Brand Quarterly MAY 2014

UP, UP AND AWAY! With a great new look and more articles than you can shake a cape at!

MAY 2014 IN THIS ISSUE

Marketing Audits And Your Marketing Strategy It’s All About the Customer Experience Location: The New Currency Of Marketing Taking SEO To The C-level What Makes Content Compelling?

Featured In This Issue:

4 Bare It All: Merging Social Media With PR

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Fake Or The Real McCoy?

Taking SEO To The C-level

Victor Caddy

Mike Jacobson and Janaya Wilkins

Jeff Barrett

18 What A Difference A Mentor Makes

20 Utilising Consumer Psychology To Maximise Your Online Offering

Dr. Ivan Misner

25 It’s Time To Stop Counting Followers And Likes Nick Taylor

Graham Jones

28 Why Location Is The New Currency Of Marketing Lionel Tepper

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The Purpose Of A It’s All About The Customer Marketing Audit In Shaping Experience Marketing Strategy Dick O’Brien and Nadine Dietz Dr. Antony Michail

48 How To Use Storytelling In Your Content Marketing Program

52 To Win More Business...

Be Human David Tovey

Rachel Metscher 2

54 Emerging Technologies Driving New & Innovative Marketing Strategies Anurag Kapoor and Alan Gray

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Big Data: Problem Scope And Solutions Overview

What Makes Content Compelling?

The Dawn Of A New Domain Age

Babar Khan Javed

Chuck Jones

Damon Segal

From The Editor Upping The Anti With a great new look and more articles than you can shake a cape at - the super heros (and heroines) of Brand Quarterly, along with our world class contributors, have collaborated to bring you our biggest issue to date! Thank you to everyone who’s played a part in making this such a fantastic read for our loyal subscribers.

It’s an exciting time here at Brand Quarterly - with the intention of helping you make your business dreams a reality, we’re exploring new ways to bring you more advice, more scope... more of what you love.

For starters, we have Q on loan from MI6 and he’s burning the midnight oil to outfit the new Brand Quarterly website. Without an exploding pen in sight, the new brandquarterly.com is set to launch - 007 June.

Following that, July will see you receiving an additional issue - a Brand Quarterly ‘special edition’. As sponsors of the upcoming Brand2Global conference we’ll be bringing you the latest insights from some of this year’s world renowned speakers.

So without further ado... Enjoy the issue and feel free to send us a bat signal to studio@veseycreative.com As always, if you love it, share it. Thanks.

Brand Quarterly magazine MAY 2014 www.brandquarterly.com Publisher/Design: Vesey Creative Ltd studio@veseycreative.com

Fiona

As the publishers of Brand Quarterly, we take every care in the production of each issue. We are however, not liable for any editorial error, omission, mistake or typographical error.

The views expressed by all contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher.

www.brandquarterly.com

Copyright: This magazine and the content published within are subject to copyright held by the publisher, with individual articles remaining copyright to the named contributor.

Express written permission of the publisher and contributor must be acquired for reproduction.

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Bare It All: Merging Social Media With PR Jeff Barrett

Bare it all, figuratively. Your brand doesn’t need to be Miley Cyrus (unless you sell foam fingers) but you do need to think creatively about how you are getting noticed.

Technology and access to media have increased the importance of transparency and engagement in branding. It is requiring an open and flexible approach. Cheeky openers just make it more fun.

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For the longest time branding has been a one-sided dictation. It followed a format.

As advertisers, we got your attention, made our most convincing claim and directed you where to go. The conversation was controlled.

Social media has changed that process. By being able to interact with brands, having equal access to media, it has become less about dictation and more about conversation.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Why is that important? Think about how the Internet changed job applications. When first introduced, everyone jumped at the opportunity to apply to more jobs quickly, efficiently and with clothing optional. Rule #1: Never underestimate how much people hate pants. This ease of use led to a negative and unintended consequence. The average job now had hundreds, thousands of applicants.

HR departments were overwhelmed and couldn’t review all submissions. They then had to create processes to filter out the average and undesirable. Eventually people had to find better, more proactive ways to get noticed. The guy who made a billboard got a job. The girl who created a successful blog got a job. The guy who created a Kickstarter page about getting a job‌ got a job.

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The same now applies to branding. Greater access leads to greater competition.

Successful branding now requires a creativity, an ability to create something louder than all the noise that exists. It’s easier to create and find content but I would argue that it is just as difficult to truly be noticed - noticed at a level that moves the meter, puts you in a different tax bracket, excites investors.

Here are a few pro tips. Use social media.

There is no such thing as a viral video. Timely content and being ready to create said timely content is paramount. Great ideas are still valuable, just make sure you are ready at the right moment to release them. Most will tell you to use social media after you launch a promotion to continue engagement. Think about that in reverse. Use social media to create buzz and involvement prior to launch it will pay dividends in the long run and create a base of support to drive promotion.

Communications, public relations have not changed. What has changed is the distribution and opportunities that exist to be creative in reaching an audience. I create social content that is designed to reach a certain level of discussion, impressions, reach. Once there, I can take that to traditional media. Traditional media is still what drives the exponential growth of content. Social media is used to create the groundswell necessary to make it an easy decision for broadcasters to cover that content.

Connections still help, there is still a dance but it comes down to something quite simple for a decision maker. Would you rather cover something with no social discussion or 1 Million YouTube views and 10k tweets?

That’s a no-brainer. That’s how you create “viral” content. There is a formula behind, nothing that rivals something Good Will Hunting would write on a chalkboard, but still a formula. Both the movie and the item are dated references but you get what I’m saying.

Social media has very little to do with the tools used and almost everything to do with the conversation that is created. Human psychology hasn’t changed greatly. Just like during the golden days of Don Draper, you are still trying to lead people to an action.

Don’t let so-called social media gurus, ninjas, swamis and other strange titles complicate it for you. Social media is not complicated, only nuanced. People that know it well are great communicators. Most stumbled upon that by accident, myself included.

Make your content flexible. Use trending conversation as a catalyst for your content launch. Tap in to large, existing social networks or influencers to drive your content.

Create strategic relationships with media.

Have fun. Be conversational online. Make mistakes. Laugh about those mistakes.

Bare it all.

Jeff Barrett CEO | Status Creative Jeff Barrett is the CEO of the digital public relations firm, Status Creative. Among many accolades he is Business Insider’s #1 Ad Exec on Twitter, named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Social Media Influencers and the winner of “Best Use of Video In Social Media” from PRNewswire. His brand of humor and insight are in demand. Barrett is a columnist for The Washington Times, Technorati and has written previously for Mashable and The Detroit Free Press. He is also the host of the tweet chat, #BareItAll, which trends nationally every week.

www.statuscreative.com

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Fake Or The Real McCoy? Victor Caddy

According to the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, Intellectual property crime costs the UK economy hundreds of millions of pounds every year. Increasingly, EU trademark and copyright owners are finding it difficult to prevent counterfeit goods being bought by consumers online in an increasingly competitive climate.

With the 2014 World Cup just around the corner, many football fans from around the world will be parting with their cash to don their country’s football shirt. But at what cost?

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

FALLING FOUL… USEFUL TIPS FOR SPOTTING A FAKE The quality and printing on the shirt will be inferior for counterfeit goods.

Label does not have a unique serial number on the inside of the shirt.

Every authentic shirt will have a manufacturer’s barcode.

Does yours?

Look out for the washing instructions fakes will not have these.

Be wary of goods with prices that are too good to be true.

The logo is very basic.

Sizes are often smaller Counterfeits produced in Asia will generally be one size smaller e.g. a counterfeit XL will actually be closer to an authentic L size shirt.

The growing problem of counterfeit football shirts is big business, when you compare the cost of an authentic shirt (£40-£50) and the new England shirt (£90) with a counterfeit (£10-£20), it’s hard to say that that doesn’t sound like a good deal. You might think you’re getting a bargain but it is far from it.

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Victor Caddy Partner | Wynne-Jones IP Victor is a Partner & Trade Mark Attorney Litigator at Wynne-Jones IP with over twenty years’ experience. He is an exam-qualified member of the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys, a member of the European Communities Trade Mark Association, the International Trademark Association, and the brand owners’ association, Marques. He also serves on the ITMA Law & Practice Committee.

www.wynne-jones.com

A recent change in European law could see counterfeit goods such as football shirts seized and destroyed by customs. There have been numerous stories recently of customers buying what they thought were real watches – and in fact they ended up losing a lot of money as they were indeed counterfeits that were later confiscated. The result, ended with them being out of pocket and not knowing what the time was! This now seems to be on the rise for counterfeit football shirts, and with the world cup in the near future only growing in popularity.

Purchasing counterfeit football shirts outside of Europe online, whether it is knowingly or unknowingly can lead to not only not receiving the goods but also losing money - which can be extremely hard if not impossible to refund.

As new EU law clamps down on counterfeit goods, will counterfeit football shirts be a thing of the past?

The majority of counterfeit football shirts are made in Asia by low-paid work in sweatshops.

One of the most famous markets, Pat Pong, in Bangkok is one of THE places to go to buy replica goods. Some of the shirts are selling for as little as £2 - which almost makes it too good not to buy. However one needs to think about what they’re purchasing as the buying of counterfeit goods encourages black market trade and can lead to funding gangs involved in organised crime.

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It can be fairly obvious that you aren’t buying the real thing, look for indicators such as ‘cheap’ or ‘discount’- unless it is from official sellers. Counterfeit football shirts come in a range of grades, ranging from D-A. Grade A counterfeits look pretty much like the real thing, but to spot a counterfeit, look at the inside of the shirt for messy embroidery and a lack of inside printing. There are often holograms on the official football merchandise – which can be hard for the imitation shirts to copy. The hologram will not be the same as the originals or they will leave out a hologram altogether.

Even if you grab yourself a real bargain, that looks like the real thing – chances are the material and longevity of the product will be flawed. Much inferior materials are used to create the counterfeits which will leave you with an item that is much less likely to last until the next kit comes out. Not only may you have an inferior product, think how it would be if you are standing with your friends and your shirt looks obviously different to the real thing!?

If you knowingly purchase counterfeit goods yourself, as well as running the risk of losing your money and not receiving the goods, you are actually committing a crime that could carry a much bigger penalty than the £50 it would cost to buy an authentic football shirt.

The next time you see a football shirt bargain online, think twice, is it really worth it?

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Taking SEO To The C-level

Mike Jacobson and Janaya Wilkins Corporations must elevate search engine optimisation (SEO) to a strategic level if they are to meet the needs of their business, web users and by proxy Google.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving a website’s position or ‘ranking’ within non-paid or ‘organic’ search engine results pages. It is essential for any business looking to generate sales online. Yet there remains a lack of understanding and a certain amount of confusion amongst senior executives at traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ companies as to how SEO works, what can be achieved, and why it is important.

All too often, they will be seeking justification for why they should be investing in what they perceive as some kind of ‘black magic’.

This disconnect is exacerbated by the fact that SEO, unlike paid search models such as pay-per-click (PPC), does not fit easily with traditional corporate procurement.

Although in theory it is possible to cost out time spent on SEO projects and the cost of individual pieces of work, the process is not nearly as predictable as it is with PPC, where ‘deliverables’ and spend can be broken down relatively easily.

In addition, the language and structure employed in tender documents is also designed primarily for the procurement of physical goods and services, rather than virtual technologies or logical assets that are less tangible. Moreover, there tends to be a lack of visibility at Board level from the outset where the procurement process is led by senior managers rather than C-level executives. Even where those responsible for leading procurement do have some \

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Mike Jacobson Co-Founder & Managing Director / CEO | Ayima Search Marketing With a background in finance, marketing analysis and forecasting, Mike has overseen Ayima’s growth from a three-person outfit to an agency of over 100 staff in three continents.

