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14 Marketing Mistakes Startups Often Make (And How To Fix Them)

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Sourced from Forbes

For many new entrepreneurs, one of the most exciting stages of starting a business is getting the word out to potential customers. This is the stage when you can finally start to generate interest in what you have to offer, which means more customers and more profits. However, marketing can involve a multitude of different strategies and tactics, leaving plenty of room for error and overcomplication.

Thankfully, like most things in business, marketing mistakes create a great opportunity to learn and adjust for future success. To help, 14 experts from Forbes Communications Council discuss some of the most common marketing mistakes they see a lot of startups make, as well as their recommendations for what they should be doing instead.

1. Trying To Tackle It All

The pace, the speed, the desire to “do it all”—these are the traps to be wary of as the team sets out to develop a brand or launch a product as a startup. Simply put, instead of tackling it all, take on one, two or maybe three short-term initiatives that can both drive revenue and build your brand. Stay disciplined and be willing to defend your decisions within the organization. – Blair Primis, Flagship Specialty Partners

2. Agonizing Over Their Online Presence

Startups often agonize over their online presence, taking on large web design projects, spending valuable time on logo work and delaying social media. They should invest time in developing products and services, getting the right employees and finding and supporting customers. Get started in practical ways online and upgrade over time versus going for perfection early on. – Tom Treanor, Snipp Interactive

3. Failing To Follow A Strategy Based On Research

Startups often take on random acts of marketing versus following a strategy based on research: market, buyer, competition. Further, many startups feel they can buy their way into leads and brand recognition with paid ads. But without strategy, experience and data, they will churn through the budget fast with very little quality or output to show for it. – Alison Murdock, Trusted CMO, Inc.

4. Putting More Effort Into Marketing Than The Actual Product

A pattern I’ve seen in many startups is the 80/20 mix: 80% of the budget and resources go to marketing, while 20% go to product. While this might be effective in securing early funding and a strong user base, empty hype around products with limited value and functionality will damage a young company’s credibility and diminish its potential for future growth (or acquisition). If you build it, they will come. – Nick Karoglou, ACI Worldwide

5. Rushing Toward A ‘Big Bang’ Approach

A common misstep I’ve observed is the rush toward the “big bang” approach in marketing without first understanding the battlefield. It’s like launching a spectacular fireworks display in broad daylight! The mantra should be: Observe, engage, then fire. Find out where your audience hangs out, experiment in those spaces with bite-sized, impactful messages, and then learn from the feedback and scale. – Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz

6. Prioritizing Short-Term Gains Over Branding

Startups often prioritize short-term gains over branding. Instead, focus on defining brand identity, maintaining consistent messaging, delivering exceptional customer experiences, building trust, investing in content marketing and embracing authenticity. These aspects contribute to a strong foundation for long-term success. – Suneeta Motala, Stewards Investment Capital

7. Mistaking ‘Activity’ For ‘Strategy’

Too many marketers, especially early in their careers, mistake “activity” for “strategy.” To avoid this problem, brands need to clearly define their audience, understand the problem they solve and articulate their point of difference. Start there, and then create marketing objectives, strategies and measures from which to execute. – Dave Minifie, Terakeet

8. Focusing On The Bottom Of The Marketing Funnel

Most startups are so zeroed in on revenue that they tend to focus on the bottom of the marketing funnel. This is amplified by the fact that lower funnel marketing activities are easier to track and provide valuable data for startups. That said, startups are entering new markets with no brand awareness. Investing in brand building allows companies to broaden their pool of interest and be more efficient. – Roshni Wijayasinha, Prosh Marketing

9. Developing The Brand Before Conducting Market Research

It’s not about the logo. I’ve seen it time and time again. Many founders are too quick to spend time and/or money on developing the brand before they have invested in market research to establish the viability of their product or service, define differentiators and determine the target market among other things critical to the success of a startup. – Jen Iliff, 3X Marketing

10. Overlooking The Importance Of A Cohesive Brand Identity

Startups often fail to establish a consistent visual and messaging presence, hindering brand recognition. Instead, they should invest in creating a strong brand identity from the outset, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints. This builds trust, fosters brand loyalty and sets the foundation for successful long-term efforts. – Maria Alonso, Fortune 206

11. Assuming Media Coverage Will Generate Funding

Startups often think generating media coverage will automatically lead to funding. In reality, investors invest in founders. Startups should prioritize building founders’ market credibility and showcase their ability to scale the business. Strong leadership and a solid customer base will help make startups more attractive to investors, increasing their chances of securing funding in the long run. – Parna Sarkar-Basu, Brand and Buzz Consulting, LLC

12. Aiming To Make A ‘Big Splash’

Startups want to make a big splash and too often go for the quick hit that fizzes out. Startups need to start with a strategic plan that includes their vision and goals. From there, a marketer can develop a plan that aligns with the strategy, creating a regular cadence of brand awareness and important sales. This will help a startup last! – Kimberly Osborne, UNC Greensboro

13. Lacking Focus And A Plan

A startup has limited resources, yet founders often try to be all things to all people. Do the research, understand the market for your product, talk to customers directly for their insights and build a focused go-to-market plan. I built a GTM blueprint that includes the ideal customer profile, the company manifesto (unique selling point, messaging and more) and a comprehensive execution plan. But, above all, gain focus. – Doug Vinson, Secuvy Inc.

14. Taking The ‘Faster, Better, Cheaper’ Route

“Faster, better, cheaper” is not a strong basis for long-term competitive advantage. Startups tend to focus on launching new products and branding based on functional benefits against a narrow target market. Build competitive advantage by ensuring your brand is differentiated from your competition and incorporates emotional benefits, purpose and identity. Build your brand—not just your revenue. – Toby Wong, Toby Wong Consulting

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Feature Image Credit: GETTY

Sourced from Forbes

Expert Panel®

Communications, PR, public affairs & media relations executives from Forbes Communications Council share firsthand insights.

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7 Ways to Create a Seamless Marketing Campaign Across All Platforms

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BY DMITRII KHASANOV.

Achieving cross-platform harmony requires strategic goal-setting, customized content optimization, and a mix of paid and organic efforts.

