editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

10 Tech Executives Share Marketing Trends And Predictions For 2021

January 22, 2021 No Comments

What’s on the horizon for marketers this year? To find out, I sought insight from the following nine tech executives .

We will see fundamental shifts in how organizations approach B2B marketing. Juliette Rizkallah, Chief Marketing Officer, SailPoint

“Standard marketing models will begin to emulate more aggressive and digitally focused B2C marketing approaches, where companies leverage a variety of digital touchpoints to target an individual buyer. B2B marketing will need to adjust the B2C approaches to handle the multi-personae account buying committee and will leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to measure the progression of accounts along the top of the funnel. The second shift will surround events and the role they play in that funnel. Once largely used for high-level awareness, virtual or physical events in 2021 will instead move further down in the funnel and become more targeted to initiate engagement with accounts already active and showing commercial intent.”

In terms of digital fluency, marketers are years ahead of where anyone thought we’d be going into 2021. Alicia Tillman, Global Chief Marketing Officer at SAP

“The technology, the tactics, the flexible mindset – with these tools, disruption is no longer the showstopper it once was. As the world moves forward day by day, marketers are more prepared than ever to be agile and deliver the experiences audiences need, when they need them. Rather than months-long marketing campaigns, brand marketing will more closely mirror the way we’re living our lives as individuals. In the moment, deeply empathetic, and tuned into each other’s needs.”

We will see a stark divide in an organization’s marketing budget spend, followed by consequential impact. Jim Kruger, Chief Marketing Officer, Veeam

“With the unstable economy projected to carry into the new year, there will be a resulting stark divide in marketing budget spend. On one end, companies will look to cut back on marketing budgets because they see it as a variable cost that can be managed up or down fairly easily. On the other end, companies will increase investment in marketing because they see driving demand and building the brand as top priorities. Looking ahead, those organizations pivoting funds away from marketing will ultimately endure longer term impacts. Marketing takes quite some time to build on, and by toggling budgets up and down, past investments will begin to lose momentum. A dip in marketing spend will put these companies well behind others who continue to invest. Those who choose to navigate through this uncertainty and prepare for recovery will be far more successful in the long run.”

Verifying human engagement will be critical for marketer leaders. Dan Lowden, Chief Marketing Officer, White Ops

“In 2021, marketing leaders will be able to confidently verify engagement with real humans as they increasingly become more aware of how sophisticated bots and fraud are infiltrating their marketing spend. Marketers will partner with specialists that can help them accurately gauge if their campaigns are targeting real humans – resulting in better customer experience, ensuring higher engagement, bringing visibility to cleaner data, improving the company’s compliance position and driving stronger ROI across marketing campaigns. Marketers will be given a more critical seat at the executive table because of these insights and actions that help grow the business while ensuring every marketing dollar is effectively spent.”

Recent privacy regulations have given license for walled gardens to raise their walls even higher. Abhay Singhal, CEO, InMobi Marketing Cloud

“This is an extremely uncertain period of time, and CMOs shouldn’t have one roadmap – they should have multiple. For starters, marketing teams will need to be prepared to make the case for why consumers should opt in to data sharing within the app. On the flip side, marketers should also be prepared to potentially not have access to that data and will need to find alternative solutions or tactics to create as much of a consistent ID as possible. Without this, advertisers are at risk of presenting the same ads to consumers over and over, which compromises brand image and user experience. Having contingency plans for both scenarios will be critical, and marketers need to start setting expectations and redefining metrics as soon as possible.”

Company culture will play an even bigger role in recruiting great marketing talent. Amanda Bohne, Chief Marketing Officer at AppNeta

“Now that so many companies have proven that, for many, remote work can be as effective as in-office work, it will be hard for businesses to return to the old ways of doing things if they want to continue to recruit top talent. Top marketers will now be sought after by companies located across the country, enabling them to potentially live somewhere different or more affordable than where their current employer is located. Trying to recruit for a company where in-office work is mandated will start to meaningfully impact your candidate pool, and therefore your ability to attract the best talent.”

No matter what product you sell, what you need to market is trust. Dale Renner CEO, Co-Founder, RedPoint Global

“Consumers want trust in the product quality, trust in the organization handling your data, trust that the organization is doing what is right for the environment and social needs, trust that the organization knows and values you. Trust is ultimately driven through a series of interactions – those brands that are responsible with a consumer’s data and use it to create value for the consumer, those that provide consistent experiences, those that operate at the consumer’s cadence will build that trust. Brands unable to be trustworthy, will experience a dramatic decline in customer loyalty and brand value. ”

B2B marketers will primarily focus on strengthening relationships with existing customers. Elena Filimonova, SVP, Marketing CGS

“Marketers will evaluate their customer base to provide them with unused benefits of their service, while building out business opportunities for the future. By sharing best practices and tips for leveraging existing services with valued customers, Marketers will ensure long-term loyalty with their companies as these customers may be struggling in the current environment.”

Google and Apple have led the industry-wide clapback for transparency and data privacy. Susan Lee, Chief Product Officer, Valassis

“In the new year, it’s reasonable to assume other tech companies will put similar measures in place to further reduce user signals. Fewer precise data points from cookies and mobile device IDs means marketers will engage fewer consumers on a one-to-one or known basis. Instead, marketing teams will need to leverage advanced machine learning models and other probabilistic techniques to reach high-value audiences who look like your known customer base, maximizing scale.”

Omnipresent CX will be a game changer in defining brand loyalty. Colson Hillier, Chief Marketing Officer, Alorica Inc.