This has involved opening an additional office in the United States whilst continuing to grow the business in the UK. He divides his time between London and Stockholm, where the company has recently opened its first Nordic office.

www.ayima.com

understanding of digital media and the key messages pitched to them by SEO specialists, it is unlikely they will appreciate the nuances.

More often than not, the result is a decision based purely on price, as opposed to strategic benefits.

Strategic Tool SEO budgets vary considerably. Econsultancy found that almost half of the companies surveyed for its UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2013 are spending £10,000 or less on SEO per year, while 15 per cent are spending in excess of £100,000 per year. There have been more increases at the higher end of the range, with a 5 per cent increase in companies spending over £50,000.

Certainly, many larger corporations today remain behind the curve, either because

online businesses have established a leading position, or because they are being outpaced by more nimble and digital-savvy competitors.

One only has to look at the dominance of online firms such as Skyscanner and Amazon to appreciate just how far behind many bricks and mortar corporations are. It is most evident where they rank lower within search engine results for competitive keywords such as ‘cheap flights’, ‘mobile phones’, and ‘insurance’.

Ranking for keywords is essential in organic search because most users tend not to look beyond the first two search results pages.

A study published recently by ad network Chikita found that websites listed on the first page of Google’s search results generated 92 per cent of all traffic, with traffic dropping by 95 per cent when moving from page one to page two. Sites listed on the third page generated just 1.1 per cent of all traffic generated.

However, with natural search, companies cannot simply ‘buy their share of voice’, as there can only be one or two brands at the top of the search engine results pages taking the lion’s share of traffic. On the other hand, companies are able to buy as much ‘voice’ as they can afford with PPC or any other kind of mainstream marketing. Moreover, SEO is a process that takes years rather than months.

Ensuring companies understand these distinctions is the first hurdle to overcome.

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Janaya Wilkins SEO Consultant & Business Development Manager | Ayima Search Marketing With 10 years in Marketing and Sales, and a background in IT and Data Analytics, Janaya works in a team of 20 highly-skilled technical SEO experts who manage accounts across a vast range of sectors, such as telecoms, travel, retail, gaming, and financial services.

Janaya has developed and implemented SEO strategies for a number of major blue chip organisations.

www.ayima.com

Back To Basics Once its strategic value is understood, SEO ideally starts with the technical aspects of a company’s website, such as initial design and build, and the technology behind the site – including the content management system (CMS) and the service. It also takes in optimising the way the website is structured to deliver the most important information for users in a simple and effective way, but also such that search engines can identify information they believe is important for users. These factors are classed as ‘on-page’ activities.

penalised, resulting in a website’s near or total de-listing from the search engine’s index.

Nevertheless, a website featuring unique content that is refreshed regularly, with the right keywords distributed carefully throughout, and with links pointing back to this content from other relevant sites, stands a good chance of being ranked highly by

SEO Bringing Value: Traffic & Rankings A snapshot of the performance improvement a dedicated SEO campaign can bring.

SEO also embraces ‘off-page’ activities, which are designed to increase the ‘popularity’ of a company’s site and thus its rank within results pages – for example, the number of people that link back to a company’s website and the ‘strength’ and quality of those links are taken as a primary signal of quality and authority by search engines. In essence, ‘link building/development’ is like seeking votes from other web users for being the most relevant or best resource for a particular type of query or search topic.

Link-building and keyword targeting must be approached with caution. In the eyes of search engines such as Google, there are techniques considered as good SEO (‘white hat’), and those that are deemed bad (‘black hat’). These are penalised either by being ranked lower, or at worst by being severely

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SEO Bringing Value: Demonstrating ROI with SEO Increases in revenue YoY driven by SEO alone.

A comprehensive audit of on-page and off-page SEO activity can identify some drastic natural search quick wins, and in turn drive significant increases in revenue.

search engines. The role of the SEO specialist is therefore to ensure that corporations can be aggressive in their SEO strategy and maintain performance over time, but in a way that is sensitive to the aims and needs of both Google and web users – and which avoids any potential penalties for black hat activities (whether intentional or not).

Aligning Objectives It is also important to recognise that SEO cannot operate in isolation: it has to be considered a core pillar to the wider marketing strategy. However, defining SEO and search marketing objectives, aligning these with existing corporate strategy, and obtaining buy-in from multiple stakeholders, can prove difficult.

For example, those responsible for marketing might argue that brand, messaging and user experience take precedence over any functional changes designed to drive traffic and conversions. This is where the role of the SEO specialist becomes as much about being internal advocates for driving specific activity, and providing the critical interface between the various stakeholders, as it is simply performing the work in isolation.

One approach is to bring all stakeholders together to share ideas on best practices with regards to PPC, SEO, and social media, as well 16

as to agree a framework for delivering a more joined-up approach. Such stakeholders might include: digital acquisition managers and marketing executives; direct retail managers; PPC, SEO, and social media managers; and heads of legal, procurement, and web development. Training sessions are another beneficial activity. They don’t have to be long, but placing an experienced SEO professional in front of different teams to ensure a better understanding of the SEO process can deliver significant benefits.

In short, basic SEO knowledge should be like any other basic skill for marketing executives, and checking that it has been done right with an in-house function or external agency expert should be as commonplace as checking a translation is grammatically accurate before putting out a creative piece, advertisement or other campaign.

Thus the challenge for C-level executives is to ensure that SEO is embedded firmly within corporate strategy, and that it is approached as another key channel that is tightly managed in line with all of the other online channels and different stakeholders responsible for a website. This way, SEO activities can be undertaken safely, consistently and robustly to drive sustainable results and business outcomes over time.

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SocIal MedIa StrateGIeS SUMMIt

discover the Power of social Media Marketing

18-19 June 2014

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Global Strategic Management Institute – producer of the Social Media Strategies Summit (SMSS), which has attracted over 4,000 marketers worldwide – is bringing SMSS to Amsterdam on 18-19 June. This leading educational social media event brings together top brands and industry leaders to educate marketers, like you, on how to build an effective social media strategy.

Join us for 2 full days of learning, interactive talks and case studies, providing you with the tools and strategies vital to your organization and that you can implement back at the office right away. We also provide a great atmosphere for networking and opportunities to meet other attendees and connect with speakers.

Richard Fray, Digital & Social Media Manager, HsBC

Speakers from companies such as Audi AG, Bosch, Renault, Yelp, Cloetta and KLM will present on topics including: the vital elements of building a powerful social media strategy; how to optimise your organisation’s outreach and engagement with content; and the most effective way to harness key platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

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In preparation for this event, we’ve pulled together resources from some of the most popular presentations from the Social Media Strategies Summit in London 2013 for you to download.

Presentations in this industry report include: •• Case Study: How the World Bank Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Social Media •• User Experience: Creating Original Content that Meets Your Consumer’s Needs •• Case Study: Re-defining the Museum of London in the Digital World •• Once Upon a Time... Why Storytelling is the Key to Social Marketing

Download Your Copy Here

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What A Difference A Mentor Makes Dr. Ivan Misner

While many “traditional” jobs are in a state of flux, there continue to be opportunities for entrepreneurs. The American entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, but some folks who could tap into that spirit simply . . . are not. To succeed as an entrepreneur, a person must have a relatively high level of self-confidence to be able to navigate the highs and lows that come with building a business. One of the best opportunities to achieve that is by having the support of a mentor – or several mentors – at critical points in their formative years.

When I consider my professional path, there were several people who have had an impact on the direction of my life. One of those mentors was my high school freshman history teacher, Mr. Ramirez. At my southern California high school, the history class was responsible for selecting the student council representative for the freshmen class. Then, a freshman myself, I had run for student council 18

countless times in junior high school and was decimated every time – dead last in every election. It got to be kind of a joke among my classmates. I wanted to be a part of it so badly, but I didn’t want to face losing again in high school, so had no intention of running.

Fast forward to Mr. Ramirez’s history class at the beginning of the year. He announced, “It’s time to pick the student council representative, are there any volunteers for the position?” Nobody volunteered. After waiting a bit, Mr. Ramirez said, “Okay. If no one’s interested, as the teacher I get to pick.

So if you’re okay with that then I’m going to choose.” No one objected.

Mr. Ramirez looked at me and he said, “Ivan, I bet you would love to do this, wouldn’t you?”

My heart stopped. “Well, um, well, yeah, I kind of would, Mr. Ramirez.”

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

And then in unison, almost the entire class said: “Oh No, Not Ivan!” All of a sudden, several other kids volunteered. And I’m sitting there thinking, really - really? Is my junior high experience going to haunt me throughout high school too?

Then Mr. Ramirez said, “No. I asked if there were volunteers and there weren’t any. So I’m going to do what I am empowered to do and I’m going to pick the representative. Like I said, I pick Ivan. He’s the guy! Now, open your books and turn to Chapter Two.” The entire room echoed with the low grumble of students – but his decision was final. I was the freshman Student Council Representative.

And let me tell you something: boosted by being chosen – and subsequently mentored by – Mr. Ramirez, I worked hard, really hard, in that role. I worked so hard that, when it came up for an election mid-year, I faced an election by the same class – and won handily.

As a matter of fact I won every election in high school after that. Be it Student Council, Activities Director, ASB President, I won every election for every single position I ran for.

And it all started with that one teacher seeing something in me that said, “I think he can do a good job.”

Mr. Ramirez changed my life. The experience gave me so much more confidence, the opportunity to develop some leadership skills, and it introduced me to projects that I could take from the beginning to the end. Getting legitimately re-elected mid-term my freshman year by the students who initially booed me,

boosted my confidence and established my social standing, something that was previously nonexistent.

That confidence allowed me to go on after high school to enjoy a successful collegiate experience, to become a successful business consultant and – most importantly – to ultimately build the relationships necessary to found a business referral organization that operates in over fifty countries around the world.

I often wonder what my life would look like today if Mr. Ramirez hadn’t changed the path of my life. I also often wonder how many young people’s lives might be changed if someone would take the time to not only give them a small push, but also provide some mentorship along the way.

Without mentoring, could we see a drop off in entrepreneurship, a part of society that’s often hailed as the driver of American innovation? I fear so. This is why its important that those who have achieved success in the entrepreneurial arena “give back” by taking someone – whether a student, a graduate, or young worker – under their wing and help to boost the confidence of that person to achieve their dream.

So, ask yourself, how have you helped further the entrepreneurial dreams on another?

Do you have what it takes to be a mentor?

Could you help change someone’s life?

I bet you could.

Dr. Ivan Misner Founder & Chairman | BNI Called the “father of modern networking” by CNN, Dr. Ivan Misner is a New York Times bestselling author who has written 19 books including ‘Masters of Success’, ‘Networking Like a Pro’, ‘Business Networking and Sex (Not What You Think)’, and his recently released book, ‘Who’s In Your Room?’. He is the Founder and Chairman of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization. Dr. Misner is also the Sr. Partner for the Referral Institute, an international referral training company.

www.bni.com | www.referralinstitute.com

www.brandquarterly.com

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Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Utilising Consumer Psychology To Maximise Your Online Offering Graham Jones

When you walk into a “Main Street” store your brain is being manipulated from the moment you walk in. Store owners can control the colours, the lighting, the temperature and a host of other factors to make you want to buy. Indeed, even the kind of floor covering that you are walking on has an influence on whether or not you will open your wallet.

