Tag Archive for: Brand

Why Check-Ins need to improve in the future…

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Early adopters show big interest (see study) in location-based platforms like Gowalla, Foursquare or Groupon and obviously Facebook Places. Though only 4% of the US internet users use it, and probably the number is even lower in Europe. Nevertheless, Check-Ins could become the pull mechanism for offers on location-based direct marketing campaign in the future.

However, the check-in technology is still not completely evolved. People can still log-on from places around a building (though often not in the building…) -like we check-in on our airlines for flights today from all over the world- and still earn their “check-in credits”.

Some months ago, I wrote about loyalty cards and how the intelligent use of Social Media at point of sales, i.e. cash points at retailers or in shops, could make our purse loose some “plastic weight”, and make loyalty cards a thing of the past.

Now, combine this thought with the new location-based technology and think where we could be if these platforms could embed loyalty programs in their technology/apps. Automated check-in via apps. No second hand-over from loyalty plastic cards. Quicker engagement and upsale opportunities for companies and brands. Brave new world!?

This presentation by the DASH7 Alliance looks at the state of location-based check-ins in the past, today and the need for a global standard for check-ins (and check-outs) in the future.

The Future of Check ins

View more presentations from DASH7 Alliance.

KLM Surprise – a discussable social media campaign…

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When I first came across the KLM Surprise idea, I thought “cool customer service”, “very modern approach” and “nice use of a Social Media campaign”. It seems KLM engages in how to make their clients happy, how to understand personalized customer service of the future and how to use social media to reach out to their clients one step ahead.

On a second thought, clients could be overwhelmed in a negative way. The approach of the airline might be seen as “social media stal….”. Shall we really use this phrase? Is there some validity in it?

The idea implements all aspects and features of an advertising campaign, and the KLM claim for me seems to be: modern social advertising. Or as the brand puts it: KLM is “committing little acts of kindness because we wanted to discover how happiness spreads”.

Nothing bad about it in my eyes. I like the idea in some way…

Nevertheless, my question is: Is this modern social advertising approach going to far? Is it addressing too much the human characteristics of personality and individuality? Or is it just the modern way of personalized advertising? Some kind of the future of Social CRM?

Know what?! Let’s discuss it! Watch it and give us thoughts….

LeWeb10 – web strategy catch-up with Jeremiah Owyang

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When I joined the LeWeb10 in Paris last week, I was fortunate to spend some time with Jeremiah Owyang, partner at Altimeter Group and Blogger at web-strategist.com. We to talk about the future of web-strategy, the evolution of brands in the social web era and exchanged thoughts on how businesses need to integrate social media in their web activities. And it was good to see that our views matched nicely.

Afterwards, I did a quick video snapshot on three topics…

Where is web-strategy heading to in 2011?
The main trend that Jeremiah foresees is the integration of social media into the corporate website. In 2010, I have seen many companies already challenging this topic, and it improves. Although I have to admit, in many cases I found often tiny mistakes like the way social media conquers websites while important information gets lost or hidden in the backend or also placement of share items/buttons in the wrong corner apart from other things. Yes, companies are integrating their social affinity and activity but should not forget the business model, the target-group (or should I say friends or followers?) and the main existing user behavior…

What are the main trends from a long-term perspective?
Social analytics and Social CRM will emerge (active, pervasive), he said, and he differentiates this from social media monitoring (passive, reactive). I defintely agree in that point. Companies need to understand and react immediately whenever a client approaches a brand or a company how to match the data of all website and lead generation traffic stats with the CRM system in order to pro-actively supply relevant offers to them – be it on mobile, online or offline. Otherwise any competitive advantage will get lost in the future.

What is the role of brand vangelists/brand advocates in the future?
Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, SAP, Wall-Mart amongst others have already deployed brand vangelist/brand advocates for their purposes. He makes clear that by using these people brands get ahead of the 1:1 dialogue which he thinks does not work on the social web. Brand advocates make the communication programs scale, he argues – I could not agree more as I see the main ROI factor from a user perspective in the time factor.

Thank you, Jeremiah! Looking forward to catching up in 2011…

News Update – Best of the Day

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Although Facebook is seen as a danger from a user’s perspective in terms of data capture, it offers great opportunities for businesses. Companies better see “the Facebook opportunity, get their site and grab their buttons” suggests David Carr.

What are the targets for companies engaging in Social Media in 2011? The “2010 Social Media Benchmarking Study” from Ketchum and FedEx shows us what 62 researched companies are aiming at…
– Increase awareness and interaction with brand: 94.1%
– Create community for customers/fans: 76.1%
– Increase traffic to website: 55.1%
– Identify and react to customer needs: 50.3%
– Identify new business opportunities or leads: 49.0%
And the reason for all this? As Facebook and Twitter are the new normal. At least their co-founders Chris Hughes and Biz Stone make us believe that…

If this commerial won’t remind you of “Jaws” (1975), then none will. Y&R created a funny video ad for LG Electronics latest vacuum cleaner…

Book Review – Marketing in the Age of Google

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When somebody used to work for Google there is a lot of knowedge to be shared. And I thought, I could learn more about SEO techniques and tactics. Vanessa Fox did work for Google (apart from inventing Webmaster Central), and so I thought, I need to read the book Marketing in the Age of Google. As a web-strategist I should know the secrets of ranking high on Google for my clients.

Getting Vanessa’s inside view on how Google and their search technology operates, gives an aggregated insight on the evolution of search topics. It is saving time and presumingly more efficient than following or reading many SEO experts thoughts. And then let’s help clients to optimize their site fropm a SEO point of view.

To write a review is a challenge. As I follow some of the most interesting SEO cracks, I knew some content topics already. But there is much more quality thoughts and knowledge in it that makes the book worth reading. If companies want to optimize their top rankings, the book offers good tactical approaches and a clear structure how to start and evolve your content strategy as well as how to conquer the top positions in Google. 

Having said this, the book is based on the theory of having a web-strategy in place that is aligned to the company’s business strategy. If your company has the consumer approach understanding the needs, desires and motivation why consumers go online to evaluate products and services, then the book is a must read.

The way people used search engines has changed in the last years as the web has become mature from an information platform to a consumer generated content base. It is not about what the company spreads but what the users are looking for and the content they share and create. People hear something about a person, a brand or a campaign and instandly start going to search for more information. Not seldomly they are finding consumer input. And often the initial search entry point starts with offline marketing, PR or customer service conversation – in print ads, TV commercials or an wallpapers.

Business that know how to connect offline and online efforts will succeed in the future. Happy that this was my main claim when I started this blog and thus gets now backed up by a Google specialist… Thanks Vanessa!
 
Spot On!
The amount of input the book Marketing in the Age of Google offers is probably only handable for a SEO specialist. And this person has to have the buy in from the C-level to manage the online strategy accordingly. A lot of the strategy is based on content creation and content framework which is a PR, marketing, HR, R&D and Customer Service topic in the future in my eyes. These departments need to learn how to place content effectively in the search world. It will affect the way peope perceive the business strategy of a company and the way the companies and brands interact with their clients, partners and employees. What I missed was the effect taxonomies and social tagging might have on search in the future but maybe this comes with the next update. 

News Update – Best of the Day

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Finally, Twitter starts their first trials rolling out their first advertising into individual users’ Twitter streams. The first clients are from Starbucks, Red Bull and Virgin. This new monetization strategy called Promoted Tweets was announced some while ago and will kick off addressing Hootsuits’s 175 million users with showing them paid tweets. Interested to see how the users will react…

LinkedIn powers the company profile pages by integrating new company pages. Companies can now “showcase their products, services and associated recommendations”. The company pages allow brands to showcase recommendations from their customers which becomes benefitial for the brand virally and credibly on LinkedIn. When memebers on LinkedIn endorse products or services of a brand, their recommendations become visible to all of their connections. The viral effect is obvious. Thus, brands get some of the most credible, authentic endorsements of their products on Company Page’s Product tab. The question is whether the user likes the idea to become a brand testimonial…

Although I am not a huge fan of plastic toys, I have to admit this Barbie commercial gets the message across. “When I grew up” is a good example of kid ads targeting adults…

The way to the real-time future of marketing mix

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When you hear the term “marketing mix”, what do you think…? Pause! Think… Pause!

Does that sound familiar to you? For some of you it might. To others it blurs as they follow the hypes as new marketing topics that are shouting at them. Or did you listen to their silent tones? Isn’t it better to varify and understand the client before start creating a new marketing-mix.

Watching the latest videos on your Youtube channel, talking to “friends” on Facebook or following the latest conversations on Twitter is one thing. Drawing conclusions out of these conversations on the social web world is another. And taking actions like evaluating adwords versus email versus social network marketing or blogs versus micro-blogs) for your marketing mix afterwards is a third step.

Conclusions might also be that marketers realize that B2B people still read print preferably to online or love real face-to-face conversations. They might find out that these business decision makers think twice before they engage in conversations. Reasons might be social media guidelines or policies. Steps are needed (like social media monitoring) before you start understanding your own marketing mix could pay out (i.e. online and offline focus groups).

Other marketing opportunities have never died although social media still hypes. And there is a reason why the “marketing mix” phrase was created by Neil Borden some years ago. Not only as it is an easy to understand phrase. More as we use it in our daily business as marketers without even noticing anymore. It is in our DNA. It is a necessity. Will it ever be removed? I doubt it…

Isn’t it interesting that we never had something like “The ultimate approach to market your products and services”?

Obviously, there is none. In over 50 years nobody found one. Why that is? Well, the world is driven by human beings and their attitudes to become familiar and aware of new things is a dynamic process. Some people adapt quick, other slower. They prefer to get informed via paper. Some like online (via publisher platforms, social networks or blogs). Some still stay offline (as they are often on planes or trains). Others record TV news programs and watch them on-demand with their iPads. And then others use mobile readers or apps to stay up to date with their favorite brands.

Seeing the social hypes in our business world from an outside perspective, I sometimes get the feeling that marketers have to refocus on where users are in their “adaption of technology evolution”. And not invest all their money in one horse race. Or to use another business anology from a tactical HR point of view: Never let the whole sales team be on the same flight.

Where is the difference in marketing?
Is there one? If all your marketing budget goes on airport billboards and then an oil crisis comes up, the invest equals zero in terms of earn out. Or if you buy just one ad in a service provider catalogue on the web but the world uses Google and cannot find the provider in the first ten results, the budget might be wasted.

Some companies think investing in Twitter or Facebook saves their brands awareness in the future but forget that these sites go down once in a while. And then the data is gone or not accessible. Lucky are those who can be approached from other access points then – be it via a phone call (at most companies I am searching hours for a phone number), at an event promoted with social media maybe, at their corporate website, or the self-hosted community that is not on the popular social networks.

The cocktail of having different access points available, and those interacting with each other, is the marketing mix of the future. Although they might have a single target or focus the are aiming at, the marketing mix should be aligned to one common strategy: Engage the client.

Spot on!
As we are automizing our marketing more and more, we always have to keep an eye open which tools and trends are coming up. As technology evolves quite quickly, human beings tend to forget that they need to adapt their marketing mix accordingly. Having said that it does not mean they have to switch their marketing mix approach immediately. Watch out for the tipping point when your power buyers, your brand vangelists, start using different technology. This is the time when the “adaption of technology evolution” happens…

Infographic by InsideView: Social Media – Facts & Figures

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It is probably one of the best visuals created on facts and figures around the social web. InsideView put many stats together in one picture such as…

– history of social networks (missing Plaxo though which made me aware of the social networks phenomenon 13 years ago, apart from the leading Asian networks like Tencent/QQ)
– social profiles of the Global Fortune 100
– the world’s most popular brands and their social appearance
– social media reach and usage by country
– the leading B2B social media platforms

Nielsen study: iPad users open for ads

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When the the iPad certainly was introduced by Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs it was said to be “a truly magical and revolutionary product.” This week I have bought an iPad myself and have tried to understand what the tablet is capable as a mobile business device. I cannot really say it failed. And a new study by Nielsen asking 5.000 mobile users shows us how the iPad is delivering businesses from the perspective of a new ad platform.

The Nielsen findings from their new “Connected Devices Playbook” suggest that the iPad owners are more open and responsive to advertising than mobile users of other devices – even those of the iPhone. The study shows that iPad users are more likely to buy products after being introduced to ads. And 60% of the respondents of users across the iPad, iPhone and all other connected devices responded they were “OK with advertising if it means I can access content for free.”

The magic formula for making ads for iPad users effective are interactive features: 45% of iPad owners said they were more likely to click on ads that included multimedia than 26% of iPhone subscribers and 27% of other connected device owners. Isn’t this perfect news for the launch of Apple’s iAd platform?

What makes marketers even more happy is that iPad users indicate that they buy a product via their mobile device because of an ad. 24% of iPad users made an in-store purchase compared to 10% of those who use other devices. It seems that the iPad and other mobile devices might offer a helping hand as a revenue driver to all retailers or shop-owners. Nevertheless, we might ask the question whether this is as of the new product and the hype around it, or if this will last in the future. The final question could be how Apple will change their single app sales strategy to make the use of the iPad more cost-friendly for users.

So, who is the typical iPad user? The Nielsen study says they tend to be younger and more male than users of other devices like users of the Acer Aspire One, the Kindle, the iPhone, iPod touch or the Sony PlayStation Portable. 65% of iPad users were male and under the age of 35.

Spot On!
Sometimes it is funny when you read these studies and remember your own shopping experience. Some weeks ago, when the iPad was not even available I remember a 45 year old posh women rushing into the Apple shop. She did not even realize that the sales guy next to me was explaining the benefits of an iPad to me. She just asked when the iPad will be available, got her answer and rushed out with the same urgency she came in. The sales guy was shaking his head that day, saying some of our clients are weird. When you think about how eager she was to buy the product, I can understand that advertising is still effective… not only on an iPad.

Social Media study on digital natives released by Volkswagen and MTV

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The new international study “MePublic – A Global Study on Social Media Youth” by Volkswagen and MTV Networks presents some interesting insight into media use and value ethics in the group of 14-to 29-year-olds (digital natives). No surprise that they will respond to one of the findings: Young people want to see networking apps extend to the car… and Volkswagen already works on that app.

“With just under 500,000 fans on Facebook and over ten million visitors on YouTube since the company profile was set up at the end of 2008, Volkswagen already has one of the largest fan communities in the automotive industry. And together with our fans we are breaking new ground in the social web – as confirmed by the recent “App my Ride” competition where we gave prizes to the best developments for applications in car infotainment systems.” Luca de Meo, Group Marketing Head, Volkswagen AG.

The findings show the intensive use of new media and their commitment to brands by digital natives…
– 58% spend time on social networks on a daily basis
– 50% follow product recommendations in social networks
– 43% post their favorite brands on the social web

And the digital natives are well equipped to have best possible access to the new media.
– 94% have a mobile phone
– 92% have a TV set
– 75% an MP3 player

Obviously, there a country-specific differences as the “MePublic” the study lays open. In Japan 40% of the young people primarily use mobile access to their social network which already can be compared with some outlook on the mobile future. 57% of US digital natives use online sources prior to buying a car. In Japan it is only 38% as the young people tend to seek advice direct from the dealer.

The study “MePublic” states six user types based on criteria such as frequency of use, motivation and goal. Amongst those the characters for a “pro-social” world are i.e…
– Mediacs: most active and demanding, technically literate, strongly committed, always looking for something new
– Crewsers: social networks = place to meet up with friends
– Funatics: spectators = like to observe, but are not very active themselves

Spot On!
Generally speaking, the study shows that social networks have been added to digital natives perception of mobility. They want to be available when the are driving. When 60% of the 14-to 29-year-olds are convinced that the significance of mobile social networks will increase over the coming years, it speaks a clear language. If you fear the digital natives are “tweeting and driving”, Volkswagen takes the fear of you: “The driver’s safety remains the top priority.” This nice PR message comes along with the ambitious word about their next iPhone app called “Dieter App”. “The planned application assumes the role of the co-pilot and loyal companion and is in line with the wish for a personalized vehicle expressed by the young people”.

Is this a new approach to humanize a brand perception? Installation of apps that appear like human charaters? What do you think about the study findings?