Live streaming has gained massive popularity over the past few years. Its popularity on social media and other digital platforms has turned it into an important digital marketing tool that can be used by big and small companies to raise brand awareness.
Nothing lures people in more than a good story. American story consultant, Robert McKee once said, “Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world.” And in an age of technology, storytelling has become a cakewalk.
Gen Z, the youngest generation of consequence, comprises approximately 72 million Americans and 27% of the population. For Gen Z, storytelling and digital engagement is a daily priority as they connect on the Internet and social platforms for over 10 hours every day, according to a survey made by Adobe. They seek real-time communication with content creators, chat with trusted peers, engage in political discussion and answer live polls. They are, in effect, the primary active target audience sought after by video livestreaming services.
A survey by software company Livestream and New York Magazine shows that 80% of audiences prefer livestreamed videos to blog content. Moreover, with livestreaming becoming a popular feature on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, brands have accepted it as a vital component of social media marketing and invested28% of their budgets on livestreaming shows.
Create authentic connections
Accelerating the importance of livestreaming is the fact that Gen Z is evolving into a critical consumer category. The “Next Generation Report” from Business Insider Intelligence says Gen Z will shortly become the largest consumer population in the U.S. According to Business Insider, they are already estimated to influence $143 billion in spending in the U.S. alone. With their ability to influence purchasing decisions, Gen Z is transforming livestreaming into an industry worth over $30 billion, which is expected to be worth over $70 billion by 2021. A new study by ABI Research further estimates there will be 91 million subscribers utilizing livestreaming by 2024.
What is more, Gen Z completely shuns traditional media, seeking instead platforms where they can directly connect with brands. Characteristically, this generation is partial to honesty and transparency, which livestreaming offers, with all the glitches of spontaneous reality. Savvy brands, therefore, are creating fresh digital marketing strategies incorporating livestreaming, especially during these challenging times, bringing events in real time to locked-down audiences.
Recycle content once and build new video assets
Brand marketers are discovering the value of livestreamed content beyond the event, incorporating livestreamed content in subsequent videos and building an arsenal of marketing collateral.
Vogue used the livestreamed Met Gala for a live video on behind-the-scenes activity in making it happen. The video received over 200,000 views. After National broadcaster KBS launched BMW’s M2 on Periscope, it subsequently used the launch to return with the brand’s first interactive live-action adventure, on the app.
Similarly, many brands are recycling livestreamed content as live video footage on regular brand videos, as an important part of subsequent marketing strategy, to draw new customers. Forbes quotes Brandlive as stating that nearly 95% of brand and agency executives said live video would be an important part of their marketing strategy.
Brand marketers, thus, see it as two for the price of one, and an opportunity to capture new customers.
Bridge the virtual and physical worlds
Not long ago, there were significant gaps in streaming media technology that made live streaming inaccessible to many organizations and limited their brand expansion within the boundaries of their business’ country of origin. Today all this seems like prehistory, as the technology leapfrogged into its current user-friendly format, providing digital marketers the option of using livestreaming to get their brand in front of global audiences in real time.
Generate Valuable Market Insight
At a live event, a brand cannot quantify how many in the audience are captivated or bored. But livestreaming allows brands to obtain information by asking questions like:
Were there more viewers at the beginning of livestreamed event that at the end? If so by how much?
When people return to re-watch the presentation, what do they watch?
What does the audience say about the presentation?
These features unique to livestreaming video provide criticalfeedback on real audience reactions that cannot be obtained in any other way.
Essential for improving brand awareness
Using livestreaming video has the potential of becoming a clear growth hack for almost any brand, as you will be better positioned to form those invaluable connections with your clients. If you know how to make use of the technology available, creating those connections could be easier than ever. Understanding why livestreaming matters could be crucial to improving your business’ brand awareness.
Content marketing is a contact sport. Just like any coach, you’re in charge of preparing for the game and carrying out those plans. Such is the life of a content marketer, where you must balance content marketing strategy vs. execution.
You can’t “win” at content marketing without a solid strategy. Nor can you do so without the ability to execute on it consistently. Let’s look at how both of these functions are critical to your game plan and how to find the right balance.
Quick Takeaways
A fruitful content marketing return for your organization requires both strategy and execution.
Different resources and tools are necessary to handle both sides.
Finding the right balance ensures that you can consistently publish content that’s relevant and engaging for your audience.
Having a Strategy Doesn’t Always Mean Your Content Marketing Is Effective
Just because you have a strategy, it doesn’t mean it’s effective. This is something many organizations struggle with due to a variety of reasons. They don’t have leadership buy-in, resources are slim, it’s just words in a document, or it’s not really a cultural foundation.
It’s easy to get derailed with your strategy. It’s also something that’s living and breathing. It’s not static. Rather, so many things, internal and external, influence it. Just consider the pandemic impact. This global health crisis changed the message and strategy for basically every company.
However, you can’t dwell on your strategy and stop executing it because it’s not perfect. It never will be. You have to start somewhere with good enough and then look at your content performance analytics and data to determine if your strategy is on point or way off.
What Makes a Content Strategy Effective?
If you aren’t sure if your strategy is effective, then it’s time to find out. In general, the most successful ones have these attributes:
Specific definition of goals and the KPIs (key performance indicators) you’ll rely on to measure effectiveness.
