? And we are not doing 'digital marketing' – we’re marketing in a digital world. Even the 30-second spot on TV is recorded on a digital camera, edited on a digital software program, uploaded to a cloud server and distributed digitally to TV stations that transmit adverts digitally to your smart TV – a totally digital process. Probably the toaster you used for your bagel this morning is digital! We’re marketing to human beings not transmitting to devices. Get up close and personal."

—Mike Grehan, CMO & Managing Director, Acronym

Related: Entrepreneur Insider Live Event: How to Make More Money With Content Marketing

 

Embrace testimonials

"These days customer stories don't need to be a big customer shoot, where you fly a team on-site and film for 2-3 days. The best customer stories/testimonials today are their actual words -- pulled from social media or review sites like G2 Crowd. Why? Because buyers are skeptical today. They don't believe some highly-produced case study because it feels like marketing. Instead, companies need to use the real words real customers are saying online. Do things that provoke, inspire them to share that stuff online, and then use it all back in your marketing."

—Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing, Drift

Would you like to learn how you can leverage content marketing to increase conversions? Attend the Entrepreneur Insider Live Event: How to Make More Money With Content Marketing. You'll leave with at least 10 content marketing ideas, and a clear understanding for how to distribute this content to your target audience.

When it comes to voice search, don’t believe the hype

"I think voice search is one of the most over-hyped trends in marketing over the last few years. At this point, I recommend marketers should not chase this trend. Maybe in the two to three years, this may change. For now, brands can start preparing their content and website for voice search, but I question the ROI of these efforts until we see consumer behavior change. Until then I recommend focusing on channels and tactics that are going to have actual revenue impact within the next six months."

—JD Prater, Quora Evangelist

Related: Don't Let Digital Marketing Mistakes Derail Your Business

Creating meaningful connections and experiences

"Engagement is a key factor in creating meaningful connections with your audience. It starts with the on-site user experience and expands to engagement on social platforms. There should be clear success metrics for engagement based on the platform. For example, time spent on site could be a clear KPI for scale (reach), UX and content engagement, while user shares and comments could be the KPI for most of the social platforms. It is very important to identify content that engages users and try to build on it. Condé Nast Traveler’s Women Who Travel is a great example on how this can be done.

Two years ago, the brand launched a collection of articles around International Women’s Day celebrating inspiring female travelers around the world. To continue the conversation and connect further with those female travelers, Condé  Nast Traveler launched a Facebook group called Women Who Travel, aimed at being a space for all self-identifying women to share their travel stories, offer advice, and form a community of like-minded women. Today, the group has exploded into a 140,000+ member community."

—John Shehata, Vice President, Audience Growth, Conde Nast

Related: Entrepreneur Insider Video of the Week: How Storytelling Drives the Purchase Process

The continued dominance of video in 2020

"Video will continue to rule. There’s a reason why the play button is the most compelling CTA on the web and why reports recently show VPs and the C-suite prefer video to other content formats. B2B videos done well can delight your audience at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

On LinkedIn, millions of people have already created a video on LinkedIn, and video is the fastest-growing type of content. Members spend almost 3x more time watching video ads compared to time spent with static Sponsored Content. And since we started the LinkedIn Live pilot in February this year, we’ve seen that live video attracts 7x more Reactions and 24x more comments than regular video for individual creators.

However, many B2B marketers either think their products or services aren’t flashy enough for video or they need a Netflix size budget to pull it off. Which is just not the case. In 2020, we’ll see a lot more B2B marketers experiment with effective video that doesn’t break the bank."

Barça, football club

Brand recognition is key for football (or soccer) teams. A strong brand enables them to ask for higher prices for sponsorships, sell more t-shirts, tickets, and thus, be able to buy stronger/better players and have the upper hand in matches to become a winning team.

Barca has been expanding their content strategy and this week announced they reached a million followers in TikTok, and that they're coming out with a new TV docu-series available to stream in one of their sponsor's platform (Rakuten) - and narrated by John Malkovich.

It is really interesting to see Barca strengthen their brand through partnerships with sponsors in a win-win strategy and to expand their reach in all media (they have over 77 million Instagram followers) to ensure they remain relevant and create brand loyalty across different generations.

TikTok and the global race to dominate our attention span

Google and Facebook are both feeling the heat from the new kid on the block, TikTok. Last week, a leaked audio clip from a Facebook internal meeting made media rounds. In the leaked audio, Zuckerberg responded to an employee's questions about the rise of Tik Tok, and he laid out Facebook's competing product Lasso's plans to enter markets TikTok has yet to dominate. This week, WSJ reported that Google has held discussions about acquiring the video-sharing startup, Firework, to counter fast-growing TikTok. The question begs: what is TikTok, and why should we care? 

TikTok is the subsidiary of Bytedance, Beijing-based internet technology company currently valued at $75 Billion. TikTok's Chinese counterpart, Douyin, is the hottest social app du jour in China and its in-app conversion capability can put Instagram's e-commerce functionality to tears. Bytedance's other crown jewel within the family is Toutiao, an AI-driven news recommendation app that is the equivalent of Apple news + Google News and all other news distribution channels combined. Bytedance has recently announced it will be entering the search space, an area that "China's Google," Baidu, has dominated for the past decade or so. Bytedance is also eyeing the global market with wide ambition and TikTok has moved quickly to enter overseas markets. What's interesting about TikTok's overseas expansion strategy is how the app tailors in-market strategy based on individual countries' consumer preferences and social norms. TikTok's U.S. strategy is focused on the tween demographics, and it has captured a significant market share in a short amount of time, drawing scrutiny from media such as the New Yorker and legislators alike. Nevertheless, the firm marches on as we become more glued to our phones. In 1996, when the internet was termed "the web," the visionaries probably predicted that 20 years later, we'd all be trapped and unable to leave. 

