Digital marketing for the non-marketing professional: Part I

Your resume lists years of experience building successful companies, growing new businesses into stable ventures, helping mature ones make smart investment decisions, and now you’re on a conference call and the language has changed. We hear that 68 year-old presidential candidates are using social media to spur their campaigns. It’s presented to you like you just need to have the new intern post some things on Facebook/Twitter. You see thousands of dollars moving out the door, but where’s the return? Are your new sales tied to these efforts? When you try to apply the language of a long and successful business career to these new tech-driven marketing approaches and operational methods, do you know the words or can you not function unless you understand the ad-words?

Welcome to a new blog [series] that helps people well-versed in back office business processes understand the digital marketing landscape. What are the avenues and methodologies, how do we translate the analytics, and how do we drive positive business outcomes? Is this serving my business goals, or is digital marketing just feeding its own industry drivers?  If you’re interested, stay tuned….

Super Bowl vs. Digital Marketing-- Is there a Winner?

With the Super Bowl approaching on Sunday, I thought it would be interesting to compare traditional TV advertising via the Super Bowl with digital marketing outlets.  First, a big benefit of airing a TV ad during the Super Bowl is viewership.  A Super Bowl ad is likely to be watched by an estimated 114mm viewers whereas a YouTube video (by my quick math) may be viewed by 26mm unique users a day.  About a 4x difference in a short amount of time!  Second, the cost for a Super Bowl ad is significantly more expensive.  This year, a Super Bowl ad is expected to cost a marketer up to $5mm for a 30 second time slot whereas a YouTube ad campaign will cost $500K per day.  That is about $30,000x more expensive per second for a Super Bowl ad than a YouTube ad.  A third comparison is the difference in lifetime brand awareness.  Super Bowl ads are known to stick to consumers for years and capture audience attention "in the moment".  Digital advertising also attempts to capture consumer's attention "in the moment" through targeted ads, however according to some research, this may not be as cost-effective since targeted ads may need to be customized according to the different digital advertising platforms.

Super Bowl TV advertising looks to be a more effective approach compared to digital marketing.  However, according to Ad Executives, the best approach is to pair the two together.  One executive reconsidered going solely digital and decided to run Super Bowl ads as well to generate large-scale awareness and greater buzz.  Another company’s online sales increased 50% compared to sales before the Super Bowl.  Using a multi-channel marketing approach by paying for a 30 second commercial spot during the Super Bowl and simultaneously advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube may be the best way to increase brand awareness and buzz…just expect to pay at least $20mm.

Sources: http://www.wsj.com/articles/super-bowl-tv-ads-reign-even-in-a-digital-world-1453769256

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/05/23/35-mind-numbing-youtube-facts-figures-and-statistics-infographic/

Zika Virus in the Age of Facebook

It seems like everywhere you turn, there is another headline about the Zika virus. And the story is not great. Yet, I’m trying to figure out whether this is a real concern or perhaps just another case of media coverage gone a tad overboard?

This virus, transmitted primarily through mosquitos, appears to be on a mean tear through Latin America, with Brazil as the epidemic birthplace. The virus is linked to brain damaged babies born in Brazil – a link that is still a hunch and not yet proven.

So I had to double take to make sure I was not reading the Onion when a local news circuit reported that government officials in El Salvador were telling women not get pregnant for two years. Seriously? And abortions are illegal in El Salvador. Clearly, the officials there have not thought this through.

And now the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern.  The good news, this triggers funding to establish the connection of the virus with this terrible affliction causing babies to be born with abnormally small heads.

In the meantime every other friend is posting Zika-virus stories to their Facebook page.

So here’s what I’m wondering. How much of this media frenzy is helping people versus instilling fear? Could we be over-sensationalizing this story, same as we did with the swine flu? You might recall that there’s a vastly larger number of people who die of the regular flu – so where was the big news on that?  Or who remembers Anthrax? Maybe we are just in a new reality of how news or perhaps just viruses go viral in this age of Facebook.

Where is Social Media taking us as a society?