“In today’s ‘continuously-connected’ way of life, it’s not enough that brands respond to customers through multiple channels. Consumers crave effortless CX—being able to alternate quickly from different platforms, but for these channels to also be personalized, persistent and effective in solving pain points in the user experience. In 2021, you’ll see more companies stay one step (or maybe even five!) ahead of customers’ wants through advanced analytics and embedded intelligence, which in turn creates more contextual and meaningful interactions that allow brands to market, sell and serve their customers better and faster. When brands proactively ‘push’ tailored experiences rather than rely on customers to ‘pull’ from services after they’ve had a problem, that changes the nature of the relationship, offering insights for marketing teams to better evaluate evolving consumer preferences. The convergence of always-connected consumers, new platforms for service delivery and permissioned data provides the insights, context and channels that ultimately redefine brand loyalty.”

Feature Image Credit: Rainbow Bridge / Getty

By Kimberly A. Whitler

As a former General Manager and CMO, who worked for nearly 20 years before getting a PhD and working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, I conduct research that focuses on helping the C-suite (and aspiring C-level marketers) better understand, develop, and lead marketing excellence.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Ikea says be frugal in apocalyptic ad promoting green living

January 21, 2021 No Comments

By Imogen Watson

You may not be anywhere near the office water cooler right now, but we still want to spotlight the most talked about creative from the brands that should be on your radar. Today, we look at Ikea’s eco-focused campaign, in lieu of a festive spot.

While 2019 saw Ikea’s first Christmas ad, starring grime-spitting kitsch ornaments, this time round the retailer bypassed the festivities altogether. Reallocating its ad spend into its sustainability efforts instead, Ikea enters 2021 with an eco-focused campaign that makes clear what it holds dear.

Perfectly alliterate, ‘Fortune Favours the Frugal’ spells out Ikea’s commitment to the circular economy, by inspiring people to think differently about the benefits of living a life of moderation over a life of excess.

Created by Mother London, the spot opens with a meteor-shaped ball of trash hurtling towards Earth. A cause for concern no doubt, as the rock descends, a newsreader ominously tells the viewer that climate experts are suggesting that time has run out in the fight against climate change.

But, just as the viewer is considering putting themselves into the recycling bin, the mood lightens as a child places ‘Make it Better’ into her cassette player and clicks play, and The Barons’ funky riff engages people to action.

The film then turns to people making frugal changes to their consumption habits, such as pickling out-of-date onions, reusing waste water to hydrate the kitchen herbs, or choosing to dry their clothes on a rack instead of resorting to a dryer machine – all the while, showcasing how Ikea’s products can make you more resourceful.

And, each time a conscious consumer chooses to recycle or reuse, the impending rock of rubbish breaks down in size, to show how much waste can be saved by taking these positive steps. Poof goes a plastic pickle bottle. There goes your dryer. Bye bye plastic bags. Ultimately all that’s left is a lonesome plastic bottle that lands to Earth – only to be recycled moments later in a strategically fitted Ikea recycling unit.

This is the latest line of work Mother has delivered for Ikea – a relationship it embarked on back in 2010. Last year, it reimagined Aesop’s fable – ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ – to highlight the importance of sleep.

That sleep-focused work was followed by ‘Tonight is to sleep’ whereby Mother dreamt up a beautiful way to illustrate the healing properties of Ikea’s sleep range, which will leave you tempted to take a nap.

The blue and yellow temple of hotdogs and tiny pencils, Ikea has in recent years blended its branding, becoming steadily greener, by placing time and effort into refining its approach to sustainability. It has an ultimate aim of becoming fully circular as a business by 2030, which means its needs to ensure 100% of the materials used to make its 12,000-strong product catalogue are made from recycled and recyclable materials.

For its constant creativity and sustainability work, Ikea was celebrated in this year’s New Year Honors list – the time of year where The Drum looks back at the agencies, the brands, the organisations, movements and trends that have shaped the year. And 2020 was a year like no other.

Feature Image Credit: Ikea promotes sustainable living, in lieu of festive spot

By Imogen Watson

Sourced from The Drum

In News

How to Create a Facebook Business Page in 7 Easy Steps

January 21, 2021 No Comments

By Marko Ticak

If there’s one thing you can say about Facebook, it’s that it didn’t reach its projected user base of 1.9 billion by being complicated to use. On the world’s biggest social network, your relationship status might be complicated but creating a business page shouldn’t be.

People would still go through the trouble even if it were, though, because Facebook has a lot to offer.

It’s indispensable for small businesses, at least partially because creating a page costs nothing. As a genuine marketplace, using Facebook is more helpful when starting an eCommerce business. Finally, it’s a great place to promote your other online assets – there’s no better place to promote your site on social media than Facebook.

But above all, Facebook is still the place to be because that’s where the people you want to do business with are most likely to be. Unless you’re doing business with other businesses. In that case, you might want to pay more attention to LinkedIn.

If you’re sticking with Facebook, here are the seven steps standing between you and a fully-functioning Facebook business page.

1. Sign up or sign in

Before you start creating a Facebook business page, you’ll need a Facebook account. A regular account will do just fine. If you don’t already have one, you can create it by navigating to Facebook and filling out the form.

If you’ve already signed up, you can simply log in. Once you do, in the upper right-hand corner of your page, you’ll see a “+” icon. Clicking on it will show a dropdown “Create” menu. Choose “page.”

2. Create your page

When you choose to create a page, Facebook will take you to the page builder. Before you can do anything with the page, you’ll need to create it. But to turn that “Create Page” button blue, you’ll first need to provide all the information required in the left-hand side portion of the builder.

facebook-business-page-create-a-page-page-name

At the very least, you’ll need to provide the name of your page, as well as the category. The name can be the name of your business. As for the category, start typing your industry or niche and find the closest match.

You can come back and fill out the description later. The name and the category are all it takes to create a page. You’ll see the “Create Page” button turn blue once you’re ready to create the page.

facebook-business-page-create-a-page-my-flower-shop

Press it, and you’ll be able to move on to the next step.

3. Set up your page and add images

After you’ve created the page, the right-hand side menu will switch to “Set Up Your Page,” and you’ll be able to add photos – both a cover photo and a profile picture.

The general guidelines Facebook will remind you of are to use a logo or something identifiable as a profile picture, and something more representative of your business as the cover photo. You should also make sure you’re using the appropriate size for the social network.

