editor, Author at Mediastreet

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How to Create an Impactful Triggered Email Workflow

September 13, 2021 No Comments

Triggered emails can help to build long-lasting relationships with prospects and customers alike. According to GetResponse, these emails show a 38.03% open rate and a 6.76% click-through rate.

One of the biggest advantages of triggered emails is their longevity. It is quite possible that visitors who receive these emails engage with them some months later. According to statistics, around 18 to 23% of engagement is noticed after 24 hours of deployment.

So, how will you make your triggered email campaigns more impactful for readers?

Here is a detailed article to help.

#1. Segment your audience according to the customer journey

The spray-and-pray technique of email marketing is no longer effective. Instead, marketing professionals must take a customer-centric approach and try to send triggered emails that are relevant for the readers.

According to a 2017 report by Mailchimp, segmented campaigns exhibit better performance when compared to non-segmented ones.

They show:

31% higher open rates
64% higher unique open rates
37% lower unsubscribes

While segmenting, you can start with basic customer journey parameters like:

New subscribers
New customers
Active subscribers or customers
Inactive subscribers or customers
Re-engaged subscribers or customers

If you want to go for complex segmentation criteria, you can consider demographics, geographical location, purchase history, products browsed for, and resources downloaded.

#2. Send relevant emails based on user behaviour

Your triggered emails must be aligned with the trigger event. In other words, if a customer has placed an order, he or she will expect a confirmation email with all the necessary order details. No wonder, these emails have a 60% open rate.

Let me share an example with you.

A few days back, I searched for plus-size products on an eCommerce store. They sent me a triggered email promoting their “Plus Size Store”.

#3. Use data to create a personalized experience

The key to sending impactful triggered emails is data. If you collect more data about the customer’s interests, purchase preferences, and behaviours, you will be able to target them better. After all, 71% of customers believe that personalized experiences will affect their decision to interact with emails.

Having enough data will help you set engaging triggers that are more appealing for your customers. For example, if you are in the banking and finance sector, you can send out triggered emails whenever an EMI payment is due or there has been an update to the credit report.

Executing triggered emails at different stages of the buyer’s journey

First Stage: Brand New Subscribers

Visitors who have filled out your sign-up form in the expectation of getting a freebie or discount can be categorized as new subscribers.

Optimove suggests that 80% of prospects complete the first purchase on the day they register. 7% of them do so within the first week of registration. You must aim to crack the purchase within the first seven days.

Welcome emails help to build a strong relationship with the new subscriber. Through these emails, you can let your subscribers know about your offerings and encourage them to make their first purchase from you.

Take a look at this welcome email by Moo in which they have offered a discount coupon code and featured their unique selling points (USPs).

Image Source

Second Stage: New Customers

Leads who make their first purchase on your website will be considered new customers.

According to research, only 15% of first-time online customers will become repeat buyers. Repeat buyers contribute to one-third of online shopping revenue and spend three times more than one-time shoppers.

Use triggered emails to nurture these customers and make them purchase yet again. You can even incentivize them with an exciting offer.

eCommerce email marketers can trigger a post-purchase feedback email to increase subscriber engagement.

Similarly, SaaS business owners can ask customers for their input about how they liked the services.

See how HubSpot has sent out a short, yet engaging feedback email to interact with their customers.

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Third Stage: Active Customers

When a customer downloads several resources from your website and makes repeat purchases, you can categorize them as active customers. They are likely to be brand evangelists who will help you acquire new customers.

You can make loyal customers feel special by sending out VIP offers and bonuses. In addition, you can also invite them for exclusive interviews and then include their responses on your website testimonials or blog posts.

The BuzzSumo team, in partnership with Mantis Research, sent a survey invitation email to their loyal audience asking them to participate in it and invite their friends and family too.

Fourth Stage: Dormant Subscribers and Inactive Customers

Subscribers who have not engaged with your emails in the last few months are considered to be dormant. Lost customers, on the other hand, are the ones who have not purchased from you in quite some time.

As obvious as it may seem, the longer the inactive time, the tougher it becomes to revive them.

You can reactivate such users with the help of re-engagement emails. Remind them that you are grateful for their association with your brand. You can also share all the USPs that make you stand out from the competitors.

Take a look at this re-engagement email by Noom that works like a charm to bring back inactive customers.

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Wrapping up

Hitting the marketing triad of delivering the right content to the right person at the right time has become a breeze by setting up triggered email workflows. They not only help to engage prospective and existing customers but also assist customer retention.

If you have not started investing in triggered email workflows just yet, now is the right time.

Tools like Salesforce and Marketo can prove to be extremely useful for this.

By Kevin George

Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free responsive HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.

Sourced from Jeffbullas.com

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5 Questions You Should Ask to Determine Whether TikTok or Instagram Is Better for Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

September 10, 2021 No Comments

By Ismael El-Qudsi

Here’s a breakdown of how both platforms compare and what makes each one stand out in the influencer marketing space.

If you’re responsible for keeping your brand focused on the right social platforms and leveraging the right influencer partnerships, you’ve probably spent some time wondering whether you should focus on TikTok or Instagram.