There is a vast amount of academic research on the whole arena of “retail psychology”, investigating just what makes us want to buy something. And brands use that psychology to make sure we spend as much as possible with them.

Online, though, it is much more difficult for website owners to influence us. All that can be done is to make a flat, two-dimensional design appealing. Website owners cannot control the temperature or the lighting levels when we look at their pages – both factors which are known to influence shoppers.

Neither can they control the floor covering, the sound or any other factors that make us more or less likely to buy. Indeed, research suggests that a considerable number of people shop online whilst using their mobiles, sitting on the toilet…!

However, this doesn’t mean that brands should give up trying to use consumer psychology to boost their online sales. Indeed, there is plenty that can be done to influence shoppers to buy more from websites; the sad fact is that many website owners are not even using techniques that are known to work.

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Graham Jones Internet Psychologist, Author of Click.ology Graham Jones is a leading Internet Psychologist, based in the UK. One of the first psychologists in the world to investigate the way human behaviour has adapted to the online environment, Graham speaks regularly at conferences, as well as consulting with businesses, helping them understand and engage more fully with online customers.

Graham is an Associate Lecturer at The Open University and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Buckingham. He is also a regular guest on TV and Radio, and is frequently interviewed by journalists from around the world about online behaviour.

www.grahamjones.co.uk

Instead, the whole arena of website production is focused on design – does it look good? Yet looking good is not the entire answer. Psychological research shows that the design of a website is not the most important factor in influencing sales. After all, major online retailers such as Ebay or Amazon do not have websites that would win design awards – yet both are selling multibillion dollars’ worth of goods each month.

Focusing on design alone is taking website owners down an avenue that might not help them sell as much online as they would wish.

Consumer psychology shows several other factors which can influence the likelihood of people buying from your online offering. They broadly fall into five different categories which together form The CLICK System.

C For Convenient One of the main reasons people prefer buying things online compared with the “real world” is convenience. But convenience does not just mean being able to “get it now” or avoiding a trip to the local shops. Convenience is about tapping into the psychological need to do things in the easiest way possible. One of the features of the human brain is that it is always seeking to do things with the least amount of effort. It is a natural part of our survival instincts; your brain uses up around a quarter of your calorie intake every day, so to keep you going it needs to ensure it minimises energy usage. As a result, our 22

brains unconsciously are constantly looking for ways to reduce effort.

Online this translates into the functionality of websites. Are the functions obvious and quick to use. For example, the most common experience that people have when shopping online is on the big brand shopping sites. They all have search boxes top centre of the page and the shopping cart top right. If your website puts those items in different positions it means the page is slightly more cumbersome to use because it takes more effort – that translates into lower convenience. Subconsciously, website visitors are checking out things like this to see how much effort it is going to take to use the website. If it looks like increased effort is needed, they click away – within a couple of seconds. Hence all kinds of signals of convenience should be obvious, from the position of search boxes and shopping carts, through to clear signs about delivery and so on.

L For Likeable You can hardly move online for “like” buttons.

But, frankly, they don’t mean much. People may click one of these buttons to “like” your brand, but that doesn’t mean they really like you. It means all sorts of things – from people showing their friends what they like to boost relationships, to expressing self individuality.

Indeed, most of those “like” button presses appear to be for selfish reasons, rather

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than a true demonstration that people actually like the brand. From a psychological perspective, likeability is when true liking happens. And true liking occurs when it is two-way. You like your partner because your partner likes you. Once the liking is one-way you are in relationship difficulty. And so it is online. When a brand demonstrates it likes its customers then they like the brand. In other words, it means that websites need to demonstrate clearly that they like their customers. People feel they are being liked when the website is about them and their personal needs; it is not written from the brand perspective, but is focused precisely on the specific requirements of customers.

Online that can be translated into different websites and different web experiences for each kind of customer; one site fits all does not work online.

I For Informative One of our psychological instincts is to minimize risk; we do all sorts of things to make sure that we are not risking harm to ourselves as part of our survival instinct.

When shopping this is translated into minimizing the risk of spending money unnecessarily and avoiding the risk of spending our cash on the wrong things. In real world shops this appears as “browsing” – people wander around the store having seen something they might buy, then wandering off to look at something else, before walking

back to the original item. All the time they are thinking “should I buy it?” If they are still not sure, they maybe nip out for a coffee to rest and think. Or they visit a competing store, just to make sure. Sometimes, of course, shoppers seek advice from the assistants in the store. It is all part of our desire to “make sure”. Online retail brands have a problem, though; it is just one click to depart from their website to go to another. In the real world people only visit competing stores if they are close by – part of our convenience instinct kicks in. Indeed, research shows that people only price compare if shops selling the same items are within a walking distance of less than 1km. Online this desire for making sure that we are about to buy the right thing can be helped when a website is informative. People are seeking as much information as possible to help them be certain, so an online store that only has scant details of a product on sale does not help that psychological desire.

Hence, a website that provides detailed information, several pictures, videos of items in use and so on, is much more likely to gain sales. The more informative your product pages become, the more you increase the chances of sales as people can find the support they need to help them minimise the risk, without having to visit an alternative website.

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C For Customized

K For Knowledgeable

You might not realise it, but when you walk into a real world store the experience is going to be customized for you in some way. The shop assistant you speak with will pick up on your body language, the words you use, your age, your gender and so on to talk to you in a way that is meaningful to you as an individual. Many stores use loyalty cards to provide you with coupons and offers tailormade to your particular kind of shopping. Real world stores do a great deal to customize things so you feel that they are concerned with you as an individual. Online, though, many websites are the same for everyone; they do not provide you with an experience that is individualised making you feel ignored. However, some websites do provide customized experiences so that we feel the site is just for us – that we are treated as “special”, which makes us warm to that site. Far too many websites only get people to register so that they can manage an online account, but that is largely for transactions and to avoid entering a delivery address repeatedly. What they don’t do is use the data they have on their customers to personalize their experience of the website.

People like being treated as individuals, not as a “customer” or “shopper”. Websites that customize their offering for each individual shopper begin to demonstrate they care for their customers. Humans who feel cared for trust the “carer”. Hence customization of websites also increases the sense of trust between customers and the brand.

Another aspect of building trust is demonstrating knowledge. We trust brands that seem to know a lot about their particular subject area. Fashion stores, for instance, that are often involved in commenting about fashion, that are always in fashion magazines and that have well-known figureheads are the ones people trust more and like more. Websites that also show they are knowledgeable on their subject area gain more shoppers. You can demonstrate your knowledge of your topic by having a blog, updated regularly or by having a magazine or newsletter.

Websites that have plenty of “content” that is not simply sales material tend to do much better than those online stores which focus solely on a catalogue based approach.

Why? Because those multiple pages of content demonstrate knowledge of their sector, which increases trust in the brand.

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So, there you have it, The CLICK System which will help you tap into the psychology of your online visitors providing them with a range of triggers to make it more likely they will buy from you, rather than clicking away to another website. You can keep your web visitors for longer and make them more likely to buy when you demonstrate that your website is convenient to use, that you like them, that you are full of information, that you customize it to their specific requirements and that you really know what you are talking about. Do this things and you will really CLICK with your customers.

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It’s Time To Stop Counting Followers And Likes Nick Taylor

Today's marketer knows that having a social media strategy is important. More and more, customers are looking to Facebook and Twitter when making their purchasing decisions. But knowing exactly how much of an impact your efforts are having on social has always been tricky.

Because there is often no concrete way of measuring social ROI, marketers have, in the past, looked at arbitrary metrics such as follower numbers and 'likes'. This seems at

first to be a perfectly sensible assessment of the social media team's success: the more followers and likes you have, the higher your reach.

But this approach is naive for two main reasons: 1. It doesn't say anything about the quality of your audience.

2. It encourages the wrong kind of marketing behaviour.

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Quality As Well As Quantity To a certain extent, having lots of followers is a great achievement. Your tweets are going to be seen by more people and there's a certain amount of respect or trust afforded by people who come across you (especially for smaller businesses). But who is following you, and why, is much more important.

For a start, research has shown that up to 44% of Twitter accounts have never tweeted.

Inactive accounts may be people who prefer to read but they also include fake or abandoned accounts. Either way, they are not going to help spread your messages. Tracking active and influential followers is a far better way to understand the power and reach of your following.

But numbers don't tell you what kind of people are following you. What does a large following mean to a brand who make ÂŁ60k sports cars if all their followers are teenagers who's average income is ÂŁ18k per year?

Brands need to be engaging with the people who will either buy their products or who's authority will be trusted when they talk about them amongst their friends and colleagues.

Encouraging Bad Habits A preoccupation with follower counts and likes often leads marketers to try the 'RT and follow' or 'like us on Facebook' competition route. This is great for growing numbers

(and it's really great for people who love competitions!) but it doesn't build a social brand.

Imagine a company that sells high-end speakers. Only a very specific group of people would want, or could afford, to buy such a product. But pretty much everyone would accept a free set of speakers... or knows someone who would... or has an eBay account... So a competition offering such a thing would not necessarily attract people who could become future customers or advocates. In fact, if you're constantly pushing competitions on social media, the sort of people you're really interested in are more likely to unfollow you to clean up their spammy timeline.

That's not to say all competitions are a bad thing. Some invite fans to share their own content and ideas, to engage in conversations and generally build a more active community.

But take a look at the word-clouds showing the hashtags shared by two different sports apparel brands' followers on Twitter in December (shown on next page) One of them has clearly attracted a lot of sports fans talking about their favourite teams and TV shows, the other has attracted a lot of competition fans. The number of followers each one has is irrelevant; it's the quality of the audience that makes one of these followings more valuable than the other.

Nick Taylor Marketing Executive | PeerIndex Nick Taylor is Marketing Executive at PeerIndex, a social media data company that offers marketers deep insights into the influencers and content in the communities that matter to them. Nick is a former professional actor, writer and maths teacher. He now works in social media and helped set up the online sensation that is the Everyday Sexism Project.

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Top Hashtags #Brand One

Top Hashtags #Brand Two

Social media teams under pressure to show high follower numbers and likes are going to resort to competitions like these, or worse: buying them. Their bosses may be pleased at the end of the day but they've essentially done the equivalent of spending money on putting posters up on a road no-body uses, in a country where no-one can read them.

Engagement Is The Path To Success It may seem obvious but social media is designed to be, well... social! To really measure your success you need to look at the amount of engagement you are generating.

Brands that engage with people in a more human way will find social media a powerful platform for spreading their messages and building loyal communities of fans. Starting conversations, creating content that inspires,

entertains or solves problems, speaking directly to the people that matter and letting them help to build and shape your brand: this is what social media makes possible.

And the big social networks know this. Brands that don't make the decision to engage rather than hunt for more and more followers will have the decision made for them, or perish.

Facebook's new algorithm has caused quite a stir in the marketing community as posts reach fewer and fewer fans. Facebook's response? "You're not making good enough content." And Twitter introduced a new 'mute' function this week which will allow followers to remove your tweets from their timeline if your tweets are boring (or annoying) them.

The number of followers and likes you have is going to mean less and less. It's time to start engaging.

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Why Location Is The New Currency Of Marketing Lionel Tepper

Reaching Active Consumers Using Digital Place-Based And Location-Based Mobile Platforms

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Ask any CMO about the pressure to deliver good results, and they’ll tell you that the only good result is the one that’s better than the previous month’s result. This ongoing, resultsdriven treadmill has made advertisers less adventurous. And for many marketers, being risk averse has worked to their advantage. But in today’s marketplace, staying with the tried and true may be the riskiest move of all.

