editor, Author at Mediastreet

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When to Consider a Rebrand (and How to Do It Right)

November 11, 2021 No Comments

Your company’s future might depend on your ability to periodically refresh your brand identity.

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare’s Juliet once asked. Perhaps a rose would smell just as sweet if it were called something else, but when it comes to your start-up, a name can be integral to your brand.

Take the hard seltzer company Berczy — originally called NATRL, the founders decided to change their product’s name as part of a comprehensive rebrand in order to better tell their origin story (the idea for the company was hatched during a trip to Toronto, during which the founders enjoyed evening drinks in the lively Berczy Park).

Each company has its own story to tell, and it’s essential to check in with your brand identity periodically and decide whether it’s still true to your company as it stands today. “A clear, unified corporate identity can be critical to competitive strategy,” write Stephen A. Greyser and Mats Urde for Harvard Business Review. “It serves as a north star, providing direction and purpose. It can also enhance the image of individual products, help firms recruit and retain employees, and provide protection against reputational damage in times of trouble.”

At my company, Jotform, we recently rebranded for the first time in over a decade. It required a considerable effort from the entire team but in the end, it was well worth it. Whether you’re considering a light refresh or a total brand overhaul, here are some tips to keep in mind.

1. Make sure the timing is right

Rebranding might seem like an exciting endeavour, but it’s also a big investment and as such, carries significant risks. To avoid wasting precious time and money, start by considering whether the timing is right for your rebrand. Although it’s impossible to state a hard-and-fast rule for every company, I usually tell founders to hold off until the market or their customers demand it.

What does that look like in practice?

When the old branding doesn’t feel relevant anymore, which can be caused by various factors, including moving into a new geographical market; an evolved company philosophy; or offering additional services. With Jotform, we expanded our business over the years and the former brand, including the tagline, “easy-to-use online form builder for every business,” no longer encapsulated how we serve users. Our new brand identity, which features an updated logo and tagline — ”powerful forms get it done” — reinforces the essence of Jotform.

A seemingly obvious case for rebranding is post-merger or acquisition — but even then, perhaps not right away. When the airlines Avianca and TACA merged, Fabio Villegas, CEO of Avianca Holdings, explained that each company had its own rich heritage, culture and business. Because of all of the coordination involved, writes Villegas, “We decided to unify the vision, culture and operations of the two organizations prior to launching a single brand.”

For them, it was the right decision to wait to ensure that the new branding aligned with the customer experience. It’s up to each entrepreneur to determine when is the right time for them.

2. Do some soul-searching

If you’ve decided that now is the time to rebrand, the next step requires some soul-searching: who are you and where do you want to go.

Greyser and Urde, who came up with The Corporate Brand Identity Matrix to help companies articulate their corporate identities, recommend breaking these essential inquiries into two categories: the internal elements, comprised of a company’s vision and mission, and the external elements: how the company wants to be perceived by customers and other external stakeholders.

With Jotform, internally, we want to help users create robust forms and collect important data. Externally, however, we want to be perceived as an innovative tech company alongside trailblazers like Google, Airtable, and monday.com. This informed our entire rebranding process.

Or take Burger King — its most recent logo captured the company’s then-values: A food company that focused on speed. But Burger King’s values have evolved over the years and today, it wants to be known as a casual restaurant that focuses on taste and quality, which prompted it to revitalize its retro-looking pre-1999 logo.

“As a rule of thumb, brand strategy always follows the business strategy. Not the other way around. The business sets the objectives. The brand gets them done,” writes The Go Branding.

Asking the essential internal and external questions will inform your decisions as you envision your company’s future identity.

3. Don’t rush the process

I’ll be the first to admit: There’s a special kind of rush that comes with posting updates about your company. When you’re in the rebranding process, it’s tempting to jump the gun in order to share your flashy new brand with the world.

But if you’ve committed your company’s resources to rebranding, make sure you take the time to do it right: to gather the information you need from stakeholders; to analyze that information; to let the creative process happen organically. As cognitive scientist Art Markman has written, “Creativity needs time and space to grow.”

Hack weeks are a great way to foster bursts of creativity, but give those ideas time to simmer, and I guarantee they’ll get even better. Think of it like winemaking: You can’t rush the process. Avianca Holdings took three years to finalize its rebranding, but the final product was worth it. “I have no doubt that we made the right decision,” writes Villegas.

To nail the landing, take as much time as your company, with its unique needs and customer-base, requires.

4. Include customers in the journey

When rebranding, don’t ignore the most important stakeholder of all: the customer. Consider the case of Uber: when it redesigned its logo, the new image featured an image called the “atom and bit.” The company thought it would make the brand easy to recognize, but as it turned out, 44% of people were couldn’t tell what the new logo represented.

Alexander Chernev, professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, commented that the logo was “just too abstract for customers who know Uber for its primary function: efficient and reliable transportation.”

Had Uber included customers earlier in the rebranding journey, its trajectory might have been different.

So, how do you meaningfully include customers?

The founders of Berczy said that they kept customers in the loop by sending emails and soliciting feedback along the way. You can share updates via social media. Send questionnaires or feedback forms so that your customers feel like part of the process.

Being transparent about the process will safeguard against disappointment when you finally have the chance to reveal your new branding.

Final thoughts

Rebranding can be a powerful tool for giving your company a competitive edge — wait until the timing is right, do some organizational soul-searching, don’t rush the process and bring your customers along with you. Whether you’re considering a name-change or a total overhaul, just be sure the branding is true to your company’s internal and external ambitions.

