CMOs to Invest More in Brand Experience with Content Marketing

• Posted: September 7, 2015

CMOs will invest more in content marketing, as they shift their priorities toward customer retention, loyalty, and advocacy.  YuYu Chen, writing for ClickZ, discusses new research from The CMO Club and IBM.

According to the report, “Marketing is a (Buyer) Journey, Not a Destination,” 57% of CMOs expect their budgets to increase over the next two to three years, with a 52% traditional and a 48% digital spending split.  CMOs participating in this research indicated that content generation would be their largest expenditure, accounting for 13% of their increasing budgets.  

CMOs are focusing on customer retention, loyalty, and advocacy at every point in the buying journey.  Building long-lasting customer relationships is important to marketers, and content marketing can provide consumers with a consistent and personalized experience during the entire purchasing journey.  In addition, content marketing can serve as an educator for the brand and result in a deeper degree of engagement with consumers.

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Despite Measurement Concerns, CMOs Continue to Increase Social Marketing Budgets

• Posted: September 7, 2015

CMOs continue to have concerns about the reliability of social measurement.  Only 15% of marketers surveyed believe they currently have the proper tools to prove the effectiveness of social media according to a survey of 255 chief marketing officers by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Despite these concerns, marketers expect to allot 23.8% of their budgets for social media over the next five years. According to Christine Moorman, a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and the Director of The CMO Survey, “Closing the measurement gap is an area that companies must address if they are going to move social media into the canon of marketing strategies.”

Among the factors contributing to these concerns: most advertisers are still in the learning phase, and nearly a quarter of social media activities are being performed by outside agencies.

Additional findings from this study:

-Social media spending is currently 10.7% of marketing budgets.

-Marketers rank their integration of social media in the overall marketing plan at 4.2 on a 1-to-7 scale.

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Online Retailers Are Experimenting With Brick-and-Mortar Stores

• Posted: September 7, 2015

Some ecommerce retailers are investing in the establishment of brick-and-mortar stores. They are executing this strategy in order to differentiate themselves, to establish better brand-customer relationships, and to provide face-to-face interactions according to Susan Warren in her article for MarketingSherpa.

This article discusses an interview with Debbie Hauss, Editor-in-Chief, Retail Touchpoints, on the establishment of physical stores by online retailers. While undertaking this strategy can be expensive and require much time and planning, establishing an omni-channel plan enables the ecommerce retailer the opportunity to achieve a competitive advantage.

Hauss suggests the following steps to online retailers interested in establishing brick-and-mortar stores:

-Experiment with new locations via mobile stores.

-Open pop-up and showroom stores.

-Utilize customer data to create an effective brick-and-mortar location.

This strategy enables ecommerce retailers to provide optimal shopper experiences across multiple shopping channels.

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Mobile Revenue Not Keeping Pace With Mobile Traffic

• Posted: September 7, 2015

The mobile ad revenue of publishers is not keeping pace with the time spent on publishers’ mobile offerings, creating a “mobile gap,” according to this article from The Wall Street Journal.

Jack Marshall points out in this article that selling advertising on mobile devices is challenging.  It is difficult to show mobile users enough ads, traditional ad formats like “banners” do not perform well, and publishers cannot easily undertake sophisticated tracking and targeting of ads. These challenges impact publishers’ mobile websites and their apps.

Additional reasons that mobile ad revenue is growing more slowly than mobile traffic:

-mobile  devices have smaller screens so that mobile users don’t see as many ads as desktop users.

-advanced tracking and targeting mechanisms don’t work as well on smartphones and tablets as on desktops.  As a result, it is often more difficult for publishers to prove the benefit of mobile ads to marketers.

Solutions being developed by publishers include:

-experimenting with new mobile ad formats and tactics.

-stepping up investments in sponsored content, also known as “native” advertising.

-partnering with Facebook, which has the consumer data across devices and channels, that enhances targeting.

Marshall concludes that mobile ad revenues will increase as publishers work out the technical challenges in mobile advertising and prove to marketers that mobile advertising benefits their businesses.

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How to Effectively Connect With Consumers in Their “Content Cocoons”

• Posted: August 31, 2015

Pat LaPointe, Executive Vice President at Resonate and ARF Board member, analyzes the challenges faced by marketers trying to connect with digital consumers in this Advertising Age article.

Many digital marketing campaigns are based upon the premise that consumers like personalized ads, and that such personalized ads make marketing and advertising more relevant.  However, consumers are suspicious of these ads, consider their offers to be false, not relevant, or intrusive.

As a result, consumers create their own “content cocoons,” in which they search for information, engage in social media or watch videos.  However, each online interaction provides data for marketers, and represents an opportunity to become part of the curated web of consumers.

The author advises marketers that to be relevant in this digital world, they need to demonstrate an understanding the of the mindset and motivations of consumers. LaPointe recommends, “marrying observed behavioral data to surveys and consumer-initiated dialogue to shape highly curated marketing experiences to blend into the content cocoon consumers have curated for themselves online.”

By building insightful profiles and understanding consumer motivation, marketers will be able to provide relevant, curated content, and relevant messaging.

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Challenges and Opportunities of Measurements in Mobile

• Posted: August 31, 2015

As spending increasingly moves to mobile platforms, there is a critical need to accurately and independently evaluate audiences, media, and advertising. Joe Nguyen, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific at comScore, analyzes the need for measurement in order to maintain trust and encourage growth in mobile media.

The author reminds readers that measuring mobile is especially complex due to the use of multiple devices by consumers.  Accurate measurement must address this fragmentation.

Three key criteria for measuring any market or platform must address the need for products that:

-are holistic and objective in measurement.

-deliver outputs and metrics that fit the needs of the entire ecosystem.

-have relevant scope but can be delivered at a viable cost for the market.

In a digital ecosystem, it is also important for measurement solutions to mirror or to be comparable across different geographies and to be comparable with different media. Nguyen also advises that measurement must be done on a person-level, including demographic targets, and must factor in the impact of non-human traffic, including fraud, as well as viewability and brand safety.

In addition, this article discusses the assets, systems, and methodologies needed to develop these measurement solutions.

 

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Multicultural Marketing to Become Mainstream in a Millennial World

• Posted: August 31, 2015

Yuyu Chen, writing for ClickZ, highlights the reasons why effective multicultural marketing to Millennials has become increasingly critical to many companies.  Both the spending power and the demographics of African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic Millennials have made it critical to connect with these consumers.

Among the brands that have been building connections with multicultural Millennials according to this article are: Honda, Toyota, Wells Fargo, State Farm, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, and Kimberly-Clark.

However, there are challenges to effective multicultural marketing, which include language barriers and cultural nuances.

Among the important factors to be considered when developing multicultural campaigns, according to Lia Silkworth, Executive Vice President and Managing director of Tapestry, a division of SMG Multicultural:

-Deep cultural insights.

-Knowledge of the media habits, behaviors, and interests of the target segment.

-Research is important in order to create authenticity in marketing campaigns.

Chen points out that an alternative to targeting individual multicultural segments is the total market approach.  This holistic marketing approach involves incorporating ethnic insights into overall marketing communications.

 

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Big Data: Too Many Answers, Not Enough Questions

• Posted: August 31, 2015

In this Forbes article, Bernard Marr reminds readers that data on its own is meaningless. To avoid drowning in data, and for data to be useful, marketers must first know what data is needed.  Otherwise, too much data will obscure the needed answers.

Marr stresses the importance of starting with a strategy and identifying the right questions. Know what you are trying to achieve, then develop the questions to which answers are needed.

By knowing the critical questions, the data needed to answer those questions can be accurately identified. By following this process, you will be able to improve performance and harness the primary power of data.  Decision-making will be supported by the data developed by asking the right questions

Marr concludes that data is a strategic asset, but it must be used constructively and appropriately, as he has outlined above, in order to deliver optimal results.

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10 Amazing Out-of-Home Campaigns

• Posted: August 31, 2015

The large quantity of ads in urban environments can be challenging for marketers.  However, the creative out-of-home advertising demonstrated by the brands highlighted in this article enables them to stand out.

The author’s favorite out-of-home campaign discussed in this Designer Daily article is a Simpsons movie ad that appeared at the bottom of an escalator when the movie was released.

Additional campaigns noted by the author:

• A bus stop campaign by IKEA
• An IWC Schaffhausen bus campaign
• A giant Mars truck ad
• A KitKat bench
• A Sprite shower
• A Law & Order billboard
• A Nike bench
• Durex XXL public restroom ad
• Superman elevator ad

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Global Advertising Industry Will Lose an Estimated $21.8 Billion to Ad-Blocking Software in 2015

• Posted: August 24, 2015

According to a study released by Adobe Systems and PageFair, the estimated loss of global revenue due to blocked advertisements exceeded $21.8 billion in 2015, and this loss is projected to rise to $41.4 billion in 2016.  

On a global basis, the number of consumers using ad-blocking software grew by 41% during the first half of 2015 compared with the same period in 2014. There were 198 million monthly active users of major browser extensions that block ads as of June 2015.

In the United States, the number of consumers using ad-blocking software grew by 48% during the first half of 2015 compared with the same time period in 2014. As of June 2015 there were 45 million active users of ad-blocking software.

Additional increases in ad blocking growth will likely come the from the installation of ad-blocking software on mobile devices.

Laurie Sullivan, in her article for Media Post, points out that the use of ad-blocking software could explain the slowing growth of revenue from search and display ads supported by Bing, Google, and Yahoo.

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