Investing in digital marketing is no longer a desire but a strategic step that can lead a business to success. According to The Global Strategic Business Report, the digital marketing market is growing at an annual growth rate of 13.9%. So, it’s expected to reach a whopping $1.5 trillion by 2030.

As a reference, the digital advertising market is projected to reach $680 billion in 2023. Businesses cannot exist without marketing, so companies actively invest in different digital marketing channels.

Social media is at the top of the list, offering a variety of platforms to communicate with clients and users. However, dealing with cross-platform content marketing might seem daunting initially, but it doesn’t have to be. Many marketers aim to expand their reach across various social media platforms, yet efficiency becomes a concern, especially without a clear approach.

To make your marketing strategy seamless across platforms, it’s essential to craft content that aligns with each platform’s vibe. This ensures a cohesive experience, steering away from the typical advertising that users tend to avoid. Tailoring your campaign to fit each platform’s unique posting requirements not only boosts engagement but also ensures your audience connects with your brand in a genuine way.

What are the advantages of having cross-platform campaigns for a business?

Each platform has a unique purpose. Instagram and Twitter focus on awareness, while Facebook excels in conversions through ads. Tailoring goals to each platform enhances your overall strategy. Platforms vary in visual and text-based aspects. A cross-platform strategy ensures your content seamlessly fits each medium, making it relatable and effective.

Cross-platform campaigns outshine single-platform efforts. Avoid the ‘copy and paste’ trap by customizing content for each platform, optimizing engagement and reaching a broader audience. Consistent branding across platforms builds loyalty and trust. A unified brand presence reinforces your identity and boosts the impact of your marketing efforts.

Aligning marketing campaigns across platforms may seem like a daunting task that demands significant attention and resources. Indeed, it is. Nevertheless, you can consider the key factors that impact the success of developing a cross-platform digital marketing strategy.

1. Set platform-specific goals

Before diving in, it’s crucial to undertake this pivotal step. While you may already have an overarching goal for your campaign, it’s imperative to set specific goals for each platform you’ll be utilizing. Here are some illustrative examples:

  • Instagram: Promote engagement and discovery.
  • Pinterest: Drive conversion to the website.
  • LinkedIn: Build B2B-focused marketing campaigns
  • Facebook: Promote engagement and attract leads.
  • Medium: Share expertise and experience.

2. Say no to copy-paste (almost)

Since platforms have their own quirks, it’s crucial to customize content for each one. Yet, you can consider duplicating content for platforms that share similar audience segments. However, copying and pasting the same content across multiple platforms will be the biggest red flag for people potentially interested in interacting with your content.

3. Use paid and organic strategies together

Blend paid and organic approaches thoughtfully. A well-timed boost through paid promotion can enhance visibility. Experiment to discover the optimal balance.

4. Include search terms in your name or username

Make yourself more discoverable by adding relevant keywords to your username or profile name. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps the right audience find your profile easily when they search for related topics. Test different keywords to optimize your profile and attract the most targeted users.

5. Get verified

Where applicable, secure a verified badge — the coveted blue checkmark. This symbol not only instils trust but also sets your brand apart as authentic, bolstering overall credibility. As a result, users are more likely to engage with and trust your brand. Experiment with the verification process to enhance your brand’s authority and recognition.

6. Schedule your content

Strategic planning and scheduling of content in advance are the must-do. By doing so, you ensure a seamless narrative and prevent disjointed announcements. Develop a well-thought-out content calendar to maintain consistency and engage your audience effectively. You are free to try out different scheduling approaches to find the rhythm that works best for your brand.

7. Diversify your content types

Photos, videos, articles, storytelling, educational or entertainment content, case studies and way more — experimenting with different post styles expands your cross-platform marketing arsenal, offering a broader range of options to grow your brand organically.

Achieving cross-platform harmony requires strategic goal-setting, customized content optimization, and a mix of paid and organic efforts. Using the unique features of each platform and maintaining a consistent brand identity allows marketers to unleash the potential of cross-platform campaigns. This, in turn, expands their audience, creates meaningful touchpoints, and enhances conversion rates. Begin by honing your approach on one platform and gradually replicate successful strategies across others, fostering a dynamic and engaging brand presence online.

BY DMITRII KHASANOV.

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK® CONTRIBUTOR. Founder of Melandia Agency

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Agencies break down how they’ve made ChatGPT and generative AI their own

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By Jasmine Sheena.

Billion Dollar Boy, Gut, and Mischief are focused on ensuring that work powered by the tech retains a human touch.

It’s been over a year since ChatGPT first rolled out, and while constantly hearing the phrase “generative AI” has been really a(i)nnoying, there’s no doubt the technology has transformed the world. It was one of the hottest topics at CES earlier this year, and SXSW has a dedicated track for the tech.

When something’s trendy, marketers tend to take notice, and we spoke to execs at several agencies about how they have taken ChatGPT and other generative AI tools into their own hands. They told Marketing Brew that, so far, adland has found unique ways to incorporate generative AI into workflows while working to ensure there is still a human touch, all while tech giants and the federal government alike weigh potential restrictions on the tech.

Lead by example

For independent shop Billion Dollar Boy, generative AI has been useful in influencer marketing. The agency set up Muse, an emerging tech arm to help leverage AI for influencer content creation for clients, Thomas Walters, Billion Dollar Boy’s founder and its European CEO, told us. Muse, which has worked with AI artists like Jo Ann and Elmo Mistiaen on brand campaigns, has also worked with brands including Lipton Iced Tea and Versace, Walters said.

“[It’s] really at the bleeding edge of advertising,” he said.

Internally, the agency is interrogating ways to use AI to optimize work, Walters said. BDB set up a taskforce made up of folks across its departments, from leadership to business affairs, to identify workflow problems and figure out how to solve them using AI tools, Walters said. For example, after realizing the agency’s staff was spending a lot of time manually performing due diligence checks on influencers, the agency created a tool it built using ChatGPT that evaluates influencers’ posts and applies a “risk rating.”

