Digerati Magazine July 2016 Issue by DIGERATI

The Opportunity (and Challenge) of Content Marketing within

WALLED GARDENS The Last Mile of IoT: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Neil Patel on Landing Pages That Convert Top 5 Best Uses of VR in Marketing Interview with Nicki Kenyon, VISA APAC Building Brand Advocacy Through Clicktivism How Instagram Succeeds in Spite of Itself

CONTENTS

> CONTENTS Digerati is the world’s first ‘digital’ marketing magazine created specifically to provide a 360 degree view of the digital sector. Each issue covers digital innovation, content marketing, mobile, social, search, data and more. Click here to suggest a topic or submit a question.

FEATURE: The Challenge of Content

SOCIAL: How Instagram Succeeds

06 in Spite of Itself

IoT: The Last Mile of IoT: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

DESIGN: Neil Patel on Landing Pages You Need to Be Using Now!

BIG DATA

The Challenges of Decoding the DNA of Big Data

AUTOMATION:

Scott Brinker on Hygiene vs. Putting the Customer First

RETARGETTING:

RETARGETTING: Top Tips of How

How Instagram Succeeds in Spite of Itself

12 NOT to Retarget

SOCIAL:

VIRTUAL REALITY:

VIRTUAL REALITY: Top 5 Best Uses

The Opportunity (and Challenge) of Content Marketing within Walled Gardens

10 of Virtual Reality in Marketing

Welcome to the NEXT issue!

FEATURE:

04 Marketing in Walled Gardens

EDITOR’S LETTER:

Top Best Uses of 5 VR in Marketing

Top Tips of How NOT to Retarget

ADVOCACY:

Building Brand Advocacy Through Clicktivism

INDUSTRY TALK:

ISMA on Unenforceable Social Media Terms

VIDEO:

YouTube’s 10 Fundamentals of Good Content Creation

INTERVIEW:

VISA’s Nicki Kenyon on Making Advertising Interesting & Welcome

SEARCH MARKETING: 5 SEO Updates You Need to Know About

SOCIAL ROI:

Can Social Media Drive Real Revenue?

INBOUND MARKETING: The Impact of Customer Service on Inbound Marketing

THE INTERNET OF THINGS: The Last Mile of IoT: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

LOCATION:

LBMA’s 3 Layer Location Cake – Part 3

DESIGN:

Neil Patel Shares 4 Landing Page Types You Need to Use

NATIVE:

The Long Overdue Death of Display & Rise of Native

OPINION

> EDITOR’S LETTER Welcome to the ‘next’ issue. One of the notable findings from our recent Global Digital Insights Survey was the fact that Digital Innovation remains such a hot topic for marketers. Innovation will always be an important driver of marketing activity, the challenging question however is where to innovate and what technology to use? Which is why the Digerati team spend a lot of time thinking in terms of 70-20-10, Coca Cola’s marketing investment strategy that has shaped the way many modern marketers think. Under this model, marketers invest 70% of their marketing budget in established programs, 20% in emerging trends and 10% into ‘next’ ideas We use this very same model to shape every issue of Digerati. That’s why Issue #2 is focused on ‘Next Ideas’.

juggling multiple responsibilities and priorities, which often leaves little time to unwind, regroup and spend some downtime just ‘being’. Which is why we applaud the new French law that makes it illegal to email employees after work hours. So, what would you do with more ‘you’ time? The final Idea we’ve chosen to celebrate in this issue is the value of spending some of your downtime nerding out on all the cool new technology that’s out there that will be shaping the future of marketing. Our guest feature on the top five uses of virtual reality will show you some innovative ways brand are harnessing this immersive tech. Very cool stuff! So we hope you enjoy this issue and our selection of the best and hottest digital topics from around the globe. As always, we welcome your comments and feedback – constructive or otherwise – because this magazine is designed to make your life as a marketer easier.

As Jerry Maguire said, “help me help you…”

The first Next Idea we deliberated on was how to help marketers make sense of the marketing universe. Technology changes the way marketers market, and the neverending emergence of new and innovative technology to help marketers market better is a very real challenge. So we created this 1min Marketing Universe 360 video to assist you in understanding what’s out there and who the key players are.

Christopher Edwards Editor in Chief, Digerati Magazine

The second Next Idea we had was about reinforcing the value of ‘downtime’ for marketers. We’re all busier than ever before,

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

CONTENT MARKETING

Content Marketing within Walled Gardens and Across the Open Web

arketers face many challenges, foremost of which is achieving a single view of their customer. The challenge they too often face is how best to track consumer behavior across a broad digital ecosystem spanning search, social, shopping, multimedia, email and instant messaging in order to make better informed marketing decisions.

From a purely content marketing perspective, this fragmented consumer behavior can make it difficult for marketers to decide how best to structure their content marketing activities in order to achieve maximum reach and ROI, whilst at the same time reducing redundancy and inefficiency. Content Discovery - the process of getting the right content in front of the right audience at the right time – has recently emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments of the digital ecosystem. But while the category is expected to generate >

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

$21 billion in U.S. ad spend by 2018, many marketers remain unsure about best practices for getting the most from their content. Underpinning some of this uncertainty for brands is the recent shift of social companies like Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter becoming closed ‘walled garden’ environments. The walled garden challenge for marketers is simple: the platforms want users to linger on their properties as long as possible, whilst marketers want to drive users to their owned assets to drive ROI. A path forward for marketers is to accept that their content has to exist on the social platforms and across the open web if they’re to reach the widest audience possible. The real challenge for today’s marketer, however, is how best to deliver content into both environments in a cost efficient way.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

Digerati sat down with Taboola’s

CEO Adam Singolda to discover how brands can develop robust content discovery strategies that work within walled gardens and across the open web.

What’s the opportunity for brands as you see it?

The opportunity present within walled gardens owned and controlled by social behemoths like Facebook and Twitter is obvious. With one billion active daily users, Facebook is a content discovery powerhouse, a caveat being that brands fishing in their pond have to play by their rules. However, the opportunity for brands across the open web is equally enormous. Taboola now reaches over one billion unique monthly users across our network of publisher sites, so marketers have the opportunity to achieve a similarly massive scale outside and around these walled gardens.

CONTENT MARKETING

So walled gardens are a good thing then?

Yes. And no. I believe that while social companies do offer meaningful opportunities for brands, the risk marketers take is being too dependent on them as a means of content discovery. This can keep your customers at arm’s reach. Marketers need to know their users and customers, and build relationship with them by talking to them directly, and not through someone’s wall.

So you think marketers need to take a wider view of where their content lives?

For a long time social was the place people discovered things. It drove people away from Facebook and into your own blog, website or app, but now things are changing. Facebook’s ‘Instant Article’ is changing the rules, and people will never leave Facebook. So, given this change, the answer is a resounding yes. Marketers should absolutely diversify where their content appears. They should be aiming to have their content appearing in multiple environments, including on publisher sites as there’s a lot of credibility and added value in being discovered there. So yes, it’s important to diversify, but also to build experiences on your own website that allows you to build relationships with consumers. You can then leverage a publishers close relationships with their audiences to drive discovery.

drive really high value to small businesses, such as how to manage your cash flow, then over time people build trust and become loyal, long term customers.

Marketers have a range of options to them to drive content discovery, how should they prioritize between them?

People spend about 22% of their time on social, 21% on search and 20% of their time consuming content, which means that the opportunity for content discovery is broad and varied. So marketers need to spread the net, so to speak, and make the effort to be where their target customers are. But before any content discovery happens there needs to be serious time spent dedicated to strategy. There must be a long term strategy first, and it absolutely must start with a clear goal in mind. That is, a consideration of what exactly it is that is trying to be achieved as well as defining what success looks like. Content for the sake of content is a mistake.

There are some really good examples of brands that are taking a longer view to their content. American Express have Open Forum, a website that exists away from Americanexpress.com, where they write really high quality content for small businesses in America. This project is driven by the notion that if you can

What role can content play in driving sales, ROI?

When marketers are creating their content optimization strategy, most of them understand the value of engaging audiences through content, but aren’t sure how to tie their efforts back to sales. While some marketers expect content to lead directly to transactions, others see content as a means of strengthening brand perception. The actual ROI of content, however, is in the middle. It’s true that most content does not lead directly to a purchase, but when done correctly, every story you publish should lead consumers closer to buying your product. Content marketing isn’t a sales tool, but it isn’t a brand-building tool either. It’s a platform for building relationships at scale.

Once you’ve developed a relationship with your potential customer, it’s possible they might give your product a try. However, just because they’re in the evaluation stage doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to choose your brand. Your goal is simple: establish, deepen, and nurture relationships with your audience. This simple perspective will yield an uptick to your conversions. ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

SOCIAL MEDIA

How Instagram Succeeds In Spite of Itself by Ben Shute, Manager Social Media at QBE conversation difficult, and the ability to respond directly to another user’s comment is a multi-step process.