By Aytekin Tank

Entrepreneur Leadership Network VIP. Aytekin Tank is the founder and CEO of JotForm, the easiest online form builder. JotForm was ranked in the 2016 Entrepreneur 360™ List, an annual ranking of the most entrepreneurial private companies in the U.S.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

Apple is killing Google in one key area

November 11, 2021 No Comments

By Jack Wallen

After a disastrous Pixel 6 pre-order experience, Jack Wallen shares his thoughts on what Google can learn from Apple.

The Pixel 6. The mere mention of the name gives me equal parts excitement and frustration. I haven’t been so excited for the release of a phone in a very long time, while simultaneously feeling as though I might forever shake my head at how a release went down. Google absolutely failed the release of its latest flagship phone, the Pixel 6, which should go down as a historic shame (at least within the realm of the tech sector), but will barely register as a blip on the radar of consumers around the world.

Let me explain.

The day of the Pixel 6 release was upon me. I watched the Google event because I had to report on the details of the new phone. During the event, I shifted between the Google speakers and the Play Store, hoping I could be one of the lucky ones to pre-order the exact Pixel 6 I wanted.

I don’t remember at which point it happened, but Google unlocked the metaphorical doors and allowed people to start pre-ordering the Pixel 6.

In theory.

What unfolded was an absolute disaster for Google.

I attempted to place the phone in my shopping cart, only to receive a 500 error. At first, I thought it was that Google hadn’t actually made the pre-orders officially available and I just needed to double down on my patience. But the error persisted.

And then morphed.

And then returned.

Eventually, the error vanished, only to reveal most of the devices had already sold out. I was able to finally place a 128Gb unlocked device (not the phone I was hoping for) in my shopping cart, only to receive yet another error.

I kept at it. No luck. I did some quick searching to discover the problem was global.

This was an embarrassment.

The company that is supposed to be the heart of everyone’s internet experience couldn’t deliver on a simple e-commerce solution on what should have been one of its biggest releases to date.

At some point, the wife and I had to run some errands. I asked her to drive, so I could continue trying to get Google to take my money (this time on my Pixel 5) yet the company persisted in failing to do so.

It wasn’t until I got home and tried again (some three hours after the event was over) that I was able to get the phone into the shopping cart and make the purchase.

Once this event was over, it gave me time to reflect on my experience and similar experiences with previous Pixel releases. A conclusion was drawn.

Apple absolutely kills Google on hardware releases. In fact, there’s absolutely no reason to compare the two.

Apple succeeds.

Google fails.

The “meh” approach

Apple spends the money necessary for proper marketing and is capable of getting consumers seriously hyped about a new product. It’s what Apple does best. And in this case, it’s astonishing how large the gap is.

During the lead-up to the Pixel 6 release, I think I saw maybe two commercials for the device, and those commercials were less than exciting (to say the least). Prior to the latest iPhone release, I couldn’t escape the advertising. It was everywhere. So prevalent was Apple’s iPhone hype, it had me wondering, “It’s been years since I had an iPhone. Is it time I try one again?”

On the contrary, Google’s Pixel 6 hype had me like, “Meh. Whatever. I’ll get one.”

That always seems to be Google’s approach to marketing hardware. “Meh, it’ll work.”

Thing is, the Pixel 6 looks to be one of the best phones on the market (once they start arriving in the hands of the users). So why the company approaches marketing with such a blasé attitude is beyond me.

Consider this: The Pixelbook Go is one of the finest Chromebooks on the market. Do you remember their marketing efforts? Neither do I. When the original Pixel Chromebook was released it was a work of technological art. It redefined mobile screens, keyboards and trackpads. Hype? Nada. Android 12 might well be the finest iteration of Google’s mobile platform ever released. PR? Scant.

If you’ve ever wondered why Android market share lags far behind iOS in the United States, it’s because of this very thing. You cannot turn your TV on without seeing iPhone ads or placement. They are everywhere. When was the last time you saw an Android phone in a television show?

I know it might seem silly, but product placement works … very well. People see celebrities using a product and they’ll feel inclined to want that product. You just don’t see celebs sporting Android. It’s all iOS all the time.

Apple knows this and uses it to its advantage. And when a new iPhone release is upon us, Apple inundates the media with incredibly effective advertisements that actually work to build hype around their product. Apple is the true master of marketing.

And until Google can bridge this gap, Android will continue to fall behind in the U.S. and Japanese markets (both markets where image is important). Google needs to markedly refine its lead-up to releases, shore up its e-commerce solution, and then hire a marketing team that understands precisely why Apple constantly succeeds (even when its product might be inferior to what Google has to offer).

If Google doesn’t fix this problem, it’ll have to accept that the Pixel market consists of previous Pixel owners and mobile device users who have grown tired of the iOS way of things. If that’s the company’s marketing plan, then all I have to say is, “Meh.”

Feature Image Credit: Google Pixel 6, Image: Google

By Jack Wallen

Sourced from TechRepublic

In Uncategorized

Big Data Analytics: How it Enables Digital Transformation

November 10, 2021 No Comments

By Ryan Williamson

The digital way of life is no longer a distant dream but our current reality and it has served everyone well too. For businesses, especially, it has far-reaching consequences, enabling them to reach newer heights every day. But how does one achieve such digital transformation, you ask? With help from big data; you see, the copious amounts of data companies now have access to, big data helps companies use said data to not only streamline their operational workflows but also drive business strategies. It also helps make processes quicker, effective, and much more efficient.

