A brand-building case study focusing on format length, branding and testing best practices
YouTube is becoming an increasingly important tool for digital marketers, both from an owned and paid media perspective. Over the last five years the platform has continued to grow and with over a billion users and many millions of views a day, Google can genuinely claim to have both the first and second largest search engines on the planet and a media platform to rival many mainstream broadcasting rivals.
From an advertising perspective, the reach YouTube offers marketers is phenomenal, however as with all forms of advertising, optimising the media alone will only get you so far. I’ve recently been involved in a multichannel equity campaign and due to the storytelling nature of the content we’ve had to really think about how best to recut the main TVC for the YouTube TrueView campaign (which is using skippable pre-roll ads).
The…
The top 5 benefits consumers expect from fashion and apparel brands
Know your audience: That’s the lesson retailers are acknowledging as the key to adapt their business to the reality of today’s rapidly-evolving market. Faced with unprecedented upheaval retail brands must now focus on understanding how to dazzle shoppers and earn their loyalty.
To uncover patterns among shoppers’ often-unexpressed wish lists, retailers are turning to technology, from data analytics to social media listening, for clues on how to improve their brands’ perceived value. They seek to discover what functional requirements shoppers will actually pay for, how to satisfy shoppers’ emotional needs and how to boost word of mouth.
These meaningful consumer insights can help retailers successfully meet consumers’ needs to enhance customer relationships, build brand trust and drive revenue growth.
What fashion and apparel shoppers really want?
New research in Harvard Business Review pinpointed five specific benefits that consumers want most from fashion and…
Chart of the Day: Top 20 Instagram Mobile App Advertisers in the USA
This week saw Instagram release a bunch of new features to their increasingly popular Instagram Stories. They announced what they called 'the biggest update to Stories since launch in August'. The app now allows you to tag your friends and integrates Boomerang, so you can add the 'wacky' looping videos into your stories.
Notice how the Disney account has tagged the Mickey Mouse and Good Morning America accounts - Oh and Happy 88th Birthday Mickey.
A unique feature released just for verified users (the ones with the blue tick) is the ability to add links to websites. This has always been a downside for marketers and influencers using the platform to promote their brands. Before this update, you could only add one link to your profile unless you were willing to invest in advertising spots. This…
How to focus your efforts to improve mobile conversion performance by using the full range of mobile user research techniques and tools
For the past few years in the digital industry every year has talked about as ‘the year of mobile’. Despite this, many digital marketeers are still focusing CRO activity on desktop and leaving mobile devices as an afterthought. Latest stats show that mobile continues to be a growth platform for people accessing websites, and that those people are getting more comfortable using their phones for buying online.
As shown on Smart Insights last year, mobile traffic overtook desktop as mobile phone use continued to rise at a staggering rate. Stats from the same report also show that desktop users are around three times more likely to convert than those visiting a site from a smartphone; showing that there’s a lot of potential for improvement for mobile conversion rates.
This …
Affiliate marketing, done well, offers a way to circumvent the ad-blockers
The increased use of ad-blocking software is disrupting the digital marketing industry as we know it. People have grown tired of “interruption advertising,” whereby irrelevant ads are forced upon them or they are tricked into clicking them on their small mobile screens. Successful brand marketing depends on building relationships with consumers, and as customers demand more control over the types of ads they see, affiliate marketing has proven to be an effective way to establish, strengthen, and maintain these invaluable relationships more authentically.
The Affiliate marketing concept is simple: Brands hire affiliates, who may be bloggers, publishers, or other companies, to promote a product or service using their own blogs, websites, or social media channels. Affiliates are paid a share of any sales or a commission resulting from their efforts. Compensation for affiliates may also take the form of incentives, discounts,…
Chart of the day: Neuroscience reveals that for long-term impact ads should appeal to emotion or make us laugh
In this example of neuromarketing, brain responses to over 200 TV ads were analysed. By looking at how the respondents' brains engaged in long-term memory encoding whilst watching the ads, Neuro-Insight were able to establish what makes for effective TV ads.
Since short-term memory only lasts a few seconds and then is lost forever, if you manage to get your ad into someone's long-term memory they'll be able to recall it for years. That means it's critical that your ads are able to make an impact and become part of someone's long term memory.
As the chart shows, information-based ads or discount-related ads make very little long-term impact on our brains. Opting for the 'hard sell' is clearly not effective. Humour stands out as the most effective…
Good web design is crucial for making the right impression
First impressions are important... Presentable clothes, matching accessories, getting to meetings on time – it all matters. It shows people around you that you care.
Online, first impressions matter too. Website visitors make judgements about website credibility in as little as 50 milliseconds, and one in five website visitors will leave your website, not giving you a second chance.
Staying on top of the current trends makes it possible to create a website that will impress your audience, and will hold users attention for the first crucial 10 seconds, and beyond.
So what are the Web Design trends for 2017?
First things first. Web design is not art.
Art expresses feelings, raises questions, provokes emotions. By contrast, design helps people to find answers, take action, or complete a task.
More than ever before, everything in web design, from imagery to navigation,…
Facebook's updated inbox will allow marketers to manage messages across different Facebook-owned networks on a single platform.
As social has grown, it has diversified. Where once a marketer focused on social media may have just had to manage the company Facebook and Twitter accounts, with LinkedIn on top if they were B2B, now there is an abundance of networks. We can add Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat to the list of major platforms, and then there are Messenger apps likes Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp that also require attention. More niche sites like Reddit, Tumblr, SoundCloud, SlideShare and Imgur may also deserve a social presence, depending on the brand in question.
No one ever had success on a social network by quickly setting up a profile, posting a few times and then forgetting about it. To drive results these platforms need constant attention and effort from marketers, so inevitably the increasing number of platforms that…
How golfing brand Lyle & Scott achieved a 48% Increase in Revenue Per Visitor
Throughout its 140 year history, Lyle & Scott has built a global reputation for distinctive, beautifully designed, high quality knitwear, combined with the brand’s solid authority and presence in the golfing sector. The company is committed to developing new and exciting products, making them available to customers across multiple channels. The Lyle & Scott website (www.lyleandscott.com) now retails in over 50 countries worldwide making ecommerce one of the major components of the company’s sales structure. This case study shows how they increased the vital revenue per visitor KPIs by following the AWA Digital Ecommerce CRO process.
CRO project background and objectives
Lyle & Scott’s objective was to increase the conversion rate of the Website. The ecommerce team wanted to augment online sales by increasing revenue per customer.
The ecommerce team had built a substantial customer database and were already mining…
Chart of the Day: New consumer research shows why it's important to get into the primary inbox
Here's some useful insight for email marketers who are looking to understand changes in the inbox behaviour of consumers. It's a new report from the DMA showing how busy consumers manage their busy inboxes. The research looks at a range of issues including 'ghost' accounts; unsubscribes and in-depth focus on the behaviours of younger consumers, including 'Millennials and what motivates consumers to share their email address.
How many email addresses do consumers have?
This is the specific question we'll look at here. The answer is... more than you might think, although as a marketer you may have more than most.The chart shows two is most common which will typically be because people have a work and an inbox email.
The proportion…