TikTok and Instagram both offer distinct attractions for their users. While both are visual, TikTok is more audio and music-driven and has a more creative and spontaneous feel to much of its content. Instagram, on the other hand, is a more established platform with a more polished aesthetic. Because of its longevity, a sophisticated advertising and influencer network has developed on its ecosystem, which can make it easier to venture into known-commodity partnerships with influencers.

Where are your time and resources best spent, and what differentiates the two? The right answer often differs for each brand and that the difference depends on their audience and goals.

What’s your target audience demographic?

The platform you prefer may vary depending on which types of users you’re seeking to connect with. TikTok’s overall audience skews younger, with half of all Gen Z American adults accessing the platform, as compared to only 22 percent of millennials and 14 percent of the 50-64 cohort.

Instagram has a wider user base among all demographics, with 48 percent of 30-49 year olds on the platform and a third of the 50-64 age range. Its growth has stabilized and it’s not experiencing the same rapid user base expansion as TikTok.

How are you hoping to get seen?

Instagram has an advantage on influencer choice, because the network is more established and there are more influencers working there. Because Instagram has been an influencer option for a while, influencers may have a formula in place and be more certain about tried-and-true ways to gain attention from their specific audiences.

Sponsored content and advertising make frequent and expected appearances in Instagram users’ news feeds, while on TikTok, only 5.7% of content creators post about brands, products, or services on a daily basis. That number grows to just 17.3% on a weekly basis, with 60.8% of content creators reporting that they have never shared sponsored content on the app, as per our most recent research where we polled 1,743 influencers from more than 20 countries. This is, by far, one of TikTok’s greatest advantages and presents a great opportunity for marketers looking to capture people’s attention in a less saturated space.

Which metrics are you using to gauge success?

TikTok’s structure and users’ top content interests (#comedy and #dance) mean marketing efforts need to be more subtle, humorous and creative to attract interest. It’s not the platform for a hard sell nor for brands who want to have tight and rigid control of influencer content.

However, it is the ideal place to level up on organic engagement and to create relationships that may boost loyalty and migrate followers over to your other social platforms. In fact, 87.1 percent of TikTok influencers and content creators say their engagement rate is higher than on other platforms.

TikTok’s potential reach also far outstrips any other social platform because its algorithm doesn’t limit views, so if you’re planning campaigns that grow reach and awareness, TikTok might be the best place for your influencer marketing efforts.

If your focus is on a quicker sales cycle or moving your target audience from the middle to the bottom of the sales funnel, you may be better off with a consistent storytelling strategy on Instagram Stories where you link directly to your landing page or ecommerce site.

How well-versed are you in influencer marketing?

Do you already have an established influencer program, or are you just getting started? Your own knowledge level may influence the direction you lean with your platform choice.

If you’re accustomed to working with influencers and have a good grasp on your goals and metrics, you may feel ready to venture directly on to TikTok. You’ll know where you need to go and what you need to do, and you can guide the partnership based on your previous experience, especially if you use an influencer database to source the right people for your niche.

If you’re new to the influencer marketing world, you may want to leverage the knowledge of Instagram influencer partners.

Instagram influencers we surveyed said they typically spend at least three hours daily using the platform, which means they likely have their audiences’ likes, dislikes, and propensities down to a science. If you can source the right influencers for your campaigns, you can rely on them to serve as co-strategists as you plan your new influencer marketing campaigns.

In our recent study on TikTok influencer marketing, marketers surveyed said that analytics and tracking is one of their biggest TikTok challenge areas. If you’re confident in your influencer marketing knowledge, and you’re willing to experiment a little, you can easily and creatively overcome these challenges and get attention in a less saturated market.

Is there a clear winner for brands building an influencer marketing strategy?

In the battle for brand positioning, there’s no clear winner between these two powerhouse platforms. Instead, you can find the right place to showcase your business when you think strategically and evaluate which media sources your ideal buyer consumes.

Not many things in business come down to feeling alone, but you can evaluate which brand feels like a natural fit based on the criteria we mentioned, then continue to adjust while monitoring performance data.

You may find that one platform is clearly right for your brand or you may see opportunities to connect with your target audience across both. As each platform refines its offerings, algorithm, and business-focused features, you can continue to experiment accordingly with your strategy.

And, if you find you’re ready to dive into something new, TikTok can provide a welcome platform for experimentation. By getting your brand in the space, you can see where content is resonating for your audiences, define your goals, then align with the right creators and make a splash.

By Ismael El-Qudsi

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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A Look at the Top 4 Digital Marketing Categories

September 10, 2021 No Comments

By Kaya Ismail

Digital marketing has become a necessity for any business attempting to survive in this day and age. It’s been said that the most important thing is not the amount of money you spend on digital marketing but the way you spend it. What does this mean? Well, certain categories within digital marketing will give you more benefits than others, depending on your company’s size and goals.