Maxime Rozencwajg, senior account director at BDB, said that the agency spent months experimenting with ChatGPT and other AI with artists and clients. Through its trial-and-error process, the agency and its legal team have built out a framework for AI that aims to “protect our clients as much as possible,” Rozencwajg said. “But we don’t have all the answers yet. No one has.”

History repeats itself?

At independent agency Gut, a generative AI tool built off ChatGPT is being trained to be “promptless,” meaning that the tool can process data to the extent that it can then create new data by combining sources, Christian Pierre, chief intelligence officer and partner at Gut, told Marketing Brew.

What data points could be included in such work? They’re “randomized…[and] based on science and culture and history,” Pierre said. One data point the agency fed into the AI was a project that Gut’s São Paulo office previously worked on with Brazilian tech company QuintoAndar, that was designed to raise awareness of ways to help fight dengue, a viral mosquito-borne illness. This example was fed into Gut’s ChatGPT model, so it could potentially output similar ideas in the future, Pierre said.

Gut also trained ChatGPT to cross-reference data with an AI assistant from OpenAI competitor Anthropic, Claude. Gut also utilizes other AI tools, including Bard, Entropy, and Stable Diffusion, Pierre told us.

Besides building promptless AI, Gut is also investing in AI personas. The agency is working on six different personas, which are designed to model people in different life stages and backgrounds, Pierre told us, with the idea that brands can solicit input and advice from the personas based on the demographics the brand is targeting.

“It’s kind of [like] having a focus group on standby,” he said.

Gut requires that all AI-generated content be checked by a human staffer, Pierre said, and before AI is used at the agency, its usage is voted on and agreed upon.

“Generative AI today can solve routine tasks and things like that…but it cannot solve what a human can do: Use that data to do something that will resonate with people,” he said.

Teamwork makes the dream work

Gut isn’t the only agency setting boundaries around AI usage. Independent shop Mischief @ No Fixed Address’s VP of creative technology, Darrin Patey, told Marketing Brew that the agency is already setting boundaries around AI, sometimes with help from other companies: Mischief has been working with companies like Shutterstock on ethical attribution and AI artist compensation.

“They figured out a way to handle attribution and make sure artists are getting some sort of compensation for their work,” he told us.

Mischief has also diversified its use of AI instead of only relying on ChatGPT, employing Waldo and Jasper. While Waldo is a research tool, Jasper can be used to help create social media posts or reformat content, he said. At Mischief, AI is usually only used to generate internal materials, like imagery for a deck, rather than for public-facing content. Human refinement of AI output has become even more critical after Patey said that in some cases, “we were catching made-up attributions.”

“It really puts a huge emphasis on hygiene,” Patey said. “We’re double-checking everything that we see.”

Feature Image Credit: Amelia Kinsinger

By Jasmine Sheena

Sourced from Marketing Brew

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Why The Marketing Funnel Is Dead (And How To Evolve)

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By Anton Lipkanou.

For too long, marketers have clung to the marketing funnel, blissfully unaware (or, in some cases, willfully ignorant) of the reality that today’s consumers follow a buying journey that doesn’t follow a funnel.

The days of casting wide nets with channel-first tactics are over. I believe that chief marketing officers who want their brands to be industry leaders must let go of the archaic strategies that once dominated their playbooks and instead focus their efforts on converting only the best of the best: their superfans.

The Downfall Of Traditional Marketing

Once celebrated for its simplicity, the marketing funnel model now falls short in mapping the intricate, non-linear journey of the modern consumer. It naively views the consumer journey as a straight shot from awareness to purchase, a concept laughably out of sync with the multifaceted, unpredictable nature of today’s consumer.

Despite the growing body of evidence pointing to the funnel’s obsolescence, the marketing world clings to it like a crutch. This reluctance to evolve is an ingrained mindset and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the game has changed. But the digital transformation doesn’t care about our comfort zones. Today’s consumers, armed with information and options, don’t just passively drift down a funnel. They’re active players, often sidestepping our best-laid marketing strategies.

In the third quarter of 2023, retail e-commerce sales saw the highest quarterly revenue in United States history—roughly $284 billion. As consumers increasingly turn to digital platforms, it becomes more important to adopt a more nuanced, consumer-centric marketing approach. Those who recognize this shift and move to strategies that engage with the evolving dynamics of consumer interaction can be the ones to capitalize on this historic surge in e-commerce activity.

Modern Marketing Challenges

Paid social media has aggressively expanded its influence past the top of the funnel, dramatically impacting a hallmark marketing metric: the cost per acquisition (CPA). The reliance on CPAs from these platforms has become a double-edged sword. Marketers putting all their eggs in the easy-to-measure paid social CPA basket have watched as costs skyrocket, leading to financial losses.

As we say goodbye to third-party cookies, marketers face a profound shift in data collection. Technology democratization has leveled the playing field, but this seismic shift comes with new challenges. Major digital platforms are increasingly pushing modeled data, which subtly encourages a dependency that could skew marketing decisions by driving reliance on convenient but inaccurate data. Thus, the real challenge for marketers is discerning the truth in a sea of approximations. The key lies in using this data judiciously, complementing it with other organic insights to ensure a grounded approach to understanding consumer behavior.

With a media inflation rate soaring past 5% (registration required), corporations demand efficiency. This can lead to significant compromises, not just in campaign quality but also in consumer engagement. Marketers must innovate and find ways to optimize budgets without sacrificing the long-term vision and engagement that fuel brand growth.

The Superfan Marketing Revolution

Superfan marketing is a strategic shift that prioritizes deep understanding and engagement with the real VIPs of the brand: superfans. In the post-cookie landscape, marketers are being called back to the basics: truly and profoundly understanding their consumers, brand positioning and product-market fit.

Gone are the days when marketers could lean on broad data to attribute impressions across the conversion funnel. Now, the game demands marketing that doesn’t just reach people but persuades them. While this approach demands more focus and effort, I believe it’s the only way a brand can win in this new era of marketing.

Creating A Supercycle

These superfans, the most engaged and loyal customers, are at the heart of this approach. Putting prospective superfans at the forefront of marketing strategies is about investing resources to delve into the depths of what makes them tick. This means understanding their specific needs, preferences and behaviors and then tailoring your messaging and strategies to resonate with their unique consumer DNA. Here’s how:

1. Leverage data to identify and engage potential superfans.

Re-imagine the traditional marketing funnel. Instead of looking at the funnel horizontally by stages, slice the funnel vertically by audience segment and focus only on the superfans. This is not about creating generic customer experiences for anyone who might buy; it’s about crafting personalized journeys that speak directly to the needs and preferences of your superfan segment. The goal here is to create a high-spend, high-value experience to nurture these prospects with such precision and care that they evolve into loyal, high-value customers.

2. Break down the silos between data, media and technology.

Data, media, and technology need to collaborate within your organization to ensure that the data insights inform media planning and technology deployment. But it doesn’t stop there. You must also optimize continuously. Analyze the effectiveness of your strategies and tactics in real time, using data and feedback to refine and adjust your approach.

3. Focus on strategic effectiveness.

Traditional marketing lives by the mantra “every prospect has value,” but this couldn’t be further from the truth. I believe distractors need to be cut from your attention completely. The core middle—the 80% of your customers who provide a decent amount of revenue but are not loyal to your brand—is not worth the resources required to figure them out. To make a real, material difference, focus your marketing only on your superfans.

Now is the moment to evaluate your marketing strategies. By stepping away from the outdated marketing funnel and embracing superfan marketing, savvy CMOs can write the playbook for the future.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Anton Lipkanou.

Follow me on LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Anton Lipkanou is President / Partner at Delve Partners. Read Anton Lipkanou’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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Meta Announces Updates to Advantage+ and Shopping Ads

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Meta has announced a heap of new ad updates, primarily focused on retailers and those using its automated Advantage+ campaigns.

And there are a lot of niche use cases within these new updates, which could apply to your business.

The first update is “Advantage+ creative optimizations”, which will automatically optimize your video ads for viewing on Reels, or the mobile Facebook and Instagram apps with 9:16 ratio.

Meta ShopTalk update

That will help more brands tap into the popularity of the various Meta video formats, with Reels being the key focus.

As per Meta:

“Reels and video on our apps continues to grow as daily watch times across all video types grew over 25% year-over-year in Q4. In fact people now reshare Reels 3.5 billion times every day.”

The new process will also enable advertisers to dynamically create multiple variations of an ad, so the system then has more options to display to users, depending on what they respond best to.

Meta’s also updating its Advantage+ catalogue ads, with the added capacity to import and use branded videos or customer demonstration videos, instead of just static images.

Meta ShopTalk update

Advantage catalogue ads, which Meta first launched in beta testing last year, provide personalized recommendations to users, based on what Meta’s system detects that each will be most interested in, and this new process will provide more capacity to showcase relevant products within the display.

Meta’s will also now enable brands to upload a “hero” image in the centre of their catalogue ads, which Meta’s AI will then use to show people the best products from their catalogue to drive performance.

Meta’s also adding more eCommerce ad options, with users of Magento and Salesforce Commerce Cloud now able to create Shops ads within their management systems. Meta’s also integrating its Shops ads and branded content ads (now called “Partnership ads”), which will enable direct purchasing from collaborative campaigns.

And there’s also new elements in Reminder Ads on Instagram:

“Now, advertisers can include external links to a new product or sale in their Reminder ads to help turn a person’s interest into a purchase. This summer, we’ll also give advertisers ways to notify people when an event starts and before it ends.”

Meta ShopTalk update

Meta’s also looking to expand Reminder ads to Reels in the coming months.

There’s also new Promo Codes promotions on Facebook and Instagram, as well as ads with product tags:

“In March, we’ll bring ads with product tags to Facebook Feed (currently Instagram only), and in April, we’ll launch the global availability of ads with product tags to all businesses, whether or not they maintain a Shop.”

Meta ShopTalk update

Meta’s also updating its Collaborative ads offering, to provide more analytics on performance, while it’s also testing the ability for advertisers to use Collaborative ads with Advantage+ shopping campaigns.

Finally, Meta’s also working on Advantage+ Catalogue ads with omnichannel brand and product level reporting as a new managed service solution “to help RMNs prove that ads on Meta platforms drove sales online and in-store”.

So yeah, a heap of updates, all with varying levels of applicability and use. And while there may not be some huge, headline change that will get the most attention, there’s a lot of value for specific brands within these changes.

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Forecast: AI’s Rise Will Cut Search Engine Traffic, Affecting Advertising

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By KIT EATON.

AI supplants conventional search engines, their loss of market share will change the digital ad landscape, says research firm Gartner.

A new report from the research firm Gartner, has some unsettling news for search engine giants like Google and Microsoft’s Bing. It predicts that as everyday net users become more comfortable with AI tech and incorporate it into their general net habits, chatbots and other agents will lead to a drop of 25 percent in “traditional search engine volume.” The search giants will then simply be “losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.”

One reason to care about this news is to remember that the search engine giants are really marketing giants. Search engines are useful, but Google makes money by selling ads that leverage data from its search engine. These ads are designed to convert to profits for the companies whose wares are being promoted. Plus placing Google ads on a website is a revenue source that many other companies rely on–perhaps best known for being used by media firms. If AI upends search, then by definition this means it will similarly upend current marketing practices. And disrupted marketing norms mean that how you think about using online systems to market your company’s products will have to change too.

AI already plays a role in marketing. Chatbots are touted as having copy generating skills that can boost small companies’ public relations efforts, but the tech is also having an effect inside the marketing process itself. An example of this is Shopify’s recent AI-powered Semantic Search system, which uses AI to sniff through the text and image data of a manufacturer’s products and then dream up better search-matching terms so that they don’t miss out on matching to customers searching for a particular phrase. But this is simply using AI to improve current search-based marketing systems.

AI–smart enough to steal traffic

More important is the notion that AI chatbots can “steal” search engine traffic. Think of how many of the queries that you usually direct at Google-from basic stuff like “what’s 200 Farenheit in Celsius?” to more complex matters like “what’s the most recent games console made by Sony?”–could be answered by a chatbot instead. Typing those queries into ChatGPT or a system like Microsoft’s Copilot could mean they aren’t directed through Google’s labyrinthine search engine systems.

There’s also a hint that future web surfing won’t be as search-centric as it is now, thanks to the novel Arc app. Arc leverages search engine results as part of its answers to user queries, but the app promises to do the boring bits of web searching for you, neatly curating the answers above more traditional search engine results. AI “agents” are another emergent form of the tech that could impact search-AI systems that’re able to go off and perform a complex sequence of tasks for you, like searching for some data and analysing it automatically.

Google, of course, is savvy regarding these trends, and last year launched its own AI search push, with its Search Generative Experience. This is an effort to add in some of the clever summarizing abilities of generative AI systems to Google’s traditional search system, saving users time they’d otherwise have spent trawling through a handful of the top search results in order to learn the actual answer to the queries they typed in.

But as AI use expands, and firms like Microsoft double– and triple-down on their efforts to incorporate AI into everyone’s digital lives, the question of the role of traditional search compared to AI chatbots and similar tech remains an open one. AI will soon impact how you think about marketing your company’s products and Search Engine Optimization to bolster traffic to your website may even stop being such an important factor.

So if you’re building a long-term marketing strategy right now it might be worth examining how you can leverage AI products to market your wares alongside more traditional search systems. It’s always smart to skate to where the puck is going to be versus where it currently is.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By KIT EATON.

Sourced from Inc.

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How These 2 Social Media Growth Opportunities Will Transform Business in 2024

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BY ASHLEY HUBKA.

Social media platforms are great tools for “listening” to ongoing conversations to understand what is important in your community.

As we move into 2024, two trends are reshaping how businesses engage with their customers. The first is the shrinking gap between awareness and purchasing, which is evident in the skyrocketing popularity of social commerce, which merges social media discovery with e-commerce. The second is the growing consensus nationwide that businesses should contribute to the well-being of their local communities. This expectation transcends traditional notions of corporate responsibility and asks companies to take the lead in building strong local economies and more resilient communities.

Both trends present opportunities for businesses to generate competitive advantages and growth opportunities, and why an organization’s social platforms should be a strategic priority in the year ahead.

Bridging the discovery-purchase gap

With a growing demand for convenience and immediacy, consumers are moving through the consideration phase of the traditional awareness-consideration-purchase journey online and at lightning speed. This shift requires businesses to focus on converting customers in real time. Social media is quickly becoming the first option for consumers to engage with their favourite brands, shop for the products they love and discover new ones. Because digital discovery often leads directly to purchase, integrating shopping experiences into consumers’ social media feeds is essential to satisfying their desire for convenience and immediacy. This approach caters to the shift in consumer behaviour by emphasizing seamless and personalized interactions with brands in familiar online spaces.

Social media platforms regularly roll out new features and functionalities. For example, last year, TikTok launched its TikTok Shop, and Instagram replaced its “Live Shopping” section with the “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart” buttons to make it easy for users to purchase products as they scroll through their Feed and Reels interfaces.

Retailers are realizing that social commerce platforms like TikTok Shopping, Instagram and YouTube Shopping have become vibrant marketplaces. This is not a fad; Statista projects social commerce will generate $3.37 trillion by 2028 at an annual growth rate of nearly 30%!

Walmart tapped into the power of social commerce last December with our innovative “Add to Heart” shoppable series that combined the holiday season traditions of shopping and watching holiday movies. This first-of-its-kind shoppable commercial series featured over 330 products featured in the series available for real-time purchase, including furniture, holiday décor and clothing items the cast members wore. Customers could watch “Add to Heart” on TikTok, Roku, YouTube and Walmart’s social media channels, and TikTok’s Video Shopping Ads and Roku’s “Ok to Text” feature enabled them to shop whether they were at home or on the go.

The applications and benefits of social commerce are not limited to consumer retail. LinkedIn’s native lead generation is a short hop to something like in-video actions to bridge the gap between discovery and B2B sales. Social commerce is also a viable sales platform for service providers. An insurance company may not offer products its customers can add to a virtual shopping cart, but it can distribute engaging content via social commerce to generate leads and sales.

For now, capitalizing on this trend requires businesses to create interactive, entertaining content that engages audiences who may never set foot in their physical locations. But with the ever-changing social platforms and the tools they provide, what works today might not work tomorrow. That’s why it’s essential to regularly review customer engagement and social media strategies and adapt to and take advantage of them.

Make community building a business priority

While social commerce platforms are transforming traditional sales models, an equally important shift is occurring in how businesses interact with their communities and the role social media platforms play in those interactions.

Organizations of all sizes should make fostering the well-being of their local communities a top priority in 2024. Companies can achieve higher visibility and create positive change by gaining an understanding of what matters most to their community. Demonstrating a commitment to communities, employees and customers is a strategic choice and a key driver for long-term success.

At Walmart, we know that applies to us too. Walmart is a big company, but we are also a collection of businesses in more than 4,600 communities committed to being good stewards of the places our associates and customers call home. We aim to:

  • Create value for communities by providing convenient access to affordable, quality goods and services through our omnichannel business model and everyday low prices.
  • Contribute to economic vitality by providing quality jobs, training and career paths, investing in local suppliers, and contributing to local economies.
  • Strengthen community resilience by supporting local organizations and causes that matter to our customers and associates, increasing food access, and preparing for and responding to disasters.
  • Build more inclusive and engaged communities by advancing equity, supporting caring and connected communities, and deepening engagement between our stores and clubs and their surrounding communities.

Consider how your social media strategy can help you optimize your approach. Social media platforms are great tools for “listening” to ongoing conversations to understand what is important in your community. They also identify opportunities to get involved and make meaningful contributions to the things that matter to your community. Humbly sharing a business’s involvement on social media will help increase awareness and favourability, strengthening its reputation.

BY ASHLEY HUBKA.

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK® CONTRIBUTOR

Senior Vice President & General Manager, Walmart Business, Ashley Hubka, oversees the retailer’s eCommerce experience built to empower SMBs and non-profits. She oversees strategy, operations and growth drivers. Prior, she served as SVP, Enterprise Strategy, Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships for Walmart.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Wireless Ireland JNLR Listenership Figures

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Wireless Ireland continues to add new listeners as latest results show growth across its network of urban stations.

The latest JNLR audience figures show that an average of 3.809m adults tuned into
Irish radio stations weekly across the period of April 2023 to March 2024. That
equates to 91% of the 15+ population and the research also shows that the average
listener is listening for over 4 hours daily, highlighting the importance of radio in this
market.

In Dublin, Wireless Ireland’s Q102 grew weekly reach by a massive 26% year on
year to 184,000 listeners, while FM104 also increased to 258,000 listeners. While
the Q102 figure only includes 3 months for the new Ryan Tubridy Show, it is pleasing
to see that it and the other shows across the schedule are delivering new listeners
and playing a strong part in its growth story. The combined weekly reach in Dublin
now stands at 360,000 or 30% of Dublin adults. Wireless Ireland stations in Cork
also saw year on year growth, with Cork’s 96fm growing to 169,000 and C103 to
128,000, an impressive 19,000 higher than the same period last year. Combined the
stations reach 50.6% of the population on a weekly basis.

In Limerick 91,000 people tuned into Live 95fm on a weekly basis, equating to 52.7%
of the population, while 110,000 people tuned into LMFM, capturing 38.9% of the
available audience.

urbanmedia, the Wireless Ireland owned sales house, also delivered year on year
growth and now reaches 980,000 people weekly, helped by partner stations Galway
Bay FM delivering 117,000 and WLR 61,000 in weekly reach.

Today also saw the release of RAJAR listenership figures which cover listenership of
UK radio stations. The report showed that U105 now delivers 223,000 listeners on a
weekly basis, on FM across greater Belfast and DAB across all of Northern Ireland.

Commenting on the results, Sean Barry, Managing Director of Wireless Ireland said

“The continued growth in our audience numbers is testament to the work being done
by our programming teams across the island. We continue to invest in the best talent
and it’s great to see our audiences reacting positively to the changes that we have
made. A strong JNLR number backs up what we’re seeing in our digital audiences
and we look forward to even more growth in the future”

ENDS

Wireless Ireland assets in Ireland include Dublin’s FM104 and Q102, Cork’s 96fm
and C103, Live 95 in Limerick, LMFM and U105 in Belfast. Its sales house urban
media also represents Galway Bay FM and WLR and is the home of the Urban
Access national package.
Wireless Ireland is part of News UK & Ireland which also includes News
Broadcasting, home of talkSPORT, talkSPORT2, Talk, Times Radio and Virgin Radio
in the UK and News Ireland, publisher of award-winning titles The Sunday Times,
TheSundayTimes.ie, The Irish Sun and TheSun.ie, as well as HarperCollins.

Sources –
JNLR/Ipsos 2024-1 (Apr ‘23 to Mar ’24 – published 15th May 2024)
RAJAR/ IPSOS MORI/ RSMB – Q1 2024 (published 15th May 2024)

For further information please contact Brian McCarthy on [email protected]

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Apple TV+ might soon make a change that users may not like

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The streaming service might join its competitors in making a major change that may become an extra charge for users.

Apple TV+ might soon be planning to follow in the footsteps of its competitors who are starting to charge their users an extra fee to stream content without ads.

Several new hires at Apple in its advertising sector are pointing toward the reality that Apple TV+ is rapidly investing in building its TV advertising, according to a new report from Business Insider.

The report reveals that Apple has recently hired former NBCUniversal ad executive Joseph Cady as executive vice president of advanced advertising and partnerships. This comes after the company hired former NBCUniversal executive Jason Brum to join Apple’s video ad sales team in June last year.

A few months later in September, Apple hired former Peacock executive Chandler Taylor as a video ads account manager. Also in October, Jacqueline Bleazey, a former senior director of sponsorships and ad sales at FanDuel, joined Apple’s video advertising sales team.

The move from Apple comes after Amazon added ads to its Amazon Video content in January and offered customers the option to pay $2.99 a month on top of their $8.99 monthly subscription fee to remove them, a move that earned the company backlash from its users and a class-action lawsuit.

Netflix launched its ad-tier option in the U.S. in 2022 for $6.99 a month. The streaming giant has recently been planning to remove its cheapest Basic ad-free plan (which was discontinued for “new or re-joining members” in July 2023) for users in the U.K. and Canada this year and later hinted that the change would also affect U.S. customers.

YouTube has even started cracking down on users last year who use ad blockers to stream content ad-free on the platform. The platform began pushing a new notification to users warning them that their video playback would be disabled if they didn’t remove ad block from their web browser and reminded them that they can watch content ad-free by subscribing to YouTube Premium for $13.99 a month.

Apple TV+ currently does not have an ad-tier plan and only offers a $9.99 monthly subscription.

Even though many users have expressed outrage about the integration of ads into content that was once able to be streamed ad-free, Americans are warming up the idea of subscribing to ad tiers when it comes to streaming services. According to a recent survey by data company Disqo, 51% of respondents in the survey said they would likely pay for an ad-tier subscription plan while 37% were unsure.

By

Patricia Battle is a Breaking/Trending News Writer for TheStreet’s trending section. Before joining TheStreet, Patricia was an Associate Editor for City & State NY, and prior to that, an Editorial Intern for The Garnette Report.

Sourced from The Street

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Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media

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Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier.

Social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade holds a lot of lessons that apply directly to AI companies and technologies.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022 survey, Americans blamed social media for the coarsening of our political discourse, the spread of misinformation, and the increase in partisan polarization.

Today, tech’s darling is artificial intelligence. Like social media, it has the potential to change the world in many ways, some favourable to democracy. But at the same time, it has the potential to do incredible damage to society.

There is a lot we can learn about social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade that directly applies to AI companies and technologies. These lessons can help us avoid making the same mistakes with AI that we did with social media.

In particular, five fundamental attributes of social media have harmed society. AI also has those attributes. Note that they are not intrinsically evil. They are all double-edged swords, with the potential to do either good or ill. The danger comes from who wields the sword, and in what direction it is swung. This has been true for social media, and it will similarly hold true for AI. In both cases, the solution lies in limits on the technology’s use.

#1: Advertising

The role advertising plays in the internet arose more by accident than anything else. When commercialization first came to the internet, there was no easy way for users to make micropayments to do things like viewing a web page. Moreover, users were accustomed to free access and wouldn’t accept subscription models for services. Advertising was the obvious business model, if never the best one. And it’s the model that social media also relies on, which leads it to prioritize engagement over anything else.

Both Google and Facebook believe that AI will help them keep their stranglehold on an 11-figure online ad market (yep, 11 figures), and the tech giants that are traditionally less dependent on advertising, like Microsoft and Amazon, believe that AI will help them seize a bigger piece of that market.

Big Tech needs something to persuade advertisers to keep spending on their platforms. Despite bombastic claims about the effectiveness of targeted marketing, researchers have long struggled to demonstrate where and when online ads really have an impact. When major brands like Uber and Procter & Gamble recently slashed their digital ad spending by the hundreds of millions, they proclaimed that it made no dent at all in their sales.

AI-powered ads, industry leaders say, will be much better. Google assures you that AI can tweak your ad copy in response to what users search for, and that its AI algorithms will configure your campaigns to maximize success. Amazon wants you to use its image generation AI to make your toaster product pages look cooler. And IBM is confident its Watson AI will make your ads better.

These techniques border on the manipulative, but the biggest risk to users comes from advertising within AI chatbots. Just as Google and Meta embed ads in your search results and feeds, AI companies will be pressured to embed ads in conversations. And because those conversations will be relational and human-like, they could be more damaging. While many of us have gotten pretty good at scrolling past the ads in Amazon and Google results pages, it will be much harder to determine whether an AI chatbot is mentioning a product because it’s a good answer to your question or because the AI developer got a kickback from the manufacturer.

#2: Surveillance

Social media’s reliance on advertising as the primary way to monetize websites led to personalization, which led to ever-increasing surveillance. To convince advertisers that social platforms can tweak ads to be maximally appealing to individual people, the platforms must demonstrate that they can collect as much information about those people as possible.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much spying is going on. A recent analysis by Consumer Reports about Facebook—just Facebook—showed that every user has more than 2,200 different companies spying on their web activities on its behalf.

AI-powered platforms that are supported by advertisers will face all the same perverse and powerful market incentives that social platforms do. It’s easy to imagine that a chatbot operator could charge a premium if it were able to claim that its chatbot could target users on the basis of their location, preference data, or past chat history and persuade them to buy products.

The possibility of manipulation is only going to get greater as we rely on AI for personal services. One of the promises of generative AI is the prospect of creating a personal digital assistant advanced enough to act as your advocate with others and as a butler to you. This requires more intimacy than you have with your search engine, email provider, cloud storage system, or phone. You’re going to want it with you constantly, and to most effectively work on your behalf, it will need to know everything about you. It will act as a friend, and you are likely to treat it as such, mistakenly trusting its discretion.

Even if you choose not to willingly acquaint an AI assistant with your lifestyle and preferences, AI technology may make it easier for companies to learn about you. Early demonstrations illustrate how chatbots can be used to surreptitiously extract personal data by asking you mundane questions. And with chatbots increasingly being integrated with everything from customer service systems to basic search interfaces on websites, exposure to this kind of inferential data harvesting may become unavoidable.

#3: Virality

Social media allows any user to express any idea with the potential for instantaneous global reach. A great public speaker standing on a soapbox can spread ideas to maybe a few hundred people on a good night. A kid with the right amount of snark on Facebook can reach a few hundred million people within a few minutes.

A decade ago, technologists hoped this sort of virality would bring people together and guarantee access to suppressed truths. But as a structural matter, it is in a social network’s interest to show you the things you are most likely to click on and share, and the things that will keep you on the platform.

As it happens, this often means outrageous, lurid, and triggering content. Researchers have found that content expressing maximal animosity toward political opponents gets the most engagement on Facebook and Twitter. And this incentive for outrage drives and rewards misinformation.

As Jonathan Swift once wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” Academics seem to have proved this in the case of social media; people are more likely to share false information—perhaps because it seems more novel and surprising. And unfortunately, this kind of viral misinformation has been pervasive.

AI has the potential to supercharge the problem because it makes content production and propagation easier, faster, and more automatic. Generative AI tools can fabricate unending numbers of falsehoods about any individual or theme, some of which go viral. And those lies could be propelled by social accounts controlled by AI bots, which can share and launder the original misinformation at any scale.

Remarkably powerful AI text generators and autonomous agents are already starting to make their presence felt in social media. In July, researchers at Indiana University revealed a botnet of more than 1,100 Twitter accounts that appeared to be operated using ChatGPT.

AI will help reinforce viral content that emerges from social media. It will be able to create websites and web content, user reviews, and smartphone apps. It will be able to simulate thousands, or even millions, of fake personas to give the mistaken impression that an idea, or a political position, or use of a product, is more common than it really is. What we might perceive to be vibrant political debate could be bots talking to bots. And these capabilities won’t be available just to those with money and power; the AI tools necessary for all of this will be easily available to us all.

#4: Lock-in

Social media companies spend a lot of effort making it hard for you to leave their platforms. It’s not just that you’ll miss out on conversations with your friends. They make it hard for you to take your saved data—connections, posts, photos—and port it to another platform. Every moment you invest in sharing a memory, reaching out to an acquaintance, or curating your follows on a social platform adds a brick to the wall you’d have to climb over to go to another platform.

This concept of lock-in isn’t unique to social media. Microsoft cultivated proprietary document formats for years to keep you using its flagship Office product. Your music service or e-book reader makes it hard for you to take the content you purchased to a rival service or reader. And if you switch from an iPhone to an Android device, your friends might mock you for sending text messages in green bubbles. But social media takes this to a new level. No matter how bad it is, it’s very hard to leave Facebook if all your friends are there. Coordinating everyone to leave for a new platform is impossibly hard, so no one does.

Similarly, companies creating AI-powered personal digital assistants will make it hard for users to transfer that personalization to another AI. If AI personal assistants succeed in becoming massively useful time-savers, it will be because they know the ins and outs of your life as well as a good human assistant; would you want to give that up to make a fresh start on another company’s service? In extreme examples, some people have formed close, perhaps even familial, bonds with AI chatbots. If you think of your AI as a friend or therapist, that can be a powerful form of lock-in.

Lock-in is an important concern because it results in products and services that are less responsive to customer demand. The harder it is for you to switch to a competitor, the more poorly a company can treat you. Absent any way to force interoperability, AI companies have less incentive to innovate in features or compete on price, and fewer qualms about engaging in surveillance or other bad behaviours.

#5: Monopolization

Social platforms often start off as great products, truly useful and revelatory for their consumers, before they eventually start monetizing and exploiting those users for the benefit of their business customers. Then the platforms claw back the value for themselves, turning their products into truly miserable experiences for everyone. This is a cycle that Cory Doctorow has powerfully written about and traced through the history of Facebook, Twitter, and more recently TikTok.

The reason for these outcomes is structural. The network effects of tech platforms push a few firms to become dominant, and lock-in ensures their continued dominance. The incentives in the tech sector are so spectacularly, blindingly powerful that they have enabled six megacorporations (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook parent Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia) to command a trillion dollars each of market value—or more. These firms use their wealth to block any meaningful legislation that would curtail their power. And they sometimes collude with each other to grow yet fatter.

This cycle is clearly starting to repeat itself in AI. Look no further than the industry poster child OpenAI, whose leading offering, ChatGPT, continues to set marks for uptake and usage. Within a year of the product’s launch, OpenAI’s valuation had skyrocketed to about $90 billion.

OpenAI once seemed like an “open” alternative to the megacorps—a common carrier for AI services with a socially oriented nonprofit mission. But the Sam Altman firing-and-rehiring debacle at the end of 2023, and Microsoft’s central role in restoring Altman to the CEO seat, simply illustrated how venture funding from the familiar ranks of the tech elite pervades and controls corporate AI. In January 2024, OpenAI took a big step toward monetization of this user base by introducing its GPT Store, wherein one OpenAI customer can charge another for the use of its custom versions of OpenAI software; OpenAI, of course, collects revenue from both parties. This sets in motion the very cycle Doctorow warns about.

In the middle of this spiral of exploitation, little or no regard is paid to externalities visited upon the greater public—people who aren’t even using the platforms. Even after society has wrestled with their ill effects for years, the monopolistic social networks have virtually no incentive to control their products’ environmental impact, tendency to spread misinformation, or pernicious effects on mental health. And the government has applied virtually no regulation toward those ends.

Likewise, few or no guardrails are in place to limit the potential negative impact of AI. Facial recognition software that amounts to racial profiling, simulated public opinions supercharged by chatbots, fake videos in political ads—all of it persists in a legal grey area. Even clear violators of campaign advertising law might, some think, be let off the hook if they simply do it with AI.

Mitigating the risks

The risks that AI poses to society are strikingly familiar, but there is one big difference: it’s not too late. This time, we know it’s all coming. Fresh off our experience with the harms wrought by social media, we have all the warning we should need to avoid the same mistakes.

The biggest mistake we made with social media was leaving it as an unregulated space. Even now—after all the studies and revelations of social media’s negative effects on kids and mental health, after Cambridge Analytica, after the exposure of Russian intervention in our politics, after everything else—social media in the US remains largely an unregulated “weapon of mass destruction.” Congress will take millions of dollars in contributions from Big Tech, and legislators will even invest millions of their own dollars with those firms, but passing laws that limit or penalize their behaviour seems to be a bridge too far.

We can’t afford to do the same thing with AI, because the stakes are even higher. The harm social media can do stems from how it affects our communication. AI will affect us in the same ways and many more besides. If Big Tech’s trajectory is any signal, AI tools will increasingly be involved in how we learn and how we express our thoughts. But these tools will also influence how we schedule our daily activities, how we design products, how we write laws, and even how we diagnose diseases. The expansive role of these technologies in our daily lives gives for-profit corporations opportunities to exert control over more aspects of society, and that exposes us to the risks arising from their incentives and decisions.

The good news is that we have a whole category of tools to modulate the risk that corporate actions pose for our lives, starting with regulation. Regulations can come in the form of restrictions on activity, such as limitations on what kinds of businesses and products are allowed to incorporate AI tools. They can come in the form of transparency rules, requiring disclosure of what data sets are used to train AI models or what new preproduction-phase models are being trained. And they can come in the form of oversight and accountability requirements, allowing for civil penalties in cases where companies disregard the rules.

The single biggest point of leverage governments have when it comes to tech companies is antitrust law. Despite what many lobbyists want you to think, one of the primary roles of regulation is to preserve competition—not to make life harder for businesses. It is not inevitable for OpenAI to become another Meta, an 800-pound gorilla whose user base and reach are several times those of its competitors. In addition to strengthening and enforcing antitrust law, we can introduce regulation that supports competition-enabling standards specific to the technology sector, such as data portability and device interoperability. This is another core strategy for resisting monopoly and corporate control.

Additionally, governments can enforce existing regulations on advertising. Just as the US regulates what media can and cannot host advertisements for sensitive products like cigarettes, and just as many other jurisdictions exercise strict control over the time and manner of politically sensitive advertising, so too could the US limit the engagement between AI providers and advertisers.

Lastly, we should recognize that developing and providing AI tools does not have to be the sovereign domain of corporations. We, the people and our government, can do this too. The proliferation of open-source AI development in 2023, successful to an extent that startled corporate players, is proof of this. And we can go further, calling on our government to build public-option AI tools developed with political oversight and accountability under our democratic system, where the dictatorship of the profit motive does not apply.

Which of these solutions is most practical, most important, or most urgently needed is up for debate. We should have a vibrant societal dialogue about whether and how to use each of these tools. There are lots of paths to a good outcome.

The problem is that this isn’t happening now, particularly in the US. And with a looming presidential election, conflict spreading alarmingly across Asia and Europe, and a global climate crisis, it’s easy to imagine that we won’t get our arms around AI any faster than we have (not) with social media. But it’s not too late. These are still the early years for practical consumer AI applications. We must and can do better.

Feature Image Credit: STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | GETTY, ENVATO

Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier

Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist and an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Sourced from MIT Technology Review

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