’ve been spending a lot more time on Instagram lately than usual. What I’ve noticed through building my community there is that despite it being a social platform, Instagram’s success seems at odds with its limited function set.

While the simple double tap to like an image is how it should be on mobile first social applications (the number of times I have done this on Facebook is ridiculous), and the ability to leave a comment is as straight forward as you would want it to be, other functions that are inherent to a social experience are not. There are three key areas where I think they need to improve.

This is particularly true for highly engaged accounts with large followings, as a limited number of comments load at any given time, making it challenging to find conversational elements. Sharing Perhaps the greatest shortcoming of Instagram is the ability to share content from others intra-platform. While it obviously pushes the point of original content, the number of third party apps that repost, or “regram” the content of others, demonstrates that the desire to share interesting content of others, in spite of how clunky the process is (more further down about that).

Perhaps the greatest shortcoming of

Conversation The ability to interact with not only a creator, but also commenters, is a core principle of online community building, with people coming together around a piece of content to make it something bigger. With Instagram however, conversation is difficult. Leaving a simple comment is fine, but the chronological nature and non-nesting of the comments makes following a

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

Instagram is the ability to share content from others intra-platform.

While Facebook has created conventions around how content from others is displayed when

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

you share from another person or publisher, Instagram (despite being owned by Facebook) has left it up to the multitude of developers to determine this, creating a lack of consistency, and at times a total lack of credit to the creator. Through developing this feature, Instagram can standardise the way content is shared on the platform, generating greater engagement and reach for creators. API In all of the aforementioned re-gram apps, the process generally involves a mirrored feed, a selection of the image, a standardised overlay, a copy caption function and then opening the photo in Instagram, pasting the caption and posting. It’s anything but smooth, and a limitation of the API. I’m beta testing Buffer‘s new Instagram integration, which is a much better experience in that I can schedule the post with the image and caption, and I get a reminder at the time to post and it copies across the image and caption for me to use. However, it exhibits the all to familiar trait of not being able to post directly to the platform. While none of these things are obviously inhibiting growth, the limitation of true community building features and a rough road to using third party tools to interact with it make it seem to be that Facebook and the Instagram team are missing a huge opportunity to increase growth.

BIG DATA

The Challenges of Decoding

the DNA of Big Data

hen Francis Crick and James Watson unraveled the DNA molecule 60 odd years ago they provided the world with a blueprint for life. Their research into understanding the human building block Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), the master molecule within every cell containing the genetic code of organisms, is arguably the most important discovery of the last century as it has since revolutionized everything from medicine to agriculture and forensics.

was planted in 1865 when the father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, posited that each successive generation of pea plant inherited two “units of information” from each parent. This reference to “units of information” – named so because genes had not yet been discovered – was the first inadvertent hint at the importance for

A key outcome of their research has been the advent of DNA sequencing which has now become indispensable for basic biological research. DNA sequencing - the process of determining the order of the four base nucleotides in a strand of DNA within a DNA molecule – has greatly accelerated biological and medical research. It’s through our ever expanding knowledge of DNA that scientists are able to save lives by identifying genes that trigger major diseases and then developing and manufacturing drugs to treat these diseases. A more recent scientific development that has the potential to deliver comparable outcomes to the discovery of DNA is found in the data sciences, a recently emerged organizational imperative that somewhat paradoxically has its roots presaged 150 years ago. The seed for the Big Data age

revolutions across all aspects of society, spanning health care, agriculture, crime detection, as our understanding of DNA has. Yet as an emerging science there are clearly challenges to overcome. The plethora of data at hand, the tools available for analyzing this data, and the shortage of experienced scientists to leverage these tools to deliver bottom line returns from analytics, are just some of the many challenges being tackled. Big Data is a nascent and nebulous industry, which explains why some marketers are already experiencing data fatigue.

Central to overcoming these challenges is an organizations ability to clearly outline the role data analytics will play in achieving the core business objectives, as well as its capacity for sourcing the appropriate talent to harness the multitude of technologies available to marketers into a technology solution that delivers bottom line returns.

future generations of understanding the interrelationships of units of information (‘data’). It’s this focus on understanding the interrelationships of information that spawned the Big Data age. Harnessing data analytics has the potential to yield equivalent

In coming years, it will be the organizations that develop their own Big Data DNA blueprint, supported by a core team that collects and collates the relevant available data, curates it in order to extract insights to inform business strategy to generate commercial returns whilst remaining compliant within the regulatory framework that will have the competitive advantage.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

MARKETING AUTOMATION

Scott Brinker on Hygiene vs. Harnessing Technology That Puts the Customer First

igerati sat down with our favorite marketing technologist, Scott Brinker, creator of the Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic, to hear his thoughts on how marketers should best evaluate and deploy new technologies within their organizations.

Q A

It’s because the task of marketing is exponentially more complex than ever before, so the thinking that served marketers yesterday won’t be as effective tomorrow. A major factor underpinning this complexity is this incredible disruption in the channels and touchpoints that marketers have with their audience, their prospects and their customers. This isn’t even about marketing technology, it’s about the steady pipeline of innovations that are appearing. Look at the Internet of Things and how this is going to change the nature of communications between marketers and their audiences.

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

Marketingtechnologybrief.com

You’re spending a lot of time ‘in market’ talking about the need to rethink marketing management, why is that?

Then there’s the explosion of bots using messenger interfaces as a way to interact with audiences. When you have these sorts of innovations arriving almost constantly they can actually disrupt marketers who can become enamored with the ‘new-new’ thing. I think the dynamic for marketers of having to understand and adapt to these successive waves of technological

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

innovation is probably the single biggest management challenge today.

OK. So what should marketers be considering when they evaluate new technologies?

I think they should be thinking about the customer. Look at all the current interest in

MARKETING AUTOMATION

chat bots. A lot of the discussion is focused on how a number of these chat interfaces on websites are powered by machine learning, yet most people don’t care if they’re talking to a human or not. Debating whether a chat bot could pass the Turing Test is a novel exercise, but at the end of the day for marketing it is

So, Customer Centricity should be the main driver for technology filtering?

Absolutely. Companies need to acknowledge and accept that they are on the hook for customer service. Even though they know they can work with outside partners on this, the ownership ultimately rests in their hands.

Is it really that simple?

Yes. And no. It is a combination of what technologies serve the customer, but also what technologies is the brand able to effectively apply - because the biggest challenge with marketing technology is not the tech itself - but the ability of an organization to absorb it productively into its actual work.

The question that marketers need to be asking when evaluating new technologies is ‘are these technologies meaningful and do they make sense to consumers?’

This is because they haven’t yet worked out how to deeply harness and co-ordinate all those technologies they’ve deployed to ‘stay competitive’. So when you hear your competitors banging on about omni channel marketing it’s very easy to think ‘Oh, we should be doing that too’, but for a lot of those competitors it’s more illusion than reality. How would you prioritize new technologies to be played with?

We’ve previously discussed how companies will roll out technologies as a hygiene factor because everyone in their vertical is doing it. Your thoughts on this?

when you peel back the layers and ask specifically how is this working it turns out that most aren’t running omni-channel marketing, and those that are doing it are incredibly light touch.

So the determination should be a consideration of what technologies are most relevant to the organization’s core customers, and also, what technologies the broader marketing team / organization overall are able to harness today. If you can’t apply it, why build it?

less about whether the artificial technology application passes as human and more a consideration of does the technology pass the test of delivering value to the target audience or providing a great customer experience.

It is one of those things where the illusion is often very different than the reality. A classic example is omni-channel marketing. There are a huge number of brands that raise their hands and say “Yeah, we are doing omni-channel marketing…” but

To a very real extent it depends on your industry. But at the end of the day, it always goes back to what sort of relationship are we trying to create with the customer? What sort of services or experience could we deliver to the customer that the customer would value and would make us stand out within in our competitive landscape?

Against that background, to the degree you can, chat to your customers and observe how your customers interface with your company to get a sense of what seems to be their process: where are the hurdles they run in to, what do the customer service/ sales engineers teams have to say? Collect that pool of real world customer challenges that people have and then, when looking at the range of marketing technologies, filter it through this lens and trial the selected technologies.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

VIRTUAL REALITY

Best Uses of Virtual Reality in Marketing

by Tom Szirtes, Director, Mbryonic

effectively. Each micro case study includes a video with exclusive footage plus some actionable insight from each campaign. 5. Boursin – Sensorium Soft cheese supplier Boursin created a virtual reality experience that takes you on a journey through a fridge full of delightful treats. They hired the marketing agencies BecauseXM and HammerheadVR to deliver the project. Boursin exhibited this in various malls and events around the United Kingdom. It’s quite extravagant for a cheese company but we like it because it sets the bar high. Their exhibit also includes wind jets so you can truly experience this adventure. 4. Volvo – XC90 Test Drive

he brands and agencies that are succeeding with Virtual Reality (VR) Marketing are doing two things very well; they’re identifying VR Marketing narratives that get them results, and they’re putting 100% of their resources into creating stories that resonate with their audience. VR Marketing works because it solves a huge problem marketers have around engagement:

• Immersive – users wearing a headset are completely immersed in the content, meaning fewer distractions and more attention on the message.