Further, the integration of big data analytics allows faster, more informed decision-making with access to real-time data. It has the ability to be a game-changer with the efforts of organizations to transform digitally. Today companies offering numerous data analytics services get extended while helping enterprises in creating new business models and achieving great heights.

Let us take a look at some other competitive advantages that big data analytics brings to world businesses.

Better customer retention rates: No matter how large a customer base a business may have managed to gather, unless you can consistently meet their expectations, the company’s business is bound to suffer the brunt of unhappy customers, i.e. high customer turnover rate. Thankfully, big data analytics can help companies avoid that by offering extensive insights about the business’ customer attributes, preferences, etc. Big data tools can also help companies boost their customer acquisition rates by fortifying sales and marketing strategies.
Risk management: Big data tools help companies not only quantify but also model various risks. In addition to that, big data analytics also drives predictive modeling and analytics, which helps companies to continually and effectively monitor threats and also prevent fraud and other such malicious incidents. Big data analytics does this via careful examination of all company data, be it customer profiles, transaction histories, etc. The information, then, gained helps not only remove risks but also fine-tune services, support, etc.
Improved marketing campaigns: Big data can also be put to work in the marketing department, allowing marketers to leverage all types of data to examine the distinctive manners in which various groups of the business’s target audience engage with the company, their purchase patterns, etc. Such insights can then be used to build marketing strategies that are primed to deliver desired results while also saving plenty of time and money.
Understand customers better: Big data analytics empowers businesses with the ability to better understand their target audience via insights on their behavior, thought processes, purchasing histories, etc. Based on this feedback, companies can quickly adapt strategies that will help them create a better quality of experiences, reduce complaints, and pre-emptively address issues that may mar customers’ satisfaction with the brand.

It is no secret that we are generating truly colossal amounts of data every single day, thanks to the deluge of connected devices and how much the world has come to rely on them for daily functions and tasks. This, of course, presents immense potential and a whole new world of opportunities but only if companies are successfully able to harness organizational data and put it to work for their businesses. How?

Well, as the above discussion demonstrates, with help from big data, of course. So, if you too wish to leverage the might of big data analytics and achieve critical and strategic business goals, you ought to start working on fortifying your digital business transformation strategy with big data. If you need help figuring that out, you can always engage the services of an expert vendor in the market. Now, off you go.

By Ryan Williamson

Sourced from TechTarget

In News

How To Use Instagram To Build A Successful Social Commerce Strategy

November 10, 2021 No Comments

By Zarnaz Arlia

Instagram recently rolled out a new advertising opportunity: It launched ads in Instagram Shop. The new ad placement is the most recent addition in a long line of e-commerce capabilities introduced by the app and a prime example of how Instagram is leaning heavily into social commerce.

These moves come as no surprise when you consider the massive growth currently happening across the social commerce landscape. Earlier this year, eMarketer reported that U.S. retail social commerce sales will reach more than $36 billion this year, and Instagram and Pinterest are at the top of the list of social media networks delivering the “most relevant” social commerce experiences. Instagram has been undergoing an evolution by transitioning from its roots as a photo-sharing app to focus on creators, videos, messaging and, perhaps most of all, shopping.

The good news for brands: Instagram’s users seem to be more than happy to go along with these changes. According to Instagram’s data (via HubSpot), 90% of its users follow at least one business. A Facebook-commissioned survey of 21,000 people (via Social Media Today) revealed that two in three people on Instagram said the app allows interaction with brands.

For brands aiming to maximize their e-commerce efforts, Instagram could be key to building a social commerce strategy. The app has multiple features to help brands better connect with their audiences, expand their reach and increase online sales revenue. Here are three social commerce features Instagram has released recently and how to leverage them.

Instagram Shop Ads

After launching Instagram Shop in 2020, an area of the social media app that’s 100% focused on the shopping experience, Instagram has now rolled out ad placements in the Shop tab, which, according to Instagram’s website, makes it easier for users to “discover and shop from brands when they’re already in the mood to browse.”

Like other products, Instagram Shop ads are displayed as tiles on the Instagram Shop home page. A Shop ad tile links to the product details page, where shoppers can learn more about the specific item and browse other products from the brand. Some ways brands can leverage Shop ads include:

• Using look-alike audiences: The audience that engages with your Shop ads likely has a high intent to purchase. You can leverage their data by creating look-alike audiences based on their characteristics to use in your marketing campaigns.

• Learning from insights: Test different types of Shop ads for the same product to learn more about your audience’s preferences and inform future content creation.

• Retargeting shoppers: Create custom audiences in order to retarget customers who have purchased from your shops in the past.

Instagram Reels Ads

In August 2020, Instagram introduced Instagram Reels, which are 60-second video clips that come with a variety of features that allow anyone on Instagram to be a creator. Less than a year after releasing the video feature, Instagram Reels ads were made available in June 2021. They give brands the opportunity to share full-screen video ads that are up to 30 seconds long.

As with Instagram Reels content that users post, people can comment on, like, view and share Reels ads. To maximize engagement and win more conversions, brands should first familiarize themselves with the format: I’ve found that the key is to create Reels that blend seamlessly with native content. Reels ads tend to be more effective when they include audio, like a trending audio clip or audio your brand has produced, along with captions that grab users’ attention as quickly as possible.