If you like how your profile photo looks and you think you’ve set your cover picture just right, you can move on. If you haven’t checked the mobile preview, maybe do that first – it’s as simple as pressing the smartphone icon in the upper right-hand corner of the preview area.

Once you’re done and you press save, you’ll be in for a treat.

4. Establish your page’s identity

After pressing “Save,” you’ll see the complete back end of your page, the place where you can manage all of its aspects. It can be a bit overwhelming because there are just so many options and awesome things to do.

Before you move on to filling out the page, you might want to unpublish your page first. This won’t delete any of your progress or change any information – it will just ensure that no one will stumble upon the page while it’s still being created. You can find the option in Settings.

Facebook might ask you what your reason for unpublishing the page. If you say you’re doing it because the page isn’t finished yet, Facebook will ask you what you need to finish the page. Give it a reason and unpublish the page – you’ll be able to get back into the setting and reverse this at a later time.

Moving through the “Set Your Page Up for Success” guide is a good choice for your next step. Establishing the page’s identity would be the first thing you need to do. If you’ve skipped something in the previous steps it will show up here. If nothing else, you’ll get a chance to center the profile picture.

facebook-business-page-establish-your-pages-identity

After taking care of this, you can move on to fill out the next section – it’s an important one for businesses.

5. Provide info and preferences

The next step involves providing all that useful information about your business you want people to know. Do you have a website? This is the place where you can connect it to your page. Do you have a physical location you want to include? Business hours? A phone number? Messaging preferences?

facebook-business-page-provide-info-and-preferences

If any of this information doesn’t apply to you – like if you don’t have a website, for example, press the “More” button and you’ll be able to choose that it doesn’t apply to your website.

The last of the options, “Add a Page button,” is a special one. When you choose a page button, you are choosing what type of action you want people to do when visiting the page. Click on “Add Button” and you’ll see several options you have at your disposal – some of which come with options of their own.

When you pick one of the options, it will appear below your cover photo. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to change your mind and pick another page button later.

6. Final preparations before going live

Creating a Facebook business page might be simple, but it can still take some time to complete. Up until now, you’ve been covering the basics. At this point, however, you might decide to go off the beaten track and fill out the page before presenting it to the world.

There are tons of things you can do right now. You could try, for example, to add a username to your page – you’ll find the option beneath your page’s name. Adding it is a great way to make sure people will be able to find your page easily – after you’ve published it, that is.

facebook-business-page-create-page-username

This is also a great time to go over the business tools Facebook provides. You can set up a store, set up appointment bookings, or show a menu, all depending on the type of business you run and the reasons you created the page.

You should also check the settings and configure some important things like:

Visitor posts on your page
Age and country restrictions
Automated responses in messaging
Assigning page roles to people
Connecting the page to an Instagram account

None of this is particularly difficult to do. However, the settings are extensive, and it might take some time to go through all of them.

7. Introduce your page

Technically, your page was created four steps ago – anything you did in between was setting it up and fine-tuning it. When you think that’s done and your page can perform the functions you had in mind for it – let you showcase products, communicate with customers, get them to sign up for your newsletter – you can publish the page again.

The final prompts in the “Set Your Page Up for Success” guide will have you invite friends to like your page and create your first post.

Inviting your friends is a way to leverage your network to give your page an initial boost. However, that boost is anything but organic – people will do it to support you, not necessarily because they are interested in your business. The jury’s still out on whether you should do this or not.

Things are much clearer with the welcome post – you should definitely create it. Creating posts, or posting content, is one of the activities that are expected from an active page, and it’s a great way to engage an audience. You can add photos, locations, and even moods to the post.

With that, this part of the work on your page is done. Don’t get too comfortable, though, as maintaining a Facebook page requires a lot of work. So, get ready to learn about advertising on Facebook, keeping visitors engaged, and using Insights to grow your page.

Conclusion

A Facebook Business page is a great asset for a business of any size. For a small business with a small advertising budget, however, it can be incredibly useful. All it takes to create one is some spare time and a couple of ideas for content.

Keep in mind, however, that creating the page is the first step towards establishing a useful and profitable social media presence for your business. Don’t expect things to happen overnight. You’ll have to keep at it to see results.

By Marko Ticak

Guest author: Marko Ticak writes about everything from marketing to writing. He likes getting caught in the rain, and he doesn’t mind it’s a cliché. When he doesn’t write, he listens to music and looks for things to write about.

Sourced from Jeff Bullas

In News

Building a Brand from Scratch? Start With These Tips

January 21, 2021 No Comments

By Sean Peek

Today, it’s more important than ever to create an authentic brand that resonates with your target customers. These tips and tools will help you build a strong brand from scratch.

Your brand is essentiall your business’s identity, including factors like your logo, company colours, voice and “personality.” Having distinct branding helps customers recognize you and makes you stand out among your competition. However, it can be difficult to zero in on an identity, then implement it into a visual style and written tone. Here’s how to build your brand from scratch.

Steps to building a solid business brand

Developing a brand that resonates with your target customer is more important than ever before. In fact, 86% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they will support. These six steps will help you identify your audience, develop your brand and, most importantly, develop authenticity.

Research your target audience

In order to establish a brand, you need to know who you’re trying to connect with. While your goal may be to reach out to “everyone,” your company should have a dedicated audience as your customer base. Once you have that customer base in mind, research them and their preferences. Read product reviews and subreddits to learn how they feel about similar products and competitors, as well as what they look for in businesses.

Research your competitors

Identify your direct competitors and analyse their established brands. Pay attention to their logo and colour palette, what language they use and how they engage with their customers. Don’t copy what you like and ignore what you don’t; rather, consider what motivates their choices and how you can use that data to inform your own decisions as a business.

Define your company’s purpose and values

Your company’s purpose may be to sell products or provide a service, but it should be based on what motivates you and your employees. Think about the impression you want to leave on your customers and your community and make those values front and centre of your brand.

[Read: CO— Blueprint: Rebuilding Your Brand]

In order to establish a brand, you need to know who you’re trying to connect with.

Establish a voice

It’s important that your brand has a distinct yet authentic voice. Do you write your materials in a formal tone or a more casual one? How do you speak to your customers during pitches and on support calls? Choose words, phrases and a distinct tone that matches your brand.

Create your visuals

Visual representation is one of the most distinct and immediate ways to establish your brand’s uniqueness. Choose a colour palette that conveys the way you want your customers to feel about your services. Design a logo that is easy to read, visually simple and recognizable in any size, be it a website header or Instagram avatar photo.

Build a strong digital presence

With so much business done online and through e-commerce today, it’s important that your brand extends to social media. Ensure that your brand, including its visuals, voice and messaging, is consistent throughout your social media channels and other digital platforms. Through these platforms, engage with customers in a personal sense, answering their inquiries and responding to positive and negative comments.

Tools for building a brand

Creating a distinct look and voice is easier said than done. Here are some tools to help you build your brand.

Canva: Canva is a website and mobile app that turns anyone into a professional graphic designer. Canva’s tools and templates are easy to use no matter your artistic abilities, letting you create graphics for social media, presentations or any other type of visual material.
Designhill: If you need a logo but don’t know any graphic designers, Designhill is a great resource. Simply submit your ideas and logo inspirations and they’ll pair you with their fleet of freelance designers. Or, if you’d rather choose yourself, browse through their list of designers and hire one whose style speaks to you.
Hootsuite: Managing multiple social media accounts can be overwhelming, especially if you have a small team. Hootsuite allows you and your team to plan, create and schedule your social media posts across various platforms all through one easy-to-use hub.
MailChimp: MailChimp is an all-in-one email marketing tool to let you import your contacts, create email campaigns and send them to various contacts. You can even create a landing page that lets people sign up for your marketing services.
HARO: Help a Reporter Out, or HARO, Is a resource that connects journalists and media outlets with professionals who have experience to be used as sources. It’s an easy-to-use and great way to find an expert versus doing hours of search engine research.

CO— aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected experts. However, before making any business decision, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.

Feature Image Credit: Now, more than ever, it’s important to intentionally build your brand. — Getty Images/VioletaStoimenova

By Sean Peek

Sourced from CO U.S. Chamber of Commerce

In News

7 Tips to Enter a New Market and Experience Rapid Growth

January 20, 2021 No Comments

By Dasha Kroshkina

Use this strategy to experience fast success after launch.

According to HolonIQ, the global EdTech market is growing at 16.3% and will grow 2.5x from 2019 to 2025, reaching a total of $404B in global expenditure. On top of that, it is expected that more than 100 education companies will have market caps over $1B by 2025.

The data confirms that the EdTech market holds great potential, and one of the best ways to grow your company is by entering new markets and expanding your business presence.

During the last four months, the StudyFree team participated in two accelerators (Berkeley SkyDeck and Techstars NYC), managed to enter six new markets, and grew threefold.

Here are seven tips based on our experience on entering a new market and demonstrating impressive revenue traction in a short period of time.

1. Choosing the market

First, you should determine the market volume (how much of your target audience is based within the chosen market), look for any initial entry barriers that can prevent your business from developing to the fullest (for example, language, legal, or infrastructure barriers), and evaluate your competition within the chosen country (including how many companies offer a similar service, and how the market is developing). Macrofactors like historical income growth, population trends in the younger demographics, penetration of the Internet, and changes in Google search requests within your segment can give you a clear picture of general trends and heightened market awareness.

In our case, we chose large countries where the EdTech market is growing rapidly (for example, the Indian EdTech market is estimated to grow from $2.5B to $10.4B in the next 5 years). We were also interested in several African countries (Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa) because we saw a huge potential upside for growth in the region as well as relatively low competition in the current market. However, both India and African countries are known for low purchasing power. To validate the scalability of the business from a revenue standpoint, we chose Brazil, which is similar to our mature market (Russia) in terms of the size of the economy and average income level.

Key Advice: Understand your goals before entering the new market. What do you want to achieve? Are you only interested in generating revenue in this market, or do you want to engage in further fundraising in the market? If you aim to fundraise, analyse the market, and look for similar companies who have already entered the market and attracted investments. These companies can be a benchmark for you to prove the market’s validity, validate your scalability, and confirm the fact that there’s a demand for your product.

2. Understanding the market

The next step is to analyse the market from different perspectives (this took us around 2 months). During this stage, you should conduct customer development interviews to understand the key customers, their pains, problems, and potential solutions. This will help you understand how to change your product’s narrative and finetune your value proposition and key triggers accordingly. These in-depth interviews should give you a more nuanced understanding of the market from the customer’s perspective.

We also recommend communicating with local companies, as well as companies who have successfully expanded to this market (the ideal benchmark is a company with the same business model and price level), to learn about potential pitfalls and bottleneck problems from the corporate perspective (infrastructure issues, paying systems, etc.).

In our case, we conducted more than 100 interviews with potential customers in each country and more than 20 interviews with the relevant companies.

3. Testing the market

After analysing the market and absorbing enough introduction data, you can then move to the next stage: testing. We choose one instrument that we are confident about and start testing the same funnel in multiple countries. Changing multiple factors at the same time is not recommended because you won’t be able to validate outcomes or the direct impact of changing the country.

Make sure you have all analytics installed, collect the data, analyse metrics, and iterate as much and as fast as possible. On average, we run 47 tests per country per month.

4. Adaptation and localization

We recommend starting by “localizing” the content and specific instruments you use: Find local copywriters and local designers during the adaptation stage. Use the platforms that are the most familiar to the end-user and track the difference.

