Tag Archive for: Content

Reports: How retail marketing managers use digital, and how customers think…

/in , , /by

Social media marketing has become more and more important for retail marketers in the U.S. this year compared to 2013. This states the latest reports by Extole which was based on the survey response of 302 people responsible for marketing and technology at U.S. retail companies. However, mobile marketing and email are still top priorities as well for those marketers across various verticals, company sizes and geographies.

Extole Report 2014 Marketing Spend to 2013

Although social media marketing was the leading marketing spend compared to last year with 41%, mobile advertising (32%) and email marketing (31%) were catching up as well. Whereas thee marketing spends were on the sweetspot for budget spends, topics like display advertising (28%), content marketing (28%), and paid search (24%) got less marketing spends this year.

Extole Report 2014 Marketing Channels Regularly

The report also made clear that retail marketers use social media and email two most (85%). Not surprisingly as social media was mentioned as the most effective tactic for acquiring customers. 50% of the retail marketers have picked it in the top three results. Nevertheless, if retail marketers want to convert retail customers, email marketing is still seen as the most effective marketing tool.

Spot On!
If we compare this report to another much broader study by Capgemini “Digital Shopper Relevancy Report” that asked 18.000 consumers around the globe, marketers might be putting too much emphasize on social media marketing. Marketers might have a closer look at the not “socially-engaged shopper” categories and then decide in which markets to invest in social media marketing, and which stay with a broader holistic digital marketing approach.

Capgemini 2014 Digital Consumers

What is your experience on how to best address your customers in the retail or technology space?

dmexco 2014 – Flashback in Quotes & Discussions

/in , , /by

dmexco 2014 Debate HallThe growth trend of the digital marketing show dmexco is impressive and continues to write a promising (hi)story.

Visitors: 31.900 – increase by 16% compared to 2013
Exhibitors: 807 – means over 65 exhibitors more than 2013
Speakers: 470 – as of various stages with new start-up village and work labs

This year I wanted to wait some days before I am writing my little review to see what really stayed in my mind, and what people were talking about after the event. This is what stayed in the brains of my friends – maybe it should reach you.

1. “dmexco is like the Lumascape brought to life.”
#Quote in Breaking Down Silos for Brands Panel
Damian Burns, Director of Global Strategic Partnerships, Google

2. “Nerd is the new black”
Brad Rencher, SVP & General Manager Digital Marketing, Adobe

YouTube

By loading the video, you agree to YouTube's privacy policy.
Learn more

Load video

3. “Online is the new offline.”
Quote by Joko Winterscheidt, TV-Moderator

4. “The play is to work out the first against the second screen.”
Quote in “Addressable TV – A Marketers’ Dream Panel”
Jim Clayton, Executive Vice President, HE New Business Division, LG Electronics

YouTube

By loading the video, you agree to YouTube's privacy policy.
Learn more

Load video

5. “The digital revolution is over, we are now in the digital evolution.”
Quote in Digital Revenue optimization 2.0 Panel
Sital Banerjee, Global Head of Media, Philips

6. “The brand in many ways need to take the back-seat. It can’t be all about the product if you move into the content section.”
Quote in “The Content Summit”
Jimmy Maymann, CEO, Huffington Post

YouTube

By loading the video, you agree to YouTube's privacy policy.
Learn more

Load video

7. “@ft presence at #DMexco so big they don’t even have a stand! They are on every phone and tablet! @dmexco @ftbized”
Quote from #FT rep/via Oliver Matthews

The three main takeaways from the event for me were…
a) Trend: dmexco stages are challenging global TV stages.
b) Topics: TV goes mobile. Digital is leading corporate strategy.
c) Town: Cologne needs more taxi drivers and/or UBER subscribers.

Really looking forward to moderate the next dmexco, 16th and 17th of September 2015.

CU there!

Website Experience: Consumers rate performance most, content second

/in , , /by

The common understanding in marketing teams is that content is key to meet the expectations of consumer. However, this might be right, most US consumers (52%) see high performance as the main quality feature of a website, according to a recent report from Limelight Networks.

The report that surveyed 1,115 consumers valued website performance (streaming with no buffering, pages that load quickly, and so on) as the most important digital experience feature. It also states that performance comes before fresh and updated content, delivering a consistent experience on mobile and desktop, and providing personalized content.

Performance is Key to Websites

The respondents also make clear that they (59%) will wait less than five seconds for a webpage to load before being frustrated and leaving the site. Even more, more than one in three (37%) stated to leave and buy a product from a competitor if a website is slow.

The mobile experience is also becoming more critical for marketers. When 85% accessing a website with a mobile device at least some of the time, and 50% of the surveyed people do so with either a smartphone or a tablet most of the time, it shows that mobile customer experience needs to be thought about carefully. However, the good signs are that almost half of the users (44%) are more generous in terms of waiting for website response when accessing websites via mobile devices but the trend is to see fast downloads as well on mobile and desktop.

Spot On!
The report illustrates the connection between brand and website experience: 82% of consumers recommend a brand after a positive website visit.

Website Performance leads to Recommendation

However, marketers might think about personalization with the use of smart data now, the report also warns that more than one in three users (38%) do not want websites to remember their previous website visits. The website experience remains a business challenge “Businesses need to educate themselves on the challenges and intricacies of delivering a high performance digital experience to ensure hidden latency issues don’t disrupt a user’s interaction with the brand,” summarizes the report.

Social Network Leaders for Business

/in , , /by

Adobe’s CMO.com did a great job in summarizing the leading social networks for business in one nice infographic alongside their CMO Guide to The Social Landscape. The marketing technology company checked each of the platforms according to four criteria: brand awareness, customer communication, SEO and traffic generation.

Obviously and not surprising, the leading platforms are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. From our experience not all marketers are aware of the importance to change the contents for each platform and not just run them in different timings. The target-groups on the various platforms may be quite different, thus their interests in content and context as well as their wants and needs might vary extremely – although they might be the same people sometimes.

YouTube will probably become the leading platform when the whole world is more driven by Millennials and their input. Although you might be thinking about funny videos, going viral now, most of the business content can be manuals, employer branding stuff, or even product explanation videos. The opportunities are massive and it is time for marketers to realize.

In the B2B space, Slideshare might be a new platform for marketers. The chances are big here as well, as companies and brands get the option to show presentations from various standpoints. Especially, if the company is addressing different stakeholders in a purchase process, it is sometimes good to open up some thoughts before the meeting, so stakeholders can prepare. And, how often did presentations before meetings not go through as of company email file restrictions…?!

Obviously, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest play a role from a corporate brand perspective. And Google+ especially from a SEO and content marketing point of view. However, we are still at the beginning and every case needs to be evaluated on its own.

Any important platform you are missing in the top 8 social networks?

CMO_Social_Landscape_2014

Facebook & the "Freemium". What if Facebook charges one dollar a month?

/in , , /by

money-sepiaStop reading this blog post if you are a Facebook fan. You might hate it. You might like it. Stop it! You won’t? Well then, don’t try to be a consultant and just read this and act like a Facebook user. This is our idea how Facebook could become even better…

When I wrote about The Social Globe -a world of paid social networks- some years ago, people called me “mad” and “crazy” teasing such “wild” and “early” paid ideas around social networks. Sometimes, I wondered why The Social Globe – a “network” of social networks like the broadcasting network Sky (earlier Premiere in Germany) never kicked off, bearing in mind all big social networks needed revenue. Maybe it was too big an idea. Maybe too superficially explained. Maybe… Whatever. I never found an answer. Well, maybe one. All major networks want to outplay their competitors. Collaboration is out. Although, we all have the social media philosophy in our heads: Sharing is caring. It does not count for social networks it seems.

Some years are gone since, and we all think about and discuss the value of Facebook. We wonder about it’s algorythm deciding what we see, watch and read. And we blame their advertising programs which often don’t make the user happy, nor does it seem to meet the personal targeting criteria. Well, in case people even notice the ads.

Traveling a lot, I have discussed a new monetization approach with social media and social networking insiders all over Europe. What happened if Facebook would change their business model according to the following “freemium” scenario. Yes, I know that Mark Zuckerberg has said, Facebook will never cost the user anything.