Because of their reach — users can find Reels via Instagram’s Explore tab and the Reels feed, as well as within their own feed — Reels ads can be an effective way for advertisers to connect with new audiences. You can also use Instagram’s analytics data to view the number of plays, accounts reached, likes, comments, saves and shares to monitor your performance.

Checkout On Instagram

Instagram checkout, an in-app purchasing feature that allows users to buy a product without ever leaving the app, has been around for years but was initially only available to a select group of brands when it first launched. Last year, Instagram opened access to its checkout feature to all U.S. business and creator accounts that had an Instagram Shop.

As Instagram explains on its website, businesses can use the checkout feature to reduce the friction in the path to purchase, as well as take advantage of other shopping tools: “With checkout on Instagram, businesses can truly leverage the full ecosystem of Instagram Shopping features to build experiences that drive awareness and transactions all in one place.”

But challenges still remain for B2C brands that want to optimize their Instagram advertising efforts within their social commerce initiatives. Emplifi’s recent “State of social media and CX: Q2 2021” report found that ad spend on Facebook and Instagram jumped nearly 50% year-over-year during the second quarter of this year. With so many B2C brands vying for consumer attention on Instagram, one of the primary challenges for brands entering the social commerce market is getting in front of the right audiences at the right time with relevant content that inspires consumers to make a purchase.

Fortunately, because social commerce is still a relatively new and growing tactic, there are many opportunities for marketers to make an impact. Brands should look for ways to use Instagram’s new features to stand out on the platform. For example, they can try taking more creative risks with their advertising content in Reels ads, while they can tailor Shop ads toward the very users shopping for products they offer.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Zarnaz Arlia

Zarnaz Arlia is the CMO of Emplifi, a leading customer experience platform. Read Zarnaz Arlia’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Content Memes: 5 Tips for Using Memes in Content Marketing

November 10, 2021 No Comments

By Anthony Basile

The internet is many things — it’s the place where a huge percentage of marketing takes place, but it’s also an untamed landscape where every day brings a new crop of transcendent, foolish and transcendently foolish content.Can you marry these two worlds? Can memes live in harmony with your well-designed and sensible content marketing strategy? They can, provided you don’t go overboard, and understand the context around what you’re doing.

It’s tempting to assume that because memes are silly, you can quickly toss them together and tweet them out for clicks and views. That strategy could backfire, though. After all, people who are online a lot — so, just about everyone — will recognize the “right” and “wrong” ways to use these images.

Depending on how trend-savvy your target audience is, an older meme or one reposted or assembled carelessly could show your brand to be out of touch. It’s also worth remembering that the internet is a place where some truly unsavoury speech goes on. Not realizing the history behind an image could end in a humbling social media apology for using offensive content.

Memes, applied to your content marketing strategy, can be the perfect flavouring for your more substantial social media marketing content. Just as you wouldn’t use a bowl of sugar as a main course, you don’t want memes to take over your brand voice — but they sweeten the overall mixture and keep people interested.

But first, let’s get back to basics. When we talk about content marketing with a meme, what do we mean?

What is a Content Meme?

Memes, images that are widely reposted and used to convey meaning, have become a building block of digital culture. Merriam-Webster took a stab at defining how the word “meme” came to define those images. The term goes back to the 70s, and Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene — the book described memes as ideas that catch on and spread.

Describing goofy pieces of viral content as memes began as early as the late 90s, and this meaning had taken over by around the turn of the 2010s. Merriam-Webster canonized the word’s new role in 2015.

The standard format of an internet meme, in the captioned-image sense, is a picture that signifies a feeling labeled in a way with which people will grasp. Maybe they recognize where the image is from, perhaps it’s just amusing or evocative. Either way, it now means something new.

Some memes stay in circulation for years, while for others, diminishing returns set in almost immediately. The extremely online members of the audience will likely scoff at anything even slightly out of date, but that doesn’t mean those posts are worthless. Some topics spin off one meme after another, year after year. And when I say “some topics,” I mean Spongebob SquarePants. That show must have come along at just the right time. But that’s another article entirely.

Making variations on these widely shared images has become easier over the years — for this article, I’ve used the meme generator on Imgflip to pair text with common meme template formats. There’s nothing stopping you from taking a similar approach.

Using a meme as content for marketing is a natural next step once you’ve learned to generate these posts. After all, your goal as a content marketer is to draw eyes to your brand and get attention. Speaking the lingua franca of the internet seems perfect. So begins the marriage of meme and marketing into meme marketing.

As an introduction to using memes for marketers, you can go back and check out our favorite SEO memes for inspiration. The mere fact that there are captioned images about search engine optimization shows the wide variety of topics you can discuss in meme form.

5 Tips for Creating Your Own Content Memes

OK! Are you ready to start using memes in your content strategy? Don’t answer right away! It’s a little more complicated than it seems.

Admittedly, it may seem very, very simple. Just slap some text on a trending meme and post it to social media. But that’s not the whole story. Remember, we’re content marketers, and we can’t unlearn everything just because we’re in the land of captioned cats and Spongebob Squarepants.

Here are a few tips on creating content that uses memes:

1. Don’t Always Take the Shot

Turning every trending meme into a branded post isn’t necessary. Even if you’ve established a fun tone in your social media strategy, you can afford to pass some up. Getting a good reaction to one post could lead to a too-quick follow-up or a post trying too hard to make a meme match your message.