Even though we made an informed decision not to localize the product and the funnel in terms of translation, we did work on expressing our values, offers, and messages on the landing page and in the newsletter, based on the comments we received during our customer development interviews. We then hired local copywriters who helped adapt the message and make it 100% natural for the audience. By doing this, we made sure that the product was still the same but that the tone of voice was optimized for the market.

5. Data-driven paid digital marketing

If you use paid marketing, you should collect as many relevant data points as possible: who your target audience is, what their preferences are, the communication channels they use, and the sites they visit. Then start running your campaigns and optimizing every stage of the sales funnel, going from top to the bottom of the funnel.

Regarding specific channels, we recommend using Facebook first (for D2C businesses) because its algorithms are much more advanced, and CPA is lower on average, compared to Google Ads. During every stage of the funnel, we collect engagements through pixels, registrations, conversions, etc. Once we have enough engagements at each stage (ideally from 500-1000n), we proceed to optimize every step. After reaching over 1,000 people, we then upload the data set to Facebook and Instagram and try to find similar people to optimize their process. (It generally takes 2-4 weeks to get the most qualified audience). As a result, we end up with people interested in our product – people who can go down the funnel and be willing to make the payments. Progression from the previous step to the next one goes faster with each iteration and allows not only work on increasing sales but also decreasing the cost of acquisition.

Be aware that, at this point, you have to be ready to lose money for a few months since you’ll be testing your hypothesis and collecting data points about your audience. Think about it this way: if you do not pay for a lead right away, you are paying for information that will help you to bring more leads.

In our case, the optimization was three times faster. When we eventually got enough data points, our CAC dropped three times in one week.

6. Brand awareness and trust points

Never underestimate the importance of brand awareness and the creation of trust points as they are key to fit in the market.

When you enter a new market, no one knows about you, your product, or its concept. That’s why you need to use enough channels to raise brand awareness. This can be done in multiple ways, including local partnerships, influencers, PR, local ambassadors, and feedback on your website. This is crucial because the people you are trying to reach need to see you in multiple ways — the ideal way being when someone else recommends you to them. Another great way is to encourage people to provide honest and sincere feedback on your product.

In our case, we could see the direct correlation between the brand awareness we built and the outreach. Even the most minimum brand awareness strategy can trigger sales, so it is essential to maintain good communication with your customers and continue the adaptation while using local services.

7. Potential growth

Getting those initial sales is great. However, you have to keep in mind the speed at which you can grow in this market. You might triple your budget, but you could also find yourself stuck at any given point if the market is not ready.

When you’re in the growth stage, you should prioritize the factors that will help you grow at the necessary speed. You should select 1 country, 1 channel, and 1 funnel, and double the budget to see how it goes. Don’t expect direct sales right away since the adaptation period can take time, and keep in mind that if you hit the ceiling at an early stage, you might not grow. Don’t try to understand the market passively since you will never get significant traction right away.

By following these guidelines, we have been able to expand to 6 different markets and become cash positive quite early; and even at this point, we are still running more than 47 tests in each country per month. If you ask me what the winning formula is, I will have to say openness and flexibility, a growth hacking mindset, and last but not least, sufficient data. These are the keys to enter new markets and build a truly global product.

Feature Image Credit: Mark Newman | Getty Images

By Dasha Kroshkina

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

Instagram reportedly let some influencers in on user engagement tips

January 20, 2021 No Comments

By Mehreen Kasana

Some influencers say the secret sauce for gaining more popularity and engagement is “unrealistic” while others appreciate the insider tips.

User engagement is every influencer’s lifeline. All tips and tricks are welcome. Especially if these tricks and tips are coming from Instagram itself. According to Business Insider, Instagram recently told several influencers how to increase user traffic and engagement with their posts.

Shared behind closed doors, these suggestions come down to a matter of math (number of posts) and timing (how many times posted per day and week). The three Instagram content creators Business Insider spoke to told it that recommendations included posting three in-feed posts every week (which also means IGTV and Reels). They should also try to post somewhere between eight to 10 Stories through the Instagram Story feature. Look, no one said full-time content was going to be easy.

On a daily basis, influencers should post Stories twice a day for engagement, Instagram reportedly advised. Reels should be posted four to seven a week and IGTV posts should be somewhere between one and three each week. The reactions to these recommendations ranged from incredulity to appreciation. One Instagram influencer said that she had to stop herself from laughing out loud at the amount of content required for more traffic, which sounds like a sensible reaction. Others echoed this sentiment, while some said the input was valuable.

Welcome to the influencer market — Love it or hate it, the influencer economy is very much alive. For years now, social media users have turned to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and other platforms to get cues about consumer trends, brands, and products through influencers’ feeds. While the COVID-19 pandemic effectively sucked the popularity and appeal out of celebrities thanks to their tone-deaf posts, influencers — especially micro-influencers with follower numbers between 1,000 to 100,000 — gained attention and continued to find success.

Social media companies are clearly aware of the power of influencers too. They’re a lucrative commodity for networks because they drive engagement and are often the first to get access to — and show off — new features. According to the influencer marketing agency, Mediakix, at least 17 percent of profiled brands invested a separate and detailed budget for influencer marketing last year alone. There is also a growing body of literature on how to be a successful influencer, such as The Influencer Economy: How to Launch, Share, and Thrive in the Digital Age, and talks right out of Google on the same topic.

Clicks beat ethics — Of course, giving select users tips is ethically problematic. Either share with all or none. But then, this is the same industry where influencers have been known to buy empty bags to pretend they’ve been given (or bought) designer products. The Federal Trade Commission isn’t particularly fond of influencers either, as is obvious from its crackdown on influencer marketing tactics that fail to disclose advertising partnerships to audiences.

But despite the pushback, influencers continue to gain ground and fans, even in politics with the help of decidedly partisan influencers. It’s not shocking then that Instagram sees how financially viable and socially impactful they are and lets them in on a tip or two. Their success is key to its success.