Finding effective ways to reach consumers has become the biggest challenge facing advertisers today. Traditional methods of

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advertising are becoming less effective as consumers are no longer spending time in places where marketers have traditionally had an advantage in reaching them. To recapture attention, advertisers are forced to navigate through a complex media landscape in pursuit of an often distracted and unreceptive consumer.

As a society, we have become more mobile and we’re living in closer proximity to each other. According to a recent report from McKinsey Global Institute, more than 80%

of citizens in the United States live in large cities.1 This trend, known as urbanization, has accelerated as opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation improve life in most urban areas. The advent of mobile technology combined with ubiquitous connectivity has radically changed consumer behavior. We are no longer tethered to one (or more) fixed locations. Americans today spend significantly more time outside of the home and workplace than just a few decades ago. Increased mobility is providing

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new opportunities for marketers, which is why location has become the new currency of marketing.

This article is aimed at brand marketers, media strategist, and planners who are looking for ways to break through and reach on-the-go consumers using nontraditional marketing methods. To compile this, we have drawn from more than 5 years of examination and reporting on location-based mobile marketing and digital place-based media. It also includes quotes by thought leaders who participated in open forum discussions at the Digital Place-based Advertising Association’s (DPAA) “Video Everywhere” Summit held in New York on October 22, 2013.

The Connected Consumer: Distracted And Unreceptive As platforms increasingly diversify, delivering targeted brand messages becomes more difficult. We’re living through a time when television has become the least accountable of all mass mediums, and shifting from one digital screen to another and moving from device to device have become commonplace for consumers.2 Mobile devices now allow content to be consumed anywhere and everywhere, and the world is awash with content. According to YouTube, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded each and every minute, and people around the world are watching more than 1 billion videos each day on mobile devices.3 Consumers are less receptive of display advertising and are actively filtering out unwanted content through mental firewalls, banner blindness, and ad-blocking software, rendering most online advertising ineffective.

According to Forbes, more than 22% of Web surfers actively block advertisements, and it’s projected that the use of ad-blocking software will continue to grow at a rate of 43% per year.4

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The effectiveness of online advertising has decayed every year since the first banner ad was introduced. For example, in 1994, a banner ad on HotWired reported an incredible clickthrough rate (CTR) of 78%.

In 2011, the average CTR for a Facebook ad was dramatically lower at only 0.05%.5 Effectiveness has also declined for other digital marketing platforms such as email, online search, and in-app mobile advertising— once the novelty wears off, engagement tends to drops off as well. The problem with online display advertising is compounded even further by recent reports of online click fraud.

It’s estimated that $53 million of advertisers’ budgets have been wasted by click fraud in the first two quarters of 2013 alone.6 When we think about the challenges marketers experience navigating their brands through the digital ecosystem, it’s not surprising they’re shifting ad spending to more reliable, safe alternatives. In the quest for ROI, perhaps it’s time to stop thinking screens, and instead, start thinking locations.

“Location is the new cookie. We have just started to scratch the surface of using location from a targeting and analytics standpoint.”

David Cohen, Chief Media Officer, UM, DPAA, October 2013

Tandem Platforms: Leveraging The Moment According to Google, more than 50% of all mobile searches have local intent, and 17% of search happens while consumers are on-the-go.7 Active consumers spend money, and while they’re going about their daily routine, they’re also actively looking for information. It’s at this precise moment when the consumer’s optimum receptivity is piqued and open to receiving branded messages. But not just any message. The message must be relevant to the specific environment and have

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a sense of immediacy that responds to the unique moment the consumer is in.

Two platforms, digital place-based media and location-based mobile marketing, are proving highly effective at reaching on-thego consumers. Digital place-based networks (DPN), also known as digital out-of-home (DOOH) media, utilize strategically placed, networked digital signage displays to reach consumers with highly targeted messages in venues such as transportation hubs and shopping centers. Digital place-based networks are location-based businesses.

Every digital display—public or private—is tied to a physical location, and that location is attached to a specific IP address. Similarly, location-based mobile (LbM) providers have the ability to triangulate a mobile device’s location to a specific radius and push content and promotions that are tied to active locations. Location-based mobile campaigns drive foot traffic to a nearby retail location, or even target a competitor’s location. When combined, these tandem platforms provide unique synergies for marketers.

Both location-based mobile advertising and digital place-based media share similar

targeting and audience capabilities; however, both mediums are only as effective as the onscreen message relevant to the environment.

For example, JCDecaux France has equipped its digital place-based inventory with sensors that enable the on-screen message to change based on the current temperature, pollen count, precipitation, or wind speed. The ability to instantly adapt the advertising message brings greater relevancy and immediacy to brand campaigns. Adding interactive technologies such as touchscreens and sensors has also been shown to increase engagement and message retention. If consumers interact with a brand’s message, then they are more likely to remember it.

“What I love about digital place-based media is that it’s so targeted. The ability to zero-in on your particular audience is a phenomenal advancement in a marketer’s ability to reach their audience. Digital place-based media is the next-generation platform where marketers will be placing their advertising dollars.”

Bob Liodice, President & CEO, Association of National Advertisers, DPAA, October 2013

Tandem Platforms Reach On-the-Go Consumers Option

Description

Venue/Offer

Benefit

Value

Digital Place-based Networks (DPN)

DPNs utilize strategically placed, networked digital signage displays to reach on-the-go consumers with targeted messages

Transportation hubs, shopping centers, hotels, fitness centers, spas, movie theaters, stadiums, arenas, gas stations, and restaurants

Highly targeted reach and demographics based on time and location, constantly replenished audience all day long in hightraffic, brand-safe environments

Delivers relevant information and offers tied to specific locations and on consumer’s path-topurchase; high visibility that’s always on

Locationbased Mobile (LbM) Marketing

LbM marketing delivers offers, promotions, and content tied to an opt-in user’s profile and current GPS location

Offers and information are pushed to mobile devices based on proximity to a location or GPS radius

Highly targeted messaging uses geolocation that captures on-the-go consumer’s attention

Delivers relevant information and offers tied to a specific location and brand promotion

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The Big Shift: Multiscreen Campaigns Gaining visibility in today’s marketplace means planning across the entire digital ecosystem. Most consumers divide their screen time across multiple devices, shifting their attention from one digital screen to another, which makes multiscreen campaign planning an imperative for brands. According to a new study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Nielsen, multiscreen advertising campaigns will account for more than 50% of all media spending by 2017.8 The study, which polled client-side marketers, agencies, and media sellers, defined multiscreen campaigns as those that run during a similar time frame across two or more digital screen platforms, including television, computer, tablet, smartphone and digital place-based media.

In another survey by the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) of strategic media planners, 64% of planners are advising their clients to shift funding away from traditional out-of-home to digital place-based media. The same survey also found planners recommend moving dollars away from traditional television (41%) and online media (40%) in order to fund digital place-based marketing channels.9 According to PQ Media, a leading provider of econometric intelligence on global media and technology, the United States is currently the largest market for digital out-of-home advertising with revenues that exceeded $2.17 billion in 2012.10 The digital out-of-home segment currently represents less than 30% of total out-of-home advertising spending; however, these numbers are steadily increasing as more advertisers shift their budgets to the medium.

Location-based mobile advertising is also garnering a larger slice of multiscreen ad budgets and is forecasted to receive more than 60% of the total spend on mobile advertising by 2018. Location-based mobile space is 32

expected to grow more than 150% by 2020 and generate double the CTR compared with the mobile industry average of 0.4%.11

Influencing Consumers: Retail’s New Playbook Physical retail environments now compete head-to-head with virtual online shopping.

As a result, retailers have had to revise their playbooks and elevate the shopping

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experience to provide a reason for consumers to visit a physical store.12 Mobile devices have also changed the equation. It’s now commonplace for consumers to comparison shop on their smart phones while they’re in-store. To combat the online and mobile shopping threats, brands are allocating a greater percentage of their budgets to shopper marketing, which includes the use of place-based retail networks to influence buying decisions at the point of sale.

Retailers are increasing customer engagement in-store through the use of interactive technologies. Touchscreens enable consumers to explore and access product information at will. Proximity sensors and event triggers can activate screen content when a user is nearby or picks up a product. Facial recognition software can tailor on-screen messages based on a viewer’s age or gender. Gesture-based systems, such as Microsoft Kinect and Leap Motion, can be

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Lionel Tepper Managing Editor | ScreenMedia Daily Lionel Tepper is Managing Editor of ScreenMedia Daily, an online resource that covers the intersection of digital place-based media and location-based mobile marketing. He has more than 25 years of experience in advertising and content development working on business-to-business and consumer brands working with major advertising agencies in New York.

www.screenmediadaily.com

used to engage shoppers by enabling direct screen interaction using physical movement.

Mobile technology such as near field communication (NFC), QR codes, and Apple iBeacons (BLE) are being integrated into retail environments so shoppers can receive special offers on their mobile devices.

Digital Place-Based Media: The Amplification Channel It’s estimated that the average person is exposed to more than 64 hours of promotional messages outside of their home each year, and digital place-based media is becoming a large part of that exposure. PQ Media estimates that there are now more than 1 million digital place-based screens across the United States, which includes more than 425 individual digital out-ofhome networks.10 Each network provides advertisers with unique reach and audience demographics that vary by time of day.

Examples of digital place-based venues include transportation hubs such as airports, and railway and bus terminals. Corporations have also deployed digital screen networks as an effective way to communicate with employees at call centers, manufacturing facilities, and distribution hubs. Corporate advertising networks now reach on-thego professionals at office building lobbies and elevators. Hospitality providers such as hotels, fitness centers, spas, fast-casual

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restaurants, and entertainment and sports venue operators have adopted the technology at movie theaters, stadiums, and arenas.

Retailers, which include in-store networks and shopping centers, are influencing purchasing decisions by placing digital signage screens in aisles and checkouts. And specialized networks are popping up in doctor and dentist’s offices, hospital waiting areas, gas stations, beauty salons, and college campuses.

Digital place-based advertising is not a replacement for television; instead, marketers should think of DPNs as an amplification channel that is complementary to traditional media. Digital place-based media is a reach extender, helping advertisers to connect with consumers throughout their day rather than concentrating promotion into a few hours during prime time television. Digital placebased advertising can also be used as a more cost-effective alternative to television, particularly for local advertisers who are looking to reach a specific demographic.

DPNs also offer advertisers hyperlocal targeting down to a specific ZIP code radius that works in tandem with locationbased mobile marketing and online social media campaigns.

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“We’ve been talking to our clients about complementing their content-based strategies with an audience-focused strategy in television and online video, and place-based media seems like the perfect play to add a highly complementary, highly scaled place-based video where we can now identify audiences very specifically.”

Kristian Magel, EVP, Director, National Broadcast, Initiative U.S., DPAA, October 2013

Location Metrics: Are All Ad Impressions Created Equal?

Media strategist and planners are always looking for sustainable experiences to recommend to their clients, but measuring any medium’s effectiveness has become complicated. Ad impressions now come in many different flavors, and not every metric applies uniformly to all media. For example, the Internet has made demographics less important, and behavioral targeting doesn’t always translate to a quantifiable number.

While media convergence has made digital screens omnipresent, it’s important to recognize that just because it’s a screen, not all screens provide the same engagement attributes or opportunities for brand marketers. So what yardstick should be used to measure digital place-based media?

The most important metric often comes down to the environment—the stronger the location is, the more likely that a specific ad impression has greater value to an advertiser.

If the quality of the location becomes the primary metric for measuring a digital placebased network’s effectiveness, then are all locations created equal? Not necessarily.