Digital Marketing is constantly changing, but there are some foundational categories of digital marketing you need to have a strong grasp of to thrive in the digital ecosystem. To learn more about the top digital marketing disciplines and the software tools for digital marketing. we asked the experts and here’s what they shared.

Top Categories for Digital Marketing

If there is a universal truth in digital marketing, every marketing executive has their own ideas of how marketing should be done and even how many marketing categories there are. Working in such a rapidly evolving industry means that new marketing categories can crop up all the time.

Even in the past ten years, there has been a huge jump in how digital marketing is understood. However, like Kate Adams, SVP of Marketing at Boston, MA-based Validity, said, “while marketing categories aid in creating brand awareness, recognition and trust, what a lot of marketers don’t realize is that the success of their digital campaigns is highly contingent on the health of their data.”

To understand more about each category, let’s take a closer look at some of the most popular digital marketing categories.

SEO

For some marketers, SEO is the pillar of their campaigns. This is because SEO is applicable to the other digital marketing categories. For instance, you’d have to use relevant SEO keywords in your drip campaigns and content marketing to make them effective and engaging, which is why SEO and research are fundamental for digital marketing.

SEO Tools

“When it comes to doing SEO, our go-to tools would be SEMrush and Ahrefs. We find using SEMrush helpful as it allows us to quantify our website’s estimated reach and also determine our site’s domain and/or resource authority,” shares Maya Levi, Marketing Manager at Tel Aviv, Israel-based ReturnGO.

SEM

Search engine marketing (SEM) refers to the practice of leveraging paid advertising that appears on the search engine results pages (or SERPs). In search engine marketing, companies place bids on keywords that Google visitors might use when looking for certain products or services, which gives the company the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those search queries.

SEM Tools

According to Christopher Moore Chief Marketing Officer at Mooresville, NC.-based Quiet Light, “The best tool for pay-per-click advertising is Google Ads Editor as it allows you to create and edit different ad campaigns across different Google accounts making it far easier to manage your various campaigns and edit ads as the campaign goes along to make them more SEO friendly.”

Content Marketing

Content can take many forms, from blog posts to voice instructions delivered through IoT devices. Since it can takes many forms, it is often seen as the lifeblood of marketing campaigns. Due to its flexibility, content marketing has a central and all-encompassing role in every marketing strategy and can be tailored to fit customer needs before, during and after the buying process.

Content Marketing Tools

There are many content tools out there to help improve your content marketing. They can help build, grammar, content suggestions and SEO best practices. Examples include Grammarly, Ink and Jarvis.ai. Most of these are artificial intelligence-based apps that helps marketers overcome writer’s block and create content more consistently across niches, and ensure SEO is baked-in to the process.

Email Marketing

Getting into inboxes and engaging recipients through email marketing has become more challenging than ever before, with inbox volume nearly doubling year-over-year. Email marketing tools can help simplify email marketing campaigns and provide crucial insights to help increase engagement and improve execution.

Email Marketing Tools

A good piece of advice is that you should always start with an ESP (email service provider) that fits your budget and your brand. “Flodesk is a great option for paid with no tiered plans, but if you want to start with free, MailerLite is another popular one with a generous amount of free subscribers before you need to upgrade your plan,” shares Abby Sherman, Director of Strategy at Minneapolis, MN.-based Snap Agency.

Data Analytics

Without data, marketing is nothing but guesswork. On the other hand, the inappropriate use of data can definitely cripple even the best-laid plans. “Marketing and sales teams waste up to 50% of their time dealing with data quality issues,” confesses Adams. “From duplicate records to outdated contact information. If companies aren’t reaching the right audience, their marketing efforts (and money) are going to waste,” she continued.

Data Analytics Tools

“To gather data and insights, we supplement our usage of SEMrush with Google Analytics (GA),” said Levi. “Google Analytics is easy to set up, and it allows us to stay on top of our social networking profiles and website’s performances. Through the data that we get from GA, we can resolve marketing roadblocks that we encounter along the way strategically,” she shared.

All in all, to make it easier for you to meet the demands of digital marketing, it’s best if you choose and invest in the right software that will make the research, execution, and optimization of these efforts much easier for you. Some of these helpful apps include CRM tools, automation software, and collaboration tools that, with the help of personalization and a human touch, will help you create relevant and effective marketing campaigns.

Feature Image Credit: Adobe

By Kaya Ismail

Sourced from CMS WiRE

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7 Tips to Use AI to Acquire and Retain Customers

September 10, 2021 No Comments

By Kevin Payne

Artificial Intelligence (AI) mimics the cognitive functions of the human mind, particularly in learning and problem-solving. Many of the apps that we use today are powered by AI. From voice-activated virtual assistants to e-commerce, AI applications are everywhere.

With the advancements in AI technology and access to big data, companies across different industries are integrating AI into their processes to find solutions to complex business problems.

The application of AI is most noticeable within the retail and e-commerce space. Websites and apps can interact intelligently with customers, creating a personalized approach that enhances the customer experience.

No matter what industry your business operates in, these seven tips can help you acquire and retain customers more efficiently at a fraction of the time it takes to do things manually.