• Memorable – our brains are built to remember events linked to locations, this means that VR experiences have a longer trace in the audience’s memory. • Novel – with high media and public interest in VR, early adopters can benefit from favorable media exposure. The following campaigns are examples of brands leveraging VR

• Impactful – the intensity of a VR experience is greater than traditional media generating strong emotions in its users which are linked to real behavior change.

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

Test driving a car through VR makes a lot of sense if you don’t have a car dealer close by. It’s great to see Volvo make an app to support the launch of their XC90 SUV. It puts you in the cockpit and takes you on an idyllic ride through the country. This was created by Framestore VR Studio and we think this is a great move by Volvo – a company that’s struggled to modernize their brand against their competitors. By adopting VR in this way they’ve made the public look at their brand in a new light. It also might become the standard by which future test driving apps are compared, giving Volvo a first mover advantage in the automotive industry.

VIRTUAL REALITY

1. Marriott – The Teleporter Imagine being able to transport yourself to a beach paradise whenever you wanted! Framestore VR Studio and Relevant partnered with Marriott to create a unique teleportation experience for the public. Framestore VR Studio describes it as “A Revolutionary 4D Tourism experience for Marriott Hotels, that teleports you first to a Marriott Hotel and then to the beach in Hawaii.” 3. Patron – The Art of Patron A tequila company might not be an obvious beneficiary of a VR marketing strategy, but Patron used the power of VR to tell a compelling story around the company’s product. Using a mix of live action and computer graphics they created a 360 journey following the product lifecycle from agave field to being served at a glamorous party. The entire production took six months and was developed by creative agency Firstborn, postproduction agency Legend and sound design agency Antfood. This was a great campaign because it gives the user an inside look at the process of creating Patron’s Tequila, plus it’s both entertaining and educational. 2. Merrell – Trailscape To support the launch of a new hiking boot, the Capr, Merrell created a VR experience called Trailscape that takes you on a dangerous mountain hike. Participants walk along a stage set that is mapped to the virtual experience to create a new level of immersion. The motion capture allowed

adventurers to explore the mountainside, with tactile elements such as rope walkways and shaking wooden planks, making this one of the most immersive VR experience to

date. Showcased at 2015 Sundance Film Festival, it was the brainchild of Merrell, agency Hill Holliday and Framestore VR Studio. Trailscape does a great job of integrating the brand into a powerful user experience. We really like the fact you can walk around in this demo, which is relevant for the product and also isn’t something we see often in VR experiences.

Inside a telephone booth-like structure, they used Oculus Rifts, heaters, and wind jets to take users on a trip to Hawaii and London. Whilst it’s not quite the same as actually being there, it might help you decide on your future trips. It also helped Marriott position themselves as a forward looking and relevant brand in the market. We liked this because it combines visuals with our other senses, going beyond what is possible by just showing a 360 video. Whilst not a cheap campaign to produce, it was successful enough for Marriott to commission a second experiences, proving that VR is more than a one-off gimmick and something that can be core to a marketing strategy when used properly.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

RETARGETTING

hen explaining to family and friends what retargeting is, I get a range of responses. “Wow! Is that how they do that?” or “”OMG! Is that why that ad followed me around for weeks?” Retargeting can be an incredibly effective marketing tool by serving relevant ads to relevant people - but when done badly - retargeting can be overbearing and downright annoying. So what is it that annoys customers? Is it being hounded by the same ad over and over again? Is it being served an ad from a site they visited with a completely irrelevant product? If these are the common bugbears of consumers, why don’t advertisers listen?

Retargeting is not a game of persistence. Continuing to serve the same ads over and over to potential customers is more likely to give people a negative experience than if you show them relevant, targeted ads less often. Keeping retargeting relevant and positive is a top priority for a datadriven business like AdRoll. Our core premise is around responsible retargeting that delivers results for advertisers and builds a connection between customers and brands. We looked at some of the things giving consumers an unfavorable view of our industry and put together some top tips on how NOT to retarget. What is retargeting? Retargeting converts windowshoppers into buyers. Generally 2% of shoppers convert on the first visit to an online store. Retargeting brings back the other 98%. Retargeting works by keeping track of people who visit your site and displaying your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online.

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

Top tips on how

NOT

to retarget by Ben Sharp, MD APAC, AdRoll

RETARGETTING

Target the same people over and over with the same ad

Easy enough to do if you’re using many retargeting providers. Implementing a system that has the ability to cap the number of times a customer is served a particular ad is imperative to retargeting responsibly. Segmenting your site visitors based on pages viewed and actions taken on your site allows advertisers to enhance campaigns further using additional strategies. For example, once a customer has

The two most common groups that are segmented are those who have purchased on your site and those who haven’t. These groups can then be further refined to reflect the level of intent shown on a website. Think of low intent segments as customers who have made it to the homepage, mid intent segments as those customers that clicked through to a product page and high intent as customers who abandoned the shopping cart. Each message can then be tailored offering various products and incentives such as free shipping or a percentage off.

50% of Australian marketers agree that social media retargeting is currently the hottest topic in retargeting. made a purchase from your site, you can retarget them with ads to join a loyalty program or receive a discount on their next purchase. This eradicates irrelevant ads following customers around the web.

Serve the same old, generic display ad to everyone that has ever been to your site With 98% of visitors to your site leaving without making a purchase, brands may get excited by the huge base they have to start with. The key to any successful retargeting campaign is to segment your audience so they can be served the most relevant ads.

the power of programmatic to be front of mind with the most valuable customers. Campaigns are expanded and enhanced by utilising social channels, and Facebook’s News Feed ads often results in likes, shares, follows, comments, etc., taking the customer’s relationship with your brand to the next level.

Mobile isn’t advanced enough yet. Advertisers don’t need to worry about it Don’t let mobile fall into the too-hard basket, Australian’s are spending 52 per cent of their digital screen time on their mobile device. This is a number far too high to ignore. While tracking a customer’s mobile journey can be difficult, it is possible with the right tools. Keeping relevant and playing in the same space as your customers is essential. By simply adding mobile ad sizes to Facebook News Feed campaigns, Australian marketers have seen 29 per cent more clicks and 15 per cent more conversions.

Nobody pays attention to social advertising

Mobile attribution is an ongoing challenge for marketers. A study from the US shows this is the case, however progress is being made with mobile game developers driving the industry forward, tracking KPIs including mobile app installs, in-app purchases, and customer lifetime value.

Fifty per cent of Australian marketers agree that social media retargeting is currently the hottest topic in retargeting. With our customers seeing an average performance lift of 2.13x more impressions, 2.0x more clicks and 1.38x more conversions when incorporating Facebook into their retargeting mix it’s easy to see why. A recent study shows that almost a quarter of every hour Australian’s spend on the internet is dedicated to social networking sites. It is crucial for brands to harness this shift in media consumption and pair it with

You can see that the advantages far outweigh the tracking difficulties. Make sure your site is mobileoptimised and step in the right direction. Now you know how NOT to do, it’s time to the retargeting game responsibly and keep your customers coming back to your site over and over again.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

ADVOCACY

Building Brand Advocacy

through Clicktivism

arketers tend to recoil when they hear the term “digital activism”, usually for good reason. Activists aren’t known for being friends to brands, so the unspoken rule is to steer clear of them wherever possible. Then there’s the sad but true fact that the term “digital activism” has become synonymous with the term “slacktivism” - where people can, and do, ‘support’ worthwhile causes with the least amount of effort possible; typically by sharing a popular hashtag, liking or commenting on a social media post

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

or changing their profile picture. That being said, in recent months a handful of successful social change campaigns have drawn media attention around the globe, breathing life into the value of digital activism, or clicktivism. Online petitions like the recent #ToyLikeMe campaign - which lobbied LEGO for more inclusive toys, resulting in LEGO unveiling its first ever mini-figure in a wheelchair - have some brands rethinking the potential of clicktivism. Digerati sat down with Change. org’s Anna Robinson to learn more

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

about how some savvy brands are deferentially embracing worthwhile causes to build brand advocacy online.

The LEGO campaign is a highly visible demonstration of the power of online activism, does this make your day when you hear of these types of wins?

It does. But it’s also important to remember that this is just one successful cause championed by the 130 million users in every single country in the world. A petition wins every hour of every day around the

ADVOCACY

world and if it didn’t work, people wouldn’t keep coming back.

130 million is a large community. Does this disprove the mantra that apathy rules?

Absolutely. Despite what we may think is true, people are far from apathetic about the world around them. They want to create lasting change in their community.

Clicktivism is a new area for many brands. What do brands need to know about this space?

Individuals see their consumer behavior increasingly as a way of creating change, but they also see that governments alone can’t create the types of change they are looking for. So in that space, they’re looking for brands to step up and be leaders. Consumers are looking for brands to take a stand on important issues that they care about.