Scene from Pixar and Walt Disney Movie Wall-E

In 2008 Pixar and Walt Disney released their animated movie WALL-E.  The movie plot is about a robot designed to clean up waste in an abandoned earth that ends up falling in love with a more technologically advanced robot called EVE.   After following her to where all humans have relocated, he notices how there is no actual human interaction.  Their lives are controlled by this tiny screen, which levitates in front of their faces.

As an animated movie lover, if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it!

However much I may love the movie, I can’t help wondering if the film contains a foreshadowing of where humanity is headed.  Will we end up as useless human beings doing everything digitally - “seeing” the world only through our small, or not so small, screens? 

Social Media is a great tool for marketers. It is a great way to bridge the gap in communication between brands and customers.  It provides a constant connection with our audience, allows us to provide instant answers to questions and concerns.  We, as marketers, can figure out what consumers want, when they want it, and how to deliver it.  Those are the wonders of the “digital” world.    But are we delivering more than just information? 

Are we driving society to a vegetative state?  When we think about it, human nature loves instant gratification.  We want everything and we want it right now, and social media is providing exactly that.  What is the sense of going out shopping when I can simply order it online from the solitude of my home?  Why would I travel for the holidays if I can hold a video call with my family members without the hassle of traveling? 

Are we turning into independent silos that connect only through technology?  I often find myself looking at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to see what others are up to, instead of calling them to find out.  I even met my husband on Tinder!  (But that is a long story that I will leave for future posts)

So I ask myself the question, should we, as marketers, start targeting those basic human needs in order to sell more, faster?  Or should we try to mitigate the wrongful evolution of society?  

Combating terrorism on the Internet and in social media

Recent research has shown a slew of societal benefits associated with social media:

• Faster flow and wider distribution of information
• The ability to make and strengthen relationships with new people
• Reduce the need for face-to-face interaction
• Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding of efforts
• Accessibility to opportunities, including education and employment

But what happens when those benefits are applied under the context of terrorism?  Modern terrorist, extremist militias and paramilitary groups have taken to the Internet to do just that - to take advantage of the readily available plethora of fast, wide-reaching communications channels to recruit, instruct, and coordinate.

Want proof?  Look no further than this post on the Cats of ISIS.  Cat videos aside, for a more serious look, take a browse through the well-engineered and professionally crafted Dabiq, the online magazine of the Islamic State (IS).

The U.S. and its allies are sprinting to catch up, even initiating its own State Department moderated YouTube channel as a counterpropaganda mechanism for IS recruiters, and in some cases, taking advantage of IS social media for ordnance targeting.

Interested in reading further?  Check out this Popular Science article which provides a more in-depth discussion on the topic.

As Online Booking Behaviors Change, SEO Gains Importance for Travel Companies

Before the internet, booking travel was a human-to-human interaction.  Vacation-hopefuls relied on experienced travel professionals to recommend the best hotel.  Business travelers, fiercely brand loyal, called their favorite airline to book directly.  While travel service providers posted (and continue to list) their inventory on Global Distribution Systems (GDS) used by travel agents, the true array of options was seldom available to the average end user.  

The world wide web has opened the kimono as Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Orbitz have grown in popularity and allowed travelers to search the full inventory across providers by publishing GDS content online.  On top of the OTAs, Metasearch sites like Kayak and TripAdvisor arrived to make sense of the overwhelming volume of content increasingly available, steadily shifting search volume from the OTAs.  

Source: Phocuswright Research.

As OTAs and Metasearch sites continue to proliferate, the problem is only exacerbated by the influx of travel-related apps.  With all the options to learn about travel, we find ourselves back in the original conundrum of too much information and no idea where to start.  Enter: Google.

The rise of ad blocking and its effects - Kassie Means

As increasing amounts of money continue to pour into digital marketing, there also seem to be increasing problems popping up (pun intended)....fraud (through bots that click on ads to raise the click-thru rate), viewability (ads that the user can't see but that the marketer gets charged for), and now ad blockers. 

According to a report in August 2015 published by PageFair and Adobe, 15% of the US population was using ad blockers. Globally, they found that the use of ad blockers had risen 41% in the previous 12 months. It should be noted that these numbers were published prior to Apple's iOS AdBlock Plus, so the 2016 report should be even more interesting to read. The digital ecosystem seems to be at the beginning of what the TV world dealt with when Tivo's were first released....the beginning of losing the eyeballs that were needed to charge marketers. Of course, the money that marketers were charged was/is necessary in order to create the content that attracted the eyeballs in the first place. DVR's have conditioned consumers - they realize that they don't have to watch ads anymore, and so I think their patience with digital ads was lower to begin with. In addition, as digital ads tried to become more interesting, their load times increased, which lengthened the time that it took for consumers to load the content they desired (not to mention ate up their data). As CTRs declined, ad agencies and marketers came up with more interruptive ad units. And, here we are now, in a world where consumers are annoyed at advertising and want to block it.

The content providers need money to provide the content, and if they aren't successful at charging their "readers" for it, they need to do something to combat the growing threat of ad-blocking. So what to do? There is now what is called "Native" advertising, where the publisher develops content for a specific marketer and then identifies it as "sponsored" or "promoted by" or "brought to you by" or sometimes just marked with a marketer's logo. The beauty of this for an advertiser is that the ad blockers don't realize it is actually an ad, so they let it through to the consumer (or at least that's the way my own technology-challenged brain understands it). However, the FTC doesn't like the direction that Native is going and issued new guidelines on Native Advertising in December. (https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/native-advertising-guide-businesses)

Forbes tried something different and issued a message to its ad-blocking users:

According to Content Standard, "With the stick comes a carrot: Forbes promises users an “ad light” experience when they turn off the browser; users will still see display ads, but no autoplay or animation."

However, apparently after some users turned off their ad blockers, they were served "pop-under" malware that, if they followed the instructions, would allow personal information to be stolen. Yikes!

As a publisher (Woman's Day and Womansday.com), I believe that consumers should have to pay (with their own money or by being served ads), but this episode was concerning, to say the least. I don't have a solution, but I think that the topic will only get more interesting this year....

Blogging a path through history

One day, when historians look back upon the turn of the (21st) century, they are certain to view the advent and adoption of the Internet in much the same way that we once viewed the Industrial Revolution: a period of advancement for civilization spurred forward by key technological advances.  Never before has civilization had the opportunity to leave an indelible mark on the world at such a widespread, individual level, but if power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then what does the power to spread your thoughts to a global audience do?

Spur you to do strange things, apparently, according to this article, aptly titled "Dear Old People: The Internet is Forever".  Or how about this article, which relates a short anecdote about a penitent, self-proclaimed blog critic (apparently before internet anonymity became a thing).

Well, in the spirit of forever, here's a quick look at what EMBAs used to blog about a decade ago:

Is AOL becoming the next NBC?  Maybe, if not for YouTube and Netflix.

Here's a question we all know the answer to:  Will Facebook, TagWorld, Tagged, or VarsityWorld become the next MySpace?

Or how about this one: Podcasts....Is anyone really listening?

I wonder what the class of 2026 will have to write ten years down the line.  Maybe they'll be writing nothing at all: Scientists Invent Mind-Reading System That Lets You Type With Your Brain

Twitter's potential decision to allow 140+ character tweets, and its implication on digital marketing

The speculation that Twitter will do away with its 140 character limit is becoming closer to reality. While there are other factors that may be at play as to why Twitter would decide to change one of its most unique features, there will certainly be implications on the digital marketing space. More conceptually, it will allow brands with a lot to say to differentiate themselves. Brands with extensive social campaigns and identities will be allowed to ditch the brevity and fully explicate themselves. The ability to explains why they are special may result in more customer captivity. However, this lack of brevity may also be a deterrent to readers and look and feel more like a blog. It also might eliminate the need to click on the links if the story is fully imbedded, which is another measure of value creation. In fact, it becomes more likely that users will remain within the Twitter ecosystem for their information and less likely to click away to a company site. This means that Twitter captures more of the value than the brand advertising, as the user has all the information they need about whether or not they want to buy, from the single tweet. There will be positive customer service effect, allowing companies to interact with their patrons more closely and with less abruptness. Companies will likely invest more thoroughly in their customer care on Twitter, in which they can avoid short and nondescript responses. Lastly, it is difficult to predict how users will respond to this change. There are myriad other site that offer a platform for longwinded advertising, and it's possible users and brands will go elsewhere.

A few words for advice to those thinking about starting a social media campaign

I recently read an article about the ins and outs of running a social media campaign, and how social media continues to "revolutionize" the marketing industry. It is true that social media has given companies access and a voice that was once reserved to only the biggest and most powerful organizations on the planet. There are now multiple channels that give even the smallest of companies the ability to interact with its customers, vendors, and evangelists alike.
However, the increase of accessibility doesn't mean anything goes. The normal rules of business and success still apply. A company can't just be social for the sake of being social. I hear about this all of the time in my line of work, Companies want to get involved in social media because they know that their peers are doing it and they don't want to miss out on the action. Before you know it, they dive in head first with no idea what they are doing, or even what they are trying to accomplish. It isn't long before these poor souls wave their collective white flags in defeat and become social naysayers. Is it the fault of social media? Of course not! If you said yes, then you are the same kind of person who blames the poor polar bear at the zoo for acting like a polar when some drunk frat boy climbs into his den on a dare.

While my example may be a bit extreme, the lesson rings true. It's not the wild west of marketing. You can't shoot first and aim later. Here are three easy to follow tips that will help ensure your social blood sweat and tears are not shed in vein.

1. If you want to succeed, you have to have a plan that ties into the overall business strategy. It sounds simple enough, but seriously, stop and ask yourself why you are doing this in the first place. If the campaign won't promote the overall business strategy, abort.

2. Treat social just like any other business or marketing campaign. You have to have goals. In fact, it is best to have targets in mind before you even start. This will make it easier to benchmark your progress during the campaign. Who are you trying to reach? What do you want to say? What do you ultimately what them to do? The answers to even these basic questions will help you determine where to spend your money. Social platforms are not one-size-fits-all.

3. Choose platforms that have cross functional capabilities. This will help you amplify the message while minimizing the amount of work you have to do. Speaking of the message, remember that quality content is king. Think of social just like any other conversation. You have to have to bring something of value, or you will be ignored.

So there you have it. While these rules may not make you a social media mogul, they will certainly help you  avoid becoming a social media misfit. Good luck and Happy sharing!

Why digital marketing is missing the target

If you're annoyed by the massive amounts of marketing that often block the web page view, and most likely is completely unrelated to a product or service you would ever think about purchasing? Here is the explanation... and yes, I also thought it was done on purpose to irritate me.

If most digital marketing programs or campaigns have a weak area, it’s analytics. One recent study identified that the biggest talent and hiring gap in online marketing is in the analytics space.

HBR declared that data scientist is the sexiest job of the century. Research company Gartner suggests that there will be 4.4 million big data jobs available in the next two years, and that only a third of them will be successfully filled. It’s no surprise. Everything is moving toward data: big data, mobile data, performance data, campaign data and product data.

So hopefully very soon, the new generation that is more tech savvy, will enter the workforce and will be able to make some sense of all this data collected about our consumer preferences to actually strategize digital marketing.

Like many things in life, the information you retrieve from your business intelligence software is only as good as the data going in. Online marketers have certain indicators they should be monitoring on a continual basis, like changing in consumer preferences. For example, the girl that used to “like” a certain store on Facebook is becoming a woman and entering the workforce; she might not have spare time to “like” stuff on Facebook anymore with the same frequency. How will the analytics identify the changing in trend and proper adjust to market the proper merchandising?

Top 3 Digital Marketing Trends for 2016

Being a digital marketing novice I started doing some research on what the latest trends are and found a few articles that I found interesting. Most articles mention the same trends that we have seen in our digital marketing class as well. There are a few common recurring themes that I would like to highlight. If you want to learns about these trends and more http://impress1.com/connect/blog/entry/top-3-digital-marketing-trends-for-2016-which-you-should-be-starting-in-2015.html          

1. Content remains KING: Quality content has always been important and this will continue to be the case. A lot of the search engines are getting smarter in recognizing quality content so you better step up your game if you want to improve your ranking. Some interesting but very convincing statistics on what effect content has on your brand perception: 80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles vs an ad. 90% of consumers find custom content useful, and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them. 58% of consumers consider companies that produce video content to be more trustworthy. 71% of consumers say that videos leave a positive impression of a company. Content marketing costs less than traditional, outbound marketing. Content marketing costs 62% less per lead than outbound marketing.
2. Agile SEO: As mentioned before Google has placed a premium on quality content over keyword optimization. Pictures and videos are much more relevant for a search query. As an example, pictures are worth 1,000 words and a video can be worth as much as 1.8 million words. With the trend of visual content comes the art of supplementing these visuals with smart meta descriptions. This is an easy but sometimes overlooked simple way to optimize your SEO strategy. Key will be to keep changing your SEO strategy as technology is changing so rapidly.
3. Optimize for Mobile: Most digital marketing strategies will be focused on appealing to the millennial. 87% of this digital generation admits to never being without their phone so you better focus on optimizing your mobile websites/apps. If you are not convinced yet here are some stats: 86% of the millennials are of the opinion that there are still a lot of websites without good mobile functionality and 14% wouldn't do business with a company that doesn't have a mobile site or app. More research and purchases are done on mobile/tablets and a friendly user interface will be essential for better conversion rates.  

Hawkers - Sunglasses Turned $300 Into $60 Million in 2 Years

Even if we think social media world is very mature or has less business opportunities than before, here we have a recent successful startup from Spain, basically spending his budget on Facebook ads.

Story

A year ago, four young entrepreneurs launched their own brand of sunglasses, Hawkers. They now sell their wares in over 50 countries, have a turnover of more than 15 million euros, and employ a workforce of 40. They have produced for Mercedes Benz and PayPal, and their sunglasses are worn by national and international celebrities such as Paula Echevarría, Usher and Dani Alves. Not forgetting that they have become the "first Spanish company" to sponsor a team from the NBA, in this case, the Los Angeles Lakers.

eCommorce and Social media

When the founder used his last $300 to start the company, he had a prototype, and a simple website. Knowing he wanted pricing to stay low, he decided to sell exclusively online. At the time Facebook ads were getting a lot of negative press so testing out the algorithm as fast as they could to see what would generate the most sales seemed completely reckless. But they did it anyway. The "spray and pray"approach rarely works, but within weeks the Hawkers social media pages were exploding, sales began to skyrocket, and customer acquisition was pennies on the dollar.

Their commitment to eCommerce has been based on social media, with Facebook playing the leading role. Using "reverse engineering", they have managed to optimize their online advertising and reach levels undreamt of – to the point that Mark Zuckerberg’s company invited them to tell their success story to his team of engineers at their headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Strategy – Reverse Engineering (trial campaigns).

Online commerce fitted into their mission like a jigsaw piece. "It’s allowed us to reach more customers without the need to accept conditions set by middlemen", points out Iñaki Soriano, one of the co-founders. If they have had an ally on their adventure, however, it has undoubtedly been the social networking site par excellence. "We wanted to reach out to a wider public through social media, and Facebook has become an indispensable tool for achieving that", says Pablo Sánchez, another of the co-founders.

Hawkers’ strategy has been based on "mathematics". "The more people you reach out to, the better chance you have of telling them about your idea. And Facebook allows you to do that on a small budget", Sánchez points out. As the entrepreneurs admit, although there is now a trend to make the most of the advertising support provided by this social networking site, "very few small businesses" were exploiting this channel a year ago. Which is why, with their software-engineering know-how, they had to resort to a classic trial-and-error approach in order to maximize their impact. "We launched a lot of trial campaigns and we would carry out some reverse engineering based on the results", Sánchez underlines. "We tried to find out how the Facebook algorithm worked, depending on the variability of the results."

Second- Highest number of likes in sunglasses world

This system has positioned Hawkers as "the sunglasses brand with the second-highest number of likes in the world", behind Ray-Ban but with over 2.6 million likes. The results even surprised Facebook itself, which last November showcased the team from the Spanish company as a performance success story at a conference with their engineers.

Raul Garcia Mur