Take good matches between meme and brand when they come up, and let bad matches pass by. You may feel like you’re missing an opportunity, but that beats “posting cringe.”

2. Don’t Force Memes to Follow the Rules

Treating memes as regularly scheduled parts of your content marketing strategy — that is, keeping them relentlessly on-message and including a ton of information — can lead to big, unwieldy posts that just don’t work.

Memes in your brand’s Facebook or Twitter feed every once in a while can keep things light, but they’re not load-bearing pieces of your content strategy. Let’s face it, that weight of expectation is too great for such goofy content to bear.

3. Tell a Joke

This ties in with point No. 2, but is worth stating on its own. Memes, at their best, are funny. They’re absurd. They’re jokes. Trying to make a salient or incisive point with them is a near-impossible needle to thread.

Using a meme as part of a serious discussion of the issues is in the spirit of topical editorial cartoons. You may think that’s a reason to try it, but take a moment to ask yourself: When’s the last time you enjoyed an editorial cartoon? There are dozens of useful marketing content varieties that can express your brand’s values. Memes can just be humorous.

4. Do Your Homework

Before you post a piece of trending content, you should know your meme… or at least visit Know Your Meme. Doing some research can stop you from having to backtrack later if you’ve accidentally started to participate in a trend with a less-than-wholesome origin. This is the internet we’re talking about. Anything can and does happen there.

The temptation to be first, and to post something while it’s still topical, is strong. After all, jumping on a trend that has faded away is a bad look, and the cycles seem to move faster than ever these days. With that said, in some cases, it’s best to go back to point No. 1 on this list and let the opportunity pass. The clicks aren’t worth the risks.

5. Be Nice

Kindness and digital culture don’t always go together, but when you’re posting for your brand, they should. Taking shots with your meme-powered marketing messages may seem like it’s all in good fun, but if someone gets offended, that can be a PR problem for your company. People will notice the logo on the Facebook or Twitter account that posted the offending content, and they’ll take screenshots of the incident.

If there’s even the slightest risk that your post is punching down at any person or group, rethink it. Keeping things light and fun is the rule of the day when it comes to funny marketing posts. This isn’t a very edgy approach to marketing, but it’s also good common sense. Imagine how it feels to be insulted by a meme posted by a company. Would you inflict that on anyone? No way.

What It All Memes

You may have noticed a trend among these tips. They’re more don’ts than do’s. Does this mean we’re telling you not to use trending memes for content marketing? Certainly not. It just means we’re looking out for your brand, and there are plenty of risks that come with getting it wrong.

Let’s face it: When you google “branded memes” or “memes about marketing,” the results aren’t encouraging. Working with a fast-moving, user-generated type of content with its own logic has some real, foreseeable challenges. If you keep those challenges in mind, you can score some social media victories among your core audience. If not? You may stumble into trouble.

A well-deployed meme is a momentary journey back to the goofy, anything-goes energy of the early World Wide Web. Can that help your brand create a good impression? In the right circumstances, it sure can.

Now, the rest is up to you.

Sourced from Brafton

In News

Why Your Culture of Digital Experimentation Is Failing

November 9, 2021 No Comments

By Michael Mathias

Modern marketing strategy is a tug-of-war between assumptions and absolutes, gut instincts and concrete data.

This balancing act can be uncomfortable. Data-driven strategy places marketers directly into customers’ shoes. Every interaction, conversion, friction or opportunity can be analysed and maximized to drive the business forward. Yet, fortune favours the bold! There’s an undeniable time and place to throw caution to the wind and lead through gut instinct.

Digital experimentation steadies this balancing act, offering a framework to act on gut instinct within the safety net of fast, quantifiable and customer-cantered results. This tempered risk taking is very attractive: 45% of marketing decision-makers invested in experimentation last year.

Running experiments (A/B testing, multivariate testing, multi-armed bandit testing, user research, personalization and more) measures the target audience’s response to design, segmentation, channel or product strategies in near real-time, enabling marketers to make incremental improvements to customers’ experience.

To maximize this opportunity, businesses must adopt a culture of experimentation. But that’s easier said than done. Today, we’re sharing four common mistakes to avoid when building a culture of digital experimentation.

1. No Executive Buy-In

Building a culture of digital experimentation comes from the top. It cannot be siloed to teams or individuals, and it cannot be throttled by corporate bottlenecks.

Running frequent experiments means inevitably some will fail — and that’s perfectly fine. Failure is an opportunity to learn something new. It’s in these moments of surprise that true innovation takes root.

Executives must champion experimentation across the organization and work tirelessly to remove bottlenecks and silos from the optimization process. Failing to do so dilutes effectiveness, reduces agility, and negatively impacts overall innovation culture.

2. Skipping the Strategic Framework

A strategic framework marries experiments and goals, ensuring processes are consistent and reliable. It forces marketers to evaluate gut instincts and define a hypothesis to be measured, proven true or false, and iterated on for better outcomes.

The framework is a shared plan to document goals, tactics, audience segments, key performance indicators, duration and next steps.

It must specify the test variable — an element that can be identified, modified, added, or removed to improve the customer experience or achieve a desired outcome. If you test too many things at one time, there’s no definitive revelation to drive the next approach.

The framework must include guidance on achieving statistical significance — what threshold determines action? If the sample size is too small, the results may be misleading.

The shared strategic framework ensures experiments are transparent, defined, rooted in data and purposeful.