Detailed and heavily researched buyer personas. You must really know your audience to develop content that will resonate with them.
Types of content (blogs, eBooks, webinars, video, etc.) you’ll use and how they align with your buyer persona preferences.
Channels you’ll use to disperse and distribute content (social, email, paid, etc.)
Tools you’ll need to develop content workflows, track audience behaviors, set up campaigns, aggregate analytics, and leverage automation.
Foundational language that should influence every piece of content you create (value prop, USP (unique selling proposition), elevator pitch, taglines, vision statement, and mission statement).
Content production goals (how much throughput do you commit to every month—check out these insights on blog frequency, for example).
If your strategy addresses all these points, you should feel pretty confident that it can be effective. The challenge for many is how to execute it.
Content Marketing Execution: Turning Strategy into Action
Coaches create game plans with precision, and then they attempt to execute it. They know they’ll have to course-correct along the way because the unexpected is inevitable. When you watch an NFL game, you know these guys are professional athletes, the best of the best, but you can also tell when they aren’t executing—dropped passes, sacked quarterbacks, and huge mental errors.
That can all happen in content execution as well. Strategists lay out the plans for a content team to be successful. Yet, the same challenges keep popping up. Some of the biggest around execution are consistency and content creation workflows.
There is certainly reason for friction here. However, it’s not difficult to improve this part of execution. Technology is the answer. A content marketing platform can streamline workflows, provide you with dynamic content calendars, and help you identify where the impediments are.
For example, you might have a few design resources, yet they’re necessary for almost all types of content. If that’s what’s slowing your production, you can consider hiring more in-house talent or outsourcing.
You’ll likely never have “enough” resources. But redistributing them and augmenting your team with outsourced talent can help you reach your content production goals.
Data Should Influence Execution
Execution isn’t on autopilot. The content performance data you generate and analyze should inform it. It could change your strategy, as well. For example, you may learn that your audience has a high preference for visual content over written content. You’ll change your execution of tactics based on this to meet your audience’s expectations better.
Execution Requires All Hands in the Same Circle
Sports teams huddle and put their hands together to show they are one. Your content marketing team should do the same when it comes to execution. Much of this comes down to accountability and transparency. When you have a technology platform that tracks the status of every project, you’ll have a clear picture of who isn’t playing their role.
Then it’s time to investigate the issue and find out what’s actually happening. It may be a time to coach up, add resources, or make a cut.
Finding the Right Balance for Your Business
Content marketing strategy vs. execution is a core concern for any organization committed to content marketing. Having the right balance means your strategy has all the essentials, and you refresh it regularly but aren’t getting caught up in it being perfect. On the execution side, it means analyzing why you aren’t meeting production goals and how to fix your strategy so you hit your goals.
These two areas are necessary for achieving wins in content marketing—more traffic, leads, and sales. And we can help!
If you’re ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently, check out our Content Builder Service.
Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business.
Michael Brenner is a Top CMO, Content Marketing and Digital Marketing Influencer, an international keynote speaker, author of “Mean People Suck” and “The Content Formula” and he is the CEO and Founder of Marketing Insider Group, a leading Content Marketing Agency . He has worked in leadership positions in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as for thriving startups. Today, Michael helps build successful content marketing programs for leading brands and startups alike. Subscribe here for regular updates.
Even though we term this sector as SME, there are some big differences as to how marketing executives should look at a 300-people company from a 10-employee firm.
The SME sector offers significant growth opportunities for the economy, and marketing to this large sector in India makes sound business sense for growth. Although many companies of local and international origin have positioned their offerings for the SME sector, many still have not been able to make a mark in a significant way.
SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM…. you name it, they are all targeting the SMEs if you just take IT sector companies alone. Amazon is making more inroads into this sector disrupting established players’ business models. Reliance Jio is following suit.
In order to minimise the risk and optimise resources in reaching out to SMEs, there are some interesting things companies can do. First, understand the buying mechanism in this sector. Even though we term this sector as SME, there are some big differences as to how marketing executives should look at a 300-people company from a 10-employees firm.
The propensity to buy more may not be there. Their lifetime value to a marketer is pretty low, as they do not buy much during their short time engagement.
It is best to avoid marketing to the micro business segment at least in the initial phase of your marketing campaign. You would find both ROI and response to your queries staying low in this segment. Therefore in order to show success with your marketing and have a wider acceptance within your company, it is best to plan differently.
Second, marketers should know who their best customers are. Do they know when reaching out to the SME sector that it is a good playing field to generate revenue? Will intuition pay off, as the data available is almost useless? How can a marketer really know where to put the initial marketing funds? The ideal way is to profile existing customers in several business sites against employee count.
Marketers can then analyse the types and sizes of the businesses that buy their products. By knowing approximate share of penetration within various employee-size firms you can have several analysis done on various buckets. Marketers then can target the prospects that behave like their best customers, thereby minimising risk and maximising profitability of prospecting.
By taking the step of understanding the actual profile of your existing customers, you will be able to align your marketing investment with the right opportunities. Remember what a direct marketing guru said: “Success is dependent upon 40 percent lists, 40 percent offer and 20 percent everything else.”
The third tip is about mixing market segments with channels for driving better performance. As we all know no channel optimally provides access to all required SME profiles you need for your products and services. Therefore it is imperative that you test and measure several of such channels to find the suitability in getting better response rates and ROI.
In my experience, the following three channel options should indeed be tested: social media, e-mail and telemarketing. If you intend to win the SME sector, these three channels must be used proactively. Typical utilisation should be in the range of 40-50% for social media, 30-40% for email and the balance for telemarketing.
By doing so you will indeed be utilising multiple channels in the true sense. This weightage is from the overall marketing budgets perspective including costs to acquire database and lists, and personnel costs of telemarketing.
The logical question now is how you can know the ROI of your activities. Since many variables are involved here, you need to analyse which mix of channels is most effective. The key is in finding the most effective combinations and frequencies with order costs.
As an example, consider segmenting the MSME sector by the number of channels and frequency as follows: Micro segment receive one emailer only; small segment receives couple of emailers and targeted social media impressions; and medium segment receive all the three: social media, e-mailer and telecall. You can also change the above by mailing three people at a medium size company, two at small and one at micro.
Or perhaps you should altogether drop micro segment, as these are probably not worth pursuing in the initial stage. It takes some experience before you climb the learning curve and understand what works for you based on various mixing options.
Finally, marketers should also focus on getting accurate analytics to ensure that the marketing strategy is appropriately framed. Both number crunching and interpretation are important in this respect. One of the biggest mistakes we see marketers making is in equating success of a campaign by measuring the response rate. This is especially true when we do thought leadership seminars with many IT companies.
We engage a thought leader to build relationship and prospecting, and till recently most companies measure the success by the number of target customers attending the free dinner and webinar sessions. It took several such events before one of our key customers decided to change the measure into business won from such gatherings.
In the SME sector, as many as 90% of respondents will not get to the purchase stage. So you may have done the best surgery, but the baby did not survive! Even with a fantastic response rate, your product or service can fail to take off if measures are not done right. What can you do in such a situation? Concentrate on measuring average orders, second orders and cross-sell propensity. By doing these activities you can segment the SME market appropriately and execute ROI-driven marketing programmes.
The raison d’être of a website is to draw potential customers and help generate leads. This can be achieved by an intelligent mix of strategies that include paid advertising, SEO, social media, and email marketing.
Website traffic is the lifeline of every business. More visitors to the website mean greater number of prospective customers coming across one’s products or services, which, in turn, will generate more sales. Hence, driving larger traffic to a website is really a no-brainer for businesses looking to make a name for themselves in the market.
For small- and mid-sized business owners, a website is an essential extension of their business itself, and for some, such as the online stores, it is the actual business. After achieving a pixel-perfect website, it’s important for businesses to divert their attention to drive substantial traffic to it.
Here are the five most effective ways of bringing traffic to one’s website:
1. Leverage paid advertising
Most of the strategies to drive traffic are free, requiring dedicated and consistent efforts and time. Towards this end, a strategy that can be more effective, easily measurable and provide quick results comparatively will be investing in paid ads. These include pay-per-click ads, social media ads, display ads and video ads. Pay-per-click ad campaigns will allow one’s brand to be at the top of Google search results whenever a search towards that end is carried out.
Social media ads such as Facebook ads are cheaper and allow brands to set highly-specific parameters like demographics, age, behaviour, location and interests so that ads are shown to the intended audiences. Display and video ads are visual ads that can be shown on third-party websites.
2. Implement good SEO strategies
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a specific website by ensuring a higher visibility for the site on the list of results given out by a search engine. Both on-page and off-page is an essential aspect of a successful website.
Backlinks, or creating links to other websites that can lead visitors to one’s website, especially are quite valuable for SEO as they represent ‘vote of confidence’ for search engine giants like Google. For SEO that drives positive results it’s important to ensure that the website and content are updated and relevant to those seeking one’s products or services. Appropriate keywords, captivating meta descriptions and valuable, catchy content are the deal-breakers in SEO. Sign up for our exclusive newsletters. Subscribe to check out our popular newsletters.
3. Be social
In the current digital era, a business can’t afford to not be on social media platforms. Globally, the usage of social media for marketing has doubled. One needs to be on social networks like Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter to reach out to their target audience.
No matter who the target audience is for a business, they are bound to be on a social network somewhere. The right way of connecting with them is through creating content specific to one’s industry or products so that it can draw followers in. Even for a niche market, one can find a following with consistency and premier quality content.
Also, using the right hashtags is equally important. People have become very selective about the content they consume and hence, they are resorting to hashtags as a way to filter and streamline the influx. Using hashtags smartly will enable businesses to target the right audience so that they are directed to their websites.
4. Invest in affiliate marketing
Affiliate programs allow brands to attract more traffic by tapping into other people’s users. Companies can publish their content on other websites and pay a commission on the sales generated. This way they can earn positive word-of-mouth for themselves. The pay-outs are made only when a genuine sale is made, which means there’s minimal risk involved. An affiliate program, once set up, can be left to go on autopilot so that one can focus on other aspects of their business. To get started, one must draw up a list of the best affiliate programs and then decide which can be appropriate for the purpose.
5. Use email marketing
Email marketing continues to be an effective channel for driving traffic to a website. It’s come a long way since the times of promotional blasts that were quite pesky for many customers. However, now email marketing involves building a well-thought-out sequence of newsletters or blogposts that can lead to more sign-ups that can forge long-lasting relationships.
In fact, even the basic and most primal welcome email is much improved than the old-school transactional kind. In its simplest form, email-marketing is a great option for showing off one’s latest blog post or for informing customers about an upcoming sale.
Summing it up Just creating an attractive website and waiting for the right audience to chance upon it won’t suffice. The competition is tough. Businesses need to adopt strategies to grow traffic on their websites. It’s important to focus on one’s target audience and quality of content to drive relevant traffic and get amazing results.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
Email reigns supreme as a customer engagement channel.
As consumers turn to digital as they cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, 91% rate email as a top communications channel, according to Critical Channels of Choice—How Covid Has Changed the Channels of Engagement, a study by the CMO Council.
Next are websites (61%), telephone (59) in-person (49%) and text (43%).
And when they have a critical need, 55% of consumers now view email as a channel they could not live without. That reflects a slight margin over the telephone, but it is a major shift, given that the phone was the overwhelming choice last year.
Telephone slipped, in part, because brands delivered a poor experience using the phone, the study says.
In general, consumers see email as:
Convenient — 29%
Trackable — 22%
Reliable — 18%
Fast — 11%
Trusted — 8%
Personal — 7%
Email is also seen as a trusted channel when consumers need to communicate with a brand. They prefer it even when they don’t get an immediate answer because “there’s a social contract that a brand will respond in short order, even if it’s an automated response,” the study states.
But email also brings challenges to brands, one of which is that consumers’ inboxes “are flooded with non-relevant marketing messages resulting in low open rates,” it continues.
Moreover, email is only one part of the multichannel environment that consumers find frustrating.
For one thing, 87% of are irritated by having to renter details in multiple channels — so much so that 73% question whether they should do business with that brand. Gen X is most irritated by having to repeat themselves, and Gen Z the least annoyed.
And in general, 65% say brands are not exceeding expectations with digital engagements during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, 21% of consumers now prefer to engage with brands only via digital, from discovery to conversion. That’s up from 10% last year, likely reflecting the impact of the pandemic on habits.
On the privacy front, 25% of the respondents would share their personal data to receive more personalized experiences and offers. In addition, 22% would do so to receive better service, 15% for faster service, 9% to be able to self-serve and 7% to receive more engaging experiences.
The CMO Council surveyed more than 2,000 consumers in October. The survey covered six countries: the U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
Both B2B Marketers and Buyers Increasingly Sold on Conversational Marketing
B2B marketing professionals have found email, online live chat, social media, and chatbots have all seen increased usage in 2020, while phone and video call use has fallen by more than 10 percent, according to recently-released B2B buyer communication survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts
B2B Tech Firms Cut Marketing Budgets Due To Pandemic: Study
Despite an overall drop in marketing spending due to the global health crisis, budgeting for digital and content marketing are the most likely to see increased spending, while some 60 percent of B2B technology firm executives say that their key performance indicators (KPIs) haven’t undergone change. MediaPost
Subject Matter Expertise A Growing Factor for B2B Buyers When Evaluating Vendors
In 2020 over 32 percent of B2B and professional services buyers see subject matter expertise and industry knowledge as the top attribute when evaluating firms, a rate over 11 percent higher than 2018 figures, with client service flexibility the only other element that became more important during the past two years — two of several statistics of interest to online marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts
7 ways COVID-19 has changed B2B customer experience forever
The pandemic has blurred the lines between B2B and B2C marketing, brought more intelligent automation to customer experience (CX), and made trust a more important factor, and Adobe has taken a look at how these changes will play out in 2021 and beyond. Adobe (client)
Linked Rolls Out Company Engagement Report
LinkedIn (client) has launched a Company Engagement Report offering new insights for B2B marketers, especially those using account based marketing (ABM), featuring a variety of organic and ad engagement metrics, the Microsoft-owned professional social platform recently announced. Adweek
Facebook Once Again Experiments with Up and Down Votes for Comments to Optimize Engagement
Facebook has begun limited testing of Reddit-like upvoting and downvoting options among certain Facebook Groups, with an eye towards boosting relevant content and engagement levels, recent observations of the social media giant have shown. Social Media Today
Google’s Working on a New Process Which Would Convert Static Website Assets into Video Content
Google has launched URL2Video, a new prototype utility that incorporates some of Google’s AI systems to turn static website digital assets into video content, in a move that could lead to new digital marketing opportunities, the search giant recently announced. Social Media Today
Social Media Trends 2021 Global Report
Content remixing, memetic media, and nostalgia marketing are among the trends marketers are likely to see more of during 2021, according to recently-released global social media survey trend data from HubSpot and Talkwalker. Talkwalker
Microsoft Clarity, the company’s tool for visualizing user experience, is out of beta
Microsoft has widely released Clarity, a free service offering a variety of user engagement and other metrics using site JavaScript, previously available only in beta form, the firm recently announced. Marketing Land
B2B Content Marketers Getting More Successful in Building Credibility
B2B content marketers say they have found creating brand awareness, educating audiences, and building credibility and trust as the top three benefits of B2B content marketing over the past year, followed by lead generation and building loyalty with existing customers, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:
A lighthearted look at “CX is more than a department” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist
New Photo Filter Shows What You Would Look Like in Facial-Recognition Database — The Hard Times
TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
Lee Odden — #TimTalk – The Business of B2B Influence with Lee Odden — Timothy Hughes
Lane R. Ellis — 10 Tips for Prioritizing Tasks to Make the Most of Limited Small Business Resources — Small Business Trends
Lee Odden — 40 Marketing Quotes to Provoke Thought and Inspire — Visitor Queue
Have you found your own top B2B marketing stories from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below.
Thanks for taking the time to join us for our weekly B2B marketing news, and we hope that you’ll return again next Friday for another examination of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.
By Lane Ellis
Lane R. Ellis (@lanerellis), TopRank Marketing Social Media and Content Marketing Manager, has over 36 years’ experience working with and writing about the Internet. Lane spent more than a decade as Lead Editor for prestigious conference firm Pubcon. When he’s not writing, Lane enjoys distance running (11 marathons including two ultras so far), genealogical research, cross-country skate skiing, vegetarian cooking, and spending time with his wonderful wife Julie Ahasay and their three cats in beautiful Duluth, Minnesota.
Google will roll out an option in the coming weeks that allows users to opt out of having their Gmail, Chat, and Meet data used to offer “smart” features like Smart Compose and Smart Reply.
Gmail permissions are being featured by Google as the next privacy setting. Whatever the choice users make, “Google ads are not based on your personal data in Gmail, Maalika Manoharan, product manager at Google, wrote in a blog post.
Earlier this year, Google advertisers gained the option to buy Product Shopping ads and Showcase Shopping ads for Gmail campaigns in March. They are reported in the Google Display Network.
Standard Shopping campaigns will automatically run on Gmail, when marketers opt in to Gmail, Discover, and YouTube campaigns.
Manoharan explains that automated algorithms, not manual review, make it possible for Google to offer the new privacy feature. A toggle disables the background data processing that makes it possible to collect and use the data, Manoharan explained Monday.
Users remain in control of their data, whether they are an individual Gmail user or a Google Workspace administrator.
The new option will roll out in the coming weeks.
The Privacy Checkup tab allows users to control whether the data in Gmail, Meet, and Chat can offer smart features in the tabbed inbox for Smart Compose and Smart Reply in Gmail, as well as a reminder when bills are due in the Google Assistant and restaurant reservations in Google Maps.
Google’s engineers at the Google Safety Engineering Center in Europe developed the setting, which may have been based on the Global Protection Data Regulations (GDPR).
Auto-delete was introduced as the default to give consumers greater control of their data.
The ability to turn on and off some individual smart features is not new. The setting, which now gives users a choice whether or not the data can be used, is designed to reduce the work of understanding and managing that process.
As with all Google products, Gmail, Manoharan writes, Meet and Chat are secure-by-design to help protect consumer data and safeguard privacy.
A slew of famous media defectors who jumped onto the platform recently raises the question of whether Substack can address media’s woes
I started a Substack two weeks ago and it’s going better than I thought it would. Friends texted me: “Congratulations on the launch.” To which, I responded: “Heh, thanks it’s a blog.” Another pinged: “You joined the movement!” The best reaction was an encouraging tweet from fellow Substacker, Michelle Lhooq: “Let us all welcome [Sean] to the Substack stripper pole, where writers dance for our readers loose change and tell ourselves we’re the future of media hehe.”
Michelle’s sangfroid about the media hullabaloo regarding Substack makes sense to me. It’s a Faustian bargain to commodify your personality. You’re free from the limiting influences of institutions. This is of course why the most famous Substack defectors – Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Andrew Sullivan and now Matt Yglesias – moved to the platform. Yet, input from editors is inevitably just replaced with the pressure of analytics. As teen YouTubers, who were the earliest to experiment with commodifying their personalities confess, the quantification of attention both positive and negative quickly influences our decisions. There are some sides of ourselves our subscribers want to see, others people would prefer not to … This applies doubly to controversial views.
But no matter how you feel about it: we live in a personality-based economy now. Cancel culture and platforming, the two discourses that help us navigate the dynamics of our social media ecosystem both point back to this state of affairs. When Yoni Appelbaum snarks: “PITCH: Like Substack, only with the best writers, rigorously edited, beautifully illustrated, accessible online, but also bound together and delivered directly to your door, for a small fraction of the price of subscribing to each individually” – and then tweets a link to the Atlantic’s digital subscription page, his first appeal is to the publication’s stable of writers. The Atlantic’s brand is not its 163 years of illustrious history or its institutional reputation. It’s brand is a meta-affect of the media personalities it platforms, and most importantly – those it doesn’t.
Personality is upstream from institutions in the same way culture is upstream from politics. Substack has clearly taken note of this. Consider Ezra Klein: an influential proponent of the netroots activist blogging movement in the early 2000s, his Wonkblog was essential reading for those closely following the passage of Obamacare. Originally a solo project, it was quickly acquired by the Washington Post. But by 2014, Klein had attracted the attention of venture capitalists and was installed as the editor in chief of Vox, a leader in the data journalism movement, clearly indebted to Klein’s explanatory style of journalism. Ezra Klein’s personality is lightning in a bottle. It flows from him, not the media properties he has founded.
There’s a tedium to the hamster wheel of personal brand, and as so many have noticed the causality from followers to funds is opaque at best, a con at worst. In a world where podcasters get Patreons, sex workers get OnlyFans, and influencers get brand partnerships, writers have taken note. If Substack is a stripper pole at least it’s not pro bono.
Substack is not quite the ‘revolution’ tech critic Jaron Lanier envisioned in his 2013 book, Who Owns the Future? For Lanier, our current detente wherein users receive free services and creators receive free exposure in exchange for free content, was never viable. A few monopolies control (and monetize) an inordinate amount of all the information created around the world, while the masses would be left out in the cold. He proposed users – creators in his estimation – be reimbursed with micropayments for content they contributed to the internet. Substack isn’t quite the equivalent of Twitter paying us a penny per tweet, but it seems the closest thing we will get to a fairer ecosystem in the near future.
For many people, the issues surrounding Substack strike at the heart not only of what free information has done to society – but what free information has done to the media industry in particular, which has been decimated by declining profits. In 2020, Google, Facebook and Amazon are on course to consume 62.3% of US digital ad revenue – to say nothing of Craigslist’s fait accompli on the classified ads that formerly supported local journalism … Substack is a pragmatic response to one issue plaguing an industry in crisis – a collapsing ad-based revenue model. Rather than propose more voodoo innovation, it addresses the issue head on with the straightforward transaction of a subscription, a shift that industry leaders such as the New York Times have also pursued to great effect. A new micropayments platform for newsletters won’t magically liberate public intellectuals from commercial pressures; it won’t solve the tensions between free speech and safety; and I highly doubt it will make having a career as a writer any easier. But it will create space for writing not tailored to the trending on Twitter section, encourage writers to develop a deeper relationship with their audience, and promote the sort of writing (both longform and short) that doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of legacy media.
In a few years’ time, I predict we may look back at the chaotic information ecosystem of the 2010s as a sort of social media interregnum. Seduced by the seemingly magical qualities of our new powerful technological tools, we deluded ourselves into believing clout and exposure could be a replacement for dollars and sense. The fragmentary properties of the internet remain in place. Strong-willed media personalities now have the tools to set up shop and operate independently. Legacy publications will worry less about trending in social media feeds and more about the conversion rate for subscribers. Audiences will be less global and more curated. And most important of all, the social media channels – chastened by the techlash – will return to what they were always meant to be: places for self-promotion, not self-publishing.
Feature Image Credit: ‘We may look back at the chaotic information ecosystem of the 2010s as a sort of social media interregnum.’ Photograph: Léo Corrêa/AP
Sean Monahan is a writer and trend forecaster based in Los Angeles. He co-founded K-HOLE, the trend forecasting group. He releases a weekly trends newsletter at 8ball.substack.com
As advertising budgets get tight, remain tight, and come under increased scrutiny from CFOs and CEOs, marketers must not only increase the effectiveness of their marketing, but also look for ways to cut unnecessary expenses. The savings drop straight to the bottom line. A dollar saved is a dollar earned on your P&L, the “P” line, literally. The dollars saved have significantly more impact on profitability than the many dollars spent on getting more sales, especially in low-margin categories and industries.
Take for instance P&G cutting $200 million in digital ad spending, and seeing no decrease in business activity. In fact, during the same timeframe, “Jon Moeller, P&G’s chief financial officer, said the reduction in ad spending obviously didn’t hurt the company’s performance in the recent fiscal year because sales increased, up 1% from the previous year [and] organic sales grew 5%.” P&G saved another $750 million by 1) slashing its agency roster by 50% (CNBC), 2) reducing the complexity and number of adtech middlemen in the programmatic supply chain through in-housing (FT), and 3) increasing price transparency and accountability by buying from vendors directly and avoiding undisclosed mark-ups by agencies. Of course not every marketer can save a billion dollars like P&G did, but marketers of all sizes can find and cut unnecessary costs. Here are a few to start with.
Cheap Ad Impressions on Long Tail Sites
Many marketers, especially the biggest spenders, were lured by the large numbers of ad impressions and low prices offered by programmatic ad exchanges. These ads were supposedly shown on millions of “long tail sites.” But common sense will tell you there aren’t enough humans visiting millions of long tail sites enough times to create the trillions of ad impressions bought and sold through programmatic exchanges; fake sites and fake users (bots) are creating those impressions out of thin air. Those sites can sell ad inventory at low CPM prices because they pirated or plagiarized all the content and had little to no cost. There’s a reason mainstream publishers can’t sell you ads for much lower costs; their content is expensive to make. Good publishers have real journalists, real editors, and real content and therefore real human audiences.
The first thing to cut is unnecessary ad spending on large quantities of low cost ads. If it seems too good to be true, it is (too good to be true). You can do this aggressively by turning off Google Display Network and search partners and by turning off Facebook Audience Network. You can also start to use an allow-list or include-list of domains, instead of a block-list; there are so many fake and fraudulent websites you can’t block them fast enough. Don’t take my word for it; run your own experiment cutting low cost ads on long tail websites from your media buys. See if there is any change to your business activity and outcomes. I’ll bet you that you won’t see any difference. When Chase cut the number of long tail sites showing its ads from 400,000 to 5,000 (a 99% decrease) they saw no change in business outcomes, either (NYTimes).