The battle for attention has shifted from words to video form. The robustness of the underlining recommendation logic and ability to keep a captive audience for as long as possible within the platform ecosystem are key in winning in this new competitive environment. Content creators and marketers are betting on story-telling in short-form video format. Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok have pioneered a verticle frame aesthetic, which Firework aims to "disrupt" by advocating for a horizontal, 30 seconds canvas to support higher production value video clips. We shall wait, likely not for long--if our attention span is an accurate predictor-- and see who will soon win out. 

Saudi Arabia #Ad

I thoroughly enjoyed this NY Times article about Instagram influencers who have been paid to promote travel tourism in Saudi Arabia. As a country that is known for its extreme censorship, ruthless executions and role in the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi's murder, it was surprising to see that they were trying to market themselves as a friendly place for outsiders to visit. As a move to decrease the country's reliance on oil and diversify its economy, the kingdom's tourist board plans to expand its visa program to 49 countries. Only time will tell if this will help both the country's image and economy.

Email marketing fails

An interesting article I found when I did some search about email marketing.  In class we learned about how to achieve success with email marketing but while there are great guidelines to follow, we need to pay attention to the content and be aware of the situation that may deem inappropriate.  For example, Adidas sent an email to Boston marathoners congratulating the participants for completing the race but the message said, "Hi, you survived the Boston Marathon."  Nothing wrong with that right?  Well, unfortunately this message was delivered after the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon.

Below is the link to the article and you can see other similar situations of email marketing that otherwise may have been a success but failed because of the timing of the messages.

https://chamaileon.io/resources/4-email-marketing-fails/

The takeaway I got is that you essentially only get one shot at email marketing and while it may be the most effective way to be successful, it's the easiest way to fail if you are not careful.

When marketing goes stereotypical

This past week, the NYTimes published an article on how wedding marketing can be very stereotypical when it comes to female and male roles.

As part of their email marketing, two sites (the Knot and Wedding Wire), after the wedding, in order to keep in touch with their customers kept sending reminders to change their names to their new husband's.

Then Facebook assumed that now that their customers reported they were married, they'd soon have kids so they started showing baby ads.

The article also goes into the different expectations for women and men on their wedding day and how marketers - in their attempt to connect and sell - magnify them and thus, perpetuate stereotypes.

Worth a read:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/fashion/weddings/the-sexist-undertones-of-wedding-marketing.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Love

Selling a Python Class on the Most Popular Social Media in China

Scrolling down my friends’ pictures and posts on WeChat feeds, I suddenly saw a Python Online Class advertisement showing up. “Those who can do Python would succeed in jobs. Catch up with your peers, right now!” It follows with six pictures about how simple but useful this class is. You can just click on them to enter the official info page of the online class.

With more than one billion monthly active users, WeChat is now more than a texting app as its name suggests, but more of a social media platform with enormous traffic. Q3 2018 sees a 47% increase in advertising revenues, accounting for 20% of its total revenue. Brands pay WeChat bloggers for advertorials, and paid advertisements also appear in little boxes at the middle or the end of the articles. There is another way of placing paid ads: on WeChat Moments.

WeChat Moments Ads are similar to Facebook / Instagram Sponsored Posts: you have never followed that account, but it comes along with the other feeds you follow. WeChat Moments is a popular function on WeChat which counts 750 million daily users - a relatively public but still private space where you can post pictures, thoughts, links and videos for friends to see. How does the system assist advertisers to target the viewers and increase the conversion rate like this Python Class?

One interesting thing about the WeChat Moment Ads is that you can interact with them just as a random post of a friend. Through the “Likes” and “comments” I can see who has seen this Python class advertisement and reacted to it. Among my contacts, there are 17 friends “like” this post and 18 people comment under it. Many comments are like, “Why are so many people liking this post??” “I just started to learn Python and WeChat send me this.” “Everyone is crazy learning coding?” “My peers, help me out in the future!” ... “What the heck!?”

Most of the responses are negative, complaining about the narrative causing anxiety among young people. However, we can’t deny the precision of placing this advertisement. One of the comments says, “This is the only product I purchased on WeChat Moment Ads, as a 'middle-aged' person I need to learn this.” but she is just in her late twenties, managing a social enterprise.

I feel like those ads are becoming more and more personalized on WeChat Moment these days. I did search coding-related stuff sometimes recently. Among those who commented, most are college students, recent graduates, or young people entering the job market. Although people feel negative about the way it generates anxiety, it gains brand awareness. As more people are worried about leaving behind a necessary skill, more people would take a look into that python class.

The rise of TikTok and how advertisers can partner with it

It’s now been more than a year since TikTok launched in the US, and in that short period, the Chinese-owned video app has leveraged virality of user generated video on its platform to capture 500m+ users. Now that it has gained traction they have shifted towards monetisation now by partnering with a number of brands and slowly unveiling a number of advertising capabilities.

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Cosmetics brand e.l.f. is one of the latest advertisers to launch a paid campaign targeting TikTok’s Gen Z user base. Using the popular “Hashtag Challenge” ad unit, the brand recently launched its #eyeslipsface campaign, encouraging TikTok users to create videos showing off their makeup using an original song created for the activation. e.l.f. Beauty also purchased a 24-hour takeover ad, which prompted users to participate in the challenge upon opening the app.

“Gen Z is a huge audience for us,” said Kory Marchisotto, CMO of e.l.f., in an interview with eMarketer about the news of the partnership. “It’s of critical importance to make sure we're not only where they are, but also serving up content that's relevant to them.”

Marchisotto says it’s not just TikTok’s demographic that has e.l.f interested in the platform. “I think [TikTok] is bringing something very different. Instagram has become highly polished, it's still the coffee table book, it's very curated. On TikTok, everybody's out there to have fun and express themselves in unique ways.”

Ad Formats

Though the video app has yet to roll out all its ad capabilities—such as augmented reality lenses and full-screen video ads, as listed on its website—some early adopters are testing select formats.

Brands like Guess and Chipotle Mexican Grill partnered with TikTok on sponsored “Hashtag Challenges,” which placed branded hashtags on the app’s Discover page. Food delivery app Grubhub was reportedly testing video ads on TikTok as early as January 2019, and fashion retailer Hollister Co. ran a series of in-feed video ads last spring. TikTok has also become a popular platform for influencer marketing, especially for brands looking to work with the platform’s up-and-coming video creators.

A representative from TikTok confirmed that its hashtag unit was still the only ad product officially available in the US, but it is conducting early experiments with other models. Last month, sponsored hashtags were expanded under the name Hashtag Challenge Plus and now include an in-app shoppable component.

Walmart

Walmart TikTok’s list of advertisers also includes the largest company in the world. Walmart launched its #SavingsShuffle hashtag challenge in late September and promoted the campaign using a roster of TikTok influencers. “It's kind of one of those seminal moments when you start seeing those kinds of brands,” said TikTok vice president Blake Chandlee at Advertising Week in New York City. The brand used the hashtag challenge Explore tab—which pops up when a user taps on a hashtag—to advertise a variety of shoppable products and ask users to guess Walmart’s best-selling item. (The answer: toilet paper.)

NFL

In perhaps the largest US branding effort to date, TikTok announced a multiyear partnership with the NFL that will allow third-party brands to sponsor content on the NFL’s TikTok account. When the announcement was made prior to the 2019 season, the NFL began posting using the hashtag #WeReady. Although the NFL told AdAge that it did not pay to promote the hashtag, the organization plans to use the Hashtag Challenge feature in the future. The NFL also hopes to generate user engagement by inviting fans to create TikTok-centric content to support their favorite teams and players.

Ralph Lauren

As the official outfitter of the US Open Tennis Championships, Ralph Lauren was one of the first brands to use TikTok’s shoppable Hashtag Challenge Plus feature to show off its collection for the 2019 tournament. The challenge asked TikTok users to post a video wearing Ralph Lauren products using the hashtag #WinningRL. At the end of the contest, creators of the top three videos with the highest engagement were awarded free US Open gear.

Macy’s

The department store kicked off the back-to-school shopping season by bringing its omnichannel “All Brand New” campaign to TikTok using the platform’s Hashtag Challenge. The challenge encouraged students to post videos wearing back-to-school outfits, and if users tapped on the hashtag, a “Shop Now” prompt appeared above Macy’s official videos linking to its website.

Kroger

For its own back-to-school campaign, Kroger became the one of the first brands to use TikTok’s shoppable Hashtag Challenge Plus feature. The grocery chain promoted its #TransformUrDorm campaign, which encouraged college students to show off their decorated dorm rooms. Similar to Macy's, the campaign allowed users to tap on the sponsored hashtag, which led to a separate Explore tab showcasing Kroger products and direct links to its ecommerce channel.

Chipotle

One of TikTok’s most notable US partnerships was with Chipotle, which worked with the video platform twice on hashtag challenges. For Cinco de Mayo, the restaurant chain asked fans to post their best “lid flip”—where users flipped an aluminum dish lid onto a Chipotle plate and then used the hashtag #ChipotleLidFlip—to promote its free delivery offer. The brand went viral on TikTok in August when it announced a new challenge, #GuacDance, which became TikTok’s highest-performing branded challenge in the US.

Fake Instagram account for shopping in peace

I found this article on The Cut a very interesting take on targeting ads. Today, individuals are endlessly looking for ways to avoid a barrage of shopping ads. This one individual decided to make a fake Instagram account to shop without the noise.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/10/a-shinstagram-is-a-secret-instagram-account-for-shopping.html

5 Social Media News Stories

1. Facebook Messenger rolls out new tools and drops the Discover tab

2. Facebook may soon start hiding likes, too

3. Twitter introduces drag-and-drop images

4. New in-app shopping ads may be coming to Facebook

5. YouTube launches a Fashion "hub"



https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/industry-updates/social-media-updates/5-social-media-news-stories/

PayPal withdraws from Facebook currency platform

PayPal’s withdrawal from Facebook’s currency platform could be a sign that digital marketing and transaction is moving away from platform. While Facebook is still the #1 social media, Facebook is facing an aging demographic and customer trust issues. This could impact the relationship between Facebook users and advertisers. 

This could bring about a different digital marketing approach. PayPal has an install customer base with transaction data. Advertiser could also use previous transaction data and retailers can better segment customers. 

Creating Earned Media for the Digital Marketing Strategy

A good friend of mine is a journalist. I asked her what she though was the next frontier in her industry. She started talking about a local company she knew called 72 Point, “they do sponsored surveys. Mostly things like, ‘how many slices of pizza do people eat in their lifetime’.” 

A far cry from hard hitting news, but then she got into it. First of all, companies like 72 Point employ the same kind of people who would work in a news room. Journalists, photographers, graphic designers… They work together with their clients (like H&R Block and Groupon) to “create and distribute newsworthy content and generate media exposure.”

How could lifetime pizza consumption be considered newsworthy? Topics like these have something 72 Point refers to as “talk value”: subjects that are likely to strike a chord with publishers and their audience. Subject that publishers want to write about and that readers want to share: earned media. 

To illustrate how this works, take 72 Point’s campaign for Garnier. They conducted a survey profiling women’s busy schedules. The tie-in to hair care is the implication that because mornings are the busiest part of the day for many women, Garnier’s Flatiron Express product (which is formulated to reduce styling time) frees up time in the morning and gives you time for everything else you need to do. They go on to create very cute infographics, complete with hashtags. It’s all designed to be sharable material. 

Infographics and news releases are then sent out to 72 Point’s network. Since a lot of media outlets have scaled back their teams, they are very reliant on outside sources for research and are especially interested in news (releases) that writes itself. In fact, you’ve likely read content like this before without realizing it. For example, let’s say ABC is running a story on working moms’ stress. Well, the story might have something like this: “according to a survey done by Garnier, women need an extra 82 minutes per day to accomplish everything on their to-do lists.” 

The story links back to the site, which drives traffic. Of course, the clout of the backlinker’s site helps to increase the search ranking of the destination site. And these backlinkers include some very prominent sites. It’s all part of the broader digital marketing strategy. The content produced is incredibly consumable and sharable. It comes complete with hashtags and cute infographics and, similar to listicles, creates and easy reading experience. 

Tis the Season for Apples and Cider

This week, I'm working on how to continue building towards a cider business without putting much capital to work, just yet. One step I need to take is to build a website and start experimenting with SEO and SEM.

It is great to learn that Google's bidding and budgeting allows for extreme specificity when it comes to bidding on keywords. The apple season, from September to October, is the prime season to capture audience attention online. While I knew that searches for "cider" spiked (no pun intended) during autumn, I had not yet thought about the long tail of keywords.

A search for "Asian hard cider" yields essentially no matching products or brands. You find ciders/perries made of Asian pears, but that is it. We'll count that as a win for us.

In addition to building a plan for bidding on ad words,  website development at this stage will also have the objective of building a database of interested consumers. I'm aiming to gain insights into potential consumers by having them sign up for pre-orders.

This will all contribute to a digital marketing ecosystem of gaining brand awareness, gaining customers and info on who they are, and then funneling those insights back into a refined SEO and SEM strategy.

Emails as a rare push marketing tool

Emails might thought to be an old marketing tool, but I still think it is a rare tool which enables us to proactively reach the customers.

We learnt about SEO and Ads in the class, but those are basically pull marketing tools. We need to wait until the customers notice, and we need to highly rely on customers' behavior to make them take even one look at our offerings.

On the other hand, emails are more push marketing tool, which when appropriately reached into the mailbox of the customers, they will very likely be read, at least the subjects or a few sentences.

I have some experience of email marketing and the response rate was normally around 3 - 5%, which were quite high. Emails were very useful to proactively deliver the message and offerings to specific customers. Also one thing very good in email marketing is that basically sending emails is free. Of course, you need to have a list of recipients which sometimes you need to procure from outside, but once you have an address, emails are very capable to deliver your message into the appropriate group.

Facebook, Libra and the world of cryptocurrency

Today PayPal announced it would be withdrawing from the nonprofit consortium of companies in the Libra Association, amid growing regulatory scrutiny of the new cryptocurrency. Given that the head of Facebook's Blockchain team was a former president at PayPal, this does not bode well for the fledgling consortium, and it will be interesting to see whether Visa and MasterCard follow suit.

At first glance the project to create a new cryptocurrency, backed by respected brands such as Uber, Lyft, Spotify, Facebook and leading venture capital firms sounds intriguing. It could be useful for safely moving money in real time, without needing to wait days for settlement, and it could be beneficial for reducing or eliminating transfer fees for people and businesses looking to send money overseas or repatriate funds held abroad by creating a borderless currency. Moreover, by establishing incentives for businesses to accept the cryptocurrency, it could be interesting to see widespread retail use of cryptocurrencies finally go mainstream.

On the other hand, Facebook's penchant for disruption and commitment to open systems may have potential drawbacks. An Economist article earlier this year writes:

"Were every Western depositor to move a tenth of their bank savings into Libras, its reserve fund would be worth over $2trn, making it a big force in bond markets. Banks that suddenly saw lots of deposits leave for Libras would be vulnerable to a panic over their solvency; they would also have to shrink their lending." 

The implications of disrupting the status quo to the traditional banking system should be taken seriously. Moreover, it could be problematic for this private association to impede sovereign governments' ability to moderate their home currencies, safeguarding themselves against inflation and recession. In addition, there could be unforeseen consequences of the "democratization" of payments systems, such as facilitating money laundering by drug cartels and autocratic regimes.

Facebook has already demonstrated the immense power of social media to disrupt the status quo through social media through movements such as the Arab Spring and its remarkable ability to empower a new generation of activists across the globe. We have also begun to see some of the potential risks of this incredibly powerful tool with the 2016 presidential elections and Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook is admirable in its ability to set the groundbreaking vision for the future of digital technology, and its ability to successfully execute on its goals. We should be careful that future innovations it plays a role in, such as Libra, are thoughtfully regulated going forward.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/06/22/facebook-wants-to-create-a-global-currency

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-ceo-tim-cook-criticizes-companies-facebook-creating-cryptocurrency-libra-2019-10

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/04/paypal-looks-is-the-first-company-to-drop-out-of-the-facebook-led-libra-association/

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/4/20899310/facebook-libra-paypal-online-currency-payment-system-cryptocurrency

WeWork’s Startup Party Ends With Some 2,000 Jobs Set to Be Cut

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wework-startup-party-ends-2-133709945.html

So more job cuts, more job cuts, more job cuts!  This seems to be the new way of trying to gain profits and cut costs.  However, I wonder if folks ever really stop to think if this is in the long run what makes the most sense.  What is happening at WeWorks has happened in many other places and it will continue to happen.  I think it is so sad that we think people are so easily disposable.  

This week at my job we let go of a bunch of people.  This came without warning and instantly.  There are two sides that are not considered in this equation.  You have the folks that are let go- which could be an incredible talent that could help you grow.  Then you have the folks that stay- they are now afraid that they might be next and have more work to do.  The entire companies suffer when this is done and I am not sure that the folks on top who make these decisions truly understand all the consequences of masses layoffs.  There is no more job security and the longer I am in the corporate world the lounder I hear these words.  The only thing you know for sure is that changes are coming. You need to have plans A, B, and C and be ready for whatever comes your way. 

By Jeannie Marmol

"Nope," says the people, "we don't want personalized ads."

Marketing in its very essence is about reaching the right people at the right time for that sweet conversion. Online advertising ushered in an era of high-touch and engagement. Brands and platforms are obliged to know as much about the target consumers and track them with the hope of ultimately scoring a sale. To brands and platforms, it's a fair trade--a superb free service in exchange for personal information, so they can continue to deliver great products and services. The logic continues: if consumers were going to see ads anyway, might as well see things that they are tangentially interested in. After all, humans are drawn to familiarity. The mere-exposure effect, the psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop enjoyment from familiar things, is an integral part of our humanity. 

A new study that came out this week might have poked a hole into the marketing premise as we know it. In a survey of 1,100 US internet users, the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) found that 93% of respondents said they would be willing to share their gender with a website, but that dropped marginally to 90% if it meant the data was used to create a personalized ad experience. Approximately 91% said they would share their race or ethnicity, but that dropped to 86% for a personalized experience.

This data provided a glimpse into customer psychology: while marketers may think customers want personalization, there’s growing consumer skepticism over those experiences. The ARF survey also found that, in general, people were slightly less likely to share their data in 2019 than they were in 2018. 

The bombardment of ex·po·sé in the news about Facebook and other tech giants have invariably made an impression in our collective consciousness and augmented our understanding of ways personalization connects to the loss of privacy. As a society, we are increasingly aware of how personal data can be used to influence and drive decisions. Marketers will have to think creatively on ways to reach consumers without the compromise of data and privacy. 

Who will win the future? Email or Social Media?

Thinking ahead of our discussion on email marketing without knowing the dominant mechanism, I had made the assumption that email marketing was the antiquated & dying breed of the two forums. Surprisingly, after researching, email is the clear winner in terms of conversion rates, Click Through, and ROI.

To offer more color, I am an avid 'unsubscriber' of marketing emails. I absolutely cringe when I receive marketing emails from retailers. My aversion to this lead me to the conclusion that everyone would have a similar reaction to them- but clearly that is not the case. The surprising factor was perhaps not that email was the winner but by how much it was the winner. Here are some reasons why:
-Email is more far reaching. Although people engage in a multitude of social media sites/platforms (instagram, facebook, twitter, youtube, etc), email is more broad. It isn't linked to particular demographics therefore the accessibility is wider for marketing B2C and B2B.
-McKinsey found that email is 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
-It turns out that 60% of consumers subscribe to a brand’s email list to receive promotional messages compared to 20% of consumers who will follow brands on social media to get deals.-Its becoming harder on social media for organic reach causing engagement to drop. When facebook and instagram evolve their methodologies of feeds, it can effect the durability of a marketing campaign.

Conclusion
It's clear that email is not going anywhere, nor is social media so for any successful marketing campaign, especially for online only retailers, a combination of both is the way to go.  

Even your favorite discount store is opening an online store - marshalls.com

One of my favorite things that I do during my free time is going to the "treasury hunt". By this treasury, I mean the steals that I get at fantastic prices. I go to Marshalls, TJmaxx, Century 21 the most. I got an email today that Marshalls is opening an online store.

https://www.marshalls.com/us/store/index.jsp

Which seems to be a crazy idea. How do you deal with all the stocks, they probably carry the most item SKUs, doubling Target's or Tripling a regular clothing store. So, to SKUing thousands and millions of the products and posting online seems to be of a crazy task.

Wait, then I got to think. Are they a platform service? Or... are they just another version of their offline stores? It seems like they already have a great name value for their offline stores, and they cannot seem to be transferring all of their goods into the online space, so they must be a platform service. Why would a vendor/or a brand want to post their goods on the Marshalls vs. Amazon then? This must be a margin, and no-return back to the brand owner policy. Marshalls is known to buy all their goods at a cheap price but never returning back to the brand owner even if the sales is not satisfactory. They will haunt down the customers with low, lower, and the lowest price so the customers have no option but to "alright... I will buy it". If they are organizing a different platform version for the online store versus the offline store, they can be more focused on getting the cash out of the business and can grow bigger.

Maybe, next time, you won't be able to see Macy's.com, because there is not enough discount with the particular clothes or the cosmetics.

Good night, everyone!

Social media update, brought to you by my teenaged cousins

Yesterday, I took a deep breath, swallowed my pride and Googled “What apps are the kids using?” The top articles were dated and mostly advice for parents monitoring their teens. My search terms apparently make me sound like a narc. I needed to ask someone on the inside.

It so happens I have teenaged cousins living in Switzerland and Canada. We keep in touch though Snapchat and Instagram. I Snapped them: “This is embarrassing, but what apps are you using? Give details. Needed for critical research.”

My youngest cousin gets back to me right away. Her reply is superimposed over a picture of her laughing, which does nothing for my ego. “I know about Tiktok but I don’t use it. It’s popular. It’s like Vine 2.0.” She goes on, “I just use Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp and Depop (to sell clothes). 

The oldest replies by Snapchat voice message. She informs me that Facebook is not cool. She uses “Snapchat, Whatsapp, Instagram and, ummm… Pintrest?” The way she says Pintrest makes me think that it’s not very cool either. She’s heard of Twitch and says a lot of people use Tiktok, which she tells me “is so cringey.” I ask why. “Because the videos people post are just so… cringey! Anyway, it’s just like the new Musical.ly.”

Huh? What is Tiktok, besides the sound of me getting old? Is it like Vine or is it like Musical.ly? What is Musical.ly, anyway? Why is my 16-year-old cousin selling her clothes?

It turns out Tiktok, Vine and Musical.ly all allow users (who skew young) to create, edit and share short videos. Tiktok videos are a maximum of 15 seconds long. More on this later, but of the three, Tiktok is the only platform still around.

Tiktok’s trending videos mostly show kids dancing and lip-synching (unfortunately, it seems to the same five songs). I didn’t see the appeal. How was this different from other platforms? I scrolled the endless feed of dancing teens, challenges, crafts and cats. 

Once I’d broken free, I read a few articles about Tiktok’s background in A.I. and how their algorithmically-driven content sets them apart from other social media. Their feed is less of a self-directed experience than one based purely on algorithmic observation and inference. Facebook and Instagram both do this to some extent but I’d argue the core experience is still driven by personal connections. It’s more akin to how YouTube uses algorithms to provide recommendations (you may be aware of the various problems with that). Essentially: the more you view, the more they learn what you like, the more they feed it to you… and the longer you stay glued to the platform. 

This formula works. Tiktok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, is valued at $75B and has surpassed Uber as the world’s most valuable startup. They have become China’s most popular social media export, with 1.3 billion downloads worldwide.

As I mentioned, Vine and Musical.ly are with us no more. Vine was initially popular but withered away after being bought by Twitter. It was discontinued in 2017. Meanwhile, ByteDance bought Musical.ly in 2017. They folded Musical.ly into Tiktok this summer following a dispute with the Federal Trade Commission. Musicial.ly, with their very young demographic, had been illegally collecting personally information on children. They settled for $5.7 million - a record penalty.

Social media platforms hold a lot of power, so when they cross ethical and legal lines the stakes can be high. Just this week, headlines speculate that Tiktok (remember, a Beijing-based company) may be censoring protest related content in Hong Kong. It will be important to watch how Tiktok toes these lines, especially since their young audience is not directly choosing the content they consume but being guided by the invisible hand of an algorithm.

The Future of Online Shopping

On August 11th, 1994, a customer in Philadelphia bought Sting’s 4th album, Ten Summoner's Tales, for $12.48. Why did this matter? Because this was the first secure online transaction ever made: it was the birth of e-commerce as we know it.

Twenty-five years later, e-commerce has really grown up. That first purchase was a more complicated process than most of today’s online shoppers could muster. Luckily for the shopaholics among us, online transactions have evolved toward the end goal of becoming as frictionless as possible. From the development of Pay Pal in 1998, to the one-click checkouts that we have today, online shopping has become easier than any 90’s mall rat could imagine. Convenience is key to it all. It’s all about removing obstacles from shoppers and giving them fewer reasons to think twice about making a purchase. So, with all your heart’s desires just a click away, the question is: what’s next?

You might well try asking your smart phone. “Hey Siri?”

Voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are finding their way into our hands and homes. Voice-enabled smart phones aside, Statista estimates that smart speaker household penetration rate in the United States will rise from 35% today to 75% by 2025. And consumers are using this technology to shop. Today, 18 million US consumers have made some form of voice payment, and Business Insider projects that this will quadruple over the next five years. These projections will depend on consumers’ growing comfort level in using voice technology and its ability to offer increased convenience.

One of the key barriers to adopting this technology is the concern around privacy. Common worries like; “Is Alexa spying on me?” and “what is she doing with my data?” Certainly, privacy is a hot issue for many tech giants at the moment. Today, most voice-assistant use is centered around small tasks like setting timers, playing music and checking the weather. This will change as we move through the technology adoption process. In the very near future, we'll see voice assistants being used for more and more involved tasks – aided in part by features that improve user security. Indeed, features like voice-authentication promise to offer increased security over passwords. 

But the real sell with voice-assistance is the convenience potential. Not only does it allow users to make purchases when they might be engaged in other tasks – say ordering milk while they’re cleaning out the fridge – it helps them to make purchases while they’re top of mind. This is more convenient for the user, who likely wouldn’t have remembered that he was out of milk until he went to make coffee the next morning. Importantly, it also allows Amazon to win a sale which otherwise might have been lost to the convenience store across the street.

This is just the beginning for voice technology. Business Insider predicts that voice payments will continue to “evolve from clunky and poorly scripted sessions to interactions as natural as one might have with a personal shopper or bank employee.”

Pandora now tailors music and ads

I am a long time listener of Pandora Radio, and not the premium account type, I have long enjoyed the free version spliced with ads. As a marketer, I enjoy hearing the ads to learn about the creative and relevant products/services in the market. So it wasn't going to get passed me that Pandora had some of the worst targeted ads in the industry.

Living in NYC, I frequently would get targeted radio advertisements for car dealerships in central New Jersey and mentions of concerts in genres I didn't enjoy. I was puzzled why in the age of programmatic advertising, with tons of information about their target consumers, how their advertising would be so ineffective. To make it worse, the same ads would play on endless loop - did Pandora have a problem selling ad spots or were they not taking advantage of modern programmatic technologies?

Then, earlier this year, in one single day, I noticed a change. Suddenly the ads seemed relevant to my life - targeted for my neighborhood and about products I am interested in. After all these years of listening to their website and mobile app, it was as if they were finally listening to me. But what changed? and why?

For this blog post I decided to look in to Pandora's advertising history and explore if there was an impetus for this change. Sure enough, there was a major change this year and I found an article that summarized what happened:

https://goodwaygroup.com/blog/recent-changes-pandora-advertising

In summary, Pandora had previously outsourced their supply side ad sales to a third party management company. In 2019, they purchased a company called AdsWizz that gives them enhanced geo-targeting capabilities, expanded reach, and holistic reporting for improved analytics. These capabilities make Pandora a more attractive advertising medium for advertisers and will drastically improve the user experience. Yes - improved ads improves the user experience. So not only are the ads now more relevant for me, it seems there are now more advertisers using Pandora as a target service. Just today I heard an ad of a new Target location opening a few blocks away from my house - relevant and timely!

Criteo trying to navigate GDPR, how will marketers respond to cookies

Criteo relies upon cookies and therefore has struggled with the introduction of GDPR due to limited access to cookies potentially. Moving forward we need to think about whether users will "opt-in" to cookies as it is unsure whether people understand these changes fully and what the uptake will be. How users respond to this will completely shape how advertisers approach digital marketing and targeting.

Article:

Earlier this week, the publicly listed ad-tech outfit reported its third consistent slowdown in revenues since the enforcement of GDPR in the E.U. on May 25 last year, with Q4 revenues of $670 million, representing a slowdown of 1 percent year over year.

It would be a natural assumption to lay the blame of Criteo’s decrease—it likewise posted a 0.2 percent annual revenue increase for full-year 2018—entirely at the door of GDPR, but not all are in agreement.

Under repeated questioning from financial analysts, Criteo executives said the financial impact of the data-privacy legislation, which requires consent from consumers before their data can be used to target an ad buy, was in the region of $5 million.

Criteo CEO JB Rudelle said, “As regards [to] GDPR, we don’t see this as anything existential for us … smaller than what we, what we expected … less than 2 percent, to be exact.”

Although the ad-tech company’s traffic acquisition costs increased more sharply in Europe compared to any other part of the world—an increase of 6 percent in the E.U. compared to a decrease of 4 percent in the Americas during Q4— executives expect to return to double-digit growth in late 2019.

The markets have responded positively in the aftermath of Criteo’s latest filing with its share price spiking by as much as 15 percent in early trading. However, Richard Kramer, founder of financial analyst firm Arete Research, believes this is more indicative of bets against the ad-tech company and how low expectations had sunk in the last 12 to 18 months.

“I don’t think you can parse it [Criteo’s performance] to say GDPR is directly impacting them [leaving revenues flat or slightly down for three consecutive quarters],” he said, adding that it could potentially have proven a boon for the French outfit.

“What we’ve seen is that GDPR has raised the value of first-party datasets and to the extent that Criteo is able to ingest the first-party CRM data from its clients—it might be trusted to do that in a way the average retailer wouldn’t hand the same data over to Amazon or Google—it probably puts them in a marginally better position,” he said.

“Where GDPR has been an abject disaster, it’s hit the data brokers and small publishers, many of which must be hoping to avoid regulatory scrutiny.”

Meanwhile, Kramer also went on to note how Criteo’s dip in take rates, the difference between its gross revenues and what it pays publishers on its network, were a “mean reversion” and likely one of the reasons for its flat revenues.

However, Criteo’s take rates are still above what pure-play demand-side platforms charge in the market. Albeit, Kramer added that the lowering of Criteo’s take rate could potentially be a competitive play to compete with pure-play DSPs such as The Trade Desk.

Ad Tech company

I'm sure many of you are familiar with or at least heard of affiliate marketing, pay per click advertising, and selling ad space, as ways to promote or post online advertising.  Have you ever wondered how exactly that works?  In class, we talked a little bit about the bidding process when it comes to key words in search engine marketing.  Did you know that there is also a bidding war for ad spaces online and that there is a company solely dedicated to creating an exchange platform for that bidding process?

Several years ago, I had a client that was looking to go public and needed our help with the process.  When my team and I first got there, we had no idea what this company did nor did we even know that such company existed.  It took us an entire half a day meeting to get a better understanding the whats and the hows of this company's business model.  To this day, I still don't fully understand how it actually happens but here's what it essentially does:

So basically a publisher of the ad space uses this company's products to set up a platform to sell their space and the company auctions this space off to the advertisers and the bidding war begins.  The most fascinating thing about this process was that thousands, if not millions, of bids occur in a manner of seconds, or even milliseconds.  What I never fully understood, or refused to even try to understand, was how the communication occurs among these publishers and advertisers.  How do advertisers know that such auction is taking place and who does the actual bidding?  I can't imagine a person sitting in front of his or her computer and clicking through to win the bids.  I'm not sure if these advertisers are subscribed to this platform and machines do the communicating but regardless, I thought it was the coolest technology and something that never crossed my mind when I saw online advertising.  I'm always blown away by the people who thinks of these kinds of things.

To find out more about this company: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-is-appnexus-we-explain-what-the-ad-tech-company-does-1480632208

https://www.appnexus.com/

By the way, this company never went public and instead was acquired by AT&T couple years later.

Avoiding Social Media Crisis in a Globalized Digital Age. “Appreciation or Appropriation?”

On November 17th, Dolce & Gabbana (D&G) released its marketing Campaign for its 2019 Spring runway show on Instagram: a 3-episode short videos called “Eating With Chopsticks”. Setting the tone for the runway show on November 22th in Shanghai, D&G aimed to attract more attention on social media like Instagram and Chinese microblog platform Weibo, where it has millions of followers in total. Once D&G released the videos, it soon faced criticism from the public of conducting racism and cultural appropriation. The leak of designer Gabbana’s offensive language in a chatbox also pushed the PR crisis up to the next level. All of these led to the cancellation of the D&G show in Shanghai and pulling-off of D&G products from the major Chinese e-commerce platforms at the end. 

Hoping to display some elements of cultural inclusion, this whole idea seems to be a good campaign for the coming runway show. What makes this video so insulting to the public? In the video, an Asian model is using chopsticks to eat Italian dishes with difficulties, “First up today is how to use this stick shaped cutlery to eat great traditional Pizza Margherita.” Then in the next cannoli video, the male narrator asked in mandarin, “Is it too huge for you?” Apart from showing stereotypes and demeaning chopsticks culture, the whole social media crisis was pushed up when a model reveals designer Gabbana’s derogatory comments about China using the 💩 emoji.  

D&G used to be very smart utilizing social media. Instead of having professional models, once its runway show featured a large number of cyber celebrities, which attracted a lot of traffic online. This time, the mindless speeches of the designer are more of a social crime coming along with a sense of cultural supremacy. It is one’s freedom to hold onto their belief and express it through artwork, design, or branding, no matter positive or negative towards an issue. Stefano Gabbana has even more freedom than many others due to his power, influence and social status. Freedom of his speech and expressions carries responsibilities to the brand. Many people are tired of Gabbana’s lip service official apologies, from gay couple adoptions to publicly body-shame Selena Gomez. This might be a headache for the PR team, but more irresponsible to the staff at the backstage who worked so hard to make the runway show happen in Shanghai. 

Facing a more global customer market, embracing diverse cultural elements is common and very popular in marketing campaigns. Appreciation can also bring appropriation when it comes to the representation of a culture that is different from the one that the brand represents. Often, the history and the power dynamics of different cultures would influence the feelings of the viewers. Understanding the values and culture codes of another culture is crucial before using it.

As for the market in China, considering its customer base, China is a big market for the luxury fashion as the number of middle-class income population rises, and the consumption upgrade of the Millenials / Z-gens. According to McKinsey’s report in 2017, China comprises a third of global luxury sales. However, China’s digital environment can be harsh, with easily incited nationalism and a large number of patriotic warriors behind the screen. Due to historical reasons, “territory” and “sovereignty” are sensitive topics. When it comes to these topics, breaking the culture code, is the freedom of a brand but comes with a price tag. Short-term pain for D&G such as dropping social media followers from 993,933 to 15,892 within two weeks, it caused shrank of Asia-Pacific market from 25% to 22%, and a declining sales until March 2020 as forecasted. 