3. Haphazard Adoption

Placing digital experimentation at the heart of digital strategy can be uncomfortable at first. It’s not uncommon to undermine success through haphazard adoption.

Inconsistency may manifest as cherry-picking results or letting gut instinct take priority over experiments. It might mean applying insights unevenly across campaigns or channels.

Smart experimentation isn’t just running experiments, it’s optimizing from the lessons learned. Marketers must iterate ongoing to continuously drive incremental improvements. The intent is to learn something and apply those learnings to the rest of your strategy.

Feature Image Credit: NeONBRAND

By Michael Mathias

Sourced from CMS Wire

In News

3 Reasons to Pay Attention to SEO Marketing for Your Brand

November 9, 2021 No Comments

By Evan Nison

Investing time into SEO strategies — no matter how basic or advanced — gives a web presence to your brand that is within your control.

Increasing your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) is a worthwhile payoff. Many people use major search engines like Google and Bing to discover new brands. According to findings from SEO analytics software Moz, “66% of distinct search queries resulted in one or more clicks on Google’s results.”

Ultimately, SEO is one of the single-best marketing channels for optimizing return on investment (ROI). The data speaks for itself: According to Statista, SEO has been the most profitable form of marketing in the past four years — even topping content and email marketing.

This is why brands should prioritize SEO in their marketing efforts. Likewise, brands with in-house marketing teams of their own should be actively implementing marketing channels related to SEO. Before we jump into the specifics, it’s important to first understand what SEO stands for.

What is SEO?

SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to a website through organic search engine results. SEO encompasses the relationship between a brand and major search engines. Essentially, brands develop a rapport with prominent search engines to establish their credibility as an authoritative source for information, especially as it relates to their industry.

There are effective, proven and practical steps to increasing visibility in major search engines. In fact, many of those steps are free of charge and fairly simple, even for beginners. Why is it so crucial, though? Here are three reasons you should pay attention to SEO for brand marketing.

1. SEO increases visibility in search engines and boosts consumer awareness.

Investing time into SEO strategies — no matter how basic or advanced — gives a web presence to your brand that is within your control. If your brand is new to SEO, it’s a good idea to link your URL with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. From here, you can get your feet wet and familiarize yourself with SEO data related to your website. These programs help you learn which specific keywords and phrases people type or speak into a search engine to find your brand’s website.

Additionally, while many people searching for brands may already be existing customers, SEO increases visibility for new and prospective customers. A brand’s search engine visibility can be optimized based on location. For example, a dispensary brand based in Atlanta can be optimized to show up in results for “Atlanta dispensary.”

Although many experts would claim that SEO marketing can be done without media awareness, I fundamentally disagree as an expert on both SEO and public relations (PR). When you develop relationships with reputable journalists who write for credible news outlets, their reporting can — and does — show up in search results. These results are organic, meaning any interviews or quotes can help boost your brand’s rankings in searches. While boosting your search results of course helps you reach more potential customers, having credible news coverage puts you on everyone’s radar, including other journalists who could write about you in the future or even investors looking to fund new projects.

2. SEO is easy to implement.

Even if you’ve never done anything with SEO marketing for your brand, it’s fairly simple to get started. Even a little effort can be worthwhile.

Rather than hoping search engines will work in your favour naturally, brands can take simple steps to ensure visibility. Even if a brand is already notable and gaining traction on search engines without a planned, coherent strategy, these tips will still help. Here are a few practical steps.

1. List your website on Google, Bing and any other engines you might want.

2. Conduct simple beginner keyword research.

3. Add a “press” page on your website.

4. Sync all of your social media to your website so it’s in one place.

5. Add meta tags.

Beyond the fundamentals, I’d recommend brand leaders consider collaborating with an established marketing firm to develop a long-term, data-driven SEO strategy.

3. SEO is extraordinarily cost-effective.

You don’t have to pay to be listed on major search engines. Google, for instance, crawls — or scans and reads — listed websites multiple times a day for new and credible information to include and reflect in its results pages.

This is why SEO is a free form of marketing compared to paid advertisements in magazines, on billboards and beyond. Although specialty SEO software can be expensive, the basics are completely free. Plus, because of the low overhead costs, hiring an SEO marketing team will typically be less expensive than traditional print media — or even social media marketing campaigns — on average.

Do the SEO basics, reap the search engine rewards.

Implementing SEO into your brand’s marketing is fairly simple. To do the basics, you don’t need to be an expert. Any marketing professional can learn from scratch and gain some knowledge even in a short amount of time by putting free training and resources to use.

However, keep in mind that since search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, marketing teams need to be frequently monitoring the latest trends, tips, tricks, data and more as it relates to SEO. Brands without the capacity to take on SEO marketing internally should consider partnering with an experienced SEO firm to do so on their behalf. In the meantime, get optimizing.

Feature Image Credit: snowing12 — stock.adobe.com

By Evan Nison

Sourced from RollingStone

Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Rolling Stone editors or publishers.

In News

Apple’s advertising growth appears to have tripled since instituting App Tracking Transparency rules

November 9, 2021 No Comments

By Cal Jeffrey

Some of that perceived growth could be from and overall market shrinkage on Apple devices

In context: Facebook predicted that there would be an “adocalypse” after Apple began enforcing its App Tracking Transparency earlier this year. I don’t know if that’s actually been the case since ad-supported apps still pound me with advertisements that seem no different than before. However, one analyst firm says Apple has greatly benefitted from the new ATT rules.