Buying Your Own Branded Keywords in Paid Search
Many marketers, especially the biggest spenders, were duped by their agencies into buying their own branded keywords in paid search marketing. Why would agencies do such a thing? It is possible they didn’t know better. But it is also possible that those keywords are by far the highest volume ones (people knew the brand already) and had the highest click through rates, by far (people were going to click on the search result anyway). Those brand advertisers whose branded keywords already appear as the first organic search result should not be paying for search ads on those same brand keywords. Otherwise, a search ad is placed directly above the first organic result and users accidentally click the paid ad instead of the organic search result they would have clicked anyway. This costs the advertiser unnecessary expenses (see chart below). Agencies won’t tell you that because without the high volume brand keywords and high click through rates, their excel spreadsheets wouldn’t look as good, and they’d have to do more work to drive results for your paid search dollars.
Google search results (screen shot)
Fraud Verification Tech That Doesn’t Work, and is Black Box
Many marketers, especially the biggest spenders, were tricked into thinking they can detect their way out of trouble when buying low cost ads in programmatic channels. They thought that if some other party checked the ads for bot activity and fraud they would be protected from wasting money. But what they didn’t realize is that the bots can easily trick the detection too, and not get marked as “invalid” — as in IVT “invalid traffic.” Not being marked as invalid, does not mean that it is valid. It could be that the detection simply failed to detect the bots. To put it simply, bots can either alter the measurement with malicious code to defeat it; or bots could simply block the detection tags of the fraud verification companies to avoid detection altogether. Yes, read that one more time — the bots simply block the detection tags of these vendors, and get away with it. “Not measured” is also not the same as “valid.”
Don’t take my word for it; turn off fraud detection for a period of time and see if you notice any changes in your digital campaigns. I’ll bet you that you won’t see any change. And you’ll never be able to verify if they measured correctly or not, because these detection technologies are “black box.” This means they give you a number — e.g. 9% IVT — but do not explain how they measured it. Even the MRC-accredited vendors may not be measuring correctly. MRC accreditation simply means they paid a fee to MRC, MRC had an accounting firm — E&Y — interview the vendor and verified they are measuring what they said they would measure. That is entirely different from measuring bots vs humans correctly.
Cut the fraud detection tech that does not work; you can’t verify if they work anyway. Oh, and definitely stop paying those fraud detection tech companies that extort their own customers, by threatening to mark them as fraudulent or remove them from indexes if they don’t pay up. That’s “protection money.” Don’t pay it. And you wouldn’t need fraud detection in the first place if you bought ads from real publishers, instead of millions of fake sites with fake traffic.
Fake Certifications
Many marketers, especially the biggest spenders, were lulled by fake certifications offered by industry trade associations into a false sense of security. They thought that if they bought from TAG Certified Against Fraud vendors that there would be less fraud. But what they didn’t realize is that the “certifications” are pay-to-play and self-attested. This means vendors pay the fees, complete paperwork, and promise they will do no fraud to get their certifications. Do you think bad guys intent on committing fraud will actually follow the rules? Even if they are caught three times, TAG’s own documentation shows consequences that amount to less than a “slap on the wrist” and “all consequences for non-compliance will be held in abeyance during the pendency of an appeal before TAG.” If ever they are caught, fraudsters will just appeal and continue business as usual “during the pendency.”
Judge for yourself whether this expense is necessary, or useful at all. You can buy ad inventory that is already “filtered for IVT” and achieve the same “low, low fraud rate of 1.05%,” without paying for TAG certification. Just note that it may be that low because the fraud detection tech couldn’t detect the bots. So better yet, buy more from real publishers and less from programmatic long tail sites. You’ll have reduced your own exposure to ad fraud, certifications or not.
Targeting Data and Look-Alike Audiences
Many marketers, especially the biggest spenders, were suckered into paying for more targeting parameters thinking that would improve “relevancy” of their ads. While some targeting is better than no targeting at all, too much targeting is a complete waste of money. Beyond about 3 – 5 targeting parameters, the extra expense of hyper-targeting outweighs the incremental business outcomes that it drives. In fact, academic research has shown that more targeting, beyond a point, results in less business outcomes than less targeting. This is because the data used for targeting was crappy. The data was collected in privacy-invasive ways (observing what sites users visited, tracking them across sites, setting cookies, etc. all without their knowledge or consent). The insights and audience segments were entirely derived, because none of the users were logged in and none of them volunteered information themselves. (This is the opposite for so-called “walled gardens” where users are logged in to one or more Google services at all times, and voluntarily provided demographic and other info in exchange for the free services they were using).
On top of the general crappiness of the data, there’s also the bot problem. Bots know that ad tech companies look at website visitation patterns to deduce what a user likes and which audience segments they belong to. So bots conveniently trick the ad tech targeting companies by visiting medical journal websites, so they look like doctors; or by looking at swing sets in the spring, and backpacks in the fall, so they look like “swing set intenders” or “back-to-school intenders,” respectively. These are bots, not humans who really want to buy from you. By pretending to be in high-value audience segments, like doctors, bots can trick pharmaceutical advertisers to pay higher CPMs in their desperation to get ads in front of physicians. Bots make more money; advertisers waste more money on said bots.
Don’t take my word for it. Cut the targeting data you pay more for in your digital campaigns and see if you notice any impact on your campaign outcomes. I bet you there’ll be none that you can notice.
Remarketing to Your Own Customers
If you thought black box fraud detection, fake certifications, and targeting audience segments of bots were ridiculous, wait till you hear this next unnecessary expense. Ad tech companies are charging clients to “remarket” to their own customers. They even require ecommerce merchants to upload email lists of customers who already bought from their online store, so they can remarket to them. Think about that for just one second longer. These are customers who already know the brand, and like it enough to have already purchased from their ecommerce stores or physical stores. What’s the likelihood of this customer buying more from the same advertiser? Pretty likely, if not 100%.
Oh, the remarketing company told you they have some special sauce that gets these customers to buy more from you? And they tell you not to worry because you only pay when you get the click anyway (performance)? They tell you, trust us, you don’t need to know where we run the ads since you’re only paying when you get the click. Did they run your ads on porn sites? hate speech sites? fake news sites? popunders? And they don’t provide you with placement reports of where ads ran? Are you sure that ads ran in the first place? Remember Uber’s lawsuit against 100 mobile ad exchanges for falsifying placement reports or fabricating them entirely when no ads were ever run.
Cut your remarketing expense and see if the sales continue. If they do, then those sales would have happened anyway – because your customers know you and will buy from you again — not because of some magic done by the remarketing company. The only magic they are doing is tricking you into paying for sales that would have happened anyway. See: Fraudsters Cheat By Tricking The Reporting to Look Awesome
Cut, Cut, Cut More
While you’re cutting, note the 50% “ad tech tax” when buying through programmatic supply chains. Fifty percent of every dollar you spend goes into ad tech middlemen’s pockets, instead of towards showing your ads. What if you bought direct from a good publisher? Every cent of your dollar will go towards showing your ads; that’s the whole idea behind digital advertising anyway, right? Save yourself 50% or more by “buying direct” from good publishers. They will still use programmatic technologies to place the ads, but you are shortening the supply path and cutting out the middlemen who are trying to maximize their own profits, on your dime.
If you were to look even more closely you may find that between crappy targeting due to crappy data and other “drop-offs” due to the limitations of technology, you’re left with 6 cents on the dollar going towards showing ads. It’s almost like a sale at Macy’s — save 94%! By cutting unnecessary expenses in digital, you’re saving money. The above examples are not a case of “save more when you buy more” (like at Costco, or UNinformed programmatic media buying for that matter); it’s “save more when you cut more.”
Cut costs; increase savings, and get better outcomes all at the same time. Who doesn’t love that. Go check your own spending. And let me know what unnecessary costs you decide to cut.
The lucrative dream is still alive regardless of what this pandemic has done to our world over the past year. Many industries are looking for viable candidates who of course have the passion, education and experience to get hired and greatly expand on their bank accounts.
Take a look at six crucial ones worth looking into should you be navigating the world of high-paid employment.
Financial management
Everything from knowledge of IT software to analytical reporting to management experience make up someone who is good in the Financial Management industry. And the paycheck that goes along with something like this is astounding as being a Senior Finance Manager can net you up to $150,000 a year according to Payscale.
Becoming a Certified Financial Planner, or CFP for short, can only help in the process as people will feel that much more comfortable with you advising them on how to use their money in a smart way.
Sales
Take it from someone who knows. Stuttering during a sales pitch as part of an interview for you to get hired, or even worse acting nervous while talking to an actual employer who could easily fatten your piggy bank, is cause for disaster regardless.
Luckily there are tons of sales training videos out there that will help you hone in on these kinds of skills and give you the confidence to secure the bag or position at hand depending on what you’re going for.
Writing
There are many jobs out there in the world of journalism that are paying in the really high numbers. Celebrity culture, sports, banking, the list goes on and on for you to make mint in this highly coveted industry.
Skills that are worth brushing up on in order for them to be super impressed include everything from taking grammar quizzes to knowing who your audience is and even varying your sentence structure accordingly.
Communications and public relations
The gift of gab is something that many have possessed since the day they were born. Being Most Talkative in high school could turn out to be a good thing should you want to enter the communications and public relations industries, many of which are hiring at over $100K per year.
An important skill set for this is something quite simple yet many seem to overlook it: your social media presence. Take a look at how big companies that have millions of followers are doing their and try to mirror yours so that it looks professional, fantastic and something people want to like or double tap on.
Project management
Be the leader that you’ve always dreamed of being. Find yourself as the focal point of each Zoom meeting (as opposed to the in-person ones that at one point were the norm).
Mastering key skills like mapping out a timeline, troubleshooting any issues and planning your project from conception to inception will only make things better although getting to that point should require some sort of bachelor’s degree in project management from PMI (Project Management Institute).
Fortunately all that time studying will help out in the long run (regardless of where you are on your own personal ladder in life) as Salary.com reported that the median amount for this position is about $92K which can go as high as $120K.
Life Coach/public speaking
The gift of gab is once again brought up except this time it revolves around being a life coach or doing something with public speaking where people are paying you big bucks to talk about something that will hopefully change their lives for the better.
Normally a good way to hone in on this skill would be to engage with your audience in an outdoor environment, but seeing as that is not a possibility a good way to do so would be to check in on them periodically online and let you know that you are there for them beyond a simple email.
Create group Zoom chats and really hear what some of them have to say about the matter at hand so you know they are really feeling about what you are trying to put out into the world.