Around 70% of Change.org’s petitions target brands, not governments, and that creates huge opportunities for brands to listen to consumers and gain access to larger, highly engaged audiences. There’s an opportunity for brands to really engage people deeply in their work and help turn people into advocates who will help drive the success of the brand into the future.

Q A

In your experience, which brands are doing this well?

More than 100,000 organizations are advancing their causes and connecting with new supporters on Change.org, but two brands who stand out are Virgin America and Fusion.

Virgin America ran an amazing campaign in Dallas, Texas, where they were effectively locked out of the airport by other airlines. They launched a campaign on Change.org to help get them into that airport, achieving 27,000 signatures in a very short amount of time, but more importantly helping engage a whole group of people to help drive that brand forward.

prolific problem. They’ve run documentary content, but also run a campaign asking President Obama to end solitary confinement for juveniles, which they shared across their website, social media and email programs. It attracted huge amounts of celebrity endorsements, but also engaged about 100,000 people from existing and target audiences. That campaign was victorious when President Obama announced he would be ending solitary confinement for juveniles.

It doesn’t Q feel like it’s a choice A anymore to not engage with consumers and what they have to say online.

What are some guiding thoughts for the brands who want to move into this space?

First thing I’d say is DON’T IGNORE IT. We’ve seen when companies engage actively with meaningful causes, they get rewarded by consumers. But when they ignore complaints or petitions it doesn’t make it go away. It doesn’t feel like it’s a choice anymore to not engage with consumers and what they have to say online.

The other brand that I love is Fusion, which is a U.S. television network who have run an incredibly smart brand marketing digital strategy which taps in to grassroots advocacy. One of the campaigns they’ve run with us is focused on prison kids. The campaign tied in with the content they were delivering on the network, looking at instances of juvenile justice and incarceration in the U.S., which is a

The next thing I’d suggest is START TO LISTEN. Brands need to be incredibly responsive and make time to really listen. But they also need to think really deeply about how they can actually use what they hear to help shape the way that their brand operates. The third thing is AUTHENTICITY MATTERS. People are very good at sniffing out when brands aren’t being authentic and are seen as just doing it for brand mileage. My final tip is to have the courage to TAKE A STAND. Be willing to take a stand on issues. Identify with your existing consumers what those issues are that they care about. Never be afraid to take a stand.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

SOCIAL MEDIA

Media Giants Terms Unenforceable Under Australian Law by Sara Delpopolo, President of ISMA

he International Social Media Association (ISMA) recently analysed the enforceability of the

Terms of Service of ten of the most prominent social media platforms under Australian law. Their findings, released in their 2016 Social Media Terms of Service White Paper, reveal

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

significant shortcomings throughout the Terms of Service and details where they fail to meet appropriate legal standards in Australia. Unsurprisingly, the Terms of Service are heavily one-sided, in favour of foreign corporations and unfair to Australian users who are being short-changed by the

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

platforms. These findings form the basis of ISMAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reform agenda in balancing the interests and rights of both social media users and the platforms. As a result of the power held by these platforms, they are burdened with a far greater level of corporate responsibility. Perhaps this is the

SOCIAL MEDIA

reason for their overly complicated Terms of Service which they know hardly anyone reads, but which everyone accepts anyway. However, most Australians do not realise that some terms are completely unenforceable. In short, accepting the platforms’ terms does not mean throwing your rights away. The most concerning terms relate to disclaimers of liability, IP enforcement, privacy and data, consumer laws and minors. Whilst allowable in the United States, it is a contravention of the Australian Consumer Law for platforms to rely on their very broad disclaimers of liability in respect of issues such as the fitness for purpose of the services. Other problems with the Terms of Service arguably arise due to public policy expectations placed on the platforms by virtue of their influence and control. In order to balance their own legal rights against those of their users, the platforms have had to implement mechanisms to deal with increasing user complaints. The effect is that when claims of infringement or other complaints are filed via the takedown provisions, the platforms are acting as judge, jury and executioner on what are more often than not complex legal issues reserved for the courts. For example, when it comes to claims other than copyright infringement such as in respect of trade marks, the platforms appear to be hiding behind the safe harbour provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act in order to indemnify themselves against any incorrect determinations.

Most users readily accept that they sacrifice some degree of privacy on social media, but the advertising practices implemented by some platforms reveal the inadequacies of the current Australian privacy laws. With minimal notification, some platforms collect parcels of data called cookies containing information about users’ internet activity both on and off the platforms. If a user elects to opt-out of this practice, that preference is stored as a cookie. This means that when users delete cookies (in order to minimise online surveillance), advertising preferences revert back to the original settings and, without the user realising, the surveillance recommences. Perhaps of most concern is that none of the Terms of Service carry any clear legal effect for Australian users under the age of 18. Minors are a rapidly growing portion of the social media user base, already numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Contracts entered into by minors are not always going to be invalid. However, when most of the

platforms’ Terms of Service are over 45 A4 pages long and require legal training to understand them, it begs the question. Consequently, minors fall into a significant grey area when it comes to enforceability. This could result in issues such as the platforms (or page owners) having to refund payments for in-app purchases made by minors; the invalid assignment of copyright when it comes to user generated content created by minors; or even liability exposures for unauthorised surveillance and data collection of minors online. “The findings are very comprehensive and reveal the enforceability of the Terms of Service, and the extent that Australian users’ legal rights may not be protected” explained Sara Delpopolo, President of ISMA. “This Paper is a crucial step by ISMA towards achieving what should be expected of the online legal landscape - to protect Australian social media users and assist businesses. Social media is not just about being ‘sociable’; it’s about how society interacts on digital platforms internationally.” Ms Delpopolo concluded.

Intending to avoid a patchwork of laws and the Band-Aid solutions seen so far, the main objective of ISMA is to work with government departments and platforms to reach a sensible multistakeholder resolution. ISMA’s 2016 Social Media Terms of Service White Paper which incorporates a detailed Comparison Table can be accessed via ISMA membership. www.isma.ngo

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

VIDEO

YouTube’s

10 Fundamentals of Good Content Creation

hether you’ve

SHAREABILITY

already

Will viewers share these videos?

created a

We use “shareable” interchangeably with “viral” -- the idea that people watch your videos and immediately want to share them. Sharing or recommending videos is powerful because people are learning about YOU from the people THEY trust the most — their friends and family. We think people share videos partly because of what the videos say about themselves.

viral video that gained

100,000+ views, or you’re only now starting to think about developing a series of videos, these guidelines will help you to test your ideas and give them the best chance of success on YouTube. You don’t need to have them all, but the more boxes a creator/brand can incorporate, the more chances of being a digital success.

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

For example, sharing a funny video demonstrates their sense of humor. Smart content makes them look smart. How will your videos make people look

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

when they share them? What was the last thing you shared in social media? What made you share it?

CONVERSATIONAL Are you speaking directly to your audience? YouTube is an incredibly social platform. Viewers see their favorite stars as friends. Talking to the audience builds loyalty and repeat views. As you look at series ideas, consider how to have a dialogue with your audience. Establishing such a bond can mean the difference between simply finding an audience and creating loyal fans.

VIDEO

INTERACTIVITY Can you involve the audience? Imagine if you had the power to affect what happens in your favorite TV show -- how thrilling would that be? One of the unique advantages of making content on YouTube is that you can give the audience the chance to participate. Interactive videos are effective because they show viewers that the channel is as much for them as it is for the creator. So, as you develop show ideas, see if you can involve the audience in what you’re making.

CONSISTENCY Does this idea have strong recurring elements? Top creators agree that consistency is a must if you want to build a loyal audience, but that can mean different things to different people. Some creators consistently release videos on the same day and time. Others suggest it’s all about consistent formats, so fans know what to expect. Using the same face or personality across your videos might be your consistent element. Even a consistent tone of voice can be helpful. Regardless of how you achieve it, make specific elements of your channel cohesive when you plan your content. How can you improve consistency on your channel?

TARGETED Is there a clearly defined audience? Viewers love seeing videos they can relate to, so try tailoring your content to a specific group or demographic. This could be a large group, such as parents of toddlers, or a small niche, such as collectors of Disney toys. Either way, we’ve found that the more you can define your intended audience, the more traction you’ll get.

SUSTAINABILITY If the audience loves it, can you make more of it? To set yourself up for long-term success, you need to build a sustainable operation that will maintain viewer interest over time. Think about what it takes to produce your series. If your audience really loves it, are you able to create more considering the location, the equipment, and budget? Is this a topic or type of production that you’ll continue to love well into the future?

DISCOVERABILITY Will your videos surface in Search or Related Videos? YouTube is one of the most-used search engines in the world. People pour onto the site looking for video content around all kinds of subjects. Sometimes these queries center around hot topics or trending events, like an amazing sports play, an election, or the Olympics. Other times, people search for information, such as how to fix a water heater or how to do the “smoky eye” makeup effect. Either way, discoverable videos pile on extra views and potential new subscribers.