Not all venues are the same and marketers must understand the specific demographics and traffic dynamics for each location. For example, there might be a high-traffic venue that’s not really relevant to consumers. The location has high traffic, but the screens

are like wallpaper as far as consumers are concerned. In contrast, another location may not have high traffic, but it is extremely relevant to consumers when they’re shopping for products. Each location needs to be evaluated separately—it all starts with the consumer and the location’s relevance.

The Takeaway: Marketing ROI Digital place-based media is part of the larger multichannel ecosystem that can effectively amplify a brand’s message, creating a deeper level of engagement with on-the-go consumers. The medium has the reach and scale that brands are looking for, with high volumes of traffic across a wide range of locations. And unlike television, it can’t be switched off or Tivoed.

According to a recent study by Arbitron | Scarborough USA, more than 108 million on-the-go consumers reported seeing placebased video advertising displays across 10 different venue types over a 30-day period.13 Digital place-based networks have a constantly replenished audience all day long, and most DPNs provide advertisers with proof of play, so they know their advertising is making an impression.

Buying digital place-based media and location-based mobile channels together is about to become easier in the near future.

Several companies are working on automated buying solutions that will help media buyers and advertisers purchase multiscreen campaigns across both platforms.

Until recently, most media buys have been negotiated; however, media today is increasingly being driven by data and analytics. Programmatic buying, also known as automated buying, is helping agencies and brands buy media more efficiently using algorithms to analyze and automate the delivery of data. Several major advertising

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holding companies are developing new initiatives designed to make buying locationbased mediums easier*.

Digital place-based media is unique because it intercepts active consumers with relevant, highly targeted messages as they move through the day. Similarly, location-based mobile marketing delivers relevant, highly targeted information to mobile devices within a geo-fenced area. For marketers looking to raise mass awareness and generate incremental reach, digital place-based media and location-based mobile marketing offer a brand-safe environment free of the risks of online media. These tandem technologies are changing the media mix for brand marketers by providing a highly effective platform for reaching on-the-go consumers.

REFERENCES 1) McKinsey Global Institute, Urban America: US cities in the global economy http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/urbanization/us_cities_in_ the_global_economy 2) AdAge Study: Young Consumers Switch Media 27 Times An Hour, April 2012 http://adage.com/article/news/study-young-consumersswitch-media-27-times-hour/234008 3) YouTube, More than 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html http://www.onehourpersecond.com 4) Forbes, Use of Ad Blocking is on the Rise, August 2013 http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/21/use-ofad-blocking-is-on-the-rise 5) Andrew Chen, The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs, April 2012 http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/05/the-law-of-shittyclickthroughs 6) Adometry, Click Fraud Report 2013 http://www2.adometry.com/Click-Fraud-Report#.

UpUpao1aT7t 7) Google Think Insights, Mobile Search Moments Study, March 2013 http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/creatingmoments-that-matter.html 8) Nielsen, ANA and Nielsen Study Revels Multi-Screen Advertising To Rise Dramatically, October 2013 http://nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2013/ana-and-nielsenstudy-reveals-multi-screen-advertising-to-rise.html 9) DPAA, Study By Digital Place-based Advertising Association Reveals Dramatic Increase In Funds Being Moved http://www.dp-aa.org/newspress.php?newsid=156 10) PQ Media, Global Digital Out-of-Home Media Forecast 2013-2017 http://www.pqmedia.com/globaldigitaloohforecast-2013.html 11) Research and Markets, Mobile Location-based Marketing Solutions Analysis and Market Forecast 2013-2018 http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/rxxgc5/mobile

*

To learn more about these initiatives, you can download Screenmedia Daily’s Digital Place-Based Advertising Trend Report - Insights and Issues: Programmatic Buying and Digital Place-based Media.

(Note: Registration required)

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12) Deloitte, The Changing Face of Retail, The Store of the Future: the New Role of the Store In a Mutichannel Environment http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-Germany/Local%20 Assets/Images/06_CBuT/2013/CB_R_store_of_the_ future_2013.pdf 13) Arbitron, Scarborough USA, Points of View 2013 Digital Place-Based Video Report: On-the-Go Professional http://www.arbitron.com/study/points_of_view_study.asp

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007 JUNE, 2014

Quarterly...

Brand Quarterly

The Purpose Of A Marketing Audit In Shaping Marketing Strategy Dr. Antony Michail

A very important step in shaping marketing strategy is to audit the marketing function and related strategy. Such auditing practices are not common to many organisations that decide on a marketing plan and budget

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without measuring the performance of their previous and current activities.

Marketing accountability demands from marketers to be able to effectively measure the performance of their marketing

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Dr. Antony Michail CEO | Anacalypsis Strategy and Marketing Consultants Dr Antony Michail has 15 years of progressively responsible experience consulting and advising both small and large corporations in relation to their marketing strategy, implementation, and company growth. He has also designed a number of new initiatives to promote creative thinking in relation to new product development such as specialized Think Tank rooms, QMI (quick market intelligence) and VOC (voice of the customer) workshops.

Antony has also delivered a number of academic lectures and seminars in relation to business strategy.

www.anacalypsis.co.za

department. It is also essential to assist the Board in decision making and thus provide direction in shaping future strategy.

This is the first of a series of articles that will discuss what is a Marketing Audit and its importance; but also: •• Analysing the external environment •• Examining the internal business environment •• Investigating the performance of the marketing department and processes •• How to integrate the results of a Marketing Audit into Marketing Strategy and Plan

What Is A Marketing Audit?

A marketing audit is a structured approach to the collection and analysis of information and data on the internal and external environment, including information on the business and economic climate, the market, competition, major competitors and the company’s operating performance. The audit is an essential prerequisite to marketing strategy formulation A marketing audit is a structured survey of an organisation’s Marketing efforts. It looks at the way Marketing is planned and managed.

It asks what has been done and what else should be done. In other words: •• what has worked?

•• and what has failed?

The purpose of a marketing audit is not to criticise particular activities, but rather to identify whether there are any working practices that could be more effective. The marketing team within a business are fully involved in the marketing audit. They may carry out the audit themselves, or with the support of an outside consultant.

A market audit builds the foundation for future marketing decisions. The golden rule in performing a market audit is that you must be objective and read the market as it actually is. This means the audit must not be structured around your product, service, or business. Though these may be mentioned as reference points, don’t make them central to the audit. To do so could result in conclusions slanted toward your business, giving you an inaccurate picture of the market and defeating the purpose of the exercise. The audit is based on market research activities and must be completely independent from research on the performance of your product, service, or business.

Characteristics Of The Marketing Audit A valuable and successful marketing audit must have the following characteristics: •• Comprehensive - The marketing audit covers all the major marketing issues facing an organisation, and not only one or a few marketing trouble spots.

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The latter would be called a functional audit if it covered only the sales force, or pricing, or some other marketing activity.

•• Systematic - The marketing audit involves an orderly sequence of diagnostic steps covering the organization’s marketing environment, internal marketing system, and specific marketing activities. The diagnosis is followed by a corrective action plan involving both short-run and long-run proposals to improve the markets.

•• Independent - The marketing audit is normally conducted by an inside or outside party who has sufficient independence from the marketing department to attain top management’s confidence and the needed objectivity.

•• Periodic - The marketing audit should normally be carried out periodically instead of only when there is a crisis. It promises benefits for the organization that is seemingly successful, as well as the one that is in deep trouble

a marketing audit will differ. The key is to perform a complete audit (to form a solid baseline) in establishing your marketing approach, and then update that information as you feel it is warranted.

Marketing audits many times are ordered only after the control charts indicate that the marketing situation is no longer under control. The marketing crisis has occurred and there is panic scrambling to discover the reasons why sales are in a steep decline. A marketing audit can be a useful measure at such times providing it has not arrived too late for recommendations to effect a turn around. A better procedure, therefore, would be to have had a regular audit when things appeared to be going well in the same way an apparently healthy individual might take a regular medical exam. An audit during “good times” which would examine areas outside the scope of the normal control procedures may well discover the beginning of strategy obsolescence. How often a firm should conduct a marketing audit will vary with the firm.

The Marketing Audit Process How Often A Marketing Audit Should Be Performed Because of the constantly varying business environment, marketing audit is frequently required, not only at the beginning of the planning process, but along with the implementation stage, providing also ground for evaluating possible future courses of action.

Marketing audit on a regular basis is a strong reference point, reflecting evolution in external business environment, internal experience and strategy development.

Some companies will perform a complete audit every year. Others will conduct an audit every four years, with modified versions used in between. Depending on the complexity of a given industry and the amount of growth or change it is experiencing, the timing of 40

The complete marketing audit process involves three major steps. These include: 1. Pre-audit Activities. Pre-audit activities involve determining who will conduct the audit and when it will be performed.

It also involves establishing the scope, objectives and methodology.

2. The Audit Process. The audit process itself involves a number of substeps: •• Data Collection. Assembling the information about the macroenvironment, the industry, the company as well as the marketing mix is the most expensive and time consuming aspect of the marketing audit.

•• Information Analysis. This involves evaluating the data collected in an

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attempt to provide an all inclusive picture of the company’s marketing program: How well it meets the requirements of the marketing concept in providing for customer needs as well as corporate profitability, facing the competition, adapting itself to changes in the macroenvironment, and how efficient it is in doing this.

•• Preparing Recommendations. An audit report is prepared based on the strengths and weaknesses identified.

3. Post-audit Activities. After the audit report is prepared it must be presented to management and perhaps other groups within the company. The findings and recommendations should be debated. Plans to implement recommendations complete with time table should be drawn up.

The Marketing Audit Team Selection of the appropriate people to perform the marketing audit is also crucial to its success. The auditor(s) must have experience, know-how, and creative imagination if they are going to be able to discover the problems and foresee opportunities.

Objectivity is also important. An auditor who is drawn from the business unit that is to undergo the audit is unlikely to be able to examine dispassionately the policies and procedures he or his superior helped to create and/or have been responsible for implementing. In such a case the auditor may simply be too close to the system to see it clearly or may be reluctant for political reasons to find fault with co-worker’s or superior’s policies or their efficiency in implementing them.

There are commonly six alternative sources of auditors and, by implication, as many methods of conducting marketing audits: 1. Self-audit. A company can ask the executive who is directly in charge of an activity to appraise its strengths and weaknesses.

2. Audit from across. A company can assign persons in a related activity on the same function level to prepare an audit of the neighbouring activity.

3. Audit from above. The audit can be conducted by the executive to whom the manager reports.

4. Company auditing office. The company can establish an office with the responsibility for conducting all company marketing audits.

5. Company task-force audit. The company can appoint a team of company executives with varied backgrounds and experience to conduct the audit.

6. Outside audit. The company can hire an outside individual or agency to conduct the marketing audit.

It has been suggested by a number of authorities that the least effective of these methods is the self-audit while the most effective is the outside audit. Outside consultants provide the needed impartiality and generally are able to bring a broader range of experience as well as the most up to date audit methodologies into play.

It is however recommended the use of a combination approach whereby the experience and objectivity of the outside consultant be coupled with the perspective of the internal personnel in a joint audit team.

In the next article we will discuss the role of the external environment when auditing a marketing strategy and department.

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It’s All About The Customer Experience Dick O’Brien and Nadine Dietz

Insights From CMOs On Omnichannel Personalization In Retail With the advent of the digital age, today’s retail shoppers are informed, instrumented, interconnected and now in control of the path to purchase. Due to this, marketers around the world are trying to figure out the right strategies, marketing mix and approaches for the omnichannel shopper – a shopper that is extremely knowledgeable, hyper-connected and shops at-home, in-store and on-the-go.

The omnichannel shopper is demanding a seamless and more personal experience.

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Marketers need to adapt and find ways to effectively engage with their shoppers at every possible touchpoint. Making this a priority can pay off big for retailers. According to a Bain & Company survey, an average company loses 20% to 40% of customers every year. Reducing attrition by 5% can improve bottom line profits by 25% to 85%.

Also, increasing loyalty by 1% reduces costs by 10%.

Leading CMOs recently shared their expertise and real-world examples in an industry research report – “The CMO Guide

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to Omnichannel Personalization”. The report provides marketers with actionable insights, critical enablers and advice for how to succeed with omnichannel shoppers in this new retail environment. The guide is based on the exclusive insights and extensive know-how of top retail marketers including: GameStop, Godiva, The Home Depot, Jamba Juice, JCrew, Michaels, OfficeMax, Petco, Quiznos, Roundy’s Supermarkets, Saks Fifth Avenue and Sears/Kmart.

Linking Theory And Practice At the most basic level, omnichannel personalization is an evolving practice, effectively engaging customers across all touchpoints through relevant interactions that uphold a consistent brand identity, but are tailored to meet customers’ unique preferences.

Success in omnichannel personalization means that marketing must revolve around customer engagement. A one-way

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Dick O’Brien Director of Product Marketing For Social Commerce And Promotion Optimization Saas Solutions | Revionics Dick has a strong track record leading product development and strategic marketing efforts for leading technology organizations such as Revionics, Bazaarvoice and Marketech. He has in-depth background and expertise in the following areas: product marketing, product management, market research, competitor analysis, strategy development, market analysis and planning.

www.revionics.com

monologue from retailer to customer is no longer sufficient; only a two-way dialogue will enable retailers to truly understand the shopper and obtain the knowledge of what really matters to them.

Techniques vary and are highly creative. For example, the CMO Guide reveals that Quiznos, a franchised fast-food restaurant with locations globally, engages their customer at all touchpoints in the decision path to create a real-time customer recognition program that leverages both customer and in-store engagement devices.

Michaels Stores, one of the largest specialty retailers of arts, crafts, framing, floral, wall decor and scrapbooking, believes a key benefit of online targeting vs. the paper circular is the ability to adjust messages and customer offers minute-by-minute, not just weekly.

Michaels is using heat maps, a measurement tool that uses content statistics and analysis of online messaging, to help the company determine which email campaigns are the most effective and with whom.

Managing Big Data The key to successful omnichannel personalization is finding a way to capture relevant and actionable data, and being able to sift through noise to create critical 360° customer profiles. The management of data also requires a true partnership between the CMO and the CIO; the interdepency between these roles will continue to evolve.

High quality data provides comprehensive customer profiles, from which an optimized and personalized customer experience can be created and executed at every interaction both in and out of stores.

Nadine (McCracken) Dietz Senior VP of Business Development and Global Marketing, 5One With 20 years of shopper insights’ experience servicing retail as a consultant, researcher, manufacturer and software developer, Nadine has a thorough appreciation for industry wide customer-centricity needs and a rigorous approach to enhancing the customer experience.

She is currently Senior Vice President of Business Development and Global Marketing for 5one and has led efforts for organizations such as SmartRevenue, IBM/DemandTec, EYC, Abbott Laboratories, Information Resources, Inc. and more.

www.5one.com

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It’s All About The Customer Experience

customer experience, but provides a sense of connectivity with the Petco community.

The customer experience is the cumulative impact of all interactions that an individual has with a business, its products or services.

Marketers must never forget that unhappy customers are more “powerful” than happy ones, because they are much more likely to tell others about bad experiences than happy customers are to share a good one.

Omnichannel personalization is about finding ways to create, retain and amplify happy customers. The CMO Guide showcases companies like Amazon, Burberry and Maverik, all exceedingly shopper-centric companies. The CMO Guide also shines the spotlight on Petco. Petco is giving customers outlets for their passion through social media, which not only enhances the

Further important takeaways from this research include: Obtaining Actionable Insights from Data: Disparate signals are emerging from the marketplace. A retailer’s data needs to be aggregated and analyzed to understand the market, including segments within it and the what, when and where surrounding shopper needs. The results of the analysis then must be systematically operationalized.

Adopting Shopper-Centric Strategies: Once retailers have defined their target market and market segments, they need to align their strategies to effectively serve those customer segments. The key is putting the customer ahead of products and solutions ahead of functional silos.

The CMO Guide to Omnichannel Personalization CMO Club And Industry Experts Weigh In 1. What Is Omnichannel Personalization?

Pic

Ashley Sheetz

Lauri Kien Kotcher

Fred Neil

Susan Shields

GameStop

Godiva

Home Depot

Jamba Juice

2. How Do I Effectively Engage Customers?

3. What Are The Critical Enablers?

4. Future… Customer Experience?

5. Keys To Success

6. Who’s Doing It Well?

Shannon Smith

Paula Puleo

Kim Feil

Elisabeth Charles

JCrew

Michael’s

OfficeMax

Petco

October 2013, Written by 5one & Revionics

Nadine Dietz

Don Hamblen

Denise Incandela

Jennifer Dominiquini

Susan Lintonsmith

Roundy’s Supermarkets

Saks Fifth Avenue

Sears

Quiznos

Trish Ferguson

Sheridan Stavac

Karen Dutch

Kathy Beck

Dick O’Brien

Becoming Increasingly Shopper-Centric: The organization must move from a “productcentric” to a more “shopper-centric” approach.

This entails not just providing new metrics, but internal adoption and alignment.

Breaking Down Organizational Silos: Operational issues will emerge. Implementing omnichannel personalization means breaking down existing organizational silos and working together in new and more productive ways. For example, obtaining CEO sponsorship and then creating a position that sits above Merchandising, Marketing, Operations and IT with responsibility for the shopper experience is an organizational change that could help break down silos and improve the overall customer experience.

Staying Abreast of New Technologies and Adapting: Keeping up with emerging technologies and maintaining the optimum skill sets on board is challenging, but vital for success. This means ensuring the retail organization is flexible and responsive to new technologies. Examples include: •• Customer Segmentation: A more advanced way to segment is customer hyper-segmentation, or micro segmentation, which groups small numbers of customers into extremely precise groupings, based on various factors, including predictions. Retailers can then direct specific marketing actions to each micro-segment to maximize the effectiveness of every contact with each customer. By tracking and carefully analyzing how different marketing actions affect the spending behavior of different micro-segments, it’s possible to predict the varying effectiveness of different marketing actions on different micro-segments.

•• Optimization Technology: There is now optimization technology available with optimization engines, which provide optimal engagement (an offer, an invite, a newsletter, an event, a game 46

etc.) with a customer based on their personal preferences and behavior (product, channel, vehicle, frequency).

These preferences come from the data collected, measured and appended to the individual customer profile, then blended with marketing strategies, analytical insights and custom business rules to achieve performance objectives.

Sophisticated engines seamlessly integrate data and analytics to simulate optimal scenarios and create forecasts to benchmark results. When a shopper takes an action, evaluating these actions becomes a critical input to the master data file at the individual customer level, which then becomes key inputs to the driver analytics and the cycle repeats and tunes itself.

Develop a Road Map: The road map should cover a minimum of two years and include detailed milestones for digital, social, mobile and in-store engagement. The road map should leave room for flexibility so a retail organization does not miss emerging opportunities. Being nimble is critical for success.

Whether a retailer is purely bricks and mortar or is a true omnichannel player, it must adapt to a new set of rules. It is not the retailer that is omnichannel – it is the shopper, and it is up to the marketer to create the ultimate customer experience.

The CMO Guide to Omnichannel Personalization can be downloaded here: http://goo.gl/s76DCJ

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JULY 8 2014 In association with the Brand2Global Conference, London 2014

How To Use Storytelling In Your Content Marketing Program Rachel Metscher

A few months ago, I wrote an article about storytelling newfound renaissance. It seems to me that the term “storytelling� gets thrown around in marketing departments without much thought to what it truly means. I worry that storytelling will become a hackneyed term and lose its impact. If storytelling is the new black, how can a marketer implement this technique into her program?

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Step One: Realize Storytelling Is A Different Approach As a marketer, you are trained to persuade your prospects that your products and services are the best. However, marketing to your prospects has become more complicated. You are now competing not only for your prospects e-mail box, but also

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Marketers never had to worry how to connect with their prospects. We would send emails, postcards, and collateral out and those interested would contact us and the cycle would continue until the prospect purchased.

In today’s market prospects are in control.

A Corporate Executive Board (CEB) study of more than 1,400 B2B customers across industries revealed that 57% of a typical purchase decision is made before a customer even talk to a supplier. The game is changing and marketers need to find new ways to connect, and do it much earlier in the sales cycle than ever before. It’s no longer sufficient for marketers to create content, now you have to figure out how to break through the noise and resonate.

It’s all about understanding how the customers or products highlighted in our corporate stories relate. Your corporate story is beyond brand : it’s about how you connect with your prospect’s challenges with your solutions. It is a different approach because marketers need to think beyond just getting their message out in the market, but also how it can resonate and connect. Your prospects are already engaged with your company directly or indirectly on social media creating unique conversations daily. SAP’s Chief Storyteller, Julie Roehm said it best, “to break through the clutter, meaningful, one to one conversations with our customer is now more important than ever.”

Step Two: You Need Buy-In their attention. Three-quarters of all adults now regularly use a social networking site.

There are more active wireless devices in the United States (326 million) than there are human beings (314 million). More than 6 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube every month. If you are going to capture your audience attention, you need to have something valuable and relevant to say.

Storytelling sounds simple in concept, but your internal stakeholders will not understand why they need to change. Whether it is your sales, product or services teams, they are only interested if you send out the email or promotion, they do not care if the message works. That is not their interest.

Your stakeholders just want to make sure the tactic has been accomplished, but little time is devoted to whether it performed well.

Marketers know performance trumps activity.

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Marketers are the customer’s advocate and the only team invested in representing their concerns, pain points, and challenges. So, you need to help your stakeholders understand why defining the customer, understanding their pain points, addressing their concerns will be beneficial. This change is the hardest piece to storytelling and often overlooked.

So, how do you get change with your internal teams? You need a corporate sponsor.

Someone in your organization that your internal teams report to that understands and supports what you are trying to achieve. Think executive or someone of influence. Executive support takes understanding what motivates her and illustrating what success will look like when you are done. Be clear that storytelling is not a fad, but a way to tell the story to the client about how your company can help them.

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Step Three: Define Your Audience Now that you have everyone on board to be storytellers, it’s time to define your audience.

If you have developed personas for your marketing use those to help develop your stories. If you do not have personas, here is why you need them: Personas help define who will consume the new content you are about to create.

Personas are profiles of your customer. They are a snapshot into what motivates that customer to buy your products or services.

Questions to consider when developing personas: what makes the audience engage?

Why should they care? What’s in it for them?

What do you want the audience to do after reading your story?

Creating personas will take time. You will need to do some interviewing of current clients as well as stakeholders who work directly with them. A great example of how to research your audience is look at job postings in your field. I am currently working

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Rachel Metscher Director of Content Marketing | ICF International Rachel Metscher is responsible helping her clients create content that adds value, maximizes results, and contributes to the conversation as the director of content marketing at ICF International (NASDAQ:ICFI), who partner with government and commercial clients in the energy, environment, and infrastructure; health, social programs, and consumer/ financial; and public safety and defense markets. A champion of clear and concise communications, she has worked for The Princeton Review and Fannie Mae. You can hear about her musings on PR, social media, content marketing on her blog, Metscher’s Musings.

www.metschermusings.wordpress.com

in the energy space and was having trouble understanding who works in the energy space. I started looking at job postings to find out who the utilities were trying to employ and use this as the foundation for me to build my personas. It wasn’t perfect, but with the requirements I understood what was needed in their roles which in turn helped me figure out pain points and motivators. I used this as the foundation to build the personas and peppered subject matter interviews to refine the personas.

