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Perhaps most reflective of this has been the award-winning juggernaut of REI's #OptOutside campaign, which won the Titanium Grand Prix on Saturday. If for some reason you weren't one of its 6.7 billion media impressions, essentially the company closed its doors on Black Friday, encouraging its employees and everyone else to get out into the outdoors. Beyond the ad, starring REI chief exec Jerry Stritzke introducing the idea from a wide-open office, the brand also created a helpful online guide to hiking trails and other outdoor activities around the U.S.
By encouraging us to drop out of the annual shopping day, the outdoor retailer aims for more sales and brand loyalty. The company said the brand's social media impressions went up 7,000%, with 2.7 billion media impressions in 24 hours, while overall the campaign attracted 6.7 billion media impressions, 1.2 billion social impressions, and got more than 1.4 million people to spend the day outdoors. Meanwhile, more than 150 other companies joined REI to close their doors on Black Friday, and hundreds of state parks opened up for free.
If Cannes is the ad and marketing industry's Oscars, than this is arguably Best Picture. The Titanium category is meant to honor work that breaks new ground, crosses boundaries, and pushes the industry forward. The win adds to the campaign's Media and Promotions Grand Prix, picked up earlier in the week, and its run of wins at other industry awards like the D&ADs, and Best of Show at the One Show awards in May....
It was recently brought to The Drum’s attention that we are longing for long-form. The age of bite sized media is seeing a resurgence of its comfortable long form component, despite our attention spans shrinking into oblivion with a quick fix of 140 characters.
Facebook Instant Articles, the Guardian’s ‘The Long Read’, Snapchat Discover suggests that people are craving more insight into the things they are interested in rather than just flashes of information. The Drum Network asked its members what they thought about the resurgence of longform, and if they thought it was here to stay....
Marketers are ramping up their technology investments to better understand consumer needs and behaviors. Technologies to power social marketing, digital commerce and marketing analytics are the highest priorities, per July 2015 research.
Gartner surveyed more than 330 organizations in the UK and North America on their 2015 marketing budgets and 2016 expectations. Almost two-thirds of respondents said that social marketing and digital commerce were leading technology investment priorities.
Additionally, 61% of marketers said that marketing analytics were a priority and more than half of respondents were prioritizing tech for customer experience and advertising operations.
According to Gartner, in just a few years, 89% of businesses will compete mainly on customer experience. And by 2020, the customer will manage 85% of its relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. This means that the customer experience will quickly overtake price and product as the key competitive differentiator among brands.
These statistics may be alarming for some. After all, the status quo for so long has been about marketing a great product or service at the right price, and you will have a constant flow of new customers. Businesses must quickly come to terms that this is no longer the case, or won’t be for much longer. Consumers demand a great experience across multiple channels, and are willing to pay more for it.
What Do Consumers See as the Ideal Customer Experience?
Research by Economist Intelligence Unit revealed that the top five areas consumers identified as leading to a positive experience included:
47% – Fast response to enquiries or complaints
46% – Simple purchasing process
34% – Ability to track orders in real time
25% – Clarity and simplicity of product information across channels
22% – Ability to interact with the company over multiple channels...
The number of UK consumers using social media to research what products are "best" has rocketed from 25% to 43% in the last year, according to the Adobe Digital Index (ADI) 2015 Holiday Shopping Prediction report. The study examined more than 1trn visits to 4,500 retail websites since 2008, with a separate survey of over 400 consumers per country in the UK, USA, Germany, France, Australia, China and Singapore.
"We’re seeing the rise of social media as a source of product reviews," says Ryan Dietzen, senior market insights analyst at ADI. "It’s a key part of the customer journey."
The story is the same across Europe, with the percentage of respondents in France using social media to research products jumping from 28% in 2014 to 35% this year. Almost half of respondents in the UK said product reviews are one of the top two influencers on them when making major purchases, while the number influenced by reviews was even greater in Germany at 64 percent....
Why are customers more excited about uncertainty than they are about clear incentives? Let's see why mysteries motivate them.
You’re a 21st Century business-owner, which means you know you need to have a presence on social media, but do you know the effectiveness of your social channels to your business? If you want to scale and sell online, you better have your brand out there for the world to see and interact with. Being social really does matter but it is important that you take the time to calculate your ROI for each network you’re business is on.
To determine the value of social media accounts to businesses Shopify analyzed 37 million social media visits that led to 529,000 orders. Facebook is the largest of the social networks, it also had the most traffic and sales for companies, with 85% of social media sales for those on Shopify coming from Facebook. Surprisingly the high order values came from fashion aggregator Polyvore. Along with the information Shopify collected on its merchants, they also analyzed the profitably of social media accounts for various industries....
A commonly held view among B2B firms is that their prospects make selections and purchasing decisions based solely on logic and reason, and are not influenced by emotion the way that B2C purchases are. However, recent research proves otherwise.
The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) partnered with Google to learn what leading marketing teams are doing differently to connect with their customers emotionally and show personal value. From Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands studies 3,000 B2B buyers, marketers, academics, thought leaders and consultants across seven B2B industries and provides thought-provoking insights as to how B2B buyers react to emotional marketing compared to a more functional approach....
Unfortunately, many landing pages overload visitors with information and options. All of the choices end up confusing visitors, which results in fewer customers.
How Not to Confuse Your Landing Page Visitors: 1. Help Visitors Take the First Step The first rule about not confusing people with too many options is…give them fewer options. Though challenging to some, it is crucial to minimize the number of actions you ask visitors to take on your landing page. The purpose of a landing page is to allow people to start the process and get their foot in the door. It’s where the visitor begins the journey with you, so the fewer choices a visitor has to make on your landing page, the better....
Hey there, marketer. I’m curious … what’s really going on in that day-to-day work life of yours?
When you say you’re working from home, are you actually being productive? When you have a deadline, do you wait until the last minute? What are you actually doing on LinkedIn? It's time to speak the truth.
Below are 15 graphs and charts showing how we really spend our days....
...Looking at dollars in ad spend or marketing support is not indicative of the actual effectiveness of a marketing program. But neither is reducing non-working marketing dollars. In fact, reducing this number may be an indication of being less efficient, and it should be actively discouraged as a strategy for P&G or any other marketer to improve their marketing bang for their buck.
For those wondering “What the heck are non-working dollars?” I’ll explain: All money spent on consumer-facing activities is classified as working dollars (think of paid media spend, sponsorships, in-store activation, etc.). All dollars spent before anything reaches consumers -- like TV commercial production cost, content creation development cost, but also agency fees, strategy development and research, etc. -- is classified as “non-working.”...
... You can’t force anyone to pay attention to you online. All you can do is entice. Permission Marketing was an expanded observation of that fact, and an exploration of an alternative. Instead of trying to gain attention by being increasingly obnoxious, we can earn a prospect’s permission to deliver a message to them.
This calls for a whole new tool kit. If people are going to ask you to communicate with them, you have to come up with a form of marketing that’s too valuable to throw away. Advertising copy gives way to content — informative, interesting material that speaks to a highly informed customer....
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Social strategy. Digital strategy. Mobile strategy. Content strategy. Everyday we’re being urged to create a new strategy. But with all the chatter about new channels, it seems we may have lost sight of the concept of an overall Marketing Strategy. And this gap has huge implications for marketing effectiveness. The tactical programs we create need to rest on a single foundation, otherwise we’re just sending dollars out the door. Case in point, the biannual CMO Survey just released by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, the American Marketing Association and Deloitte revealed that “marketers are expected to nearly double their social media spending in the next five years even though most can't show the impact of social on their business.”
Ya’ll as we say here in Texas, social media, direct marketing, public relations, advertising, etc., are not strategies -- these are tactics, and each of these tactics can potentially be deployed to support any number of strategic options. Marketers, I issue you a call to arms, it’s time to get serious about marketing strategy.
Marketing strategy, not a channel or touchpoint or tactic, is how your organization will achieve its mission. It is the critical link between marketing objectives and marketing programs and tactics. Your strategy selection (and just as importantly what is not selected) provides focus and enables your organization to concentrate limited resources on building core competencies that in turn create the sustainable competitive advantage needed to pursue and secure the best revenue opportunities....
Complacency is not an option in today's marketplace. Changeable buying behavior, channel and technology proliferation, data profusion—these are just a few of the realities marketers face today that necessitate transformation. Whether it's improving on marketing strategies that work or taking an entirely new approach, marketers must shake up their practices in 2016.
Knowing where to start or what's most essential to improve on can seem overwhelming with so many possibilities. So, DMN asked 15 marketing leaders to provide insight into what they think should marketers do differently in 2016 to attract, convert, and retain more customers. Here, their advice....
To say native content has grown since last year would be an understatement. In 2014, Pressboard combed through 1,500 pieces of content for our "best of" list -- this year it was closer to 7,000. To give you an idea of how far the space has come, we had to buy VR headsets just to review a couple of the entries.
2015 was the year that native content moved from experimental to fundamental and nearly every major publisher and brand discovered the power of stories, instead of ads. Here are some of the best from the last 12 months...
Some 58% of respondents said they were more likely to engage with brands online only if “it’s really easy and asks nothing of me.” In addition, 48% of respondents said they’d prefer brands to simply entertain them rather than ask them to do anything at all.
More disturbingly still for attention-hungry brand managers, the report also found that respondents “resent doing anything that appears to benefit the brand more than it benefits them.”
So what’s a lonely brand to do? And how did expectations get so high?...
An idea doesn't have to be unique to be great. In fact, there are some really awesome examples of great marketing out there that you can lean on to inspire your next project. (Austin Kleon calls this concept "stealing like an artist.")
But finding these examples isn't always easy. That's where we come in. We've collected 12 places on the web where you can browse and search for examples of great marketing -- including website design, design in general, email marketing, and social media pages. Check them out, bookmark them, and use them to inspire your own marketing strategy.
Get 50 brilliant examples of website design now by downloading our free flipbook....
As history has taught us about media and technology in the past, with the introduction of any new technology, we’ll always have the initial hype and scare that life, as we know it will never be the same.
What does this mean for the future of e-commerce? The desktop is not obsolete; rather it’s going to have to change its mechanisms to make room for the new powerhouse in the commerce arena. Growing at a steep rate, mobile currently accounts for 29% of eCommerce transactions in the US and 34% globally. The end of 2015 forecasts mobile share to reach 33% in the US, and 40% globally.
There are two main avenues behind this growth; 1. Virtual Engagement 2. Faster Transactions
Two channels are available via mCommerce where there’s only one with eCommerce because the mobility allows you to actually purchase goods in store with your mobile device where you wouldn’t carry around your laptop to checkout. According to the VP of Marketing at AppsFlyer Ran Avrahamy, “when thinking about omnichannel efforts and point of sale purchases, mobile is the connecting link. Retailers who begin to deploy in-store beacons for their marketing teams are beginning to see attribution from mobile campaigns and are optimizing their in-store consumer shopping experience.”...
Marketers are trained to put their best foot forward and ignore the downsides of their products. This is about doing the exact opposite: finding your weakest points and showcasing them for all to see.
More the choices and features on your website and web application, the tougher it gets to understand your interface, therefore limit the number of choices for a better user experience. This results in higher user satisfaction and lesser bounce rates.
Strip all the non-essential features and elements from your website and mobile application. Think from a consumer’s perspective on different usability environments.
‘Are you asking too much information too soon on your website? Can the navigation be made simpler and clearer?’ Remove all the unnecessary options along a user’s journey....
We tapped the Economist Intelligence Unit to survey almost 500 high-level marketing executives from around the world to get a real sense of what’s on all of your minds.
The results are insightful, encouraging, and exciting. Why? Because when you step back and look at the overall big picture, it tells me that, more than ever, marketing is in charge and the future is really, really bright for marketers everywhere. We are at the center of business and if we make the right investments we are going to find ourselves setting strategy, driving revenue, and shaping the future of our own organizations. A real “Marketing First” world.
I would strongly recommend you read the report in its entirety. There is a ton of insight in here. But let me give you a few of my highlights....
As CMI research shows, marketers with a documented content marketing strategy are more effective than those who don’t have a written strategy. Yet, only 27% of B2C and 48% of B2B marketers have developed a plan.
If you lack a written strategy, a one-page plan is a great place to begin. If you have a detailed strategy but struggle to gain traction, boiling it down to one page will make it easier. A one-page strategy can help you:
- Crystalize your content marketing strategy
- Gain stronger buy-in more quickly from executives or clients
- Keep content producers strategically aligned...
Social media is used to build brand ambassadors, drive traffic, and convert sales. While building a social media following can be very difficult, one way to speed up the process is to tap into a fan base that is already established – that of your competitors. Yes, you can steal your competition’s followers right out from under their noses.
Stealing is usually a zero-sum transaction, wherein one party loses and the other party wins. But that is not how it works with social media. This guide will show you how to gain followers by leveraging your competition’s social networks. So if you want to accelerate your social media game by getting followers from your competitors, here are several tips you should consider..
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Good story. Great campaign. Exceptional content marketing results!