This case of D&G is an attention-worth case for marketing campaign creative directors for the careful use of cultural elements. Targeting a globalized market on open platforms, messages can easily be interpreted in different ways, although sometimes unintended. Respecting a different culture seems to be a basic rule, but in reality, people’s unconscious bias (which is normal and we all have biases) can lead the whole campaign/project into a disaster. Just as the retail and buying editor trend forecaster WGSN, Sandy Chu said, “People are navigating across social media channels and languages, so something that happens in one country can easily be amplified across languages and countries in real-time.” 

Diverse leadership in the company would be valuable and necessary, and the voices of the staff of various cultural backgrounds can easily avoid these types of mistakes. Effective internal communications and feedbacks would minimize the negative messages penetrated in marketing campaigns or products. Luca Solca, head of luxury goods at investment company Exane BNP Paribas says, “A multinational, multicultural, diverse leadership organization can perceive and integrate different sensitivities.” If D&G had listened to the viewpoints of several Asian staff and asked their opinion about it, they may have heard about their feelings. Just a change certain language, change the facial expressions and acts of the model, and this video series may turn into a successful campaign. 

Reference: 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-goods/2018/11/21/18106473/dolce-gabbana-fashion-show-china-racism-instagram

https://www.drapersonline.com/news/can-dg-recover-from-its-china-crisis/7033285.article 

https://media.thinknum.com/articles/dolce-gabbana-still-hurting-from-china/

https://www.fin24.com/Companies/dolce-gabbana-says-sorry-as-china-debacle-threatens-its-future-20181123 

How to make it VIRAL!

How to make it viral: https://www.lifewire.com/tips-for-going-viral-3486236

AdAge Calls Us to Action to Fight Fake News

In this fascinating AdAge article, the esteemed industry publication called out advertisers to help fight fake news - and instead of urging us to rage-tweet into the void or protest-march in the streets, the article provided some very clear steps that can and should be taken immediately to fight the issue. The writer laid out a pretty sober diagnosis of how online advertisers are creating financial incentives that fuel this crisis, and why supporting fake news is not necessary. To support its case, the article provided facts and figures that show positive economic reasons to advertise on credible news sources. I must say, it is a very good read, and it even gave me some hope.

I will summarize below:

1. The article calls out some trends that are diminishing the struggling professional news business, specifically:
• Audience-buying in programmatic markets ("advertisers favoring the scale of long-tail content networks and major platforms that take no responsibility for what the content they distribute").
• Aggressive brand-safety measures (the article defines this essentially as blocking ads on professional editorial pages or pages where controversial topics are discussed)
2. As I stated earlier, the article cites some pretty interesting metrics to support its case specifically (quoted from the article):
• "In 2016, comScore concluded that ads placed within professional content deliver 300 percent better mid-funnel favorability, consideration and recommendation metrics."
• "Display ads on premium publisher sites experienced 67 percent higher brand lift"
•  "IAS research concluded that consumers consider ads 74 percent more "likeable" when seen on high-quality sites."
• "Consumers are nearly three times less willing to associate with brands that advertise alongside unsavory, offensive content (see Magna’s Brand Safety Effect)"
• "according to Edelman, 48 percent of consumers feel it is a brand’s own fault if their advertising appears near inappropriate social media content."

Long story short - I urge you to read the article and share it. It's the best news I've seen all day.

Optimizing "Retailer" Sponsored Search

This week I had an opportunity to discuss the growth of online retailer capabilities with an employee of Kroger.com. She shared that Kroger is now selling sponsored ad space for search keywords on their website. The customer facing sales team for my manufacturing company suggested that sponsoring search keywods on retailer websites is one of the highest ROI driving tactics in digital marketing because of the opportunity to put your brand directly in front of a customer that is specifically searching for your category and is ready, willing and able to hit purchase at that moment.  The fact that an item is sponsored is less relevant than on a site like Google because the item directly matches the keyword searched and does not seem out of place.

For example, Dove bar soap is sponsored in the below search for "soap" on Target.com. See the small "sponsored" call out on the bottom right:

As retailers work to figure out how they will make online retail profitable, one way they will do it is pass the expense on to the manufacturers through things like "retailer paid search." Kroger.com for example is using their sponsored search as a profit center:
https://www.wcpo.com/news/insider/kroger-co-courts-advertisers-in-its-newest-side-business-precision-marketing

As customers start to adopt online shopping behaviors, they will start to build out their regular order cart. Many websites allow shoppers to save carts so they can simply be placed on auto reorder. Manufacturers who invest in online search capabilities now will have a significant advantage in that their items will be the first to be set in shopper's auto refill baskets.

SEO and Ads

I worked in a clean-tech start-up several years ago. The life in a start-up is a roller coaster. That was an exciting experience that let me do something new and something I had never experienced everyday.

In 2011, I launched a carbon offset service as a new business in that company. The carbon offset was a bit buzzing at that time due to the end of the Kyoto Protocol. Not only regulated companies with massive CO2 emissions but also consumers and individuals started to buy carbon-offset products. We tried to get into that business as a new player, who provides carbon offset credits (emission reduction credits) to help the companies who want to sell carbon offset products.

There was another first-mover in the market, who had a famous advocator as a CEO of the company. Because of its well-established brand image, the first mover always had been featured first in the media. If people googled "carbon offset," then you could see that company coming on the top of the list.

We, as a follower, initially had no presence in the market. That was when we primarily focused on SEO to brought our page ranks higher. We also spent significant investment in Ads.

That eventually made our service coming on top of the google search result.

Interestingly, this web search result impacted our real business. From a certain period, we became known as one of the most successful carbon offset service companies in Japan. The google search results boosted by the SEO and Ads reinforced our brand and created enormous business opportunities in reality. It was a great lesson that taught me the importance of SEO and Ads. Not only for the companies who live in online businesses but also off-line businesses can benefit from search results tremendously,