By Mehreen Kasana

Sourced from INPUT

In News

How deepfakes could change fashion advertising

January 20, 2021 No Comments

By Kati Chitrakorn

Deepfakes are moving out of the darker corners of the internet. Tech experts predict positive applications for fashion.

A 2018 Zalando campaign featuring model Cara Delevingne across 290,000 localised ads was achieved using deepfake technology to produce a range of alternative shots and voice fonts. Now, as the algorithms for manipulating and synthesising media become more powerful, the fashion sector is beginning to take notice.

In the tech world, deepfakes specifically refer to media produced by artificial intelligence technology called generative adversarial networks. Deepfakes are video or audio that has been modified, such as by changing a face, the words spoken or the language used. The term was first coined on the internet in 2017 by combining “deep-learning” and “fakes”.

Zalando’s campaign ran on Facebook across 12 countries, gaining 180 million impressions across social media, according to Infinitizer, the micro-targeting specialist agency that worked on the campaign.

Advances in technology have made it harder to distinguish between real and fabricated media. Deepfakes have had a bad reputation, not least because the majority are fake pornography. Critics also point out the dangers of political deepfakes that might generate convincing fake news. “Any digital window to the real world is one that can be duped and faked sometimes,” acknowledges Sunny Dhillon, a VC who has invested in a deepfake marketing company.

Like a rising number of marketers and investors, Dhillon emphasises the “absolutely positive” applications of the technology. As Covid-19 lockdowns restrict in-person activities, and advertisers explore digital technologies, deepfakes have significant potential for experiential marketing. Face-swapping technology, which once took weeks to execute, can now be completed in minutes with a result that is “Hollywood quality”, according to Reface co-founder Dima Shvets.

Experiential marketing tends to be associated with the physical environment, like pop-up stores, but deepfake technology can bring experiential marketing online, directly to consumers, says Dhillon. Examples might include interactive fashion weeks or gaming experiences, he says.

Dynamic influencer marketing

Dynamic campaigns — the term for micro-targeted ads at scale — are becoming a key tool in a marketer’s arsenal. Deepfakes have the potential to help brands reach customers with highly targeted and personalised messaging. For influencers and celebrities, deepfakes help them to easily broaden their reach by agreeing to front a fashion ad campaign and model clothes without even turning up for a photo shoot. Millions of different deepfake ads can instantly run across platforms like Facebook, while up to 100 different influencer ads targeted at various audiences could run, says Simon Lejeune, a growth marketing consultant.

It’s not a giant leap in a world where digital identities such as gaming avatars are already overlapping with real-life identities, while CGI models are mixing with real-life influencers. Imagine a new kind of deal, where an influencer provides a brand with a sample of 15 minutes of audio content and a few video shots. Using deepfake technology, a brand can transform that content into thousands of hyper-targeted ads. “Influencers might start licensing their faces and voices to brands,” says Lejeune. “A computer can take their faces and voices and reproduce them in 16 different languages or poses, and select the most persuasive one.”

Over the past year, brands have pivoted towards acquiring licensing and usage rights to influencer-produced content and using the content as ads from their brand channels, rather than paying influencers to post on their own feeds, says Emily Hall, campaign director at marketing agency Goat, which has offices in London, New York and Singapore. By acquiring usage rights, brands can decide on captions that better match their tone of voice or produce different cuts and edits of the content to post on whichever social media they consider most effective, with metrics available. “It gives brands an element of control,” says Hall.

Organic influencer content typically costs 5 per cent more, but acquiring usage rights could cost 20 to 30 per cent more than the original fee. “It’s still very good value for money,” says Hall. “The influencers are still creating content and doing the heavy lifting for the brands.”

Dynamic voiceover and deepfake videos offer huge potential for marketers in many sectors. A 2019 malaria awareness ad featuring David Beckham speaking nine languages showed how deepfakes can broaden the reach of a public message, receiving 400 million impressions globally within two months.

Deepfakes can also support influencers and content creators who are asked to create more live content but may not be exceptional performers in all media, says Dhillon. Hall agrees: “You’re taking away that risk of a human element, while still retaining a human touch.”

Hyper-personalised advertising

Chinese tech companies are further along in using deepfakes in marketing. In a July 2020 white paper about its plans for AI, Chinese tech giant Tencent emphasises that deepfakes are “not just about ‘faking’ and ‘deceiving’, but a highly creative and ground-breaking technology”. The company urged regulators to avoid clamping down on this nascent tech trend. For fashion, Tencent cited how deepfakes can show outfits on a broader variety of models with different skin tones, heights and weights. When consumers see products as extensions of themselves, they are willing to buy more, pay a higher price and advocate to friends, Harvard Business Review found.

Deepfakes can provide a route to “very quick understanding” for customers viewing new collections from a brand, says Matthew Drinkwater, head of the Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA) at London College of Fashion. He first started running deepfake experiments in 2019, when Microsoft sponsored a project that enabled his team to insert consumers in ads. “This isn’t about fit. It’s about giving you a first impression of how something might look.”

This month, Gucci has partnered with software firm Niantic to release a new collaboration with The North Face in a game of Pokémon Go. “Imagine if Gucci could take it one step further and send its top 50 clients personalised videos of themselves wearing the new collection,” Shvets of Reface AI says. In 2020, Reface AI enabled users to virtually try on Gucci clothes as part of a trial with Kering, resulting in one million swaps in a single day.

A demo of how the FIA, Superpersonal and Hanger uses deepfake technology to capture a user.

Image may contain: Human, Person, Plot, Diagram, and Measurements

Retailers can also hyper-personalise service using a deepfaked assistant to help with online enquiries who is a customer’s exact demographic and speaks their language. Rather than talk to a faceless bot, shoppers could talk to a “real” face, which could enhance trust, says Drinkwater. “All of the indications are that if you’re able to personalise content, consumers are more likely to engage, so there’s a real practical application for the industry to start using this more widely.”

Some form of regulation is likely, notes marketer Lejeune. Potential discretion could include labels clarifying that deepfakes are not real people, he says. Dhillon adds that blockchain has potential as a future means of tracking authenticity.

Consumer data protection is another hot subject. Supporters of deepfakes say that the success of existing face-swap apps shows that consumers are comfortable with sharing their data. In 2019, AI photo editor FaceApp, which enables users to change their facial expressions, looks and age, was a viral hit. In 2020, Sway, an AI-powered app that enables users to visualise themselves dancing, became the third most downloaded app in the US during Super Bowl weekend.

The ethical implications of deepfakes have yet to be fully explored, suggests FIA’s Drinkwater. But he is convinced deepfakes are here to stay. “The technologies that surround artificial intelligence and machine learning are already critical to how brands can manage different aspects of their business, from their supply chain to marketing and communications. [Adoption] is not so much a pivot but a deepening commitment to technology and deep learning.”

By Kati Chitrakorn

Sourced from VOGUE Business

In News

7 Executives Share Marketing Predictions For A Post-Covid 2021

January 19, 2021 No Comments

By Kimberly A. Whitler

I typically ask executives to share annual predictions as we head into a new year. For 2021, I sought insight regarding how marketing will change after Covid. Below is their insight.

Brands will be expected to be clear on their values. Amy Vale, CMO at Dosh

“In 2021, vocalizing your values will no longer be the exception for brands, it will be the rule, and marketers need to be prepared to stretch their authenticity muscle. We have increasingly seen brands this past year speaking up for what they believe in — from showing their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, to companies encouraging their users to vote, to increased transparency on sustainability practices. Consumers are reaching a tipping point in voting with their dollars, holding brands accountable to higher ethical standards. However, marketers absolutely must balance communicating values while avoiding a tactless stunt, especially when supporting a cause. Any social impact initiative should have one or all of the three following pillars: money (are you putting forward a meaningful donation behind your support?), time (are your brand’s executives volunteering for this initiative?) and knowledge (helping to increase awareness of the initiative).”

Brands will focus even more on expanding customer lifetime value. Bernardo de Albergaria, CCO at Airship

“For the last few years, we as an industry have focused a lot of chatter on how B2B marketing has converged with B2C — it’s just as likely for Deloitte to have apps as it is Disney. Recently, the opposite is true, where the 1:1, data-based, account-based marketing that we have often seen in B2B is becoming a focus in B2C. Personalized, even individualized, digital interactions with customers have been everything in this pandemic — no matter whether they are consumers or businesses. In 2021 we will see a much stronger B2C marketing emphasis on contextual and relevant in-the-moment customer interactions and an overt shift to focus on expanding customer lifetime value — qualities that currently are more reminiscent of B2B.”

“In 2021, businesses that sell high-stakes goods or services (auto, insurance, home improvement, etc.) will invest more in their digital experiences, but will need to be extra thoughtful about how to permeate those experiences with human touch points to make a shopper’s online experience as seamless as possible. Like many shopping behaviors, making high-stakes purchases has moved online for most consumers during COVID, despite the complexity of these purchases. What’s more, 46% of shoppers are likely to continue making these purchases online, even after stores open up widely. However, high-stakes purchases still rely heavily on human interaction. With this in mind, the most successful high-consideration business will be those that give online shoppers access to expert assistance via phone or live chat exactly when they need it — not before or after — and equip their sales reps with the data they need to provide a world-class human / automation hybrid experience.”

Brands should focus on authentic, data-driven storytelling. Scott Holden, CMO at ThoughtSpot

“The COVID-19 crisis has put pressure on every marketer’s budget. So it’s critical we shift our focus to only the most pressing needs of our customers. Now more than ever, storytelling is critical for linking the value of your product to the challenges your customers are facing. But it must be done authentically and supported by data. In this environment, you can’t make up a narrative and hunt for data to justify it. With COVID-19, data is changing so fast, we must use it to lead and shape our narratives from the outset. Every person on the frontlines of your company, whether a marketing manager, account exec, or sales engineer must be armed with data in the moment. Only then is it possible to craft narratives that reflect what’s happening in the world and are supported by evidence that will connect authentically with your customers. This marriage of data and fact-driven storytelling should be a priority for every marketer in 2021.”

Industry conferences will be online-offline hybrids in 2021 and for years after. Penry Price, VP of Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn

“Industry conferences will be online-offline hybrids in 2021 and for years after, serving people who don’t want to travel away from home as well as those who wish to attend in person. We’ve learned during this pandemic that we can communicate over digital platforms better than we thought. Whether it’s been colleagues and clients working from home, friends and family socializing during off-hours or public figures chatting it up, this once-in-a-century pandemic has inadvertently proven live video can achieve intimacy even when we cannot be together. And companies that have hosted large events in the past can be much more cost-effective and achieve better ROI because digital entails less overhead.”

Be transparent about your purpose-driven business strategy. Kevin Seller, CMO at Ping Identity

“As we look to 2021 and beyond, a main priority for CMOs is to authentically establish purpose-driven brands. Companies that clearly articulate a vision for doing good as a part of the delivery of their goods and services are ones that will succeed. We’ve seen the pandemic shift users’ preferences in more ways than one and as a result, consumers are more inclined to transact with brands that stand for societal issues that make the world a better place and are not just motivated by profits. Social goals will become table stakes for organizations that are looking to engage with consumers on a more meaningful level and establish more seamless and memorable user experiences.”

Embrace the benefits and team comradery virtual events bring. Lynn Ledwith, CMO at Ansys

“Marketing has always been about cutting through the clutter, differentiating and delivering seamless, frictionless customer experiences. The pandemic hasn’t changed that — if anything I believe it has pressured marketers to be nimble, embrace digital-only initiatives and think more creatively. Looking toward 2021, I’m focused on making marketing more of a team sport, mobilizing cross-functional teams across the company, particularly with events. This past year we hosted our first-ever virtual event, which resulted in higher levels of customer engagement and renewed purpose from employees, all at reduced costs. Physical events will not become extinct and undoubtedly will experience a resurgence, however, this still seems a ways away. Next year, I’m anticipating additional gains from this virtual event setting and will be investing in producing a steady stream of digital-content like augmented reality experiences and virtual booths to better this experience.”

