Digital marketing on holidays!

Digital marketing on holidays!

The Holiday season is a great moment to boost your sales if you have a great digital marketing strategy. So, here are some tips:

Pinterest

“+38M people have saved holiday pins” and obviously each day the number is increasing. Pinterest is a social network were people look for gift inspiration, and we know that the Holiday season is a moment for gifts. So, create a board and content were your brand is present during Christmas.  

Vloggers

“68% of shoppers prefer product videos from “people like me” because they find the approach far more relatable.” Therefore, use vloggers to provide shoppers with product reviews and ratings. They can help your brand this holiday season by giving customers recommendations on what to buy.

Email

It is a great channel to support your brand during the holidays. Customers are looking for personalization, because they will be receiving tons of emails. Tailored your message with individual preferences and reconnect with your customers from last holiday season.

Search

As a brand, you definitely should add a holiday shopping keyword. During the holiday season customers search for terms related to holiday deals.

Sources:

http://haystak.com/automotive-sem-digital-campaigns-for-the-holiday-season/

http://www.cukeragency.com/blog/2015/09/21/2015-holiday-digital-marketing-guide/

http://www.business2community.com/brandviews/salesforce/digital-marketing-trends-watch-holiday-season-infographic-01391210#1rBB1GbGRzzScZvC.99

The impact of wearable devices on digital marketing

The impact of wearable devices on digital marketing

 

Wearable devices understanding is very important to stay ahead of the curve in digital marketing.  Specially because “Wearable tech companies could see growth from 33 million units sold in 2014 to 148 million units sold in 2019.” The major impact will be in:

• Social media: now that customers will wear the technology, users will consume, share and interact differently with content. Social networking sites will have to adapt to the different technologies and surface will probably be different, so brands have to adapt to offer wearable-specific features.
• Data and analytics: wearable technology will gather much more information about consumers. For example, technology that measures heart rate could sell their data to sports brands or vitamin brands. Companies will have to invest more time and money on analyzing this data to take advantage at digital marketing.
• App development: with new apps specific to the wearable technology there would be new ways to do display advertising.
• Search: each wearable technology has a different screen size, so search is going to be affected. For example, if the screen size is smaller people will use more voice search where people tend to speak much longer keyphrases than they would be willing to type.

Sources: ImFORZA, http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/

Real time marketing examples

Real time marketing examples

To continue with the fun examples from class, I wanted to talk about real time marketing. Real-time marketing occurs when brands react quickly to local, national or global events happening online or offline. It is basically the art of getting your brand involved with the latest news story. It works even better on social media because you can get your message out there much quicker than any other medium.

Several great examples are:

• Arby's at the Grammys with the following twee:

Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs

Pharrell Williams was wearing a hat during the Grammys that looked similar to Arby’s logo. This tweet received 75,000 retweets and more than 40,000 favorites by the following morning. Moreover, it received kudos from other brands like Pepsi and Hyundai.

• KitKat after the news that the iPhone 6 plus could bend, the brand tweeted the following:

We don’t bend, we #break

This real time marketing was retweeted over twenty-five thousand times

• Jeremy Clarkson was reported to have punched a producer. Snickers quickly capitalized the event with their ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’ tagline an tweeted the following:

@JeremyClarkson you may want to have some of these on set next time you are #hungry…

It has received 4,974 retweets and 3,748 likes.

To get real-time social media right, you need an active follower base that regularly engages with your brand on social media. When done correctly, interactions of this type increase engagement, boost earned media, and help humanize large brands. "Nearly half (49%) of marketers believe real-time marketing needs to happen within minutes, and a quarter (26%) say seconds. Still, 46% of real-time marketers require 30 or more minutes to respond to breaking news and events on social media."

Sources: socialmediaweek.org, marketingland.com, twitter.com, Michael Brito LinkedIn, adage.com

Social media during Paris attacks

Social media is not reliable on breaking news stories but it is extremely useful and can add a lot of value. Specially, the Facebook Safety Check. Which was created for natural disasters. But, this November it was used during the Paris attacks. Facebook Safety Check had an important role. It sent the question of “are you ok?” to users in the Paris metropolitan area, and they only had to press a button. Even though it was not used during other previous attacks, Facebook already announced that they will have the feature even in cities were Facebook is not highly used. Let’s pray for not having to use it again.

During the Paris attacks, “Within the first 24 hours of the crisis, 4.1 million people made use of the feature reaching over 360 million of their friends and family.”

Also, some hashtags were useful. Parisians used #porteouverte to let tourists and people around the area know that their homes were open for shelter during the attacks. There were open messages with addresses and also people offered their homes if anyone messaged directly.

“The hashtag was re-posed 480,000 times making it the second-most used keyword on Twitter”

As usual, there was also misinformation that people published to gain followers and retweets. In the future, as a social media user filter information and research for the useful sources that you have available through the different platforms.

Sources:

http://kevin.lexblog.com/2015/11/15/paris-attacks-demonstrate-the-importance-of-social-media/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/paris-attacks-is-social-media-becoming-more-reliable-in-a-crisis-1.3320891

Improvement to the Local Awareness Ads – Facebook

Improvement to the Local Awareness Ads – Facebook

Hyperlocal advertising is a tool that helps you address your message to people who share your neighborhood and who is your target customer. It allows marketers to use a smartphone’s GPS data (location feature) to geographically target audiences for the purpose of delivering relevant ads.

Facebook continues to look for new ways to make money. A year ago, FB launched a local awareness add, but this October they improved it. This new feature will be available first in the US and then it will be launched in the whole world. “Businesses just punch in their address or select one from their Facebook Page, set their radius, gender, and age range, add a photo and message, and Facebook routes the ads to people in the vicinity.”

Now, Facebook will provide marketers with more information about the people near their stores. So, if you have a business with multiple locations it is a great way to have more insights about the people that goes near a specific store. Now, each business can find out the days of the week and times of day when those neighborhoods have more visits.

Sources:

• http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-brands-stores-tailor-ads/301219/
• http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/facebooks-new-local-ad-products-target-and-track-nearby-consumers-167949
• http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/07/facebook-launches-local-awareness-ads-to-help-businesses-reach-users-nearby/

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing

Creating or distributing content with influencers starts a conversation with a built-in audience. “Five to 10 percent of social media users are responsible for 60 to 80 percent of influence”. Source: NinjaMetrics. It is a strategy that is increasing over the years; in 2015:

• “84 percent of marketers planned to include it in their strategy.
• 47 percent considering the strategy “very effective,” and 34 considering it “somewhat effective.”
• 22 percent said it's their top customer acquisition tool.”

 If you want to reach your target you have to:

• Ask yourself: who does your target listen to?
• Do research identify influencers
• Secure their partnership
• Develop campaigns through their platform to their audience

But, you have to be careful. Influencers care about their brand and their fans. So, you want to reach fans that are potentially interested in your product. Moreover, you have to find influencers whose personal brand and fan interests match your company’s.

In conclusion, some recommendations to find the right influencer are:

1. Focus on engagement rather than the number of followers. Also, the platform the influencer uses is key for your customers’ engagement. If your consumers are more into Instagram, find an influencer at this platform.
2. The influencer has to be fan of the brand. It is important to have brand believers influencers, because their fans will know when they are being used as a marketing strategy.
3. Be creative and try to meet halfway. Goals are different between influencers and brands.
4. No one-night stands. It is important to build relationships with influencers, both the brand and the influencer would feel better working together and the audience will be more engaged.

Sources: General Assembly, NinjaMetrics, AdWeek.

Snapchat Lenses Feature

Snapchat Lenses Feature

If you are a Snapchat fan, you probably saw that all your friends were doing a Snapchat with special effects on their faces. Examples are: converting your tongue into a rainbow, your eyes into hearts, your face into a monster… Starting this Halloween, Snapchat will offer "sponsored lenses" for companies to buy, likely to promote new movies in a bid to generate more revenue.

For advertisers the cost is going to be $750,000 on peak days (holiday such as Black Friday or Thanksgiving) and $450,000 on an off peak day. Even though you think it is a huge investment, Snapchat has 100 million users a day, which means less than one penny per customer.

My recommendation after seeing all Snapchat’s innovations, download the app now and always have the latest version of Snapchat app.

Source: Tech Times

How to exponentially grow your email list?

How to exponentially grow your email list?

To help your own channels such as email marketing you have to constantly add new subscribers. Why use email? Because emails are controlled by you, while Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms are not. 

• Think big (10x), ambition is very important.
• What works for one company may not work for other companies, so learn by doing. The faster you start the faster you’ll get there.
• Create metrics that are predictable and scalable. 
• Don't do one offs, be consistent. Be regular in how often you send out emails to your list.
• And, use the AAA formula:

1. Ask: ask your people to go to your newsletter through other social media platforms.
2. Assets: your email signature is your asset. Add a link to your signature that goes to a landing page where people can sign up for your mailing list. Join slack groups and comment on them, organize your key people and influencers that should always know about your new launches. The emails you are sending already to your base have to encourage your subscribers to share and forward your emails.
3.  Acquisition: boost post Facebook and then retarget your content. No one wants to click adds, people like to click when they know they can learn something new and different. 

Sources: hubspot, presentation by Noah Kagan (founder of SumoMe)

Search Engine Rankings and Presidential Elections

Many already know that digital marketing has played an important role in presidential campaigns. But still people are not taking advantage of improving their SEO ranking and it seems very important based on the Psmag article.

 

"A new study has found that undecided voters are more likely to say they'll choose a political candidate after they see websites about that candidate appear among the first hits in a list of search-engine results.

 

In experiments with a hypothetical election, the effect was large, causing 36 percent or more of undecided voters to switch votes after seeing one candidate or another appear in top results. In a real-world election, where most of the study volunteers were already aware of the candidates, the effect was smaller, but still significant: about 11 percent."

Looking into US past elections, "SEO Vote 2012 indicate that Barrack Obama’s website has 8,676 rankings, while Mitt Romney’s website only has 2,836". Guess who won? For next elections, maybe we can predict who is going to win based on SEO rankings before actually the elections occur.

Optimized content can help candidates win. So, relevant content should be posted on candidates webpage. Also, people not only search keywords such as "Presidential Elections in USA" or "Obama", they search for relevant issues such as: war, economy, abortion, death penalty... Candidates should understand through Google Trends and Google Analytics which are the topics that have more search and be the source of information by adding on their webpage specific content about the issues and on third party webpages with appropriate links pointing to the candidate's website.

Sources: http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/search-engines-affect-elections
http://www.inc.com/jeremy-dearringer/how-seo-can-shape-the-presidential-race.html
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012-PresidentialElection/SEO-Vote-Internet-Trends/prweb10094330.htm

 

 

Email marketing introduction and tips

INTRODUCTION TO EMAIL MARKETING:

Email is a channel that you own, so take advantage of it. It is a great resource because:

1.       Your audience has already opted in

2.       You can speak directly to them in a relevant way through segmenting, targeting and testing

3.       It has a higher conversion rate than other opt-in relationship channels such as social media

There are different types of emails:

1.       Transactional: welcome email when you sign in, thank you email when you complete a purchase, confirmation email when you made a purchase, abandoned cart email when you initiate a purchase but do not complete it.

2.       Marketing: newsletter, promotions…

Key metrics:

1.       Open rate: # opens/total recipients. A good open rate is around 20% to 30%.

2.       Click to open rate: # clicks/# opens. A good click to open rate is around 20% to 30%.

3.       Conversion rate: # actions/total recipients. It depends on the industry and the email offer.

4.       Unsubscribe rate: # unsubscribes/total recipients. Should be less than 1%.

Taylor and test depending on your customers:

You can modify and do A/B testing to improve your metrics. Recommendations are to create different subject lines, images, messaging, landing pages, time of the day you send the email, and others.

GENERAL TIPS:

·         Be clear: when creating an email start with a question, what do I want to say to my customer?

·         Be concise: use short and simple words, and avoid fluffy modifiers such as amazing, memorable, powerful, beautiful, unique, innovative, it’s never been easier…

·         Define who is your customer? What do they need to know? And give them the information they need and want to read.

·         Write how your brand speaks.

·         Think about mobile.  Everything you send should be mobile-friendly, if not it is not going to perform very well.

·         Avoid jargon and catchphrases: for blogs and magazines examples are: X is the new Y, the future of X, viral… For startups examples are: adaptive, disruptive, seamless, game changer…

·         Subject line: tell what it is inside, don’t sell what it is inside, be descriptive, make it local or personal, < 50 characters, avoid all caps and exclamations, use emojis for fun (not as replacement of words)

·         Pre-header: summary and teaser (longer that the subject line, should complement each other, has to be different).

·         Headline: different from subject line, the most obvious. It is what people read.

·         Body: people are scanning, make it easy for them to scan, and images are key. Do not make false promises.

·         Call to action (CTA): make it clear. Keep it short, no more than 5 words, the majority are two words such as Buy Now. Use active language because you want customers to act now. Create a sense of urgency, so give customers a reason to act now. For instance, put a limited time frame on deals so customers won’t wait.

·         Footer: unsubscribe (make it easy to unsubscribe), address, link, little image (something fun), social media buttons.

·         Track and analyze your results.

Sources: Vertical Response, Mailchimp, General Assembly, Forbes, Huffington Post, HubSpot