How to Use AI to Get and Keep Customers

1. Identify Gaps in Your Content Marketing Strategy

If you’re just starting with content marketing, you’ll need to know what type of content to create.

By using AI, you can identify the gaps, find fixes, and evaluate the performance of your content marketing campaign.

Take Packlane, a company that specializes in custom package designs, for example. They came up with high-quality content like helpful blog posts that provide valuable information. At the same time, the content they publish makes it easier for their target market to understand their brand and services.

If you’re in the retail or e-commerce space, you can use AI to identify the gaps in your content marketing. Your content may be focused on your products and their features, but through AI, you can determine the relevant content that addresses your audience’s needs and pain points.

2. Pre-Qualify Prospects and Leads

Not every visitor to your site will become a paying customer. If you’re not getting sales despite the massive traffic, it means you’re generating low-quality leads.

Some reasons why this happens includes:

Targeting the wrong audience
Poor content marketing strategy
Using the wrong type of signup form
Promoting in the wrong social media platforms
Ineffective calls to action

These explain why 80% of new leads never convert into sales. The mistakes can be rectified with the help of artificial intelligence.

AI tools can extract relevant data to help you learn more about your target audience. These tools also provide predictive analytics on your customers’ behaviour. They, in turn, help improve your lead generation strategy because you’ll know which leads to pursue, where to find them, and how to effectively engage them.

3. Provide Personal Recommendations

According to a report by the Harvard Business Review, even though there are privacy concerns when consumers’ personal information changes hands, people still value personalized marketing experiences.

Brands that tailor their recommendations based on consumer data boost their sales by 10% over brands that don’t.

Recommendation systems’ algorithms typically rely on data on browsing history, pages visited, and previous purchases. But AI is so advanced that it can analyse customers’ interactions with the site content and find relevant products that will interest the individual customer. This way, AI makes it easier to target potential customers and effectively puts the best products in front of the site visitors.

Because of AI, recommendation engines are able to filter and customize the product recommendations based on each customer’s preferences. It’s a cycle of collecting, storing, analysing, and filtering the available data until it matches the customers’ preferences.

This is an effective way of acquiring and retaining customers because there’s an element of personalization.

4. Reduce Cart Abandonment

A high cart abandonment rate is the bane of e-commerce business owners. According to a study by the Baymard Institute, online shopping cart abandonment rate is close to 70%.

Users abandon their online carts for various reasons:

high extra costs
complicated checkout process
privacy concerns
not enough payment methods, or
they’re not ready to buy yet.

Using AI-powered chatbots is one way to reduce cart abandonment. AI chatbots can guide the customers through their shopping journey.

AI chatbots can have a conversational approach and give the customer a nudge to prompt them to complete the purchase. These chatbots can also act as a virtual shopping assistant or concierge that can let a customer know about an on-the-spot discount, a time-sensitive deal, a free shipping coupon, or any other incentives that will encourage them to complete the checkout.

With AI, lost orders due to cart abandonment are recoverable and can lead to an increase in conversion rate for e-commerce businesses.

5. Increase Repurchases With Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics is the process of making predictions based on historical data using data mining, statistical modelling, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other techniques. It can generate insights, forecast trends, and predict behaviours based on past and current data.

In marketing, predictive analytics can be used to predict customers’ propensity to repurchase products as well as its frequency. When used to optimize marketing campaigns, AI-powered predictive analytics can generate customer response, increase repurchase, and promote cross-selling of relevant products.

It’s all part of the hyper personalized marketing approach, where brands interact and engage with customers and improve their experience by anticipating their needs and exceeding their expectations.

With predictive analytics, you can focus your marketing resources on customer retention and targeting a highly motivated segment of your market that are more than happy to return and repurchase your products. This approach is less expensive than advertising or implementing pay-per-click campaigns.

6. Improve Your Website User Experience

Every business—big or small—knows the importance of having a website, where visitors can interact with the brand, respond to a call to action, or purchase products. But it’s not enough to just have an online presence; it’s important that visitors to the site have a great experience while navigating through your site.

What makes for a great user experience? Users have different expectations. Some of them want faster loading time, while others want a simple and intuitive interface. But most important of all, they want to find what they’re looking for. It could be a product, content, or a solution to a problem. Whatever they may be, it’s up to you to meet their expectations.

With artificial intelligence, you can improve your website user experience tenfold. Here are some of the ways AI can be used to improve user experience.

Search relevance

This pertains to how accurate the search results are in relation to the search query. The more relevant the results are, the better search experience the users will have. This means they are likely to find relevant content answering their queries or finding products that solve their problems.

Personalized recommendations

Content that is tailor-made for the user tends to have greater engagement which increases the likelihood of conversation. Amazon has perfected the product recommendation system using advanced AI and machine learning. AI gets data from customers and uses it to gain insights and apply predictive analysis to recommend relevant products for cross-selling opportunities.

AI chatbots

The presence of chatbots contributes to a great user experience because they provide 24/7 assistance and support in the absence of human customer service. Users can get accurate answers to their inquiries quickly and efficiently, compared to scrolling through a text-based FAQs.

7. Social Listening for Potential Customers

Social listening is the process of analysing the conversations, trends, and buzz surrounding your brand across different social media platforms. It’s the next step to monitoring and tracking the social media mentions of your brand and products, hashtags, industry trends, as well as your competitors.

Social listening analyses what’s behind the metrics and the numbers. It determines the social media sentiment about your brand and everything that relates to it. It helps you understand how people feel about your brand. All the data and information you get through social listening can be used to guide you in your strategy to gain new customers.

Social media monitoring and listening can be done much more efficiently with the help of artificial intelligence. It’s an enormous task for a team of human beings to monitor and analyse data, but with AI-powered social media tools, all the tedious tasks can be automated. They can be trained to leverage data to provide valuable insights about your brand with high accuracy.

With AI and machine learning, your social listening can easily determine your audience, brand sentiments, shopping behaviour, and other important insights. By having this information within reach, you’ll know how you can connect with them more effectively and turn them from prospects to paying customers.

Key Takeaways/Conclusion

More companies across different industries are using the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to significantly increase brand awareness, enhance customer engagement, improve user experience, and meet customer expectations.

AI can identify gaps in your content marketing strategy so that you can create content that’s relevant to your target audience.

AI can help you generate high-quality leads that are likely to buy your products.

With AI, you can personalize and tailor-fit your product recommendations based on your customers’ preferences, increasing repeat purchases.
AI can be integrated into your e-commerce site to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
AI significantly improves website user experience by making it intuitive, accessible, and easy to navigate.

AI-powered social media tools can help you monitor and gain valuable insights about your brand. You can then use this to develop a social media marketing strategy to gain new customers.

Achieve these milestones, and you’ll be sure to acquire new customers and retain existing ones.

Feature Image Credit: iStock/monsitj

By Kevin Payne

Sourced from https://www.blackenterprise.com

In News

Understanding the Weight and Impact of Search Ranking Factors

September 9, 2021 No Comments

By Peter Roesler

You know that abiding by Google’s rules is a must, but did you know not all search ranking factors are applied equally?

As a business owner or marketing professional, you know the importance of competing for the top positions in SERPs (search engine results pages). For years, I have explained how important it is to mix relevant, targeted content with well-constructed pages and sites that load quickly (among other things) to achieve favour from the search engine deities (i.e., algorithms).

Search ranking factors are complex. They also change all the time. This is one of the most frustrating parts of this industry.

However, I’m here to help and demystify the ever-changing ranking factors for you. Remember, the search ranking factors are essentially a minimum bar you need to cross. This doesn’t mean your site is guaranteed to rank.

Achieving Search Engine Success

Now it’s time to figure out what will help you achieve the success in search engines you are hoping for.

There’s no question that Google is the top authority when it comes to search results. It also offers guidance and guidelines on the “Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines” page. Here you can find a selection of tips that, when combined, impact each piece of ranking content.

What are these principles? Glad you asked.

The Top Principles Used for Search Ranking Results

Google makes it clear what the search engine’s intent is. These principles help to clarify this even more:

People are searching online for several purposes. They may want to accomplish something quickly or dive deep into a specific topic.
It’s the role of search engines to provide a diverse array of high-quality, helpful search results in an order that makes sense based on quality and helpfulness.
Different search types require different search results.
Search engines are used worldwide, which means diversity in search results is a must to satisfy the diverse people using search fully.
Search results need to be helpful to people who are searching for something. The results need to provide trustworthy and authoritative information rather than leading people off-topic by presenting misleading information.

When you understand the guiding principles related to search quality, it is pretty clear what Google is saying.

Any given webpage may be ranked uniquely for a specific search. The search engine will determine ranking for keywords differently based on (along with other external variables) the intent and location of the person who is searching.

What does this mean for you?

Well, it means that the ranking factors you are trying to optimize for aren’t always applied equally.

Understanding the Search Ranking Process

At the very heart of SEO, the goal is to maximize the main opportunities. This begins by knowing where these opportunities are and then creating content that helps you capitalize on these opportunities.

While it can be challenging to grasp, understanding this important concept (and the principles used by Google) will help you create content that better serves search intent.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Peter Roesler

President, Small Business SEO@KickAss_SEO

Sourced from Inc.

In News

‘Advertisers are starting to lose trust’: Why media buyers say Facebook is losing its grip on social ad spend

September 9, 2021 No Comments

By Kimeko McCoy

For the last few years, Facebook and Instagram have dominated advertisers’ media mix. But recently, media buyers say ad spend on social media’s biggest platforms has started to deteriorate.

It’s more of a slow leak than a mass exodus, with client ad spend dedicated to Facebook and Instagram recently declining by 5-10% over the last year, according to Hallie Wyckoff, group director of social media at Wunderman Thompson Commerce.

“It’s happening now because of the pandemic, in all honesty,” Wyckoff said. “There were so many changes in marketing budgets last year where a lot of brands pulled back for a bit or had to be more lean with what they were willing to spend.”