Feature Image Credit: Crystal ball, Getty

By Kimberly A. Whitler

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Users shun WhatsApp to join Telegram, Signal amid rising data concerns

January 19, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from Business Standard

At about 500 million users and growing, Telegram has become a major problem for the Facebook corporation

As WhatsApp teases users to either give their consent to sharing data with Facebook or lose their accounts after February 8, rival Telegram’s Founder and CEO Pavel Durov on Saturday slammed the social media giant, saying it is no surprise that the flight of users from WhatsApp to Telegram, already ongoing for a few years, has accelerated.

According to Durov, Facebook has an entire department devoted to figuring out why Telegram is so popular.

“Imagine dozens of employees working on just that full-time. I am happy to save Facebook tens of millions of dollars and give away our secret for free: respect your users,” he said in a statement.

At about 500 million users and growing, Telegram has become a major problem for the Facebook corporation.

“Unable to compete with Telegram in quality and privacy, Facebook’s WhatsApp seems to have switched to covert marketing: Wikipedia editors have recently exposed multiple paid bots adding biased information into the WhatsApp Wikipedia article,” Durov claimed.

“We have also detected bots which spread inaccurate information about Telegram on social media”.

Millions of people are outraged by the latest change in WhatsApp Terms, which now say users must feed all their private data to Facebook’s ad engine.

In 2019 alone, Facebook spent almost $10 billion on marketing.

Durov said that unlike Facebook, Telegram doesn’t spend any money, let alone billions of dollars, on marketing.

“We believe that people are smart enough to choose what is best for them. And, judging by the half a billion people using Telegram, this belief is justified,” he said.

Not just Telegram but another encrypted messaging app Signal has seen a surge in new sign ins after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk vouched for it.

“Verification codes are currently delayed across several providers because so many new people are trying to join Signal right now (we can barely register our excitement). We are working with carriers to resolve this as quickly as possible. Hang in there,” Signal tweeted.

“Everyone should be able to register without delay again. Thanks to all of the carriers who flipped the right switches so that people can keep switching,” the company further said.

Over 400 million Indian WhatsApp users this week received an in-app notification from WhatsApp as part of an upcoming global roll-out for over 2 billion users, asking them to either accept the changes in its Terms of Service and privacy policy by February 8 or their accounts will be deleted.

The in-app notification did not elicit much details but clicking on the links clearly mentioned the key changes in how WhatsApp will collect and process users’ information going forward, and the partnership with Facebook, its parent company, as part of a larger unification drive between the family of apps.

To recall, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in October said that the company is working hard to merge Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp so that they can start to function a little bit more like one connected interoperable system.

In a bid to allow cross-messaging among its family of apps, Facebook has reportedly started merging Instagram and Messenger chats. The social network has already integrated Messenger rooms with WhatsApp on the Web.

Sourced from Business Standard

In News

How to Stand Out As a Leader in a Saturated Online Market

January 19, 2021 No Comments

By Kelly Wing

Three ways to stand out in the online market.

Fit in, or stand out? Serve existing markets, or serve those in untapped markets? As the online marketplace becomes increasingly saturated for entrepreneurs, and the amount of information available to us online leaves us feeling increasingly overwhelmed, we reach a point where we have no choice but to pull back and reassess what is important to us.

What is commonly referred to as the red or blue ocean strategy, business owners can create an offer so unique and differentiated that they can stand out in the market instead of drowning in a blood-stained red ocean.

Here are 3 ways you can stand out in a saturated market online, more so from a humane level rather than a strategic level.

Realize what is true for you, not what is true for others

It is easy for people to follow the cookie-cutter strategies of how things have always been done. But as the world, society, and humans evolve, so does the way we do business.

Many find this challenging because they lack a deep level of awareness and trust in themselves. They’re afraid that if they tapped into their own intuition and deep inner-knowing, it might not bring them the success they see everyone else achieving.

Long-lasting and sustainable success in business comes from doing what feels good to you, every step of the way. While you can achieve success following other strategies, if it doesn’t feel good to you, it will leave you feeling uninspired and unfulfilled.

Challenge the status quo of business

As humanity evolves into heightened levels of awareness and consciousness, we naturally begin to create a new paradigm of business.

Challenging the status quo is not a common desire amongst leaders. According to Harvard Business Review, 72 percent of leaders say they rarely, or never or rarely challenge their status quo in business.

Leading and serving from the inside out means we learn to know ourselves first and foremost. This can be a fulfilling journey of self-discovery for many, finding their own purpose and truth, which can become largely suppressed when we work in a typical traditional job that isn’t aligned with our highest desires.

To challenge the status quo of business comes with making one fearless and courageous decision at a time.

Find your “Zone of Genius”

Gay Hendricks identifies 4 different zones of genius in his book, The Big Leap.

In the “zone of genius,” we can zone in on and capitalize on our innate gifts and abilities that come naturally to us. In this zone, we become in flow and realize what we are uniquely gifted at, often finding ourselves skilled in a specific area more so than others.

In Hendricks’ book, he prompts you to ask yourself what you do you do that doesn’t seem like work, and what brings you ultimate joy, satisfaction, and abundance at the same time.

Ultimately, standing out in a saturated market online is about identifying what comes naturally to you and capitalizing on that unique gift and skill. We often attempt to do things that come naturally to other people, mimicking their steps and strategies while ignoring or denying our truest and inner-most skills and gifts.

To live a whole and fulfilling life, we must enjoy what we do, including how we run our business on a day-to-day basis. By focusing on what feels good to you (and not others), we can ultimately achieve the levels of joy and freedom we are all seeking.

Feature Image Credit: Doug Armand | Getty Images

By Kelly Wing

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe