By Tom Wadlow Brexit, Trump’s election, the death of David Bowie – 2016 was certainly a year nobody could have predicted.
The same could be said for the world of marketing. With many organisations discovering new ways of marketing their brands motivated by changing consumer habits, such as Facebook Live and a rise in influencer marketing, it was a year of change for the industry and for the world. As we look ahead to 2017, we expect many of last year’s innovations to really come to the fore. Here is what we think the big talking points will be. The rise of real-time video Social media users are beginning to demand more in-the-moment content, giving them a vicarious view into a world they’d previously been unable to access. As a result, new platforms such as Facebook Live and Instagram Stories are quickly becoming some of the most popular ways for people to discover and share content. With latest figures showing 1.79 billion monthly active users, these social media platforms provide a great opportunity for brands to get themselves seen. In 2017, we’ll see more brands using these platforms to tell stories and engage with customers, and businesses must adopt video as the new normal in customer service or risk getting left behind. Mobile still rules No matter where they are or what they’re doing, consumers are interacting with brands on mobile, tablets, TV screens, desktops – you name it, they’re on it, and brands need to be visible. In the US, at least, it has been predicted that 72% of all digital ad spend will be on mobile in 2017, reaching an unprecedented $65.87 billion by 2019. And if you factor this on a global scale, especially with growing internet accessibility on mobile, we are going to continue seeing soaring budgets in mobile ad spend. Artificial intelligence gets smart Chatbots – the applications powered by artificial intelligence that are designed to simulate a conversation with another human – are the next phase in the migration from a desktop-dominant world to a mobile one. While they are no new phenomenon, customer service began to transform online through the proliferation of chatbots in 2016, with organisations using the technology to generate two-way, personalised interactions with customers. Facebook, for example, went from having zero bots in February to 18,000 by July, according to research firm Forrester. At first, conversations with these robots may be inferior to service from a human, but as machine learning develops it will become harder and harder to tell the difference. While chatbots provide great potential for organisations to streamline and better communicate with customers, brands will have to decide how best to keep up and stay true to themselves as they do. Getting the tone and content of this conversational commerce right will mean that marketers need to understand the personality of their brands inside out. Embracing virtual reality Despite its initial usage in the gaming industry, brands have become wise to the opportunities that virtual reality presents when it comes to promoting their products and services. There have been some great success stories in the world of marketing in recent times, with big brands using virtual reality to create an immersive experience for both consumer and B2B audiences. At bigdog, for example, we worked with Mazda to create a virtual showroom using the Oculus Rift headset, to give customers the chance to experience driving a car like never before, resulting in sales before the car had even launched. However, as usage increases, costs will come down and as a result 2017 will see smaller businesses taking advantage of the technology to create effective marketing campaigns and brand recognition. Getting personal 2017 will see personalisation move from a buzzword to a fundamental part of the marketers’ toolkit, across web, social, email and every other channel in the customer experience. In a digital age, customers are walking data generators, creating quintillions of bytes of information about their daily habits, needs, and experiences. At the mercy of customer experience, marketers are tasked with the daunting prospect of being able to understand this data to provide a personalised experience, based, at the very least, on a level with a consumer’s last-best interaction. Consumers are smart and they expect their world to be personalised, yet almost every marketer's website is generic and one-size-fits-all. In 2017, brands will seek out the tools to build truly personal custom experiences. Native advertising 2017 is set to be the year of native advertising as focus shifts to a mobile-first perspective, seeing brands creating content that consumers want to see and which adds to, rather than takes away from, their experience. However, the industry needs to ensure that the core benefit of a native ad – being unobtrusive – is not lost. In business, and particularly in the world of marketing, agility is the key to momentum. Providing business owners and marketers are willing and able to adapt to the ever changing needs of their customers, they can look forward to a successful and prosperous 2017. Source:http://www.businessrevieweurope.eu/marketing/1217/Marketing-in-2017:-whats-in-store By Tammy Mastroberte Engaging with customers to encourage repeat visits and increase sales is a huge part of a restaurant operator’s success strategy, and thanks to technology, this task is getting easier. According to Hospitality Technology’s 2016 Customer Engagement Technology Study, 84% of operators are driven to invest in customer engagement technology to enhance the experience and satisfaction of their customers, and this includes loyalty programs.
In fact, 41.3% of restaurants are already using a loyalty program and 27% are planning to implement one within the year. Using the data captured through these programs, operators can target customer segments with special offers, drive an increase in visits and more. “We can see how often people come in, what they are buying, and based on that, what we think they might like,” says Carrie Henderson, marketing manager at Shari’s Café and Pies, based in Beaverton, Ore., and operating 95 locations. “We can tailor rewards based on this [information] and that’s where the data comes in and is really helpful.” Shari’s launched its Café Club loyalty program in May 2014. Once customers register their card or sign up with the free app, they can get a free slice of pie. The company uses Paytronix its loyalty technology, which integrates with its MICROS point-of-sale (POS) system. “We were one of the first to sign up for Paytronix’ check-level detail and integration with the POS, and as time has gone on, the data gathered has become really robust and valuable,” Henderson notes. “It adds another element to your loyalty program. Instead of just doing a blanketed offer to all customers, the detail from the program allows you to target offers based on guest behavior.” Not Your Average Joe’s, based in Milton, Mass., with 26 locations is also collecting guest level data using Fishbowl, which integrates with its POS system. The company created guest segments based on customer behavior such as dinner-only customers or those who drink wine. Using these segments, it can create custom marketing programs to drive visitation, says Rob Gotti, chief marketing officer for the company. “We will take a segment and create a test group and control group to see if we get a true lift from the promotions we are doing using the technology,” Gotti explains. “One of the longstanding questions is ‘Did we really need to do that discount program or are we just subsidizing visitation that would have already been there?’ and so we create a control group that mirrors the pre-program visitation pattern and then look at the response between the test group and the control group to measure the lift.” Some operators are also taking advantage of location-based technology to know when their customers are at a location as a way of tracking visits. This is the case at Houston-based Café Adobe, with its two locations. It is using Turnstyle for customer engagement marketing and guest WiFi. As long as a guest has logged in once, the program will pick up his or her phone every time he or she comes into the store. It can also detect if the customer walks by and not enter the restaurant. “We measure how often they come in, and we have offers we tie to it that get automatically sent to their cell phones, email or social media,” says Bob Borochoff, CEO and president of Café Adobe. “I wanted two things — to know more about customers and find an easy way to contact them that was not invasive because they opt in. We usually send them something free, like a free dessert, after a certain number of visits or to get them to come back in if they have not been there in a while.” Known for its shrimp dish, Café Adobe offered a promotion for Father’s Day that gave customers two extra shrimp if that customer showed his or her cell phone screen to the server displaying the offer. Employees then tapped the screen and the customer could no longer reuse the offer, Borochoff notes. Source:http://hospitalitytechnology.edgl.com/news/Restaurant-Loyalty-Programs--Use-Data-Analytics-to-Drive-Visits108633 By Nash Riggins Like it or not, the dawn of the digital era has completely redefined the way companies engage with customers. The web is now awash with dime-a-dozen promotions, and it takes a lot more than an eye-catching graphic or great deal to convert ordinary web users into loyal customers.
That’s why more and more businesses have started to focus their promotional efforts on new content marketing strategies. What is Content Marketing?Simply put, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that sees businesses create and distribute valuable content in order to attract a clearly defined audience. Rather than shamelessly pitching goods and services with ordinary sales copy, content marketing enables you to deliver information that enhances consumer knowledge. By establishing your business as a consistent source or relevant and valuable industry information, content marketing strategies are designed to help you create an intelligent consumer base that will ultimately reward your hard work with their loyalty and business. Who Uses Content Marketing?Although increased reliance on the web has substantially increased the uptake of businesses adopting content marketing strategies, the concept itself has been around for quite some time. Notable examples include John Deere, which launched its own magazine in 1895 designed to provide farmers with useful information on how to make their businesses more profitable. More than a century on, that magazine is still going strong, with a circulation of more than 1.5 million readers in 40 countries. Michelin’s coveted restaurant guide and Jell-O’s iconic cookbooks were launched around the same time with identical motivations in mind. More recently, energy drink leviathan Red Bull has emerged as one of the guiding forces of content marketing. Its steady YouTube presence, feature film productions and magazine all provide extreme sports consumers with a consistent and unique flow of information and content that have helped the company to establish phenomenal brand recognition. How Can I Use Content Marketing for My Business?No matter what sort of business you’re running or what type of industry you’re operating in, content marketing can be an extremely effective and versatile promotional strategy. If you’d like to develop a content marketing strategy to help bolster your business, you must first define your target audience and their needs. Think of who your business is targeting, what sort of information they’re typically after and how you could provide useful content to fill those needs. Next, you’ll need to determine how and where to produce and distribute that content. By undergoing some market research, you should be able to develop a firm idea of where your would-be customers are spending the bulk of their time online. You might be able to maximize your digital exposure by producing videos on YouTube, writing blog posts on LinkedIn or contributing guest articles to relevant industry magazines. After you’ve got a firm idea of what types of content to produce and where to do it, it’s worth developing a content calendar that will push you to remain consistent in your outreach efforts. If you’re attempting to establish your own company website as a source of information, you could also benefit from deploying a simple content management system that will make it fast and simple to produce and distribute content. The Bottom LineAt the end of the day, virtually all businesses have the ability to benefit substantially from deploying a content marketing strategy. That being said, it takes a lot of thought and a lot of hard work before those efforts will start to generate returns. Just remember: no two businesses are alike, and so your content marketing strategy should differ from others, too. It’s simply a matter of doing your homework and staying committed. Source:https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/what-is-content-marketing.html By Chase Small Business Ad Academy The proliferation of digital marketing and social media resources has made it easier than ever to pitch to Main Street--without Madison Avenue budgets.
Mickey Mantas, global agency and partner education consultant at LinkedIn, says these options let you be selective in how you spend digitally, and only "build a presence on the platforms that best represent you and your company." Don' t think of it as a one-time campaign; it'll evolve and grow as your business does. Chase assembled a panel of digital marketing experts—from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yelp—to help you plan your 2017 social campaigns. Here are some of their suggestions:
Source:https://www.chase.com/news/011817-across-cultures By Pratik Dholakiya Before the days of the internet and Facebook statuses, marketing was a constant uphill battle for a lot of startups and small businesses. Today, it is still an uphill battle. However, digital marketing has made the task of establishing a business presence much less intimidating. In fact, some might argue that it levels the playing field and gives the smaller guys an opportunity to shine in a way the big enterprises simply cannot. There are a number of reasons why the market will always root for the underdog. As startups and small to medium sized businesses know, they have a lot to gain from a well-planned digital marketing campaign and must make sure every single dollar is put to good use. If this sounds like you, take a look at these five tips to help compete and work towards a David and Goliath story for your business. Small Business Marketing Tips1. Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)Did you know that 81 percent of shoppers will begin their buying process with a Google search? Or that 35 percent of all ecommerce traffic comes from search engines? Think of SEO as the word-of mouth of the internet. Regardless of whether you own an e-commerce platform, a brick-and-mortar store, or both, investing in SEO is one of the smartest business decisions you can make to put yourself on the map. If planned correctly, you will see an incredible ROI without breaking your bank. SEO is effective due to the fact that the customer is already looking for you, or the service you provide. This is where targeting the right customers with the right keywords helps a lot. In the hands of a marketer who knows their stuff, tools like Ahref’s Keyword Explorer prove invaluable in reaching your target audience: However, the most important thing to keep in mind about SEO is that you will not likely see significant results overnight. Like most paid options, your visibility will be tied to your budget. SEO is a long-term investment. Don’t give up if you don’t see success right away. It can take weeks, or even months. Keep investing and eventually, you will see good results. 2. Showcase Expertise with Stellar ContentContent marketing has been the central focus in the digital realm for quite a while now. Content is the foundation of brand messaging. The task is producing material in the form of blog posts, infographics, videos, etc. suited to the platform of your choice. Content creation is a golden opportunity for businesses of all sizes to shine and let the world know what they are made of and what profound value they can provide. The trick to creating grade-A content is knowing your target audience down to a tee while fielding their most prevalent questions or concerns. Take Firmoo for example. An online store for eyeglasses, they know that their product is typically one where customers like to go to a brick-and-mortar location and physically try it on. In turn, they go above in beyond on their website to provide all the information the customer might need. In addition to perfected product listings, they publish a blog that addresses pressing questions within the industry. Content is truly an underdog’s best friend. Google loves fresh, relevant material. The higher quality you produce, the better you will do in the search rankings. Everyone wins. 3. Seek out InfluencersInfluencer marketing is all about expanding your community. An influencer is basically a prominent figure with a large following. The goal is to find one pertaining to your target market and getting them to talk about your business to their loyal fan base. When you find the right one, it can do wonders for startups and small to medium sized businesses. Start by brainstorming a list of who might have the strongest impact on your audience. This could be anyone like a blogger, politician, Instagram model, or even another business owner. For example, Boxed Water came up with a genius influencer marketing campaign titled “The Retree Project.” For every Instagram post tagged with #Retree, Boxed Water planted two trees. It paired with the National Forest Foundation and other Instagram influencers to spread the word about their philanthropy. As of this writing, they have planted over half a million trees! 4. Make a Serious Effort to Get Online ReviewsWe’ve all heard the stats on how important online reviews are these days. Perhaps the most mind-boggling one is that 90 percent of shoppers incorporate them into their purchasing process. With that being said, customer reviews and testimonials can be a game changer for startups and small to medium sized businesses. This means that the underdogs need to make a huge effort to gather feedback from customers. Following a purchase, it is wise to send an email encouraging customers to rate them on the big review sites like Yelp, or with a simple form to fill out regarding their experience. Asking for reviews is a very simple task and can bring unbelievable results. The key is providing noteworthy service that warrants good feedback. 5. Never Stop Tracking, Analyzing and ImprovingTracking your results is perhaps the most important piece of the marketing puzzle. Without the keeping tabs on analytics, you won’t have a good knowledge of what you are doing well and what needs to be altered or optimized. Keep a close eye on your targeted keywords as well as content performance so you know how to make your next move. This process is how you see that your money is well spent. One of the best ways to put yourself ahead of the game is by backing up each decision you make with actionable data. If you haven’t already, look into domain analytics tools like SEMrush or a multi-channel dashboard like Cyfe in addition to your regular Google Analytics, in order to make sure each of your business moves are being properly tracked. Parting WordsMarketing in the 21st century is a fascinating entity. Never before has there been such precision and trackable information on every single move made by businesses. The best part about it is that budget isn’t nearly as big of a difference-maker as it once was. As a result of all the modern advancements, startups and small and medium sized businesses have a real shot at bringing the competition straight to the big guys. With the right strategy and proper planning, every underdog can make it big.
Source:https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/01/small-business-marketing-tips.html Although social media is the most buzzed about marketing platform, email is still the most useful channel for small businesses that are looking to connect with consumers. Email still generates a higher ROI than social media and is nearly 40 percent more effective at customer acquisition. However, to get optimum results, owners need to understand how to effectively measure and manage their email marketing campaigns.
Monitor your open and click through rates One critical metric for measuring the success of an email campaign is its open rate. As this Super Office article notes, getting your company’s message into consumers’ inboxes is only half the battle. Customers need to open your emails and click through to your website in order to have the desired effect. Knowing what percentage of your email recipients are actually responding to your campaign is essential to its success. Having that intel will allow you to tweak the keywords, and call out the language and personalization level of your messages so that they resonate with the target demographics. Clean your list To get an accurate picture of how successful your current email campaign is, you need to have an accurate list of email recipients. This means regularly purging your list of fake email addresses, subscribers who marked your emails as spam and those who have never opened a single message you’ve sent out. As this Forbes piece points out, having phantom subscribers in your database can skew your data in ways that will dilute the impact of your campaign. A quality email marketing tool will make pruning your list a cinch so that you can get the accurate reporting you need to succeed. Segment and refine Once you’ve ascertained that your message is going to actual consumers and they are taking the time to read your emails, you need to refine your timing and messaging. Using your open rate, you can get a good idea of when it’s time to send out email blasts to your consumer base. Notifying consumers about a sale they might be interested in at the wrong time can prove to be incredibly costly. Also, it’s important to segment your list into groups based on their previous ordering habits. Doing so will allow you to maximize your campaign efficiency by alerting consumers who’ve made purchases within a particular category when desired sales and new product launches are happening. It’s much easier to sell customers something they want rather than something they don’t. Source:http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/01/26/measure-email-marketing-success/ By Hajra Rahim Experts and entrepreneurs share their tips at a Telegraph Small Business Connect seminar about SME marketingLow on cash and experience, small business owners often find marketing a challenge.
So what can they do on a shoestring budget, and what’s the most effective approach? These questions were put to a panel of experts and entrepreneurs at a Telegraph Small Business Connect seminar about SME branding and marketing on Wednesday. For Raja Saggi, head of SME marketing at Google, the best approach for keeping costs low is to keep things simple – don’t try to be the biggest, flashiest or best. Use drag-and-drop template tools such as Wix or Moonfruit for your website, which start at just a few pounds a month, he said. Also on the panel was Kelvin Golding, small business ambassador for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, who outlined a low-cost approach known as referral marketing and advised SME owners to encourage their customers to shout about how great their shop or service is. “Encourage them to do reviews on websites such as Google Reviewsand Tripadvisor,” he said. He also advised SMEs to think about the search terms people use online to find products and services similar to what they offer. Use an online keyword analyser, such as Google Trends, to find the relevant words and phrases, which you can use on your website pages and blog posts to improve SEO (search engine optimisation). Alice Mayor, founder of souvenir store, We Built This City, said that Instagram was a particularly useful – and free – tool for marketing her business. Customers getting in touch after seeing products featured on the company's Instagram page helped drive sales by as much as £20,000 early on. “We didn’t have any money for a proper shoot, so we tried to take the best shots we could in store,” she said. “On Instagram, everything has to be visually stimulating, and humour is key. "Even if it’s just a product, it’s all about describing it with personality, which helps build a good rapport with your audience.” Mr Golding agreed that how you talk about your company is just as important as what you say about it. Formal or informal, speak to your customers in a tone of voice that they’re familiar with, he explained. And if you don’t know what that is, ask them, he said. Pose the question: “do you like or dislike our tone of voice?” “If you have a unique product and want to appear professional, you can easily end up explaining it with jargon,” added Mr Saggi, who advised business owners to avoid inaccessible terminology and keep descriptions short and simple. Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connect/small-business/how-small-businesses-can-market-on-a-budget/ By JT Ripton The gloves have come off and marketers now are playing for keeps.Right now, it’s the best of times and the worst of times for business marketing. On one hand, there are unprecedented opportunities for reaching potential customers with precisely segmented messages, quantifying the impact of marketing campaigns, and understanding customers through a vast stream of data. On the other hand, every business is in the same game, consumers are savvier and wearier of marketing tactics, and tools such as automation and analytics challenge businesses to keep up with the competition as much as they offer a competitive advantage. Businesses must have advanced, nuanced marketing efforts or the game is lost to others who do use these tactics. Marketing strategies such as social media outreach, search engine marketing, and web site pop-ups are yesterday’s trends. Every business does those now. Here’s the next frontier: 1. Advanced marketing automationCutting through the clutter and closing the sale requires increasingly sophisticated marketing campaigns that develop through several touchpoints and build engagement over time. Roughly two thirds of best-in-class companies use marketing automation for managing this customer journey, according to Aberdeen research. Formerly a technology only available to enterprises with deep pockets and considerable know-how, businesses of all sizes are now developing complex and sustained customer nurturing with marketing automation. Agile CRM, for instance, offers an all-in-one CRM that includes the advanced marketing automation features used by enterprise systems but at an SBM price point and with extensive on-boarding to get small businesses started. Even single-employee businesses can now initiate complex marketing campaigns easily.2. Data-driven marketing campaignsWe’re in the age of big data and real-time analytics. Businesses that want the edge now need marketers that think more like data scientists and build their campaigns around customer analytics and real-time data. Hunches and lazy due diligence no longer have a place. As Lily Croll, strategy director for digital marketing agency Wire Stone states, Historically, marketers viewed data as something static and tied to reporting. But data is now more dynamic, accessible, and broadly understood. This will open up new opportunities for messaging optimization – but, more importantly, this access to data will challenge marketers to become more nimble and responsive. Roughly 64 percent of US-based senior executives surveyed by Insights Reports said that data-driven marketing is crucial for success in this hyper-competitive global economy. This doesn’t mean big data per se, but it does mean leveraging the numbers for advanced segmentation, automated A/B testing, marketing campaign strategy, and better customer understanding. 3. Crowd-sourced brand contentIn a world where consumers are suspicious of marketing messages and the need for branded content on social media is endless, the marketing focus now is shifting from generating branded content to supporting crowd-sourced content that ties in brands organically. This is no more evident than on YouTube, where Onalytica research found that 99 percent of content that mentions brands was generated by customers themselves. Matt Gibbs, co-founder and chief marketing officer for social marketing firm UPshow, predicts, Customer generated content is going to shift from a consumer trend to a key marketing focus. The days where a business’ own social media posts have an impact are fading, and now it’s all about inspiring as much Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat content from customers as possible. 4. Serious influencer marketingContent marketing still is king; Smart Insights research found that content marketing is viewed as the digital marketing activity with the greatest commercial impact in 2016, with 22 percent of businesses saying it is most important (the second most important elements were marketing automation and big data, unsurprisingly). Without effective distribution, however, content marketing is just noise. That’s where influencers come into play. As marketing guru, Jeff Bullas says, Online influencers and niche bloggers now offer this for brands to reach targeted global audiences. They offer not only global reach but credibility and trust. Companies are now willing to pay for that attention. Bloggers with big followings realize this, and promoting company content through influencer marketing has now become big business and a leading marketing tactic that separates successful marketing from the rest. A full 85 percent of bloggers will take money for writing blog posts that specifically benefit a brand, according to research by influencer marketing firm, GroupHigh, and many influencers now expect it. Independent and respected bloggers are now important links in the content marketing chain. 5. Global marketing for allCompetition is global, but so are potential customers. Marketing to customers in only one country is becoming increasingly obsolete, and businesses serious about growth are tailoring their marketing campaigns and web site landing pages accordingly – even if they don’t have plans for total world domination. One-size-fits-all is out and country-specific e-mail blasts, calls to action, and landing pages are in. This means country-specific content, localization of top-performing content, local phone numbers through the magic of VoIP, adjusted time zone, language, and currency elements on all marketing collateral.
Businesses also must think more globally by localizing their offerings. Business and brand strategist, Martin Roll advises, Successful global brands are managed by balancing consistent brand guardrails with the freedom to adapt to leverage local growth opportunities. Without the freedom to adapt to local needs and leverage emerging opportunities, brands risk becoming obsolete and irrelevant. The marketing game is changing, and it is pulling businesses along with it. From the need to automate and take a data-driven approach, to relying on consumers for brand awareness, businesses are faced with the stark choice of evolving or being disrupted. The new face of marketing is a harsh but rewarding place where only the nimble survive. Source:https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/01/27/5-digital-marketing-trends-will-disrupt-business/ |
Marcus Guiliano
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