Addressable media is the future of advertising
North America leads the world in many things; obesity rates, moon landings, car ownership. But what about targeted ad spend? A new study of 350 senior marketings in North America shows how people based marketing is growing and the results speak to its effectiveness.
What is people-based advertising?
People-based advertising, also known as addressable media, is a bit of a buzzwordy term that essential means showing adverts to the exact people you want to see them, rather than just audience segments determined by demographics.
Technology has now advanced to the point where ads can be delivered on an individual basis. Advertisers can now buy audiences instead of programs. There is no need to forecast who will be watching. There is no need to experience the wasted reach associated with spot buying. The system determines audience composition in real time and then chooses the most appropriate ads. Each individual advertiser…
Social is the perfect way to influence your potential customers
Social selling is much discussed and often overused. People sending out endless tweets about your products gets tiring fast, and is unlikely to get anyone's attention. But if you can leverage the power of social media to influence your customers at the research stage of their buyer journey, it can be a very powerful tool.
A new study, which surveyed 2,017 people aged 18 and over, shows that 41% of people follow brands to see new product ranges when they launch and 35% use social to get ideas about what to buy when they next go shopping. This is somewhat higher for 18- to 24-year-olds at 47% and 40%, respectively.
Don't sell, influence
Once someone knows what they want, organic social is no longer necessarily the best tool for targeting that person. By that point, email, on-site optimisation or remarketing via social or display networks…
Getting social media right for B2B marketing is tricky, but not impossible.
In today’s Internet-driven marketplace, having an online presence is non-negotiable and has become an important part of B2B marketing for almost every business. When it comes to making purchasing decisions, your potential customers use social media sites and search engines to answer questions about the products/services you sell and to get an overall sense as to who you are, what you do and what others think about you.
Social media can help B2B companies by putting them in charge of their virtual identities. Far from being simply about status updates, social media is used most effectively as a brand shaper; a way to establish your company’s reputation and expertise, and to build a following based upon exceptional customer service.
Use social media to educate
For larger B2B businesses in…
Customers want good customer service, and don't like being passed between channels
On average, customers interact with four different channels when seeking customer service related enquiries from a business. The types of channels they use or expect to be able to use when contacting a business is changing too. Any marketer worth their salt knows that word of mouth and online reviews are some of the most critical channels for any business, and customer service is key to getting good results. Delivering good customer service now requires a presence across a range of channels, but in a way that allows them to be mutually supportive and helpful, rather than working at cross purposes. This isn't just a 'nice to have', it really is a must, given 97% of people say that customer service is important to their choice of brand. That's according to a study by Microsoft, which asked 4,000 people across the…
Diversify your brand narrative with a multi-platform marketing campaign strategy
“The attention economy is not growing,” asserts CRM Essentials’ co-founder, Brent Leary, and many marketing strategists would agree. In today’s fast-paced mobile world, it’s become increasingly difficult to make an impression with traditional marketing techniques, as ever-more sophisticated methods - incorporating multiple formats and publishing platforms - take hold and make their presence felt.
This is known as nonlinear marketing, and in this article we’ll explore how and why the use of such abstract strategies can be so successful, and how you can start to incorporate nonlinear into your narrative.
The value of video
Cisco has predicted that 80% of all Internet traffic will be video content by 2019, revealing a growing trend for smartphone streaming that has put advertisers the world over on hot alert. There are many other reasons to embrace video marketing, and I’ve gone to the trouble of collating…
Marketing Lessons from How Apple became the Dad’s brand and the kid’s choice
Ah the good old days. Aged in my twenties, I must have looked like a prat lugging my arm-breaking Apple computer – simply to demonstrate I was so out (from the conventional crowd) that I was ‘in’.
Everything about Apple was different. Especially its marketing. In 1984 the brand ‘disrupted’ the American Superbowl showcasing an ad predicting armies of former independent thinkers who had turned into insipid automatons, eyes fixed and living in a dystopian ‘ Big Brother society.
In terms of futurology, the Cupertino brand got it right about people’s heads down to their their chests and thoughts high in data clouds and the surveillance observation via ‘Big Data’. However rather than feeling under duress to submit every private thought, thanks in part to Apple’s lifestyle…
One algorithm to bind them all
In March this year, Instagram continued with its plans to change its photo and video feed model to one which is algorithm-based rather than organic. This is not on the cards just yet – the plan is to introduce it over the next few months – but for a platform which supersedes the others in level of social network engagement and interaction, this move is very interesting indeed.
It is also one which is going to have a marked impact on brands, users and consumer behaviour. See this Gifographic for the statistics on Instagram growth. Like it's parent, Facebook, this new structure will now see images slotted into streams based on user actions, not in reverse chronological order. For the A-List it probably means very little indeed. For the rest, well, there…
The evolution of flat design and how its journey so far can shape your online presence
Whatever the goal of your site, it has to have style and substance to succeed, but what if I told you that following one web design trend could help you to achieve both?
Increased browser support for CSS3 saw an explosion of gradients and box shadows, but the web development world is taking a huge leap away from these traditional design details and embracing the clean, crisp nature of flat design. The move sees less vendor prefixes and shorter style sheets, two factors that mean less kilobytes on page load. Here we will explore the key principles of flat design, its impact on user behaviour, experience and ultimately conversion, and unveil how this particular trend is likely to evolve throughout 2016.
Flat design at a glance
Thanks to its minimalistic nature, flat design has been the go-to concept…
Those interested in targeting millennials should look to Instagram, Snapchat and the ubiquitous Facebook
When you're debating which networks to give the majority of time and investment, the most important thing to know is will your audience be there. Too often marketers are misled by stats about how many people use a given social network, and so rush into using it, only to find little success because the user base is not made up of their potential customers.
That's why we're sharing this chart, which shows the difference between the reach of the social networks for those over and under 35. It's interesting to see how much more popular Instagram is, and the biggest difference between age groups is Snapchat, where over 5 times more 18-34 years olds use it than those above 35.
Source: ComScore
Date Released: April…
How to better examine customer behaviour to assess their readiness to convert
Today’s marketing funnel is a lot more intricate than it once was. There are now more elements to consider when it comes to awareness, throughout the process of lead nurturing and up until the point of sale. Before closing, buyers are exposed to your brand via a variety of touches, often spanning several devices, media formats and channels.
The idea is that no matter what route your prospects take along this journey, and no matter how long the journey takes, if they remain engaged, then they’re always getting increasingly closer to the point of sales-readiness.
But what does it mean for an anonymous audience member to “engage” with your brand? Richard Sedley once wrote that engagement refers to “repeated interactions that strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment a customer has in a brand.” This definition is just one of…