For Wunderman Thompson, with clients including major marketers like Unilever and Coca-Cola, ad dollars that may have gone to Facebook and Instagram have recently shifted to alternative platforms like TikTok — or to efforts to improve or build out social commerce opportunities, as well as working with influencers, Wyckoff said.

Given Facebook and Instagram’s scale, targeting capabilities and range in ad unit offerings, advertisers and media buyers predict it won’t lose its crown any time soon. In fact, the platform’s ad business is holding up for now, per previous Digiday reporting. However, the platform’s flaws like waning interest from younger audiences, rising cost per impression and mounting data privacy issues are giving way to challengers like TikTok, Snap and even Pinterest. The flaws have gotten worse because the pandemic has made for an uncertain future and constant shifts in people’s shopping habits, which has advertisers looking for alternatives.

When asked for comment, a Facebook spokesperson pointed to the platform’s Q2 2021 earnings call, in which Facebook reported strong business growth and noting that total revenue for Q2 was $29.1 billion, which is a 56% year-over-year increase. According to chief financial officer David Wehner, speaking during Facebook’s most recent earnings call on July 28, the growth was predominately driven by verticals that performed well over the course of the pandemic, like online commerce and consumer packaged goods.

At least one marketing agency, Tinuiti, which Facebook pointed to as an example of increasing investment on its platforms, hiked it’s year-over-year spending on Facebook and Instagram alongside increased ad spend for platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and Pinterest.

“We’ve seen this increase 37% YoY on Facebook and 75% YoY on IG (24% growth in Q1 and 53% growth in Q1, respectively). And we’re on pace to spend 61% more on Facebook and Instagram than we did in all of 2019,” said Avi Ben-Zvi, vp of paid social at Tinuiti.

But according to Pew Research, Facebook and other major social media platforms’ growth stalled over the past five years. Facebook’s brand reputation suffered last year after advertisers boycotted the platform with the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign. And new research from analytics and insight company Skai, shows that social media CPMs have been steadily increasing, up about 12% from 2019. According to Skai, CPMs hovered around $5.71 this time in 2019 and are now at $6.37.

Also buffeting the social giant is the fact that it is facing a serious challenge in Apple’s data privacy changes, noted Katya Constantine, CEO of performance marketing shop DigiShop Media via email.

“The biggest cause has certainly been because iOS14 removed some of the most powerful targeting options,” she said. “Also, I imagine that some of the usage has also slipped as the world came out of the pandemic and that removed some inventory and drove up CPMs.”

Elijah Schneider, CEO of social marketing agency Modifly, backs up Constantine’s claims.

“Advertisers are starting to lose trust that consumers lost a long time ago,” Schneider said.

And challenger brands have seen the writing on the wall. Modifly, with a client list that includes startups and direct to consumer brands like Super Coffee drink brand and Beam wellness brand, has seen clients press for serious ad dollar diversification since late last year, said Schneider who added that in 2019 and 2020 at least 80% of Modifly client spend was in Facebook products. At present, that ad spend now sits at 55% on Facebook and 45% on alternative social platforms, like TikTok and Snapchat. (Schneider didn’t share what these breakdowns looked like in actual dollar figures.)

“For brands that are really focused on Gen Z, Facebook is part of the mix. But they’re not necessarily the dominant part of the mix,” said Noah Mallin, chief strategy officer at IMGN Media, where client ad spend on Facebook and Instagram has decreased from 95% of budget in prior years to 75% at present. “They’re much more evenly matched for established big brands where Gen Z is a segment among many,” he added.

In a rush to diversify ad spend, advertisers have divided their digital dollars up amongst everything from alternative social media platforms to digital tools to support a brick-and-mortar presence. There’s no clear kingpin coming to dethrone Facebook and Instagram, although many marketers see promise in TikTok given the platform’s scale and massive audience.

If nothing else, the decline continues to push along the industry-wide conversation around the need to diversify media spend, making for healthy competition among the platforms and more viable options for media buyers, Mallin said.

“I don’t necessarily see [Facebook and Instagram] diminishing to nothing,” Mallin said. “But if you want to have a smart mix and you’ve got the budget for it, you’d want to have Twitch in there and you want to have TikTok in there too.”

That’s not to say Facebook couldn’t make a few changes to delay its decline — and this could just be the latest interaction of changes in the social media landscape, marketers say. When it comes to digital and social media, that landscape is always changing, meaning advertisers will always need to adapt. This pandemic made flexibility a priority, said Wunderman Thompson’s Wyckoff.

“If we start to see CPMs or CPCs go down, you might see an influx back to Facebook and Instagram,” she said. “It’s an ever-evolving world and marketers are going to continue to pay attention and see what’s best.”

Feature Image Credit: Ivy Liu

By Kimeko McCoy

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

Google is doubling down on a powerful new AI tool for Search

September 9, 2021 No Comments

By Hayden Field

But the technology has drawn criticism from the AI community

Google wants your search queries to look less like a Jeopardy! answer and more like a chat with your friend—filled with the kind of slang and shorthand only a human would understand.

To get there, the tech giant is enlisting a powerful AI tool you all might remember: a large language model, specifically one called MUM (multitask unified model).

Large language models, which are trained on datasets as large as one trillion words, help computers process and produce human-like language.

But, but, but: The tech has drawn criticism from parts of the AI community. In the past year, Google fired both co-leads of its AI ethics team after a dispute over their research on the dangers of large language models.

One of experts’ top concerns? Models trained via internet data will naturally learn biases—then can easily replicate those patterns and multiply the resulting harms.

Case study

Google hasn’t yet announced a timeline for when it’ll incorporate MUM into live search, but it’s already experimenting with one-off projects.

Then vs. now: In 2020, Google team members spent hundreds of hours compiling the different ways people could refer to Covid in order to accurately route pandemic queries. This year, they wanted to do the same thing for queries about the Covid vaccine—so they used MUM to “generate over 800 names for 17 different vaccines in 50 different languages” within seconds, Pandu Nayak, Google’s VP of search, told Popular Science.

Big picture: Google announced MUM at its developer conference in May alongside other language model initiatives, and now it seems to be doubling down on how important the tech is to its future business model. More sophisticated searches and answers will likely lead to more valuable targeted ads, which could mean big changes for the ad pricing model, reports the FT.—HF

Feature Image Credit: Francis Scialabba

By Hayden Field

Sourced from Morning Brew

In Uncategorized

Is Out of Home Ready for Outer Space?

September 8, 2021 No Comments

By Rafael Canton

One small step for billionaires is one giant leap for advertising.

Canadian start-up Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC) recently announced the Doge-1 Mission to the Moon. An 88-pound satellite called CubeSat will hitch a ride aboard a Falcon 9 rocket launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX during a lunar payload mission in Q1 of 2022.

Once in orbit, the CubeSat’s screen will display ads, logos and art; airtime can be purchased exclusively using the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. The feed will be broadcast to livestreaming platforms such as Twitch and YouTube.

So, no, we will not be watching ads in space like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

As GEC co-founder and CEO Samuel Reid noted on Twitter, the endeavour features “disruptive, non-obtrusive space ads.”

“Having officially transacted with Doge for a deal of this magnitude, Geometric Energy Corporation and SpaceX have solidified Doge as a unit of account for lunar business in the space sector,” Reid said in the announcement of the launch.

Marketing possibilities

Space is becoming crowded with marketing opportunities.

Sierra Space purchased 30- and 15-second preroll ads for Elon Musk’s SNL appearance on YouTube, looking to capitalize on Musk’s popularity and public pursuit of space. Musk has used the marketing strategy for his own benefit, having the first car in space take a spin around the globe.

Brands such as Disney, Coca-Cola and Hello Kitty have launched products into space and reached the stratosphere—literally and figuratively—of marketing.

Barry Frey, president and CEO of the Digital Place-based Advertising Association, told Adweek that the stunt will likely find success. “Whatever is run will get so much enhanced value to the brands and the advertisers,” he said. “The audience will come from social amplification.”

Who will pursue ads in space?

These kinds of ad placements are not for everyone. Ad time can be purchased with tokens that will determine where, how long and how bright the advertisement will be.

It will take some time to see what ads make sense in this new platform. “Not only will metrics have to be developed but also a proper way of vetting ads for taste, environment, etc.,” Frey noted.

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Feature Image Credit: SpaceX will launch the CubeSat satellite in 2022.ESA/ Getty Images

By Rafael Canton

Sourced from ADWEEK

In News

Study Indicates Ads Placed In News Media – Especially Print – Outperform Social

September 8, 2021 No Comments

By Colin Kirkland

Ads placed in news media consistently outperform ads on Facebook and YouTube, according to a study conducted by Australia’s ThinkNewsBrands.

The cross-platform analysis found that while ads in both print and digital news publications perform better than ads in the social media channels, print ads specifically had a much greater memory impact on readers.

The study included more than 5,350 participants who experienced ads from seven Australian brands in 11 forms of media.

For six days, 42 custom print runs were sent each morning across Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth.

To cut down on bias dependent on ad-placement, seven versions of each newspaper were also distributed each morning. Two hundred and fifty-two websites were also created, with more than 6,000 unique brand exposures.

To maintain the same creative assets for all platforms, the study provided three different print sizes — full-page, half-page, and quarter-page ads — and 6-second, 15-second and 30-second ads for digital display and video.

Duane Varan, CEO of MediaScience, who oversaw the study, describes it as “a monumental effort” that is intended to assure advertisers that it was a true “apples to apples comparison.”

Results show that newspaper ads, regardless of ad type, outperformed Facebook up to four times.

On mobile and desktop, ads in news outlets delivered 1.7 times the unprompted recall of 6-second YouTube ads and were equal to 15-second YouTube ads.

News outlets also proved most effective for short-term ROI, with 10% stronger sales growth than social media.

“The thing about news is that it’s cognitively engaging,” Varan explains, adding: “When you watch the news, you’re thinking about what’s going on. You go into the ad break with your brain wired and fired up, and so you have better access to your memory pathways as a consequence.”

According to Varan, ad recall in news outlets was consistent across three stages of memory:

1. Attention (seeing and absorbing content) was measured by brand recognition.

2. Message-processing was measured by queue recall.

3. Memory retrieval was measured by unaided/free recall.

“It’s telling the story, again, around this clear superior memory effect for news,” Varan says. “It’s consistent with what we’ve seen across many other studies that we’ve done for news clients.”

Varan believes there is too much “assumption” in the market and that various media ad-effectiveness propositions “need to be weighed.”

“We can’t just make assumptions about what effects we think things deliver. We have to have some data that informs it.”

Out of all the study’s findings, Varan says he was most surprised by the comparison of print ads to Facebook ads.

“Just to see how much stronger newsprint was vis-a-vis a Facebook ad, you’re getting a much greater impact,” he says. “A print ad is even outperforming a video ad. That’s pretty telling.”

Varan thinks advertisers have forgotten how good print ads look.

“We just have not been around the medium enough to remember,” he said. “A print ad is very rich. Compare that to the fleeting experience of seeing an ad and scrolling through it.”

Overall, the study suggests how powerful context actually is.

The success of an ad may depend heavily simply on where an ad is placed, Varan says, noting: “Think about how hard it would be to get a 10% lift. Here we’re talking about much more dramatic effects.”

While the study is based on Australian consumers and media outlets, Varan believes that if the study was replicated overseas it would show similar results.

“The numbers might not be exactly the same, but the trend would be,” he says.

By Colin Kirkland

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

5 Ways That Gen Z Differs from Millennials That You Must Take Into Account When Promoting Your Business

September 8, 2021 No Comments

By Adrian Falk

If you take a look at consumers from small towns to the world’s biggest cities, you will find that there is always a huge gap in age. Companies recently had to figure out what makes Millennials tick, now the focus has shifted to Generation Z. So what does Gen Z mean for your business? Some corporations have decided to put them in the same boat as Millennials, however, that is a mistake. Although Gen Z consumers share similarities with Millennials, there are important differences for advertising your business to this new generation that you’ll need to take into consideration.

Here are five ways that Generation Z differs from Millennials when you set out to promote your company.

1. Generational gap

Every generation has quirks that make them different from one another, and sometimes these differences can make it hard to have a one-size-fits-all approach for marketing to a general audience.

Let’s look at social media usage across three generations — Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z. Gen-X’ers tend to use platforms like Twitter and Facebook more frequently, meaning that ads through these social media sites would be effective. Generation Z, on the other hand, prefers snappier ads in the form of posts or videos on Snapchat and Instagram, or ads taken out on YouTube and TikTok. They also respond well to witty marketing messages and tend to value the social media presence of a brand.

2. Diversity and inclusion

Generation Z is big on diversity and this effect can be seen in how they consistently advocate for more progressive stances from companies. Gen Z feels it is most important for companies to work with a diverse group of people with various skill levels. They want to bring everyone they can to a discussion as that is how they think the best results will be produced. Although many companies have adapted this mindset, as this generation gets older and becomes a more prominent part of the consumer base, businesses will be further encouraged to become more inclusive.

3. Consumption and expression

Generation Z tends to continue buying from brands that promote their sense of self. As discussed in a study by McKinsey & Company, Gen Z is more likely to buy a product that they can personalize or utilize in self-expression, that supports a charitable cause they believe in, and one that doesn’t explicitly advertise towards male or females. This is all in stark contrast to previous generations where, now more than ever, consumerism is being pushed in a new direction as this generation is using consumption as a means of expressing individual identity. What they buy isn’t just a commodity in some cases, it is a piece of what makes them themselves, and it’s important that companies take advantage of this when marketing to them.

4. Environmentalism

Along with progressive causes, Generation Z responds extremely positively to companies that actively promote environmentally beneficial products and practices. For clothing brands, since they are sometimes more likely to thrift than buy fast fashion products in some cases, it’s important for companies to make sure that they are producing options that make this generation feel like they are making a difference. The changes can even be small ones at first, like fully recyclable or compostable packing materials, and eventually progress into larger efforts towards sustainability.

5. Human Element

This generation is the first that is completely surrounded by technology, but despite that they largely prefer to have a human element present when a company is promoting to them. This is because of how surrounded by technology they are and that they can more easily detect when a company is being authentic and honest with them. Gen Z can see through companies’ attempts to save face or recover from a controversy, and will not purchase from a company that they view as deceitful or trying to only get their money without providing them their money’s worth.

As a company it is important to recognize that traditional methods of promoting to consumers won’t always work with Gen Z. To appeal to this group, you’ll want to focus on branding yourself as an organization that provides the right environment and benefits they seek. When advertising, if you can show how your company is embracing this younger generation as individuals, as well as demonstrating a more progressive stance, you can become very attractive to its members.

By Adrian Falk

Founder & CEO of Believe Advertising & PR

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe