Mediastreet
Tag

Market Research

Browsing
In News

Why Businesses Can’t Afford To Skip Market Research

No Comments

By Andrew Faridani

When launching a new campaign, product or new line of service, many businesses – both large and small – choose to forgo an important step: market research. While many companies cite cost as the reason to skip this crucial step, others think it’s too time consuming or simply not necessary.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Market research is the most critical piece of a marketing launch because it helps businesses understand the audience segment and, by extension, the actual need of a product or service.

Some companies think it should be the first thing cut when discussing an upcoming launch. Because it’s a long-term payoff and doesn’t immediately turn into revenue, it’s quickly ignored or discarded for something more immediate.

If you’re not doing market research, what needs to be remembered is it’s very likely your competitors are. And the business with the better understanding of what a consumer needs and wants is going to come out on top.

Take Target. It’s hard to believe from such a large company, but when they launched their brand in Canada, they skipped market research and banked on name recognition to drive customer traffic. After buying the leases for a defunct discount chain in Canada in 2013, Target quickly turned the empty stores into new Target stores.

The big store conglomerate spent millions on marketing on social media, radio, TV and billboards but never took the time to deep dive into the specific Canadian consumer segment. Customers in Canada knew the brand, but when they went into stores, they saw different products than what they’d seen in U.S. stores and prices were higher. It took less than two years for Target to close its Canadian stores and call the launch a failure.

The main lesson learned is: Do your market research! The time and cost of doing proper research is worth the investment, every time. And here’s a secret: it doesn’t have to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sure, if you’re Pepsi and launching a new beverage or Nike testing out a new shoe, market research will cost upwards of millions. But if you’re a small business trying to determine whether you should launch a new line of business, or if a product is a good fit for a specific locale, there are cost effective ways to do your market research. Some are even free!

Here are a few of the best tried-and-true best practices in market research:

Free Please!

Before you dip your toe into paid research, use the free online tools at your disposal. The best tool? Google. Search the phrase you’ll use to describe your product and review its popularity. If the popularity is high, ie. millions of searches, it’s in high demand. If there are only a couple hundred results, you may be barking up the wrong tree.

Another important tool is the keyword search query within Google Adwords. Their keyword research tool tells you how frequently certain words and phrases are searched and how they changed over time. This tool gives insight not only into what is being searched, but how. It will help refine the best words and phrases to use when promoting your product or business. And it will also give insight into the popularity and search volume of those terms.

Go Digital

For many, the image that comes to mind when you say “market research” is a person standing in the grocery store offering free samples of a new product. And while that can be effective, the digital realm is a much easier and faster option. You don’t get quite as many opinions standing in line in the grocery store as you might running an online poll. Think 20 people versus 5,000: That’s a significant difference.

LinkedIn and Twitter both host online polling and provide solid results. It’s important to slice and dice the audience until you’re polling the right segment. Make sure your geographical location is accurate – it’s not uncommon for those polling to accidentally use a much bigger geo target setting than necessary, which can skew results.

You can hire a third party vendor to do your polling and/or surveying or find a self-serve platform, like Survey Monkey. The best way to determine which solution is by budget and campaign size. If your budget is $10,000 or less, use a plug-and-play, self-serve option. Anything over $10,000 should be handled by the pros.

And don’t forget simple ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. Running an A/B test using different images, slogans, and copy can tell you what is resonating with your target audience – and what isn’t.

Email For The Win

Another smart tactic to use for market research is an email marketing campaign. Whether you use an internal email list or purchase one from companies that specialize in list creation, targeting a segment audience via email works phenomenally well.

There are many digital ad agencies that specialize in surveys. They help you buy legitimate lists to purchase within a specific vertical which is a great way to target specifically. For example, if you’re a dental manufacturing company, there are very specific lists you can buy to help you find and target dentists. You can break down the list by location, speciality, size of practice, etc. Email marketing is an effective way to do market research without breaking the bank.

Market research can make or break your business. Be smart and put in the time and effort to make sure your product or line of business is truly going to resonate with your target audience.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Andrew Faridani

President and CEO at BreezeMaxWeb. Read Andrew Faridani’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

Read More
By
In News

Windows of Opportunity Created by the Lockdown

No Comments

By

The pandemic has many downside

The pandemic has many downsides, like the increased difficulty of beginning a new enterprise. Funding, for example, proves complicated as financial institutions become tight-fisted with their money. So, aspiring entrepreneurs find it hard to get cash.

Existing businesses have also been hit hard by the coronavirus, resulting in higher levels of unemployment all around.

Fortunately, many with jobs have saved a substantial amount of money during the pandemic using financial instruments such as tax-free ISA shares and stocks and money market mutual funds. This increase in disposable income could translate easily into golden business opportunities for the savvy entrepreneur.

A depressed economy doesn’t have to mean the end of the world. Hard times build good character and create good businesses. The best way to take advantage of this unique opportunity afforded by the pandemic is outlined in this article, starting with the benefits.

Benefits of starting a business during the pandemic

Common sense dictates that starting a new venture while the world is in chaos is not the best idea. Yet, companies founded during difficult times are better able to weather storms than their fair-weather counterparts.

Because most ventures launch during economically robust times, pandemic-era businesses enjoy the exclusive pleasure of having fewer competitors with whom to deal. During uncertain times, existing organizations do not want to spend money drumming up new ideas. Here lies a gap for an enterprising individual to contribute bold, original ideas to the marketplace.

Lurking in the turbulent economy are increased cost savings for newcomers who wish to open a business at this point. Operating expenses decrease as things like fixed cash outflow – mortgage, for example – can now be appropriated at inexpensive rates. Novice business owners can also benefit from their more influential bargaining power. They are in a position where they can come to agreeable terms with various stakeholders and develop beneficial new business relationships as a bonus.

New businesses stand to benefit from spiked levels of customer loyalty. This consumer-facing advantage contributes significantly to the permanence of a small organization. Country-specific tax incentives also aid business robustness. In the U.K., for example, small businesses receive VAT relief and have grants earmarked for them in the national budget.

Eligibility for government assistance will largely depend on the organization of the business in question.

Use market research to choose the right business type

When uncertainties arise, a sound organizational setup will stand any entrepreneur in good stead. Market research provides a wealth of information that can aid the decision-making process in the early stages of beginning a business.

Studying the business environment – particularly the activities of similar companies – can inspire prospective merchants. In the marketplace of ideas, there is often no need to reinvent the wheel. By offering minor changes to already established, successful commercial concepts, a new enterprise can easily make the best of the pandemic.

Analysing future customers is another way to get valuable information for planned business ventures. Well-organized focus groups allow participants to describe their attitudes towards products or services in their language. This information is necessary feedback for those looking to dip their toes in entrepreneurship.

There are several ways to seize the opportunities afforded by the pandemic. Some business types that are thriving right now include cleaning services, virtual exercise sessions, and mask-making.

COVID-compliant surroundings are in high demand. Both corporate bodies and private individuals increasingly require expert cleaning services in the New Normal. For this type of business, demand will very likely outlast the pandemic.

A healthy immune system is a somewhat effective weapon against the coronavirus. Keeping fit is a great way to boost the immune system. Ordinarily, going to the gym formed part of most people’s health regimes. However, the pandemic tangibly hit the exercise industry. It bounced back through the popularization of virtual exercise. In this way, the fitness market cleverly demonstrated its resilience and ability to reinvent itself.

Using masks as protective gear is common for non-essential workers. Everyone wears one now out in public. As the pandemic rolls on, consumer demand is increasing for chic and trendy masks. For example, many actors during awards season often have designer masks to match their bespoke outfits. Large corporations have contributed to the demand by having their employees wear trademarked masks.

Whatever business type a budding entrepreneur chooses, a key ingredient is the new company’s flexibility.

Adaptability

Part of staying adaptable as a new business is writing a recession-proof business plan. A detailed strategy like this will show prospective investors, vendors, and other stakeholders that the individual behind the enterprise knows what they are doing.

Separating private funds from company funds is a solid strategy that will help a novice firm remain flexible. The wise entrepreneur will open a dedicated bank account for business operations and budget prudently so the new business can endure.

It was mentioned above that cost savings are lurking in upheaval caused by the pandemic. Human Resource is an area in which a company can demonstrate flexibility and prudence. Rather than adding full-time staff members to the payroll, begin by subcontracting talented individuals as needed. If it is necessary to hire any employees, honesty about what the company can afford to offer is a good policy.

Digital Marketing

Marketing online is about more than selling goods virtually. A thriving online personality based on empathy and efficiency helps a business to stand out.

Empathy is enhanced when a business makes clever use of its social media accounts to engage its client base. Companies demonstrate efficiency when they make the most of technology to enlarge their market reach. Innovative email campaigns and user-friendly websites play a big part in crafting a company’s virtual image.

Overall, it is a good business practice to have a robust online presence. Marketing in this way increases the longevity of new organizations.

Conclusion

Contrary to received wisdom, it is possible to begin a small business amidst challenging global circumstances. Success depends on flexibility, a reliable online presence, and a sturdy business plan.

No one knows how long the pandemic will last. Plucky entrepreneurs who show foresight in their business planning will do well in current and future uncertainties.

By

Sourced from INFLUENCIVE

Read More
By
In News

Programmatic: Why building a curated marketplace should be a priority for buyers in 2021

No Comments

By Michael Feeley

Anyone working within programmatic advertising is likely to hear the phrase ‘curated marketplace’ a lot in 2021 – but what does ‘curation’ really mean in this context and why should it be a key priority for media buyers over the next 12 months?

Michael Simpkins, Marketplace Commercial Lead at Xandr explains, as the programmatic landscape has become increasingly cluttered and complex over the past decade, many people now assume that media buyers operating their own ‘curated marketplace’ are simply looking to work with fewer partners in the advertising supply chain. However, this is only the first step and barely scratches the surface of how curation can help improve the effectiveness of a media strategy.

Going back to basics

With the rapid growth of the programmatic industry, the supply chain became fragmented, resulting in a loss of control and transparency for both buyers and sellers. Buyers are also facing increasing pressure to justify return on ad spend, but siloed spending, rigid metrics and a convoluted supply chain make it hard to prove marketing impact on business outcomes.

As a collective, the industry has matured in the past few years to take a step back and simplify the complex landscape. Direct relationships between buyers and sellers are being rebuilt and big steps are being taken to improve supply chain transparency. Marketers, now more understanding of the supply chain, are seeking to regain control not just over their ad spend but over their campaign performance too and, with the deprecation of the third-party cookie, these objectives take on even greater importance. On the other hand, with the proliferation of header bidding, publishers want to make sure their most important media buyers are still able to reach and value their inventory effectively. It is important for companies to deliver unique value across the advertising ecosystem from consumers, buyers and sellers. One of the ways we at Xandr are able to do this is through our curation offering, which brings buyers and sellers together on our platform, offering buyers a simplified and dedicated workflow to easily build out their own curated marketplaces from the supply available on our premium advertising marketplace.

Regaining control of the supply chain

By building out a curated marketplace, buyers gain control within the SSP (sell-side platform) and can apply macro business rules to supply before it hits the DSP (demand-side platform) for targeting, significantly reducing risk in a diverse supply chain.

Through curation, buyers are able to maximise their investment by having full control over supply decisioning and ensuring all media is run across brand safe environments and eliminating non-essential pass throughs in the supply chain. Costs can also be reduced as buyers streamline supply sources, campaign workflows and operational complexity while also having the ability to negotiate price and priority within publishers. Buyers are able to receive regular reports on supply-side fees and auction dynamics, strengthening cross-industry relationships and supporting our industry’s quest for supply chain transparency.

As collaboration becomes even more important in 2021 and beyond, curating a marketplace on a single platform can reduce the risk even further. With fewer partners you’re able to work together on market and regulatory changes, niche audience targets and specific campaign needs together.

What is curation?

Today, we are used to a two-party transaction with a buyer using a DSP to purchase inventory and a seller using an SSP to surface their inventory to the buy side. Curation moves us to a three-party transaction where we now have a curator that sits between the SSP and DSP and works alongside the publishers to decide what inventory is allowed into their marketplace and then packages and merchandises that inventory via a curated multi-seller private marketplace (PMP) to make it available to the buy side to trade in their DSP.

Creating your own curated marketplace does not have to be a huge undertaking – in fact, it involves just four key steps:

  • Identify what you want to get out of the curated marketplace. Is it fee and auction dynamic transparency? More control on your supply paths? Performance gains? Setting a clear objective and strategy for the curated marketplace will make the process clearer for all parties involved.
  • Establish who you want to partner with to build out the curated marketplace. Pick a technology partner that has the supply coverage, tools, expertise and service models to implement a successful curated marketplace.
  • Work with your technology partner to understand what supply to bring into your marketplace and how to work with the publishers to do so. A curated marketplace should bring buyers and publishers closer together, not act as a blocker.
  • Optimise your curated marketplace. These marketplaces shouldn’t be static and should constantly be optimised based on performance, market changes and pricing.

As consumers continue to access media content across numerous devices, their attention becomes increasingly difficult to capture and hold. To catch their audience wherever they are viewing content means marketers are having to reconsider their strategies for planning, buying and measuring advertisers. We have to introduce an option for those who want to buy advertising and access to consumers on all devices and formats in one place, and that option is curation.

By Michael Feeley

Sourced from The Drum

Read More
By
In News

Brand reputation remains top marketing priority as lockdowns ease

No Comments

By John McCarthy.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has interviewed 344 of its members to discover their priorities as lockdown eases. Brands treaded carefully during the pandemic and, it appears will continue to do so, with brand reputation being the priority for most.

The survey ran between July and August. With brand equity the focus over recent months, sales figures are a side-concern for the majority of marketers.

The Drum explores the research here.

Findings

  • Brand reputation remained the number one priority for six in 10 respondents, while sales-based activities were sidelined.
  • The communication of employee and public safety messages came in at number two.
  • Online sales were the highest-ranked of sales promotional strategies, emerging as a top priority for 15% of marketers.
  • Discounts and promotions to increase product sales and footfall was a “very low priority“ for the vast majority of marketers (73%). Only 2% said it was their top priority. Generating in store footfall was only a top priority for 3% of marketers.
  • Things have been tough. One in 10 (9%) of the respondents said that they had been made redundant; a fifth took a pay cut (20%) and that they had (17.5%) taken an enforced holiday. One in six (17%) said they had been placed on furlough during the period of the pandemic.

Analysis

  • Chris Daly, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, said it is reassuring to see reputation ranked first despite the very clear commercial difficulties right now.
  • “It is clear that the UK marketing community is not prepared to sacrifice short-term gain for long-term pain,“ he added.
  • He was concerned at a lack of confidence in promotional activity however: “Marketers have worked hard to maintain customer engagement during lockdown. As restrictions now ease it is key they make the most of this opportunity to help drive the recovery we are all hoping for.”
  • What state will the industry be in once the furlough period ends? The survey included estimates of the size of the UK marketing industry. It is estimated to employ 415,000 staff, 37,000 redundancies are expected and 83,000 are taking pay cuts.
  • However, good news may be around the corner. 87% of marketers felt confident or very confident that the marketing sector would bounce back after Covid-19.

By John McCarthy

Sourced from The Drum

Read More
By
In News

How can marketing change the world for the better?

No Comments

By Jenni Baker.

Does marketing have the power to change the world? The year 2020 has forced us all to redress the net result of the industrial revolution, which spurred mass consumption and throw-away consumerism. So, can our industry – with the abundance of talent, skill and creativity- champion for a better future for all?

The Drum and Facebook have partnered to bring together teams from brands and agencies across the globe to provide some answers to this very challenging question. The idea is to get together experts from the industry to find solutions to business and societal challenges to help create value for the people and the communities it impacts.

The creative brief

Uniting three markets under the theme of ‘stakeholder capitalism’ – with attention to inclusion and diversity – three separate teams in North America, EMEA and APAC were put together to answer the brief that involves a rethink of how small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) that are run by minorities operate, and how as an industry we can help create more resilient businesses especially in these unprecedented times.

Each of the three regions were given three separate briefs – The US (North America) team’s brief is to focus on women run SMEs. So how to overcome systemic social and financial challenges while starting and sustaining female-led businesses? Do they need to approach entrepreneurship differently?

For the London, UK (EMEA) team the theme was immigrant-led small business. Are immigrant-owned businesses the untapped potential? What are the challenges and opportunities of migrant founders and their businesses?

The theme for the APAC team is silver start-ups. A growing number of over-65s are now delaying retirement by starting their own firm, fueling a ‘grey business’ boom. What are their challenges, can we identify the most pertinent ones and solve those problems?

The first meet-up

Each of the teams kicked off their first virtual brainstorm session to find a campaign solution that would positively impact the lives of minority groups operating in the SME market. Each of the teams were also given mentors to help guide through the process.

Following is the list of the three teams:

Team US

  • Tom Spaven, brand director, Bombay Sapphire, North America (mentor)
  • Stephanie Walker, innovation marketing manager, Pepsico
  • Cassie Begalle, strategy and innovation brand Manager – U by Kotex, Kimberly-Clark
  • Iyanni Callender, junior art director, Strawberry Frog
  • Paola Ortega, associate strategy director, DDB Chicago
  • Michael Rodriguez, content strategist, 3 Leches Creative

Team UK

  • Arjoon Bose, marketing head- culture & brand experience (Europe-Australasia), General Mills (mentor)
  • Andre Campbell, partnerships lead, Mercedes-Benz
  • Fatima Diez, head of marketing, MunchFit
  • Shannie Mears, co-founder & talent chief, The Elephant Room
  • Jade Nodinot, former creative associate, BlackBook London
  • Emma Luxton, former senior account executive, Avantgarde London

Team APAC

  • Erica Kerner, SVP, marketing strategy & partnerships, ONE Championship (mentor)
  • Triveni Rajagopal, global digital director, skin cleansing and BPC, Unilever
  • Chandini Malla, senior manager, Diageo
  • Bryan Martin, social media executive, Reprise Digital
  • Adrianne Pan, planner, Havas Singapore

Team US: A fact-finding mission

Gender equality is at risk of being set back decades in the current climate – not just minorities in general, but especially women in it. In the US, the focus is on women-owned SMEs, looking at how female-led businesses can overcome systemic social and financial challenges, as well as addressing the different approaches that this cohort might have to entrepreneurship in order to succeed.

One such challenge was posed by keynote speaker Victoria Monsul Singolda, owner and creative director of Iris & Virgil, who discussed that though it might be true that for women-led businesses, their vulnerabilities as women and as small business owners are compounded, there needs to be a gender-smart approach because not all women-led businesses are the same.

“I never really thought of myself as a female business owner, I’m just a business owner. Maybe because my mother was very dominant in the household, she was a student, she was a business owner, she was a mum, we always saw her, we were always together. Maybe that’s why I never thought that there was something different or special being a girl.”

Headed up by mentor Tom Spaven from Bombay Sapphire, the team immediately honed into “resilience” and “impact” as the insights towards this gender-smart approach.

The team delved into discussions to align on common goals and objectives. The first step was to focus on the challenges in order to find the most creative solution – with three key take-aways that these women are lacking: Knowledge and resources to tap into; a community to help them venture into this new world; and platforms available to really share and have people learn more about.

The team then decided that the initial insight-led approach would begin with a fact-finding mission to assess the situation and the scale of the problem that the campaign needed to solve; followed by the consumer insight to understand the deep motivations and needs of the target to ultimately give the barrier they need to start to push against in order to solve the problem; and finally, culture listening around this topic – all of which would help to get a clear, sharpened brief about the real problem they are trying to solve.

Team EMEA: Move from ‘pivot to evolve’

On the other side of the Atlantic, Team EMEA, led by mentor Arjoon Bose from General Mills, tackled the untapped potential of ethnic minority and immigrant-owned founders, their challenges and opportunities.

“The last few months have been testing and I think we’ve all come up with a ton of learning. But I think we’re at that stage right now where we’re needing to move from pivot to evolve,” said Bose. “A growth mindset is what we’re going to have to need as we come out of this and prepare to get stronger and accelerate.”

After hearing from keynote speakers Sharon Jandu, director, Yorkshire Asian Business Association and director, Northern Asian Power List; and Steph Douglas, founder, Don’t Buy Her Flowers, it was clear that a heavy emphasis on networking, relationships and experiences, along with access to digital technologies, were key in bringing this community together.

“For an SME, they are so busy doing what they do that they don’t have the time or the capacity to think about what they can do – or they don’t have the networks to enable them to get the contacts to get investments or to get ideas. They are constantly running on a treadmill, trying to do and keep what they are doing alive. How can we stop them becoming so absorbed in their business that they can actually distance themselves and look at it from an aerial perspective?” asked Jandu.

The team identified the need to listen and learn directly from migrant-led business owners themselves to understand their experience, their struggles and challenges with direct feedback through focus groups and on-the-ground research. This would allow them to narrow down into one or two sectors that need the drive and support. They identified Facebook’s own small business community as a great place to start to create a questionnaire in order to gain invaluable insights to help shape their strategy.

“The opportunity that digital gives us to connect these immigrant-owned businesses with each other and provide each other with their own experience and their own knowledge can be a very valuable thing that we could leverage if it’s relevant to their challenge,” said Fatima Diez.

Team APAC: Reinventing and re-energising culture

With a growing number of over 65s now delaying retirement and fuelling a ‘grey business’ boom, the focus for Team APAC was on overcoming the challenges faced by the silver start-ups, particularly when it comes to navigating through the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentored by Erica Kerner from ONE Championship, the team was presented with a keynote talk by Jeremy Nguee, founder, Preparazzi Gourmet Catering; Batu Lesung Spice Company; who helped his mother set up Mrs. Kueh, a local sweet treat business. They touched upon some of the unique experiences and challenges of their business that they ran from home.

Hoping to learn from this experience and translate these lessons to help support silver entrepreneurs and home-based businesses through his volunteering role in the Hawkers United Facebook community, Nguee said: “I think this is going to be a very, very big market. There are a lot more home-based businesses coming up because of high unemployment in the market.”

Inspired by the talk, the team decided to focus on Singapore food culture and food service industry run by silver entrepreneurs, that has an international dimension throughout much of its history but continues to retain features firmly rooted in the locality so that the global and local are not always distinct. The team wanted to understand the different segments of businesses and the landscape in which they were working in.

“The complexities of Asia, the complexities of the segment, the types of digital, could become such a beast,” says Kerner. “My instinct is to start with the data. Starting a business now, no matter what your age is a challenge and a lot of small businesses are obviously struggling to survive. We’ve got a lot of things to think about. What aspect of this do we want to try to unbuckle?” asked Kerner. “In Singapore we are losing a lot of that Hawker culture and if we can find a way to re energise it, and bring more people back into it, it’s good for all of Singapore culture.”

The next steps

Over the upcoming weeks, the teams will continue to work on their campaign and then subsequently present the big idea for solving that problem.

The final ideas will be entered in The Drum Social Purpose Awards.

The Drum consulting editor, Sonoo Singh, said: I’m inspired to see the true power of marketing when used to promote issues that are critical to our societies, persuade a change in behaviours, and influence a positive shift in behavior that would benefit our environment. Having been involved with all the teams, I cannot wait to see the final outcome of this very challenging brief.”

By Jenni Baker

Sourced from The Drum

Read More
By
In News

Brands can turn the tide during coronavirus by building new consumer journeys

No Comments

By Shawn Lim

Brands need to focus on hyper-localisation by connecting with consumers where they are, as Covid-19 has dramatically changed consumer behaviour and altered the path-to-purchase, according to Facebook and Boston Consulting Group.

According to a new report called ‘Turn the Tide’, released by Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, the use of micro-targeting can help brands get the first-mover advantage. This is because countries are being divided into different zones, with distinct restrictions due to the pandemic, so they need to build social connections despite social distancing, by engaging with consumers in their context

To cope with pandemic lockdown, which has caused significant disruption for communities and businesses, people are spending more time on social media platforms. This means brands have an opportunity to build stronger dialogues and deeper connections with users.

The aim of the guide, according to Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, is to guide brands to adapt to the pandemic and ensure business continuity.

Nimisha Jain, the managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, says: “We are experiencing unprecedented shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviours as 80%+ consumers will continue to practice social distancing and are bringing the outside inside, over 40% of consumers are dialling up on health and wellness spends, e-commerce adoption has already advanced by two-three years, to name a few.”

“These aren’t just temporary surges, and many will last longer and become more defining traits. Our analysis reveals that only one in six companies emerged stronger in past crises. Players who show the agility to reinvent their value propositions, go-to-market plans and business models to address these demand shifts, will be the ones that set themselves apart from the pack.”

In addition, the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

For example, brands can bring alive experiences through virtual launches and product demos as people turn to virtual experiences for every facet of their life. Facebook said it is already seeing more brands explore Facebook and Instagram ‘Live’ to connect with their followers and customers, with brands now thinking about using social media platforms for new product launches too.

Heeru Dingra, the chief executive officer at WATConsult tells The Drum the agency has modified its planning and strategy around the new consumer journeys, urging its clients to follow a simple mantra of ‘solve, serve and sell’.

She explains brands should focus on solving the problems their consumers face, serve their purpose and the result thereof could be the sale of services or products. She notes a lot of brands have understood this concept and have already started altering their approach to fit this mantra.

“We leveraged the power of gaming and re-created one of the most iconic games of all time, Ludo, for our client Tata Motors. Titled #SafetyFirst Ludo, this version aims to spread awareness about the importance of personal hygiene and social distancing amid the Covid-19 outbreak,” she says.

She also calls out work by Bajaj Allianz General Insurance called #CareWillOvercome, which salutes frontline workers, while a #ReconnectWithStarbucks campaign turned the act of baristas calling out people’s names into a digital phenomenon.

She adds: “These examples summarize how we integrated the need of the hour that is to maintain social distancing, continue to concentrate on personal hygiene and at the same time have our heartfelt appreciation for the ones who have been fighting for us day and night, into our brand approach in some way. This helps to amplify the brand message while being sensitive to the current situation, serving the purpose of extending the required communication and increasing as well as sustaining brand recall.”

The report also advised brands to look at their media mix models to drive growth by aligning to new media landscapes. According to the report, when brands, especially those with traditional product categories, start spending more online, they need to understand incremental outcomes, as well as cross-platform efficiency.

This would increase the need for digital measurement standards, such as custom mix modelling (CMM) by Nielsen, which Facebook said it had piloted last year.

Gautam Mehra, the chief data officer for South Asia and chief executive officer of programmatic at Dentsu Aegis Network observes the importance of moving away from traditional marketing metrics to real business metrics that can be measured and improved on an ongoing basis.

“With the impetus of commerce, CRM and digital transformation, I think, every company will now have a direct-to-consumer line of business and will want to bring themselves closer to the consumer, and rely less on the intermediaries,” he explains.

While most brands are dealing with huge change across many aspects of business, focusing on the changing customer journey is a good place for marketing to focus attention.

Feature Image Credit: the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

By Shawn Lim

Sourced from The Drum

Read More
By
In News

Why marketers must look beyond cookies and rethink data in the 2020s

No Comments

By Thomas Hobbs

Marketers must stop prioritising strategies built around cookie data if they’re to succeed in the 2020s. Speaking on a panel at The Drum’s Predictions 2020 event at Sea Containers this week, Andy Chandler, Adjust’s VP for UK and Ireland, called for brands to evolve in the post-cookie world and start to work out whether they’re truly adding value to their customers’ lives.

“With Google Chrome getting rid of third party cookies, brands need to start looking at data differently or they’re going to very quickly get left behind,” he explained. “We are moving into a cookie-less world, where consumers are interacting more with apps than browsers, so the way we measure data needs to truly reflect that. We need to keep evolving and keep up with where people are, ensuring we add real value to their lives.”

A recent feature by The Drum explored the impact of Google’s plans to “render third-party cookies obsolete” and how brands must now respond. According to Ed Preedy, chief revenue office at Cavai, one solution could be for brands to use online messenger apps to speak directly to their consumers. He says messenger apps can ensure more tailored advertising and better conversion rates when it comes to making a purchase.

He added: “In 2019, there were 73 trillion posts across all messaging apps. And in markets like APAC and Latin America, something like 63% of consumers purchased over a messaging app or spoke directly to a business. These are becoming hotbeds for commercial opportunity and it will only grow in the decade ahead in the UK too.

“Messaging apps allow for a genuine two-way interaction. They qualify what users want and who they are almost instantly, so therefore the advertising that runs is contextually relevant. They will become so much more important as cookies start to dissipate. I think there will be a wider move to more personalised platforms, where advertising is less random.”

It was a frank assessment that Tanzil Bukhari, managing director for EMEA at DoubleVerify, very much agreed with. He insisted consumers now want to see more relevant advertising and that getting rid of cookies will ensure this happens more consistently. “The Google Chrome announcement will mean publishers have to offer much richer and directional content, and that’s only a good thing.”

Using data in the right way

But there was also a message of caution in the air, with Vodafone’s brand director Maria Koutsoudakis warning that brands and agencies who prioritise data too heavily risk becoming irrelevant, on a panel earlier that morning alongside Ogilvy CEO UK, Michael Frolich. Koutsoudakis asked the audience: “When was the last time you spoke to a customer? If you stood back from click attributions and A/V testing then what do you really know about your customers now?

“By only really focusing on data, there’s a risk we create a generation of marketers who don’t understand brand, consumers or behavioural change and aren’t agile enough to cope with it. There needs to be more of a blend of people being on the ground, really speaking to their customers, as well as having a good data strategy. If marketers only care about digital metrics then there’s a risk they become irrelevant in marketing in the 2020s.”

With consumer data obviously so important to the UK mobile network’s business, she admitted it has taken a back step to ensure it’s precious about protecting it. “We don’t sell this data as we can’t afford to lose our consumers’ trust,” she admitted. “Being so cautious might mean we get left behind, but I think it’s worth it as we can’t take any chances.”

Frolich agreed with Koutsoudakis’ sentiment. In the 2020s, he said ad agencies shouldn’t be using client and third party data unless they can absolutely prove it has a positive impact on creativity and this in turn enriches the lives of their customers.

“We aren’t a data company, we are a creative agency,” he insisted. “We use client data and third party data to feed our creativity and build better work that consumers then enjoy. If you’re using this data and it isn’t creating better human insights then you’re using it incorrectly.

“Agencies have bought big data companies and it isn’t working because they’re not using the information to create better marketing. If we can work with a client like Vodafone and use their data to feed better creativity then we’re winning.”

The sentiments around trust were picked on another panel, where Courtney Wylie, VP of product & marketing, Mention Me had a word of caution: “We’re going to continue to see this evolving trend of lack of trust. A declining trust in influencers, brands, marketing channels.”

However, the way the relationship between agencies and brands works will become a lot more adaptable over the coming years, with a one-size-fits-all approach now completely redundant. John Readman, CEO & Founder, Modo25, explained: “In past there were only two options: work with an agency or do something in-house, but we will see these lines blurring more and more. There’s no reason why a combination of both won’t be the best way forward.”

Talking about the way forward, Andrew Challier, chief client officer, Ebiquity predicted that the industry will finally see “the rebirth of creativity and the importance of creativity in engaging people and reaching people in a meaningful way.”

A more ethical way of thinking could impact Facebook and Amazon

As we move further into the 2020s, some of the event’s panellists warned that established retailers and social media brands could start to fall short, as consumers switch to a more ethical way of thinking.

“Yes, lot’s of people still buy off Amazon, but the fact Brits also want to become more engaged with their local community means independent retailers should be confident heading into this new decade,” predicted Hero Brown, founder of Muddy Stilettos.

She explained further: “We’ve noticed a real shift in our readers wanting to support the high street more and more, and there’s this ethical thinking coming through, which could be detrimental to an Amazon. Shoppers want real-life experiences, even from online brands. They’re starting to get tired of faceless fast transactions and want to see brands brought to life in a more physical way. This trend will only intensify in 2020.”

Meanwhile, Darren Savage, chief strategy officer at Tribal, would like to see Facebook’s dominancy recede in the social media space. “I think major firms who consistently lie will come unstuck in the 2020s as people won’t put up with it anymore,” he said. “An immoral toxic cess-pit like Facebook will come tumbling down.

“The blatant lies they tell around consumer data will mean people will leave the platform in much bigger numbers. Truth is more important than ever before and just being a big business isn’t going to protect you if you mislead consumers.”

Proving you’re making a difference

This ethical way of thinking also extends to a brand’s commitment to sustainability, and Misha Sokolov, co-founder of MNFST, believes this will only rise in importance over the coming years.

“I spoke recently to someone at the Volkswagen Group and he was telling me how they calculated they were responsible for 1% of all global emissions, and that’s why they now want to be carbon neutral within 10 years,” he said. “The smartest brands won’t just put a nice message on their packaging, but do something that has a provable positive impact on the environment and helping reduce climate change. It must happen automatically as brands will lose market share if consumers don’t think their being ethical enough. There’s no excuse in the 2020s.”

And businesses shouldn’t just think of sustainability in environmental terms either, with it also being just as wrapped up in how a brand and business treats its employees. Stéphanie Genin, global VP of enterprise marketing at Hootsuite, says employee advocacy will be a huge trend moving forward, as consumer want to ensure their favourite brands treat their staff good before supporting them with a purchase.

She added: “Employee advocacy and employee generated content will become so so important. When you empower employees to be the communicator of what your business stands for it really adds to brand value and boosts sales. I think marketers are missing a trick by not prioritising this more heavily.”

However, Readman, added none of this will work unless it’s part of a global governance policy. “It’s all good being sustainable and doing good things for employees in one market, but if it’s not something you’re doing consistently across the board then consumers will work it out and there will be a backlash.”

Meanwhile, for John Young, executive creative director and co-founder, M-is, as brands start to really understand the consumers through personal engagagement, “the advertising budgets will transfer into experiential budgets.”

Be as safe as possible

Another topic of conversation that came up throughout the day was brands ensuring the data they keep on consumers remains safe, especially as more and more of their ads are traded programmatically.

Francesco Petruzzelli, chief technology officer at Bidstack, said that 13% of global ads are currently fraudulent and that while major brands know it’s a “big issue”, they’re not necessarily doing enough to prevent it. “We acquired a publishing guard to protect publishers, but I find a lot of people aren’t thinking seriously enough about this issue. It won’t go away!”

Dan Lowden, chief strategy officer at Whiteops, added how he recently worked with a major brand who believed bots were accounting for up to 5% of fake views of its £10m campaign, but says his team worked out they were actually accounting for 36% of traffic.

Looking ahead, he concluded: “The bad guys aren’t going to let up and will keep on persisting with cyber crime in the 2020s. We all need to be serious about tackling this problem and do more to collaborate as an industry to ensure that marketing dollars are genuinely being spent on human engagement and not just robots.”

By Thomas Hobbs

Sourced from The Drum

Read More
By
In News

Four arguments why B2B marketers should spend more on brand building

No Comments

By James Wood

B2B marketers can be very focused on the short term, and who can blame them? Sales are putting on the pressure for a constant stream of leads and business leaders have quarterly targets to hit to keep the shareholders at bay.

It’s this short term thinking that means the majority of activity produced by B2B marketing teams is below the line, bottom of the funnel, sales ‘activation’ activity (call it the boring stuff) and not the bigger, fame and brand building advertising activity that the majority of B2C brands seem focus on (the glamorous stuff).

Now, couple this with the fact that the average tenure of a CMO is now just 43 months (and that new incumbent wants to shake things up and make their mark on the business), and it’ll come as no surprise that only 4% of B2B marketing teams measure impact beyond six months.

But a new report from the B2B Institute and LinkedIn, packed with research from Advertising Effectiveness stalwarts Les Binet and Peter Field, says this short-sightedness is damaging the growth potential of B2B brands.

According to ‘The 5 principles of growth in B2B Marketing’, in order to grow, B2B marketers need to start shifting efforts (and budgets) towards a 50/50 split between short term activation activity and long term brand building (the stuff that makes you famous).

However, it’s pretty clear we are starting on the back foot. B2B marketers are incredibly sceptical about the value of brand building and many have a misconstrued view of the effect brand building has on the business.

Just 30% of B2B marketers, for example, believe advertising has an effect on pricing power and only 50% believe reach is a strong predictor of success. It’s pretty clear businesses need to start thinking differently about longer term brand building. But as with any shift, there has to be a strong reason to do so.

So, we have distilled the findings from the report into four arguments you can take to your board/sceptical CMO to convince them to put more budget into longer term brand building, B2B advertising and fame defining campaigns and activities.

Argument one: “Look! You can’t argue with the facts – brand building will build our market share and our bottom line.”

Let’s start with a fundamental rule. The share of voice rule. A rule that has been known and stayed consistent for the last 50 years. The rule goes thus: brands that set their share of voice (share of all category advertising expenditure) above their share of market, will tend to grow.

This has been well known in B2C, but Binet and Field have shown the trend is true in B2B – a 10% extra share of voice, for example, will lead to a rise in market share of 0.7% per year.

Put simply: shout louder than the competition in a way that gets you noticed and you will expand. That alone is worth the investment.

Argument two: “We can kill two birds with one stone with this! Not only will brand building attract new customers, but it’s a great way to reassure our current customers they have made the right choice and feel proud about being our partner.”

Put simply, brands grow in two ways, either by gaining more customers, or by selling more to current customers. In B2B, the focus is often put on the latter thanks to new customer acquisition costs being high. But this piece of research shows us that actually the best way to achieve real growth is to acquire new customers, meaning more has to be put into activity to attract them.

But shifting budgets to attract new customers doesn’t have to come at the cost of current customers – putting money into brand campaigns also helps reassure existing customers they have made the right choice (and means they can show off to their mates in the pub about working with a cool, well known brand.)

Argument three: “Don’t trust me, trust Danny Khaneman! We need to be the brand that is the easiest to choose when a potential customer is shopping around.”

While everyone seems to think B2B buyers are purely rational beings, the truth is just like anyone else, many of the decisions they make are not made on purely rational thoughts or processes but on brands, products and services that are the most ‘mentally available’. As the economist Daniel Kahneman says, “the brain is largely a machine for jumping to conclusions”.

This is due to the Availability Heuristic – a rule that says given the choice between several options, people prefer the one that comes to mind most easily. It’s the reason that when you are shopping you are most likely to pick up Fairy washing up liquid and Kelloggs cornflakes, rather than unknown brands.

Maximising mental availability, or being the easiest brand to choose to buy, is just as important in B2B as in B2C and the best way to do this is to build fame through brand building campaigns.

Argument four: “A suit isn’t a shield for emotions! After all, Business people are people too, they just happen to be at work. So we need to use the power of emotion to ensure people engage with our brand. And guess what? The best way to do that is long term advertising campaigns.”

As a marketer, one of your key aims should be to make people feel positively towards your brand, even if they can’t say why. That comes from creating emotions and feelings around your brand and positioning yourself in a way that becomes more firmly embedded in a buyer’s memory than functional product messages.

This will translate into real business results, thanks to the fact that if we like a brand (or feel a positive emotion towards it) we are more likely to hold positive beliefs about its benefits. And it shows in the results – emotion based, fame building campaigns outperform rational ones by a margin of 10x. Even the tightest CFO can’t say no to that.

B2B marketers need to need to take off those short term blinkers and start thinking about how we build brands that grow, become famous and build the business over the long term. While the short term activation activity is still key, we need to start readdressing the balance and we hope this starts today.

A big thanks to The B2B Institute, LinkedIn, as well as Les Binet and Peter Field, for their excellent research on which this whole article is based. You can download the full research report here.

Feature Image Credit: Building B2B brands

By James Wood

James Wood, head of Earnest Labs, the innovation arm of Earnest

Sourced from The Drum

Read More
By
In News

Semantic content analysis will disrupt marketing – for the better

No Comments
By Jergan Callebaut

We know that exceptional content is what makes a brand. We also know that analysing our data to very specifically target audiences is crucial for great ROI. But we rarely put the two together and use the data available to actually analyse what content works – and why.

Yet knowing exactly why content works can give us that winning edge. And, luckily, the ability to see what indisputably resonates the most with our audience – and drives our bottom-line – is already in our hands.

The state of play

In the climate of the current ‘data boom’, audience targeting naturally takes precedence, with the majority (55%) of marketers saying ‘better use of data’ for audience targeting is their priority in 2019, according to Econsultancy.

It makes sense. On a daily basis, we’re faced with countless blogs, podcasts, speakers and everything in-between promising that if we perfectly optimise our targeting, our messaging will beat the daunting odds of the 0.9% CTR cited by WordStream. And so, we dedicate hours and hours every week to creating personas, hypothesising about audiences, segmenting users and running lengthy A/B tests to find the piece of content that our audience love. We add to our already-complex marketing stacks tools that tell us what messaging has been more successful, in order for us to optimise.

But when we do find that winner, do we know why it works? Do we know exactly what features caused the higher CTR? Do we know how we’re going to recreate it in our next campaign, to make it better, even?

This lack of knowledge – despite all the tools and techniques we use to offer insight – is what we at Datasine call the ‘black box’ because when it comes to understanding why, we are left in the dark. Just looking at results doesn’t give us the insight needed to truly understand content preferences in an actionable way.

Semantic content analysis

To crack open the black box, we need to start conducting in-depth semantic analysis of our content. Only then can we begin to truly understand why some content resonates and some doesn’t.

As experienced marketers, we come prepackaged with a deep understanding of – and fascination with – psychology and our audience, meaning we’ve already got the skills on paper to analyse our content. It’s simply a matter of breaking it down into parts. We’ll look at this in terms of images and text.

If you want to analyse your imagery, you can take all the image assets you’ve ever created and note down the particular elements you used in each, then check to see if there are any patterns which relate those choices to your ad performance.

For example:

  • Did you use a photo of your product outdoors? Or in the showroom?
  • Were people visible in the shot?
  • What was the size of the text, and the colour of any overlays or CTAs?

It may even be worth inviting a panel to judge your images on the emotions that they evoke, or photographers to assess the quality and composition of the shot.

You can do the same for text content, approaching this by categorising how you describe your product or service. For example:

  • Do you appeal to your product’s ease of use?
  • Are you emphasising your innovative credentials?
  • Do you use particularly casual – or formal – language?

With this process, we can see which types of content are receiving the most engagement. And we can use these features to keep creating great campaigns that we further optimise as our understanding of customer content preferences grows.

Scaling content analysis

If we have just a few campaigns on the go, content analysis is easier, but it gets harder as we scale. It stops being practical to expect humans to spend days, weeks, even months labelling what goes into each piece of content. Here’s where machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) come to the rescue.

AI models can extract all of these elements in seconds by analysing image or text semantically to look at content like humans do. That way, we can cut back on lengthy, expensive A/B testing, and get rid of guesswork once and for all – a vision we at Datasine are working toward. Our AI platform Connect (formerly Pomegranate) automatically identifies the most effective content for your audience.

By embracing semantic content analysis and working collaboratively with AI, we can feel confident in understanding exactly what content is going to work before we hit send.

Sourced from The Drum

Read More
By
In News

Weibo and WeChat get 68% of their reads from pushing content to existing followers

No Comments

By Taruka Srivastav

Most accounts on Weibo and WeChat get the majority (68%) of their reads from pushing content to existing followers.

The remaining 32% of reads mostly come from sharing on moments (10%), in chats (3%), history (4%) and others (11%). “Others” is typically desktop usage or non-official types of promotion by sharing the direct link to the article.

Content should be shared on Weibo 2-4 times per day and WeChat only when there is great content to share, according to a research done by KAWO.

WeChat and Weibo have suffered with platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu on the rise. The read rates are down significantly, but seem to have stabilised and even picked up a little in the case of service accounts.

The Top Stories have grown significantly since it was launched in December 2018, but is still quite small for most accounts. Accounts with less than 2000 followers have seen as much as 13% of their reads from Top Stories.

Furthermore, the average subscription account doesn’t seem to be held back by the limit of 1 post per day. Meanwhile service accounts send a higher number of articles per push presumably because they’re only able to contact users 4 times per month.

According to KAWO CEO Alex Duncan, follower growth on Subscription accounts has fallen quite a lot over the past 3 years, but seems to have been helped a little by the changes

“WeChat made to the Subscription folder in June 2018. Although the growth rate has slowed, they are now also losing less followers too presumably because it’s less annoying for users to scroll past an article they don’t like rather than open each subscription account one by one,” he added.

Usage in the week before and the week after Chinese New Year is higher with users presumably spending more time on social media.

KAWO spent 6 weeks analyzing 20 million data points to answer every marketer’s questions on WeChat and Weibo.

The Drum recently spoke with Akae Wang, an executive creative director in the corporate marketing and public relations department at Tencent to find out how Tencent brought the moon closer to WeChat users during Mid-Autumn Festival.

Feature Image Credit: Weibo and WeChat get 68% of their reads from pushing content to existing followers

By Taruka Srivastav

Sourced from The Drum

Read More
By
Load More