Step Four: Get Organized Managing multiple themes and getting your story out in the market will take planning and organization. Editorial calendars will be your new favorite tool in 2014.

Editorial calendars helps organizations organize multiple themes, platforms, team members, and manage the process of creation. Pam Dyer, a Social Media Today contributor wrote that editorial calendars should be viewed as a roadmap to ensure your content is optimized to meet your business goals and targets the right audience.

It will also provide assurance that your contributors, stakeholders, and distribution channels are working in concert. I love that because as marketers we sometimes neglect the planning and organizing internal resources to create content.

but also I make sure all folks contributing understand they are accountable to delivering the content. The editorial calendar is a great tool to work with multiple stakeholders to understand where their content will be distributed and manage deadlines. I would also stress that the editorial calendar is not static, but ever evolving. I am constantly changing themes and distribution of content based on changes of my contributors or marketplace. A great example was my firm’s recent whitepaper on the polar vortex affect the U.S. energy market ability to respond to extreme weather. Based on small changes to timing we were able to capitalize on great earned media opportunities in the national press and trade publications.

Editorial calendars also help me manage the contributors and foresee holes in the plan. It can also be a great source to help you generate ideas for future contributions and repurpose opportunities. Don’t think you can use only one story at a time, you can repurpose several content pieces for different platforms such as social and off line.

Storytelling is not a new concept, but is more challenging to use in today’s noisy marketplace. Marketers who will effectively use realize this technique will take time, planning, and executive buy in. It’s not only about the planning, but also the stories themselves. Do you have a corporate story that will resonate and cut through the noise?

As the Director of Content Marketing, as see my role as the CEO of content. I help plan,

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To Win More Business... Be Human David Tovey

Over the past 20 years I’ve spent thousands of hours with business owners, salespeople and professionals who seem to change their persona when it’s time to win business – when it’s time to ‘sell’. It’s as though they go from being the normal person they usually are (the one their mother, partners and kids would recognise) and transform into some sort of selling machine. They take a deep breath, as if steeling themselves for battle, put on their jacket and say things like “Right, let’s do it”!

They then hit the phone or go to selling meetings behaving like they think salespeople should behave, they put on an act and in the worst cases use manipulation and pressure to get their way.

Selling isn’t about warfare or some hugely dangerous expedition where massive reserves of physical and mental energy are needed. Usually the most energetic thing that needs to be done is to press the call button 52

for the lift and then sit on a comfortable chair in an air-conditioned meeting room with nice people, having a chat about business over a coffee! If you have the product or solution that genuinely addresses a customer’s needs and then behave as a normal human being, selling is a totally natural and comfortable experience for both buyer and seller. It doesn’t require us to put on an act.

“We are actors – we’re the opposite of people” – Tom Stoppard, Playwright The very best actors are those you believe in; you trust that they are perfectly in character (think Daniel Day Lewis in the film Lincoln). It takes years of training and total absorption to achieve that level of perfection. We certainly recognize when another person is ‘putting on an act’ and a character is not believable.

When that happens in business it changes the dynamics of a conversation and results in reduced belief and lack of trust.

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Robin Kermode, the ex Royal Shakespeare actor and communications guru, says in my book “It’s about having equal status and showing your humanity, never talking down to other people but also never putting other people on a pedestal because it changes the dynamics of a conversation and the way you are perceived. I speak with senior politicians just as I would speak with fiveyear-old children.

He doesn’t mean that politicians need to be spoken down to like some adults might speak to five-year-olds; he means that he speaks with everyone as Robin the human being who happens to be an expert in communication.

That is, by not talking down to children and not talking up to senior politicians.

The best salespeople do not try to force their will on customers.

“It’s important to accept the fact that other people are as much individuals as you yourself are. They perversely insist on behaving like human beings. This means that they too have their strengths; they too have their ways of getting things done; they too have their values… Each works his or her way, not your way. And each is entitled to work his or her way”.

Peter F Drucker The best salespeople do not try to force their will on prospects or customers. They respect that people are individuals who like to have the freedom to choose and that customers want to be helped, not patronized. If you are

with a person who is over-friendly too early in a relationship, it is likely to raise concerns about their motives, you wonder about their real agenda. If you are with someone who goes into pitch mode too soon, you are likely to feel that you are being pushed to do something the other person wants rather than being allowed your own freedom to choose.

Decision makers rarely say anything if they feel patronized or pressurized, they tend to think Who is this person to speak to me like this? and then they vote with their money.

If you make the mistake of putting on your ‘selling hat’ and attempt to change from your normal personality into a different person, your discomfort when in that false character will show. You don’t need to conform to a stereotype of how a good salesperson behaves and act out of character. You just have to learn the professional skills and behaviours involved in selling – and behave like a human being.

David Tovey Author of Principled Selling David Tovey is a motivational speaker, coach, consultant and author of Principled Selling – How to Win More Business Without Selling Your Soul, published by Kogan Page. With over 25 years of sales and marketing experience, David works with individuals and organisations to help them build amazing business relationships and achieve outstanding sales growth with a joined up approach to inbound marketing, social media, sales, major account management and sales leadership.

www.principledselling.org/david-tovey

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Emerging Technologies Driving New & Innovative Marketing Strategies Anurag Kapoor and Alan Gray

The global marketing landscape is ever changing with emerging technologies and marketers need to ensure that they are tuned into the latest high tech trends that will have a strong impact on their industry. There are two technologies in particular that marketers need to pay close attention to as they could bring the art of targeting customers to an entirely new level – wearable and location-based marketing technology. These areas open up powerful opportunities for marketers if they have the strategies, IT systems and data analytics in place to fully leverage them. And if they are leveraged together, skies the limit on the opportunities that marketers could uncover.

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Anurag Kapoor VP of Business Development, Analytics | The Smart Cube Anurag Kapoor is an analytics professional with over nine years experience in managing client engagements related to Marketing and Supply Chain Analytics. He has been with The Smart Cube (TSC), a leading custom research and analytics organization, since 2003.

www.thesmartcube.com

Wearable Technology Gains Strong Momentum The growth of wearable technology is predicted to substantially pick up this year and continue to gain strong momentum.

Canalys, a market research firm, stated that in 2013 1.6 million smart wearable bands were shipped and that in 2014 shipments could reach a total of 8 million. They are also predicting that in 2015 over 23 million units will be shipped and in 2017 over 45 million.

Deloitte analysts stated that smart glasses, fitness bands and watches should sell about 10 million units globally in 2014 – generating $2 billion. Credit Suisse predicts that the entire market will be worth $50 billion by 2018.

From Google Glasses to FitBit to Galaxy Gear Fit to Pebble Watch, there is no question that wearable technology has arrived and is here to stay. For marketers not only is this a new way to touch the consumer, but it also creates

a new data stream that can be leveraged by businesses to help them highly customize offers and messages to their target audiences with optimal precision and success.

Location-Based Marketing Along with wearable technology, another area that is picking up strong momentum is location-based marketing. In fact, according to Pyramid Research, global market revenue for mobile location-based services and location-enabled mobile apps should reach more than $10.3 billion by 2015.

An example of a location-based marketing program that proved to be successful was when Nestle in the UK “hid” GPS trackers in some of its chocolate bar wrappers such as KitKat and Yorkie. A team then tracked the users after they opened the wrapper and contacted them within 24 hours to deliver a cash prize.

Another example is Netflix, an on-demand streaming service, ran a location-based

Alan Gray VP of Business Development, Strategy & Marketing | The Smart Cube Alan Grey has many years of experience leading strategy and marketing efforts for organizations such as Coalition Marketing and Catalina Marketing. He has been with The Smart Cube for over three years heading up the business development for the company’s Strategy & Marketing practice.

www.thesmartcube.com

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outdoor advertising campaign, which encouraged college students to interact with the company by posting regular questions about different film genres and popular TV series. Students were then requested to post their answers using university-specific Twitter hashtags and localized responses, which were shown on digital screens at 36 universities.

Data Analytics Is Critical For Success

The Power Of Fusing Location-Based Marketing With Wearable Technology

For data analytics to be successful, there are two levels required in this process, including:

Fusing location-based marketing with wearable technology could be very powerful.

In order to successfully do this, organizations will need access to the data streams that these technologies generate along with analytical capabilities on the back end. In addition, they need dedicated resources analyzing this data and then developing actionable insights. This will allow companies to target the right customer, at the right time, in the right location, with the right offer.

For example, a grocery store that is running a location-based marketing campaign could tap into the wearable technology and when a runner is near one of their grocery stores, the retailer could automatically alert and offer that runner a deal on a product such as vitamin infused water. Another example would be when a runner is by a sports apparel store and the retailer alerts him/her to an offer for a discount on running attire and accessories.

This is very powerful marketing, which allows the retailer to reach consumers with highly targeted offers. The retailer is also gathering real-time data on each of their location-based marketing promotions, so they can leverage this data in the future to improve promotions.

And the consumer receives relevant deals – it’s a win-win for both the consumer and the retailer.

With these types of emerging technologies, the need for data analytics is critical, which helps organizations uncover consumer patterns, trends, unforeseen correlations and other valuable consumer insight. This type of information can be leveraged not only by marketing, but also in other areas such as customer service and product development.

•• The algorithms that help connect the two technologies and are able to deliver the benefits to a marketer from a tactical perspective.

•• Business analytics that ensures the algorithms are actually delivering the value and meeting the business objectives that were originally outlined.

Business analytics helps support the marketing strategy for the organization ensuring long-term growth. Both parts of the analytics mentioned above need to be implemented to ensure optimal success.

While many organizations are joining the bandwagon of big data and investing millions – they sometimes lower their emphasis on the importance of analytics, which is a mistake.

Every year there will be emerging technologies that come to market and it’s critical that organizations carefully evaluate them to ensure they will generate sales, strengthen loyalty and fit within their brand.

If this criteria is met then companies should integrate the new technology within their marketing program, which will help them compete more profitably, stay relevant to their customers and enhance their brand.

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Big Data: Problem Scope And Solutions Overview Babar Khan Javed

Companies have had data about their key stakeholders for as long as they have existed, more recently we have been applying technology to analytical to solve problems for as long as we’ve had computers, so what’s new and what’s different here? So the first question is, “how much data are we talking about?” and why is there a preface big. In 1979, Dr. Jack E. Shemer and Dr. Philip M. Neches formed Teradata, a name that represents the idea of unimaginably large amounts of data and the resulting value

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proposition is “this is what we are going to help our customers optimize on”.

In 2008, WIRED magazine published an article titled “The Petabyte Age: Because More Isn’t Just More — More Is Different” and so you begin to see that 28 years later, the prefix creep moves on and “terra” won’t work anymore in the new normal with all this data being collected. Four years later, WIRED came out with another article on “The Exabyte Revolution” and the prefix’s are marching up - this one didn’t work for 28 years or 4

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years or even one year - it worked for about 6 months because Cisco recently came out with a report on “The Zettabyte Era—Trends and Analysis” and its not even the scary part.

There is only one more prefix in existence that can describe the next phase in big data and its called the Yottabyte, indicating a value of 10008. Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist for the Center for Digital Business at MIT’s Sloan School of Management on this problem wherein the term “Hellabyte” was unveiled as

the potential successor for the Yottabyte, if and when it comes to that.

This goes to show the increasing cascade and raw amount of digital data being generated, its coming at us more quickly, from all directions and its got forms we are not used to. As a corporate sales professional, I’m used to seeing my data: •• in numeric and text form, •• organized in rows and columns, •• spreadsheets and databases

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and we got comfortable working with that.

Now we’re getting data from the social web - pictures, status updates, hash-tags, videos and search terms. Because of GPS sensors, accelerometer, compasses and this array of sensing devices, our smart phones are giving off an exhaust trail of data. This really is a brave new world in the digital information realm. About 4,000 photos are uploaded to Facebook every second, with a quarter trillion to date. Google processes well over a billion searches a day. To find a way to profitably mine even half those searches and what the implications of the trends are - informational or transnational then business can gain insights & an advantage. Just some facts from less than 10 years ago: •• Facebook had not yet been founded •• Google was five years old •• Twitter was a gleam in someone’s eye •• The iPhone was four years away It’s really unreasonable to expect that companies around the world are on top of this phenomenon. By looking at problems with fresh eyes and utilizing the sources of new data that are relevant towards an industry, whether from a demand or supply perspective, accurate predictions can be made based on stakeholder intent and for operational streamlining.

In the real estate market, the crystal ball on how housing prices would and will fluctuate is has the highest demand among brokers.

The status quo means of attaining insights on housing prices is to approach the National Association of Realtor’s and subscribe to their forecasts on housing prices changes, which are developed by looking at economic indicators such as interest rates, GDP, demographic shifts which creates a statistical model that spits out forecasts area by area around the country. MIT’s Lynn Wu and Erik Brynjolfsson took the big data approach and sifted through Google’s search results within a specific territory and find links between 60

searches that suggest buying curiosity “house prices in Detroit” and the shift towards call to action (i.e. the searcher has finally decided) searches such as “schools in X area of Detroit” and build correlations between reasons for interest generation and means of closing the transaction. The result: the prediction model is 23.6% more accurate than the status quo.

According to this paper, employee theft and fraud accounts for up to $200 billion a year across the economy. As enterprises grow and become more geographically spread out, it becomes really hard to stay on top of everything going on - especially in a fairly inexpensive table service restaurant that run on razor thin profit margins with an immense load of data based of triggering any action and in house transaction. The other fact about these businesses is that employee dishonesty is on the rise and can be really devious about making sure that money that should go to the business finds its way into their pockets instead. NCR had the idea of doing pattern matching on this ocean of data coming in and flag suspicious behavior which would alert managers. The study looks at the before and after of the implementation of the technology in 400 locations and found the following benefits: •• drop in observed theft by USD 25 per week per location •• weekly revenue increased on average by USD 3,000 per month •• tip % significantly went up So what happened that employees felt the strain of big brother, curtailed their theft practices, focused more on up-selling & customer service and gained more take home tip income.

Once upon a time, Google conducted application tests with brain teasers such as “How many golf balls can you fit in an airplane?” and “How many gas stations are there in Manhattan?” to assess the methods

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

Babar Khan Javed Chief Marketing Officer | Ephlux Babar Khan is the Chief Marketing Officer at Ephlux, an Entrepreneur in Residence at Ephlux Insights, a Member of the MENA Board with the CMO Council and a speaker for the Marketing Association of Pakistan.

www.ephlux.com

through which a candidate would reach the answer as opposed to focusing on the answer itself. After going through their data and second guessing the effectiveness of hiring practices and criteria, Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations famously shared in an interview with NYTimes: “Brainteasers are a complete waste of time.” It also turned out that values such as schooling and GPA had little to no correlation between workplace innovativeness and performance.

“Computers are useless.

They can only give you answers.”

- Pablo Picasso The entire reliance on technology is not advised, as advanced machines do not know what questions to go ask next, so one of the cultural shifts the industry needs is to move away from making decisions towards asking questions and figuring out the next opportunity. The question to ask is “what do you need to get better at?” and a good way to do that is writing down 5 questions to which your organization does not yet have the answers to. When you look at what data driven companies do, its more incremental and experimental, they test and look at the data to assess the beneficial outcomes (if at all) and proceed down the path of highest returns. The scientific view is to have a hypothesis and work very hard to disprove

it - the goal is to be wrong and not structure the outcomes around a safe answer senior managers hope to reach. It’s time to send the signal throughout the enterprise that the era of analytics and geeks is the path upward, towards smarter decision making in the new normal.

One of the things that we’ve seen is that old dogs can learn new tricks, the internal tech and analytic teams can re-skill themselves to thrive in the new era of creating data scientists - able to work with big data sets and programs while having training in AI & machine learning including being able to talk to peers in management teams. Universities like KITE have recently launched the Center for Data Sciences to consult on big data and train the industry. With the introduction of MOOC’s from MIT, getting teams to upscale their minds on the latest technologies and methodologies in this era of adaptive learning has become more fluid.

Managers in this era need to start looking at their areas of ignorance and where the blind spots lie. The art of asking a good question is a really subtle art and that’s truly why it hasn’t been automated because the ability to be confused is still a very human skill. Managers need to stop thinking like accountants and more like geeks and think of new ways to combine what they are actually good at versus what the data are actually good at the next brave frontier.

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What Makes Content Compelling?

Chuck Jones

Content development and distribution, surveys show, is garnering a growing share of the marketing budget. Content marketing is the practice of getting appropriate types and amounts of information to prospective buyers in a timely and efficient manner. It gives buyers insights into their business. The goal is to drive leads, and ultimately sales.

Compelling content engages prospects, moves them further along in the sales cycle, and draws them to your events—the ultimate content channel. What are the attributes of compelling content?

•• It’s relevant. It deals with the buyer’s world and the buyer’s issues, not yours.

•• It’s truly valuable. It doesn’t dwell on what they already know. Value comes in three ways: 1. New information the recipient didn’t know before.

2. Analytical insight that helps buyers make sense of information and think of actions they can take.

3. Advice on how to take advantage of an opportunity, avoid pitfalls, mitigate risks, or survive a tough market.

An internet search will deliver a lot of online content about content marketing. But not all is compelling.

Here are a few of value: “Think of white papers, case studies, infographics, blogs and more as casting baited lines out into the water. If what you’re sharing is the right kind of content you’ll get plenty of interest and hopefully reel fish of all sizes into the boat.” From Chief Marketer, quoting Jane Buck, an expert in custom acquisition.

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“Your audience doesn’t need to be sold to — they need information. … Think about changing the mantra from always be closing, to always be helping.” From Toprankblog.com, quoting LinkedIn VP Jonathon Lister.

10 approaches to creating content when you don’t have breaking news to share regularly.

From Amazon’s page promoting “Content Rules”, a highly acclaimed content marketing book by Ann Handley.

Chief Marketer’s Holly Hamann wrote a great article, “11 Ways to Turn One Piece of Long-form Content into Dozens More.” Examples: turn an e-book into a webinar , turn the webinar into multiple blog posts, post a presentation on a site like SlideShare, record the webinar and offer it as complimentary content on the website, and post links to everything on social media.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

In your content, especially content in your marketing events, resist the temptation to shift into blatant “sales mode.�

At the event, remember that communication is a two-way street. You want to seize opportunities to listen to your audience.

Survey them in real time using smartphone apps, or use any available means to gather

feedback. Organize panels, round table discussions, and plenty of opportunities for peer interaction. Interview existing customers and gather information for case histories.

And remember: Coming out of an event, you have huge opportunities - not only for more content, but also for expanded engagement with those who attended.

Chuck Jones Chief Marketing Officer | Omnience Chuck Jones is the Chief Marketing Officer for Omnience. His experience includes multiple senior marketing positions in large, complex professional services firm. Chuck believes that marketing should be built on a clear strategy, further the business goals of the firm, be organized for maximum efficiency and cost effectiveness and be integrated with sales to generate revenue growth.

www.omnienceevents.com

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The Dawn Of A New Domain Age Damon Segal

Over 1000 new gTLD (Generic Top Level Domain) extensions are becoming available now, as if people weren’t confused enough by the web. Today it’s simple .co.uk, .com if you want to be international, even .eu at a stretch. You just need to do a Google search and look at the first page results. All you get in the UK is .co.uk, and .com, which has a 53% market share, in your results, there may be the odd .gov.uk even a .org thrown in for good measure. How often do you get a .info, .biz, .co, .me, .mobi, .pro etc. We already have hundreds of domains but this new change is different.

The new domains are not just country extensions; these are generic descriptive words that from a marketing perspective can have some excellent value! Also it’s pretty good news for registrars who get to sell them and I understand the application fee to get the gTLD from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was at least $185,000 each! Nice business!

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So What Are They?

A gTLD is a domain at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System.

Supposedly TLDs are better for SEO but I don’t think that has been confirmed by anyone official. Where they will help is by giving us more memorable domains e.g. prada.boutique, seo.ninja or tourguide.london.

Building Your Business From The Brand Up

I also find it hard to believe that although Google’s Matt Cutts says the new TLDs won’t have an advantage over existing domains that they won’t some how feature in one of the 200 or so signals Google looks for to rank a site. It may take five years, but why would you not rank Hyatt.Hotel over Hyatt.com if I search for Hyatt Hotels?

Many brands have applied for their own name domain extension, the reasons for this will vary but brand protection will be a prime one. Domains like .amazon will likely be available through Amazon for something like myshopname.amazon. Some other brands who have registered are; .apple .android .intel .citi .cartier

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Then we have the more generic terms such as; .email .guru .today .tips .agency .careers

.photography .technology

and many more!

This means you can register some great memorable marketing names. We recently registered telaeo.tips and telaeo.academy for a new website builder called Telaeo. If you are a photographer you might have packshot. photograpy instead of packshot.co.uk. The options are huge. For a full list take a look at the resources at the end of this article.

Land Rush Registration Phase The Landrush phase is the first opportunity registrants will get to buy domain names with no special prior requirements. If you have registered during this phase don’t think that you are guaranteed your domain. Many others may have also registered for this name. When it becomes available it will be up to your domain registry to snap it up before the next person!

Early Access Registration Phase If you’re willing to pay a premium on a domain you can register during the Early Access phase.

What You Need To Know There a re quite a few of these domains already available but even if they are not you can reserve many of them. The reservation periods are Sunrise, Land Rush and Early Access. If you have a trademark you don’t need to worry too much as it would be illegal to register the gTLD unless your trademark is not international in which case Sunrise is for you.

In Summary

The Sunrise Registration Phase

Resourses

If you hold a trademark then you are allowed to register your domain in the Sunrise phase.

You will need to be registered in the TMCH (Trademark Clearinghouse) and provide the associated SMD (Signed Mark Data).

https://gtld.123-reg.co.uk

If you think your business would benefit from an exciting new memorable domain then it’s worth registering but as far as the web sphere goes I suspect it will take a long time for these domains to gain a popularity where you would think to go to Hyatt.Hotel or Hilton.

Hotel automatically rather than trying a .com first.

www.godaddy.com/tlds/gtld.aspx http://newgtlds.icann.org

Damon Segal Managing Director | Emotio Design Group Having come from a traditional marketing and design background Damon has seen drawing boards replaced with Macs and paint brushes become Wacom Tablets. He is the Managing Director of Emotio Design Group, Director of Intenix and Co-Founder of Telaeo. Damon now provides both consultancy and delivery of marketing solutions to both large global and small businesses across a broad base of commerce and industry. His clients include Iron Mountain, Accenture and Bestway to name but a few.

www.emotio-design-group.co.uk

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