ACCESSIBILITY Can a brand new viewer fully appreciate every episode? When looking at new series ideas, it’s worth considering that a significant percentage of people may discover a single episode through a social feed, a search result, or a Related Video. Therefore it’s important to have videos that don’t require a lot of context. A show with “stand-alone” episodes is helpful because, if you’ve uploaded 50 episodes, those represent 50 chances for a new viewer to stumble upon your work, enjoy it, and subscribe for more. As you develop a new show

idea, ask yourself if a new viewer can appreciate each episode by itself. We’re not saying you have to have a fully accessible show, but it can help a channel grow faster.

COLLABORATION Is there room to feature other YouTubers? Nothing boosts a subscriber count faster than collaborating with other creators who have passionate fans — especially those who are making similar videos. Partnerships provide great opportunities to expose your content to new viewers who are likely to enjoy what you do. When the guest star promotes the video, your work is seen by another loyal audience who already knows how to use YouTube — how to subscribe, comment, and favorite videos. If they like you, they’ll subscribe to you too. Collaborating is also a great way to build relationships inside the very vibrant and active community of creators.

INSPIRATION Is this idea coming from a place of genuine inspiration? Top YouTube creators will often tell you that loving what you do is of the utmost importance. Not only will it give you more stamina as a creator, but viewers can identify true inspiration — or the lack of it. Therefore, you’ll want to be seen on camera as authentic, interested and, most importantly, passionate — and this comes naturally if you’re truly inspired. If you’re an individual, make videos that will make you happy. It happens to be key to building fans. If you’re part of a company, strive to make content that’s true to brand, and find talented people who are inspired by the channel’s mission.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW WITH

NICKI KENYON VP DIGITAL MARKETING & TRANSFORMATION APAC AT VISA 20

he term Big Data has been cited so often in the media, the boardroom and in businesses around the world that it’s become difficult to know what it really means. Is it simply a hollow buzzword, or is it a critical business enabler? More importantly, is it really going to change the world? We didn’t know, but we knew someone to ask. Digerati sat down with VISA’s Nicki Kenyon to have a chat about the role of Big Data at Visa, the value of understanding your customers, and to hear why brands should harness their customer data to make advertising interesting and welcome.

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

You’re responsible for driving marketing transformation to deliver marketing excellence for future needs. How do you anticipate those future needs at Visa?

It comes down to having a very clear view of where the business is at today, in a sense, performing an audit; gaining an understanding of what marketing channels we’re currently employing; what approach we take to media planning; how traditional are we vs. how in touch are we with how consumers are behaving; how close are our marketing activities reflective of where consumers are, how they are behaving and consuming. In terms of future needs, it’s about getting really clear on where the business is currently at, and then it becomes about keeping up

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

to date with consumers and their behavior.

Therein lies the marketers challenge; staying current with

I agree. I think marketers in general are just ‘off’ with

consumers behavior…

consumer behavior. The classic example is marketing spend. How many hours a day are consumers spending watching TV, listening to radio, or on digital devices, versus where that split is in terms of marketing spend? This is vastly different. So, we need to keep up with consumers, how they discover, how they search, how they share, and then be prepared to adapt and put in place technologies that can reach them in those channels and match their behaviors.

INTERVIEW

This is similar to the gap in mobile between consumer consumption and ad spend, so how are you closing the gap? How would you convince the business, for example, that Snapchat is now relevant?

It’s about taking a ‘test and learn’ approach. If I could just say “here is something new, it’s interesting to us because 10 million people are using it”, or whatever the data is that supports that Snapchat is relevant to the business as a communication channel to reach consumers, life would be easy. But, people then ask me for proof points.

why is the technology relevant to the business - and then (ii) deliver the proof points in a ‘test and learn’ environment.

What is the role of Big Data at Visa: is it customer led or hygiene focused?

We absolutely take a customer centric approach. From there, there are two ways we think about data to enable (empower?) us to reach the right audience, effectively. Firstly, when I talk about how we can leverage data for marketing purposes. I don’t show a single chart or table or graph. I prefer to

When you can target a consumer knowing something about them, their life stage, their interests and behaviors, and present something to them which is relevant, it starts making advertising interesting and welcome. So I tell them I can’t give you proof points until we test and learn. So let’s do a small project. Let’s put a small amount of budget against it and let’s be clear about what our business objective is. We shouldn’t ever just use technology for the sake of technology. Start there, do a test, keep it modest and then bring the learnings back to the business. To me, the steps are (i) identify the data or analytics first, that is -

The wealth of data that we have is just so enlightening if data is viewed as a tool that better informs the decisions we make as a

business. It is a huge opportunity. Secondly, data provides us with an effectiveness measurement, that is, an understanding of how effective our marketing activities are. And that’s the exciting thing about Big Data: it’s not the wealth of the data that we have access to, or the ‘bigness’ of it, it is what it can actually tell us as far as who our audiences are and how effective our marketing is….which is unprecedented. We’ve never been in an era like this where we can see how effective we are being as marketers.

Do you feel that digital is overly scrutinized versus traditional marketing because we can measure everything in the digital space?

Yes, it has become another distractor. Throughout my career I’ve become increasingly interrogated by senior leaders in business - non marketers - when we presenting a marketing report that has digital tactics. The interrogation is unprecedented with immediate responses consistently centering on return on investment etc.

show what the data can do for the business. And it’s all about targeting: identifying who is the audience we want to reach, where they are, how they are consuming/ discovering, and therefore how we can connect with them in a targeted way, which is therefore a welcome way.

We’ve never, ever been interrogated in quite the same way as when we’ve done a traditional television campaign etc. In those instances, leadership is more focused on the creative. The interrogation that exists around digital - because we have the data is another distraction, where people get obsessed with the numbers, often the wrong numbers. What we should all be focusing on is what any particular campaign, digital or otherwise, is doing for the business and how that campaign is driving business impact.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

INTERVIEW

Would you describe data as your big digital priority for 2016?

Absolutely. When I think about digital I think about, data and technology and people. But it is the data that we have access to that enables us to make better informed decisions whether it’s business priorities, whether it’s how we spend our budgets, whether it’s what channels we communicate through. The wealth of data that we have is just so enlightening if data is viewed as a tool that better informs the decisions we make as a business. It is a huge opportunity.

There is a mind-shift, however, that needs to take place, and I think there are lags in mind set shifts and people understanding what that opportunity for data is, and what it can provide. There are also lags in resources, that is, we don’t often have the right business minded people who understand where the opportunities in data are, or, at the other end of the extreme, the data scientists to help us understand what the data actually means.

The channels are there, the technology is there, the big question is how can data leverage them more effectively?

Quantium stated that the 4 principle goals of data are: knowing your customers better; knowing what they are buying; knowing where to find more customers; knowing what new products to create. Does this reflect the view at VISA?

and it is experiential, we can track that, we can know that someone remembers that it was a VISA ad that they saw, and that is an effective result, a true business outcome.

How does data drive genuine customer engagement at VISA?

Engagement is different for every person, so you can’t produce a single creative asset and expect everyone to engage with it. Now, because of data and technology, it’s about knowing the customer you’re trying to reach and delivering messages, products and services that are relevant to them. There’s a great quote from Cyndi Gallop… “people hate advertising in general, but they love advertising in particular”. I think this sums it up beautifully because as a marketer I don’t want people to hate advertising, but as a consumer don’t serve me up an ad in my Facebook or Twitter feed for a new car when I’ve just bought one.

The wealth of data that we have is just so enlightening if data is viewed as a tool that better informs the decisions we make as a business. It is a huge opportunity.

It’s about connecting the dots between these two different types of people and finding a common language to leverage the data so the business can make the right decisions. I still often see the creation of single creative assets >

that are blasted to a mass audience, where data could have been utilized to provide a more targeted, relevant and effective message.

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

Absolutely. And the fifth goal I would add to that list is a consideration of how effective are the marketing activities we are doing proving to be? We have lots of discussions about marketing effectiveness and measurement at VISA. And it’s not about every single marketing activity resulting in a sale or acquisition, because there are many ways of monitoring effectiveness. When there is a role for the brand, and it is relevant

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

That said, show me a personalized ad in whatever channel that I’m consuming that tells me about a new kids adventure park that’s just opened in Singapore and I will tell you that I love advertising as I live in Singapore, I have a young daughter, and a relevant piece of content that is engaging and targeted to me is great advertising.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

5 SEO

Updates

You Need to Know About By Kate Toon

s someone who teaches business owners the in’s and out’s of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), I’m well aware that one of the biggest worries many of them have is staying across Google’s algorithm changes so they maintain their search rankings. Staying on top of the latest SEO developments is an essential part of any well-rounded digital strategy, so I’ve compiled five recent search developments to give you a head start. Google AMP AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open-source initiative that encourages publishers to create mobile-optimised content and have it load instantly. It’s all about improving the mobile experience, where speed is often an even more critical factor than for desktop. Websites that implement Google AMP will display stripped back content that launches more quickly. At first, AMP focused primarily on publisher content, however Google’s Richard Gingras recently announced that AMP will be coming to Recipes in the mobile search results. Recipes in AMP will be in a carousel format and include a photo, similar to how we currently see AMP appear in the “In the News” mobile carousel. It’s likely that AMP will be rolled out across all content soon, making it a definite must for your SEO to-do list.

TIP: If your site is built using WordPress, consider installing the WP AMP plugin to dynamically generate an AMP-compatible version of your site content. Currently it only works for posts, but i suspect they’ll upgrade it as Google rolls out AMP . Search Result Changes

Featured Snippets Another impact of the increasing popularity of mobile is the increase in featured snippets. This is where Google plucks some content out of your page and uses it in a featured box at the top of the page to make life easier and quicker for mobile users. Although some people fear having the answer to a search query appearing in the results will stop users clicking through to your website, the opposite generally proves to be true. To increase your chances of being featured in the featured snippet, I recommend:

Google recently moved the ads from the side column of the search results to the top of the search results. This change has had a number of knockon effects: The width of the results has increased from 500 to 600 pixels.

Posting content that answers specific questions (think “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why” and “how”).

Organic results have crept a little higher up the page—a good thing seeing as Google has put four AdWords ads at the top of the results pages.

Having a clear, interesting image on the page.

We now have around 70 characters (including spaces) for our all-important title tags.

Bing’s Market Share is increasing

Local Advertising on Google Maps We already know that certain local terms will result in a local three pack appearing in the blended results. But Google is taking it one step further by launching multiple new advertising opportunities to advertise on Google Maps with everything from promoted pins to in-store promotions. For now, this is strictly on Google maps—not on the organic listings local three pack, but who knows how long that will last…

According to comScore, Bing’s share of the search market rose by 0.2% in April, while Google’s dropped by 0.2% during the same period. Google’s total share of the US desktop search market has dipped below its previous 64% to 63.8%, and Microsoft’s share of desktop search is now sitting at 21.6%. This isn’t a massive shift by any means, but it does signal that brands should be looking wider than Google and giving Bing a larger role in their wider SEO strategy.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

SOCIAL MEDIA

Can

Social Media Drive REAL Revenue? by Shawn Herring, CMO, Torchlite Marketing

D 24

igital marketers of today have gone in circles trying to answer the question of whether or not social media can actually drive real revenue. While social media is still rapidly changing, and there are many new ways to attract prospects and convert customers, that certainly hasn’t always been the case. Early on in the days when social media was emerging and companies were trying to figure out how to implement a “social strategy”, the focus was very much on branding and customer service. However, with the evolution of social channels over the years there are many new opportunities to attract real revenue through social. According to a recent Entrepreneur article, “Companies are spending anywhere between $100,000 to $300,000 (and sometimes even more) to build and maintain their social followings. Between ads, salaries of social media managers, and of course the requisite marketing tools and services to keep it all together, social is now a significant investment for most brands.”

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

So how can those brands be sure their significant investments are actually paying off? Here are 5 ways social media can drive real revenue for your company, according to a recent Oracle blog written by Steven Woods:

Extending Your Reach As marketers we’ve defined “reach” as size of our database – the number of people we can actually touch with our messaging. As Google grew so did inbound marketing, and more emphasis was placed on creating content that could be easily found by your ideal audience. Social media has once again changed that model. More people are finding content through social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook - both organically as well as paid advertising through social platforms. Buyers were once defined

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

by search terms. Today they’re defined by their social networks. Getting sharable content into those networks, while observing who interacts with it, lets you grow the reach of your marketing.

Targeting Influencers to Drive Conversions Getting prospects to convert, to take that next step, has always been about establishing trust. In decades past, that network was limited. But social media has made the number of “light” relationships we can maintain explode. Buyers are turning to influencers on social media to help guide them through the buying process and find what content is worthy of their attention. If a prospect is connected to a large number of influencers in your space, they are more likely to buy. Social media gives marketers the unprecedented ability to identify

SOCIAL MEDIA

Image courtesy of huffpost.com

traditional customer testimonial. They are designed to give firsthand validation of your product or service. But if they don’t feature someone the buyer knows or trusts, the value is limited. Social media helps us understand who each prospect knows. If we’re aware of this, we can personalize assets like video customer testimonials, and select one that the prospect actually knows. That kind of context helps establish trust, and makes it possible to drive up the value of the final deal.

Better Return Through Better Leads ROI on social media marketing is one of the most debated topics today in B2B marketing. Yet, there’s definitely return from social media when done right.

and engage these influencers. And earning their trust results in that trust being passed down to prospects, leading to increased conversions.

Increasing the Velocity of Your Pipeline For a given revenue cycle, doubling the velocity of your pipeline can have the same effect as doubling the size of your database. But to do so you need to make your content discoverable, contextual and easy to access.

Making it possible for prospects’ to see how their social graph is engaging with your content leads to greater trust. With the latest advances in landing page editors, grafting prospects social graph onto marketing assets is available to anyone who can drag and drop. Meanwhile, social sign-on tools make accessing your content easier while still collecting the customer data you need. Combining these methods speed up the movement of your buyers through the sales and marketing funnel.

Boosting the Value of Your Marketing Wins are great. But getting the most revenue out of a deal is even better. Social media enables us to do that better than we ever could before. How? It all goes back to trust. Think about the

One of the best ways to drive return on any marketing investment is to alert sales of leads’ hot-button issues, allowing them to start a conversation with the buyer. By collecting data through social sign-on, detailing the content prospects are viewing and sharing, and understanding whom they trust on the social web, you can identify the best leads. It’s return through relevance, and social media is making it easier.

Keep in mind social media has changed significantly over the past 5 years and will continue to evolve significantly in the future. As the technology progresses, the opportunities to drive revenue through social media will likely continue to progress as well. Are there other ways your company is using social media to drive leads, conversions, and ultimately revenue? We’d love to hear how your company or brand is finding success.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

INBOUND MARKETING

The Impact of Customer Service & Content on Inbound Marketing

nbound marketing is a hot topic for many marketers for many reasons, foremost of which is the benefit that results from making the shift from buying to earning leads. Many marketers today are working harder than ever before to generate leads by buying ads and running email marketing campaigns, whereas a savvy cadre of marketers have begun working smarter and shifting focus to delivering content and customer service that earns the attention of potential customers.

Digerati sat down with Trent Allan, Head of Marketing at Appliances Online to understand how his business is standing out from their competitors in the cutthroat consumer goods sector. Let’s start at the beginning, how do you define a ‘lead’? A lead to Appliances Online is a hit on our website. Someone, somewhere who typed in our domain directly, came from a comparison price engine or most commonly used a search engine. No matter where they come from at this point the customer, to us, is a lead. In fact I consider every hit we get to our website a potential lead, with all traffic to ‘purchase intent’ pages being a verified lead. How do you generate leads? One way we collect leads is from broad awareness activities such

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

as TV, sometimes, radio, and even our blimp. Whilst our blimp doesn’t exactly generate a lead at the immediate moment a person sees it, if when that person’s fridge dies one month later they think of us, that person is a lead and the blimp played a significant role. We also engage in more direct acquisition type advertising to generate our leads. We work hard at making sure our website and all its pages appear in Google when people are looking for what we sell. We also work hard at producing helpful content and useful information which we make available via our blog and then distribute via our social media channels and email database.

People trust what other people have to say, it doesn’t even need to be a friend or family member, it could be a complete stranger via an online review. Our customer service and the effort we place into looking after the customer post-sale is the reason we continue to grow and are still in business. What’s your greatest current challenge in your lead gen activity? Our greatest challenge comes in understanding where to invest our marketing money for lead generation. People involved in ecommerce know of the last click attribution model. It’s what Google Analytics use as their default model,

If you address the common concerns your customer has, when they have them, in the end I think you will win online lead conversion. What’s the one thing that generated leads best? Without a doubt it comes down to how we treat the customer. I’m talking about our customer service. Our customer service is everything; by providing the best experience possible people will tell other people about us, and it’s one of the best lead generation activities you’ll ever get.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

and for good reason given other models are unproven. In my earlier example, the person seeing the blimp and buying their fridge with us next month, the blimp gets no credit for that sale. The credit goes to the last activity that person performed on their computer before coming to us, which was likely a brand name search through Google.

INBOUND MARKETING

The same applies very much for TV and billboards. You can’t know the ROI for these mediums, you may know they have an effect, but you don’t know by how much. Until we can accurately determine the correct attribution split across our marketing activities it will be a real challenge to understand the true impact of different mediums. How are you converting leads into customers? There are many factors that impact us converting leads without touching the price. As mentioned above, we’re about service - about providing the best shopping experience in the world - so a huge play towards converting leads is reminding people of our great customer experience everywhere from the homepage,

product page, and right through the checkout to final payment receipt.

AdWords campaign.

It’s about trust. If you’re buying an appliance, first you want to make sure you’re not paying too much, but once you’re sure of that your concerns come down to trust. Will the company look after you? Will they will delivery on their promises? If you address the common concerns your customer has on and offline - when they have them - in the end I think you will win at lead conversion. Buying leads can be a fast way to fill the sales funnel, your thoughts? When you really think about it, every business is buying leads. If you invest money into a better website, you’re really buying leads the same way as if investing in a Google

Let’s assume though buying leads actually means buying contact details, contact details that allow you to contact that person and disturb them from whatever they were doing. Seth Godin has a great book on permission marketing, if you’re ever thinking of buying leads I suggest you read his book. Buy buying leads you’re attempting to snatch your potential leads attention away from whatever they are doing. Permission marketing is all about getting permission from your customers to market to them, not rudely forcing it down their throats. Instead of concentrating on buying leads I would instead suggest working harder to make those people want to hear from you.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

INTERNET OF THINGS

The Last Mile of IoT:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Ahmed Banafa Image courtesy of Falta Fuente

he possibilities that IoT brings to the table are endless. IoT continues its run as one of the most popular technology buzzwords of the year, and now the new phase of IoT is pushing everyone to ask hard questions about the data collected by all devices and sensors of IoT. IoT will produce a tsunami of big data as the rapid expansion of devices and sensors connected to the Internet of Things continues, the sheer volume of data being created by them will increase to an astronomical level. This data will hold extremely valuable insights into what’s working well or what’s not. Also, IoT will point out conflicts that arise and provide high-value insight into new business risks and opportunities as correlations and associations are made.

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

Examples of such IoT data: • Data that helps cities predict accidents and crimes. • Data that gives doctors real-time insight into information from pacemakers or biochips. • Data that optimize productivity across industries through predictive maintenance on equipment and machinery. • Data that creates truly smart homes with connected appliances. • Data that provides critical communication between selfdriving cars. That’s the good news, but it’s simply impossible for humans to review and understand all of this data with traditional methods, even if they cut down the sample size, it simply takes too much time. The big problem will be finding ways to analyze the

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

deluge of performance data and information that all these devices create. Finding insights in terabytes of machine data is a real challenge, just ask a data scientist. But in order for us to harvest the full benefits of IoT last mile (data), we need to improve: • Speed of big data analysis. • Accuracy of big data analysis. The only way to keep up with this IoT-generated data and gain the hidden insights it holds is using AI (Artificial Intelligence) as the last mile of IoT.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is an academic field of study which generally studies the goal of emulating human-like intelligence.

INTERNET OF THINGS

John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1955, defines it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines” In an IoT situation, AI can help companies take the billions of data points they have and boil them down to what’s really meaningful. The general premise is the same as in the retail applications – review and analyze the data you’ve collected to find patterns or similarities that can be learned from, so that better decisions can be made. To be able to call out potential problems, the data has to be analyzed in terms of what’s normal and what’s not. Similarities, correlations and abnormalities need to be quickly identified based on the real-time streams of data. The data collected, combined with AI, makes life easier with intelligent automation, predictive analytics and proactive intervention. AI in IoT applications: • V isual big data, for example – will allow computers to gain a deeper understanding of images on the screen, with new AI applications that understand the context of images. • C ognitive systems will create new recipes that appeal to the user’s sense of taste, creating optimized

Challenges facing AI in IoT

menus for each individual, and automatically adapting to local ingredients.

1. Compatibility.

• Newer sensors will allow computers to “hear,” gathering sonic information about the user’s environment.

2. Complexity. 3. Privacy/Security. 4. Safety. 5. Ethical and legal Issues. 6. Artificial Stupidity.

What is next …? Gartner predict that by 2018, 6 billion connected objects will be requesting support – meaning that strategies, technologies and processes will have to be in place to respond to them. It will become necessary to think of connected devices less as ‘things’, but more as customers and consumers of services in themselves – and as such in need of constant support. The need for AI will be more prominent at that stage under the pressure of the huge number of devices and sensors.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

LOCATION MARKETING

Driving LocationBased In-Store Engagement by Asif Khan, founder LBMA

I 30

n last month’s issue of Digerati we looked at the first layer of our 3-Layer Location Cake Driving Location-Based Traffic (click here to read it) and this month we’ll focus on the second layer: Driving LocationBased In-Store Engagement.

The second layer of the location cake is about increasing dwell time, basket size, and customer experience. It’s at this layer you invest in technologies like Wi-Fi and beacons.

Beacons: The Hot Topic in Retail Beacons are the much debated tracking method that no retailer has really figured out how to master. Why? Because beacons are a little Big Brother-ish and not every consumer wants his or her shopping behavior tracked. Having said that, some consumers are OK with sharing as long as they get a benefit - and targeted engagement could be that benefit. Beacons are about connecting the offline to online experience. Perhaps a customer walks by an item, looks at it, but doesn’t buy, the store can later send them an email about their shopping trip and remind them of items they passed over. Beacons also “listen” in on customer behavior, similar to how search engines are used to track

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

browsing history and provide targeted online ads. Beacons give retailers the ability to collect data — something they are missing out on with their brick-and-mortar customers but are able to gather online. By engaging customers digitally in-store, they can later use that data to re-engage them online. It’s about being able to deliver that message in real-time, based on the context of where you are. It’s all about bringing that data into a single platform where you can act on it. Here are six ways retailers could utilize beacons and other indoor location technology:

1. Greet your Customers With mobile beacons, the process of greeting customers as they enter the store becomes virtually automatic. By placing a mobile beacon near the door, customers unsure whether to enter or not will find themselves attracted to the shopping area not solely by the always important kindness of the employees, but figuratively by the store itself, with a short message encouraging them to come inside to take a look around.

2. Send Customers Contextual Messages In large department stores, customers can find themselves lost and

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

discouraged from purchasing. Thanks to beacons, however, they can always be reminded about their location in the store, and what products to find in specific areas. This has the double advantage of making the customers feel more at ease, and potentially encouraging them to purchase more goods.

3. Broadcast Special Deals The implementation of deals and special offers has traditionally been communicated by affixing placards to the specific groups of discounted products. This arrangement has the downside of potentially not being noticeable by all the customers, especially if the layout of the shop isn’t very good. With beacons, customers can be alerted of the best deals whenever they pass through predetermined areas, allowing a much more flexible management of the store’s offers.

4. Market Segmentation with Different Apps Taking this concept one step further, with Bluetooth beacons it becomes much easier to segment customers based on a multitude of criteria. By providing different groups of customers with different mobile apps for the store, certain beacons can be set to trigger different messages for different apps. This could, for instance,

LOCATION MARKETING

alert only the most loyal clients about a particularly good deal only available to them, without bothering the rest of the customer base.

Knowing the importance of online purchases and e-commerce, many retail stores nowadays have an online portal to sell their products. 5. Redirect to a Website Knowing the importance of online purchases and e-commerce, many retail stores nowadays have an online portal to sell their products. However, convincing customers to visit it is usually a difficult step, requiring either online advertising or telling them about it while they are at the store, without a guarantee

messaging, which is a 500% increase over the consumer packaged goods average for mobile ad engagement.

they will remember. With beacons, push notifications with encouraging messages redirecting to store websites can be sent directly to customer smart phones, where they will remain a single click away.

6. Keep track of your customers Accurate customer and store analytics are traditionally difficult to come by, since the main focus of store personnel is typically to encourage customers to shop. Thanks to wellplaced mobile beacons, however, this operation becomes much simpler. Individual phone signals can be tracked around the store by different beacons, allowing you to know which paths are more frequently taken, which areas are most visited, and how much time is spent looking at specific products.

Dick’s Sporting Goods saw “tremendous uplift” last spring in a test deployment at some locations in cities representing five of the last eight NHL Stanley Cup playoff teams. In partnership with the NHL, the beacons pushed different offers to people when they came within 200 feet of each of the retail stores.

Successful Beacon Deployments

While much of the discussion of beacons focused on their use in retail locations — and understandably so — other deployments show promise as well. United Airlines recently deployed 100 beacons in a proof-of-concept at Newark Liberty International Airport. The beacons offer customers an airport map with directional capabilities to help find their gates and other important information.

Hillshire Farms used geo-fencing combined with beacon technology to speak to consumers on their mobile devices as they entered a store. This digital programming messaging initiative delivered a 20x increase in purchase intent by those exposed to

The bottom line is retailers need to jump in and experiment, and make sure to promote location-based alerts with physical or digital signs in-store. In the next issue of Digerati we will look at the final layer of the 3-Layer Location Cake: Driving LocationBased Transactions.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

WEBSITE DESIGN

4 Delicious Landing Page

Types Your Business Should Cook With by NEIL PATEL

The upside down homepage

Do you know the most visited page on your website? Most probably, it’s your homepage. Since it’s the most valuable page for your business you need to ensure it has a compelling design and that you put your most important information front and center. So, how about treating your homepage like a landing page? Serial-entrepreneur Bryan Harris has developed a high-converting homepage he calls the upside down homepage that generates 35% more subscribers. Here are its 3 special features. 1. Navigational links at the bottom Guide your visitors with a story about you before presenting them with link options at the bottom of your homepage. Bryan Harris found that his bounce rate decreased by 83% after he did this. 2. A CTA above-the-fold

f B2B companies that use landing pages, 62% have six or fewer total landing pages. I understand the underlying thought behind this is that businesses want to focus only on the essentials. That’s why only 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign. In my opinion, when it comes to landing pages – more is better for businesses. Why? Because having more landing pages equates to more lead collecting opportunities for your website. Every marketing campaign is different and might target different audience demographics and interests. A large number of personalized landing pages is great for your business. HubSpot in its analysis of 7,000 businesses found that companies see a 55% increase in leads when they increase their number of landing pages from 10 to 15. Companies with 40+ landing pages get 12 times more leads than those with 5 or less. The message is clear: lead generation is positively impacted by having more landing pages. So, what are the different types of landing pages your business could create? I’ll show you 4 different types that you might choose to create based on your business and campaign goals.

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

The website portion immediately visible to a new visitor is the most precious piece of real estate. Peep Laja, from ConversionXL, found that content placed above the fold still gets 80% of our attention. Harris advises that you immediately present the option of signing up for your list to a new visitor. For the callto-action headline, he suggests you find your most popular blog post that would be relevant to a beginner on your website. Then, use it as bait for your CTA. 3. Do this before asking them to opt in for the second time You’ve got the visitor interested so don’t clutter your landing page with other CTAs. You just need to keep the momentum going. The best way to do it is by presenting your best post. Now, you need to format this most popular piece in the four-part framework that grips the reader – result, problem, agitate and solve. Now is the time to conclude your story and ask the reader to join your list for the second time. Note: Although the above homepage design is a terrific lead generator, I wouldn’t advocate that you direct visitors from all of your campaigns to it.

Capture’em landing pages

The motive of these pages is to gather personal info about your potential customers. Unlike the upside down design, these landing pages don’t have any navigational links. Ideally, they have just one button allowing the visitor to submit his or her info before they move on.

WEBSITE DESIGN

explore the 4 winning examples that were hand-picked by Oli Gardner, author of the book, Attention-Driven Design.

The please don’t go landing page

Suppose you’re holding a big industry conference or a webinar. You market the sales page of your event in your guest posts and on your social media platforms. What happens when your offer ends? The publicized links to your sales page on blogs and social media aren’t going away.

As you know, a great way to build buzz about your product is by conducting a webinar. You can use a capture’em landing page for gathering webinar registrations. You just need to write a compelling headline and share the webinar details on the landing page. Here’s an excellent example of a webinar landing page by Tim Paige. You can also collect details about your potential customers in exchange for a resource or offer. For example, email marketing provider Vertical Response used to offer a 30-day risk free trial to prospects in exchange for their personal info. NOTE: Generally, fewer form fields will lead to higher conversions.

So, why not leverage this opportunity to generate buzz about the next version of your event? Similarly, you can collect emails of people who land on your previously conducted webinar pages. Landing page creation tools like LeadPages also give you the option to redirect all of the visitors from your existing event page to an ‘offer ended’ page.

Conclusion As you keep generating more traffic from your content marketing and paid marketing efforts, you’ll need to create more landing pages. The layout of these landing pages will depend on your unique marketing campaign goals, your target audience and your source of traffic. Now you know the above 4 types hopefully you’ve gotten your creative juices flowing.

Just for clicks landing page

Do you want to introduce your customers to the key benefits of your product/ service and get their micro commitment? Then this landing page is a great fit. You show the prospects a summary of your offer and convince them to click-through to your website. This baby step warms the leads, builds momentum towards the point of purchase and encourages them to complete the transaction. This type of page is a non-intrusive way of maintaining the attention of your visitor and helping them in the purchasing process. If you want to design such a click-through landing page, then I would recommend that you

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

NATIVE ADVERTISING

Image courtesy of fipp.com

The (long overdue) Death OF DISPLAY ADS & the Rise of Native by Christopher Edwards

he much debated solution to the publishers ‘problem’ with the escalating adoption of ad blocking software

may have inadvertently been given in response to a question on the importance of native advertising to mobile monetization. In May, Taboola’s CEO Adam Singolda told Business Insider he believes we’re heading toward a world where publishers have zero standardized ad formats; a world where publishers are instead monetizing their sites through customized and native-based experiences. He suggests this is driven by the dual realities that (a) consumers

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

are showing higher engagement with native formats, and that (b) this brings greater value to advertisers.

This absolutely makes sense. From a publishers perspective this is nothing but good news. Ad placements that achieve better engagement with consumers, and thereby greater results for advertisers, have got to be a good thing. So when the converse is true - when ads aren’t engaging audiences and are delivering less than impressive results for advertisers - why aren’t they being phased out? Everyone knows that the central

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

role that display once held in media buys has long passed its halcyon days. So why aren’t publishers dancing a jig of joy when consumers are giving them the answer to the ad blocking problem by (a) adopting ad blockers en masse whilst (b) engaging with native placements and sponsored content in much the same way they are with editorial content? By and large consumers like you and I are aware of the unspoken contract we have between the publishers and ourselves: we have to put up with ads in return for free content. We’ve all been well trained to expect there to be some advertising within the

NATIVE ADVERTISING

content, but what we’re looking for erence for native advertising amongst ly within the sites editorial content – and conversely looking away from – digital consumers, while ads that in- - are going to have a distinct advanare ads that aren’t so ‘addy’, obvious terrupt (pop ups, auto-playing videos, tage over those who deploy more and etc.) are the lowest rated. BuzzFeed, more interruptive ad units in the hope and irrelevant. Even with the abovementioned Wall Street Journal, New York Times, of screwing one last lousy dime out of ‘collective’ agreement in place there and the Guardian have all likewise an irrelevant format at the expense of remains a need for content and ad recognized the looming demise of their audience. innovation that serves the consumer, standard display and intrusive ad exLast week I had the pleasure of the publisher and the advertiser. Web- periences and invested significant chatting with Nicki Kenyon, Vice Pressites go the way of MySpace pretty amounts of time, money and reputa- ident Digital & Marketing Transformaquickly if their content doesn’t make tion into developing engaging native tion APAC at Visa. During our chat the grade, no amount of rebranding formats and sponsored content solu- Nicki mentioned an idea that I think or superficial tweaking will save a site tions that keep all parties happy. could guide the shift in the type of adthat doesn’t offer consumvertising placement’s on ers a compelling reason to publishers sites in years return. So why aren’t pubto come. She said; lishers accepting the dual “When you can target a truths they know to be true consumer knowing someabout the ads they have thing about them, their Algorithmically propagated littered throughout their life stage, their interests websites - that consumers and behaviors, and present content appearing on are blind to standard dissomething to them which a page that is semantically play, and that native foris relevant, it starts making mats are more effective – advertising interesting and relevant to the editorial and taking proactive action welcome.” content on a page has right now? Imagine that. Making to be significantly more Ad blocking isn’t going to advertising interesting magically disappear, quite and welcome, surfacing commercially effective the opposite. In the U.S. it’s ad sponsored ‘content’ than an ad that’s sold in expected that ad-blocking to a consumer in a tartechnology use will more geted environment when one millionth of a second than double in the next five you have their attention. to the highest bidder. years, with CNBC reporting Or, in wider commercial that ad blocking could cost terms: building a comdigital publishers over $27 mercial model around billion by 2020. And it’s no relevant content and wonder why. Consumers are tired Let’s tell it like it is: algorithmical- non-intrusive ad placements that give of being tracked online. They’re tired ly propagated content appearing on consumers what they came to your of intrusive, ugly, auto-play ads. The a page that is semantically relevant site for – a fair exchange of value in CTR’s and ROI from campaign after to the editorial content on a page has return for time spent. campaign are testament to this. The to be significantly more commercially Ad blocking is certainly a worthemergence of new browsers like Op- effective than an ad that’s sold in one while talking point at present, but not era that come with built in ad blocking millionth of a second to the highest because the debate is about how to software are a response to this. shift consumer behavior away from ad bidder. Yet even as consumers turn away Another way of saying this is that blocking. Rather, the debate has merfrom standard display their behaviors it will be the publishers who deliver it because it could (and should) teach with regards native content place- advertising funded content that de- us to embrace consumer behavior and ments suggest a mutually beneficial livers real value to consumers for the recognize and respond to the lessons path forward. Earlier this year Hub- time they take to consume it - content underpinning it in order to remain Spot found that there is a clear pref- (or ad placements) that sits seamless- commercially viable in years to come.

ISSUE 2, JUly 2016

WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

STORY SUGGESTIONS? BURNING QUESTIONS? ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS I N F O @ D I G E R AT I M AG .CO M