But what is the value of restricted and filtered content? What if I cannot see the content of my real friends? What if I don’t see (the ads of) my favorite love brands anymore on Facebook? What if Facebook loses it’s personal benefit and value for me more and more?

So, this is the moment of truth. Users get two account options on Facebook in the future…

a) Free Account
Filtered user account. Ads and branded content to be displayed according to Facebook’s targeting system. Facebook decides what content the user sees. Who your “real friends” are is decided by the algorithm.
Costs: 0 EUR per month

b) Paid Account
Unfiltered user account. Opportunity to personalize the own stream. Ads and branded content of the user’s favorite brands will be displayed according to their love brand personalization. The users decide what content they see. Who their “real friends” are is decided by the user.
Costs: 1 Dollar per month

Facebook has opened up a new field of communication, a new way of bringing people closer to each other. No matter how far separated they are. It is a great way to make us aware how close we are living, breathing and experiencing our daily lives.

The idea of paid for Facebook accounts is out there to being discussed. Go ahead and give us your thoughts.

Maybe this is the start of a new way of thinking about Facebook. Maybe we can start a real discussion on how to make Facebook a better social networking place with more personal value, less self-glorification, and so on. One that leverages “real” personal connections.

Would you use such a paid version, or stick with the old free account?

Report: Too many tech vendors for marketers in midsize companies

/in , , /by

In many markets we can see the challenge for SMB marketers to effectively manage their tech vendor offerings.

Now, this experience gets underlined by a recent report based on a survey from DNN Software of 300 US marketing executives (50-5,000 employees) in February 2014. The report states that almost two thirds (63%) of marketers in midsize companies find the market is overloaded with marketing technology vendors to manage them effectively. Just imagine what it means for an SMB marketer to manage five and more tech vendor connections (53%)? Or even 10 or more of them which is what 15% have got to do in their daily business.

Obviously, there is some kind of logic behind the number of technology vendor relationships that marketers need to manage: The bigger the company, the more vendors. In companies with 1,000-5,000 employees marketers need to manage five or more vendors (75%) whereas in companies with 50-99 employees it is only 33%.

DNN Software 2014 Number Tech Vendors
However, the technology is not really helping marketers to ease their business. The majority of marketers (70%) think their job has become more challenging with all those technology marketing solutions in the market. Furthermore, a big portion of them is asking for a “mixture of a marketing and tech specialist” to help manage their marketing technology.

DNN Software 2014 Tech Challenges

Concerning their challenges for 2014, most midsize marketers find it is a major or moderate challenge to get customers’ attention (79%). Interestingly enough, more than two-third respond (72%) are having trouble to find their target group on the web. The same portion states that the challenge to stand out from the crowd comes with the volume of online content which makes it rather difficult for them to effectively do their business and achieve their results.

DNN Software 2014 Challenges Marketing

Report: Friday is Engagement Day on Facebook

/in , , /by

The more work people have the less they have got time to engage on Facebook. Right or wrong? Well, right…

At least according to a recent report from Adobe that states Facebook users engage with brands more on Fridays than any other day on in the week. In their Q1 Social Intelligence Report which analyzes the interaction of Facebook posts and ad engagements, the company found that 15.7% of all impressions happened on a Friday.

Adobe FB Engagement Q1 2014

In the second place came Thursdays with the second highest post impressions and engagement (14.5%), followed by Saturday (14,4%) with almost the same share of impressions. Sunday appears to be the day when people are not massively engaging with Facebook compared to the rest of the week (13.4%). A detailed interaction overview shows that Fridays were the strongest interaction days examined across all engagements: comments (17%), likes (16%) and shares (6%).

Adobe FB Share of Engagement Q1 2014

Furthermore, the report which was based on 260 billion Facebook ad impressions across different industry sector like media, entertainment, retail and travel, makes clear that photos and video seem to become the new secret sauce in user engagement on Facebook. Photos still show highest engagement rates in the first three months in 2014. 24.7% of all brand video views in Q1 came in on a Friday. Although people have more time on Sundays, it is the day with the lowest share of video impressions (6.4%). The engagement around video updates were up 25% year on year and 58% quarter over quarter.

Adobe FB Video Engagement Q1 2014

What are your findings around Facebook updates? What content types perform and which don’t? Is Friday really such a powerful day for you as well?

Report: How to be more successful with the right blogging tactics

/in , , /by

The questions we usually get from marketers are quite similar: What makes a good blog post? When is the best time to publish? How do questions in headlines perform? And so on. A recent report by TrackMaven analyzed 1.16 million posts from 4,618 blogs and 1.9 million social shares of those blog posts. The results were published in their Colossal Content Marketing Report. The analyzed content included blog posts from various publishers, like content marketers, individual bloggers, and media companies.

The report shows that Tuesday and Wednesday performed as the most popular days for publishing posts. Of the analyzed blog posts 87% were published during Monday and Friday (9 AM to 6 PM ET with a peak at 11 AM-12 PM). This does not say though that weekends don`t perform well. 13% of blog posts published on weekends got more social shares per post on average. Although just 6.3% of posts were published on Saturdays, these still received 18% of the total social shares.

TrackMaven 2014 Social Shares by Postig Frequency

As most marketers strive for engagement to justify their social business activities, one of the findings will be of best interest for them. The most social shares from blog posts came in the evenings around 9 PM-midnight ET (highest engagement 10-11 PM). Special peaks also occur when people get their coffee, meeting hours go down and after midnight TV shows (4-6 AM ET, 7-8 PM plus 1-2 AM).

TrackMaven 2014 Social Shares by Time of Day

Some more findings…
– Blog post titles of around 60 characters in length performed with most social shares (average was around 40 characters in length).
– Blog posts with question marks in their title had almost twice as many social shares that those without any punctuation.
– Blog posts with a mixture of capital and lowercase letters achieved most shares.
– Blog posts get most sharings via Twitter (Tweets shares got 38.6% of total social shares) and Facebook (Facebook shares 26.7% – Likes got 33.8% of engagement).

TrackMaven 2014 Social Shares by Channel

Spot On!
The headline definitely is a key element for blog posts being read and getting shares as on Twitter and Facebook there is not much more to see, and many people won’t even read but still share it the blog post. Although the magic headline might sound like a perfect tactic for blogging, there is more in blogging tactics than knowing when to publish or some rules around punctuation. Good content, relevant aspects, various point of views (interviews) and probably one of the main elements: continuity. Most blogs starts euphoric and die after some weeks. Blogging is a time-consuming challenge but with the right blogging tactics it is not rocket-science.

Why content marketing is like running a marathon (infographic)

/in , , /by

Content marketing seems to be the new hype in the business world. But wasn’t it there before? Case studies, whitepapers, corporate brochures, corporate publishing, etc. – did we not have all of this before? Maybe the B2B world was better trained in this topic than the B2C folks.

The guys from Curata now train marketers with a step-by-step content marketing marathon infographic. It will make marketers understand what it needs to become efficient in content marketing, to have the right pace at producing versus curating content, to achieve the perfect help and support from your fans and get to the finish line.

Good luck – and don’t forget to drink some water!

Content Marketing Marathon Infographic

Infographic: How Google Ranks Your Website's Relevance

/in , , /by

Google Rank WebsitesThis is one of those secrets that is discussed in every single seminar we do: How does Google rank websites? Why does my website not rank higher than my competitors? What could be the best SEO strategy so that Google ranks us under the first three results?

The Google’s algorithm is one of the biggest secrets in the marketing world. The 200+ ranking features make it very challenging to find the right web strategy of your content and website structure. So, what’s the best way to develop a “Google-loves-us” strategy?

Neil Patel has created a nice infographic that illustrates the main components of the Google algorithm. Let’s see what he comes up with…

How Google Determines Where to Rank Your Website
Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

Spot On!
The main challenge to drive more traffic via search lies in understanding the holistic approach of Google’s algorithm. Obviously, it is about the final user that works with the website, reads the content and shares it through their own social communication platforms. Over are those days when people though the “link-in-link-out” game will solve the SEO war, when companies got paid for building link farms, and people got money to bring more links in. In the end, the user decides on what they need, and finally the Google Algorithm reflects that.