Apple’s on-device advertising platform, Search Ads, reserves spots at the top of App Store queries for developers to advertise their apps in relevant search results. For example, when searching for Telegram, a user may encounter a paid Twitter banner at the top of the results page (below).

The Financial Times notes that data from mobile marketing analysis firm Branch indicates Apple’s mobile advertising market share has tripled over the last year. Search Ads only held a measly 17 percent of the iPhone advertising market a year ago. As of last month, it commands a majority share of 58 percent, with most of that growth coming in the previous six months.

“It’s like Apple Search Ads has gone from playing in the minor leagues to winning the World Series in the span of half a year,” said Branch Product Marketing Head Alex Bauer.

Analyst group Evercore ISI predicts that Apple’s advertising platform is likely to clear $5 billion in fiscal year 2021. Researchers see growth over the next three years, reaching $20 billion annually.

“[Apple’s privacy push] significantly altered the landscape,” Evercore reported.

Apple began requiring developers to ask users for permission to gather and use their data for ad targeting earlier this year, after a nearly four month delay. As expected, many users have opted out of tracking on most apps. As a result, Facebook’s “Audience Network” and Google Ads were severely hobbled when users began denying permissions to track.

The Financial Times suggests that this mass exodus is what led to Apple’s ballooning advertising growth. However, this might be a bit overstated. For one, Apple’s Search Ads platform is an exclusive feature of the App Store and does not engage in first-party advertising within its apps.

Additionally, analyst Eric Seufert points out that the data Branch used in its analysis excludes gaming apps, a dominant subsector of the broader app market. He mentions that Branch only looked at “mobile app install ads spending and not mobile web ads spending,” which further skews the analysis. Also, the actual values used in the study are unknown.

“This data is presented as a percentage of total attributed installs,” Seufert said. “Given that these figures are percentages and not absolute values, the total market size of iOS installs is a relevant consideration which is omitted here, ie. if the total market shrank, Apple’s increased share might not be indicative of increased revenue or scale.”

Seufert said that without solid numbers, it is hard to put the study into context. In other words, Apple’s advertising growth came at least in part because of an overall market shrinkage caused by the new transparency rules.

Indeed, several mobile advertisers have adjusted their advertising budgets in favor of the Android platform. Analysts at Singular say that advertising between Android and iPhone markets was split nearly 50/50 toward the beginning of 2021. As of June, advertising dollars spent now favor Android 70.3 percent to 29.7 percent.

So, it is hard to determine how much of Search Ads tripling go market share was actual growth without knowing the absolute values used to calculate those percentages.

By Cal Jeffrey

Sourced from TECHSPOT

In News

6 Ways to Gain Competitive Advantage

November 8, 2021 No Comments

By Habib-Ur-Rehman

Competitive advantage refers to why clients choose you over your competitors, allowing your business to achieve huge margins while generating value. For something to be considered a competitive advantage, it should be difficult or impossible to copy or duplicate. Before establishing a competitive advantage, ensure that your products or services offer value and generate interest, find your target market and how you’ll cater to them, and know your competitors and what they’re doing.

A clear competitive advantage helps businesses increase certainty and channel their resources for maximum return on investment. It makes your revenue streams more constant and predictable to help achieve momentum. Additionally, gaining a competitive advantage reduces expenditures such as recruiting, marketing, and fundraising and allows you to measure your progress accurately.

To develop your source of competitive advantage, you need to know your key competencies and understand your competitors and their competencies. Find out who your paying customers are and what they value. Here are ways to gain a competitive advantage.

1. Differentiation focus

With differentiation focus, you aim to differentiate within one or a few target market segments whose needs indicate that there are chances for you to provide different products or services compared to your competitors who may be focusing on a large group of consumers. To adopt the differentiation focus strategy, ascertain that your target audience has different needs and wants that the existing competitor goods or services aren’t meeting, ensuring a valid reason for differentiation.

Through this strategy, you can establish a niche market segment for your business to achieve higher prices than undifferentiated products. Use a market intelligence platform to acquire granular insights into the competitors’ activities, such as new product launches, to track their every move and predict what they’ll do next. This will help you create a fool proof plan to execute your differentiation focus strategy to gain a competitive advantage.

2. Cost leadership

When you leverage the cost leadership strategy, you aim to be the lowest-cost producer in your niche market. With this strategy, you offer similar products with the same quality as your competitors but at lower prices. To succeed with this strategy, find ways to produce your goods at a lower cost, such as high productivity levels and capacity utilization, take advantage of your bargaining power to negotiate for low-cost production materials, and use technology in your production processes. Accessing the most powerful distribution channels will ensure that your products reach a wider audience.

3. Differentiation leadership

Differentiation leadership allows you to target a larger market to gain a competitive advantage across the entire industry. With this strategy, you have to choose one or more criteria that buyers use to position your business to meet those criteria uniquely. Since differentiation requires you to charge extra to cover the additional production costs meant to offer value-added features to your clients, you have to find ways to convince them to choose your products over the undifferentiated ones. It requires a huge marketing investment. To achieve differentiation leadership, ensure exceptional product quality and branding that focuses on customer recognition. Focus on wide market distribution and constant advertising.

4. Consider innovation

Although product innovation can give your business a competitive edge, process innovation can bring you a greater advantage. This is because it completely changes the way a company operates. Process innovations are beneficial because they reduce product costs, helping you attract more customers before your competitors find ways to discover and imitate your process.

5. Leverage strategic partnerships

Partnering with businesses within your industry or closely related sectors is a good way to gain a competitive advantage. Strategic partnerships involve joint ventures where companies bring their resources together to gain exposure at the expense of those not in the alliance.

6. Strategic management

Strategic management involves planning and implementing strategies to establish, maintain, and grow a company’s competitive advantage. To develop a strategic plan, you should understand stakeholders’ expectations, global trends, and the competitive landscape to help with strategic decision-making for a strong long-term competitive position. To achieve and maintain a competitive advantage, you should constantly track and review your strategic approach for an improved financial situation and fast response to continually changing market forces.

Endnote

Since markets are generally competitive, sustaining a competitive advantage can be challenging. This is because competitors imitate advantaged industry competitors or the disadvantaged competitors create their unique competitive advantage to outdo those already enjoying the competitive advantage.

To maintain and increase competitive advantage, consider constantly assessing your company, its value proposition, the customers, competitors, and the market. This will help you ensure that you always have a competitive edge over your competitors.

By Habib-Ur-Rehman

Habib-Ur-Rehman is well-known writer for tech, business, food and multiple topic writer with updated info for the audience, believe in the researched based content writing with outstanding writing style.

Sourced from Boss Magazine

In News

Why And How To Diversify Your Business’ Online Presence

November 8, 2021 No Comments

By Akram Atallah

Naturally, as a business owner, you want to spread awareness of your brand to as many people as possible. Developing an online following — whether of viewers, readers, customers or clients — is a common tactic for doing so. But, later on, the tools you use to build this following can significantly weigh on the success of your brand.

Many entrepreneurs make the “either/or” mistake: They either build their own domain on the open web or establish a presence within a walled garden. The best method for reaching the largest possible audience, however, isn’t either/or. It’s leveraging both walled gardens and a personal domain, as well as online marketing and advertising channels, to gain insightful data, independent brand equity and a corner of the web that’s managed entirely by you.

Sow Seeds Within A Walled Garden

From Facebook and Instagram to Amazon and Etsy, odds are you’ve used a walled garden before. Simply put, walled gardens are external platforms on which you can anchor your web presence or e-commerce store — but the perks don’t stop there. You can also advertise, market and sell goods, receive payments, offer content and perform a range of other online activities. The “garden” is the platform itself, and the “wall” represents its closed community of members, merchants and other registered users — in contrast to the open web.

Walled gardens come with millions of pre-existing users, making it easy to reach people as soon as you establish a presence on them. The best-known include Amazon and Facebook, but there are thousands more, including LinkedIn, Etsy, Angi, WhatsApp and Shopify.

In addition to letting you tap into an existing audience, walled gardens allow for easy account setup. Their platforms are often user-friendly, requiring little to no technical knowledge on your part. Using this turnkey solution, you can set up a free profile and begin reaching customers almost instantaneously.

Although walled gardens come with many benefits, you’ll want to ensure your brand isn’t contained exclusively within one for maximum long-term growth. To diversify your audience and unlock valuable data, it’s important to establish a simultaneous presence with a consistent brand look and feel outside the garden walls.

Own Your Online Presence With Your Own Domain

According to the results of a 2020 study by OpenX, 84% of consumers search the open web for business information, and 81% for products to buy. Far from obsolete, the open web is still the place many customers turn to first with a pressing need or question.

So, before you launch a presence within a walled garden, be sure to secure your own domain and build a website that’s entirely your own. If you’re not sure where to start, begin by looking for a domain name that successfully represents your brand. Consider securing a descriptive domain extension like .io, .live or .studio, which are often more readily available than .com names and can be both more memorable and relevant to your business.

From there, it’s time to establish a website and, fortunately, you don’t have to be a technology whiz to build one. Simply go to your registrar of choice, purchase the domain, then connect with a website builder that can develop you a new site using WordPress, SquareSpace, Drupal or another content management system. (Website developers can typically also secure the domain you want.)

Consider Other Avenues For Marketing And Advertising

Once your new site is up and running, and you’ve linked it back to the walled gardens you have a presence on for greater reach, what next? There are countless other avenues at your disposal to maximize the number of people who engage with your brand.

Despite the quick rise of social media, emails remain relevant and effective. According to the results of a 2020 study by AWeber, 79% of small business leaders believe that email marketing is important to their business strategy — and for good reason. Emails still ensure a sizable return on investment at $42 for each $1 spent, as noted in the Data & Marketing Association’s 2019 report (paywall). If you can secure people’s email addresses, you can use email marketing to stay top of mind — and, hopefully, capture their views, clicks and dollars.

But email isn’t the only manoeuvre for driving people to your website. Building a strong SEO strategy can help boost traffic, too. Start by researching the top keywords used by your target demographic on the open web, and strategically pepper those words throughout your site, especially in headings and subheadings. Next, consider creating a regular schedule for publishing high-quality content that hits on those keywords. This will increase organic traffic and the odds that other websites will backlink to your site, which, in turn, improves your search rankings.

You can also use your own website to gather valuable data about site traffic and visitor demographics. With these new, relevant insights about your customer, reader or viewer base, you can calibrate your digital approach to resonate with and reach your target audience. With that, you’re ready to build brand recognition, broadcast to a wider crowd and position yourself for future success by diversifying your presence across the web.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Akram Atallah

Akram Atallah is CEO of Donuts Inc., a global leader in next-generation top-level domains and digital identity. Read Akram Atallah’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes