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10 Uber Trends That Will Drive Digital Media in 2014

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This was just posted over on the HackerGroup.com blog here, but wanted to share here as well. There is so much going on with regards to marketing technology that I wanted to highlight 10 big trends that play into just about every campaign we build. Let me know what you think!

Here are ten trends that we saw and tested in 2013 that will have big impacts on campaigns and insight in 2014.

1)      Increased ability to connect off line customer data with online or mobile targeting. As direct marketers, we live on lists of prospects and customers that we send mail to. The amount of data we have access to at the household level and the models we built to select the right people to mail to in the past has been completely dis-connected from the ability to target online and mobile users outside of email. However, new data safe havens that anonymize the connection between offline and online data plus new technology capabilities such as mobile location matching boosts our ability to target online and mobile consumers based on off-line insight.

This trends opens an entirely new way to target prospects and users in online and mobile channels. Our media strategies can now start with a list or customer model and we can execute across a wider swatch of media. This is a really big deal and will dramatically impact digital marketers work in 2014.

2)      New marketing advertising technology that connects the same user across multiple connected devices – tablets, smartphones and laptop/desktops. The buyers journey is continuing to evolve, especially with the improvements of smart phones and expanded access to the internet – anytime, anywhere. However, the ability to understand that journey and deliver marketing messages as appropriate points in that journey has been hindered by the inability to follow that journey across connected devices.

New technologies from companies like TapAd and Drawbridge build device graphs that help us understand that a series of advertisements on a mobile phone drove research and purchase on a laptop or tablet. There are many more examples, but this trend of connecting users throughout the buy cycle will help drive more digital marketing dollars to mobile platforms and help us re-think how we communicate to specific customers.

3)      Re-marketing gets smarter by working across channels. A corollary to #2, the connection of data across channels – search, mobile, social and online – via exchanges and direct media relationships is creating opportunities to target media in one channel based on the interaction in a different channel. A great example of this is delivering an ad on the Facebook Mobile app based on searching activity on Google.

The implications for 2014 is that digital marketers will need to evolve their strategies based on the customer buying journey and targeting end users based on relevant buying signals wherever we can find them.

4)      Tablets will outsell ALL desktop & laptop computers in Q4 2013.  The tablet trend has been gaining steam since the launch of the iPad and with dozens of manufacturers it is the go to device for consumers. Tablets tend to be bunched into the “mobile” category because they run on mobile operating systems like iOS and Android. But, with less than 10% of tablets shipped cellular enabled, it functions more as an easy to use consumer grade laptop. Here are the main uses of smart phones vs tablets.

What this means is that digital marketers have a new, highly scalable form factor and use scenario to integrate into their campaign strategy.  New ad units, interaction scenarios and usage location (on the couch, in the kitchen) drive different types of messaging strategies and abilities to connect with the end user in order to be more relevant with their usage patterns.

5)      Location based measurement and marketing is getting better. The ability for marketers to deliver messages and measure impact of ads based on location is a game changer for digital mobile marketing. The fact that we can now reasonably connect the impact of mobile ads with change in location patterns through new technologies like Placed and PlaceIQ means that the value of mobile advertising will be more clear. If we know, for example, that the treated group of a mobile campaign for a retailer (the group that saw the ads) shows up in that retailers store 5x more often over the control group (the group that didn’t see the ads) – that’s a plus, right?

For 2014, the integration of location based measurement and better micro-geographic targeting will be a major theme for many digital marketing campaigns.

6)      Marketing attribution technology and process is getting better. We spend a lot of time measuring the performance of marketing programs and assigning success metrics based on sales. It is always a challenge to separate the impacts of different campaigns that are running at the same time aimed at the same audience across multiple channels and assign success to specific spend. However, new approaches, mathematical models and technologies from companies such as Visual IQ, Adometry and Convertro are helping drive better attribution.

For companies running large and/or complex multi-channel campaigns, upping your marketing attribution game will help drive better marketing resource allocation in the coming years. If you aren’t actively building attribution systems, now is the time to re-visit and set the foundation.

7)      Marketing automation is moving from B2B to B2C. Marketing automation – the process of delivering marketing messages in an automated way through the use of data and behavior triggers – was born in the long sales cycles of the Business to Business (B2B) environment. As the technology for marketing automation has gotten better and easier to implement, more Business to Consumer (B2C) companies are taking up marketing automation tactics and implementing them. This is especially true in longer research sales cycle type products like auto’s, health insurance and subscription services.

For companies that engage in extensive conversations with customers either before a sale or need to keep a conversation going to keep the subscription dollars coming in, look hard at the marketing automation technologies that are out there such as Marketo, Pardot and Act-On. They may give you inspiration to improve your communications and sales efficiencies. This tactic is less effective for pure e-commerce or transactional B2C companies (I’m lookin’ at you Amazon!).

8)      The advertising delivery technology on mobile devices is improving rapidly and beginning to deliver capabilities we rely on in online display. Mobile Real Time Bidding (RTB) – aka programmatic media buying – will make up 45% of mobile ad buys, central ad serving technologies like Phluent and DoubleClick are better and mobile networks are assigning inventory to open exchanges.

The improvement in advertising delivery technology along with improvements in location based measurement and cross device connectivity means it will be a very important year for marketers to test and understand the full impact of connected device marketing. These trends in combination with the amount of time people are spending on their phones means that 2014 could be the perfect year to get great media value out of mobile while the technology is adequate for running sophisticated, impactful campaigns.

9)      Email is now truly a mobile first tactic. With over 60% of emails opened and read on a mobile OS – either on tablet or smartphone – the way to plan, organize and deliver content in email on mobile has to be your primary consideration. Responsive or fluid design is important, but thinking through the way people read emails on device and then click through to the website is critical for improving response.

If you haven’t invested in responsive design or a mobile first approach to email, do it. Now.

10)   Buying specific audiences is getting more consistent (and easier) across display, online video and TV.  Good news for brand media planners – giants like Google are making their audience segments – or affinity segments – more consistent to how TV is purchased for YouTube video and online display. Clearly this is aimed and breaking down some of the barriers between more traditional media purchasing and the new-fangled digital world.

What this means for marketers is that you can start with an audience segment that you want to talk to and be more consistent with your targeting and buys across channels. This is a nod to an uber-trend of customer centricity in planning and buying. I’m sure we’ll see more of this type of streamlining as the large digital players work to get more dollars out of traditional channels like Radio and TV into their video, contextual and social inventory.

I hope you like the trends we’ve pointed out and are as excited for the new year as I am. 2014 is brimming with exciting new opportunities in the digital media space and we’re already knee deep in integrated, cross-channel campaigns.

What trends do you think are important that we missed?

A New Way to Measure Mobile Marketing

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I recently posted this method of mobile marketing on The Hacker Group website here. We’re doing some very interesting work with our clients on connecting mobile with other campaigns for improving targeting and tracking. Here’s the text of the post.

Digital marketers are addicted to cookies. Not the delicious raisin-oatmeal variety, but the unique text files that reside in your internet browser on your computer that ID you as someone who visits ESPN.com and buys power tools regularly on Amazon.

The use of cookies is the dominant paradigm in digital tracking and it DOESN’T WORK in the mobile marketing environment. The fragmented device, mobile app and operating system environment doesn’t allow for consistent placement and usage of cookies across devices. There is no central ad serving system such as an Atlas DMT or DoubleClick that can consolidate the view of a consumer. So, fugetaboutit.

On top of the cookie tragedy is the fact that mobile devices – especially smart phones – are used differently than the research > buy > retain flow we’ve come to know and expect on computers and websites. Mobile phones are used as research and navigate aids much more than research and buy aids. We shouldn’t EXPECT people to research a purchase and buy it on their smartphone so why should EXPECT our smelly old tracking systems to replicate on that platform. You’re right, we shouldn’t.

I’d much rather light a candle than curse the darkness, so here is what we CAN do to track the impact of mobile – especially in relationship to physical retail.

Change the mobile paradigm from tracking cookies to tracking location. Most smartphone users have location turned on at all times for weather apps, social media networks, check-ins, etc. In 2012 it was 73% and that was up significantly from 2011. It’s a thing, mobile ad networks know where your device is most of the time.

Now, if we take this bit of info and apply that to tracking, we can start to make some interesting connections such as:

–        A control group of mobile devices did not see my ad, but a test group of mobile devices DID see my ad. How many of those that saw my ad showed up in my retail store vs the control?

–        Ad networks see the mobile device go to a specific spot every night around 6pm and stay there until 7am. High likelihood that the device owner lives there. What does that address tell us about the device owner?

Creepy? A little. But, it is a way to understand the new ways mobile marketers are looking to change the tracking paradigm and understand how the delivery and receipt of mobile ads are stimulating response and encouraging specific behavior. It’s not perfect, but what tracking system is.

So, to measure the impact of mobile media, break the current ad tracking paradigm and think location, location, location. Feel free to comment to this blog with thoughts and tomatoes.

Why Direct Response is the Right Foundation for Digital Media

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Here’s the first post on The Hacker Group website located here. I think it sets a good foundation for making the argument as to why direct response agencies should be more successful than pure digital agencies in using digital marketing.

We view marketing in two distinct modes – Brand or Direct Response. While both communicate the value of a product, service or company, the key performance indicators and core drivers of success are different. Brand marketing focuses on improving the awareness, perception and likeability of a product, while direct response marketing is about generating a measurable sale or consumer action. Both are important.

Digital marketing can be either brand or direct response. But digital has much more in common with data-centric direct response than brand marketing.

Why? Direct response marketing is built on the following four core capabilities:

Data Management for Response and Attribution

It takes massive amounts of data to build response models, understand user preferences, deliver media, attribute sales and optimize performance in direct marketing. The ability to process, store, analyze, report and execute campaigns based on data is core to successful direct marketing. Data provides transparency, results discussions, progress metrics and accountability.

Data as a Digital Imperative – Digital marketing is at its most powerful and effective when data is captured, analyzed and used for optimization. Understanding how data is created, how it is transferred from one organization to another, how to store the data, how to report data and, most important, how to use data to improve performance, is core to digital marketing.

Segmentation and Targeting

Selecting the right prospect profile to target is critical in direct marketing due to the cost of producing mail packages, print ads, and TV and radio commercials. The overlay of analysis and predictive modeling to determine the right group of people to mail, email or show direct TV spots to with the right message is critical for achieving a positive return on investment.

Segmentation and Targeting in the digital world is also critical to improving ROI on marketing spend. In the online world targeting can mean anything from serving ads against specific keywords to real-time optimization of display ads to a specific action on a website. The advantage of segmentation and targeting online is how fast you can collect data and optimize campaigns – many times automatically – vs. waiting for weeks or months for the sales results of direct mail. The discipline of targeting campaigns up front in the direct marketing world when applied to digital marketing gives us a better starting point for optimization.

Testing and Optimization

In direct marketing, testing and optimization requires setting a control group that gets consistent treatment against test groups that get new treatments, in order to quantify lift. You optimize by repeatedly incorporating winning elements into the control and striving for new champions. It is iterative.

The digital version of testing and optimization can happen with much smaller data sets at greater speed and a lower cost since you don’t need to print and mail anything. Many digital-only companies fail to incorporate this discipline into their DNA.

Creative that Sells

Direct marketing creative is built to elicit a response – including special offers targeted to specific segments. Combining successful targeting with a compelling offer is 80% of the success or failure of direct marketing, as a rule of thumb.

In the digital world, specific offers are also a critical piece of a test matrix. Determining which offer performs best both in immediate response and on-going lifetime value requires the data, targeting and optimization to all work together.

The high cost of planning and executing a direct mail, DRTV or other campaign creates accountability and precision in direct marketers. That ethos drives a higher level of execution excellence in digital campaigns as well. The cost of failure is much higher with direct marketing campaigns given the cost of production and extended lead time needed. Companies raised purely on digital don’t have this type of discipline because of the inexpensive flexibility to test, pause and optimize in-line.

Wrap it up!

Digital marketing benefits more from the core capabilities of direct response marketing than brand marketing. Data-centric digital channels easily lend themselves to the response and optimization nature of direct marketing. Digital excels when data, targeting, testing and specific offers come together to meet a specific audience.

 

P.O.E.M. Customer Acquisition Model

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I recently posted this on the Optify blog here. I modified the P.O.E.M. model to be a resource for digital marketing agencies to help explain digital to their clients so take a look and let me know what you think!

There are a LOT of strategies and tactics for using digital marketing to acquire, nurture and retain customers online.  We find it effective to explain the various digital marketing activity to clients using the P.O.E.M . media model which gives us a framework for discussing the costs and benefits of the various strategies. Nokia was an early developer of this model and used for digital media planning. We have evolved it for digital marketing agencies and the types of services you can offer.

This blog post is geared towards explaining an extended version of the P.O.E.M. model so that you have a method for discussing the channels and where they fit into the overall digital marketing programs.

First, some definitions and a helpful table:

P – Paid Media Programs – aka: outbound marketing

O – Owned Media Programs – aka: nurture and retention marketing

E – Earned Media – aka: Inbound Marketing

M – Managed Media – new segment for digital marketing agencies

POEM Media Model Matrix for Agencies

Here are some tips and ideas to use for engaging customers in the different types of media.

Paid Media – AKA Outbound Marketing

Paid media is a great way to enhance and amplify current acquisition  programs. Paid media should not, however, be the main acquisition program for you or your clients unless you are well versed in the paid media channels and have a VERY strong grasp of ROI. Paid media like Google AdWords, affiliate programs, web banners, sponsorships, etc. become more difficult when the distance between the paid placement and the revenue generating activity gets further apart based on time or steps.

Here are five tactics to consider providing for your clients within paid media

  1. Reporting and ROI tracking services. Reporting can be enlightening for the client and is critical if you are going to be spending media dollars on their behalf. Setting up marketing campaign tracking, having a consistent reporting system and regular review with the client is the first step in paid media success.
  2. Google AdWords –  Paid Search. This is the default beginning media spend for many businesses. It can be effective if you have the entire package of campaign set-up, creative management, landing pages and conversion and reporting.
  3. Niche newsletter and site sponsorships. Spending media dollars against an audience that you have  identified by location, content interests, hobby, etc. can get you in front of that interested audience in a targeted way.
  4. Paid product feeds in product comparison sites such as Amazon, Google Product, ShopZilla and NextTag can be a great way to get your products in front of people search specifically for it.
  5. Contextual display campaigns in Google. Putting advertising in front of people who are engaging in content related to the keywords or audience you are targeting is easiest to do through the Google AdSense program.

Expertise in each one of the paid tactics is required in order to be effective. Before promoting these tactics to your clients, make sure you have done your research, have experience or can partner with someone like a vendor for success.

Owned Media – AKA Nurture, Retention and Advocacy

We have all heard that is it less expensive to keep and grow your customer base than it is to acquire new customers. This is particularly true for small companies with limited resources. As a digital marketing agency, if you can help your clients do a better job communicating to their current customers and known prospects, you will be able to show success in a relatively short period of time.

Here are six tactics to explore and sell related to owned media:

1)      Website development. Everyone needs help with their website, no one is 100% happy with their site and as a digital  marketing expert, you can bring a customer acquisition/retention perspective to the website development process even if you or your agency don’t do the work itself. Creative shops are great at doing creative sites, but tend to be weaker on the SEO elements or conversion and nurture elements.

2)      Website conversion. Look at the clients site from the point of view of a prospect and try to understand the following:

  1. What is the value proposition?
  2. Why would I want to buy a product or service from this company vs a competitor?
  3. What is the primary call to action? What is the one thing you want the prospect to do on the homepage? How obvious is it?
  4. How can someone who is a prospect or customer continue the relationship with the business? Social media? Newsletter? Blog post/RSS feed?

3)      Customer newsletter. I’m constantly amazed at how many companies don’t have a regular newsletter for their customers. This is a huge lost opportunity to alert them of new products/services, promote educational content, deliver offers, highlight other resources and keep your brand in front of them.

4)      Nurture email program. This tactic is particularly important for B2B clients who don’t have an immediate sale on their site. Setting up an autoresponder when someone signs up for some educational material and drip campaigns that deliver multiple emails over a span of time that will help the end user understand the value and see the client as an expert are excellent services for you to offer.

5)      Customer advocacy program. Just having the conversation with a client about how to get their customers to advocate for them opens a whole series of potential strategies and tactics including referral programs, thank you offers in Facebook or Twitter for those that are following you or your business or other simple thank you programs.

6)      Merchandising, cross-selling and up-selling programs. Again, this is a strategic conversation with the client on ways to increase the average order size or leverage a purchase to cross-sell additional products or services. The strategic conversation leads to test programs, specific tactics and  a deeper relationship.

The big benefit of focusing in on owned media is that you have the ability to contact people directly who are already aware of and, hopefully, a fan of the business. Moving those customer to repeat visit/purchase and become advocates is a critical need for every business.

Earned Media – AKA Inbound Marketing

Earned media is a perfect complement for owned media as earned media supports both nurture/retention tactics as well as acquisition activities. At the core of earned media is showing the world that you are an expert in a particular topic and/or field. This is accomplished through the creation and curation of high quality content that shows your customer knows their stuff. This content is then used to build the website, generate conversions, create organic search visibility, provide interesting posts for social media and give people a good reason to link back to your site.

I mention curation as well as creation because one of the biggest challenges with earned media is creating compelling content. In reality, there is a lot of great content on the internet and many sites do a great job with acquisition by putting their own spin and perspective on studies, reviews and presentations by other people. The trick is to make it  original, show that you understand the subject and have an opinion that gives your client authority.

Here are five tactics to consider helping your clients with for earned media

1)      Content creation and curation. This is the #1 challenge of most businesses who have taken on earned media. You don’t have to be an expert in their field, but you need to be able to find people who can write and other sites that have good content for review and commenting.

2)      Search Engine Optimization. There are lots of guides for this, but all websites need to have an SEO strategy and be optimized as much as possible for this high quality traffic.

3)      Social Media profile management and content syndication. Social media is changing at a rapid rate so updating profile pages, responding to comments, using these channels to promote content you have created can result in a bigger audience and activity.

4)      Public relations and influencer marketing. Finding the people who are already authorities in your clients space and strategically engaging them can lead to a faster boost of your clients authority, more links and more visibility.

5)      Link building. While traditional link building is on the wane, helping your client identify content that would be compelling and helping them to syndicate the content can generate website referral traffic and hopefully links that will support the search engine optimization program.

 

Earned media is not a one and done type program, you and your client need to be committed to this for a minimum six months. This includes optimizing the site, creating content, measuring traffic and sales performance monthly (not daily or weekly) and being clear about the time frame required to be successful. Once you start to see the benefits of this program, it can be a long-term relationship with the client.

Managed Media

Managed media is specific to agencies that will manage specific channels on behalf of their clients. Often times, an agency will partner with client on specific channels because they have the channel expertise – website development, paid search, email, social – but not the industry or subject matter expertise required to be believable and effective.

Instead of giving you specific tasks, here are two questions to ask to determine if shifting to a managed media model is appropriate:

1)      Does your agency have the channel specific skills to execute a campaign in either the B2B or B2C client channel. The skills necessary for B2B and B2C are different with unique sales cycles, offer types and audience communications. If you are growing into a channel,  make sure you have the time to invest in educating yourself and have enough testing budget (time or money) to learn and work your way into success.

2)      Does your agency have the subject matter expertise to completely take over a channel for a client? In some cases, you may have great expertise from personal experience, a hire you’ve made or work you’ve done with others in the industry. If you can help the client with the content, channel management and reporting without relying on them to provide materials – you don’t need the managed model

Summary

I hope this post has been helpful in giving you some tools to use in order to talk to current and prospective clients about digital marketing programs and how you can help. The expertise you can bring to any of these tactics on behalf of your clients depending on their needs should help move you from a vendor to a trusted partner. As always, we look forward to your comments and questions!

More P.O.E.M. Resources

http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/12/defining-earned-owned-and-paid-media.html

http://searchengineland.com/buyers-guides/digital-advertising-agencies-2013-a-buyers-guide

My First Patent – Recommending Link Placement Opportunities

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patent-cover-imageI was checking out the Google mashup – What Do You Love – www.wdyl.com – this morning and one of the widgets is Google Patents which had an image of the document I submitted with Tommy Unger, Erez Barak and Paul Brown on a way to research and recommend finding links. This became the link tool in Optify and was a fun project as well as some different approach thinking. I knew we had submitted the application, but never received a notification that it was accepted and through. Here’s the patent if you want to look it up http://www.google.com/patents/US20110302145 – and the pdf US20110302145-Link-Opportunities-Optify – pretty exciting find this morning!