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646bbe822236d88361ead1466c846ef8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/02/16/why-facebook-is-the-next-big-player-in-local-search/ | Why Facebook Is The Next Big Player In Local Search | Why Facebook Is The Next Big Player In Local Search
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As the main search engine of choice for most people, Google dominates with more than 63% market share and holds 95% of mobile searches. But that’s quickly changing as Facebook continues to expand its search features, particularly in favor of businesses themselves. In fact, one can say Facebook is the next big search engine and local marketing platform for brands that want to reach their target audience, including prospective and current customers.
Facebook Local Is Taking On Local Search
Nearly half of consumers are already using social networks, like Facebook, to discover local businesses through brand pages, the Places feature or recommendations. The company rebranded its event app and launched Facebook Local last November, a directory of local businesses and events that make it easier for users to find local shops without leaving the app. Furthermore, the directory is organized by category and whether your Facebook friends have visited the location.
Facebook Local also utilizes user-generated content to compile profiles, including photos, busy times and ranks based on user reviews. Facebook understands the social media user’s need to fit in and stay up-to-date, meaning the app is programmed to show where their users are or plan to go. Local search results will show popularity by friends -- not strangers -- without having to ask for recommendations. For businesses with a brick-and-mortar presence, Facebook has made major strides in helping users find business locations like restaurants without ever leaving the Facebook platform, making it a must-use marketing channel for many franchise brands and multi-location businesses.
Hello, Are You Near Me?
Facebook has dabbled in local search in the past and has been taking incremental steps forward every year. With Facebook Places, local businesses can ensure they are appearing in relevant searches. Not only is it highly functional, but Places is also the first result provided when relevant terms or searches are made. For example, a search for “happy hour” returned Places results at the top, followed by local business pages.
Not only does this benefit the local businesses who own and update their Facebook pages and Places feature -- it also benefits the users. How? They can use the popular “near me” searches to find recommendations on shopping, food, nightlife and other interests in their area. For example, a user looking for “snow boots” during a stormy winter season can utilize the search bar to find retailers in their local area that offer these items. About three-quarters of Americans own a smartphone, so it’s no wonder that Facebook’s mobile app is quickly becoming the newest search engine for users seeking products, services and local business information.
Simply having a page with your address and phone number can go a long way, especially for consumers who rely on previous reviews and feedback. Facebook’s search bar makes it easier for multilocation businesses and franchises to reach a wider audience -- one that includes prospective customers.
Facebook Paid Campaigns Can Increase Customers
As Facebook continues to make significant strides forward in local search, it appears that they also have more of a focus on offering hyper-targeted, paid-media advertising options for businesses. Recently, Facebook announced it is changing how the content posted by publishers and brands will be found organically by users. Favored content from friends and families will appear over business postings. Because of this, organic results are likely going to take a hit. After establishing Place pages (a requirement if you’re planning to run ads), brands will now need to look at potential paid avenues in order to more effectively reach their target audiences. For marketers, this major change denotes a shift toward a more competitive advertising environment, which will ultimately reward those skilled marketers and advertisers that develop sophisticated ad campaigns (while leveraging the myriad targeting options available) in the Facebook Ads Manager platform.
As Facebook continues to advance its Ad Manager platform and more businesses continue to increase their Facebook advertising budgets, franchise brands and multilocation businesses will particularly need to ensure their Facebook marketing campaigns are focused on capturing leads and conversions (calls, store visits, lead forms) rather than simply increasing user engagement (page likes, boosted posts, etc). If set up and managed properly, Facebook can provide a significant return on investment for business locations without requiring large amounts of advertising dollars to generate new customers.
While Facebook’s recent update might not be enough to overtake major players like Google, it is a solid step forward for a social platform. Brands who utilize Places pages will not only see an uptick in their targeted campaigns but also an increase in conversions for new and existing customers. Who knows what Facebook has in its future, but I wouldn’t bet against employing a local search strategy on the platform.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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349a8d7995eaf716e784f1b01a6ee785 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/02/27/10-ways-blockchain-could-change-the-marketing-industry-this-year/ | 10 Ways Blockchain Could Change The Marketing Industry This Year | 10 Ways Blockchain Could Change The Marketing Industry This Year
Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency. Ethereum. These related buzzwords have been in just about every business publication lately, and it seems that everyone wants to learn more about blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology behind it all.
Experts predict that 2018 will be a huge year for blockchain, noting that the technology is poised to dramatically change a wide range of existing industries. What does the rise of blockchain mean for digital marketing? We asked members of the Forbes AgencyCouncil to share their thoughts.
FAC members weigh in on the blockchain. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Brands Will Be Able To Better Target Consumers
Like many emerging technologies, it is very early to truly understand how blockchain will impact marketing. It has the ability to remove the middleman in digital advertising. However, that may take years to displace Google and Facebook, if ever. Because of blockchain's transparency, it will initially help brands build trust with consumers. - Lisa Allocca, Red Javelin Communications
2. Malicious Ads Will Grow
JavaScript-based cryptocurrency miners have already been found in the wild, wasting visitors' CPU power to send "coins" back to website owners. 2018 will see an explosion of this type of shady ad to top-tier sites, especially as "on by default" ad blockers become more popular. Website owners will be searching for new ways to monetize but must balance the ethical use of their visitors' resources. - Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH
3. Privacy Concerns Will Be Resolved And Advertiser Trust Will Increase
Giving users control over the amount of personal information they reveal appeases privacy concerns from the user perspective and promotes social responsibility from the advertiser's side. Studies routinely show that if you ask permission first, users are more than willing to give you personal information if there's a reward in turn. That reward is paying users directly to view ads. - Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
4. Decentralization Will Remove The Media Middlemen
Marketing and advertising startups in the blockchain space are already popping up. These aim to tokenize user behavior and offer a sort of credit system between advertisers and the consumer, which completely removes the massive middlemen managing big media. As we continue to decentralize our world, this is inevitable. Be smart. Move away from being a middleman. Be the source. - Trevor Chapman, Trevor Chapman Group
5. The Fraud Verification Industry Will Grow
Advertising online is complex when it comes to ensuring media is bought and delivered as intended. Blockchain will make this more transparent. I predict that fraud verification companies will, or have already begun, the blockchain process to evaluate how we can stop bots and fraudsters from stealing ad dollars from brands. Blockchain will allow us to verify who, how and where ads run. - Ashley Walters, Empower MediaMarketing
6. Delivery And Reporting Will Transform
The first marketing area affected last year by blockchain, even on a small scale, was video content delivery. That will extend beyond video to more content producers this year. They will love how they can control how their assets are delivered and ensure it's properly tracked. Then, once advertisers experience verified delivery and reporting, it will be required. - Todd Earwood, MoneyPath Marketing
7. Advertising Will Become More Transparent
Marketers love to publish case studies of their outliers that are getting amazing results. The gradual implementation of blockchain will provide transparency on marketing claims by every journey having the ability to be analyzed and validated. This will even lead to the ability to also negotiate contracts and accept terms based on those results. - Douglas Karr, DK New Media
8. Influencers Will Become Fewer In Number But Better In Quality
Influencer marketing campaigns are going to change dramatically. With blockchain, marketers will be able to see if the influencer's followers are true people or simply bots. Essentially, it will reduce the number of influencers but leave the top influencers at the top. - Loren Baker, Foundation Digital
9. Publishers Will Become More Accountable
Technologies like Ethereum make publishers more accountable as transactions become more transparent. Advertisers can see exactly where their traffic is going. Ad data is paramount — it’s shocking how much information we don’t have. Measuring impressions doesn’t cut it. Blockchain technology will unveil everything, decreasing fraud and increasing attribution. - Michael Weinhouse, Logical Position
10. It Will Solve Numerous Industry Issues
There are blockchain projects being created that might provide solutions around payment processing or fraud prevention within the ad exchange environment. Other areas of interest blockchain technology could solve for are measurement, invoice reconciliation and publisher/advertiser transactions. - Chad Recchia, Awlogy
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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1b2ef52ff51f76d67541617dd3bf986a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/02/28/three-steps-to-solving-influencer-marketing-fraud/ | Three Steps To Solving Influencer Marketing Fraud | Three Steps To Solving Influencer Marketing Fraud
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Social media fraud is not new. As a founder of a startup that is in the business of digital influence, I am acutely aware of just how pervasive this problem is.
The New York Times recently published an investigative report on the social media industry’s “black market” -- the continued viability of fraudulent accounts and interactions on social media platforms that persists despite growing criticism and scrutiny. Citing business and court records, the investigation focused on a company that sells Twitter followers and retweets, the majority of which were found to be fraudulent. The company boasts more than 200,000 customers, from celebrities to athletes to social media influencers, among others called out in the report.
According to Rachel Botsman, the leading expert on how technology is transforming trust, we are in the middle of what is considered to be the third fundamental shift in trust in our society’s history: the shift from institutional trust to distributed trust, shared among networks of people. Powered by the mass, global adoption of social media and the democratization of information through technology, it is a shift that continues to impact every arena from politics to business. This has resulted in the birth of an influencer marketing industry that is estimated to grow 38% in its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years.
Unfortunately, when there’s a financial opportunity of that scale, fraud is sure to follow. However, now that marketers are using influencer marketing more than ever before, I am pleased to see conversation around a solution happening openly among the marketing community.
Here’s a potential roadmap to how we solve the fraud problem together.
Acknowledge shared responsibility across influencers, marketers and platforms.
To start, we must all acknowledge a shared responsibility across multiple parties to combat this challenge. Influencers, marketers and platform companies all own a piece of the problem and need to work together to solve it. As Adobe alluded to in its “Mean Streets” commercial a few years ago, some marketers have fallen into the trap of just needing to hit a quarterly vanity metric and, in doing so, got addicted to shortcut methods of achieving that metric.
Platform companies, including the social networks, have been wrestling with fake accounts for years, but it’s no secret that these accounts have resulted in some revenue going into their pockets. As The New York Times pointed out, some consumers are going to attempt to stand out among the increasingly competitive crowd of influencers by inflating audience sizes or engagement volumes with the swipe of a credit card, despite putting in the effort to create beautiful and authentic content. Combine that with the fact that the social platforms will eventually throttle organic reach in order to drive more influencers to promote their content via ads, and you have a propagating cycle of behavior that forces fraud to flourish.
Establish common standards and acceptable thresholds for fraud.
Once we acknowledge our shared responsibility, we can openly accept that some degree of fraud will always exist in influencer marketing. Similar to the force of gravity, the larger the audience of a social media account, the more bots it will attract statistically -- even if that account isn’t trying to attract them. Once we accept this, we can leverage lessons from the financial industry and come together around a common set of standards and acceptable thresholds for fraud and other questionable behaviors within influencer marketing.
We don’t necessarily need an influence “credit score” like the days of Klout, but there is no question that digital influence has become a form of currency in its own right, and financial credit scores have been working for multiple decades now, as long as bankers use the information properly.
For example, influencers, marketers and platform companies should come together to create a database to identify fraudulent activity and questionable behaviors. Within this database, we could identify influencers whose audiences indicate a high percentage of bot activity (including followers and engagements), influencers who too frequently take down content they were paid to create and those who participate in comment pods, to name a few. And for those influencers who are providing proven value, they should be identified and rewarded within this database. The demand for the time of influencers who are ethical and transparent should be worth more.
Leverage technology and data to enforce the standards.
After common standards or thresholds are established, technology and data need to be leveraged to enforce those standards. Data science and machine learning algorithms can be used to analyze the followers and engagements that are connected to influencers to see which are coming from accounts with very few posts, an above average following-to-follower ratio, a short lifespan and a location in regions known for having bot farms.
The database of known fraud accounts and influencers with proven value could eventually have an application programming interface so that all participating parties could leverage that data in their influencer marketing operations. At Mavrck, we are working to one day contribute to a database like this, leveraging the millions of profiles and billions of posts, likes and comments we’ve indexed to help report fraudulent accounts.
In the meantime, we urge marketers to think of influencers as more than just a one-dimensional tool for reach. Those who are leveraging influencers (or any of their euphemistic complements: thought leaders, subject-matter experts, creators) for reach and frequency alone are missing the point. That’s like using your smartphone to only make phone calls.
Influencers, by definition, have such rich knowledge and expertise. To not leverage them as insightful collaborators throughout the entire marketing process (research, strategy, planning, creative, media and measurement) is a missed opportunity most marketers today can not afford to lose. Those who take advantage of influencers' multidimensional value will end up creating more empathetic, trustworthy relationships with consumers.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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8f9c93c4fea8651775c0ebd010d7c863 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/02/ai-wont-take-over-corporate-communications-but-it-can-help/ | AI Won't Take Over Corporate Communications, But It Can Help | AI Won't Take Over Corporate Communications, But It Can Help
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A workplace revolution is underway across most industries, and robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are at the center of it. Machine learning and automation are becoming deeply integrated across all aspects of the way we live and work. As the promise of AI threatens to replace human drivers, factory workers and cashiers, which industry is next?
There’s been discussion of corporate communications being replaced by automation and robot writers once and for all. I say, no way. Compelling, effective public relations is not possible without emotional intelligence and human trust. Here are four reasons why human communications professionals won’t be replaced by AI anytime soon.
At its core, content is about human relationships.
The best marketing creates and builds relationships between brands, consumers, customers and journalists based on trust and respect. This is increasingly important as journalists and consumers are inundated with information and overloaded with posts and messages on social media. Reporters need sources to deliver truthful, compelling and relevant stories. In a time of skepticism for news, we need to do more to drive trust and empower journalists to work with real, true sources -- not AI technologies or robots that can be programmed to manipulate. Emotional intelligence is at the core of strong relationships.
Understanding reporters requires human intelligence.
Reporters and editors are being asked to take on expanded roles and write a greater number of stories in the 24-hour news cycle. They have no time to waste and communications strategies must adapt to meet their needs.
For those on the front lines of companies, the issues we encounter every day are different and require varying approaches. Real relationships with reporters are critical in verifying the truth and getting attention. Companies need to understand what journalists care about, what their readers want and what is new and different.
Indeed, robots could -- and technologies exist that do -- analyze what a reporter covers to capture key phrases and generate an email. Reporters can see through this and it often creates more noise than value. Developing a unique angle, tying your company news to a bigger industry trend or sharing an unusual statistic requires creativity, context and human intuition. This deeper understanding goes beyond commands and keywords.
Creativity is best done by humans.
Last year, Google financed a new project in Europe called Radar, aimed at automating news writing. There are existing technologies that automate press release writing as well, and that’s a good thing because they are becoming less important. In fact, having a robot create press releases would free more time for humans to develop creative and impactful stories.
The best marketing elicits impact, humor, attention and value. Sweden listed its entire country on Airbnb as a tourism stunt last year. A few years ago, millions of people poured buckets of ice on themselves to raise money for ALS. Robots won’t be pulling off this level of creativity anytime soon and here’s why: In order to make humans care about something, you have to understand the human psyche.
AI can make communications better with humans.
Brands and marketing professionals need not fear automation and AI because these technologies are proving to play important, helpful roles. Numerous tools are available that allow us to connect with audiences. Tools like BuzzSumo, Zignal and TrendKite create valuable insights and can measure reach and impact of company messages and direction for future engagements. Hashtag and keyword tracking programs like Keyhole enable monitoring for trends, brands and competitors in real time, so companies can communicate quickly and efficiently. Conversational language companies like Narrative Science use analytics to create data-driven stories about a company or industry. Using AI and automation tools can replace mundane and time-consuming tasks that provide more time to focus on creative and contextualized story angles.
Humans are essential for telling creative stories, developing buzzworthy ideas and communicating effectively. AI and automation play an important role, but those technologies have their limits. At the core, marketing and communications develop important relationships that cannot be replaced or mimicked by technology.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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917b823208cad9789ed33009861426c6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/02/five-proven-tips-for-recruiting-your-client-advisory-council/ | Five Proven Tips For Recruiting Your Client Advisory Council | Five Proven Tips For Recruiting Your Client Advisory Council
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Once your company is ready to start a client advisory council (also known as a client advisory panel or customer advisory board) and you’ve created a program charter and aligned your internal team, you’ll soon turn your attention to recruiting customer members.
Recruiting is a topic that is often challenging for companies of all sizes. Many trip up here, are unable to drum up support for their program or might offend some internal folks or customers in the process. Yet after having completed over 200 successful advisory council program engagements, I’ve learned what it takes to successfully recruit customers to advisory council programs, and I've learned how to get them eager to participate and even build a waiting list.
Here are five proven tips for recruiting customers to your client advisory council program:
1. Put members first.
Among the top reasons companies fail to attract customers to their engagement program is that their initiative is too self-focused. Client advisory councils (CACs) are definitely not the forum for canned company presentations, sales pitches or product demos. Instead, client advisory councils must address real, shared strategic challenges faced by all members. The inherent value of the gathering should be provided to customers first and the host company second.
For example, if your company offers IT security software, your CAC should include updates on the latest security breaches, share best practices for companies to protect themselves and review a myriad of tools and technologies available to help do so. This must be communicated as part of the recruiting process.
2. Target ideal candidates.
Your client advisory council charter should drive the right members of your program — not only the shared business challenge your initiative is addressing but the desired level of professional as well: CIOs? Security executives? Product managers? Once these criteria are determined and agreed to, a list of nominations can be assembled that targets the best companies (not necessarily merely your largest accounts), ideal levels or job titles (which can vary from different companies) and the best people themselves.
In addition to matching job levels to your strategic program, you’ll want to identify professionals who are capable speakers (e.g., who speak at events or write blogs) and are open to sharing their ideas and challenges. Avoid potential members who are shy, secretive or not simply exposed to higher level corporate strategies.
3. Call for nominations.
Once you’ve nailed down your ideal member selection criteria, you can put out a call for advisory council nominations, which are often submitted by sales folks, account managers, service teams or anyone who has direct relationships with your customers.
You’ll want to assemble a list of at least 40 nominations to consider, and then determine the initial 20 or so A-list candidates to invite to your advisory council program. If you identified the candidates properly and communicated the program benefits clearly, you’ll likely receive a high number of acceptances, perhaps 16 or 17, but maintain a goal to get a dozen of them regularly attending your in-person meetings.
4. Get personal.
When it comes to communicating the value of your client advisory council to your target members, we recommend taking an old-school approach: Hand-deliver or FedEx a glossy, printed charter and formal invitation letter — signed by the CAC executive sponsor — to your target member.
If an in-person meeting is not possible, a direct phone call from the relationship manager should be made after the target has received the invitation materials to discuss the council program and answer any questions. We do not recommend CAC invitations come via email from a marketing/events person. Such a method communicates lower value and will almost certainly receive more declines.
5. Recruit on an ongoing basis.
Just because your CAC program is launched and underway doesn’t mean membership is closed forever. Quite the contrary, companies should continually be on the lookout for new CAC candidates, as members can change jobs or companies, get acquired or get too overwhelmed in their role to continue serving, and replacements may be needed.
In addition, CAC membership should be established for a certain amount of time (two years is ideal), after which new blood can be rotated into the program to provide fresh ideas and perspectives. As such, companies should build a waiting list of candidates who are eager to join the program at the earliest opportunity.
Recruiting for a successful client advisory council program requires a coordinated effort of your customer-facing teams, and their time, attention and commitment to do it well. When done properly, the effort will result not only in a high amount of program acceptances but also an initiative that is set up for long-term success in the years to come.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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a0a8e4ccb795e8dd54e838c02c66f984 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/05/how-to-increase-search-rankings-and-conversions-with-customer-ratings-and-reviews/?sh=15948c026605 | How To Increase Search Rankings And Conversions With Customer Ratings And Reviews | How To Increase Search Rankings And Conversions With Customer Ratings And Reviews
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Business owners sometimes complain about the accuracy of online ratings and reviews. But no matter how the angle swings on this feedback for your business, user ratings and reviews have a significant impact on sales. They are a critical part of whether a buyer decides to make a purchase or not.
According to research, 85% of online consumers trust online reviews on the same level as personal recommendations from friends and family. Likewise, additional research shows a 166% increase in sales conversion when ratings and user-generated content are integrated into the online shopping experience. Not bad, right?
Not only do ratings and reviews determine purchasing habits, they also affect a businesses’ search engine results.
Below is more information about how online reviews work with search engines, and also how you can integrate them into your site to better influence conversion rate and brand trust.
How Ratings And Reviews Affect SEO
For branded or product searches, search engines display business websites but also usually display results from top review sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor or industry-specific sites, like Edmunds for vehicles or Consumer Reports for products.
Because these sites are often on Page One of search results, it’s critical for businesses to ensure that the reviews about their business are accurate and properly reflect how they treat customers. When receiving a negative review, answering it constructively can earn the respect of potential customers. To answer a negative review constructively, business representatives need to show the customer that they are heard and apologize for their experience. If the review isn’t accurate, the representative can state their side of the incident -- but respectfully and without name-calling or exaggeration.
In fact, consumers don’t expect businesses to be perfect. In a study by Northwestern, participants said they are suspicious of five-star ratings, and consumers often look at negative reviews first to determine the legitimacy of the reviews as a whole.
Customers often check out reviews before deciding to contact a business, as well. A study found that consumers read about seven reviews before they decide to trust a business. According to the study, this is an increase of about 14% in the number of reviews compared to the previous year.
These trends prove that honest reviews have a significant pull on consumers’ buying habits, and in some cases, may have more influence than the company’s website itself.
How Google And Other Services Bring In Third-Party Data
Yelp and Facebook are consumers’ most trusted source of business reviews, with Google and the Better Business Bureau coming in third and fourth. One of the reasons why Google is such a trusted resource of ratings and reviews is because it pulls in reviews from multiple places, aggregating them into an overall picture of a business.
While Google used to do this automatically by pulling in reviews from third-party sites, they received pushback for doing so without permission (because this decreased traffic to the review sites themselves). Google now still pulls in third-party data, but only with permission via an opt-out.
Besides showing reviews for organic results, you can also use Google seller ratings in paid AdWords campaigns to boost your website’s search results in Google. In fact, Google Ads with seller ratings see up to a 10% increase in click-thru rate, according to Google’s findings. Google pulls seller ratings from collected customer reviews, so these are important to monitor as well.
Google isn’t the only place review sites are showing your company’s reviews to current and potential customers. Yelp has continued to integrate its reviews through its API to over 100,000 registered developers.
Some of these developers are pulling in Yelp reviews to well-known apps, including Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple products and Eat24. Customers are increasingly seeing reviews for almost every search they complete, no matter whether it’s in an app, through voice search or in a traditional search engine.
On-Site Solutions
Integrating reviews as part of your SEO strategy can have significant benefits to your business. Aside from allowing reviews to be shown in organic and paid search result pages, you can incorporate third-party and native reviews onto your website for both product and service-based businesses.
Some services, like Yotpo and BazaarVoice, collect reviews on your behalf, which are then automatically integrated into your website once it’s set up. You insert a code or plugin into your CMS and pages to show the most updated reviews (how it’s installed exactly depends on the service you use).
You can also use Yelp and TripAdvisor APIs to pull review data for your business directly onto your website. Some APIs have display requirements, like TripAdvisor, which says that its reviews can’t be aggregated with any other data source. Their reviews must be displayed on their own.
Including reviews on your website gives visitors an instant glimpse into what other customers’ experiences were and allows them to review this feedback on your own site without having to jump to an external source to read them.
Off-Site Solutions
Whether you are collecting reviews using a service or API, it’s still important to take the time to monitor and respond to reviews on your most popular review site profiles. These review sites can be a significant source of traffic for you, so make sure they are kept up to date with the most pertinent information.
If you have multiple locations or handle a large number of reviews, you can use a third-party service like ReviewPush to aggregate and monitor reviews (much like SaaS products like HootSuite do for social media profiles).
Commonly called “reputation management,” constant review monitoring is crucial in today’s online marketplace. Not only do consumers in all industries rely on reviews and ratings to make purchasing decisions, they also use review sites as a place to find information about a business (e.g., hours of operation, service offerings and more). A comprehensive reputation management strategy should be integrated into your SEO efforts to help get more conversions online.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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f7a36f600ddc741734d94a7d70cbbfbd | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/06/main-streets-comeback-mobiles-opportunity-is-retails-in-store-resurgence/ | Main Street's Comeback: Mobile's Opportunity Is Retail's In-Store Resurgence | Main Street's Comeback: Mobile's Opportunity Is Retail's In-Store Resurgence
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Change defines our industry, and mobile marketing will experience a year full of change — you can count on it. One transformation that’s coming our way is an opportunity to help drive a Main Street resurgence for SMBs. There’s something amazing happening out there. The potential is huge.
Here’s what I’ve seen: You walk the streets of suburbs, like the Pennsylvania community in which I grew up, and you see that Main Street's coming back. Stroll the Main Street of the California city where I live and work, and you can see it happening there, too. Blocks that were dead just a few years ago are now hopping with hip, cool, local SMBs.
The stats support what I’m seeing: 2017 was the strongest year on record in the history of the NFIB Index of Small Business Optimism survey — actual sales increased by 14 points in the poll. It was a strong holiday season. But it’s more than just a holiday boost. Shoppers are ready to go small. If mom-and-pop entrepreneurs can get together with like-minded lawmakers — even in crazy expensive places like New York City, as Curbed reports — there’s a real chance at helping this resurgence grow.
To help this comeback happen, however, it’s also going to take innovative technology and mobile solutions. So, let’s look at what’s happening, and what can happen next.
Community And Personalization: Adding Mobile To The Main Street Story
Main Street shops have always held a corner on face-to-face, one-to-one, meaningful experiences. That’s the nature of their business. There’s more to it than that, however. Main Street’s future, a new chapter for in-store retail success, is going to require long-game thinking and luck. The resurgence will turn on the intersection of mobile technology and community reinvestment.
I’m not the only person saying this.
“Small business retailers have a competitive advantage that none of these bigger, better capitalized and techno-powered retailers have: their personal touch,” wrote Pamela Danziger, the president of Unity Marketing, in an article. “It is realized not just through the personal service that specialty retailers offer, but by being vital members of the local community. This trend will reshape the retail landscape over the next decade.”
Main Street SMBs are players in the local community. That means something important in this day and age, in this era of fake news and online fraud. To be part of a constant, real, personally invested neighborhood is no small thing. It goes to the heart of what a huge segment of consumers loves about shopping.
Mobile will help SMBs respond to that segment, reaching audiences on the cutting edge of the SMB economy, allowing advertisers to offer local, meaningful experiences. The following examples show how this can happen for businesses.
Omnichannel
The mobile-to-offline (M2O) cycle is all about consumer research followed by in-store mobile, social-media and text-based interactions with friends and family.
SMBs that commit to omnichannel can plug into shoppers’ M2O search, helping shoppers find new ideas with proactive offers and non-intrusive but inspiring mobile creative based on their shared location data. SMBs can then provide shoppers with outlets to share their love of discovery with others.
The brand inspires them with a new idea — to cross town to try a crazy new donut flavor, even if it might sell out. And when those shoppers take a chance on the experience, they snap pictures while waiting in line and share the physical-location experience. We know from our own research that more than a quarter of millennial and Gen Z shoppers say they'll do this when the moment means something to them. It’s a killer match because Main Street is all about individuality and unique experiences in the first place. Mobile puts a spotlight on retail discoverers. It’s these local champions that SMBs crave and need to reach.
In-Store Pickup
Entrepreneurs don’t have to be big-box retailers to be players in the M2O space. Street Fight tells us that small and midsize businesses are now among the 61% of retailers with both in-store and online strategies that offer "buy online, pick up in store" options. A bike shop, for example, can put its inventory into the M2O space, allowing cyclists to build out their frames and add all kinds of gear, in-app. Then, the shop can leverage upsell and customer-experience opportunities when the customer comes into the local shop to collect their wheels.
Metrics On Main Street
Beacons and smart packaging are claiming fresh territory on the marketing stage. Proximity marketing’s value is estimated to hit $52 billion by 2023. That’s no joke, and with all this energy coming back into the sensors-based space, there’s no reason to confine metrics and analytics to big-box locations. Specifically, SMBs can add foot traffic and long-term measurements to their campaigns. And there’s still a major case for geo-fencing and geo-conquesting in the SMB ecosystem — from auto dealerships to competing storefronts.
Mobile-to-offline experiences are shaping the way SMBs survive when other models — malls, for example — are not. Here’s more good news, as CNBC puts it: “Technology has allowed mom and pops to gain exposure around the world without expanding their footprint by leveraging the power of social media and targeted marketing.”
We already know that consumers are in love with personalization. We know that they’re willing to provide data if it drives dynamic, intelligent interactions. Going back to Main Street doesn’t change this demand — it just drives it in new directions. It’s all happening on Main Street, and now it’s the mobile device that’ll take us there.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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60fc5b57a299689ade4a8c151e0bfda7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/08/how-to-manage-your-pr-expectations/ | How To Manage Your PR Expectations | How To Manage Your PR Expectations
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Here’s what I love most about PR: Anything is possible. We can land a client’s dream placement, changing everything for them. It’s like winning the lottery. But with all the possibilities come big expectations.
When Oprah had her show on network TV and an appearance could literally change someone’s life, it seemed like 90% of my new business calls started with, “I want to be on Oprah.” The thing was, most people had no clue what that really meant. They didn’t realize all the things that would need to be put in place first to leverage such an interview — things like a website capable of handling a very large volume of traffic and fulfillment and distribution channels that could manage thousands and thousands of orders.
So, in this world of endless possibilities, how do we manage PR expectations? If you’re like most of our clients, you are similar to a parent who is clear that their child — their book, project or cause — is the cutest, smartest and best-behaved child on the planet. Confidence and believing in your baby is a good thing. But you do need to realize that sometimes the world and the media don’t share your point of view.
How To Do The Dance In Reality
First, you need to get very clear about your goals. This will allow you to connect the dots and see the value of PR.
Look, there are thousands of venues in the current media landscape and every one of them brings value to the table. You just need to sort out which venues are the best fit for you. Maybe a placement in a specific trade venue will do more to move the dial for you and your business than a placement in a national general consumer magazine or a top morning show interview. Or maybe a placement in your own backyard with a local media outlet is your winning ticket.
What Does PR Look Like?
Next, it’s very important to know the difference between being featured versus being quoted as an expert.
When most people think of PR coverage, they imagine a full-page spread in O, The Oprah Magazine, TIME, or Men's Health, where the journalist gushes about how amazing their book, product or cause is: They’re the savior of the world.
That is not necessarily how PR works. Most of the time, the media is looking for you to bring value to their readers, viewers or listeners. They’re looking for your expertise to support their stories. This type of coverage is a win-win because you provide the media with value and you get quoted as a thought leader or expert, which is incredibly valuable to you.
As a PR agency, we’ve landed a lot of media coverage over the years featuring our expertise and business practices, but the placement that generated the most website traffic for us was an article that quoted my business partner on the difference between PR and advertising.
A Means To An End
Lastly, like most things, media coverage is a means to an end, not an end in itself. You have to leverage media placements to reach your goals. Use it to attract potential clients and to take your business to the next level. When you get a great placement, let the world know. Share it with your fans, followers and connections, email it to your potential clients, and add it to your website. Nothing builds and establishes your credentials like PR. But in order for PR to do that, people need to know about it.
So, when it comes to managing your expectations, it all comes down to clarity. Be clear about what you’re out to achieve and how PR can help you reach those goals. This will allow you to celebrate all your wins along the way, which quiets the mind and keeps you on your path.
PR is the most powerful marketing tool — but just like any other tool, you need to know how to use it and what you want it to achieve. There are so many different possibilities in the PR lottery.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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9740dbee5b132c8733539df50f22cf6e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/08/what-marketers-can-learn-from-the-declining-olympics-viewership/ | What Marketers Can Learn From The Declining Olympics Viewership | What Marketers Can Learn From The Declining Olympics Viewership
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There was a day when we all sat down, as families, to watch the Olympics. We carved out time in our weekends and each night to watch key events. Today, that is not the case. A February 2018 Gallup poll showed that 61% of Americans didn’t plan to view the Olympic Games at all. The number of older Americans who did plan to watch is down, and the percentage of younger Americans is even lower. Actual data on Olympics viewership shows that TV viewership was down 8% compared to 2014. For those who do still watch the Olympics, we do it in a dramatically different way. Why?
Because we consume media differently than we used to. No longer do we plan to watch a previously scheduled network event — we watch on our own time, on demand. We also don’t necessarily sit down to watch it and we certainly don’t watch it exclusively. I view highlights on my phone, via Snapchat or the NBC.com live feed while working. Some people are even experiencing these Olympics with virtual reality. No matter which platforms the events are available on, they are still not drawing as much of an audience.
What can we learn from this?
1. Content still matters most.
Offering virtual reality and cross-channel options only make a difference if the content is compelling to the audience. The Olympics, and particularly the winter games, are less compelling than ever. The buildup, teasers and personal interest stories just didn’t build enough excitement. There was a lot of talk about the Olympics being an ideal space — and perhaps the only space — where Americans could remain truly unified. The divisive world we live in has left little opportunity for our country to stand together. Yet, this doesn’t seem to be enough.
As with any marketing or programming opportunity, we need to understand real consumer insights to figure out the best way to make them relevant in today’s world. Perhaps we haven’t quite found that yet for today’s Olympics, or perhaps they aren’t relevant for as many people as they used to be. Either way, the content of the Olympics matters. We do care about the athletes and their challenges, so there’s more personal content than ever. We do care about the newer events and learning how they’re judged. We must be knowledgeable, not naïve, which is why there are overviews on what the scores mean, how the judges judge and what the little yellow and red dots at the top of the screen symbolize. Yet the interest isn’t strong enough. More insight is definitely needed, and research before and after the Olympics is the way to get there.
2. Multiplatform consumption is the only way to grab attention.
We no longer want to be told when to tune in and what to watch when we do. We choose to consume media where, how and when we want to — all necessitating the multiplatform approach that we see with the 2018 Winter Olympics. I may watch it on TV at the appointed 8 p.m. time slot but I still check the medal counts on Alexa each morning. My oldest son, 25, may watch some, as he’s old enough to remember the family event of Olympic weeks every few years, but he’ll only watch on demand, maybe on Hulu. My middle child, 23, will likely watch it only on streaming video on her iPad or phone if she watches at all. My youngest, 14, sees the Snapchat updates and only occasionally pays attention. None of them will do it as their sole focus; it will accompany other media or activities.
3. Shorter sound bites are the only way to keep attention.
It’s not hard to notice that the information we consume comes faster and in more abbreviated form than ever. Twitter taught us to communicate, listen and react in only a few characters. Snapchat taught us to hurry up and watch or we’d lose the visual. Now, we often don’t have the patience for a full hour-long show or a 5-page article.
Communication, news and entertainment need to be synthesized into sound bites that will help us enjoy and experience it. Olympic highlights on NBC.com or quick updates on other platforms may be the most effective ways to whet our appetite and keep us engaged. This is an important lesson for any brand. Some of our target audiences may still want or need long-form communications, but the short-form is essential.
For the Olympics, and for anything else we want consumers or our customers to absorb, we have to get better. We have to drill down to discover real insights and act on them in the content we deliver. We have no choice but to offer multichannel media. We should expect that it will be consumed on an individual's own schedule. Finally, we need to think and act fast. Imagine what we want to communicate and then speed it up, do it even faster and in easy-to-digest sound bites. This is how I often think about communication today, and it's how marketers need to think in order to keep capturing the wallets and imaginations of our consumers.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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8ead56fca6fc0491010a7df93bd5b480 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/09/13-tips-for-developing-your-brands-initial-content-strategy/ | 13 Tips For Developing Your Brand's Initial Content Strategy | 13 Tips For Developing Your Brand's Initial Content Strategy
Every brand needs a solid content marketing strategy to reach consumers, including a plan for multiple content types across multiple platforms.
If you've never been on the planning end of a content strategy, it can be overwhelming. How can you find the right balance of blogging, social media posts, videos, email campaigns, infographics and contributed content — and how can you keep coming up with fresh ideas? If you're developing your first content strategy, follow this advice from 13 experienced professionals of the Forbes Agency Council.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council weigh in. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Get Used To Non-Linear Storytelling
The luxury of telling a story with a beginning, middle and end is declining. If you think about ways to communicate across screens, attention spans and levels of interest, your content will resonate with more people. While the story may be disconnected (a gif here, a video there, an infographic elsewhere), as long as they communicate the same main idea, they will be effective. - Kieley Taylor, GroupM
2. Map The Customer Journey
Before creating a content strategy, it’s vital to know when, where and how to best reach your target audience. Answer these questions by mapping their customer journey. Include emotions, thoughts and expectations at each touchpoint of the journey. This will help guide both content and channel, and result in highly relevant material for customers and prospects. - Howard Breindel, DeSantis Breindel
3. Don't Make Content For Content's Sake
Good marketing's purpose never changes — what need are you trying to solve for? Creating content for content's sake just adds noise. Your first question is: What are your consumers' needs, and how will your content solve for them in a way that your existing marketing efforts don't? Are you telling a more emotional story, providing a clearer value proposition, or reaching new consumers? - Craig Greiwe, Rogers & Cowan
4. Know Your Content's Destination
With so many different media platforms out there, your content should be created with the knowledge of where it will live. Will it air on television? Will it be placed on Facebook, YouTube or your website? Tailoring your content to the medium will not only make it more appropriate for the space, it will make it more effective. - Bill McCabe, Eicoff
5. Make Sure All Content Communicates Your Brand's Core Values
A content strategy is not just a box to check, it's essential. If you are a consumer-facing business, your content is what your customers are consuming well before they pull the trigger to make a purchase. Pick a content strategy that communicates your brand's core values in a voice that resonates with your audience. Most importantly, don’t be generic. - Eric Dahan, Open Influence
6. Develop An Evergreen Content Plan Around Broad Themes And Common Questions
Many organizations start a content program at extremes, with too many ideas or too few. Begin with common customer questions, misinformation or complaints to build your library. Think in terms of broad themes, all of which are supported by individual posts that are narrow and deep. Evergreen content can help you scale your program faster than topical posts, and can be repurposed for years to come. - Michelle Pittman, JConnelly
7. Create Content That Speaks To Your Expertise, Knowledge And Insights
Ensure that the content itself is based on your expertise, knowledge and insights. For example, if you're a consumer products company, your content should not center around travel tips. Also, remember that audiences are bombarded with content and have limited attention spans. Keep it brief and give it some flavor. - Anne Marie Malecha, Dezenhall Resources, Ltd.
8. Develop Your Audience Personas
The first and most important thing while developing a content strategy is to develop your audience personas and understand where to reach them so you develop a multi-channel strategy approach. This is the fuel for all of your digital marketing activities. Make sure your audience is engaged, as the quality of your content is key to driving success. - Martha Madero Gonzalez, GROU Crecimiento Digital
9. Provide Solutions With Your Content
Content marketing works best when your content provides answers or solutions to your target audience's questions or problems. By answering their questions and solving their problems, you are positioning yourself as a subject matter expert and building trust and respect. This is what makes content marketing so powerful. - Adam Stone, Octane Marketing
10. Identify What's Not Being Talked About
With every content marketing strategy, the best way to scale is to start small and target an underserved niche. If you want to make a statement, reach a target audience and provide value, create a unique piece of content that discusses something in the industry that's forward-thinking and not touched upon. Back up pieces with research and solid arguments. Start the conversation, don't join it. - Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
11. Be Ready To Adapt And Evolve Based On Data
A content strategy needs to be fluid and should evolve based on performance, so don't obsess over the minutiae. Start with developing content that not only aligns with your overall business objectives but also gives your targets what they are looking for. You will become more efficient over time and data will tell you what is working and what isn't. Stop planning and start doing. - Jacquelyn LaMar, VI Marketing and Branding
12. Focus On Your Ideal Client
In the service space, it's easy to talk shop — to focus on things that matter to the service provider. This is a classic first-timer mistake. Instead, create a profile of your ideal client and develop topics that speak to their goals, opportunities and challenges. Define your best advice for these three areas, then build your editorial calendar and stick to it. This works very well. - Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
13. Use What Google Gives You
Google provides several tools to assist with the creation of a content strategy. Use these tools to determine which content should lead the strategy. The best tool is Google Analytics. Past performance is typically a good indicator of future success. Identify what has worked, and then figure out how to do more of it. Then, rely on tools from Google to fill in the rest of the content strategy. - Brett Farmiloe, Markitors Website Development
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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a2b0a3f6dc5ebbaac35ad8b52127051b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/12/15-ways-to-increase-brand-loyalty-and-retain-your-customer-base/?sh=36f9f1867733 | 15 Ways To Increase Brand Loyalty And Retain Your Customer Base | 15 Ways To Increase Brand Loyalty And Retain Your Customer Base
Developing your company brand is key to driving customers to your business. The more a consumer resonates with your brand, the more likely they are to buy from you again. Creating this loyal following of customers can ensure continued success and help drive sales of your company’s products and services forward.
The Pareto Principle states that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from 20% of your current customer base, making it imperative that you focus on creating loyal, repeat customers that will continue to frequent your business.
Below, 15 members of the Forbes Agency Council provide the one thing a company can do to increase its brand loyalty. Here is what they had to say:
Members of the Forbes Agency Council share their best tips. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Don't Let Your Customers Down
If you consistently deliver high-quality products and services and stay on top of trends, your customers will stick with you because they know they can count on you. - Kelly Ann Collins, Collins & Company
2. Be Authentic And Consistent
The importance of being authentic and consistent cannot be underestimated. Customers must be able to count on the company to deliver the same outstanding products and services over time. And if an issue ever arises, they need to know that it will be addressed immediately and with individual consideration. - Troy Smith, Search Optics
3. Have A Noble Edge
Scientific studies show that people are intensely loyal to brands leveraging the Noble Edge Effect. This is when an independent source shares the socially responsible or charitable work your company does. Be authentic about giving back and let others tell your story. This is especially effective with customers who have strong moral aspirations or who have little product knowledge and experience. - Elizabeth Edwards, Volume Public Relations
4. Live And Breathe Customer Service
Nothing is perfect in life. We all get that. But when that something goes wrong with your product, a great way to increase brand loyalty is to simply be there for your customer. Live and breathe customer service, because without them, you won't have any following. Answer the phone, respond to the messages left on your social media channels, and do what you say you're going to do. - Daniel Lazarz, Life of Dad Agency / Life of Dad, LLC
5. Provide Value
Don't just write content for the sake of content or throw out minimal discounts or offers. Provide something your users actually care about. What do they want to know, see, do, have? Give them more of that. Understand their personas, what drives them and why they like your product in the first place. Following this pattern will increase results. - Sara Davis, Osmond Marketing
6. Keep Your Eye On Quality
Customers expect a certain level of quality. Exceed it. Maintaining a consistent level of quality that offers a no-brainer level of value to the customer will keep them coming back. Exceeding your customers' expectations while giving a level of quality they can count on, will earn you their loyalty and advocacy. - Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing
7. Be Responsive
Responsiveness is critical to brand loyalty. While your brand may resonate with your persona, if your behind-the scenes-brand is not responsive to your audience, you can quickly lose that loyalty. For example, if someone sends you a message on social media or a question by social or email, having a process to follow up with those individuals is critical to maintaining loyalty and trust. - Elyse Flynn Meyer, Prism Global Marketing Solutions
8. Follow Up With Your Customers Regularly
Checking in with customers after the sale is critical to establishing long-term relationships, especially in business-to-business. Check in with your customers during onboarding, right after onboarding, and at regular intervals. This is key to staying on top of their satisfaction. Sometimes, all it takes is a quick phone call to prevent a major issue. - Lisa Allocca, Red Javelin Communications
9. Stop Spamming
It can be tempting for brands to create as many touchpoints as possible, especially by sending direct emails daily or multiple times per day. But the more I hear from a company, the more likely I am to delete everything it sends me. I'm most loyal to brands that, in addition to offering great products and value, respect my time by only reaching out with educational content or about good sales. - Jade Faugno, Intermarket
10. Personalize Your Marketing
Personalizing your marketing efforts will increase brand loyalty. Use the data your users give to you to create more personalized experiences to deliver what they want. Create customized offers and content based on your data. - Loren Baker, Foundation Digital
11. Align Yourself With Like-Minded Businesses
When possible, align yourself with complementary brands and like-minded businesses. A huge trend in 2017 was brand collaborations. The right partners can provide tremendous value to your brand because, through cross promotions, you are not only increasing your customer reach, but you are providing your current customers with added value. - Megan Shroy, Approach Marketing
12. Listen To Your Customers
Companies should always listen to their customers. Regardless of positive or negative feedback, every piece can be useful information. Customers will feel more connected to the brand if they open up a two-way dialogue, and these passionate customers who take the time to give feedback will be your biggest advocates. - Katie Jansen, AppLovin
13. Focus On Killer Operations And Systems
Consumers have tons of choices for where they get their products and services, and they are just waiting for you to mess up to jump ship. Make sure you have great systems in place — from ordering to production to delivery — and that your business runs smoothly. You'll set yourself apart from other businesses that drop the ball. - Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH
14. Anticipate
Go beyond the expected. When a company is able to anticipate my needs and goes above and beyond expectations, they earn my loyalty. For instance: A client of ours provides a lifetime warranty on their quartz products. So if something goes wrong with the product during or after installation, customers are covered. When you invest thousands into your new kitchen, peace of mind is essential. - Alannah Tsimis Sandehl, IDM Brand
15. Treat Every Day Like Groundhog Day
What I mean is to consistently repeat a brand's message the same way each day. One of my mentors, "Rocket Ray" Jutkins, used to quip, "Repetition builds your reputation." Loyalty emerges when trust is established. Trust results from consistency. - Dave Wendland, Hamacher Resource Group
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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60fc6b81547492b5f4d4388b420f5cdc | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/12/five-tips-for-generating-facebook-video-ideas-that-your-audience-will-love/ | Five Tips For Generating Facebook Video Ideas That Your Audience Will Love | Five Tips For Generating Facebook Video Ideas That Your Audience Will Love
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You know that the best way to reach your audience on Facebook is through video. You’ve probably heard the statistics, like the one that says that by 2020, 80% of all internet traffic will be video. Video is huge, but the question is: How do you constantly come up with new, engaging content?
This is a challenge that many brands are encountering on Facebook. With feeds that are already cluttered and the addition of Facebook’s new algorithms for prioritizing content, coming up with ideas for videos your audience wants to watch is more difficult than ever.
Or is it?
Generating new and engaging Facebook video ideas isn’t the monstrous endeavor that it might seem. When you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall in creativity, refocus and try one of these tips for generating great video content ideas.
If You’re Talking To Everyone, You’re Talking To No One
This first tip isn’t so much about what you need to be doing, but instead what you should avoid when generating ideas for your Facebook videos. When you’re feeling stuck, it’s easy to think a broad reach is best, but that isn’t going to get results.
When you’re looking for your next killer video idea, make it super targeted. If you have a large audience, a video that attempts to appeal to all will often fall flat. Instead, use this opportunity to segment your audience and develop several new video ideas to reach all of them at different points.
For example, despite being a smaller business, Organic Daily Post doesn't try to reach an audience outside of its core followers — natural and organic remedy lovers. It's the same approach a much larger business like Houzz — a home decor and design business — takes in marketing, focusing on how-to videos for the do-it-yourself corner of the market.
The key to being successful with this is posting content frequently and not focusing all of your attention on only one segment of your audience for too long.
Remember, It Isn’t Really About You
Sure, it’s about you and the brand you’re building. But then again, it really isn’t.
If you want video ideas that are truly engaging, the focus needs to shift from promoting your brand to entertaining and providing value to your viewer. A common route might be to sit in front of the camera and basically brag about yourself. Stop and think about how engaging this really is for your audience. A reality check will tell you that it isn’t.
Look at your business and pinpoint specific topics that you can use to add value and entertain. Your team members can be a great inspiration when you look at their strong points and even their hidden talents.
Step Outside Of The Business Box
You can come up with only so many content ideas that are business-related before you run into a wall. When this happens, don’t take it as a cue to step away from video for a while.
Instead, look at your community and maybe even the local news for inspiration. There’s a good chance you’ll find opportunities to build your name locally by becoming more involved in the happenings outside of your business.
This is also a great opportunity to let your audience get to know you better. What do you love to do in your spare time? Do you have hobbies? Participate in work-centered team events, like sports? Is there a trend you’re super excited about but never get the chance to share?
Step away from the idea that engaging videos need to be all business, all the time.
Learn The Formula For The Perfect Story
At a loss for engaging video ideas? There’s a formula that can help you with that. Well, not exactly a “formula,” more like a diagram.
You might remember something called Venn diagrams from when you were in school. If this sounds like a foreign language to you, a Venn diagram is a series of shapes, usually circles, with each shape representing a group or aspect of your problem. You then overlap these circles to find where they meet and what they have in common.
So, start with your target market. Who are they? They might be a smaller segment of your larger audience. Next, look at your products and services. What are you offering that’s specifically suited to your target? Finally, what is your unique spin that you can add?
Try filling in the circles with different answers and watch the creativity begin to flow.
Use Your Existing Resources
Sometimes, the best ideas will come from content you’ve already created.
Look at your previous Facebook posts and blogs, if you have one. Which ones were the most popular and generated the highest level of engagement? Once you’ve found them, take that content and use it as the base of your video.
For example, a restaurant could leverage assets already available to them — menu creations, drink recipes and local events — to produce a successful video series.
There’s a good chance that your audience has already told you what they find interesting and engaging. You just need to do a little digging to uncover the gold.
With the popularity of Facebook videos, it sometimes feels like it’s all been done before. Here’s the thing: You haven’t done it all before, and you have something to show that’s uniquely different from the videos that everyone else is offering. You just need to unlock a little creativity, step outside the box and take a chance or two. Great, engaging Facebook content is yours for the taking, you only need to reach out and grab it.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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c9bc710fb6ed152b9e6fed7da9de0e86 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/14/how-to-craft-the-ideal-user-persona-for-your-brand/?sh=2aca394b6ead | How To Craft The Ideal User Persona For Your Brand | How To Craft The Ideal User Persona For Your Brand
Creating personas for the different users or customers interested in — and buying — your products can be a beneficial way to understand and recognize the likes and dislikes of a consumer group. Every company should take the time to evaluate who its typical (and atypical) customers are and what needs you should target to get their business.
Crafting these customer personas takes time. The better you can drill into who your customer is and what their desires are, the better you will be able to develop a persona that accurately reflects your ideal consumer.
Below, 15 members of the Forbes Agency Council provide the most important initial considerations for crafting an ideal persona. Here is what they recommend:
Members of the Forbes Agency Council weigh in. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Know The Difference Between User And Buyer Personas
Differentiating between user personas and buyer personas is very important. For enterprise products in particular, the buyer is often very different from the product user. For example, the buyer of a marketing data platform is likely a CMO concerned with how it will drive sales. However, the users, likely campaign owners or data scientists, are more concerned with usability. - Preethy Vaidyanathan, Tapad
2. Apply Pareto's 80/20 Principle
There is no doubt that your product appeals to a wide variety of people. Most business owners have a hard time coming up with a specific audience because it's easy to get distracted by the exceptions that come in on a daily basis. Here's a good starting point: Use the 80/20 rule. Develop your personas around the 20% of your customers who account for 80% of your income. - Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing
3. Talk With Your Customers
To build out your personas’ psychographics, your best bet is to talk with your existing customers. The most effective way to do this is to pick up the phone or survey them with the help of a simple tool like Survey Monkey. Understanding what motivates your customers to buy will help you more effectively communicate with similar people. - Laura Cole, Vivial
4. Talk With Your Sales Team
They are the ones on the front lines selling your products and services every day, so it’s important to ask them for insights. This may seem obvious, but many marketing people forget about this valuable internal resource. - Megan Shroy, Approach Marketing
5. Don't Neglect Your Vision Board
When creating your ideal user persona, it takes more than just significant thought and careful consideration. It requires discovering exactly who you want to cater to. The best place to begin is envisioning who that person really is. Create a vision board of their interests and life. Then back up your vision with data, research, surveys and interviews, and establish their goals and challenges. - Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design
6. Start With The "Why"
The first thing is to understand the need for user personas. One of our app development projects began with app positioning features and was followed by creating user personas. Our desired outcome was to develop groups of users in order to ensure a successful gamification process, which helped our customers find the "perfect present" quickly. Our objective? Develop engaging user experiences. - Alannah Tsimis Sandehl, IDM Brand
7. Look To Facebook Insights
Start building out a more holistic view of your potential consumers by leveraging Facebook and its expansive user data. Export your customer (or prospect) email list. Upload that list into Facebook as a custom audience, and voila! Your customer profiles are immediately expanded to include income ranges, relationship status, job titles, purchase behaviors, spending methods and much more. - Jon Clark, Fuze SEO, LLC
8. Understand Your Customers' Problems
When creating your ideal persona, the most important consideration is determining what problem the user has that your product or service solves. By understanding their problem or challenge, you can determine how your product or service can best help them, where they may be typically seeking information on how to solve that problem, and even brainstorm content ideas that will engage with this persona. - Elyse Flynn Meyer, Prism Global Marketing Solutions
9. Find Your Brand Truth
An authentic persona requires a deep exploration into the brand's truth. Truth is not marketing speak or brand attributes. Instead, it is the pure reason for a consumer or customer to care. Consumers today expect that a brand persona be honest, human and true, but all that can be bolstered when the brand shows it really cares about higher-order ideals like community, humanity or citizenship. - Daryl McCullough, Citizen Relations
10. Don't Try To Reflect Your Perfect Customer
Think of the most distracted, overscheduled, mildly interested, take-it-or-leave-it prospect, and craft your personas around them. Then, when it comes time to craft the user experience, if you keep this persona in mind, you'll be forced to create something so compelling that even the worst-case customer should be motivated to convert or purchase. - Justin Daab, Magnani Continuum Marketing
11. Always Think Ahead
Ideal personas should withstand the test of time and be nimble enough to encapsulate future changes in your industry. Being nimble doesn't mean it doesn't have to have a strong identity, it just means that it should be able to adapt as your brand and your goals progress. - Priscila Martinez, The Brand Agency
12. Know When And Where To Reach Them
When you develop personas for digital marketing, one of the most important things to consider beyond who they are, where they are in the buyer cycle and how they make their decisions, is where and when to reach them. Considering the platforms, channels, times of day and overall communication method that is best for each persona will help ensure your ads are optimized for that audience. - Ben LeDonni, CreativeMMS
13. Treat Your Personas As A Hypothesis
Too many teams build personas and then treat them like the truth rather than a hypothesis. Personas are meant to be the backboard for all of your experiments. With this in mind, we try to fill our personas with questions rather than definitions. These questions become the guide for the experiments we run in both messaging and targeting. Most importantly, we revise these personas over time. - Jacob Johnson, Gitwit Creative
14. Identify Mindset
Persona alone is too shallow. In 2018, an ideal persona cannot be created without an understanding of recent psychological research on the importance of mindset. Each persona could have one of two mindsets that need to be engaged very differently, or you risk turning off your prospect completely. Take time to understand mindsets, how to recognize them and how to communicate with them effectively. - Elizabeth Edwards, Volume Public Relations
15. Don't Try To Create Just One Persona
It is essential that you do not try to create one blanket persona to summarize your audiences. You must consider their variations to create segments and subsegments of consumers to understand which groups you want to prioritize and which are not of value. From there, you can better research and map out how each persona thinks, feels and acts to best target them. - Nina Hale, Nina Hale, Inc
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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6562aa2d9e36d2461d8cd1b9f434fafa | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/15/how-to-stay-in-the-sweet-spot-of-agency-size/ | How To Stay In The Sweet Spot Of Agency Size | How To Stay In The Sweet Spot Of Agency Size
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From an anthropological perspective, the evolution of agencies follows a predictable path, regardless of geographical location or market focus. Consequently, all five-person agencies tend to have key similarities; the same holds true for agencies boasting 200 or more team members.
For someone starting or running an agency, the foreknowledge of an agency’s expected growth provides the opportunity to make wise planning decisions. After all, it’s always easier to prepare for changes and trade-offs than to have them suddenly thrust at your agency’s door.
Whether your agency is in its infancy or you’ve already built somewhat of a legacy, you need all the information you can get to pivot correctly. Today, according to research, we are seeing a 38% reduction in average agency client revenue, so any chance to play Nostradamus is a significant opportunity.
Analyzing The Metamorphosis Of A Standard Agency
The top types of agency players include the brand-new agency with up to five employees, the mid-size agency of six to 12 employees and the more robust agency of 13 to 25 employees. Each agency arrangement has its own pros and cons, not to mention its possibilities for growth.
In the smallest of agencies, everyone wears many hats, including the owner. Not only is the agency founder at the helm, but she’s also directing everyone’s decisions. Rather than a flat hierarchy, all personnel get their marching orders from one boss. Although this might seem chaotic, it’s necessary; money is tight and resources are stretched thin.
A young agency of five or fewer people develops a desire to take any client, no matter the client’s needs, size, vision, etc. How else can it build a portfolio other than by saying “yes” without constraints? Anyone with marketing and advertising needs is a prospect, from the owner’s church buddy to a team member’s next-door neighbor. Efficiency? It doesn’t exist. It’s replaced by a sense of reinvention and survival.
Eventually, a small agency with grit and hustle will expand its employee base. As the sixth, seventh and eighth employees come into the picture, a skeleton process develops. Despite the tribal knowledge that’s verbally passed on, protocols become structured. Sure, the owner is still doing a lot of client work and working at the business, but now he’s also thinking about administrative needs that weren’t there before.
The closer the agency gets to a dozen employees, the more urgent the need for nonbillable positions like accountants or business managers. Now, this means the revenue producers are not just covering their own salaries -- they're covering also the salaries of others (including gig workers). Is it any wonder, then, that this size agency often has a gorilla client that accounts for 20% or more of revenue? Unfortunately, a gorilla is an asset and a liability. One misstep, and suddenly cash flow could slow to a trickle.
Let’s say an agency realizes it can expand into the 13-plus employee realm. It’s time to define a new, intentional norm. Without systems, the agency may break. Thus, the agency owner has to let go and become more prescriptive in the way the team is arranged. No longer is one person going to spend time in several developments -- she must choose accounts or the creative department. Ideally, everyone will fall into a box. Otherwise, processes will fall through the cracks.
Certainly, each person will wear multiple hats, but those hats will be better defined. A hierarchy will develop with department heads and a middle management layer. The owner can work on high-level client development and the day in, day out work can land on a trusted colleague’s to-do list. Surprisingly, this time period is emotionally charged. Longtime staffers may feel uncomfortable moving from a family to a team. And owners might not like the necessary disconnect between them and their employees.
At the same time, decision making at this third agency growth stage turns from “let’s all discuss this” to “I’m the owner, and here’s what I want us to do.” It’s a game shift, and some players feel frustrated because they don’t understand the rules. However, this type of top-down resoluteness keeps an aura of discipline and drives the team toward the owner’s preferred specialization and niches. And that brings us to the notion of the boutique agency.
Advice For Agencies With 13-Plus Employees
If you’ve weathered the years as an agency and your staff includes more than a dozen individuals, congratulations! You’re at the sweet spot. However, you need to make sure you’re making smart choices, including these three top considerations:
1. Avoid the gorilla.
Feel like your client-to-revenue ratio is unbalanced in favor of one business? Think about how you can create a niche so you don’t have a gorilla. Niche agencies can thrive in this segment as long as they don’t have a single client that could suddenly pull the rug from beneath them and force them into layoffs or bankruptcy. Remember the cautionary tale that happened to Express Scripts not long ago: Its shares plummeted because one of its largest clients publicly said it was discontinuing its Express Scripts contract.
2. Hook your local pond’s big fish.
Every agency has a local or regional pond. If you’re still focused on generalist deliverables, size up the biggest fish you have in your area and do your best to hook it. Sure, you’re basically geographically bound, but that doesn’t mean you can’t level up the size of your average client.
3. Master a niche for out-of-market clientele.
Interested in becoming a full-service integrated marketing agency not confined by geographic boundaries? Master a specialized niche so clients not in your backyard feel comfortable coming to you because you’re the best. Specialization areas include SEO, branding and digital media.
Not quite where you know you can be as an agency? Re-evaluate your organization’s systems and plans from top to bottom. Then, make the changes you need to enjoy all the fruits of being in a sweet spot.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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30e86cbda143c14fc7e7888ea3b7791f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/26/10-tried-and-true-workplace-strategies-that-improve-company-culture/?sh=3ff8aec2540f | 10 Tried-And-True Workplace Strategies That Improve Company Culture | 10 Tried-And-True Workplace Strategies That Improve Company Culture
At the heart of every successful organization is a thriving company culture. Your people are your greatest asset, and when they feel connected to a company's mission and values, they're much more likely to produce their best work and help the business grow.
It's important to remember that good company culture can't be faked or bought. Instead, you and your leadership team need to continually check its pulse and make sure that your engagement strategies are working. And if they're not, you need to try something new.
Not sure where to start in improving your organization? Take a lesson (or 10) from these Forbes Agency Council members.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council offer their best tips. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Unlimited Time Off
One thing we do that our staff loves is offer unlimited time off and don't follow a schedule. We simply state that if it is abused it will be changed. Our staff loves the fact they can work from home some days and take personal time when needed. As long as the work is completed and they plan accordingly, it works. It keeps the staff happy and energetic. - Justin Christianson, Conversion Fanatics
2. Innovation Day
We implement Innovation Day twice a year. Everyone drops their normal work and teams form to concept and prototype innovations that improve the lives and experiences of our customers and employees. On day two, the teams all demo their creations to a panel of judges and everyone votes for the best innovation. We have implemented over 50% of the innovations in our software and processes. - Michael Baker, dataxu.com
3. Encouraging Conversations At The Coffee Bar
Do you want your morning brew? You gotta walk for it. At Empower, coffee is centralized on the first floor. All three floors are forced to travel to a single coffee bar supplied by our beloved Coffee Emporium. The result? Lots of friendly banter during the morning rush and a 3 p.m. caffeine surge versus mindless refills siloed on each floor. We savor our cup of joe and talk with each other. - Ashley Walters, Empower MediaMarketing
4. Group Fitness Classes
Client pressures and deadlines often make communication between employees all work and no play. About once a month, we plan for a group Soul Cycle class. The 45 minutes spent on the bike with your team provides invaluable camaraderie and connection. Everybody looks forward to these days, and coming back to the office after an uplifting class does wonders for productivity. - Priscila Martinez, The Brand Agency
5. Perks Aligned With Company Values
A strong company culture aligns perks with company values. That way, the perks represent an extension of the company's underlying beliefs and not just something cool that helps with recruiting. For example, one of our values is "You Are Unique." As a perk, we give everyone a paid day off on their birthday to celebrate the fact that they are a unique miracle who should be celebrated. - Brett Farmiloe, Markitors Website Development
6. Work From Anywhere
Our team is full of explorers. Employees need flexibility in their work environment. A few employees have enjoyed working from Bali, Costa Rica, Berlin, etc. People establish their work hours up front so colleagues can know when to expect their team members to be online. Tools like Slack and Dropbox keep us connected and working productively. They return energized with lots of great stories. - Gina Michnowicz, Union+Webster
7. Company Volunteering
Company volunteering has helped my team improve morale, productivity and show deeper connections for everyone involved. Volunteering has allowed some of my employees the chance to collaborate with other employees that they may not see or talk to that much. Employees have the chance to reveal skills that they might not have had the opportunity to show at work, too. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
8. Swarm Days
We implemented a flexible remote work policy three years ago that has become core to our culture. But sometimes humans go nuts after spending too many consecutive days in a home office dungeon. To mitigate against this, we instituted "swarm days" every Thursday, where we all "swarm" to one physical office and hang out. It's the chaser to the remote work tequila shot and works and tastes great. - Chris Sanborn, Sanborn
9. Transparency And Empowerment
While we love perks, we are firm believers that perks do not equal culture. Given that, the most powerful tried-and-true strategy is transparency and empowerment. Share your successes and your failures, and look to everyone to help build a better company. It is just amazing how much good can come from putting these tenets into practice. - Michael Mothner, Wpromote
10. Ask People What They Want
If you want to improve your culture, make sure you are asking your people what they want. What do they want their work experience to be? How do they want to learn? How do they want to be rewarded and acknowledged? How do they want to grow? Once you start having these conversations, your culture will not only improve, it will bring an air of authenticity and improvement will be fluid. - Julie Veloz, IPG Mediabrands
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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74ad0dbb702c74f9d64d6027ac72158d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/27/nine-agency-pros-share-their-most-challenging-campaign-and-how-they-handled-it/ | Nine Agency Pros Share Their Most Challenging Campaign (And How They Handled It) | Nine Agency Pros Share Their Most Challenging Campaign (And How They Handled It)
Life at an agency can be exhilarating. Every client campaign presents a new opportunity to be creative. Of course, the flip side is that you're often starting from the ground up. You may have worked on similar campaigns in the past, but each one is unique and may present some challenges you've never encountered before.
We asked nine members of the Forbes Agency Council to share the most unique campaign they've ever worked on and how they faced the obstacles it brought. From building a fake brand to producing a pyrotechnic auto show spectacular, here's what they learned from these projects.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council weigh in. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Highlighting And Balancing Two Brands In One Campaign
I'm finalizing a long-form branded content video for a large retail chain in NYC. Our client brought in a partner to help subsidize the cost of the project. The challenge became to weave not one but both brands into the piece without it feeling like an ad for either. Our client trusted us to tell the story we were hired to tell. Both brands look like rock stars and our creative remained intact. - Kenny Eicher, The CSI Group
2. Creating Local SEO Campaigns For Medical Practices
Medical practices are often multiple businesses at the same location — a doctor's practice and a retail store. Creating unique local listings for the practicing physicians, in addition to the retail store listing, makes it hard to establish a brand presence. These campaigns we ran required extreme organization, attention to detail and a strategy more advanced than citation building. - Aaron Henry, FOUNDRY512
3. Creating 24/7 Media Materials For A 600-Mile Peace Walk
One of the most unique campaigns we have worked on was for a client walking 600 miles from London to Geneva to embody a message of peace for the Syrian people. The challenge: Our team came in after she had already started her walk. We overcame this challenge by incorporating our Online Press Kit 24/7 technology, which allowed our whole team and the media to access our constantly updated content. - Drew Gerber, Wasabi Publicity, Inc.
4. Impressing A Jaded Media Audience
When we launched a digital camera for a global brand, we needed to impress the media who had "been there, done that." To demonstrate the camera's high performance under different conditions, we took them on a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon, on a race course with a professional driver and finally to a suite in the Palms with a full-size basketball court and trick basketball team. - Jenni Smith, EGR International
5. Building A New (Fake) Brand From Scratch
Jamba Juice found out that Ellen DeGeneres and Adele were going to prank one of its locations with a made-up brand called Swishy Chug. We only had eight hours to create a whole new brand, including a campaign with assets including a webpage, coupons, etc. Planning is great, but sometimes you just have to act. In this case, we were lucky to have a client ready to take a risk and move quickly. - Dan Golden, Be Found Online
6. Standing Out During A Highly Competitive Tourism Season
We helped Visit Syracuse, a destination known for the snowiest winters on record, build demand during this notorious season. The “Official Home of Winter” humorously positioned them as a fun destination, reaching internal stakeholders and external visitors with a simple message: Syracuse owns winter, has fun with it and is proud of it. - Nicole Mahoney, Break the Ice Media
7. Getting Loyal Consumers To Share Random Content
One big campaign I worked on was trying to increase market share for Diet Mountain Dew by creating really random videos to increase brand awareness. It was a huge challenge and was massively successful by engaging our most loyal consumers, who shared the content all over the internet. The key to the success was to focus on the loyal consumers and have them share. - Korey McMahon, McMahon Marketing
8. Producing A Complex, Tech-Heavy Launch Event In 18 Hours
In 2017, my team launched the fastest street-legal drag production car for Dodge during the NY Auto Show. With a short load-in window of 18 hours, an impossible task for most, we strategically pre-programmed lighting and A/V, allowing us to complete this extremely complex production. Pier 94 on the Hudson River transformed into a stage with a drag strip, pyrotechnics, hero cars and celeb guests. - Scott Kellner, GPJ Experience Marketing
9. Selling Our Own Brand
One of the toughest campaigns to manage is a company rebrand because, for it to work, everyone in the organization has to feel ownership. For our recent repositioning, we had several internal teams develop and pitch ideas, with an iterative review process that helped us land on the strongest option. In the end, the teams all felt vested because they contributed to the process. - Chris Cavanaugh, Freeman
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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3c146b0261af88d83ce3d190bf6c05ab | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/28/how-to-propel-the-future-of-womens-leadership/ | How To Propel The Future Of Women's Leadership | How To Propel The Future Of Women's Leadership
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For the past five years, I have been the CEO of an answering services company. During that time, I’ve experienced a lot of growth, and with that, the need to promote a lot of people to leadership positions. The first promotion I had to make was for Vice President of Operations, and I chose to promote a woman to that role.
This decision was made not just because I understand that women need the opportunities now, more than ever, in order to grow professionally and demand an equal claim to men in the workplace. But this person genuinely deserved the position. She is hardworking, intelligent and always one step ahead of the problem she saw coming in the first place. I tell you this not to brag, but to make pertinent a few of my opinions regarding female leadership in the workplace and how we can ensure that the future really is equal.
There Are Plenty Of Women Overlooked For Leadership Positions
I recently read a column about Sallie Krawcheck’s Own It: The Power of Women at Work, and something really struck me: “To empower women, power must be given to them.” It’s not enough to just say, “Give women more leadership roles,” or “Let’s bridge the wage gap.” More leadership and senior roles need to be given to qualified women in order to actually empower them.
According to a study conducted by Columbia University, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, both male and female hiring managers were two times more likely to choose male candidates for mathematics and science careers over female candidates when all applicants had equal skills. Further, when an applicant who performed worse on a test was chosen over an applicant that performed better, two-thirds of the time the chosen candidate was a man.
According to Harvard Business Review, this is due to unconscious bias. Iris Bohnet, director of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, said: “Seeing is believing. If we don’t see male kindergarten teachers or female engineers we don’t naturally associate women and men with those jobs, and we apply different standards."
So, how can we remedy this issue when it comes to hiring, promoting and the like? Here are a few things recommended in that same article:
• Be aware of hiring prejudices and how they occur.
• Better educate and train managers on unconscious biases.
• Test future job performance via work sample tests.
• Simplify and standardize the hiring process.
To help simplify and standardize the hiring process, I propose companies do the following:
• Provide unbiased work samples to see how effectively candidates interact with the work material.
• Use standard questions in your interviews.
• Try to be conscious of the candidate's "likability." Someone you may feel a connection to may not be the most qualified person for the job.
• Go into blind interviews. Not knowing the identity of the person you are about to interview can keep you barred off from preconceived judgments on race, gender or any other bias you may have.
Here’s what these changes can lead to:
A Trend In Actual Female Empowerment
Instead of being all talk, actually giving women leadership positions will start a snowball effect that will lead to more women being promoted to senior roles. I’m not saying to promote a lesser candidate just because she’s a woman, but give the women who deserve these positions a legitimate chance — maybe they've never been given a real chance before. That is the difference between what we’ve been doing and what we’re now doing. We need to actually consider women for these jobs.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor:
• Only 26% of people employed in computer and mathematical occupations are women
• 57% of women participate in the labor force
• Women who worked full-time, year-round in 2014, earned on average 78.6% of men’s median annual earnings
Inspiration For Other Women To Dream Bigger
With hard work, diligence, intelligence and education come rewards of seniority within businesses and organizations. By giving executive-level jobs to women who deserve them, we are showing younger women and working women that this idea of success is possible. And when we know that something is actually possible, we can start planning a course of action to achieve our dreams.
It’s one thing to be aligned with the movement of empowering women, but it’s another to really implement these things in your everyday life. I’m talking to all business owners and managers out there. Are you considering all qualified candidates regardless of gender for positions that need filling? We all need to start practicing a lot more of what we preach. I don’t claim to be the perfect leader, nor would I give a job to an undeserving candidate, regardless of gender. But we do need to be conscious of our intentions and motivations when it comes to these types of issues in our everyday lives and in our work lives.
We’re still a long way away from equality in the workplace. Let’s all dedicate ourselves to empowering women and keeping our workplaces fair.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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2ceea86fb0b5d6d434f162923eaec989 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/03/30/four-trends-poised-to-shake-up-digital-marketing-in-2018/ | Four Trends Poised To Shake Up Digital Marketing In 2018 | Four Trends Poised To Shake Up Digital Marketing In 2018
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Looking back, several incredible advancements changed the way marketers operated in 2017.
Automation started to crawl and then rose to its feet and took off in a sprint. Politics got heated, and brands chose sides, with everyone from Apple to mom-and-pop stores weighing in on President Donald Trump's immigration ban. Livestreams became commonplace, coinciding with a rise in mobile user experiences. Google read the tea leaves, rolling out a mobile-first index that emphasizes mobile content more than ever before.
While we cannot afford to forget the lessons of yesteryear, there are numerous new challenges and opportunities shaking things up in 2018. To stay ahead of the game this year, marketers need to embrace trends such as growth hacking, voice control and programmatic marketing.
Beyond the inevitable continuation of influencer marketing's rise, there are a number of trends primed to change marketing for the better in 2018:
1. Growth Hacking
Marketers already work with everyone in the office, but growth hacking has transformed cooperation from a duty to a necessity. By rapidly experimenting across product development and marketing channels, companies are able to identify the most efficient ways to grow. Marketers can team up with developers, designers and other departments to collect the targeting data necessary to design marketing experiences that capture customer attention.
Larger companies like Uber, Dropbox and Airbnb have blown up using this technique. When you join Dropbox, you’re given a free gigabyte of space. If you want additional free space, you simply need to convince your friends to join the service using a link specific to your account. Your friend gets a free gigabyte of space for using that link, Dropbox gives you another free gigabyte of space, and Dropbox gains yet another user. It’s a win-win-win scenario.
I think 2018 will be the year smaller companies adopt a similar approach. This is largely because tools have emerged that make growth hacking possible without a strong coding background. Companies that don’t have the budget for growth hacking can find more affordable options by conducting some research.
2. Programmatic Marketing
Most marketers have heard of programmatic marketing at this point, but few know how to do it well. That will change by the end of this year, particularly for B2B companies.
New exchanges for programmatic are on the rise. Many long-term holdouts, such as LinkedIn, have begun to offer improved options for targeting audiences. Smaller publishers still struggle to match the targeting capabilities of the big fish, but more accessible tools mean programmatic literacy will become essential.
Considering some reports suggest that programmatic could account for more than 80% of all advertising by 2019, it's obviously in for a big 2018. We now have the ability to have automated advertisements adjust across the internet. This includes smart TVs, Pandora, Facebook, Google and countless other avenues. These ads can use artificial intelligence to fine-tune themselves based on what works and what doesn't.
3. Facebook’s Real-World Tools
Digital marketing mostly lives online, but Facebook (full disclosure: my company is part of Facebook's Small Business Council) is providing tools that will take the physical world by storm. Store visits, for instance, allows companies with multiple locations to easily promote their businesses to people in the area. We’ve started to use this tool to manage advertising for about 30 Dairy Queen locations along the west coast, sparking much higher ROI conversions than usual.
Facebook has also rolled out an offline conversions tool, which helps companies see which transactions in physical locations stem from people engaging with Facebook ads. This eliminates any guesswork related to advertising ROI, allowing you to see exactly how much business your online ads generate.
Google is piloting a service that allows large stores to track conversions based on data from AdWords and store visits, though it’s not the only company to offer something like this. For instance, Zenreach empowers smaller operations to quickly collect customer data that they can later use to reengage those same shoppers.
4. Voice Control
Amazon Alexa and Google Home have truly arrived. As more consumers become comfortable hosting always-on microphones in their houses, marketers will soon have opportunities to take advantage of this unprecedented access.
How can your brand leverage voice? Think about natural questions your customers might have, and find ways to capitalize on them. For example, Tide has created an Alexa skill that enables people to ask the device how to remove various stains. When someone asks how to remove a pesky wine stain, Alexa might toss in a subtle Tide recommendation. Think about the ways people might use voice control, and work to deliver solutions.
Voice control will complicate some aspects of marketing, particularly search engine optimization. When you say, “Hey Alexa, I need new deodorant,” it’s going to go ahead and send you the first option to show up in a quick search. The brands that pay to be at the top of those search results will likely see an uptick in business. It’s similar to the candy bars and soft drinks we see when we check out at grocery stores — those companies pay for that premier placement. I suspect we’ll see more companies investing in voice control as a result.
Undoubtedly, a few surprise trends will make waves before the end of 2018. While it’s impossible to predict everything in the fast and frenzied marketing climate, these four trends are likely to change things. By staying on top of these trends, digital marketers can get a head start on the marketing world of tomorrow long before it comes.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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358706459e77a81e320bd41210cfcb96 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/06/three-trends-to-follow-to-reach-your-hispanic-audience-with-meaningful-campaigns/ | Three Trends To Follow To Reach Your Hispanic Audience With Meaningful Campaigns | Three Trends To Follow To Reach Your Hispanic Audience With Meaningful Campaigns
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Advertising campaigns geared toward Hispanics can often fall into a familiar trap, relying too heavily on overused tropes such as a love for soccer and the importance of family in Latinx culture. Lately, however, I have observed that brands are beginning to shift their focus when targeting their Hispanic audiences, placing it on particular passion points instead of the most general elements of Hispanic culture. This will result in a landscape where advertisers spend more time on developing meaningful campaigns that really speak to Hispanic audiences, instead of merely ticking a few boxes and repurposing old content.
If your brand or your clients are looking to create meaningful campaigns for this audience, here are three trends on the horizon to consider.
1. Brands will no longer hesitate to embrace multicultural advertising campaigns.
Taking a multicultural approach can pay significant dividends, especially when it comes to ensuring continued cultural relevancy and campaigns that will stick in people’s minds. After all, which campaign are you more likely to remember -- the generic one that made a broad statement without saying something particularly meaningful or the campaign that made a concerted effort to focus in on your culture?
When creating multicultural campaigns, it’s important for brands to develop them with the audience in mind, instead of simply adapting existing ones. Doing so will allow brands to embrace aspects of Hispanic culture in their advertising from the get-go, which will draw in audiences and allow the bond between brands and Hispanics to flourish.
2. Brands will move from generic insights to truly understanding their audience.
You've probably heard that Hispanics tend to be more family-oriented than other demographics. But what does this really mean? Having these generic insights will no longer cut it -- instead, in order to create truly engaging content, brands will have to truly understand the dynamics and complexities of Hispanic audiences.
For example, exploring the relationship between family and product purchases, a study by Viant found that Hispanics are 74% more likely to be influenced by their children to buy a product as compared to non-Hispanics. From a brand perspective, this information is important because it indicates where they should be spending the most effort.
Brands need to understand the specific networks within their chosen target audience in order to be able to create and target advertising accordingly -- this knowledge only comes from in-depth analysis. Once brands are able to identify the key individuals within families, they can then “surround” the buyer by creating an in-family network of influencers, all through a word-of-mouth ecosystem.
3. The key generation will be the millennials.
Millennials, millennials, millennials. Millennials are important. Who knew? Sarcasm aside, not all millennials were created equal. For some reason, brands tend to focus on millennials as a uniform group with common interests and shopping habits. This isn’t strictly true, especially if one takes into account other demographic factors such as race, socioeconomic status and location.
In fact, millennials are one of the most multicultural groups out there, with 42% of the 75 million millennials in the U.S. identifying as multicultural. On top of that, millennials make up 40% of the Hispanic population -- which means that if advertisers are truly serious about targeting Hispanics, they should also be tailoring their message to appeal to the millennials amongst them.
It’s no big secret that millennials have a significant amount of purchasing power and can be extremely loyal to the brands they support. But brands have to earn that loyalty, and the only way to do that is by proving that they understand the nuances of what it means to be a Hispanic millennial living in the U.S.
In order for brands to achieve these three things, there must be diversity at all levels of the organization, from the consumer all the way to the advertiser. Brands that neglect diversity risk creating campaigns that are irrelevant at best and insensitive at worst. Brands can only flourish in the Hispanic space when the team creating the campaigns is as diverse as the people it is trying to reach.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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28708a796c34d8b91c38f5751122f27b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/09/how-to-level-up-your-agency-and-gear-up-for-growth/ | How To Level Up Your Agency And Gear Up For Growth | How To Level Up Your Agency And Gear Up For Growth
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Doubling your agency’s size from roughly 35 employees to 65 employees serves as the leveling-up stage where you take on bigger and better clients (and often better employees to serve them). As an owner, you’re no longer in the weeds like you might have been with 12 to 35 employees. Instead, your main focuses are business development and finance.
In my experience, business development is about making the C-level connections that drive business. It might occasionally require “roughing it” on the golf course or riding waves with an eclectic client, but keep an eye on the big picture: According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses created two-thirds of the jobs added in the last five years. You’re doing important work out there on the ninth hole.
Sharing The Leadership Load
When your agency reaches the 35-to-65-person stage, owners must be OK with being removed from the day-to-day decision-making loop. Your former department heads will probably become vice presidents to make room for more skilled and senior employees underneath them.
While client satisfaction and retention remain important, a variety of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) will move into the spotlight. A team with diverse backgrounds and expertise will be especially driven by numbers, and you’ll often see incentive pay (likely in the form of a bonus program) directly tied to KPIs.
Along with more rigid compensation structures, scaling up to the 35-to-65 stage requires structured responsibilities, and the agency becomes almost like a factory in terms of how jobs are brought in and where they’re assigned to from there. This doesn’t mean saying goodbye to creativity; it means, instead, that onboarding work and accomplishing it on time (and on budget) must now become systematic.
Putting Your Eggs In Multiple Baskets
Ramping up your agency means even more risk when it comes to relying on the one or two “gorilla” clients in your net that essentially carry the company. As you can imagine, payroll for that 65-person team is a hefty expenditure, as are the increased monthly costs associated with growth (like a bigger office and extra materials).
Developing and executing a business strategy takes valuable time that you don’t have when a gorilla walks out. Instead of waiting for a big client to leave -- and don’t pretend for a second that it couldn’t happen to you -- constantly vet new business so you’re prepared if your behemoth should exit the building.
To encourage all clients to stay with you as long as possible, make sure your employees are knockout performers. When your agency had fewer than 35 employees, it was easier to keep somewhat mediocre performers to avoid going through what can be a lengthy hiring and training process. At 65 employees, people who are unable to hit their numbers will have to go. You might have more cash flow, but when a client leaves, you’ll have to cut staff quickly to maintain the proper ratio.
Growth isn’t always easy, but there’s a definite path to follow to achieve it. To go from a 12-employee to 35-employee agency and then to one that’s around double the size, follow these steps carefully:
Master your niche.
In the 35-to-65 range, your marketing is extremely targeted toward the big clients in your vertical. A wide scope of operations isn’t what gets you to this size -- specific case studies and client testimonials in certain categories will win over the big clients.
Create two tiers.
Once you’ve found your niche, your clients will fall into one of two tiers. Category A clients will make up just 20% of your clients but drive 80% of your revenue. The remaining 80% of clients fall into Category B -- these are clients that bring in 20% of net profit. As you increase in size, you must strive to drop B clients in favor of A clients. In the same vein, you need to ensure you’re replacing B employees with A employees.
Decide what you want to be.
This is your agency, and only you should decide what you want it to be. Why did you start it in the first place? Where do you want it to go? Discern how you’d like for the business to serve you, your employees, clients and the community at large. These are all factors in creating the agency that’s right for you.
Internalize this idea: What’s right for you is best.
Bigger might have typically been better back in the Mad Men days, but that’s no longer the case. I’m privy to the financials of all agencies I work with at Agency Management Institute, and some of the most profitable are the smallest, while conversely, some bigger agencies are struggling. The point is that you can make a good living no matter how big you build a business.
Before you go running after growth for its own sake, make sure you can sustain it. Start by specializing in the industry where your biggest clients live, and figure out what you can do to land others like them. Separate your clients into tiers, and focus your time and energy on finding more that fit into the top tier. While going through this process, make sure you don’t lose sight of what you want your agency to become. It’s your ship, and only you can steer it.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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77a014e0bc1dd9b4ea68a2f285659bfe | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/10/10-brainstorming-strategies-that-work/?sh=58afc9895da7 | 10 Brainstorming Strategies That Work | 10 Brainstorming Strategies That Work
Every team needs a good brainstorming session to come up with potential solutions to their most pressing business issues. In most cases, that issue is how to tackle a project, but what happens when you need to completely overhaul an existing business process?
A panel of 10 Forbes Agency Council members were asked to share their best tips for brainstorming new approaches to these standard practices. Here's what they had to say.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council offer their best tips. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Ask Questions And Don't Rush Your Solutions
As we age and establish routines, we rarely stop to ask if those are still the right things to be doing. Start by asking questions about why a meeting is needed or if a process is still relevant. Challenge the team to clarify the business problem or opportunity you are trying to address. Then push the team to identify all the questions that need to be asked in order to find the best solution. - Lisa Gearhart, St. John & Partners (SJ&P)
2. Break Things Down To A Granular Level
Before you even approach a new process, you should do the following: State the problem, give the problem some supporting evidence (when did it last happen, which client complained about it, etc.), list as many potential solutions to each case, look over the solutions with your team to see if they are rational and turn them into actionable items. - Omar Jenblat, BusySeed
3. Get All Hands On Deck
From time to time, I like to call an "all hands on deck" meeting. With the help of a whiteboard, I ask team members from different disciplines to weigh in on something that may or may not be their field of expertise. No answer is wrong and no comment goes unnoted. This method allows us to have different perspectives. - Ricardo Casas, Fahrenheit Marketing
4. Find A Fresh Set Of Eyes
Over time, businesses change. People, products and services come and go. Yet the processes more often than not stay the same. Often, it can take a fresh set of eyes to recognize whether the existing processes are still adequate or improvement is needed. Utilize the newer people in your organization to look at your processes on a regular basis to determine what, if anything, can be improved. - Cash Miller, Titan Web Marketing Solutions
5. Accommodate For Different Styles Of Brainstorming
A typical "brainstorming" involves gathering everyone in a room to throw ideas around and conclude the session with some that stick. Done, resolved, right? Nope. I learned from reading the book Quiet by Susan Cain that only extroverts participate. Introverts need some quiet time to process before they contribute. I allow people to add notes or send in an email with their ideas after the session. - Beth Noymer Levine, SmartMouth Communications
6. Apply Structure
Brainstorms without structure can turn into interesting discussions, but can also leave participants without any clear direction at the end. Schedule a meeting with measurable outcomes. Identify the topics that need to be discussed, what is needed for the discussion, and then apply a time limit. Structured brainstorms breed more creativity and avoid the pitfalls of sidebars and diversions. - Stefan Pollack, The Pollack PR Marketing Group
7. Identify Your 'North Star'
Have an end goal and keep a time cap. Brainstorming new approaches is great but can easily get derailed by personal anecdotes. By establishing the end goal at the forefront (“We are here to solve X”), this North Star can always be pointed to if the conversation is getting off track. Keeping a time cap — say, 30 minutes — also increases the urgency to help you stay focused on your end goal. - Bernard May, National Positions
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
8. Get Out Of The Office
Do it away from the office. Being in the same environment with the same people so often can exacerbate the status quo and breed complacency. Hold an off-site company-wide happy hour, group lunch or anything that will keep your staff energized and thinking in new, creative ways. - Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
9. Get Anonymous Feedback
Examine how things are being done and how you can improve. Are there processes that could be done more efficiently? Avoid groupthink by asking for anonymous feedback from your team. Listen to what each one of your employees thinks about a particular business practice. After picking the best ideas, talk in a group setting to see which ideas are most efficient and realistic to start implementing. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
10. Find A Tool That Helps You Become Process-Driven
Brainstorming sessions often get stuck in the 'cloud' that they form, hardly ever being utilized to its best ability following a meeting. In an industry driven by fast-paced deadlines and task-oriented business practices, find a process-driven platform, such as Salesforce, that can establish and organize your data. - Jennifer Wentzo, coded{PR}
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dc0b620be0c051a27f7caef459961cd3 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/11/sorry-blockchain-tackling-the-ad-fraud-problem-in-a-tech-driven-world/ | Sorry, Blockchain: Tackling The Ad-Fraud Problem In A Tech-Driven World | Sorry, Blockchain: Tackling The Ad-Fraud Problem In A Tech-Driven World
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Investors love disruption because it often means high valuation in a young startup. The chance to get in on the ground floor of a disruptive company is intriguing because a relatively small input of venture capital can yield extraordinary returns if the business model takes a truly unique approach to doing business. 2018 is turning out to be the year of the blockchain with a predicted $2.1 billion being spent on the potential solutions powered by the technology.
What Is Blockchain? A blockchain is an immutable, distributed ledger that tracks information, similar to a spreadsheet. The key difference is that every participant in a blockchain has a copy of the spreadsheet, not just one third-party intermediary. So instead of relying on a bank to verify a money transfer, a process which often takes several days, a blockchain ledger can verify with near certainty much faster and often cheaper. It is nearly impossible to corrupt a blockchain because all participants have an instantly updated copy of the ledger. Although the rise of quantum computers poses a threat to the security of the blockchain, if a person tries to falsify data, the blockchain will notice the discrepancy, compare that to all other existing ledgers and nullify the invalid input automatically. Blockchain And Ad Fraud As blockchain applications are explored, there has been a lot of excitement about the potential of fighting ad fraud. With over $7 billion wasted per year in digital advertising, the industry is ripe for a solution. The ad-fraud problem comes from non-human bot traffic. When a bot scans an advertisement, the company that placed the ad pays for that view even though it wasn't a real person. In effect, they're paying money for an ad without anyone on the other side viewing it. With such a widespread and growing problem, startups are hoping to use the blockchain to verify and guarantee that a person who views an ad is, in fact, a real person. Some startups are even creating platforms that would pay a small sum of money to the person watching an ad for their time through microtransactions. The issue with this model is it will initially attract a legitimate audience of early adopters but will most likely turn into a haven for people gaming the system by driving up transactions to earn the reward — or in this model, view the ads. My company has looked at how the blockchain can offer value in the ad tech space, and the solutions with the most potential tend to be focused on using smart contracts between vendors. A lot of the news you see around blockchain and ad tech offers the technology as a solution for the multibillion-dollar ad fraud problem plaguing the digital advertising industry. The blockchain, at its core, is a database. This decentralized database has some incredible uses, but it is still a database. Machine learning, on the other hand, is a perfect use case for identifying and potentially stopping ad fraud. The use of machine learning has recently accelerated due to the increase in computer processing power and the advances in deep learning algorithms. These algorithms can identify and analyze patterns in large datasets and begin to identify the unique patterns in the data. I still cannot find a use with the blockchain to match the analysis and pattern recognition power of machine learning. The digital advertising industry is powered by programmatic advertising that is delivered in a nearly 100-millisecond window. When a website or app loads, a large group of tech partners need to auction off the advertisement space and get an ad in front of the visitor. This incredibly brief window of time is where ad fraud can be prevented. The challenge advertisers and publishers have faced is that there's no technology available to use machine learning in a way that will evaluate every advertising opportunity in the short timeframe of the 100 milliseconds programmatic auction. I think this is the next big growth opportunity in the programmatic space. My team and I have been focused on trying to solve the issue of using machine learning to prevent, rather than just identify, ad fraud. In my opinion, the blockchain is not currently suited to analyze for fraud like machine learning, especially in the 100-millisecond, high QPS (Queries Per Second) environment of programmatic advertising lives. I do believe there are companies doing exciting things around smart contracts between individual partners to ensure everyone adheres to the terms of an advertising campaign, but to say blockchain will prevent fraud is an ambitious claim at the moment. I think it's too early to see how blockchain will affect the way business is done, but it's clear that this technology is here to stay. Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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a213793ada023b6e7db1737e8782c704 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/18/hybrid-content-opportunities-are-changing-the-media-landscape/ | Hybrid Content Opportunities Are Changing The Media Landscape | Hybrid Content Opportunities Are Changing The Media Landscape
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There’s no denying that the media landscape is rapidly changing, increasingly blurring the lines between paid, owned and earned media. These three broad categories cover all media: paid media, which is advertising; owned media, which includes marketing assets like a website, blog and podcast; and earned media, which is driven by public relations efforts.
Each type of media has specific and distinct advantages and disadvantages. Paid media allows you to control your own message. As long as you stay within certain parameters, you can say whatever you want, however you want. The disadvantage is that people have grown more immune to advertising and, therefore, they may be skeptical of a claim that your face cream will make them look 20 years younger in just four weeks.
Truthfully, this is also the case with owned media. When a potential client who is not already familiar with your brand visits your website, they’ll likely take what you say with a grain of salt. Still, the beauty of owned media lies in the power it gives you to control the message.
On the other hand, nothing builds credibility and awareness for your brand or product like PR. We call it “earned media” because you’ve earned the praise of a respected authority (versus merely tooting your own horn), and it can be much more credible. When a brand or person, who is viewed as credible and loved, talks about how wonderful your brand or product is, people take notice. However, there are disadvantages here too, as earned media is often more difficult to acquire and doesn't allow you to entirely control the message that's delivered.
The Hybrid Model
What’s great about the current media landscape is the emergence of a new category which blends the advantages of all three media types. This hybrid approach allows some credibility mojo to rub off on you and your business, while also granting a measure of control over your own message.
More and more media outlets are requesting content development from our clients, which is published or aired as “sponsored” or “partner” content. This is an amazing opportunity because we get to be the journalist covering our own brands. And as long as you’re providing value to the media outlet's readers, viewers and listeners, you have leeway when it comes to branding and messaging.
This hybrid model is why, at our agency, we hire writers who have worked as journalists at some point in their careers. You have to be two-headed in the PR game -- able to think like a journalist and as a marketer at the same time, which is no easy feat. But if you can pull it off, you’ll have the benefits of control and credibility.
Securing Effective Sponsored And Partner Content
For brands and agencies, the best way to go about finding these opportunities is to approach the media outlets you’d like to be featured in to see what types of sponsorship or partnership opportunities they might offer. These departments are generally different than the editorial team.
Be aware that even though you’ll pay for these types of hybrid opportunities, you won’t have total control. Much like with editorial, you’ll still need to provide real value to the outlet’s audience. The best practice for remaining authentic is to approach the opportunity just like you would with earned media -- not advertising. Avoid being too promotional. Instead, provide valuable content that will make a difference for the outlet’s audience.
In addition, some broadcast media outlets offer in-studio segment sponsorships. These types of media opportunities provide control over your message as well as credibility because your partnership with a brand gives audiences the assumption that you’ve been vetted by them. In-studio segment sponsorships also give you a chance to practice your sound bites on-camera and are often more cost-effective than hiring someone to shoot a professional video for you.
These hybrid, in-studio opportunities look much like a regular interview. The only difference is that the host will make it clear that the segment is sponsored by you. The interviews are mutually beneficial as they provide a great revenue stream for the media outlet and a chance for you to get your content and message in front of their audience.
In this brave new world of marketing, there are many opportunities to let the world know what you and your brand stand for. You have tried-and-true earned, owned and paid media efforts, as well as these emerging hybrid opportunities that can open up new doors for you and your business.
In order to powerfully navigate this landscape, it’s more important now than ever to know where you're heading as a brand and which media opportunities are best for your journey.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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cc3aefa6fe0e01d2ac88f69f342f2060 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/23/you-must-treat-your-agency-like-a-client-to-truly-define-it/ | You Must Treat Your Agency Like A Client To Truly Define It | You Must Treat Your Agency Like A Client To Truly Define It
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In a saturated market of lookalikes, potential clients don’t want to hire the same agency everyone else is hiring; they want something different. To stand out and provide that experience to its clientele, an agency's leaders must identify what makes their point of view special and then use that differentiator to win new business.
When our agency first began this process, we looked back to past experiences with clients and the common threads of those interactions. We discovered that we often helped clients optimize their marketing spend and focus on a different target audience than they thought they needed. The more we realized how effective this approach had become, the more we learned to match our clients’ return on investment to it. Eventually, that unique point of view led to our new tagline, "Create a love affair with your customer," which tells clients exactly how we can help in ways no one else can.
Dare to be different.
Agencies might provide similar services, but no two agencies are interchangeable. Consider this: If your agency exchanged logos with another, would anyone notice the difference? If not, you probably haven’t established the right point of view, which could be costing your business clients -- as well as preventing your agency from owning its niche.
None of us want to compete on price alone, however. “The cheap agency” is not a differentiator anyone covets. To provide the best service for a fair price, agencies must take a stand on what they do well and what they believe in.
Sometimes, that means placing clients’ needs ahead of yours. No agency can serve every client equally well. By developing a standout point of view, agencies will naturally put off clients who disagree with that stance but attract and retain clients whose philosophies match their own. Just like consumers prefer brands that align with their political beliefs and social causes, people who hire agencies prefer to work with others who think like they do.
Try to please everyone, and you will please no one. Take a stand, and you will lose a few deals, but the remaining opportunities will become infinitely more valuable.
Follow these strategies to develop an exclusive point of view (POV) for your agency:
1. Determine what works, and keep it up.
Discover what you know about your agency by reviewing past client meetings, successful partnerships, unsuccessful partnerships, productive conversations and data. What do you do well? Which strategies repeatedly work best? What do clients like about doing business with your organization?
Maybe you ensure a staffer stays on-site with a client for a while to quickly respond to issues. Maybe you only serve clients in a specific niche. Whatever works for you, drill down to discover the root of that strategy, and then use that information to inform your POV.
2. A company’s uniqueness should be its foundation.
All communication, marketing material and client interaction should lead back to the POV at the heart of your company. Like a mission statement or set of company values, your POV defines who you are. Anyone should be able to pick up a piece of collateral, read a thought leadership article or speak to someone at your agency and immediately know what you believe.
After we discovered our company's own POV -- optimizing spend and retargeting for an audience -- those differentiators became the crux of every interaction we had. Even companies in other industries, like Mozilla, have discovered the value of a strong POV. Though once an obscure brand, Mozilla today echoes the sentiments of its core users by prioritizing online privacy. Most Chrome users might not switch to Mozilla Firefox, but users of Mozilla’s product wouldn’t trust their online privacy to anyone else.
3. Never stray from the path.
Your POV -- your cornerstone -- dictates everything your company does, from its discovery forward. Change that POV on a whim or build something slightly off-base, and the whole structure collapses.
Once you define your POV, people begin to expect everything at your agency to reflect it. Some will turn away, but employees and prospects who share your vision will become more firmly committed to your agency over all others. Betray that ideal, and your loyalists disappear. Beyond that, the prospects you pursue by sacrificing your POV will also see you flip-flop and question your trustworthiness.
I don’t just write articles like this one. I’ve published a book, created a regular blog and launched a consistent podcast. People who consume my content know what I’m about. If I were to change my tune when trying to land a major deal, not only would my inconsistency turn off that new client, but my existing audience would also wonder whether I truly mean what I say.
4. Rebuild your website to match.
No matter how specific your niche or POV, another agency will likely offer something similar. Don’t avoid this truth; embrace it.
Rather than keep a generic website that tries to appeal to the widest audience possible, redesign your online presence to appeal primarily to the target demographic that empathizes with your POV. Talk about what you believe online, even if it turns some people off. Be open about the types of clients you serve, even if that excludes some potentially lucrative prospects. Make it easy for people to browse your site and understand your agency.
The clearer your POV, the more your agency will stand out. Some people might not like it -- that's good. If your POV is authentic, you would’ve struggled to meet the needs of those clients anyway. By understanding what makes your agency special, you can optimize your client intake, deliver better results and build a brand that can weather any storm.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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eff87014842319b0ed39f9cddee3ab0b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/24/eight-ways-a-young-agency-can-improve-growth-and-revenue/?sh=74930f2a595b | Eight Ways A Young Agency Can Improve Growth -- And Revenue | Eight Ways A Young Agency Can Improve Growth -- And Revenue
With 61% of marketers feeling like their marketing strategy works, according to a report on Hubspot, there are plenty of business opportunities available for the right digital agencies. From integrating a social media presence to achieving success in the mobile arena, your agency has the potential to transform these businesses into thriving entities that excel in the digital space. But, are you thriving in the same way?
As a new agency, it can be difficult to get a foothold with new clients and reach the success levels you have set for yourself. Reaching high revenue marks, and becoming an agency that companies look to for their digital marketing needs, requires a real knack.
That’s why eight members of Forbes Agency Council have shared their tips for newbie agency owners that helped take their business over the million-dollar revenue mark and achieve long-term success. Here is what they had to say:
Members share some ways you can improve your agency's growth. Photos courtesy of the individual members
1. Find The Right Clients
Early on, it’s important to find the right clients and avoid the wrong ones. Choosing clients and projects that are rewarding both strategically and financially will enable you to hire a talented team, improve your credibility and finance your growth. Working with the wrong clients can put you out of business. - K.J. Prince, Double Top
2. Don’t Bleed Your Company Dry
Only plan on paying yourself the amount you need to live. The biggest mistake most agency owners make is to live inside their company and bleed it dry. I wasn’t making any money until we hit $1 million in revenue. I gave myself a modest salary, took $500,000 from my partner, and didn’t take a dollar until I paid him back and also had $250,000 in the bank. There were actually three employees that made more than me. - Josh Sample, Drive Social Media
3. Lead By Example
Stay humble and always remember the tone is set from the top: You cannot expect staff members to put in their best effort if their leader doesn't lead by example. “Work hard and play hard” is a mantra that you need to get used to. - Sean-Patrick Hillman, hillSTORY Marketing
4. Delegate Management Duties
Remember why you got into this business. If you're a creative, find someone who understands business who can run the agency for you, so you can concentrate on what you really love to do. - Courtney Smith Kramer, purematter
5. Choose Carefully Who You Work With
It's all about the people you choose to work with. When you start your own firm, it's easy to think it's all about you; however, the moment your name goes on the door, your clients, peers and referral sources start looking at you differently. They look at your ability to put the right people and skills around you to enable you to scale. - Jeff Majtyka, Ellipsis
6. Focus On The User Experience
Focus on the user experience of your customer, with every touch point with your brand considered. This will create a cohesive and consistent experience that effectively establishes and maintains an emotional connection with your customers. This will also allow you to discover areas of improvement in the experience your customers have with your brand products, services or support. - Anthony Pitassi, Merchant Centric
Read more in Transformational Experiences: The Key To Building Lasting Relationships
7. Pay Attention To What Your Clients Value
Be client-centric and listen carefully to learn what your clients value. Develop an effective network that can help you build strong and lasting relationships. - Chris Bailey, Bailey Brand Consulting
8. Become A Trusted Resource
Stay focused on serving, and replicating, your core customers. Become a trusted resource and build a base of fanatical fans. The money should be proof of performance, not the end goal. When clients consider you a "must have" member of their team, your ability to charge more, grow margins, and increase profit will only increase — and so will referrals. - Phillip Davis, Tungsten Branding
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01232baa4dcf070a17ed9e586b013813 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/26/to-build-an-executive-personal-brand-follow-these-13-tips/ | To Build An Executive Personal Brand, Follow These 13 Tips | To Build An Executive Personal Brand, Follow These 13 Tips
In the modern age of marketing, it's no longer enough to create an engaging, compelling brand for your business. Now, the executive leaders of those companies need to create and market their own personal brands as well. Doing so creates trust, transparency and strong relationships, all of which are essential for business success.
Not sure where to begin in building your personal brand? We asked a panel of Forbes Agency Council members to offer some advice. Their best answers are below.
1. Become A Go-To Media Expert
One of the most effective ways for business executives to bolster their brand is by being quoted in the media as an expert. This sets them apart from the competition and positions them as "the" expert in their field. - Drew Gerber, Wasabi Publicity, Inc.
2. Have A Personal Website And Blog
People buy from people. So having your own branded website with content generated by you to showcase your expertise will help prospective buyers gauge who you are and how you can help them. For me, I've received inbound inquiries directly from other CEOs who have read one of my marketing blog posts and reached out because they need help in the areas that I specialize in. - Suttida Yang, Fastmarkit
3. Express Your Point Of View
I am often surprised by how many business executives stop short of actually having a point of view. Most have no problem offering solutions and products to fix things, but they don't actually express their POV. For executives to be influential in the digital age, make sure your digital POV comes across and that you have something worth listening to that others can get behind. - Stefan Pollack, The Pollack PR Marketing Group
4. Publish Content Consistently
I believe that creating thought leadership comes from presenting yourself as an authority. But authority doesn't come from a well-written one-off post, it comes from always being involved in the conversation. Whether it's guest posting, hosting webinars, posting on your blog, delivering keynote speeches, etc., it's important to always be producing content. - Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
5. Dive Deep Into Your Topic Of Expertise
If you are building a personal brand, you need to be able to dive deep into a topic and really understand the nuances of it. You can’t be an expert on everything. The second you try to walk in the wrong lane, you are more likely to get hit by the truck of diminishing public trust. If something is out of your wheelhouse, it takes guts to say, “You know, that is not really my area of expertise.” - Bernard May, National Positions
6. Define Your Personal Purpose
Define your individual purpose. Articulate how and for what you want to be known — both in your local community and in your industry — and align every event you attend, decision you make, conversation you have and every piece of thought leadership you write with that purpose and vision. - Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
7. Create Video Content
Show viewers what your personal brand stands for by utilizing video. Put a face behind the name. This is precisely what I’ve been working on in the past year. Not only has this significantly built up my personal brand, but it's helped me educate business owners and connect with them on a deeper level than a blog ever could. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
8. Focus On Boosting Your Thought Leadership
Thought leadership is imperative when it comes to personal branding in the digital age. Offer free, valuable content about your industry in the form of guest columns, white papers and podcasts. By doing this, you can gain trust and rapport with your target audience and improve your close rate and customer loyalty rate. You'll also set yourself apart from other brands that just want to make a quick sale. - Blair Nicole Nastasi, Media Moguls PR
9. Live Your Brand Consistently, On And Offline
How we tell our story and the consistency of that story are critical to building a personal brand. Executives must be clear on why they do what they do before they describe what they do or how they do it. Executives must ensure they practice ruthless consistency personally and professionally in what they say and write, how they dress and what they share. - Pete Canalichio, Licensing Brands, Inc.
10. Join Professional Communities To Become Visible Among Your Peers
A great way to build your personal brand is to become an active member of your professional community. Being a thought leader and providing insight, direction or challenges you've faced with your peers is a sure way to establish your personal brand. LinkedIn, Facebook Groups, etc., are all great communities with like-minded professionals that will value your input. - Jennifer Wentzo, coded{PR}
11. Share Relevant Content On Social Media
One of the biggest challenges people face when building their brand is staying top of mind. They employ multiple intrusive methods, such as email marketing and direct messages, when the answer is right in front of them. Create and share relevant and interesting content on social regularly, and surround yourself with the right audience. - Gil Eyal, HYPR
12. Build Your LinkedIn Network With Relevant Connections
Create targeting criteria for who you'd like in your LinkedIn network. Then, optimize your LinkedIn profile to communicate the information about yourself that you feel is important. Finally, send LinkedIn connection requests to second-degree connections who meet your targeting criteria. This approach will build the foundation from which you can build your personal brand. - Brett Farmiloe, Markitors Website Development
13. Don't Overthink It
First and foremost, focus on your business. Don't try to build a persona that you think people will like. If you're good at what you do and you're passionate about it, you'll naturally touch on those three cornerstones. - Eric Dahan, Open Influence
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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2d312d911f70baf84d14d6b0e3d6d52b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/04/27/ignorance-apathy-or-greed-why-most-influencers-still-dont-comply-with-ftc-guidelines/?sh=3e693d077e9d | Ignorance, Apathy Or Greed? Why Most Influencers Still Don't Comply With FTC Guidelines | Ignorance, Apathy Or Greed? Why Most Influencers Still Don't Comply With FTC Guidelines
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While the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has made clear for several years now that all paid endorsements must be clear and conspicuous, more and more research shows that influencers today either don't understand the regulations or don't feel a need to abide by them.
Consider this:
• Ignorance? New research analyzing 800 Instagram influencers found that 71.5% attempted to disclose their relationships, but only 1 in 4 actually did it in a way that complies with FTC regulations. It seems like nearly half of influencers simply don't understand the rules.
• Apathy? Separate research reported by eMarketer found that 41% of influencers say they disclose "only when I'm asked." It's hard to know whether this is because they don't feel the ramifications are likely to be serious or for some other reason, but brands would be wise to ask.
• Greed? Princeton University researchers analyzed over 3,400 YouTube videos and over 18,000 Pinterest pins that contained affiliate links that could make money for the influencers using them. In that case, 90% of videos and 93% of pins failed to disclose the "material connection" as required. Again, it's not clear if influencers are not disclosing because they feel disclosures will hurt their income streams or for some other reason. I personally have no problem with affiliate links as the cost is paid by the seller, but perhaps others feel differently.
Five Ways Brands Can Ensure FTC Compliance From Their Influencers
The FTC has also been clear that brands have a responsibility for the influencers they engage on their behalf. Fortunately, they haven't made it particularly confusing or complicated for brands to make sure all is well.
1. Use the right hashtags.
Over the years, influencers have tried all sorts of disclosures and the FTC has largely kept up, denying most of the attempts because they were not particularly clear. For a while, #spon was a favorite of influencers. That's not OK. While the FTC advises that conspicuous use of #{BRAND}partner or #{BRAND}-partner would probably be fine, you will certainly be safe with either #ad or #sponsored. The goal here is an unambiguous disclosure.
It's important to note, however, that you do not have to use a hashtag. In a blog post or other content, an influencer can also simply say, "This post is sponsored by {BRAND}" and be perfectly compliant.
2. Disclosures must be visible immediately.
In your Facebook news feed, you've likely seen longer posts that are truncated. To read them completely, you have to click "see more" to expand the post. Disclosures that come too late in the post to appear prior to "see more" are not compliant either.
Another favorite trick is to bury the disclosure in a series of hashtags. Picture a post such as, "Love this product. #bestlife #cleanliving #ad #buyonegetone #houstoninfluencers."
Did your eye skip over all of those hashtags? Indeed. So did everyone else's, which is why the FTC has said the disclosure must be "visibly separated" from other hashtags.
3. 'Handshakes' are not enough.
Social networks have started adding branded content tools designed to allow influencers and brands to post content with one another. This is commonly called the "handshake tool," and it's required for a creator to tag their business partner in the post. The disclosures provided by the tools, however, are not currently viewed as ample disclosure by the FTC.
While I generally believe the FTC has handled this issue well, with an even, reasonable hand, in this case, I disagree with them. I feel this should serve as adequate disclosure. Nevertheless, they are the governing body, so brands should ensure their influencers continue to comply with other methods.
4. Video has different rules.
So far, a disclosure appearing in a blog post or social share has been compliant. But imagine a 20-minute video where an influencer discloses once, five seconds in and begins plugging products 10 minutes later. That wouldn't suffice.
Ideally, a disclosure will appear as a caption of some sort, but at a minimum, it should include an upfront disclosure repeated a few times within the video depending on length and appearing again at the end. When in doubt, ask yourself if your influencer has been clear and conspicuous.
5. Review content.
Finally, there is no substitute for a human being looking at every piece of content produced by influencers on your behalf. At Carusele, that's our standard operating procedure for every program. In fact, we're looking for FTC compliance but also compliance with the brief and contract we've set with the influencer.
This Should Be Easy
Despite the statistics I mentioned above, we almost never have a problem with influencer disclosures on the content we commission. Why? We spell out, upfront and with significant detail, exactly what we need to be compliant, and our influencers have no problem with it.
In our experience with over 120 such programs completed, influencers prefer guardrails. If you can tell them at the beginning of the process both what you hope for and what you require, most of them deliver it the first time around. What's frustrating for them is when new requests come in after they've produced their content.
Frustration from your influencers and sanctions from the FTC can both be avoided with planning in the early stages. If you're clear and conspicuous with everyone from the beginning, you'll have no problems with the FTC.
Updated 4/30/18: This post was updated after conversations with FTC staff to clarify that hashtags other than #ad or #sponsored can be used if they are conspicuous and unambiguous.
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70593c3bac18a93e916cc3f972747efe | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/01/starting-out-strong-nine-effective-ways-to-ensure-your-agencys-success/ | Starting Out Strong: Nine Effective Ways To Ensure Your Agency's Success | Starting Out Strong: Nine Effective Ways To Ensure Your Agency's Success
Beginning agencies often start with grand ideas and good long-term goals. But figuring out how to establish your organization's foundations can be tricky, especially when it comes to interactions with clients.
Honesty is naturally important: Overpromising can be deadly to any firm, especially those that have not yet established a reputation. But while you need to avoid overselling yourself, you still have to make sure you talk enough about what clients can expect to get for their investment of trust and resources. Part of this is solidifying the image of your brand in your mind, and in the mind of your staff, so that you know what you want to present to others — and why. But a larger part is simply communicating to clients how you track metrics, and why those numbers matter, in a language that non-experts can understand.
This is only the start. To help your agency grow, nine members of Forbes Agency Council share below their best tips for newbie agency owners to help them achieve success and reach their milestones in terms of both operations and revenue. Here is what they suggest:
Members share a few ways you can help your agency grow and improve. Photos courtesy of individual members.
1. Don’t Overlook The Diamonds In The Rough
Your advantage over larger and more established competitors lies in your ability to work in niches which they have already turned a blind eye to. Leverage something unique which you can own — an angle that perhaps others have stopped focusing on or have given up on. Take pride in finding a solution or methodology that works, and own that niche with pride! - Asaf Greiner, Protected Media
2. Always Put Your Employees First
It took me a few years to learn that one. Sometimes, that means firing clients. I've done it and never regretted it. Your people matter more than anything else, including the work, and if you prioritize them and treat them like the human beings that they are, the work will more than take care of itself. - Russ Stoddard, Oliver Russell
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3. Don’t Let Your Ego Make The Calls
Always do your best to keep your ego in check. Don't get flashy with initial profit, but reinvest it carefully into continuing to grow your business. - Emily Lyons, Femme Fatale Media Group Inc
4. Be Honest, And Don’t Overpromise
Be honest about your capabilities and resist the urge to overpromise. I have found that it is much more beneficial to admit to clients and prospects exactly which service areas you may not be equipped to handle, rather than try to learn as you go. The introduction of a trusted partner with expertise in that area is much more valuable than taking on a non-specialty task yourself and failing. - David Harrison, EVINS
5. Showcase The Return On Investment
We see a lot of agencies starting out with very creative websites and attractive portfolios. They focus on "if you build it they will come" in an attempt to let the work speak for itself. Your work can't speak for itself. Businesses care more about the results of your work. Focus on showcasing the ROI of your work, along with the creative quality. - Giovanni Sanguily, TRIDIGITAL MARKETING LLC
Read more in Social Media: Measuring The ROI
6. Look For Something That 'Punches You In The Gut'
With so much valid advice floating around, it's a challenge to recall and apply anything at all. Therefore, look for something that figuratively punches you in the gut and learn from that. For me, it was when my mentor point-blank told me that my business was dead in the water when I revealed that I only make 20 sales calls a week because I feared rejection. Instant realization. Immediate change. - Atif Bhanjee, RailEyes
7. Stay Focused On Improving Your Brand
Always stay focused on improving your product and your brand. Your brand goes much deeper than your deck, website and logo. You (and your employees) are your brand. Relationships matter: One good referral or satisfied client can be an absolute game changer in your early stages of growth. - Victor Ricci, Trend Pie
Read more in 13 Content Marketing Strategies To Differentiate Your Brand
8. Leverage Social Media For PR Campaigns
Social media outlets are search engines. When distributing your press releases, it is important to treat social media outlets the same as you would treat a search engine. Social media outlets are some of the strongest and most relevant search engines. Therefore, social media, public relations, and optimization are interconnected and must be packaged together with the intent of sticking. - Troy Bohlke, 10 Day Media, LLC
9. Learn How To Explain Metrics To Your Clients
With digital marketing, understanding the value of metrics is only the first part of the equation — finding the language necessary to explain how they relate to your clients’ ROI is the sweet spot. We all speak numbers, but your clients need to see how statistics are the basis for the important decisions you make that increase their profits. - Ernesto Carrizoza, Movement Marketing
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8d4081934c6963d981606987511a6184 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/04/facebooks-reputation-problem-is-everyones-reputation-problem/ | Facebook's Reputation Problem Is Everyone's Reputation Problem | Facebook's Reputation Problem Is Everyone's Reputation Problem
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Traditionally, publishers built their business on reputation by establishing a clear voice, editorial integrity, access to exclusive stories and their unique journalists who brought those stories to life. But that substance dissolved, in my opinion, when social media -- primarily Facebook -- became the exclusive discovery platform for users to access digital content.
When readers stopped visiting their trusted publications and instead, resorted to headlines that appeared on their social media feeds, publishers quickly realized that their distribution no longer depended on their reputation. Instead, it depended on mastering tactical skills viewed by Facebook's algorithms as signs of user adoption which, in turn, would increase their stories' promotion on social feeds.
Returning To Their Roots
These publishers placed what Facebook deemed important on a pedestal, only for the platform to turn its back on them, deprioritize their posts and tank their traffic. And if having the world’s top publishers and brands angry with Facebook wasn’t enough, the company is now in the midst of a public relations crisis where users themselves are questioning its safety.
At Playbuzz, we have been working closely with top brands and publishers for years to ensure they align their storytelling practices with modern consumption habits. We aim to help publishers navigate the dying homepage, the obligation to dedicate more resources to social teams and the simple fact that 79% of readers merely scan their content -- all due, in part, to Facebook’s existence. The current “status” of Facebook’s relationship with all parties does not surprise me, and it’s likely not the last platform hurdle that media outlets will have to overcome.
Now, with the platform's trustworthiness doubted by both the public and media outlets, it’s time publishers revert back to their roots and rebuild their business based on the genuine traits that made them valuable from the get-go. Here are five tips for achieving this.
1. Speak Your Audience’s Language
Social media forever altered users' consumption habits, cementing their lack of receptiveness to long-form, text-heavy articles. With the average time spent on a piece of digital content at a painful 12.4 seconds, according to a study by the University of Hamburg, readers today are looking for visual-first, interactive, digestible stories.
That’s why publishers including Axios and The Atlantic are thriving. They’ve adjusted their storytelling practices to align with consumers’ expectations -- whether that be finding a niche and combining the right platform, data and content mix or by establishing connections with readers beyond the news feed era.
In order to win readers’ attention, you must evolve and talk to your readers, not at them. This can include asking them to vote on President Trump’s latest policy changes via a poll, rank their favorite athletes competing in the NBA Playoffs or take a quiz to find out just how much they know about the crisis in Syria while offering ways they can help.
2. Seductive Clickbait Does Not Lead To Sustainability
Facebook’s algorithm changes -- perhaps unintentionally -- created a race to the bottom of the quality bar that drove publishers to produce stories that attracted user attention at all cost. However, outlets must avoid penning irresistible, false headlines coupled with flashy (yet irrelevant) images, as frustrated readers won’t come back for more. And with fewer users spending time on content comes the inability to successfully monetize in an environment that’s already difficult to stay afloat.
I’m by no means suggesting that headlines can’t be seductive, but they must be truthful to the story accessed post-click and lead to a story that's packaged in a manner that compels readers to actively consume.
3. Create Compelling Experiences
Don't attempt to mimic social experiences. For instance, Snapchat-like stories are a great experience when they exist within the social network's framework. Detaching and pasting them into a publisher's website or app forces the original format out of the intended experience.
Have a presence on relevant social networks that enable you to tell -- and successfully distribute -- short stories but simultaneously invest in third-party tools that make the content on your website itself compelling to consume. This can include tapping platforms that enable you to add polls, ranked lists, flip cards and more to your editorial in order to boost audience engagement.
4. Meaningful Ads Are Better
From my perspective, publishers’ declining volume of impressions was the catalyst to the mass hysteria that pushed outlets to flood their pages with ads, further sacrificing content quality.
Sell less ad space and make it more meaningful. In doing so, you can create new revenue streams for your publication to replace the dull, static banner ads. This can come in the form of branded experiences that your audiences actually want to engage with and won’t worsen your user experience (UX) or degrade your offering. Less is more. A website with fewer ad units and more thoughtful placements will generate higher conversion rates for advertisers while keeping readers happy.
5. Stop Obsessively 'Pivoting To Video'
Today’s mass pivot to video due to Facebook’s prioritization of (non-monetized) video views on its newsfeed led to an inaccurate perception that video can be used as a text replacement. This resulted in publishers laying off staff to focus on low-grade video production.
In reality, video content performs best when paired with text and engaging elements. Case in point: Our data at Playbuzz shows that if you blend a news story with video and an interactive element, the time that people spend on that story increases by 20%.
Wake Up And Make A Comeback
Facebook took advantage of the global shift in consumption habits, forcing publishers to increasingly rely on the platform, only for it to turn its back on them with its recent algorithm change. Now we are left with the aftermath -- users fed up with mediocre content and publishers who shamelessly neglected their depth to prioritize optimizing their traffic.
But this inevitable fallout presents a great opportunity. Publishers can return to their roots and restore their businesses based on the genuine traits that made them worthy of readers’ time in the first place -- without an overreliance on Facebook.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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8f225ec6a4f9b88423d048e07a049429 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/04/where-should-i-spend-my-advertising-dollars/ | Where Should I Spend My Advertising Dollars? | Where Should I Spend My Advertising Dollars?
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When it comes to developing an advertising strategy, selecting the right media for your brand is a moving target. Every channel has an unknown lifespan before it will either evolve dramatically or dissolve completely. It’s hard to believe that the Yellow Pages were once our primary means of finding products and services. Today, a printed phonebook has more use as a doorstop than as an actual reference.
Newspapers and magazines have mostly shifted from print to online. Television is turning into a non-cable experience. Billboards are being programmed digitally. Between the constant change and the endless types of media available, where do you start and where do you go with your advertising?
Who Do You Want To Reach?
The early days of advertising consisted simply of reaching the masses, period. Businesses bought ad space to get in front of large audiences they hoped would include people who might be interested in their offerings. Statistics such as readership, viewership and listener base were the main indicators of a medium’s advertising power.
While those numbers are still very relevant today, digital advertising has steered us more toward advertising to the right audience rather than necessarily to the largest audience. With this in mind, you need to start by identifying who you want to reach (or to take a step back even further, who you are in the first place). You can be more accurate with your strategy when you think first in terms of audience type rather than audience size.
Get Granular
Defining your target audience can be as deep of an exercise as you want it to be. For example, a local bank offering mortgage loans might choose to advertise to married couples in their 30s, because many couples at this age are typically gaining financial stability and beginning to consider buying a home. The bank could stop there with their persona building, or they could keep going and set parameters such as income, occupation, neighborhood, etc. The more you can drill down to an exact persona, the more informed your decisions will be when you’re deciding where to spend on advertising.
Align With Their Lives
Following the example of a bank targeting couples in their 30s for mortgages, the next question they could ask would be, “Where do these people spend time?” — literally and figuratively. In a big city like New York or Philadelphia, many people in their 30s are commuting to and from work on mass transit. Enter train, bus station and subway ads. Considering that internet usage on mobile devices has surpassed that of desktop computers, the bank might pair those physical ads with geo-targeted digital ads. Geo-targeting means you are serving ads to people based on the location their mobile signal sends — traditional and digital advertising in perfect harmony when you think about it.
Now, if our bank is located in rural or suburban areas, the media strategy may shift to billboards or geo-targeted internet and terrestrial radio, since these commuters may be in their cars more often.
It’s also important to realize that there are microstrategies within each channel. Under the umbrella of social media, for instance, each individual platform is geared toward a certain audience. An accounting firm would likely advertise on LinkedIn, where business professionals connect. A catering company, meanwhile, would probably look to Instagram, where people are posting wedding photos and tips as well as other events that might call for catering services.
Expand Your Strategy Outward
When you have a clearly defined audience and deliberately chosen media, you can then build on that foundation to give more breadth to your advertising. At what times of day are your target customers on the internet? What publications are they reading? Who in their circle has similar tendencies or preferences? The targeting we have at our fingertips is truly astounding compared to the “blanket” era of advertising that I touched on earlier. Now, you don’t need to throw dollars at the proverbial “masses,” because you can carve out a precise audience and then build that very audience with targeting.
Once you know your audience, the smallest change can yield big results. For example, I work with an East Coast product distributor who realized most of their internet sales were coming mid to late morning, then dropping off considerably in the afternoon. A little digging uncovered that most orders were coming from the West Coast. By shifting the advertising buy to 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. EST, they covered the entire country’s early morning buying pattern. Sales increased, and they were able to reduce the advertising budget because it was now being used more effectively.
Deliver A Meaningful Message In A Creative Way
If you think this article was all about media strategies, you’re wrong. Remember, the media is simply the means of getting your message out. The heart and soul of your advertising are the image and message, both of which need to be refined and refined again until they are worthy of putting money behind. It’s understated yet massively important that the ads be truly creative and memorable.
Luckily, when you invest the time and energy into pinpointing and understanding your audience, that background provides guidance not just for your advertising strategy but also for your brand messaging.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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4292d90d413c7cd52e65b38855f5eccc | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/07/automate-your-pr-the-brand-press-kit/ | Automate Your PR: The Brand Press Kit | Automate Your PR: The Brand Press Kit
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I don't think I’ve ever met someone who would say “no” when asked if they would like public relations for their company. Most business owners have a clear understanding of the power of PR and the difference a single media placement can make.
When I dig in and ask people why they aren't doing PR, I usually get one of two answers: “I don't have the time” or “I don't have the money.” Both are valid excuses, but at the end of the day, they’re excuses.
Now, I know this might sound a little weird coming from the CEO of a public relations company, but not everyone should be doing PR. If you’re only interested in building a company, you might not even need to do it. But if want to build a brand or get your message out into the world, PR is essential. Here’s the good news: You don't need to invest massive amounts of money or time to make it happen.
With decades in the PR game, I’ve seen ways to set up your PR campaign so that it practically runs itself. Just to be clear, I’m not saying you don't need to do anything. You do. But there are ways to make it work for you rather than the other way around.
Build Your PR Foundation With A Press Kit
The first step in automating your public relations campaign is to ensure you have a solid foundation. One of the reasons our team is able to produce brag-worthy media for our clients is that we begin every campaign by creating an online press kit.
Why do we create an online press kit? Because we know our customer (the media).
No matter what media you’re dealing with, journalists are busy people. From the smallest to the largest of media outlets, they’re hammered daily with sources wanting in on their broadcasts, blogs and pages in their newspapers and magazines.
Try to put yourself in their shoes -- they’re human and looking for ways to make their jobs and lives easier. When you think like a journalist, it’s clear why you’d want an online press kit. Everything they need is strategically organized. There's no need to go back and forth with an expert and wait to complete an article.
A brand's online press kit should include company and product information, bios of your spokespeople, high-res images, previous media coverage, suggested interview questions, media contact information and print and broadcast one-pagers (snapshots of your press materials). We also highly recommend including five to 10 news and story angles, which can give the media insights into different and interesting ways to include your brand in a story. You can link to your online press kit from your website, but it should ultimately live on a separate site specifically designed for the media -- one that allows you to be a part of an expert database.
Funny story -- when Oprah had her show on network TV, her producers would always call my business partner Michelle on Friday evenings, just as she was leaving the office (or had already headed home). Instead of having to stop what she was doing or go back to the office, she could serve them right then and there by giving them a link to our client’s online press kit where they could find everything they needed.
A powerful online press kit allows you to systematize your PR and create a process that fits into your life. If you only have 15 minutes a day, that's fine! Find a system that lets you achieve your goals in that amount of time. One of the best strategies that can be accomplished in as little as 15 minutes each day is browsing through free or paid-for media leads from services like PitchRate, Help A Reporter (HARO) and ProfNet. (Full disclosure, I am a co-creator of PitchRate.)
You may already be using a free lead service. If so, you’ve done the PR groundwork and you know what to pitch. In that case, an online press kit allows you to send the media a link so they get exactly what they need, right away. It also allows for optimization so you can be found by search engines.
Look, there are many ways you can systemize and optimize your PR efforts so you can get the results that you’re looking for without a huge amount of time or money invested. If you’re aiming for big things -- building a recognized brand, becoming a bestseller or impacting the world -- don't let your excuses stop you from making them happen.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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06b44f9424a9a96b9d6c78102393f4c4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/07/why-your-digital-reputation-matters-and-how-to-influence-it/?sh=28f5e8b649a5 | Why Your Digital Reputation Matters And How To Influence It | Why Your Digital Reputation Matters And How To Influence It
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Reputation has always been a form of currency. In today’s digital world, however, our reputations are more important -- and more permanent -- than ever before. Ten years ago, I founded REQ with an understanding of the growing significance of online reputation, search results and digital presence. Today these issues have only become more critical, and businesses and individuals alike must learn to navigate them.
As we continue to place more trust in search results, the importance of maintaining and managing our online reputation grows. We’ve moved from the age of information to the age of reputation. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, 91% of people trust what they see and read in search engine results, and the Edelman Trust Barometer reports that 65% of people trust these results more than any other source.
These perceptions will define you. This means that what’s out there matters -- and it will continue to matter. The news cycle may evolve quickly, but your digital footprint never disappears.
Reviews, comments, social media profiles, photos, posts -- the list of what we’ve put into the online world is a long one, and this is what shapes search results. But the impacts of these results don’t end on the first page of Google. They impact behavior, decisions and, above all, reputation. With this in mind, we have to learn how to own our reputation in the digital space.
After a decade in the online reputation management business, I’ve witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly. Here are a few tips to help keep you ahead of the fast-paced, volatile world of reputation.
Participate, And Participate Proactively
Shying away from online platforms is no longer a viable option if you want to actively manage your online reputation. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have moved beyond social media forums and now operate as search engines in and of themselves. People use these platforms not only to interact but to access information and make decisions.
Participation means more than just having a profile. Push out content, and push it out frequently at strategic times. New content does not erase negative past news, but it is essential to building your online presence and maintaining a positive online reputation.
Take a deeper look at the people your brand interacts with online -- people who follow you, like and share your posts and comment on your content. This can help you better understand your audience, which leads to my next piece of advice.
Know Your Audience
Your participation won’t go nearly as far if you don’t know and understand your audience. As you gather the data you are able to collect from social and professional platforms, cater your content to your followers, influencers and target markets.
All content is not created equally. If you want to own your online reputation, first take control of what you are saying, how you’re saying it and who you’re saying it to. Reputation management is not just about self-promotion either. Go beyond advertising yourself or your business and create and share content on a broad range of topics that are of interest and value to your audience. As you continuously engage with them and build positive relationships, you’ll see your presence on these platforms improve and so too will your presence in search.
Whether you want to enhance and increase awareness of your brand or get ahead of an incoming crisis, say the right thing to the right people -- and say it well.
Stay Vigilant And Stay Informed
These tips will help you navigate the world of online reputation, but it is a world that is constantly changing. Remain aware of the frequent changes to your own search results, the changes made to the search engines and platforms, and how they operate. Google, Facebook and Twitter continually update their algorithms, and staying aware of these changes will help you stay ahead.
Similarly, monitor open-source platforms like Wikipedia regularly. Anyone can make changes, and people searching for answers online accept the information on these sites as the truth. Get ahead of inaccuracies and actively own your online accounts -- all of them.
You can’t opt out of having an online reputation in today’s world. Instead, you can be proactive, get ahead of common issues and own your digital presence. It’s never too early -- and it’s also never too late -- to start participating and taking control of your online reputation.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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f9e38623073758e60753762077c753b7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/14/12-strategies-for-local-brands-to-stay-relevant-on-facebook/ | 12 Strategies For Local Brands To Stay Relevant On Facebook | 12 Strategies For Local Brands To Stay Relevant On Facebook
The social media giant has vowed to make local news a priority, making your ability to reach your local customer base through the platform a little more difficult in the future.
You need to be proactive in your approach and consider that you have news to present as well. Keeping your posts about information that is locally concentrated and topical for your community can ensure you get the results you are looking for with Facebook without abandoning for another medium.
Twelve members of the Forbes Agency Council share strategies that local brands can implement to stay top of mind, given Facebook’s new priority on local news. Here is what they had to say:
Members of the Forbes Agency Council weigh in. Images courtesy of FAC members
1. Post Community-Focused Content
The focus is on prioritizing posts from local publishers. The good news is that Facebook identifies these publishers as those whose links are clicked on by readers in a tight geographic area. This puts pressure on businesses to post quality content that is focused on the communities they serve. The bottom line is that any engagement, especially from users in your area, will keep you relevant. - Laura Cole, Vivial
2. Become A Local Thought Leader
Take time to understand your local market. Listen to what your local audience cares about and provide commentary through engagement. If you can show that you are engaged and understand local sentiment, you can begin to differentiate yourself as a local thought leader. Promoting your local event, while tying in a local charity, lets your Facebook followers know that you are truly in touch. - Bernard May, National Positions
3. Monitor Local News
The best way local brands can stay top of mind is to tie into and share news posts with a local twist. Stay in touch with your local news: What are they talking about? What stories are impacting life in your local community? Comment on and share the products, events and elements that your neighbors care about. - Drew Gerber, Wasabi Publicity, Inc.
4. Tell Your Local Story
If you're a local brand, you have a local story. You're part of a community and you have an audience who wants to understand your story and support your business. Find what that story is and tell it in a relatable and authentic way that engenders connection and engagement. If you're authentic and relatable, you'll stay relevant, your audience will grow and you'll stay in the feed. - Carey Kirkpatrick, CKP
5. Encourage Civic Engagement
Appealing to your customers through civic engagement is a great way to develop a local story while simultaneously winning over the new algorithms. Personalizing stories to issues that matter in your demographics' communities will offer a more personal approach that will create a better connection. These stories are more "share-worthy" and can help you promote your brand while making a difference. - Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing
6. Stay True To Your Priorities
Remain focused on business goals. By thinking about specific audiences and the attributes of your product that best meet their needs, you’ll have an evergreen social strategy. If this approach also means taking advantage of additional exposure for local news, great. If not, it’s best to prioritize your brand’s success rather than chasing the next “shiny object” offered by Facebook or others. - Kieley Taylor, GroupM
7. Try Local Promotion Via Social Media
For brands with a very local target demographic, it will be even more important to focus on your location when creating your social strategy. This means ensuring you include location-specific topics such as the promotion of local events, deals and specials by location, but also highlighting your location and the proximity to your followers (ease of access). - Mike Lieberman, Square 2 Marketing
8. Target Hyperlocal Media Venues
Almost every community, whether it has a population of 500 or over one million, has its own media outlets. Google these community, county or statewide papers and see if they will cover your brand from a hyperlocal standpoint. They often love stories of hometown success, events and giving back. Go with those if possible. They'll sync with Facebook's algorithm. - Steven Le Vine, Grapevine pr + Consulting
9. Focus On Local Impact
Align your brand with local causes that are both relevant to your mission and highly relevant to your specific community. Avoid traditional CSR types of outreach and remember that it's more than cutting a check to a local cause. Get your team involved, whether it's through volunteering, advocating or supplying resources, and reach out to the local press about the stance you are taking on your local cause. - Richard Lorenzen, Fifth Avenue Brands
10. Segment Users Into Custom Audiences
The shift walks hand in hand with Facebook’s prioritization of conversation and community. As a result, brands now need to think globally but act locally. One way to do this is by segmenting users into custom audiences that are categorized by location. Brands should invest in having their social teams understand the active conversations and use of language in local markets, putting their global marketing thematic through a local lens. - Jeremy Holley, FlyteVu Agency
11. Double Down On Local Outreach
Local brand managers that have emphasized PR for its search benefits may now see even more traction from local story placements. With the deprioritization of branded content in the News Feed, marketers that place stories in local news outlets may continue to see traffic from the social network. Securing backlinks will help to funnel search and social traffic back to the brand. - Nina Hale, Nina Hale / Performance Digital
12. Do Something Worth Talking About
Local brands can incorporate events and holidays into their marketing. If a Tex-Mex restaurant runs promotions for National Taco Day or Margarita Day, they have a stronger chance of being featured in accordance with Facebook’s new priority format. Similarly, if local restaurants or retailers are vendors at local events and festivals, they will stay top of mind with their consumers. - Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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02da52e954066415f42e1a3ee1d41954 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/17/nine-ways-to-measure-influencer-roi/ | Nine Ways To Measure Influencer ROI | Nine Ways To Measure Influencer ROI
Modern companies are finding that influencer marketing is one of the fastest and most effective ways to build brand awareness, especially on social media. Although this form of marketing can be relatively inexpensive – some influencers will promote your brand in exchange for products – it is still an investment, and like any other marketing expense, it's important to track your return on that investment.
This can be easier said than done, though. Influencer campaigns don't always necessarily lead to a huge boost in sales right away, so you may need to find other ways to measure ROI. Nine members of the Forbes Agency Council weigh in on how to do it.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council weigh in. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Measure And Track Everything
Likes, comments and engagement are important, but you should always have some form of measurement when it comes to ROI. You can achieve this through affiliate links, promotion codes and UTM parameters through Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder. I would also recommend working with micro-influencers – those who have less than 100,000 followers – because they are the ones getting more engagement. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
2. Analyze Each Piece Of Content In Real Time
Too many influencer marketing campaigns are stuck using old tactics (and metrics). Having a bunch of influencers showing a product isn't enough in 2018. Modern influencer marketing requires real-time analysis of each piece of content followed by targeted syndication of the best pieces. When you do that, you can measure everything from sales lift to foot traffic to website visits and conversion. - Jim Tobin, Carusele
3. Compare Performance And Exposure To Other Marketing Investments
Tracking is gold. Be sure to track wherever possible: custom links, landing pages, influencer promo codes, giveaways, anything you can. Consider an influencer marketing campaign's performance against your other marketing strategies. How much would you have to pay on Google PPC to gain the same exposure? Keep things in perspective and consider lifetime value. - Bernard May, National Positions
4. Measure In Sales Or Sign-Ups (But Remember There's A Delayed Effect)
Measure it like all other forms of marketing and advertising: in sales or sign-ups. Clients don't want to hear about followers and clicks. However, you need to give it a 30- to 60-day window after the campaign to measure the results. Influencer marketing has a delayed effect, as people juggle their own lives and try to make time for products recommended by influencers that they resonate with. - T. Maxwell, eMaximize
5. Focus On Channel Engagement
If your campaign focuses on social media exposure with influencers, look at engagement on your social channels after the influencer initiative. Do you have an increase in engagement on your channels? New followers are important, but it’s key to have the right followers. If your engagement increases, you know you reached your target audience who actually wants to engage with your content. - Lisa Arledge Powell, MediaSource
6. Use Coupon Codes
The simplest possible answer, in this case, is the best. With all the talk of impressions, clicks and brand awareness, it's still important to get specific attribution to what worked for a specific sale. That's why giving a coupon code – and tracking which influencer gets which sales – still matters, even though it's simple. - Tim Brown, Hook Agency
7. Host A Live Experience To See Social Amplification In Real Time
A live experience is the ultimate influencer ecosystem. Getting like-minded people together who have a passion for a particular subject matter creates an environment for influencing, whether it be comics, cars or causes. Once at a live event, the social amplification through influencers is exponential and can be measured in real time through social posts, brand activation and word of mouth. - Chris Cavanaugh, Freeman
8. Share Influencer Content On Your Own Ad Platforms
Do not only consider the ROI directly correlated to the influencer's post. You may generate far more revenue from using their content on other ad platforms and reaching a new audience. Some of our most successful influencervideos were actually poor ROI generators from the influencer's post. - Jonathan Snow, Social Cadre
9. Measure In Followers Gained And Brand Awareness Over Time
From a social media standpoint, you can track how many followers you gain after an influencer posts about you. This can often be a clear and immediate spike. It is hard to measure how an influencer marketing campaign helps build your brand awareness, but over time, with repeated exposure via the right influencers, there should be an increased awareness among your target audience. - Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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1e0e6a0713797c49427655af8a75b3eb | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/18/a-contrarian-view-to-content-marketing/ | A Contrarian View To Content Marketing | A Contrarian View To Content Marketing
Pexels Pexels
Having been in digital marketing since its inception in 1994, I’m recognizing a pattern that I’d like to call out. If you’re noticing a diminishing (or even a nonexistent) return on your content marketing efforts, you’re not alone -- and it may be time to pivot.
The promise of content marketing is so simple and appealing that it has attracted a tsunami of businesses and thought leaders who are investing substantial time and money in order to build their personal and professional brands. Back in 2008, Seth Godin notably claimed, “Content marketing is the only marketing left.”
HubSpot built a company worth more than $4 billion, primarily by selling the vision and the power of content marketing. And yet, in Dan Lyons’ tell-all book, Disrupted, Lyons points out that, prior to going public, HubSpot’s primary sales growth was not based on its own content marketing but rather on a 100-person call center using, “low-paid kids calling thousands of people, day after day.”
Quality content is being drowned out by volume of content.
Research by eMarketer shows that 87% of U.S. business-to-business (B2B) companies plan to use content marketing strategies this year. The report states that these strategies will require more mature efforts as content marketing is reaching a saturation threshold.
When you combine the accelerated growth of clickbait with the volume of content shared on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (with or without advertising support), there appears to be a lot of talking going on and not a lot of listening. While quality content is still very much in demand, eMarketer is pointing out that, in order to succeed in 2018 and beyond, more content refinement is needed. I take that as the need for a better understanding of what customers really want versus a continuous stream and volume of content.
As the number of content distribution channels grow, so does the trap of wanting to be everywhere.
It’s also easy to get lost in the content marketing vortex. Today, you provide your content in any form and in any length. Do you shoot videos for Facebook and YouTube? Or should you record and publish a podcast? Perhaps you’d prefer to post pictures on Instagram or write short content for Twitter or long-form content for your blog or LinkedIn. Perhaps you have even more depth you’d like to share? Then consider self-publishing a book, and be sure to go on the speaking circuit to share all your insights and knowledge from the stage.
And we’re just getting started. As more and more channels open up, there’s more audience fragmentation and a desire to post the same content on multiple channels.
Content marketing may have reached a saturation point.
All of this content was intended to fuel the growth of your sales pipeline. And yes, the value of content marketing is still clear. According to the Content Marketing Institute, for example, 79% of business-to-consumer marketers see an increase in audience engagement and 65% see an increase in their number of leads from their content marketing efforts. Before anyone wants to buy from you, they first need to discover you and get to know you. Quality content delivers on that promise and encourages potential buyers to reach out and connect with you.
The problem shows up when more and more content contributors decide to join the party. As is the case with anything, the first movers have the advantage. I believe that content marketing, as we have traditionally defined it, is reaching (or has reached) a saturation point, and investing more time and money into it will no longer yield better results.
My point isn’t that content marketing doesn’t work. My point is that content marketing has reached a point of diminishing returns and may no longer be a competitive advantage.
Consider an alternative: shift more attention to creating advocacy.
I see a much bigger opportunity around creating customer loyalty and advocacy instead of investing more time and money generating more content. When I say “loyalty,” I don’t mean a loyalty program. I’ve amassed nearly 1.5 million miles on United Airlines, and yet I have no advocacy for this company. What I’m talking about is getting back to the basics of truly listening to your customers and building in more surprise and delight into their lives.
Content marketing may still be the only “marketing” left, but there’s a greenfield opportunity to better understand, anticipate and overdeliver for your customers. I’m still a fan of net promoter scores, but beyond asking if a client would refer you, I’d like to know what you’re doing that your current customers can’t shut up about.
For example, on the West Coast, you may be familiar with In-N-Out Burger. Their advocacy is driven by their not-so-secret menu. Before social media tipped their hand, customers who were “in the know” would take pride in ordering items that they had discovered from a previous visit (e.g., a Triple Triple or a Quad Quad). Or in New York City, you may have heard of a secret bar aptly called “Please Don't Tell,” located behind an old-fashioned phone booth inside Crif Dogs restaurant. And Zappos blows their customers away with their obsession with delivering happiness (versus selling shoes), while still, other businesses take the time to send handwritten thank you notes (even with cookies) to new customers. These are the kinds of things that let your customers know that you care about them and that you go beyond the initial transaction in an effort to build a long-term relationship.
While a ton of resources and attention continue to be invested in attracting new customers, keeping our current customers truly happy is what will keep us in business for the long term. Imagine how large your business would be if you never lost a customer. Yet, how much time and energy do we spend there versus the battleground of content marketing? Hence, my contrarian view of content marketing.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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ec4bd3a0e6bb1bcd6f11de28390d0802 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/18/three-ways-to-help-failure-springboard-your-future-success/ | Three Ways To Help Failure Springboard Your Future Success | Three Ways To Help Failure Springboard Your Future Success
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“Is this it? Is this the day I will become homeless? What about the success I had maintained for so many years? How did this happen, and how did I get to this point?”
If you have yet to experience this moment as an entrepreneur, brace yourself. Your day will come. If these tumultuous thoughts have raced through your mind before, congratulations. You’re still here. With the rise of social media, the spotlight has shined on many superficially successful entrepreneurs and their luxurious lives, but none of their posts will ever show the day-to-day struggle.
This is a dangerous standard for the average viewer who truly believes entrepreneurship is as easy as these “influencers” make it seem. Along the road to success lie countless gut-wrenching obstacles that are unforeseen and unpredictable. The period of time it takes to overcome these obstacles will vary, as will the degree to which they impact your business and peace of mind.
While discussing how failure plays an impact on success, world-renowned investor and entrepreneur Ray Dalio stated, “People who think they are a failure because they had a failure will fail. People who understand that having a failure is probably a message that they need to modify their approach and try again — and to keep doing that until they find the paths to succeed — will succeed. That’s why most really successful people can point to many failures and learnings in their wake.”
This list imparts three ways to ensure you make the most out of your failures and use them as positive learning experiences rather than dwelling on the negativity of the ramifications associated with the failure.
1. Embrace the failure.
In his book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, author and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz writes, “On my grandfather’s tombstone, you will find his favorite Marx quote: 'Life is struggle.' I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.”
Regardless of whether your failure was a byproduct of negligence, improper due diligence or something completely out of your control, owning up to this failure is of utmost importance. Embracing failure allows you to let go and, in turn, move on from the emotional toll it may be taking on your mind and body.
Failure builds character, and often at times when we most need it. Continuing success is actually quite an easy thing to do — you simply just keep on doing what you've found works best. This continued process ensures a fast track to plateauing your potential. It is only when failure smacks you in the face when you least expect it that you begin to question everything around you.
Although this might come off as a bit intimidating, it will allow you to uncover intrinsic values about yourself as well as many factors in which you need to improve. Failure in business is nothing new. Start embracing it now, so in the future when it strikes, you will be able to handle it with more experience, more clarity and less emotion.
2. Have a game plan.
After conducting root cause analysis to get to the core of what caused the initial failure, it's now time to devise a game plan moving forward. Now that we have acknowledged and accepted our failures, it is important to ensure the mistakes that were made never happen again.
Acknowledging your failures allows you to learn and grow from your mistakes. Although this may feel extremely uncomfortable, it will lead you to identify the factors that led to this failure.
Being transparent with yourself and adopting a game plan for your goals is crucial to your growth. Every possible outcome needs to be heavily scrutinized while developing this game plan. Before putting the pedal to the metal and rushing into an idea, take a minute and ask yourself:
• What possible impacts does this decision have on me and my team?
• How do I make sure that I am not in this current predicament ever again?
• What are the key takeaways from this experience?
These are a few simple but important questions to ask yourself when conducting a game plan moving forward. Jot these answers down, and allow yourself to truly reflect on what happened and how you envision your idealistic future success to look.
3. Reframe failure to spark your motivation.
Although we all want to achieve success and everything that comes with it, victory never tastes sweeter than when harsh failure has stared you right in the face along the way. While discussing the vicissitudes of success and failure, great political leader Nelson Mandela was quoted as saying, “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
If you look for a common theme among successful CEOs and businesspeople, it is how they have handled turmoil and turned darkness into light. Many of the most successful individuals in this world have been recognized for their uncanny ability to overcome adversity when their entire careers were at stake: Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk and the list goes on and on. These people would not have gotten to where they are today without overcoming immense adversity. Moreover, they used situational turmoil as fuel for igniting the ambitions that drove them to succeed in their respective fields.
In conclusion, do not allow your failures and, ultimately, fear get in the way of achieving your end goals. Learn to embrace your failures so that you can learn from mistakes, which will be of paramount importance in growing as a person and in business. Failure happens to everyone, and the more experience you have with it, the more you will ultimately progress.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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8d3873cc164268c5323137d1e118f379 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/18/won-an-award-12-ways-to-publicize-it-without-bragging/ | Won An Award? 12 Ways To Publicize It (Without Bragging) | Won An Award? 12 Ways To Publicize It (Without Bragging)
Winning a business award is an exciting achievement. It feels good to have your team's hard work and dedication recognized by a prestigious organization. Even more important is the fact that this award can serve as a great marketing tool if properly publicized. While you don't want to come off as conceited or arrogant, you can (and should) proudly share the news of your company's accolades on your website, social media, email newsletter and other customer touchpoints to make sure your audience knows about it. Here's how Forbes Agency Council members recommend announcing your award in the most beneficial way. Members of the Forbes Agency Council weigh in. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Use The Award Marketing Package To Complement Your Company's Message After reviewing the marketing packages provided to winners, include the news on your website, add it to footers on marketing materials and email signatures, share it in social media posts and a press release, tell customers/partners, include it in presentations, acknowledge the win in a video and more. Just be sure that you don't distract from your overall message. - Ilissa Miller, IMiller Public Relations 2. Encourage Employees To Share The News Get your employees involved. The first thing we do after winning an award is share the news internally. Our employees are oftentimes the reason for the achievement and will gladly help spread the news. Whether it's at a networking event, via social media or at Friday night softball, happy employees like to talk about the success of their company. - Laura Cole, Vivial 3. Focus On Your Database Of Prospects And Customers One of your most important assets is your database of prospects and customers. The general public will not understand or care about your awards or other accolades. However, your own clients probably do not fully appreciate just how great your agency is. Meanwhile, a well-defined database of prospects is key to new business. Focus on informing those who matter most. - Stewart Gandolf, Healthcare Success 4. Try New Ways Of Sharing The News, Including Live Video Firing out an email and posting the news on Facebook are the "usual suspects," but there are other ways to leverage your achievements. Make sure to brand your collateral, website and social profiles. If you haven't already dabbled in the art of going live, try sharing your exciting news in real time with your clients, fans and followers. Make them part of your special moment. - Bernard May, National Positions 5. Issue A Press Release Official press releases are a great way to publicize prestigious awards for brands and businesses. Many regional and national affiliates actively subscribe to press feeds for this kind of content. You can also leverage your press contacts on Twitter to help share the news with your local communities. Including links to the official website also aids in SEO campaigns as a secondary benefit. - Aaron Henry, FOUNDRY512 6. Share The News On LinkedIn The best and fastest way to share any good news is through social media. LinkedIn has been my go-to place to share news with my professional connections as well as friends. You can also add it into the “Accomplishments” section under “Honors and Awards” to share your achievement for the long run. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS 7. Give Credit To Those Who Deserve It Forced publicity may come across as arrogant, and it isn't as well received as an authentic celebration. Celebrate your accomplishment with your employees. Thank them and let them be proud of what you've all accomplished. Ask your social media team to promote and publicize the celebration organically. If you can find a way to make it unique and newsworthy, share a press release. - Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing 8. Let Others Speak For You The best way to take advantage of a prestigious award or investment is to use others' words instead of your own. If there is an official announcement from the awarding organization you can quote, repost or repurpose, or if there is a third-party commenting on the award or investment, it is going to validate the achievement much more than you and your organization saying how great it is. - Greg Kihlstrom, Yes& Agency 9. Reach Out Directly To Reporters Skip the generic press release route and opt for personally reaching out to a handful of ultra-relevant reporters who cover your industry. If you don't already have a relationship with them, tell them not just about the award you've won but also the bigger story behind your mission and how your company is actually impacting your industry. Don't make it a sales pitch – tell a story. - Richard Lorenzen, Fifth Avenue Brands 10. Add The Award As A 'Badge' On Your Homepage I love using awards, industry achievements and other recognition as "badges." Creating a row or section on the homepage of your website lends credibility and lasts beyond the initial announcement of the award. This allows you to keep that credibility enhancer constantly visible for anyone who checks out your website for years to come. - Tim Brown, Hook Agency 11. Email The News To Drive Repeat Business And Referrals For small businesses, sharing the news with your contacts through email is the best way to publicize your award. Current clients, previous clients and leads may miss the update on your website or social platforms. You can directly inform them of your accomplishment and what it means to your business, along with a call to action on the bottom of the email reminding clients of your services. - Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai 12. Publicize All Angles At Once Publicize fast and cover your market, industry, existing and potential customers with a bragging blanket. Naturally, don't come across as bragging, but rather as proud. Use social media, on and offline advertising, podcast interviews and updated website content. You earned it; be proud and tell people. - Timothy Nichols, ExactDrive, Inc
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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d80162a1c6461f1cfa0efe6b1e3aed75 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/22/15-agency-pros-share-the-best-work-advice-theyve-ever-received/ | 15 Agency Pros Share The Best Work Advice They've Ever Received | 15 Agency Pros Share The Best Work Advice They've Ever Received
Your approach to work may be waning if you're not motivated and happy with your current position. According to a study from the University of Warwick, happy people are 12% more productive.
But there are times when happiness fades and you need a boost to give you some direction and drive. Having a strong work ethic and an approach that empowers, you can find that key to success and be productive each and every day.
To help, 15 members of the Forbes Agency Council provide the best piece of advice they’ve received that has greatly impacted their approach to work. Here’s what they had to say:
Members of the Forbes Agency Council share their best work advice. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Schedule Everything
The best tool that many of us forget to leverage is our calendar. My day revolves around what I, and only I, put in my calendar. When it comes to work, if it's not scheduled, it's not happening. Every project, task or meeting (hopefully you're limiting these) is scheduled in advance for specific timeframes. And don't forget to schedule personal time, creative time and downtime, as well. - Vinny La Barbera, imFORZA
2. Divergence Is The Most Powerful Force
I read The Origin of Brands by Al and Laura Ries years ago and it changed my life. With everyone pushing for convergence, great brands are created through divergence. Coffee, decaf, instant, drive-thru, gourmet, pods – each subcategory of the coffee business has a different brand leader. That insight helped me create my first company 11 years ago, and it's still going strong. My second is a divergence from the first. - Jim Tobin, Carusele
3. The Basics Are Your Forever Foundation
Stick with the basics: who, what, why, where, when, how. If you can't answer these questions, then your story or message isn't effective. An outline addressing the answers to these questions will help you tap into the core of what you need to say. Then you can just say it! - Ilissa Miller, IMiller Public Relations
4. Never Overlook A Great Idea
When hearing a new idea for the first time, the best advice I've ever heard is to "love the idea for 10 minutes." I fondly remember my days performing improvisational group comedy where no ideas were ever rejected – we had to make them work. The same should be true as new ideas are first shared. Rather than rejecting it, love it. It's amazing how many great ideas just need a few moments to simmer. - Dave Wendland, Hamacher Resource Group
5. Take Inventory And Prioritize
You can't do everything. We tend to rush to the urgent at the expense of the important. Take inventory, and figure out what is important and focus your energies there. It's important for someone else to take care of the urgent, or it isn't as important as it seems at the time. - Mark Shipley, SMITH & JONES
6. Winners Quit
The saying "quitters never win and winners never quit" is single-handedly responsible for some of the worst career mistakes people make. If you're in the wrong place, if you're moving in the wrong direction, take a step back. Evaluate. And feel free to quit and try something else. - Gil Eyal, HYPR
7. Failure Is Part Of Success
Don't be afraid of failure. Failure is a natural component of success, and only through failing can we get better. Each time you fail, it's practice for succeeding. The process can be analyzed, adjusted and then tried again until you reach the desired outcome. If you're good at failing, you're good at learning, adjusting, growing and, ultimately, winning. - Carey Kirkpatrick, CKP
8. Goals First, Strategy And Tactics Second
Lots of marketers and clients get really excited about strategy and tactics because it is creative and fun, but strategy and tactics that are not aligned with client goals can waste lots of time and money. Always define your goals clearly up front and then start working on strategy. After strategy is done, start executing tactics. Otherwise, it becomes a "ready, shoot, aim" situation. - Adam Stone, Octane Marketing
9. Learn How To Delegate
For those of us who have a hard time delegating, the best advice that's been shared with me is: Expect 80% of what you would do if you delegate to someone else. After letting go and getting results, this advice has been pivotal to help in all aspects of our business. - Lee Salisbury, UnitOneNine
10. There Is Only One Thing To Do Today
Every day, there is only one thing that really needs to get done if we are to advance to our next level. The problem is, more often than not, we don't know what the one thing is, so we end up doing all sorts of busy work. Over time, as we discover what produces meaningful results, we become attuned to the one thing. Our mission must be, every day, to get the one thing done no matter what. - Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
11. Work Hard And Enjoy A Glass Of Wine
Work hard and be nice. This is something I have always kept in mind, as you never know whose path you will cross again down the road. And at the end of a long day, enjoy a glass of wine. Remember, it’s OK to relax and take a break once in a while. - Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR
12. Charge For Strategy
Many times, clients expect the strategy of any campaign or project to be included for free or as a byproduct of good creative. I had to discover that the best outcomes for campaigns and projects start with a dedicated strategy stage that must be thoroughly vetted. That strategy requires effort and time from creatives, and that time should be included as part of the project scope and budget. - Aaron Henry, FOUNDRY512
13. Keep It Simple
Every morning, do something you can easily complete. This prevents overwhelm and allows you to start your day with a focused mindset since you have accomplished or moved something forward. That positive energy will continue throughout your whole day. - Drew Gerber, Wasabi Publicity, Inc.
14. Align Your Actions With Your Goals
As you're growing a business, it can be easy to get caught up in the day-to-day busy work. But if you really want to grow, you have to make sure your daily actions are aligning with that. Ask yourself: Is this action going to help us get more customers or sell more? If not, you should rethink spending time on it. - Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH
15. Consistency Is Key
The road to success is never a straight line, and creating a great company takes roughly 10 years, full of ups and downs. It is mandatory to stay consistent over the years, not going too low during the hard times and not going too high on the good times. The bigger your business, the bigger the ups and downs, so you have to master that consistency part if you want to keep a good mental shape. - Julien Verdier, Adyoulike
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f07df85333e7ad7d2052560beba34389 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/24/beyond-reach-what-bottom-line-kpis-you-need-to-measure-on-social-media/ | Beyond Reach: What Bottom-Line KPIs You Need To Measure On Social Media | Beyond Reach: What Bottom-Line KPIs You Need To Measure On Social Media
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When businesses and brands first started their social media pages, the savvy C-Suite asked their social media manager to track analytics on this newfangled thing called social networking. For a long time — probably too long — those analytics consisted of likes and mentions.
As time went by and platforms like Twitter and Facebook provided more analytics tools, those same social media managers started to track engagement, impressions and reach, maybe even click-through rates. But as social media has long evolved from a nice-to-have to a must-do, so has the need to track key performance indicators (KPIs) that affect the bottom line of your business.
Engagement and reach are great KPIs, but at the end of the day they don’t keep the lights on. They can tell you if your campaign is performing well and help to increase brand awareness — both of which are good metrics to track — but what you ultimately want to do is get people to purchase your service or buy your product. If you’re not tracking where they’re coming from, and that includes your social media efforts, you could be wasting time and money.
Focusing On More Effective KPIs
So what KPIs should be tracked? Your KPI could be as simple as tracking a sales target. To do so, determine the realistic amount of product that needs to move within a week, month or quarter. Then, focus your paid and organic social campaigns on getting traffic converted from your social efforts to the shopping cart of your website.
Track Last Click Attribution to find how many people come from your active social media campaign and make a purchase on your e-commerce site, preferably a customized landing page that takes the consumer directly to the point of sale. Track those numbers against the same landing page's bounce rate. If the bounce rate is high compared to the shopping cart conversion, make any changes to that page or to your website.
You can also track how many leads are generated from your social campaigns. Maybe you don’t have a product to sell, but you have a service. A lead generation campaign will help you to determine if you’re targeting your campaign on social media to the right consumers. Just be sure to have the sales team follow up on those leads and report back the lead-to-sale conversion rate, another great metric to track.
If you don’t have a physical product or service to sell but make your money from actions on your website — say, video plays where you’ve sold pre- or mid-roll advertising — track the cost per action, or how much it costs you to get viewers not only to your page but also to click the "play" button. Taking that one step further, track how long they watch before they leave, as well as the bounce rate from that page.
After-the-sale KPIs are also important to track. Word-of-mouth is one of the most impactful ways to find the return on your investment of any campaign or sale, because what is being said publicly not only reflects your brand but also helps to influence future consumer purchases. You don’t necessarily need to pay big money to buy the opinion of an influencer when your customers can do that for you by leaving reviews.
Track sentiment — the positive and the negative — of what is being said about your brand or product on sites like Yelp, Facebook and even your own e-commerce website if leaving reviews is an option. And just as important, any reviews that are credible and actionable, or can be addressed by making your product or brand better, should be taken into consideration.
Let’s not rush to track reach, impressions, engagements and those other common social KPIs, but layer more measured, bottom-line KPIs into the mix to really show the C-Suite the return on investment they’ve been waiting to see.
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d6ebc0f0f20050d6052beb0f2b07b645 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/29/how-to-land-brag-worthy-media-coverage/ | How To Land Brag-Worthy Media Coverage | How To Land Brag-Worthy Media Coverage
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Look, we can likely all admit, part of the thrill of getting a great media placement or interview is the bragging opportunity. Sure, media coverage establishes credibility and builds trust with existing and potential customers, but there’s also something really rewarding about seeing yourself quoted or featured in a highly respected media outlet. (And it’s fun to share it with your family and friends!)
So, how do you land those coveted media placements? Two words: breaking news.
Breaking news is news in the truest sense of the word -- from hard news about national and world events to major political and scientific breakthroughs to entertainment news about celebrities and sports stars. Because this news is what drives the media, tying your pitches to a breaking news story is a great way to grab the media’s attention.
For example, we recently represented a sexual harassment expert. When the #MeToo movement began, we pitched the media, positioning our client as an expert who can discuss the issue of harassment in the workplace. This landed him a placement in Entrepreneur. And in 2009, we had just signed on a doctor and leading expert on unhealthy relationships as a client. Within eight hours, amid abuse news that broke about Rihanna and Chris Brown, we landed her an interview on Dr. Phil to speak about domestic violence. (This is still our record we’re trying to beat!)
What’s great about breaking news is it helps you land brag-worthy coverage by answering the two most important questions in public relations (PR):
1. Why should the media care?
2. Why should they care now?
Breaking news answers the “Why now?” question and increases your chances to share your brilliant insights, commentary or expert opinion. It also answers the “Why should I care?” question for the media. Editors and producers constantly ask their reporters to answer one question from the point of view of the reader, viewer or listener: “Why should I care?” As an expert, thought leader or publicist, it’s your job to help them answer that question.
Now, if you’ve powerfully answered those two questions, you are much more prepared. At a moment’s notice, you must be ready to jump when the media calls. The earlier you can get involved with the story, the greater your impact on the conversation and the greater your chance to be a part of the follow-up. The old saying, “The early bird gets the worm,” certainly holds true when it comes to PR.
Here are some key things to remember to help you prepare for your brag-worthy opportunity:
• Monitor the news. How? Do what you enjoy. Watching the morning news is a great way to get caught-up on the daily headlines. Or if you prefer to catch up with the news online, set up Google Alerts. It’s free and lets you know right away if there’s breaking news on your topic.
• Reach out immediately. Personalized pitching (by email or phone) is the best way to reach the media when news breaks. And note, it’s important to highlight your talking points and your availability in your pitch.
• Make sure the media has what they need ASAP! Provide a link to your online press kit and give your interviewer everything they need to prepare for the interview beforehand. Trust me, it’s in your best interest to provide all your information right away so you’re shaping the conversation and not the other way around. Be prepared!
• Ensure the media knows every possible way to contact you. This seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised how often people just give media contacts their email address. Make sure they have your cell phone number and alternate phone numbers, email address, WhatsApp, Viber, Skype, etc. They need to be able to contact you 24/7. And, of course, this goes without saying: When they call, pick up. If you can’t pick up, call back immediately!
• Ask yourself if you’re ready to fly. For TV interviews, you or your client often must be available to fly or travel on short notice. The travel may be local or you may have to fly across the country. Be prepared for spur-of-the-moment schedule changes and be ready to make travel arrangements before you pitch. And if you’re not up for travel, focus your PR campaign on print and radio, which can often be done by phone -- just make sure you have a reliable connection! There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of a radio interview and losing your connection.
• Think like a journalist. The more you watch, read and listen to the news, the more you can anticipate opportunities and prepare to comment when news breaks. Every breaking news story has a cycle, and it’s important you hit the cycle at the right time. As soon as news breaks, the media need hard experts to help sort out what happened and why. After they’ve fully fleshed that out, they need experts who can offer a solution to the issue. Ask yourself, where does my expertise fit inside this breaking news cycle? Where do I want to comment? Be very clear about this when you’re pitching the media.
A lot of this may seem like common sense, but when it comes to PR, it’s usually the smallest details that determine whether or not you capture the attention of journalists in need of an expert. Being prepared and making sure you’re on top of all the details will increase your chances of landing those coveted brag-worthy media placements.
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cea156fe876bcf5761dd9e4af33fd42b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/29/more-than-awareness-influencer-marketings-role-in-the-sales-funnel/ | More Than Awareness: Influencer Marketing's Role In The Sales Funnel | More Than Awareness: Influencer Marketing's Role In The Sales Funnel
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When you picture the sales funnel -- awareness taking up the widest part, narrowing through interest and decision, finally ending in action -- where do you think influencer marketing fits in?
Many marketers would categorize influencer marketing as an awareness tactic, which is a reasonable assumption. We tend to measure influencer campaigns based on reach, impressions and engagement rather than the end sale. And influencer-shared content is often used as an introduction to a product or service.
However, there’s really no single best time to use influencer marketing, because the path from awareness to point of sale includes many important touchpoints along the way. Today’s sales funnel process is highly consumer-driven, where educated customers are actively seeking information that’s relevant to their needs. As the CEO of Sway Group, an influencer marketing agency, I’ve seen firsthand how influencer marketing can be used effectively at every stage of this modern purchase journey.
Top Of Funnel: Awareness
Influencers have incredible sway when it comes to familiarizing their audience with your brand identity. Their storytelling and presentation skills are the perfect vehicles for everything from initial product introduction to in-depth tutorials that help consumers understand complicated features and benefits.
Awareness tactics are far more subtle (and effective) than they used to be. The outdated model of brands relying on heavy-handed sales pitches and promotional messages is changing to a more nuanced approach, with influencers who can seamlessly weave brand messaging into their own tone and language. Broad-based awareness campaigns now have a personal touch: Influencers will often share photos or stories that involve their own authentic experience with a product or service.
According to a blog post by Simply Measured, "When done right, influencer marketing can work wonders for businesses looking to launch new products or raise brand awareness by tapping into an influencer’s already established audience and reach." But don’t stop at this stage: There are still plenty of chances to motivate and connect with potential buyers throughout the sales process.
Mid-Funnel: Engagement
Influencer campaigns can drive engagement in all kinds of ways, whether it’s garnering video views, sparking a brand conversation across multiple social channels, encouraging participation in a giveaway or driving traffic to brand websites and social accounts.
Engagement is where awareness can ultimately turn into action. Likes, shares, comments -- all of these activities help spread the word and influence buying decisions. One study revealed that a whopping 74% of people will choose companies or brands based on others’ experiences shared online. It’s clear that third-party endorsement is critical for today’s socially engaged consumers.
In the middle of the funnel, consumers are becoming interested in a product or service and taking steps toward a buying decision. Influencers can help move people from one stage to the next by offering the kind of compelling content that leads people to learn more and ultimately share their own experiences and recommendations.
Bottom Of The Funnel: Action
While it’s a common belief that influencers don’t drive direct sales straight from a blog or social post, there are plenty of strategies for influencers to cut through the noise and ask for the sale on a brand’s behalf.
It’s true that influencer campaign sales are more organic and thus can be more difficult to track, but a campaign can include creative calls to actions like sharing a coupon or a discount to wavering consumers. (Tip: Unique promo codes not only feel personal but also help post-campaign tracking.) In some cases, influencers can boost in-store sales with demonstration campaigns, such as sharing the benefits of a personalized fitting and styling for a fashion retail brand.
Influencers are also starting to take advantage of the new direct sales features offered by certain social platforms. Any post can include a link to buy, of course, but now Instagram Stories has a “Swipe Up” feature that can send the follower directly to a purchase page, and Buyable Pins on Pinterest let users click to buy products they’re interested in.
Just remember: Sales can and do happen by indirect means. An influencer might publish a delicious-looking recipe sponsored by a spice brand. The recipe could include a printable that gets picked up and shared on Pinterest, making its way to a cooking enthusiast who waits until the holidays to give the recipe a try. She buys the ingredients, makes the recipe, then shares the results (and shopping list) on her Instagram page --and on it goes.
Ongoing Efforts
The sale is just one component of developing a valuable, long-term relationship with a consumer. Combine elements from all of the above strategies to stay top of mind: continue partnering with influencers to share loyalty/rewards offers, reengage influencers during key seasonal pushes, and utilize the existing content via social sharing, digital advertising or on the brand’s own site.
According to marketing's "Rule of Seven," prospects need to consume an advertising message a minimum of seven times before they'll take steps to buy the product or service. A well-planned influencer campaign will help your brand be seen on different platforms by cross sections of consumers. And when you engage multiple influencers, consumers are likely to be exposed to your brand multiple times (in a variety of diverse, authentic voices) over the course of a campaign or even a year-long program.
Influencer marketing is so much more than an introductory tactic. Well-planned campaigns will help you not only connect with potential customers but also motivate them to engage with and contribute to your brand as you guide them toward your ultimate objectives. In the end, you want more than a sale -- you want the kind of relationship that fosters brand advocacy.
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b7850a9c79965235b555c92ba6aa7269 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/30/five-essential-marketing-strategies-for-any-startup/?sh=5ad7f4905795 | Five Essential Marketing Strategies For Any Startup | Five Essential Marketing Strategies For Any Startup
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We all know marketing is essential for all businesses, but it's even more important for startups. Unless people know about your startup and what it offers, they probably won't buy your products or services.
At Kobe Digital, we come across all types of businesses. Most all of them are concerned with growth, but none are more hungry for growth than startups. Whether it's the next big SaaS company or a new chain of Thai ice cream shops, startups are a completely different animal when it comes to marketing.
Since marketing for startups is such a unique case, this guide should give founders a good place to start. As your business grows and expands its presence, it may attract customers through word of mouth. Until that happens, though, you should prioritize the following marketing strategies to spread the word about your startup.
1. Send Emails
Email marketing is an essential strategy for attracting customers to your startup for little or no cost. Once you have a prospect or customer's email address, you can send him or her emails to promote your startup.
To take advantage of this marketing strategy, you must first collect prospects' email addresses. If you have a website for your startup, consider placing a newsletter signup form on it. Alternatively, you can ask customers directly for their email addresses. The key thing to remember is that you must diversify your emails with non-commercial content like guides, how-to articles, videos and infographics. If you only send advertorial emails, subscribers will probably opt out of receiving your newsletter.
2. Start A Blog
Blogging is a powerful strategy that can help your startup generate the exposure it needs. One report found that businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads than their competitors without blogs. With a blog, you can position your startup as a leading source while also attracting organic search traffic to your site.
The secret to creating an effective business blog is to publish content that your audience wants to read. If it's valuable and worth reading, search engines will reward your hard work by ranking your blog at the top of the search results. And when your blog ranks high, it will attract more visitors -- meaning more people will learn about your startup.
3. Post On Social Media
Statistics show that more than 2.4 billion people use social media, so it's important to incorporate this channel into your startup's marketing strategy. As your business's presence on social media grows, more people will see and recognize it. Furthermore, most social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, allow business owners to pay for traffic and exposure. With Facebook Ads, for example, you can create ads that appear in users' news feeds or in the right column of the Facebook website.
It takes more than just a profile to succeed with social media marketing. You must post engaging, relevant content that gives users a reason to follow your account. And once you've attracted followers, you should encourage them to stay by responding to their questions and comments.
4. Use Paid Search Advertising
Paid search has become a popular advertising channel for startups. It allows business owners to buy laser-targeted traffic from search engines like Google and Bing. Google AdWords and Bing Ads are two of the leading paid search networks, both of which feature keyword targeting with a cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model. Using either of these networks, you can create custom ads for your startup that appear in search results when someone searches for a keyword related to your business. If your startup sells enterprise-grade cybersecurity software, for instance, you can target keywords like "cybersecurity for enterprise," "enterprise cybersecurity software" and "enterprise anti-malware."
The most appealing feature of paid search is its CPC pricing model in which you are only charged when someone clicks on your ad. Ten thousand users may see your ad, but if no one clicks, you aren't charged. Of course, you'll generate plenty of clicks if you create relevant and engaging ads, but you are still only charged by the click, simplifying the process of optimizing your paid search campaigns for a higher return on investment (ROI).
5. Sponsor An Event
Finally, sponsoring a local event can help get your startup on your prospects' radar. You'll pay the event's organizers a small fee to become a sponsor and promote your business with signs, stationary, banners, booths and other marketing materials at the event. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement that's highly effective at driving sales when done correctly.
Business owners should sponsor events that are relevant to their operations or what they offer. If your startup business is a mobile health and wellness app, for example, perhaps you can sponsor marathons and 5K and 10K runs. If your startup sells anti-malware software, on the other hand, maybe you can sponsor cybersecurity and other information technology (IT) events.
The bottom line is, don't let your startup's market share slip to its competitors. Consider these five strategies to promote your business and generate more sales.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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43903006bc6f57b0d3f4acfe4902f666 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/05/31/11-branding-tips-for-a-better-company-image/?sh=6a01cdb62be0 | 11 Branding Tips For A Better Company Image | 11 Branding Tips For A Better Company Image
When it comes to branding, most people think about logos and colors. But branding is about more than just recognizability. It's about the impact that you have on a customer and how it sends a message. The first impression can say a lot about a company, its values and what it does. Entrepreneurs should be thinking about the unintended impacts of branding. We asked members of the Forbes Agency Council about what to consider when thinking about branding assets. The answers given reveal a lot about what makes a good slogan, logo, name and more. After all, a company's branding is a visible, and often tangible, extension of the company. Forbes Agency Council members offer their best tips. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Clearly Identify Yourself While catchy names and cool graphics can be interesting, they do not do a great job of telling your story. Your company name, logo and slogan should provide insights into what you do and the products or services you offer. If you miss this opportunity, you will spend valuable time and energy on explaining the basics. That is time that could be used to further develop a relationship or share key benefits. - Korena Keys, KeyMedia Solutions
2. Make It Easy For People To Understand Make it easy for people to understand what you do. Too many names are clever wordplay or have no meaning. Also, be certain to adequately find a campaign to publicize the brand. Sufficient publicity can do a huge amount to define the brand. - Peter Prodromou, Racepoint Global
3. Let Your Brand Tell A Story Let your name, slogan and logo tell a story. Having a clear message behind your business will allow the consumer to grasp the pillars that your company embodies. - Danny Fritz, SBX Group
4. Consider What Your Customer Will Think We've been a part of a lot of new logo designs and I'm routinely surprised that the customer is not considered during the process. Most times, the logo, slogan and company name are thought of by the entrepreneur before having even one customer. If you like a high-tech look and feel and are selling to an earthy, wholesome group, there will be a mismatch. Your logo or brand won't resonate with your chosen customers. Define your customer, then create your brand to attract that customer. Are you Toyota or Lexus? Payless or Tom Ford? Walmart or Target? - David Kovacs, Allegra Princeton
5. Ask Why You Are Doing This You have a business that sells a product, but why do you sell that product? Of course, we all want to make money, but selling something to make money won't motivate the consumer to buy into your brand. Ask yourself: What difference will it make in the lives of the consumer who buys it? Start by building a foundation of who and why you are selling what you sell and work up from there. - Rebecca Kowalewicz, Clearbridge Branding Agency
6. Create A Liquid Experience The most important part of branding today is creating a liquid experience. To many, that means repeating the same slogans and looks across all platforms. That is a mistake. A liquid experience is a cohesive branding strategy but also one that takes into consideration the user and audience in an intimate way. My advice when working on a first impression is to first work on the audience. Better yet, think about the tribe you want to reach and create a cohesive yet customized branding version for a peak user experience. - Jennifer Barbee, Destination Innovate
7. Be Creative And Approachable
The best company branding is a combination of creativity and approachability. When considering a name, logo and brand aesthetic, consider your audience as well as your brand category. There's a reason we go to Zappos for shoes rather than Shoes.com. The most successful brands adopt a creative spin without deviating too much from what their prospective consumers expect from their product or service. - David Harrison, EVINS
8. Design For The Long-Term Consider how your branding and logo will hold up over time. Communicating that a brand is cutting-edge or uber-hip may drive you to the trendiest of design trends. However, you may want to think about how to bring that message to life in a way that won’t look dated in five or 10 years. The crossed-arrow look might be in today, but if you plan to be around for a while, think again. - Keri Witman, Cleriti
9. Try The ROI Principle We follow the ROI principle: relevant, original and impactful. If our brand strategy and brand development work achieves these standards, the client will make a desirable first impression in the marketplace. We take time to make sure that our clients are aligned with these ROI standards and encourage them to test our work with their past, current and "want to have" customers. Social media is a great platform to test ideas before taking them to the next level. - Alannah Tsimis Sandehl, IDM Brand
10. Think About Extensibility Your branding assets are often consumers’ first impression of your company. What’s one factor to consider when coming up with a company name, slogan, logo, etc.? Understand that your business will go through changes as it pertains to the products it sells, the region it sells in and perhaps even the audience it is selling to. It’s important to create something unique to your business that represents the integrity of your company, but make sure it’s extensible enough to weather the changes that are sure to come over the years. - Lori Paikin, NaviStone®
1 1. Pass The Radio Test
Depending on the type of your business, this can be super important. You want to make sure that your company's name is something that people can spell easily when they first hear it. If they can't, then you risk missing out on opportunities from people that just couldn't find you after (mis)typing your name. If I hear your company name on the radio, I should be able to find you right away. - Rafael Romis, Weberous Web Design
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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ff9d4a4332a9e87ccd57cc5a8204d41c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/06/01/why-more-followers-doesnt-equal-more-value/ | Why More Followers Doesn't Equal More Value | Why More Followers Doesn't Equal More Value
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For many, the term "influencer" conjures up images of athletes, movie stars, heiresses and style icons. It's no secret that celebrities, with millions of followers, have fostered a healthy career around leveraging their influence. So, the question becomes: Is there more to influencer marketing than reach and engagement? What about your hairdresser’s recommendations on hair products? Your pet walker’s advice on dog food?
With the rise of social media, suddenly everyone has a platform to share their perspectives, advice and recommendations. Average consumers like you and me have become content creators, with the ability to influence our friends, family and followers. In a world where we are bombarded with ads across all platforms at all times, these so-called "social content creators" are key to generating branded content that resonates with modern consumers. The benefits of social content creators are three-fold: authenticity, relevance and engagement.
Think about it: Have you ever found yourself trying a new product or brand because of something your friend posted on social media? If you answered "yes," you're not alone. According to a summary of Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report, "92 percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising." That said, brands must view all consumers as an extension of their marketing team to spread awareness and drive business results. Our company, Social Native, has built a technology platform to connect the dots between brands and social content creators to create meaningful connections and generate authentic, custom content.
At the end of the day, the defining characteristic of any effective social media marketing strategy is authenticity. This authenticity hinges on the creators’ genuine enthusiasm for the brand. In a mid-year survey of Social Native’s creators, 98% agreed that “genuinely liking the brand or product” is important when choosing to participate in a campaign, and 95% agreed that the brand’s aesthetic should match their own. When creators are personally invested in their content, money and notoriety take a back seat to authenticity and brand affinity, and their recommendations and opinions carry heavy weight.
Mega-influencers come with hefty price tags, and there is no guarantee that their posts will reach the brand’s intended audience. Social creators, on the other hand, can help marketers increase ROI by showing ads to the people most likely to pay attention to them. This is largely because social creators have fostered smaller, more niche audiences based on shared traits, such as location, demographics, interests, etc. As the old saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.” For instance, if a creator’s account centers around pets, their followers most likely have a passion for animals. In addition, social creators are actively engaged, sharing their own thoughts, words, videos and images with audiences that care. Taken together, relevant and engaged audiences are positively correlated with brand engagement and sales. This success owes a lot to a single distinction: Consumers don’t glamorize products, they normalize them.
When vetting potential creators, it is important to look for people with a passion, dedication to their work and who have developed trust within their networks.
Celebrities might have been the original social media influencers, but big influencers come with big price tags and issues of scale. Social creators are the answer to creating a true win-win-win. Creators win because they are getting paid to work with the brands they love. Marketers win because they are getting the content to fuel social conversations. And consumers win because they are getting valuable and personalized advertising experiences. Successful integration of social creators can give brands rich ways to tell their stories with ads that pack a powerful punch.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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4bfe4b766acfcb0575f1c019ab1da66c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/06/08/three-reasons-why-facebooks-new-dating-service-is-huge-for-marketers/ | Three Reasons Why Facebook's New Dating Service Is Huge For Marketers | Three Reasons Why Facebook's New Dating Service Is Huge For Marketers
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You've been in the game long enough to know that Facebook doesn't do anything just because it wants users to have a great time. Since the day Zuck removed the school email requirement in 2005, every single thing Facebook has done has been in the interests of gathering user data and selling ad space. So, when we were told at Facebook's annual F8 conference that Facebook would be rolling out its own Tinder-style dating service, my mind immediately went to the huge potential it has for marketers and business owners.
It's not surprising that Facebook is jumping into the online dating space. What is surprising is the fact that it's just now taking this step, considering Facebook makes a regular habit of taking a popular concept and doing it better. As Matt Smith, founder of Instagram marketing platform Later, wrote in Tech.Co last year, "Take a look at Facebook right now. Messenger and its chatbots are strikingly similar to WeChat. And, though Facebook Live looks like just another Periscope, it has actually dominated Twitter’s live video-streaming app. What’s more, Facebook’s nostalgic “On this day…” flashbacks mirror Timehop’s functionality."
So, this is nothing new for Facebook. It'll try to buy out its competition, and if the competition won't sell, the platform will just copy and monetize the product, hence the dating service. But like I said before, this service isn't for users; it's for marketers. Here are three ways that Facebook's entrance into the dating game can help people like you and me.
More Accurate Targeting Based On Relationship Status
While Facebook can currently use relationship statuses to target users, there's no way to know exactly how they're feeling about their status. Someone may be single, but we as marketers don't know if their Facebook relationship status is reflective of where they currently are or if they haven't updated it in a year.
Even though their status says single, we don't know if they've recently gone on a string of bad first dates and want to pump the brakes on pursuing a relationship for a moment. We don't know if they're like the 30% of Tinder users that are married, yet are still in the market for date spots. Plus, there are also plenty of users who don't even specify their relationship status that could be looking. But now, when they sign up for the dating app, Facebook can track their usage and know if they are actively looking for a new relationship, reference this with their interests and allow marketers to get even stronger behavioral targeting.
Greater Opportunity For Niche Industries
Let's take a new-ish entertainment concept that has been gaining steam around the country: axe throwing. Obviously, it's a super-niche industry. Data can tell us who the strongest audiences and personas are for a business like this, but (outside of birthdays) what are the events in someone's life that would drive them through the doors? Bingo: first dates.
Facebook doesn't have a targeting option that tells businesses someone is planning a first date. But with dating services, we're now able to not only select the right audiences but target them at the exact moment they're looking for the perfect date idea. Not only can we identify them, but we can use the exact messaging they need to be pushed into a conversion.
Imagine that instead of "Axe-throwing is a great way to connect with friends. Come see us today!" you can have a super-targeted ad that says, "Hey, dummy! Don't take her to the same trendy cocktail bar as every other dude on this app for a first date. Get her heart pumping by cheering her on as she fires a friggin' axe at the wall!" This creates an advantage for any business that is conducive to first dates, such as movie theaters, museums, bars with karaoke nights, painting classes – you get the picture.
More Relevant News Feed
One of the greatest things about the dating service is that you can't match with anyone you're already friends with. So what's that mean on a macro level? People will stop adding users they don't know but find attractive if they use the app.
This inadvertently purges the News Feed of irrelevant posts from people the user doesn't personally know. This decreased noise/increased relevance means people will care more about the content they're seeing, which increases time spent on the platform. The ultimate result for marketers is that people trust and engage with what's in their News Feed more, which includes your advertisements.
Like everything else at Facebook, the people who stand to benefit most from this new initiative are business owners, marketers and Facebook itself. Utilizing the dating service for marketing purposes early on could create an opportunity to quickly and effectively leverage the new opportunities it presents.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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96a16bfcae5715e541a48e880f6f8e4e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/06/11/is-your-business-in-compliance-with-the-eus-general-data-protection-regulation/ | Is Your Business GDPR-Compliant? | Is Your Business GDPR-Compliant?
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Despite the geography involved, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is not just about the European Union (EU) -- it will impact United States-based businesses as well. How will the additional data privacy rights and data collection regulation impact your marketing plans?
The GDPR is a set of new rules for data collection and storage that took effect on May 25, 2018. The purpose of this regulation is to provide individuals with more control over their own data and to moderate how that data is collected, stored, processed and used.
While the GDPR is based in the EU, this new regulation impacts businesses around the world. If your brand markets to, sells to or does business with prospects in the EU, then you need to be aware of the changes.
The Main Principles Of The GDPR
• It defines the type of data that can be collected and stored by brands.
• It clarifies what the data collected is used for, the amount collected and the length of time this information can be stored.
• It requires consent from individuals for data collection.
• It outlines the information that must be provided to consumers or individuals when their data is collected.
In some cases, the GDPR will require some shifts in the way your brand collects information and how it secures consent to obtain and use an individual’s data. If you collect or save the personal data of EU residents, then you are obligated to comply.
The actual information covered by the GDPR varies and includes any data that identifies an individual. The usual bits of information -- name, email address, physical address -- are included but so are cookies, IP addresses and location information. This broad umbrella covers the demographic details that marketers often use to define or segment an audience.
Consent Is Now Required
While brands of all sizes do have to comply with the GDPR and may have to alter the way that data is collected and stored, the main principles of this regulation involve consent. If your brand does business or even targets prospects in the EU, you must now obtain what the GDPR terms “explicit consent” to collect or store data.
Explicit consent should be voluntary, meaning the user has to opt-in or agree to the data collection. Per new GDPR rules, the individual also must be completely aware of the data being collected -- you’ll need to outline the specific details of what you collect, what you do with this information and how you will store it.
The GDPR requires you to use clear and easy-to-understand language, not legalese or fine print. Even big brands like Google are changing their data collection language to make it more accessible to users. You’ll need to keep a record of the consent given and store it in a secure location.
Visitors must consent to all types of data collection. If you collect email addresses, use a Facebook pixel or retargeting methods, each of these approaches needs to be clearly defined on your site and users must agree or give consent to each.
Parental consent is required if data is being collected from an EU resident under the age of 16. For marketers, this means a positive opt-in is needed -- the EU prospect will need to take action to affirm that they wish to proceed. If you use information for more than one purpose, then the visitor needs to be informed of every way you intend to use this data.
Complying With The GDPR
While this set of privacy regulations targets EU-based companies, the protection covers individual EU residents. If your brand markets to a global audience or sells services or goods to EU citizens, then you are required to comply with GDPR rules.
In order to be compliant, you’ll need to clearly define the data you collect from EU residents, how you store that data and what third-party services you share it with. Review your policies and practices to be sure you are letting users know what data you collect, your visitors clearly consent to data collection, and you're providing a way for users to be notified of problems or request that their data be purged. To ensure these rules are followed, I recommend that businesses take the following steps:
Update your privacy policy. The GDPR regulation means it is time to take a fresh look at your privacy policy. Take the time to review it and make sure it fully outlines how you use data. Ensure your privacy policy is updated to address the GDPR.
Review email opt-in and contact forms. If you collect emails for marketing purposes, adding consent to your subscription form or opt-in will help ensure you are in compliance with the GDPR. Since these rules will have a significant impact on email marketing and opt-ins, most email service providers have made it easy to set your forms up to comply with the new regulation.
Inform about cookies and affiliate links. If you showcase affiliate products or service or use display ads, retargeting ads or even abandoned cart emails, make sure you are asking for consent before a prospect clicks on your link. They should be informed that you use cookies and that a cookie will be used to track their sales and marketing activity.
Ensure your social media is compliant, too. Sites like Facebook are already taking steps to ensure that it is easy for users to comply with the GDPR. Your social media pages should also be compliant and clearly outline any data you collect or store.
Becoming GDPR-compliant will ensure your brand is protected from fines -- these can range up to 4% of your annual revenue or €20,000,000. You’ll also be able to showcase the care your brand takes to become and remain fully compliant with its consumers’ data protection and highlight your proactive approach to personal data integrity. If you haven’t already, it’s important to take the time to review your privacy policy and ensure you are in compliance with the GDPR.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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e5876eae5a96024559d6314a880fcbb0 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/06/12/11-tips-for-regaining-traffic-and-engagement-after-facebooks-algorithm-change/ | 11 Tips For Regaining Traffic And Engagement After Facebook's Algorithm Change | 11 Tips For Regaining Traffic And Engagement After Facebook's Algorithm Change
Facebook's recent algorithm change has caused headaches for many business owners.
Whether you operate a small business or large company, the algorithm change means that without money, it's more difficult to get your content in front of your target audience on Facebook. As some businesses and publications have learned the hard way, you should never put all of your engagement eggs in one basket, or platform.
We asked members of the Forbes Agency Council for some tips on what to do in light of this algorithm change. Their best answers are below.
Forbes Agency Council members offer their best tips. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Create Discussion-Worthy Content Many experts will say that quality content is important. Although it is true, quality is relative. Facebook will consider content worthy of visibility if it causes real engagement. Since comments have more weight, try to create content that creates a discussion among followers so you get that reach. - Jonathan Laberge, Reptile
2. Diversify Your Channels Businesses need to use multiple channels to reach their potential customers and not rely on a single channel. Social media algorithms are going to change on a regular basis and marketers need to mitigate their risk and be ready to pivot their programs on a moment's notice. - Lisa Allocca, Red Javelin Communications
3. Use The POST Methodology Originally coined by Forrester research, POST is People, Objectives, Strategies, Technology, in that order. For a strong content strategy, think of where to put your content only after you've considered your users, business objectives and where the two align. You may find that multiple platforms can be used. We do video content that does well on both LinkedIn and Twitter, for example. - Jim Tobin, Carusele
4. Start With Channels You Can Control If you're still initially publishing original content on anything other than your own website or blog, then you need to fix this first. The sooner you do this, the sooner you'll be able to stop worrying about whether your favorite social media network is going to change its algorithm or not. Focus on inside out publishing: originate content on your website and then use social platforms to repurpose and share this content. This strategy will diversify your traffic sources and continually build up the authority and online presence of your website (the only thing you really have any control over). - Vinny La Barbera, imFORZA
5. Go Live At a recent social media conference, it was clear that brands that rely on Facebook for their digital marketing have three options: one, increase their Facebook ad spend budget to promote posts (not something many businesses can do); two, keep Facebook in the mix but also incorporate other platforms (Instagram, Twitter, YouTube); or three, utilize Facebook Live, which now has a higher organic reach than other types of non-paid posts. - Rebecca Kowalewicz, Clearbridge Branding Agency
6. Retain Quality Remember this: quality over quantity. This is the golden rule of content marketing and it hasn’t changed one pixel. Always make sure you’re producing engaging, relevant and useful content. If that means you have limited resources and have to exchange fewer posts for higher quality content, do it. If that means you need to narrow your social stream from five active channels to two, yep, do that too. - Eric Fowles, VOLTAGE, LLC
7. Create Exclusive Content The new algorithm changes simply mean you have to work a little harder to engage with your Facebook audience in ways that keep them seeking out your page. Create moments and opportunities exclusive to Facebook that they need to visit your page to find, such as contests or giveaways, special sales or a community forum that engages your followers to share information with one another. - Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR
8. Consider Story Formats Attention spans have shortened as more content is consumed on mobile. To lean into how people are spending their time, consider the full screen, vertical format of Stories. You’ll capture attention by being more visual and concise. You’ll also be able to test Snapchat, Instagram, Google AMP and Twitter for alternatives for distribution. - Kieley Taylor, GroupM
9. Follow Your Audience Facebook isn’t the only platform where people consume content. Become more in tune with where your audience is and consider focusing your traffic strategy on other platforms. Regardless of algorithm changes, your main concern should be the digital location of your audience. If Facebook really is the only platform your customer base uses, consider paid targeting options. - Lisa Arledge Powell, MediaSource
10. Remember What You Did Before Facebook We often meet clients who get hung up on one marketing channel as "the" marketing channel for their brand. As seen with Facebook, when brands put all their eggs in one basket they can get crushed. The best form of marketing is multilayered. This means you're not just relying on one platform to sell, but several streams. Marketing is about testing. Make sure to always be testing. - Kirk Deis, Treehouse 51
11. Stay Relevant All algorithms have a natural state of change, whether it is Google, Facebook, Pinterest, or something that hasn’t been invented yet. When creating content for audiences, no matter the format or what algorithm is in place, the single common denominator for its success is whether or not it is relevant or interesting to the target audience. As long as you stay relevant, you can weather any algorithm storm that comes your way. - Stefan Pollack, The Pollack PR Marketing Group
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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f59070a4ac1cbd48ed31cfb310959298 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/06/14/want-to-prevent-a-full-blown-pr-crisis-follow-these-12-agency-recommended-rules/ | Want To Prevent A Full-Blown PR Crisis? Follow These 12 Agency-Recommended Rules | Want To Prevent A Full-Blown PR Crisis? Follow These 12 Agency-Recommended Rules
No brand wants to get bad press, but sooner or later, some negative feedback is bound to pop up. It might be a disgruntled customer complaining on social media or a review website, or a litigious employee suing the company for a perceived injustice. Either way, it's easy for an isolated incident like this to gather steam and explode into a full-blown public relations crisis.
While you can't prevent or predict unfavorable media attention, you can mitigate the damage and stop it from ruining your reputation by having the right preparation and response strategies in place. Follow this advice from 12 Forbes Agency Council members if you want to stop a massive PR crisis before it happens.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council offer their best recommendations. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Establish Implementation Guidelines
Ideas are exciting, and a well-executed "good" idea is better than a stagnant "great" idea. Rushing into execution, however, may expose us to PR nightmares. Setting execution guidelines can help. Although the elements of the guidelines may vary, it's wise to incorporate establishing clear goals, identifying all stakeholders and assessing the potential impact on those stakeholders into the process. - Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing
2. Monitor Your Social Media Channels In Real Time
These days, crises magnify within seconds online, so monitoring, reviewing and following activity on social channels is critical. Often times, the first place a crisis will appear is on social accounts. Monitoring social media closely can provide valuable insight and advance notice to help determine next steps, which must include swift action. - Durée Ross, Durée & Company
3. Research And Anticipate Every Possible Crisis
You can't prevent a PR crisis from happening, but there are ways to prevent a situation from escalating. During the pre-phase, you should anticipate every possible crisis that could possibly damage the company's reputation and always have this two-word question in the back of your head: "What if?" All the research needs to be done and an immediate response should take place if a crisis occurs. - Cagan Yuksel, GRAFX CO.
4. Create And Follow A Crisis Communications Plan
The biggest problem that comes out of a PR crisis is analysis paralysis. Develop a crisis communications plan that includes a detailed and specific protocol on what happens in the case of a PR crisis. Include definitions of everyone’s communication roles, contact information for pre-determined spokespeople, as well as a process for handling. - Stefan Pollack, The Pollack PR Marketing Group
5. Create A Diverse Workforce
Bring in all walks of life to your workforce – have a diversity of races, genders, ages and perspectives. If everyone in your agency is the same person, you're bound to turn people off regularly. Also, be kind, always. Act like your mom is in the room. If she wouldn't like your messaging, statements or decisions, then avoid them. - Josh Sample, Drive Social Media Saint Louis
6. Get Comfortable With Adjusting When Things Go Wrong
Things will go wrong eventually. When they do, don't panic. Falling down and risking failure is the ultimate channel to learn and grow. When faced with a PR crisis, take a moment to consider all options. You only fail if you give up. Having that positive "can-do" attitude is essential when reviewing your options. - Kirk Deis, Treehouse 51
7. Take A Pause And Collect Yourself Before Responding
A PR crisis is never fun. Taking a pause, gathering facts and managing your emotions while creating a plan of action is key. You don't want to come across flustered, overly emotional and unsure of yourself. Take a moment to prepare – the PR crisis will more than likely still exist after a quick strategy meeting. - Timothy Nichols, ExactDrive, Inc
8. Identify And Engage Your Champions Regularly
Don't wait for the PR crisis. Find your champions and empower them. Apple doesn't have PR crises because the world is filled with people who are willing to fight for them for free. Find your champions. Nurture them and make sure they're the first on the scene when you need to respond because at that point, they'll be the only ones who can speak on your behalf without sounding defensive. - Gil Eyal, HYPR
9. Listen With Humanity
Crisis prevention often starts the moment an issue breaks out, and damage can be avoided with a timely and genuinely human response. Consumers judge a brand's inaction, but they also judge the attitude and tonality of the responses. Show compassion, understanding and an appropriate level of contrition. Train those on the front lines to respond with humanity. A little kindness can go a long way. - Daryl McCullough, Citizen Relations
10. Have A Customizable Response Template Ready At All Times
You will never be able to prevent a PR crisis. They typically just happen, and you often find yourself in reactionary mode. One way you can prepare is to have template press releases done with approved replies or comments that are generic but can be customized for your unique circumstance if and when it occurs. Response time is critical for a PR crisis. - Tom La Vecchia, MBA, X Factor Media
11. Respond To Customer Complaints Quickly And Effectively
Pay attention to what your customers are saying about your brand. Make sure your communications, customer service and social teams are listening to those consumers. And have the ability to respond quickly to something that may be bubbling up about your company or products. It is essential that they work together and are empowered to handle concerns before they turn into problems. - Bonnie Kintzer, Trusted Media Brands
12. Adopt A Culture Of Good Internal And External Communication
You can prevent or mitigate the extent of the damage by adopting a culture of good communications, internally and externally. I see the damage, rather than the event itself, as the real crisis because it can linger and taint. An organization that engages in regular, proactive, transparent communications with its stakeholders is in a stronger position to contain the damage done by a crisis. - Beth Noymer Levine, SmartMouth Communications
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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7616594763d851f29a6d82ad737c4c3b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/06/18/17-self-promotional-marketing-tactics-agencies-should-stop-using/ | 17 Self-Promotional Marketing Tactics Agencies Should Stop Using | 17 Self-Promotional Marketing Tactics Agencies Should Stop Using
Modern marketers really have their work cut out for them. Consumers are savvier and have higher expectations than ever, and the traditional "hard sell" approach to advertising lost its effectiveness years ago.
Brands have caught onto this trend and adjusted their tactics accordingly, but the customer is still one step ahead: They know instantly when a company is attempting to win them over with disingenuous relationship-building tactics, and they simply won't fall for it anymore.
Instead of trying to trick people with "customer-savvy" strategies, brands should simply treat them as human beings and work toward forging authentic, valuable relationships. Here are some self-promotional tactics the experts at Forbes Agency Council recommend avoiding at all costs.
Forbes Agency Council members weigh in. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Jumping On The Bandwagon
More than ever, consumers want two things: Authenticity from brands, and for brands to engage in social discourse. In a time when brands are under pressure to stand for something, some companies are reaching to align their product with political or social issues, which, when unrelated, can feel tone-deaf and cause lasting damage to their reputation. - Fiona Bruder, George P. Johnson (GPJ) Experience Marketing
2. Overusing Influencers
We incorporate influencer marketing into several brand strategies and have seen significant results from brand awareness objectives to conversion-based initiatives. There are some agencies and/or brands who lean too much on influencer marketing and, in the process, lose the authenticity of their product. Customers can spot a sponsored post from a mile away. Make it intentional. - Amanda Ellis Stein, Expand YOUR Brand Consulting
3. Inauthentic Cause Marketing
Marketing that benefits a good cause and charity can be a great way to engage your customers and give back to the community. But before you engage in cause marketing, those partnerships must align with your brand values. Savvy customers will see right through an inauthentic partnership, perceiving your efforts as exploiting a cause to merely sell products. - Allie Danziger, Integrate Agency
4. 'Fluff' Statements About Internal Tech
Many agencies focus their pitch material on the shiniest tool in their toolbox, which is usually some IP technology that they created in-house. Don't be fooled by the fancy names or performance claims they make around proprietary internal tools. Instead, try to move the conversation to the basics and get them to talk about how their strategy will elevate performance without their internal tools. - Brooke Weller, PACIFIC
5. Only Focusing On A Single Touchpoint
Today, building loyalty means going deeper than just a single program. It requires a comprehensive customer experience strategy that’s rooted in your brand promise and that resonates with your customers. When done correctly, your brand promise serves as both the emotional “hook” that encourages engagement and the lens that ensures consistency and customer-centricity across all touchpoints. - Howard Breindel, DeSantis Breindel
6. Demanding Something In Exchange For Valuable Communication
Your initial customer exchanges don’t just introduce them to you and your product, but also how you partner. When the tone, manner and approach of your communication reflect the respect and spirit of partnership that adds value, relationships are fostered. Hold us hostage for the price of a weak, self-promotional whitepaper, and the only thing you’re selling us on is working with someone else. - Maria Budet, Zubi Advertising
7. Only Grabbing The Low-Hanging Fruit
We find many agencies groveling for the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest connection to people – financial and sexual appeal. This can be effective, but it should not be the definitive theme. Most clients carry a higher level of sophistication and creativity that is above this level of marketing, and most do not want to be branded as a company that covets the lowest common denominator. - Ernesto Carrizoza, Movement Marketing
8. Deceitful Design
Earning an opt-in or lead request can be difficult. Instead of investing the necessary time to build trust, many are opting to deliberately trick people. I'm seeing page buttons that change and/or disappear, info-demanding pop-ups that can't be closed and a host of other annoying tactics. This kind of behavior is a sure-fire way to drive potential customers away for good. - Thomas Allen, S.Marlowe
9. Crossing Privacy Boundaries
Tracking web activity or browsing history with the intention of creating personalized ads is a seemingly easy way to remind consumers to revisit whatever it is they were already thinking about. However, this tactic can be perceived as aggressive and sometimes invasive of one’s privacy. - Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
10. Promoting Their Own Awards And Accolades
I often see agencies focus heavily on the awards they have won and they self-promote too often. The better approach would be to focus on the clients' success and promote the results the agency is getting for their clients, whom they serve. - Korey McMahon, McMahon Marketing
11. Giving Away Free E-Books And Guides As An Introductory Tactic
If you were at a networking event, would you walk up and introduce yourself using a free e-book or guide? I sure wouldn't. Online marketing should emulate what we do offline. Build the relationship first with content (blogs, video, articles, etc.) that is optimized with an ideal call to action, so the right prospect will take action at their right time. - Gary Henderson, DigitalMarketing.org
12. Clickbait
Good marketing exists in the overlap between brand and consumer insights. Clickbait is a misaligned strategy that rarely fits this overlap. Liking, sharing or commenting on a social media post to "win" something may yield engagement, but it'll most likely miss the mark. The pushy nature of this approach often presents the brands as inorganic and in some cases, strains its relationships with followers. - Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing
13. Subpar Customer Service
Many companies engage real-time "Contact Us" customer service boxes, but those services are often either not attended, manned by robots, or staffed by offshore companies whose representatives have very strict scripts and no authority to deal with unique customer experiences. If you're serious about customer service, you should also be real about it: real people, real time, real responsiveness. - Craig Greiwe, Rogers & Cowan
14. Trying To Be Something The Brand Isn't
Studies have shown that consumers don’t mind being advertised to, but they do mind being lied to. Agencies that try to reach consumers by attempting to be something they are not, or that inauthentically present a brand ideal to act like they are just like the consumer or understand them, is not going to be effective. Brands need to be honest about who they are and what they are offering. - Stefan Pollack, The Pollack PR Marketing Group
15. Automated Social Media Direct Messages, Likes and Comments
Avoid automating your direct messages, likes and comments on social media. It can get old quickly and be obvious instantly when you receive a like, basic comment and direct message all at the same time on your Instagram, Twitter, etc. It is a big turn off. - Timothy Nichols, ExactDrive, Inc
16. Misleading Customers With Chatbots
Stop creating chatbots that try to trick customers into thinking they're speaking to a human. Commonly, the bot awkwardly tries to make a sale. It comes off as impersonal and can even aggravate people because the bots aren't a form of sophisticated AI or human interaction, so they can't get it quite right. if you want to scale, always being upfront and honest isn't an option – it's a necessity. - Josh Sample, Drive Social Media Saint Louis
17. Newsletters That Focus Too Heavily On Sales
Email marketing is one of the best platforms to increase growth, but lately, it's become overrun by spam. Typically agencies mean well and offer a freebie to get that precious contact info, and shortly after inboxes are hit with never-ending self-promotion emails. You really want to remember the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should be value-driven and 20% should be sales. - Kirk Deis, Treehouse 51
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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2a73e48740315dbf99f62051e9fafa49 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/06/21/marketer-fomo-breaking-down-the-search-for-the-next-mobile/ | Marketer FOMO: Breaking Down The Search For The 'Next Mobile' | Marketer FOMO: Breaking Down The Search For The 'Next Mobile'
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Innovation in the smartphone market has plateaued, and brands are restless to invest in the next great computing platform. Flagship smartphones like the iPhone X and Galaxy S9 are still rectangular slabs with screens – albeit very large screens – with incremental updates like Face ID and dual-aperture cameras, neither of which is exactly groundbreaking.
The search for the next big computing platform has left marketers scrambling to invest in emerging platforms that may or may not take off, resulting in corporate FOMO (fear of missing out). Whether it’s AI, VR, AR or cryptography, too many marketers and product leads are rushing to be first on technologies that just aren’t ready. For example, new blockchain startups are popping up to ride the wave of hype. Even Google is jumping on the blockchain bandwagon, though there is mounting evidence and opinions that the technology won’t revolutionize finance or the world.
But if you think about it, mobile is what powers emerging tech platforms like voice, AI, wearables, augmented reality and virtual reality. Voice is great for specific tasks, but it still requires a great mobile experience to complete its interface. VR and AR have hit mainstream via mobile-powered headsets like the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Go. While it’s smart for marketers to explore new platforms, there’s a risk of losing focus on the platform that matters the most today: mobile.
Now, as CMO of a mobile marketing platform, I’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of trends come and go. However, it’s clear that mobile is far from achieving its ultimate potential.
Learning From History
Even Apple couldn’t have imagined the monumental change its smartphone would bring. The original iPhone launched without an App Store, and Steve Jobs thought web apps were the future.
One reason why marketers are desperate to look for the next mobile is that many were slow to adopt mobile. In other words, some mobile marketers are looking for the next computing platform to avoid missing another paradigm shift, even if these emerging platforms haven’t been market-proven yet.
Still, today, there are brands that are slow to adopt a mobile strategy. For example, luxury watch brand Patek Philippe finally joined Instagram in March 2018. In the same month, San Francisco-based Philz Coffee released its order-ahead app. Additionally, fast-fashion brand H&M shuttered some of its physical stores due to poor sales and a mobile experience that can be best described as “usable.”
The next mobile might not be here yet, but there’s still room for brands to experiment. IKEA is a good example of a company that has taken advantage of an emerging platform at the right time. The furniture retailer jumped to AR only after Apple released ARKit, even though AR had existed for years. With its ARKit-powered mobile app, IKEA Place, the company can experiment with an emerging platform that feeds back to its overall mobile strategy.
Consumer Behavior Is Changing
While the emerging platforms we see today may never overtake mobile, they've changed how we interact with smartphones. Take smartwatches, for example. The Apple Watch Series 3 finally supports mobile connectivity, but you’ll still need your smartphone to browse the web, edit documents and access social media. The smartwatch just isn’t a good platform for extended use, as your arm and eyes will fatigue from looking at a small screen. So maybe marketers needn’t prioritize an Apple Watch app for their brand.
With voice, we’re seeing consumer behavior change as more and more people leverage voice for simple tasks like creating reminders, sending texts and playing music. This means smartphone use will decline in situations where voice is the better interface for getting things done, like in the car or while working at home. However, there'll be times when you need a screen to absorb information at a glance, and the smartphone is still the best way to get that information on the go.
AR will also eventually change consumer behavior when the tech is small enough to fit unobtrusively inside of glasses. This will move contextually relevant information from our smartphones to AR headsets, like with smartwatches. While we’ll be less dependent on smartphones in the future, they'll remain a powerful tool to keep us connected on the go. Just like PCs, mobile will have its niche and will likely be integral to technological developments on the immediate horizon, even if it’ll be relegated to mostly a hub that powers peripherals like wearables. Today, PCs are still the preferred tool for productivity, but mobile is at the center of computing.
Follow Your Customers
The takeaway, then, is to follow where your customers are but also leave room to experiment. Rather than going all-in on AI and fundamentally changing your product, perhaps adding a chatbot to improve the quality of your mobile app is a good way to dabble while providing a better experience on a platform where your customers already are. This may seem simple, but a surprising number of companies get it wrong. If your customers are adopting smartwatches en masse, then you need to craft a great smartwatch experience for them. If your customers are flocking to AR or VR, you need to create great experiences on those platforms.
And if your users are all on mobile, then you need to make sure you have the best mobile experience for them before experimenting with emerging platforms. With so many platforms to explore, it’s easy to stretch your resources too thin. Instead, look for ways to optimize, perfect and complement the strategies that you already have in place.
The result of this fear of missing the “next mobile” means marketers have been quick to jump on emerging platforms without thinking clearly about whether they’re an efficient use of resources. This isn’t to say you should be afraid to branch out to new platforms, but make sure the data makes sense. And if the data doesn’t support experimentation, then perhaps you should focus on mobile, the platform you know your customers are using.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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a8cbe7984caaa6c8e42eab244910a284 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/06/25/three-ways-copy-can-lift-e-commerce-conversion/ | Three Ways Copy Can Lift E-Commerce Conversion | Three Ways Copy Can Lift E-Commerce Conversion
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E-commerce isn’t only about optimization and functionality. Copy is still a significant factor in creating effective e-commerce sites, though it’s often overlooked in favor of design tricks or other gimmicks to engage and convert prospects and customers. Don’t be mistaken, though. Copy tells your story. It defines your products. And from my perspective, copy is so powerful that it can actually lift e-commerce conversion rates. Here are three ways that copy can be a hero for your firm:
1. Write for your target audience.
This may seem obvious, but in too many circumstances marketers write to please their brand instead of their customers. By that, I mean they write in brand language that is stilted and crafted to meet standards, guidelines and the CEO instead of appealing to buyers of their product or solution. Copy on your e-commerce site should sound as though the customer is sitting next to you and you are conversing one-on-one. This type of familiar, relaxed tone will pull people in and encourage them to explore your site further.
When you’re writing for your customers, always keep in mind the nature of your product and the type of person making the buy. For example, an electronics business will want to appeal to the logical side of a customer and will do well to present facts, results, specifications, etc. That buyer will be looking for detailed features and performance information which will meet their needs. In contrast, a fashion site will want to reach out to customers with style, trends and pricing information. Each category of buyer will have a definite persona and it will benefit the business to create content in a style that engages appropriately.
2. Choose powerful words and phrases.
As marketers, we can sometimes get too close to our products and the ways we promote them. We’ve become used to the qualities and benefits of the brands we represent and can forget about how amazing they can be for customers. We’re used to talking about technology benefits or medical products or even cosmetics -- whatever industry we’re in. That can result in brand verbiage being repeated in lots of content until we don’t even see it or hear the key message.
That can’t continue because customers will notice it. They want to be enthused, but they need you to be excited first. So, step back for a bit and really take in the scope of your brand and what it offers customers. How does it affect lives? Does it help people make easier decisions? Improve health for their families? What about creating more solid financial futures? Or maybe it’s just a killer tuxedo for the big day.
Really look at how your brand delivers and get excited again. And then let that excitement come through in your copy. Use powerful words that evoke emotions and incites people to engage and purchase. Is your line of sweaters the fuzziest, smooshiest way to get through winter? Then say that. Give people the persona of the brand and do it powerfully.
3. Let your customers speak.
One element of your copy conversion technique won’t be written by you at all -- it will come from your customers. By sharing customer testimonials on your site, you not only let current customers know that your products are working well but also that they delight customers.
Prospects and customers in the consideration phase won’t always take your word for how great your brand is, so they look to others who have purchased the products, used them and are pleased with their purchase. Testimonials have always had a place in marketing, but social media has made us even more aware of them. Customers can now be easy participants in endorsing brands by sharing, liking and commenting on products. Savvy marketers will take advantage of the influence that customers have on other customers and enable it in their e-commerce initiatives.
Copywriting and e-commerce conversion rates are tightly linked, and using just a few simple tactics can make a big difference in campaign results, regardless of product or industry. Making sure to target audiences appropriately, using powerful words and imagery, and integrating customer testimonials are strong elements for impacting conversion rates. One overarching rule to remember is to always keep the core of your brand -- and your brand promise -- at the forefront of copywriting and you will be guided appropriately.
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5abeca2becce6e70f0094301f48725c1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/06/four-predictions-on-the-future-of-consumerism/ | Four Predictions On The Future Of Consumerism | Four Predictions On The Future Of Consumerism
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At the rate we are producing data and information, the gap between present day and 2020 is equivalent to the difference between the 1980s and 2010. But even by 2020, we’re still a significant number of years away from Ray Kurzweil’s vision of singularity -- the theory that man and machine will have to merge for humankind to be able to keep pace with the self-aware artificial intelligence.
For those who don’t know, Kurzweil is one of the leading authorities on futurism and is Google’s director of engineering. He rose to prominence because a significant number of his predictions have come true: To date, nearly 150 of his forecasts since the 1990s have become a reality. And at last year's SXSW conference, he made another bold prediction: “2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for the 'Singularity' which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold by merging with the intelligence we have created.”
Only time will tell as to whether Kurzweil is correct or not, but what happens in the meantime?
My agency, Jelly Digital Marketing and PR, has had the privilege of helping clients across a multitude of business landscapes over the past half-decade. Consumer behavior in that time has shifted dramatically. To stay relevant, we've had to track consumer data and trends in order to better serve our clients and ensure that we are providing them with the best advice.
The following predictions have been crafted after analyzing proprietary data, which we cross-referenced with data from sources such as Mintel:
The human touch will be essential.
From banks to grocery checkout lines, the world will force us deeper into social isolation, while making the path to purchase more accessible, primarily due to automation. In large part due to the government’s slow-moving machine, large corporations will either lay off a large percentage of their workforce or turn to automation as a result of more employees retiring and a lack of willing candidates.
But even in this automated future, businesses -- even small ones -- can find a way to thrive because there will be a place for a friendly face. In fact, consumers will likely yearn for it. One type of store where this is likely is the humble convenience store. These stores have faced competition from automation since the creation of the vending machine, and they still live on. They do so because they are a vital part of the community, providing life’s essentials at the moment they are required -- something even giants, like Amazon, haven't quite perfected just yet.
Recommendations will be more accurate.
Let's face the facts: Most consumer-facing predictive apps that are connected to loyalty points are not that good in 2018. That’s because they take time to learn what people like and dislike. It can pick up on simple trends, like must-have weekly staples, almost immediately. But things like tastes or flavors take a lot more data and a lot more computing power.
By 2020, large corporations will have enough empirical data to make those predictions with startling accuracy. But consumers will be leery because of past poor experiences. Corporations will have to regain customer trust by proving that they know and understand the end customer's likes, needs and, most importantly, their dislikes.
There will be more seamless integration.
Why does the public continue to buy Apple products despite the company providing minimal hardware updates for new phones? The answer is simple: Apple's ability to seamlessly synchronize information across all products, no matter the distance between one connected Apple product and another.
This is where Google can continue to endear itself in the continually hurried modern consumer. By seamlessly integrating its products with each other -- from Google Home to Chromebook to Google phone -- it’ll be able to steal more market share from Apple while allowing the end-user to enjoy the benefits of sharing across a multitude of devices, effortlessly.
The global supply chain will become more sustainable.
With the march toward a $15 per hour minimum wage in a handful of states and provinces, a small but vocal chorus will start to bring to light the atrocities that can take place along the supply chain. From excessive working hours to prison-like warehouses across the globe, this group will affect positive but difficult change in corporate practice. And the public will listen.
Smart corporations, like Patagonia, have already put an ethical mandate toward their supply chain, including in the third-party companies they work with. Other companies will be forced to take a long, hard look at the way they do business and make the necessary adjustments. Unfortunately, those that are not willing to change will face the wrath of changing public perception, which will ultimately lead to a loss of profitability.
Although these predictions have been based on hard data, the world does have a way of surprising us. So, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether they will come true or not. One thing that is for sure, however, is that the consumer will ultimately determine the future of consumerism.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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0181b781535e9b5a1af80fa3b4dab350 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/09/applying-the-right-golden-handcuffs-to-retain-key-employees/ | Applying The Right 'Golden Handcuffs' To Retain Key Employees | Applying The Right 'Golden Handcuffs' To Retain Key Employees
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If there is one universal problem facing agencies today, it’s talent recruitment and retention. Agencies of all sizes are experiencing more employee churn than they’ve seen in a long time. In fact, agencies report an average 20% turnover per year. Agencies want to keep their best employees, and great employees want reasons to stay. So why are so many agencies still seeing their best employees walk?
Many agency owners are offering their key employees cars, vacations and hefty bonuses, yet people are still leaving. Unfortunately, many agencies, clients and corporations are offering employees the same perks, so someone can easily leave their current agency and get the same benefits somewhere else. Fortunately, with a little creativity and some honest conversations, agency owners can avoid this inevitable talent drain.
How Agencies Keep Stars
Unfortunately, money talks and most employees don’t take the time to do their homework. They don’t calculate the value of all of the perks, flexibility and benefits their current employer offers. Instead, in today’s competitive hiring environment, great employees get poached by companies that offer the most money. As a defensive strategy, some agency owners offer equity to employees, hoping it entices them to stay and contribute to long-term growth. Sometimes that works, but when it doesn’t, the backlash hurts.
Giving an employee equity doesn’t cost anything at first. However, if that person decides to leave, the equity leaves, too. When that happens, the agency loses control of both a star employee and a chunk of its ownership. The agency could always buy out the departed employee, but no one wants to send a big check to a person who just left the building -- especially if the company gave the equity away for free. Agencies that decide to go the equity route should offer star employees an opportunity to buy in. This strengthens the connection between the employee and company without sacrificing something for nothing.
If an employee is bringing in revenue and wants to be compensated differently, you can put structures together that reward her for continuing to do what she does best. Although it might sound unusual, another great tool to retain employees is cash-value life insurance. Wouldn't you pay an employee more if you knew you could recoup something if he left? Cash-value life insurance can do just that.
Say an employee makes $150,000. The agency can’t afford to lose him, but it also can’t afford to bump his salary much higher. Rather than strain the books, the owner could provide an additional $50,000 in an insurance policy that builds value over time. It’s more of a loan than a pay bump, so if the employee leaves before becoming eligible to withdraw the accrued cash, the company keeps the money. If he stays, that policy becomes quite valuable -- especially if the agency offers a buyout down the road. Plus, by putting the policy in the employee's name, it becomes tax deductible to the agency.
To demonstrate the value of a policy like this to a star employee, frame the offer as a long-term bonus. This generation of workers values purpose over money, and most don’t stay in one job for long. However, if employees feel like they're working toward something for their family -- and have the option to convert the policy into equity or cash down the line -- they’re more likely to see the value of the bonus. It’s a compensation package with extra features, and if both sides hold up their end of the bargain, it’s a cost-effective method to make star employees feel appreciated.
Ultimately, agencies should look to offer benefits that are both valuable and flexible. The cash-value life insurance policy is a perfect example: Neither side can back out without a bit of self-harm, but both sides reap the rewards if the partnership continues.
How To Keep Employees For The Long Haul
This life insurance vehicle is just one example, and it works for many employees but not all. I've discovered a few best practices to help find and implement policies that will make the best workers stick around:
1. Don’t make empty promises.
Employees hear promises from their employers all the time. If the company doesn't follow through, it deteriorates trust. Instead of leading employees on with promises of benefits sometime in the future, discern what makes them feel valued and take concrete steps in that direction, even if they're small steps.
2. Listen to their requests.
Don't assume your employees all want the same thing. Sometimes, I go into a career track meeting expecting my employee to ask for the moon when all he really wants is to get rid of his school debt. (Student loan repayment is a hot, new benefit for a reason.) By listening instead of assuming, I can focus on what matters to him and outline a plan to help him achieve that goal.
3. Share your intentions.
Many owners keep their long-term plans for an employee close to the vest in negotiations. Don’t do that. Disclose your intentions and talk about the future. It'll prove to employees they can trust you down the line.
Not all "golden handcuffs" work on all employees. I’ve worked with people who wanted to retire after 15 years to become farmers. Trying to squeeze more value out of people like that will ultimately make them less productive in their time with your agency than encouraging them in their long-term goals.
When a star employee wants more, don’t offer a cookie-cutter bonus and expect to retain her for long. Listen to what she wants. Then, work with financial advisors, CPAs and other professionals to design a unique benefits package that ensures both the employee and agency enjoy a healthy, productive relationship for years to come.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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458ae4dff8f5ad5457f03a7f9592409e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/12/innovation-can-come-in-the-form-of-emotional-connection/ | Innovation Can Come In The Form Of Emotional Connection | Innovation Can Come In The Form Of Emotional Connection
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We agency owners are a fortunate bunch. Thankfully, we have a lot of great digital and technologically advanced tools at our disposal. But as a leader of an agency where innovation is the way we push the envelope, I often like asking myself this question: Does technology offer the best answer when it comes to creating emotional connections?
At a time when everyone is looking for everlasting engagement, focusing on human experience is the best way to generate more than just eyeballs and awareness. Creating meaningful connections between the brands we represent and their best customers is the most exciting part of our agency existence.
It's becoming increasingly more difficult to have your brand stick with customers who are, on average, touching their phones more than 2,600 times a day. Half of young people are addicted to their phones and the average time spent on the phone is five hours.
I am a big believer that bringing together the experiential marketing that touches all five senses with digital engagement is the best combination to create lasting memories, especially when offline engagement is dear to customers' hearts. This includes old-fashioned community outreach, hand-shaking without devices in hands or ears and creating the most original form of social media content: talking to one another.
Below are some tips for creating innovative campaigns that resonate with consumers on an emotional level.
Understand And Engage Your Audience
When your team is afforded the privilege to incorporate experiences that connect people emotionally, make sure that your imagination and creative planning are anchored to the brand’s positioning. The first step is to ensure that everyone involved in the project has a clear understanding regarding the brand personas or best customers. Who are you connecting with in your outreach efforts?
For example, one of our clients is focused on positioning innovative products with a group of customers we refer to as "trysumers." These people are looking for new products not recognized yet by the mainstream, but they often want to test out products at no or low cost before they commit to a purchase.
With this in mind, we could use social media as a starting point to identify and engage these individuals by offering contests that encourage interaction and let them experiment with the products.
The goal should be to engage users in a way that they want to purchase more products or services in the future. Not only does this open the door to the path to purchase, it also provides you with valuable information about your audience members, who you can then retarget at a later time.
Understand The Mission And Align Partnerships With Purpose
The second step is to align your campaign recommendations with the brand's mission and purpose. When those pillars are in place, you can then move on to identifying strategic partnerships that represent a good fit.
Forming strategic partnerships is a special art and requires hands-on experience with brand development, PR and sometimes corporate philanthropy. The first step is to identify partners that share common values, culture, programming, audience, social responsibility and outreach efforts as your brand.
Pulling from our example above, we knew the client's mission was to get innovative products in the hands of trysumers. Based on that core mission, we had to find a partner that also valued innovation, education and that could bring a community together. To engage our audience with products, programming would be important. As a result, we partnered with museums focused on education, innovation and STEM on a series of free robotics demonstrations for children. Helping children explore new territory enabled us to initiate conversations that foster an ongoing connection with the brand. Plus, in many cases, these parents and families are the very trysumers that connect with our client’s mission.
Any successful partnership has to work on many levels. Before approaching potential partners, spend a good chunk of time researching an organization -- the first place to start is social media. Then, look into the programs, events and opportunities they could provide to your brand. Certainly, the human factor is important, too. The right fit will determine the success of the collaboration and create alignment between the two organizations.
Why should organizations that stand for "everything innovation" care about these sorts of opportunities? And moreover, why should other organizations be mindful of how to use community outreach to their advantage?
For starters, we need to remember that social aspect is key to people’s happiness. Just because we are promoting innovation as a central brand ethos for many of our clients, the roots of innovation start from conversations with people. Listening to one another can be the most powerful market research tool.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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da8125e079316fbb8648120ba45576bf | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/13/how-a-strong-economy-changes-the-game-for-local-business/ | How A Strong Economy Changes The Game For Local Business | How A Strong Economy Changes The Game For Local Business
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As the economy continues to gain momentum, local businesses are being forced to re-examine their business plans, business models and strategies. While a strong economic climate tends to indicate strength in consumer spending, there are additional headwinds for local businesses that can accompany a solid economic environment.
Low unemployment, increased investment in startups and new technologies and the potential for inflationary forces are driving local business owners to think more creatively and strategically. As the CEO of a 15-year-old brand, and having run a company through both recessionary times and periods of strong economic growth, I've learned that the most successful businesses continue to evolve and adjust based on current market conditions.
Low Unemployment Rate
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported a 3.8% unemployment rate. As the unemployment rate dips below 4% and is charging into record low territory, business owners are finding it more difficult to find and retain qualified employees.
While this poses a challenge, many business owners are searching for answers through innovation and automation. For example, in the carwash industry, there is a trend toward automated attendants. Driving up to a full-service carwash and being greeted by a person who asks what type of wash you would like is slowly giving way to an automated kiosk where you can select the wash type and pay electronically.
In the restaurant space, fast-casual restaurants are continuing to show growth year-over-year. While the American consumer is more time-conscious, which is helping fuel the growth of the segment, the fast-casual restaurant format is innovative when it comes to staffing. According to Adweek, fast-casual restaurants don’t require as much staffing as full-service dining restaurants.
And nearly full employment in the U.S. is forcing firms and agencies to direct more resources toward software tools and platforms that help manage accounts and place ads with fewer human resources.
Increased Investment
With economic strength comes investment in startups and new technologies. These investments can ultimately lead to higher cost per acquisition (CPA) of new customers for local businesses. With consumers having access to so many new media and attention-grabbing technologies, more marketing dollars are required to ensure messaging and promotions are being seen by consumers. To offset the higher CPAs, local business owners should seek innovation in defined customer targeting and focus on tracking marketing spend.
Through demographic and sociographic targeting, you can ensure your message is being efficiently delivered to those who are most likely to respond to your content. Data-driven direct mail solutions allow businesses to define specific audience parameters so their targeted pieces are hitting high probability targets and cutting down on waste. Data models can also be applied to social and digital platforms to ensure your content is speaking to the right audience.
Tracking response is also imperative to hold down rising CPAs. Use marketing tools that allow for defined tracking to ensure you are getting new customers through your doors. Furthermore, trackability also allows you to capture data on your new customers so you can potentially reach back out to them and create a customer experience that drives long-term loyalty.
Inflation Potential
Strength in the economy can also raise the potential for inflation. Local business owners must consider how inflation might impact their business. Higher labor costs and material costs may require local businesses to rethink their pricing strategies. While increasing prices may seem like the easiest way to combat inflation, creativity in production and implementation of new technologies and strategies to reduce material costs can all be examined to stay competitive.
Some ways to help offset rising inflation without simply increasing prices include shopping vendors to ensure you are getting the most competitive prices, implementing more automation in product development and focusing on strengthening company culture.
Local business owners who are aware of both the upside and the challenges that come with a strengthening economy will be better prepared to benefit from strength in consumer spending and positive economic growth.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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b836d58850cc475a500d0fd167087703 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/19/eight-approaches-to-improving-how-you-share-your-companys-story/ | Eight Approaches To Improving How You Share Your Company's Story | Eight Approaches To Improving How You Share Your Company's Story
Your brand has a strong story to tell, one that can help your customers buy into your vision and values as a business. Communicating this story, however, requires some initiative, as well as a strong voice behind it.
Part of being a business owner is filling the role of brand cheerleader. You know you need inspired and engaged teams to get creative work done, and building a strong following creates new brand ambassadors, who will then go out of their way to talk about what is good or interesting about your firm or product.
So what steps can you take to improve how you tell share your story and encourage engagement? From being an attentive listener to crafting a compelling story and being authentic, here are some of the best ways for business owners to become better storytellers and brand stewards, according to these eight members of Forbes Agency Council.
Members discuss a few ways you can improve how you share your brand's story. Photos courtesy of individual members
1. Listen
Many business owners find themselves caught up in what they envision for their business and brand, and forget the important step of listening to what their clients, and employees, are saying. Clients and employees interact with your brand and business in unique ways, and the story they have developed may not match what you had envisioned. Take the time to listen to them. - Andrea Keirn, Black Rhino Marketing Group
2. Craft A Compelling Narrative
Better storytelling always begins with a better story. Craft a narrative that is compelling, easy to understand, and will resonate with customers beyond obvious self-interest. Establish key brand values and stick to them when developing the narrative. And try to appeal to emotions in a genuine way. - Lon Otremba, Bidtellect
3. Seek To Create Emotional Connections
As a storyteller, you must understand your audience, what matters to them and how your company impacts and fits into the broader context of their lives. Focus on creating emotional connections, while communicating your mission, vision and the value your brand brings to others versus merely focusing on the attributes of your products or services. And be able to answer the “ so what and who cares” question. - Anna Crowe, Crowe PR
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
4. Speak To Consumers In Their Own Language
Brands need to accept the fact that consumers have an aversion to advertisements. They want stories. They want content. If you can tell a brand story in the language they want to hear, you don't have to worry about ad blockers. - Rob Jones, The Social Standard
5. Truly Understand How Your Business Works
Business owners need to step into the shoes of the people who work for them. They need to get on the ground level and hear and see the work that's being done and how it's being done. This is the best way for business owners to really understand the every-day challenges, the processes in place, what's working and what's not working. The show "Undercover Boss" really illustrates this. - Julie Kenney, 2nd Spark
6. Focus On Your People’s Happiness
Your people are the true stewards of your brand. How happy and engaged they are effects every part of your product, service and story. Everything starts with belief. If I feel part of the brand story, I am five times more likely to live it out in my work. We focus on three important questions: How will you help me build new skills, better serve my customers and build more trust with my peers? - Neil Bedwell, Local Industries
Read more in Five Tips To Create A Winning Employer Brand
7. See Your Brand Through The Customer’s Eyes
It’s twofold: Understand the business fundamentals and walk in the customer's shoes. You need to start with the foundation of a client’s business in order to have the deepest understanding of their intent, the values they hold themselves to and their end goal. Experience the brand through the eyes of the customer: What is easy and simple, where is the friction and what more would you love to see? - Gina Alshuler, Rauxa
8. Be The Genuine Article
Be authentic: Too many times business owners share the "expected" story and not the real story. It's OK to share the failures and successes — it allows customers and potential partners to relate to you more. It's always better to be the genuine article. - Paul Benninghove, Phalanx Digital Inc.
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a9534ef58a1247f1240bc2173deb29ca | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/19/the-reciprocity-principle-giving-to-get/?sh=c8fee0e2175a | The Reciprocity Principle: Giving To Get | The Reciprocity Principle: Giving To Get
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In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini discusses the concept of reciprocity, which is that we are hard-wired to respond positively to a gift, even if we didn’t ask for it, or even want it. We automatically feel indebted to the giver, regardless.
Now, I like thinking about marketing in psychological terms -- that is, the idea that marketing is a matter of finding and pushing the right buttons in someone’s brain to make them buy your product. I admit this sounds a little creepy. But, on the face of it, the reciprocity principle seems reasonable. After all, don’t you tend to feel good about people who give you a gift? But, is this good feeling a strong enough motivation on which to build a marketing campaign? Yes, it is. I’ve tested it. It works, amazingly well, especially for tough sales.
Several years ago, we were hired by a company that lends money to large plaintiff law firms involved in product liability and medical malpractice lawsuits. It is expensive to bring these suits -- you have to pay for expert witnesses, conduct lab work, maybe even crash test a car or two. Additionally, because they are paid on a contingency basis, trial lawyers have to foot all of these bills themselves until they are repaid from the proceeds of the judgment -- assuming they win.
So, there was a real need for my client’s services. But big-time trial lawyers are very busy and their calls are carefully screened. My client found it impossible to get through. Voicemails were ignored. Letters were thrown away unopened. Then, we put the reciprocity principle to work and my client got so much business so quickly that we had to shut the program down. Our “reciprocity bomb” was a brand new video iPod, worth about $300 -- This was in the early 2000s, so this was brand new, uber-cool technology at the time. We loaded a short video that explained our client’s pitch onto the iPod. We then put the iPod in a specially made box that showed the lawyer how to turn it on and watch the video, gift wrapped it and sent it to about 25 of America’s biggest trial lawyers.
Our client had no problem getting these attorneys on the phone when they followed up the week after the mailing. Each mailing cost about $400, but just adding just one new law firm meant tens of thousands of dollars to our client.
At least one man, John Ruhlin, has built an entire business around the principle of reciprocity. He calls it “giftology.” I met Mr. Ruhlin about a year ago when I invited him to speak to our EO Nashville chapter. He told us how a $7,000 gift resulted in a lifelong relationship that has helped him earn millions of dollars -- and his insanely large gift actually cost him nothing in the end because the gift recipient reimbursed him for the entire $7,000.
Perhaps the best, most longstanding example of the reciprocity principle is the age-old practice of charities putting free, personalized address labels in their fundraising direct mailings. Jennifer Bielat, vice president for direct marketing of Easter Seals confirms that this strategy has worked for her team.
Finally, I believe the principle of reciprocity is especially pertinent in today’s digital landscape. Think about it, all successful digital marketing -- social media, content marketing, inbound marketing or email marketing -- follows the “Give. Give. Give. Get.” formula. You never think about asking anyone for anything today until you have first given them something of value, such as a whitepaper, case study or access to research -- that is, valuable, “non-salesy” information.
Let “giving before you get” inform all of your marketing tactics. For example, mail an unsolicited gift to sales prospects. Even better, do some research on your prospects and send them individualized gifts you know they will appreciate. Surprise outstanding job candidates after their interview with a nice item of company swag -- only the ones you want to hear from again, though. Keep employees happy by giving them gift certificates on their birthday. The more you give, the more you get. It’s almost a religious experience. Or psychological warfare. Choose your metaphor.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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2e42fe5be73ea56978f6386cbe48e550 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/20/six-ways-to-optimize-your-landing-page-for-conversions/?sh=2af97bd437c3 | Six Ways To Optimize Your Landing Page For Conversions | Six Ways To Optimize Your Landing Page For Conversions
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Google AdWords, SEO, social media and email are just a few marketing campaign channels that businesses can use to drive visitors back to their website. And each of them has a price. So why are so many organizations willing to send visitors they are paying to acquire to a poorly converting landing page?
When it comes to digital marketing, there is no shortage of data available. Impressions, pageviews, cost-per-click (CPC), click-through-rate (CTR) ... it can be easy to get bogged down in numbers that don’t actually equate to money hitting your bottom line.
How Landing Page Setup Impacts Conversions
Did you know that:
• While 11 is the average number of form fields used, reducing this number to four can result in a 120% rise in conversions?
• Even just a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions?
• Using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 80%?
These stats show just how important landing page setup is to achieve more conversions.
A large part of our inbound marketing strategy for one of our clients is to utilize strategic landing pages and other lead-generation tactics as a way to drive business growth. For each downloadable content offer, such as an infographic or fact sheet relevant to the client's target audience, it's important to develop attention-grabbing landing pages and CTAs based on where the prospective customers are at in the buyer’s journey.
To that end, if your website visitors are not converting into leads or sales for your business, it may be time to evaluate your landing pages.
Not Every Web Page Is A Landing Page
Every landing page is a web page, but not every web page is a landing page (or at least not an ideal one). A homepage, for example, is not an ideal landing page. In fact, 44% of clicks generated by business-to-business companies direct to a homepage instead of a landing page. If you are sending campaign tracking to your homepage, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. Ideally, a landing page is campaign-specific and drives your visitors to complete a single marketing goal or call to action.
On your homepage, a user will likely be distracted by multiple calls to action and also have to navigate through your site to the specific product or service they are looking for.
Why do dedicated landing pages produce more conversions?
The ratio of campaign conversion goals to the links on a landing page is known as attention ratio. This ratio should hold steady at 1:1 in an optimized campaign. Because dedicated landing pages focus on a single call to action and keep that 1:1 attention ratio, they tend to produce better campaign results.
And yes, using a single call to action means eventually ending up with a lot of landing pages, which is fine. Research shows that businesses with more than 40 landing pages generated a whopping 12 times more leads than those with one to five landing pages.
How do you optimize your call to action?
First of all, make sure the CTA is relevant to the ad or listing that a user clicked on to find that landing page. If I click on an ad for a free 30-day trial of the Headspace guided meditation app, I don’t want to see a call to action to register for a $399 mindfulness summit.
Although you should limit yourself to a single call to action per marketing campaign, you can use that call to action multiple times throughout your landing page. While it is generally considered best practice to include your call to action above the fold, it is important to run A/B tests to see what works best for your customers.
The language you use is important, too. Tell the user exactly what you want them to do using strong action verbs -- for example, "Download your free 30-day trial now!"
Do all of these minor details really make a difference?
The best way to get more conversions is to begin analyzing how your current landing pages are performing, then make tweaks for improvements.
First, you need access to your landing page performance data. While there are many tools you can use to optimize your landing pages, like Crazy Egg and Optimizely, there are free tools as well. A combination of Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics should get you started, but if you have the budget, you can also use a site like UserTesting.com for actual consumer feedback.
What should you be testing?
You should be testing everything from your headlines to your calls to action, images, videos, testimonials, and more. Be mindful of your page load time -- a slow-loading landing page can negatively impact conversions. And make sure your page is mobile-friendly.
Remember the marketing funnel.
The goal of most marketing campaigns is simple: qualified leads, sales and revenue for your business. If your current website converts at 1% and your goal is to generate 100 leads each month from your marketing campaign, you can do two things:
1. Work on generating 10,000 visits to your website
2. Work on improving your website conversion rate
Which do you think is easier and less expensive?
Improving your conversion rate by 1% means you only have to generate half as many visits to get the same amount of leads. So, before you even consider starting another marketing campaign to generate more website traffic, consider this: Most websites do not have traffic problems, they have conversion problems.
Instead of focusing on increasing the amount of traffic to your website (at the top of the funnel), why not focus on the middle of the funnel, converting more of the traffic you already have?
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11b9f972f130103642f21e832d630c65 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/23/time-to-wake-up-to-the-next-consumer-powerhouse-gen-z/ | Time To Wake Up To The Next Consumer Powerhouse: Gen Z | Time To Wake Up To The Next Consumer Powerhouse: Gen Z
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Many marketers have been catching some Zs when it comes to gaining an understanding of Gen Z shopping behaviors. Caught up in the millennial whirlwind, it has been easy to overlook the generation coming up fast on their heels, those born between 1997-2012 (ages 6-21).
In order to effectively market to this group, we first need to understand who they are. Studies show that this generation is shaping up to have unparalleled buying power in the vicinity of $150 billion. In short, it's time we wake up and start paying attention to a generation that is unlike its predecessors, the overanalyzed millennials.
A crucial distinction between Gen Zers and millennials is that Gen Zers have never known a world without unlimited digital access. Millennials aged into adulthood as the power of the internet took the global stage. But Gen Z has never known a “before.” For this generation, pretty much everything they want can be purchased through their phones. Half of them have gone through puberty in the maelstrom of social media, navigating intense bullying, trolls and unfortunate moments captured for all eternity. Their world is so profoundly different from any generation before them that we might actually treat this generation as a pivotal turning point in how we historically discuss society.
Millennials have been the opening act. Our fixation on their differences and peculiarities is only warming us up for how Gen Z is going to reshape the way we think about brands and marketing. While only half of this generation has grown into spending power -- unless you add their parents’ contribution (equaling billions) -- it is important that we understand some marketing truths now:
Gen Z’s digital world exists predominantly on mobile.
Last year, Think with Google studied this aspect for teens in the Gen Z generation, writing, “While millennials were mobile pioneers, teens are mobile natives.” Because of this, Gen Z is the generation that is much more exclusive on mobile and less so on laptops compared to other generations.
Also, 95% of teens have a smartphone or access to a smartphone compared to 73% in 2014-2015. Forty-five percent of teens say they are online "almost constantly" (compared to 24% in 2014-2015), and another 44% say they go online several times a day. This has significantly influenced this generation and how they consume media and products. Marketers need to have a mobile-first (or even mobile-only) strategy in order to effectively reach these consumers.
Privacy is a concern for Gen Z, but it’s not that simple.
Because of their digital background, Gen Zers want their interactions to be transparent and authentic yet also secure. Marketers need to strike a balance between privacy and personalization when interacting with this generation online.
One clear illustration of this is Gen Z’s preference for social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram over Facebook. They like to engage anonymously and create posts that can disappear within seconds, giving them greater control over their own communications, personas, privacy and more. Marketers need to keep this complex relationship with privacy concerns in mind, especially when delivering on the demand for hyper-personalization. If brands cross the line in either direction and fail to find this balance, this group can be deterred from a purchase.
Social media influencers play a critical role in the shopper decision making process.
When it comes to learning about new products in the market, Gen Z places weight on the opinions of influencers, as evidenced by their consumption of how-to videos on YouTube -- in fact, many are using YouTube in place of traditional sources of information -- Instagram stories highlighting brands and products, and more.
They know these YouTubers are paid, but the personal connection and transparency of the brand/celebrity interaction can offset any concerns marketers might have about using this tool. We conducted a recent study on shopping behaviors in key categories, with a respondent base comprised of 647 Gen Zers and 1,438 millennials. One example from our findings is that when it comes to fashion and style, 36% of Gen Z respondents say they turn to social media influencers in their decision making.
Marketers need to recognize the importance of influencers (whether it be everyday people or celebrities) and pay attention to the importance that Gen Z places on trustworthiness, honesty and relatability between them and the product. Leverage the platforms on which this generation feels most comfortable, like YouTube and Instagram, in any outreach campaigns.
Gen Z knows marketing.
This generation understands our methods and goals. Gen Z isn’t cynical (yet) about marketing, but they do not want to be coddled or “handled.” They know how to navigate the balance between an online and offline life and are ready to be ruthless when brands don’t understand the rules. Just look at Wendy’s notoriously snarky Twitter account, which walks the line of sass and smarts that Gen Z praises. Compare it to IHOP’s clunky IHOB burger rollout, which they widely panned.
Honest transactions, honest brands, authentic voices and experiences are ideas that marketers have been practicing with millennials for the last decade. Gen Z will turn this up to 11, and brands will need to become good at the game really fast, because Gen Z is writing the rules now.
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714833230896a729e1dc0534c24d6e3d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/25/a-retail-apocalypse-near-me-how-local-search-can-revive-your-business/ | A Retail Apocalypse 'Near Me': How Local Search Can Revive Your Business | A Retail Apocalypse 'Near Me': How Local Search Can Revive Your Business
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The long-predicted retail apocalypse is here. Almost 80% of American consumers now shop online, and the traditional retail industry has suffered major losses as a result. Over 9,000 stores shut their doors in 2017. Analysts predict this year may bring another 10,000 to 11,000 closures. Malls are getting second lives as office buildings and big-box chains that stock their shelves with generic discount products are disappearing fast, as e-commerce giants like Amazon gobble up their business.
Does that mean brick-and-mortar stores have gone the way of the dinosaurs? Not exactly. Overall, the Department of Commerce reports that retail industry spending has increased over the past year, and many brands have seen their revenues climb. So, what’s their secret? Why are some outlets dying while others are thriving?
No doubt there are many reasons, but the resiliency of some businesses might have something to do with their ability to turn the internet from a foe into a friend by harnessing the power of the “near me” search.
As a marketing and SEO agency, my team and I examine all areas of search technology and how it affects a business's visibility online (both our clients' and our own). The rise of voice technology and updates to Google's local search algorithm makes the subject of local search one that impacts businesses and their access to their local markets.
The Survival Of The Locally Fittest
E-commerce may be here to stay, but it hasn’t yet devoured the traditional retail market. It’s true that most of us now buy stuff online, but that doesn’t mean we do most of our shopping on the internet. To this day, online purchases account for only 8.3% of all retail sales in the country. The rest is done in person. In other words, there’s still plenty of room in the world for physical stores.
The single biggest change may be the way customers find those stores. Increasingly, we’re using our mobile devices to hunt for things in the real world. This has blurred the line between our virtual lives and our non-virtual lives. Smart businesses have seen the writing on the wall. Those that want to survive the e-commerce revolution have already taken steps to integrate their physical locations with their online platforms.
Some stores offer discounts for in-store pickups. Others send out promotions that can be redeemed at the nearest location. A few take advantage of geotagging to create real-life experiences that can be shared on social media. One of the simplest strategies, however, is to optimize websites to attract local searchers.
The Power Of The 'Near Me' Search
The phrase “near me” is music to the ears of local businesses. “Near me” searches only drive a small percentage of web traffic but this trend is continuing to grow and could prove to be a lucrative strategy. Think about it: If a woman is looking for a fruit smoothie in East Nashville, then she’s probably close to dropping in and grabbing one.
In short, “near me” searches convert. That’s always been true for the service industry. Most of us have searched for car repair shops within 10 miles or Thai restaurants within 30 miles, but more and more, we’re also searching locally for tangible items such as clothes and accessories, home goods and electronics. Over the past two years alone, searches for “places to buy X near me” or “where can I buy X near me” have skyrocketed by 500%, signaling a shift in the way we shop.
The Evolution Of Local Search
Not only are “near me” searches becoming more common, they’re also becoming more targeted. The number of people searching specifically for “dresses near me,” for example, rose by more than 600% over the course of two years. Meanwhile, time-sensitive searches, like “R&B concerts near me tonight” or “luxury hotels near me today,” have increased by more than 900% since 2016.
Finally, many people are switching from text-based searches to voice-based searches. In fact, by 2020, it's predicted that nearly half of all searches will be voice searches. Voice-activated assistants and voice search apps make it easy to find a coffee shop while driving or to search for the nearest Apple store right after a trip to Nordstrom.
All of those changes bode well for consumers who want greater convenience and faster shopping, but what does it mean for local businesses that want to keep their doors open well into the future?
Go Local To Stay Alive
Looking forward, it’s clear that stores will have to master the nuances of local search in order to cater to customers that want a certain something in a certain place at a certain time.
In order to do that, you should:
• Optimize your site with the keyword “near me”
• Display your business name, address and phone number prominently on your homepage
• Create unique pages for each separate location
• Establish a presence on all local search platforms, including Google My Business, Bing Places and Yelp
• Be sure to include location information for better indexing so Google can find you (city, zip code, address, etc.)
• Write blog posts that mention specific events, along with a time and place
• Use natural phrases and questions to capture the voice search audience
• Create blog posts and onsite topic pages that encourage backlinks anchored to location-specific keywords
At the end of the day, the internet probably won’t kill the retail store. It is, however, changing how we shop and where we shop. All businesses with at least one physical location should start thinking now about how they’ll adapt to the changing reality. Fail to do so, and you could risk extinction.
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865d24113e14f038e07a73e2b3db4cd7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/25/why-franchise-brands-and-smbs-need-to-get-on-the-local-video-bandwagon/ | Why Franchise Brands And SMBs Need To Get On The Local Video Bandwagon | Why Franchise Brands And SMBs Need To Get On The Local Video Bandwagon
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Video marketing is no longer a growing trend. It’s a marketing behemoth that every brand should be exploring. In fact, Cisco’s “Visual Networking Index” report predicts that, by 2021, video will likely account for 82% of all consumer internet traffic.
We know the public is not only watching more video, but also that the public would rather tune into this medium than read text. According to Wyzowl’s “The State of Video Marketing 2018” report (email required), 72% of consumers choose to learn about a service or product through a video when placed next to a text option on the same page.
Most businesses understand the importance of developing a video strategy, but for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), the cost and technical requirements have often discouraged them from getting in on the action. As video becomes the predominant way to interact with consumers, it offers a unique opportunity for SMBs and franchisees to connect with their local audiences.
Video Is A Proven Winner
Video is a popular medium, but popularity doesn’t necessarily indicate marketing success. SMBs and franchisees need video to drive more than just views -- they need to drive sales. Based on our agency’s experience with YouTube’s performance video ad format, TrueView for action (more on this later), we’ve seen that video marketing increases engagement, brand recall and, yes, sales. So, why is video so effective?
• It’s more dynamic. Videos provide people with a fast, easy way to consume information about a product or service. Consumers are able to see the product in action while also taking in brand context through music, animation and voiceovers.
• It's mobile compatible. Advancements in mobile technology have made video more accessible for mass consumption. Wi-Fi and more powerful cellular networks enable mobile users everywhere to quickly stream, download and share video content.
• It spurs action. Perhaps the biggest advantage of video marketing is its ability to inspire action. For example, a 2016 report by Wyzowl (email required) found that “77% of consumers say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a video.”
Video does more than just drive online sales. It gets customers to physical locations, with almost 50% of internet users searching for product videos before visiting a store, according to a survey of 2,015 online respondents in the U.S., conducted by Google and Ipsos Connect.
How To Get Started
Based on what I have seen, video marketing has been a unique challenge for SMBs and franchisees because they’ve often lacked the budget, time or resources to produce professional videos. That reality is changing, however, as technology improves and we gain a better understanding of the medium. If your business is looking to jump-start its video marketing efforts, here are a few strategies that will help get you started.
1. Use your phone’s camera.
There’s no need for a professional camera. Smartphone cameras are fully capable of recording high-quality videos. Be sure to use a tripod and phone mount to steady your shot.
2. Take advantage of free or inexpensive software.
Many video projects can be edited using the free programs that are pre-installed on your computer. If you’re using a Mac, iMovie is a beginner-friendly editing program that comes with more than enough bells and whistles to put a professional touch on your video. If you’re using a PC, Windows Movie Maker offers similar capabilities.
3. Create an explainer video.
Some of the most popular videos that I've seen on the internet are called explainer videos. Based on our experience, we recommend creating a 60- to 90-second video that is tailored to your target audience. Present the problem quickly, and then explain how your product solves the problem for your audience. Remember that you’re offering a solution, not selling your product’s features.
4. Target your audience on social media.
Paid advertising on social media is a great way to stretch your marketing budget for maximum impact. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube allow businesses to place their videos in front of hyper-targeted audiences for minimal spend.
We recommend YouTube’s TrueView for action, a performance video ad format that allows viewers to sign up for a service or even make a purchase. These direct-response ads should be short and include a prominent call to action. Generally speaking, we recommend businesses avoid allocating budget for videos longer than 30 seconds.
5. “We’ll do it live!”
Several social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, allow users to broadcast live videos. These videos can be engagement monsters. Consider a live video if you want to project authenticity or highlight what your business does behind the scenes. We recommend setting up a Q&A session with your audience, where you can take questions directly from those streaming your video.
Video is an effective marketing solution because of its unique ability to engage viewers. Consumers overwhelmingly prefer video content to text, and businesses should be taking that reality into consideration when forming their content strategy. From my perspective, video’s ability to not only engage viewers but to convert viewers into customers makes it a marketing must for businesses of all sizes.
As technology improves and the barrier to entry lowers, video marketing becomes a more realistic option for SMBs and franchisees that previously lacked the time and resources to produce professional videos. As the technological obstacles are cleared, SMB owners and franchisees can start fine-tuning their approach to video marketing, including targeting local prospects through social advertising. The proliferation of location technology combined with the overwhelming popularity of video makes video marketing a can’t-miss opportunity for SMBs and franchisees to connect with their local audiences.
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6cf1bb08d8e635b92eec4d016dfbc284 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/26/reality-check-is-ad-fraud-up-or-down/ | Reality Check: Is Ad Fraud Up Or Down? | Reality Check: Is Ad Fraud Up Or Down?
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Last year there was some good news for the ad tech industry when the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) announced that they believed ad fraud would drop from $7.2 billion in 2016 to $6.5 billion in 2017.
As the founder and CEO of a cybersecurity solution, this cheered us up because it appeared that our solution and others like ours are putting a serious dent in ad fraud by ensuring that display mobile and video ads are properly located, visible and seen by real people.
But soon thereafter new facts came to light that told a different story.
Adobe inspected traffic across thousands of its client sites and found that 28% of the traffic showed “non-human signals” indicating that it was fraudulent. Bob Hoffman of The Ad Contrarian calculated, based on this fact, that ad fraud may reach $66 billion in 2018, which is 10 times more than the $6.5 billion predicted for 2017 by the ANA.
So, who can you believe?
It’s possible that the safeguards put in place by programmatic trading platforms, and ads.txt, which requires publishers to list authorized buyers, could be having a positive impact. But even if these initiatives are whittling away at the problem, there is another possibility that the fraudsters have simply gotten better at covering their tracks. Online fraud might, in fact, be growing but we just can’t see it.
Beating The System
Many anti-fraud solutions automatically delete traffic that appears suspicious. However, the criteria for defining what is “non-human” can stay the same, making it easy for fraudsters to fake measurements to make their traffic appear legitimate.
Fraudsters attacking the ad tech ecosystem are skilled cybercriminals who, after they attack, are continuously monitoring to see where they have succeeded and where they have failed. When fraudulent traffic is blocked, following the same rules consistently, the attacker can identify which parameters trigger an anti-fraud system and automatically avoid them so that the fake traffic can sail in undetected.
Examples of typical characteristics that are considered suspicious are clicks and views originating from a data center, too many interactions from the same location, or a spike in traffic occurring at 3:00 a.m., when most viewers aren’t using their device. All of these parameters make sense, but they are also highly obvious and fraudsters can tamper with their traffic parameters to make the bad traffic appear legitimate.
That’s why using blocking on its own, without sampling bad traffic and finding the source of fraud, won’t work. A simple black-and-white binary system is too predictable and can be spoofed. Blocking systems can actually become a testing ground for fraudsters by showing them how to make their bot software invisible. It’s fairly easy for a fraudster to modify the IP address of a traffic source or manipulate when the interactions occurred to avoid suspicion.
There are many standards and policies concerned with viewability issues when ads can’t be seen because they are the size of a pixel, stacked on top of each other, or appear below the screen. Often, traffic quality officers forget that ad measurements themselves can be changed by fraudsters, which can sabotage our ability to determine whether traffic is good or bad.
Keeping Ad Traffic Clean
To prevent the fraud from coming back disguised as acceptable traffic, it’s recommended to not just block bad traffic but to investigate to determine what and who is responsible.
Fraudsters go out of their way to disguise their activity to avoid detection. However, after an in-depth analysis, it can be discovered that they have left behind digital footprints that can give themselves away. By doing a deep inspection of traffic you can identify the source of clusters of false traffic instead of just identifying and blocking one site at a time.
In order to solve the problem and take back control of online ad traffic, there needs to be detailed information about the fraudulent sources. Anti-fraud systems let in suspicious traffic and then, by interrogating the source, can reverse-engineer how the scam is constructed, resulting in eliminating the entire program that is creating fraud instead of just blocking the bad traffic. Problematic sources are categorized and certain common characteristics tracked and reported. If more is known about the sources of bad traffic, then more effective corrective action can be taken. A better description of problematic traffic can make the difference between eliminating a publisher altogether and keeping the publisher by weeding out the bad traffic and keeping the good.
The real victory for beating ad fraud is achieved when ad fraudsters are identified and put out of business. By setting a goal for clean traffic, blocking bad traffic, but also diagnosing the cause and eliminating it, the size and impact of the ad fraud problem can be reduced. Celebrating statistics that look good can be comforting but it won’t help win the war against fraud.
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71167de1a4573f9ae2cf63584b2f6592 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/30/to-make-change-we-need-to-understand-the-industrys-diversity-paradox/ | To Make Change, We Need To Understand The Industry's Diversity Paradox | To Make Change, We Need To Understand The Industry's Diversity Paradox
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In recent years, Hollywood has taken its hits for not recognizing the need and demand for more diversity and inclusion, and as of 2018, we’ve started to witness a small but impactful change. Celebrities and thought leaders in the entertainment industry took the opportunity to voice their concerns, and it’s starting to make an impact. Now we have superheroes portrayed by women and by African Americans, and the public has responded. They want more.
Around the same time that the entertainment industry began to hear more voices demanding more inclusion, the marketing and advertising industry started to pick up hints of the public's social agenda. Being at the forefront of understanding what potential customers want, we began recommending that the brands we represent start appealing to a wider audience.
Some of the most common recommendations for big brands is to look at new ways to engage with different audiences, including finding new and fresh voices, creative elements and various perspectives that directly appeal to a more defined target audience. Basically, before, most brands created ads and campaigns targeted at a mass, primarily white population. Now, they are looking into the things that African Americans, women and other cultures like that are different from the status quo and creating specific campaigns for those audiences.
We’ve seen major brands' ad campaigns shift to appeal to various age groups, women and minorities, and in some cases, they even aligned themselves with social movements. For example, following the #MeToo movement, Twitter, Google and Nike all jumped on board with various advertising campaigns designed to empower women. And all of that sounds like a positive step in the right direction, but take a closer look and you'll notice that something isn’t quite right. That's what Nike did, and it has made a huge impact on its business and its relationship with their ad agency. These big ad agencies are recommending their clients shift their communication to a more conclusive, diverse message, while they themselves remain almost entirely dominated by white males.
In 2016, The New York Times published an article claiming that big brands were noticing the diversity paradox and wanted ad agencies to do something about it. In 2017, highlighted in an article published by AdWeek, an Adobe study aimed to understand the diversity issue and plunged into why agencies were having difficulty fulfilling this request.
The study concluded that while the vast majority (87%) of the industry agreed that inclusion and diversity should be a priority, and 82% believe that their most successful projects were produced by a diverse team, only 54% believe that the diversity in the advertising and marketing industry has gotten any better compared to the past five years. Meanwhile, the reasons as to why diversity in the creative industry is not increasing are the standard boilerplate expressions of why women and minorities struggle to gain success in any industry, which, in today's socially conscious world, sounds more like lip service from a group of happily successful and secluded white males.
In early 2018, a LinkedIn post circulated among marketing professionals, claiming the problem still hasn’t been solved. And earlier this month, in a forum I participate in alongside other leaders in the agency space, someone asked about this problem and what leaders are doing about it in their respective agencies. There was a stunning silence. And that’s the problem. There is still a stunning silence. Silence is an answer, and it speaks volumes.
The reality is that we are being disingenuous when we recommend our brands and clients be more diverse and inclusive while we continue to only offer that opinion from our singular perspective. You may believe you have a clear picture of what potential customers want, but every individual views everything through his or her own lens of experience.
No matter how hard you may try, or how much market research you do, it is impossible for an agency full of white males to create authentic work that appeals to the greater audience. If you aren’t having uncomfortable but enlightening internal conversations about age, race, religion, culture and everything in-between, with direct representatives from each group, you are missing a piece of the picture. What you think you know about another culture and what is reality are often very different.
As leaders in the industry, it’s time for us to stand up, speak out and do more than just “spin” our responses to sound like the right thing to do -- we need to actually do it. We need to hire and promote more people from backgrounds different from our own. We need to listen to stories and open our internal offices to inclusion. There is no other way to understand and be better than to start doing it.
Brands are already demanding it. Now we, as leaders, need to not only demand it but live up to it. We have to stop the silence and escape the paradox. Doing so is the only way anything will actually change. Let’s change the world.
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410e07ce8ddd1e3f415334f24357902f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/31/five-measures-latin-america-must-take-to-get-up-to-snuff-on-cybersecurity/ | Five Measures Latin America Must Take To Get Up To Snuff On Cybersecurity | Five Measures Latin America Must Take To Get Up To Snuff On Cybersecurity
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In early 2016, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) released an ominous assessment of Latin America’s preparedness for cyberattacks, characterizing the region as especially and increasingly vulnerable to potentially devastating incidents. A year and a half later, the theft of 28 million users’ data from Latin America’s largest social network site, Taringa, has proven the report prescient.
What is perhaps even more unsettling is the fact that other comparable attacks may have been carried out on the region in recent years, but we wouldn’t necessarily know it. As the IDB report points out, businesses in the region are frequently not obligated to report incidents, and governments are slow to share details of attacks with their neighbors.
Having been based in Latin America for years, I have been witness to the region’s ongoing digital transformation, the rapid changes keeping these nations competitive in the global market and improving the lives of their citizens. I have also, even recently, seen a number of clients fall victim to cybercrime.
For all the prosperity promised by increased connectivity, smart cities and factories, it’s clear that these advances will prove a tremendous liability if Latin America doesn’t prioritize cybersecurity, and catching up will be no easy task. Much of the region’s populations are largely unaware of the risks of cybercrime. Currently, the IDB estimates the cost of cybercrime in Latin America at $90 billion per year.
It’s time for Latin American governments and industries to take concrete steps toward safeguarding the region’s critical infrastructure against the threat of cybercrime. Here are five measures that must be prioritized:
A National Cybersecurity Strategy
With an estimated 2.8 billion more internet of things (IoT) devices being brought online in 2018, the attack surfaces of critical infrastructure are expanding at an ever greater rate. For governments worldwide, it has never been more critical to have a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy for preventing and resolving digital threats. But, according to the IDB, four out of five Latin American countries lack such a strategy, while around half are without a coordinated response protocol.
Latin American states must assess their infrastructure's particular vulnerabilities and then develop holistic, proactive strategies accordingly. They should designate a competent authority to implement policies that take a proactive and continually updated approach to preventing cybercrime. The region’s governments must also put into place incident response mechanisms that can mitigate damage when and if an attack occurs.
Collaboration
Latin American nations are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to cybersecurity. Most security software companies have not viewed Latin America as a critical market, and therefore there are fewer cybersecurity services available. At the same time, high tariffs can make importing security solutions unaffordable for the region’s developing economies.
But whereas these countries may individually lack the resources to adequately combat cybercrime, a commitment to joining forces in the fight can drastically improve their capacity to protect themselves. April 2017’s OAS resolution to increase cooperation, transparency, predictability and stability in cyberspace was a big step in the right direction. Now the region must double down on collaborative efforts.
A Responsible Disclosure Policy
If an attack occurs, it’s absolutely essential that businesses in the private sector fully disclose all details to authorities immediately. However -- with Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay standing out as exceptions -- the vast majority of Latin American countries have no disclosure policy in place to obligate reporting of cyber breaches.
If businesses aren’t legally bound to report instances, authorities will lack the information to neutralize the threat, reduce the damage, investigate the perpetrators and take preemptive measures to prevent similar occurrences in the future. Each country needs a responsible disclosure policy, as well as an information-sharing mechanism that ensures the exchange of actionable intelligence between government and industry.
Tech And Talent
Initiatives to tackle the threat of cybercrime won’t succeed without cutting-edge tech, nor without well-trained talent. Unfortunately, there is a significant lack of both in much of Latin America.
To help grow a security-trained workforce, the Cisco Networking Academy has partnered with 1,550 academies and 3,800 instructors to provide cybersecurity training across Latin America. As of March, some 1.6 million had already completed the coursework. Meanwhile, Microsoft last year opened a Cybersecurity Engagement Center in Mexico, aiming to provide a headquarters for the region’s development of new solutions for IT security.
These and other similar partnerships are offering Latin America a leg up in its efforts, but private and public sector organizations across the region must themselves commit to allocating resources to cybersecurity training.
Cyber Insurance
A comprehensive, collaborative strategy for proactively preventing cybercrime will vastly improve the safety and security of Latin America’s modernizing economies and societies. No preventative plan, however, is invulnerable. With hackers' intent on staying one step ahead, it’s no wonder the cyber insurance industry is set to reach $20 billion in premium revenue by 2025 -- it can cover assistance in neutralizing the breach and business interruption expenses. In short, it’s essential to ensuring that damage is mitigated.
Of course, as with other cybersecurity services, Latin America doesn’t enjoy access to a wide range of fairly priced cyber insurance options. While cyber insurers worldwide have from the industry’s inception been constrained by their lack of adequate risk models, the absence of analytics on breaches and losses from Latin America has left them especially reluctant to provide these nations services.
This, too, though, is not without remedy. Companies like Symantec-backed CyberCube are offering risk-modeling platforms to cyber insurers capable of processing terabytes of data -- and ultimately allowing the industry to insure businesses in regions where they were hitherto reluctant. Microsoft for Startups is another organization actively investing in these new models throughout the world.
As Latin America races to reap the benefits of a hyperconnected world, ever more sophisticated cybercrime will undoubtedly search out the vulnerabilities underlying those hopes. But a shared interregional commitment, along with collaboration between government and industry, can help stave off disaster. The nations of Latin America can no longer afford to drag their feet.
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e5fc297b5f5e7b3643495d4eaab0816d | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/02/its-our-responsibility-as-marketers-to-use-consumer-data-for-good/ | It's Our Responsibility As Marketers To Use Consumer Data For Good | It's Our Responsibility As Marketers To Use Consumer Data For Good
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Let me quickly assure you that I'm not about to take my turn at weighing in on the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal. The more than 880,000 search results for "Cambridge Analytica scandal" tells me that the story has been beaten to death. I want to move beyond the scandal to consider what we marketers learn about using customer data for forces of good -- rather than evil.
The recent situation with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (CA) really helped the world -- both marketers and consumers -- to see just how powerful consumer data is. And how scary the impacts can be when that data falls into (or in this case, is easily accessed by) the wrong hands.
An Evil Genius' Guide To Misusing Customer Data
Under the guise of research, CA obtained Facebook user data. The initial population of users, around 300,000 -- most of whom were paid a small amount to participate -- opted in for this survey project by downloading an app. Thanks to the Facebook privacy settings of many of the original 300,000 users, CA was able to expand its reach and collect user data on their friends, bringing the number of users to 87 million. (Insert evil laugh here.)
Through some pretty impressive analytics, CA was able to determine characteristics of individuals most likely to be swayed by politically charged messaging. Once they had identified this segment of the population, the data was used to initiate campaigns which would influence the perceptions of this group. No surprises that the most tested messages for these campaigns were fear-based, playing on people's insecurities and emotional drivers to influence political campaigns.
Marketers should take two things to heart from this experience:
1. There is great power in consumer data, and that power comes with great responsibility.
2. There is a role of responsibility for marketers and brands.
When you realize that this customer data has the power to influence political campaigns, you also realize just how valuable it is.
One study by the Psychometrics Center showed that scraping your publicly available data can allow someone to know you, within just 70 likes, better than your friends. With only 150 likes, they can know you better than your parents. And based on just 300 likes, they can know you better than your spouse! No wonder users are terrified.
Most brands already have access to elements of this data that would help them understand their spouses -- I mean customers -- better. Used effectively, brands can do great things to provide truly personalized experiences for these current customers.
How Can We As Marketers Use This Data For Good?
Even before the spotlight shone on data privacy this year, consumers had already begun to be suspicious of how their data was being used. Now even more so, consumers are worried about the worst possible scenario, imagining that every company is capturing everything about them and will use this information to manipulate them -- and take over the world. My own family refers to me as Big Brother, always watching them!
The reality is that most consumers don't differentiate between a data breach and the misuse of behavioral data. They don't understand it enough to know when you are doing wrong or right by them, nor should they. So, now they're suspicious of everything.
We need to be more aware of the delicate balance between what data our audience is sharing and the value we give them in return. We must provide value commensurate with what is shared.
• Visitor Behaviors (Cookies): Consumers have accepted that websites track their visitor behavior. In return, we should be providing a personalized onsite visitor experience and personalized offsite experience in the form of thoughtful remarketing tactics.
• Customer And Account Info: Creating an account indicates a level of commitment by the customer that should be rewarded. One-to-one personalization should be provided across all channels of communication, devices and digital experience platforms.
• Biometrics: Fingerprints, facial recognition and DNA represent the highest value of personal data a consumer can share and require the highest level of responsibility in handling and the highest value in return. Fingerprint and facial-recognition security have become standard but some consumers pass on the convenience due to the perceived risk of it being misused. If I give you my DNA, the building blocks of my genetic code, I expect you to provide a hefty value in return. Will you save my life? Will you cure cancer? With the added benefit of knowing my heritage, these are both realistic uses of this information.
Being clear with your audience about what data you gather and why you're asking for it is more important than ever. And there are three ways to make this apparent to your customers.
• Transparency: Be transparent with consumers about what they are "paying" for the "free" content.
• Follow General Data Protection Requirement (GDPR) Compliance Policies: Even if you do not do business in the EU, it's a good idea to offer this level of transparency. Your competitors already are, and your customers will come to expect it of you, too.
• Protect It: Live by the mantra that if you can't protect it, don't collect it.
There's so much that marketers can do to leverage consumer data without touching personally identifiable information.
In the wake of these privacy scandals, misuses of data and the introduction of the GDPR, 2018 has emphasized the enormous responsibility we marketers hold when working with user data. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it is up to us -- brands and marketers -- to build from this point, regain the confidence of users and educate them on the benefits we can offer if they will entrust us with their information. This starts with providing users real value for their information and keeping our promises to use it responsibly, with their best interests in mind -- always.
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b2f38067f102876a4468ec26e7b71c04 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/03/is-your-small-business-leveraging-its-google-my-business-page/ | Is Your Small Business Leveraging Its Google My Business Page? | Is Your Small Business Leveraging Its Google My Business Page?
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Developing a social media strategy can be difficult as there are so many different platforms to choose from. Not every business needs to have an account on every platform. And it doesn’t make sense to have a social media account without a goal or purpose. That’s why, at BusySeed, we sit down with every client individually to weigh the pros and cons of each platform directly related to their social media marketing goals. However, there are some platforms that every business should have. Google My Business absolutely falls in this category.
Google My Business is an extension of its former service (Google Places), which now allows business owners to control their appearance on Google Search, Google Maps and Google+. As with any platform, there are a few limitations. Online businesses that don’t provide services to a certain area or have brick-and-mortar stores are not (yet) able to utilize Google My Business. For the time being, those companies should stick with AdWords for promotion.
Furthermore, anyone can alter the information posted on your listing as well as ask and even answer questions. To ensure that no false information is being spread about your business, you need to check back in often. In this sense, Google My Business can require more time and effort than ordinary social media platforms, like Facebook, that are mostly self-sufficient after regular posts.
Despite the need for a closer oversight, we have found Google My Business to be one of the best online tools for small business owners looking to increase their general reputation, as well as in-store sales and traffic.
Manage Your Reputation
Over the past few years, online reviews have become increasingly important to consumers. According to BrightLocal, 85% of people trust online reviews as much as recommendations from someone they know. And more than 49% of consumers say that a business needs at least a four-star rating before they will choose to do business with it.
For this reason, responding to negative reviews is just as important as positive reviews! Publicly reaching out to dissatisfied customers shows your willingness to compromise and make a customer happy. This will attract future customers looking for a positive experience.
Establish Activity With Posts
In addition to online reputation management, our team creates Google My Business posts for our brick-and-mortar clients. These posts can feature an image, call to action (CTA) and a link to another page or website. While they appear similar to other social media posts, they are only displayed for a week, then hidden until a user chooses to visit your Google My Business profile.
Google My Business also offers analytics for posts to help you determine what kind of posts are the most effective for your audience. The posts are also great because they give potential customers a quick glimpse of what kind of social media content they can expect on other platforms.
Don’t Just Search, Google It
Many of the billions of Google Search queries each day are seeking small businesses and other stores in an individual’s area. Having a positive presence on Google My Business can significantly increase your sales and in-store traffic. In fact, according to Google, 50% of people who perform a local online search for certain products or stores will actually visit a store that same day.
New Opportunities To Reach Your Customers
Google is a company that is constantly evolving and improving its service for private and commercial users. While there are already many different features available for claimed listings on Google My Business, there are a few new features Google is planning to release shortly.
When you think of emojis, messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp may come to mind. But now, emojis may even be able to boost awareness and sales for your small business. This feature is still in the beginning stages and, research is still being conducted to determine more accurate effects, however, I see its potential in providing small businesses the opportunity to interact more personally and appeal to a younger demographic.
Emojis are actually searchable on Google. For example, if you type a pizza emoji in the search bar, Google will present you with local pizza parlors in your area. Since Google My Business is a Google platform, it is reasonable to assume that adding a few emojis could help you stand out from the competition and boost your SEO rating. However, too many emojis can make your listing -- and business -- seem unprofessional, so be sure to use them in moderation.
Google My Businesses also allows searchers to take action directly from your listing. While this feature has been available in the past, there are now more options. For example, customers can “Call Now” or “Schedule an Appointment.” These buttons can help differentiate your business from the competition with easy and quick customer service at the press of a button.
Although this final feature is only available to mobile web users in a few countries, Google My Business allows customers to message your business directly, both through your business’ phone number and Google’s messaging app, Allo. Just like WhatsApp Business, you can interact with customers on a more personal level and provide top notch customer service with Allo.
Based on my information and research on current marketing trends, Google My Business will likely continue developing new features that allow small business owners, as well as large-scale corporations, get the most out of their listings and online reputation management.
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2294fa6b45f6461ab5291558137e8459 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/09/why-blockchain-can-and-should-be-developed-for-digital-advertising/ | Why Blockchain Can And Should Be Developed For Digital Advertising | Why Blockchain Can And Should Be Developed For Digital Advertising
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The buzz over blockchain has grown in the past few years, as can be seen in the $2.1 billion dollars forecasted to be invested in the technology in 2018. While eyes and investments have shifted to blockchain as digital currencies, like Bitcoin, have become popular, there are more ways to use blockchain technology than by financial firms, such as by advertisers and advertising agencies. In fact, investing in the use of blockchain technology for the digital advertising world could change the landscape as we know it.
Before discussing how advertisers can use blockchain, let’s look at how the technology works, as its innovative structure is what makes it popular for financial and tech firms. As explained by Paul Dughi, vice president and general manager of WAAY-TV and AudiencePop, in a post on Medium, “[blockchain’s] tech allows digital information to be distributed, but not copied. That means each individual piece of data can only have one owner.”
This is the most important part of how blockchain works and why so many companies that use digital currency use it to secure their relevant information. It’s essentially a spreadsheet, duplicated to numerous networks of computers and updated regularly. Those less familiar with blockchain can see, through this explanation, how duplication and no one location for all data make the overall process safer and less likely to be hacked.
A New Payout Process For Advertisers
When it comes to advertisers, blockchain technology could be used when ad platforms run ads and payout distributors and publishers. Since blockchain’s design makes it so difficult to hack or commit fraud, advertisers could have a process that is not only more secure for paying out publishers of their ads, but also could make fraudulent traffic less likely.
James Hercher, an AdExchanger reporter, writes that many advertisers and online publishers are hoping blockchain can be used to expose those who do wrong in digital ad spaces. While Hercher also writes about why blockchain isn’t quite ready for digital advertising implementation, it’s definitely a possibility considering how prevalent hacking and fraudulent traffic has become.
A 2017 report, titled “What Happens Next: How To Reverse The Rising Tide Of Ad Fraud,” estimated that global advertising revenue wasted on ad fraud in 2017 could amount to $16.4 billion, and it’s believed that this number will continue to increase. However, with the implementation of a technology like blockchain, it seems to me that the likelihood and ability to commit ad fraud would most likely lower, making the potential savings in ad dollars a huge benefit for both advertisers and publishers.
The Industry Still Needs Proof And Preparation
Hercher succinctly diagnoses the state of blockchain and its potential use in the digital advertising world by explaining that many tech companies get bogged down in the software integrations. Blockchain-first startups need to develop proof of the benefits, and many companies get scared away when hearing the cryptocurrency jargon.
In order to take some steps toward implementing blockchain into the digital advertising industry, all stakeholders need to adopt a smart contract framework. A smart contract provides transparency and ensures that all parties deliver on the terms. The objective is to cut out the middleman. If brands can buy directly from publishers and content providers, the market will become more efficient, content providers will make more money and advertisers will have the transparency they require.
For those who are higher up in their companies, the most important thing to do is to educate oneself on blockchain, smart contracts and the technology that supports these potential changes. By having this knowledge, executives in digital advertising can start to pave the way for change to occur.
However, I do still believe that blockchain technology will enter the advertising space slowly. Big publishers and advertisers will test and see if credible inventory becomes available. Because the process needs to dramatically change, there will be resistance and it will be difficult for a complete market transition. But blockchain technology is valuable and stands to clean up much of the challenges advertisers face with spending budgets getting the biggest bang for their buck.
While there are still some legitimate concerns, blockchain poses the potential for a drastic and positive change in the digital advertising industry and is well worth the time and effort.
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79faa2503c76b61faf3c2efdbfab78d4 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/13/how-to-boost-employee-engagement-with-a-great-onboarding-experience/ | How To Boost Employee Engagement With A Great Onboarding Experience | How To Boost Employee Engagement With A Great Onboarding Experience
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An employee’s first day can be stressful for everyone. When there are people’s livelihoods at stake, it’s difficult to see how it could be any different.
For incoming employees, there is the fear of new environments, of making an impact and of how their new employer will live up to how they described themselves in the interview. For employers, the fear stems from risk management, integrating a new employee with existing staff and the cost to get everybody up to speed. But an excellent onboarding experience, like that of Warby Parker’s, is an affordable and proven way to reap the maximum lifetime value from an employee.
Taking onboarding seriously and investing in the future of an employee is something that I have come to embrace over the past half-decade in business. The following advice comes from the successes and failures that we have had at Jelly Digital Marketing and PR.
Onboarding Begins Before Your Candidate’s First Day
Onboarding doesn’t start on day one. It doesn’t even start when you send out the job offer. It begins during the initial screening process. It’s easy to tell you that you need to find the right “fit” for your business. But applying the theory behind the right fit can prove too tricky.
It’s a common understanding that the interview process is tiresome, nerve-wracking and, at times, cumbersome for interviewees. The interview process can be made easy, however, by having a transparent process, by being punctual with responses and by keeping to promises. So, if the follow-up time is set for one week, follow up in one week. This allows the prospective employee to know where they are at in the process, whether they are under consideration and whether they can trust your company. Failing to do this can lead to the right candidate moving on to other interviews, or worse, accepting a job offer elsewhere.
Below are a few more tips to help optimize your employee onboarding experience and, thereby, boost employee engagement.
Prior To Arrival
Before your new employee’s first day, provide access to the tools that they will use on a daily basis and recommend that the new hire become familiarized with them. Send over a welcome document to give insight into your corporate culture. Let them know who they should report to and what time they should arrive, and give a brief overview of the first day. Contact them weekly, prior to their first day, to answer any questions they might have.
In my experience, these small steps are not only crucial to calm the nerves of the newcomer but they also boost the new employee’s confidence tenfold.
The First Day
Provide a warm welcome on your new hire’s first day. At Jelly Digital Marketing and PR, for example, we have a personalized welcome sign as well as somebody ready to meet the new hire at the door.
Provide a schedule for the first week that the new hire can follow, and give them a welcome kit. For my company, this is a handwritten letter and gift cards to local coffee shops to allow the new hire to get to know the local community. This little touch lets the new employee know that they are appreciated and that we are willing to invest in them.
The First Week
Allow the new hire to meet with the executives in the company during their first week and schedule a team lunch. Touch base with an end-of-the-week meeting to answer any questions, and ask for feedback on the interview process.
Encourage new hires to explore the local area. Afterall, they are going to be spending a lot of time here, so we want them to know their favorite spots in town while also knowing who they can turn to if and when they need it.
The First Month
During the first month, explain the company’s core values and ask how they apply to the new hire’s role. Give feedback on how the employee is performing. Offer three areas of improvement and three areas of success. But also request feedback on improvements that could be made to in-house processes.
This feedback allows you to know where you are living up to your core values and areas where you might be slipping. It also gives you an accurate pulse on the employee’s happiness and as to whether you need to start to look for a replacement.
Finally, schedule monthly get-togethers and religiously keep to them.
The First Year
Before the end of your new hire’s first year, schedule an annual review. Walk through the feedback given from the first month with the employee, and ensure that you’ve implemented what you could from your employee’s feedback. Build a career plan with the employee with milestones so that they can see themselves with your company for the long haul and recognize what it will take on all sides to make that happen.
As you can see, it doesn’t take a lot of money or hard work to onboard a new employee successfully. But, failing to put these simple steps into practice could lead to a make-or-break situation for your company.
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bac3a7b27c2e078bab7182d46a32b3a7 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/14/want-better-relationships-with-your-clients-swap-stories-instead-of-stats/ | Want Better Relationships With Your Clients? Swap Stories Instead Of Stats | Want Better Relationships With Your Clients? Swap Stories Instead Of Stats
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You never forget your first flop.
Mine was a project for a regional bank. I was running a campaign to get young people to sign up for a bank account with a fun promo -- you’d play online games and earn points to redeem for fun prizes. Our agency loved it. The client loved it. But the campaign bombed.
We had problems right from the start. Workback schedules were off, people were gaming the system for illicit points. It was a disaster. But years later, I find myself still working on new campaigns with that same client. In fact, I’ve even been to one of the staff member’s weddings. (My performance on the dance floor is a story for another time.)
Even though the execution was riddled with bumps, the way we worked towards a solution together, with no one assigning blame or resentment, created a serious bond of trust and respect. You might call it trial by fire -- I call it relationship building.
In fact, looking back, many of my closest client relationships have been strengthened because the program or campaign didn’t go according to plan. Yes, signing a new client is great. But keeping one who knows you, trusts you and likes you through thick and thin is even better.
Plus, retaining clients saves money and time -- so, if you care at all about your bottom line, here’s how to get to work cultivating a genuine bond.
Open up your business model.
For some odd reason, everyone’s scared to talk about the fact that businesses exist to make money. I find that leads to the perception of (or worry about) someone getting taken advantage of. My easy fix? Just be straight about what you’re doing, especially since 91% of consumers list communication and honesty as one of their top brand values.
At my company, we don’t make money selling our software or analytics -- we give those away for free. When someone buys a story through our platform, however, we receive a percentage of that purchase as a transaction fee. I’ll tell any client how much the company makes and how the company operates. As a result, no one has to worry that there’s anything I’m not telling them.
Get radically transparent.
Once upon a time, client-agency relationships were all about who controlled access. Access to data, to technology, to preferred rates, to creativity. There was power in knowing more than your client. They needed you because you had access to things that they simply didn’t.
But now, tools have become democratized. There’s no magic ad manager that can only be used by agencies, and data is everywhere. But while an agency may not control any special access, you can still be a facilitator of information, sharing experience and expertise to decode the numbers.
When we can all see the same information, it means we’re all on the same page. There’s no advanced look, there’s no wrapping bad news as a pretty gift -- just cold, hard results, warts and all. Directness and honesty are two of the biggest builders of trust in a business. Why fake stats to make you look good when just being frank can get you even further?
Come bearing (edible) gifts.
Breaking bread together has a long history of fostering a sense of community between people. In other words, feeding people makes them more likely to sit down and listen to what you say. I think we know this outside of business as well, as we celebrate and eat together on big occasions, birthdays, first dates and more.
At Pressboard, we understand that breaking bread is about getting together and bonding, so we like to apply the concept beyond lunch meetings. We do snack hours with clients where we pop by with pretzels and beer or cookies and coffee and just shoot the breeze -- no agenda, no meeting topic. We’re a storytelling company, after all, and we know the value of connecting on a personal level.
Speaking of which ...
To build trust, get personal.
Humans bond around stories. When you tell someone an emotional story, their brain releases oxytocin, the same bonding hormone that your brain releases during intimate moments from childbirth to sex. But, too often in business relationships, we skip the anecdotes and personal storytelling and let jargon and PowerPoint presentations do the talking.
I was once invited to speak to a cookie company about content marketing, but when I got on stage, I decided to ditch my presentation and get personal instead. I shared a story from my childhood about how my health-nut family -- I’m talking yoga in the 80s -- had a special box of maple cookies that we all coveted. Instead of going on about marketing stats, I shared a real story about how I had interacted with their brand and what it meant to my family. It created a totally different dynamic. People were coming up to me afterward, starting conversations like they knew me. I sowed the seeds of trust just by sharing a memory.
Small companies and startups have an advantage over the big guys. Without a lot of policies or procedures in place, you can establish a personal touch more easily and organically. Invite clients to a casual get-together with the staff or a backyard barbecue off the clock. Swap stories instead of stats.
But don’t get comfortable.
Even once you’ve taken a client from an acquaintance into best friend forever (BFF) territory, you can’t forget that winning their business is an ongoing process. While the pressure of the pitch may be gone once you’ve wooed that dream client into a project, don’t rest on your laurels. Instead, get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Your job is to stay impressive, no matter how strong the trust is between you and the client. Think of it like a personal relationship, and try to keep that honeymoon period alive. Do the work, put in the effort and prove that you’re worth trusting, and you’ll build a relationship that might just last a lifetime.
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a9d42edfc5aef7c3002dd10816e65c70 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/15/storytelling-is-all-the-rage-but-what-does-it-mean-for-b2b-marketers/ | Storytelling Is All The Rage, But What Does It Mean For B2B Marketers? | Storytelling Is All The Rage, But What Does It Mean For B2B Marketers?
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Once upon a time, in a land not too far away, the individual became empowered to create and share authentic content for the world to consume. And the world loved it. That’s when companies began to realize that their traditional sloganeering tactics of the past century were losing effect. And marketers from every corner of the land rose to the occasion, urging brands to humanize and tell stories.
Soon, the term “storyteller” graced many a résumé and job description.
Companies set to work, re-crafting their communication plans into stories, most commonly telling tales of customer success or proudly professing their purpose. Many videos were generated, liked, shared and cried over, and everyone felt good about themselves.
But then, among all the storyteller fervor, a question arose from the depths of business-to-business (B2B) industries -- a world where mathematical equations, technical specifications and a sharp sense of deductive reasoning ruled the day and the decision making.
How was a marketer, a salesperson or a CEO of a highly complex technology company supposed to apply storytelling to communicate with their technical customers? Was a salesperson supposed to walk into their customer’s lab and tell an epic “Once upon a time” chronicle? And about what, exactly?
Was this question coming from the misfits? The naysayers and the laggards? The ones who just didn’t get it?
No.
The brave souls of the B2B industries believed in the power of stories to connect with their audiences at a deeper, more human level. And even more importantly, they understood that stories invite audiences to picture themselves in the protagonist’s shoes and vicariously experience the feeling of success or the joy of discovery. But they also wanted to know how to use stories effectively -- not to tell stories for their own sake, but instead, to drive results.
While the power of stories was accepted and universally applicable to virtually any form of communication, a few curious ones deep within technical industries realized that the goal of strategic communications and high-stakes conversations was to inspire audiences to act.
Stories come in many forms. And while they have the power to entertain, evoke emotions, educate or make a universal issue into a personal one, not all of them actually have the power to motivate people into action.
As it turns out, there is a learnable pattern in these stories that creates just the right conditions to move audiences to action. The curious ones tested and validated the steps of the magical pattern, and they inscribed it on a scroll.
Using Storytelling To Inspire Action
Whether you’re a marketer, a salesperson or in any other customer-facing role in the technical B2B industry, you can implement these steps to craft your own stories and leverage them for results.
Connection: Every good story starts with creating a connection. This can be achieved by finding a common goal between the storyteller (i.e., the salesperson) and the audience (i.e., the prospect).
Provocation: Once trust is established, the storyteller masterfully ushers their audience into a special world, disrupting the audience’s reality. This could be achieved by delivering a provocative idea or another vantage point about the audience’s work. At this moment, the audience members sit at the edges of their seats, engulfing themselves in the story. For those familiar with insight-based selling, this is the moment when an amazing insight is delivered.
Re-Education: Now, the storyteller has to deliver enough evidence to encourage his or her audience to re-educate themselves and see a new idea for how they can make a change to better reach their goal. A master storyteller knows how to best deliver the evidence and guide the audience to find their own idea, rather than giving them the answer.
Persuasion: Finally, the storyteller will empower the audience to take specific action. The most experienced storyteller connects the action to the audience’s goal, which is the basis of the connection he or she made at the beginning of the story. The audience is motivated to act because they’re actually acting for themselves.
Epilogue
Even in the most technical industries, decisions are made by humans. And storytelling is an ancient “technology” that has been perfected through the years to resonate with the human nervous system and brain chemistry.
But corporations and brands must examine the purpose of their storytelling and deploy this powerful technology to ensure it meets their purpose. Managers can follow the above framework to construct stories that are potent and inspire action.
May your stories and your careers be filled with “happily ever after.”
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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58bc023d0359c9176b7dcbc8023b1fe2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/16/understanding-the-power-of-free-in-marketing/ | Understanding The Power Of 'Free' In Marketing | Understanding The Power Of 'Free' In Marketing
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If you build it, they will come. After all, you took the time to build a mobile-friendly website. You did your research and found a secure server. You are knocking out blank pages with words, filling your site with valuable, actionable content. They will come. They must. Right?
It doesn’t matter what words you string together if nobody ever sees it. This is a fundamental roadblock new businesses suffer from on a daily basis: They create content and are lost as to why traffic isn’t crashing their server.
Once that doubt begins to lurk, they shift gears and try a different marketing approach. I see this all the time. They publish content never realizing that search engines like Google operate on a unique algorithm.
You can’t predict when Google will index a piece of content. And you can’t get The Rock to give you some Instagram love. So why even waste any time on this at all?
There is value in free. Think of the long-term value your brand could capture if you gave customers something like free service for 30 days, 100% off or bonus features that only premium plans have access to? If your product or service is proven to be killer, clients will rave about it, and that freebie will be a taste to get them hooked (and possibly turn into your largest ad).
The Cost Of 'Free'
You have server costs, site costs, content creation costs, marketing costs and, if you’re addicted to daily coffee runs, well, there’s that, too. It all impacts the bottom line.
Nothing is free. When you launch a piece of content and a lead finds it, there is an unspoken agreement happening. In your eyes, you’re giving them a taste of Utopia with the assumption they will pick up the phone and sign the dotted line. In their eyes, they’re feeling you out, doing the pros and cons and picturing themselves possibly doing business with you. It’s like dating: Sometimes you’re the windshield; other times you’re the bug.
The problem is you can’t afford to not have these freebies and be slapped aside. If all things are equal, your competition is offering freebies. So, how do you get the upper hand? Ideally, your marketing is laid out, and you have remarketing on your content setup, email campaigns ready to launch, pop-up triggers on standby and new, follow-up freebies coming out tomorrow.
The most successful type of marketing is the kind that fires multiple rounds at once on different channels.
Leveraging A Trial Period
I know what you’re thinking: I’m asking you to focus on freebies, spend a bunch of revenue supporting them and on top of it, give them time to pan out. You’re running a business; you need capital now. I get it. For companies on edge about this concept, consider leveraging a free trial period.
The great thing about trial periods is they give customers a sense of your brand, they have the freebie element, and they're a low-risk option for you. Yes, you’ll still need to support this marketing, but you'll sleep easier at night.
Marketing Isn't Always About Sales
How do strangers become friends? They talk to each other. How do startups get leads? They talk to them. Making your product or service free is all about communication and a great icebreaker. Most brands don't have unlimited bandwidth, so it's important to work within your means.
Understand that no matter what stage you are at, there is value in free. As a takeaway, I encourage you to review your brand and ask: What have I given away for free lately? If the answer is nothing, it's time to consider a change.
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7033545b725a0162aba9a830df08ce16 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/20/hey-google-how-do-i-optimize-for-voice-search/ | Hey Google, How Do I Optimize For Voice Search? | Hey Google, How Do I Optimize For Voice Search?
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The rise of digital assistants provides yet another example of the ways that modern technology increasingly resembles old-school science fiction. There was a time when it was impossible to have a conversation with a computer unless your name was Buck Rogers. Nowadays, you can literally ask a question to an internet-connected device outfitted with voice-recognition technology -- a digital assistant -- and receive a human-like response.
You can ask your digital assistant for directions to the nearest car wash, to wake you up at 8 a.m. or to check on that package you’re expecting, and this is just scratching the surface. This is what millions of consumers are doing every day with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomePod, Google Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana and Samsung’s Bixby.
It’s a safe bet that this type of technology is no passing fad. If current trends continue, then digital assistants will soon come to occupy a central place in our everyday lives, alongside other once-novel tools like GPS and text messaging.
Alexa, What Does The Data Say?
Not convinced this technology is on the rise? Can’t get rid of that sneaking suspicion that voice assistants might turn into the next Segway? Here are some key stats that point to the growing popularity of digital assistants and voice-recognition technology:
• By recording one month of sales rates for 2,000 products listed on Amazon, OC&C Strategy Consultants reported that voice-powered commerce accounted for $1.8 billion in U.S. retail revenues in 2017. This figure is expected to reach $40 billion by 2022.
• According to the ADI Consumer Electronics Report, more than half of all owners of voice assistants use it at least once per day, and more than 20% rely on it for online shopping.
• By 2020, Gartner predicts that voice-activated searches will account for 30% of web-browsing sessions.
These kinds of numbers are impossible to ignore -- especially for those of us involved in the digital marketing field. It’s clear that a fundamental shift in internet search habits is in progress. The public is spending more and more of the typical day talking to digital devices, rather than typing keywords into search engines.
As you might expect, this should have a significant impact on search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing strategies, which are based largely on old-fashioned keyboard inputs. Speaking and typing are two very different ways to search for information, and marketers must take this into consideration when figuring out ways to drive traffic to websites.
Hi Cortana, What About Optimization?
What, specifically, can the contemporary marketer do to stay ahead of the curve in the era of Alexa and Siri?
The good news is that we’re still in a transitional period, so there’s no rush to make everything voice-friendly -- yet. That classic Google Search page isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Having said this, however, it’s still best to do what you can to take advantage of the growing popularity of voice search.
Use Natural Speech
Digital assistants are engineered to process normal human conversation, more or less. Want Alexa to find the nearest used bookshop? There’s no secret code you have to learn; just say, “Alexa, where is the nearest used bookshop?” We know that most people use their digital assistants in this way.
For example, 2017 Google Data shows that 70% of all searches on the Google Assistant are in natural language. Our SEO strategy must recognize this tendency. Among other things, that means that we need to be getting away from the old-fashioned keyword terms like “used bookshop Manhattan.” No one speaks like this in a normal conversation.
Try Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords generally run from three to five words in length, and they’re more specific than standard keywords. They also provide smaller businesses with an excellent opportunity to snag a high Google ranking for certain searches.
For instance, a small mail-order business that sells vintage 50s clothing will probably not rank well on searches for “clothes.” The big nationwide retailers have those spots. But a business like this can use more targeted long-tail keywords, like “vintage fifties clothing for women,” to attract customers who are searching for specific types of apparel.
How is this relevant to our topic here? Long-tail keywords will likely become more important in the coming years due to digital assistants and their preference for natural language. To put it another way, we tend to use long-tail keywords when we’re talking to our voice-recognition devices, whether we realize it or not.
Exploit The Power Of The 'Near Me' Search
If you routinely search with the term “near me,” then you’re part of a rapidly rising SEO trend. The “near me” search allows the user to leave off their hometown and other location-specific data. This is possible because our internet-connected devices already know where we are. Therefore, it’s usually unnecessary to include this information in our searches.
Over the last two years, the “near me” mobile search has seen a 500% increase in volume when combined with “to buy,” “can I buy,” or a similar phrase, according to a comparison of Google Data from July-December 2015 and July-December 2017. A related mobile search that has recently surged in frequency is “near me today/tonight.” That phrase increased by 900% in the same period.
Effective voice search optimization is based on conversational speech, not the choppy-sounding keyword searches of years past. Understanding this concept will go a long way toward helping you meet your marketing goals in an environment more and more defined by digital assistants.
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a04c4b7312363003cc3fe6ffdd24f131 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/23/banking-on-millennials-investing-for-the-future/ | Banking On Millennials: Investing For The Future | Banking On Millennials: Investing For The Future
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Once upon a time, young girls and boys of grammar school age had passbook savings accounts opened for them by their parents, many times in conjunction with a classroom exercise that encouraged the kids to deposit a dollar a week. This activity was ostensibly designed to convey the importance of saving money, but it also served to reinforce the role that banks would play in these kids' financial lives as they moved into adulthood.
Today, the buildings that housed those bank accounts' funds -- those mammoth, stone buildings with the high ceilings and giant vaults -- are now restaurants, clubs and retail stores. There no longer is a need for giant fortresses that can accommodate hundreds of customers every day. This is the world in which the millennial generation -- those born between 1980 and 2005 -- grew up. The notion of a big, giant bank building with a guard keeping watch at the door is about as relatable to them as sitting around the radio listening to The Lone Ranger.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates that the number of bank branches dropped from just under 36 per 100,000 people in 2009 to just under 33 in 2015. Research predicts that consumer visits to retail bank branches will drop by 36% from 2017 to 2022, while mobile transactions will rise by 121% during that same period. Seventy-one percent of millennials say they would rather go to the dentist than listen to what a bank has to say, and 23% of this demographic cite lack of a mobile app as the main barrier to bank engagement.
Fortunately for the banking industry, most institutions recognize these tectonic shifts and are adapting to the new world order. For the minority of those that aren't, time is just about running out. For them, I have some thoughts I would like to share as an advertising agency CEO who has worked with numerous banks over the years.
First, some facts. The Goldman Sachs report, “Millennials Coming of Age,” recognizes five characteristics that define this group:
1. Millennials have grown up with the rise of smartphones and the internet.
2. They are digitally connected and use social media in various ways to connect and be heard.
3. Due to lower incomes and employment rates, millennials generally have less money to spend.
4. Thanks to student loans, a good chunk of millennials are in debt.
5. Connected to having less money to spend, this group has put less of a priority on large investments like marriage and home ownership.
Smartphones are the new wallets. Millennials use their phones for everything from purchasing movie tickets to displaying boarding passes to accumulating rewards points. So, it makes sense that banks that offer digital services are better positioned to engage millennial customers. They are very comfortable and, in fact, quite accustomed to, making payments via Venmo or PayPal.
According to the American Bankers Association, millennials are three times more likely to open a new account on their phone than they are in person. Millennials appreciate banks that offer digital budgeting tools via a single dashboard where they can track their spending to help them get out of debt and manage their daily finances. Facebook IQ reports that 61% of millennials say that mobile has improved the tracking and spending of their money.
And remember, it's the millennials who will be tomorrow's titans of industry, so they are certainly worth pursuing. But how? Follow the money. In other words, market to millennials on their terms. Here are a few ways to do so:
Offer experiences.
Millennials love experiences, so you might want to offer rewards for opening an account -- not in the form of a cash deposit or higher interest, but in the form of hard-to-get concert or music festival tickets. You can do this in conjunction with a sponsorship of the event that enables you to set up a VIP area for your customers, complete with selfie booths and perhaps even meet-and-greet selfie opportunities with some of the performers.
Millennials also love ride-sharing services, so how about entering into sponsor partnerships with these services in target markets? You can offer free ride vouchers as customer rewards and perhaps tie in a roundtrip rideshare as part of the aforementioned event promotion.
Engage on social media.
Social media contests are another good way to reach the elusive millennial. For example, you can give away hard-to-get concert tickets with a "like," follow or post campaign as follows:
• Follow us on Instagram (include #xyz to be entered to win)
• Add us on Snapchat (send us a snap of xyz for chances to win)
• Follow us on Twitter (and tag us in a relevant post for a chance to win)
• Like and/or follow us on Facebook (to be entered to win)
Create an easy-to-navigate mobile experience.
Millennials tend to have short attention spans. Mobile experiences need to be quick and easy. If a mobile experience is buggy, confusing or incomplete in any way, you might lose that potential customer forever — and even the best out-of-the-box marketing activations won't help.
The overarching point here is that while millennials were not born into a world of dutifully going to a bank to make a deposit, they still represent good potential customers. The trick is knowing how and where to reach them.
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087536728634a6b1d071863a084c9435 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/27/a-checklist-for-finding-the-perfect-publicist/ | A Checklist For Finding The Perfect Publicist | A Checklist For Finding The Perfect Publicist
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One of the biggest decisions you’ll ever make in your business is hiring a publicist. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: Of course you’d say that; you’re the CEO of a PR company. But hear me out.
I truly believe the relationship you have with your publicist is one of the most sacred business relationships that exists. I mean, your publicist is your voice in the world. They are the ones who will share your message with the media and public. So you want to choose that company very carefully.
I want to share with you some of my observations from 17 years of doing this, and what I recommend you consider when looking for the perfect publicist:
1. Consider their philosophy.
This is the first and foremost step, and probably the most important. How do you uncover a PR company’s philosophy? The quickest way is to comb through their website. Does it resonate with you? Do you think you’d be a good match? Who have they represented or who do they currently represent? Are those people and companies in a similar arena as you? Do you have a similar target market?
Consider this: If you’re a mind, body, spirit author or a global nonprofit and you’re evaluating a PR company that typically represents tech startups, you’re probably not a good match. Right? If you share a similar philosophy and it just feels right to you, dig deeper and connect.
At Wasabi Publicity, our approach to business is a little unconventional, and we like it that way. People are often surprised when we connect on the phone and don’t immediately try to sell them something. My intention is to explore if we’re a good fit because we need to love their message as much as they do. I mean, how crazy would it be to hire a publicist who doesn’t share your love and passion for what you’re doing? Do you really want them sharing your story with the media?
2. Look for that indefinable spark.
If you’re like me, you know the chemistry of a relationship is very important. I like to work with people who share my philosophy, work ethic and commitment to serve.
Don’t underestimate the spark. It’s in that indefinable something where you need to trust your intuition. And I believe that only comes from connecting with someone. You may have had that experience where everything looks great on paper, but then you go on your first date, and, well ... you get my point.
3. Look at their results.
Another quick way to explore whether a PR company is a good fit is their results. Ask them what results they’ve recently produced for clients. This is really where the rubber meets the road. If their results are similar to what you’re looking for, then you know you’re on the right track.
For example, if you're targeting business markets, have they recently placed in top business media venues? If you want to reach out to women, do they regularly score venues that serve that target audience?
So, when you’re looking for your perfect publicist match, it boils down to three questions:
1. Do you have a shared philosophy?
2. Is there a spark?
3. Do they have a track record of producing the kind of results you’re looking for?
If the answer to all of these questions is yes -- BINGO, you have a winner!
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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b85ef423ea3e577d9a0a41a3c15eca47 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/29/messenger-marketing-the-new-way-to-do-business/ | Messenger Marketing: The New Way To Do Business | Messenger Marketing: The New Way To Do Business
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Within the next two years, 85% of customer-business relationships will be through technology. A huge part of these relationships will take place on messaging apps, where businesses can not only provide lightning-fast customer service but also drive sales. In anticipation, business owners should be perfecting their messenger marketing strategy right now. Facebook Messenger is one of the largest messaging platforms out there, with more than 1.3 billion monthly users.
Platforms like Facebook Messenger are the new trend in the social media marketing world since they allow business owners to reach out to consumers on a large scale through advertisements, then continue to interact on an individual level.
Facebook Messenger Tools For Business
Similarly to WhatsApp Business, Messenger offers a number of tools to help business owners keep their different threads under control. Messenger Greetings are customizable messages that appear automatically when a user begins a conversation with a business for the first time.
Instant Replies are similar to Messenger Greetings, in that they are automatic replies in response to anyone who messages a business. However, these can be programmed to appear after any message, not just the first in a given thread. Saved Replies are messages you can program with common answers to questions like business hours or contact information.
Customer cards, however, are a Messenger exclusive. They give a business important information about the customer at hand to craft the perfect response. Businesses can find information like the customer’s location, local time and even order history.
Why Use Facebook Messenger For Business?
Small businesses can use Facebook Messenger in a number of different ways. Customer service becomes more streamlined and personalized for the customer while there are ample opportunities to increase revenue.
More than half (56%) of consumers prefer to contact customer service representatives over messages than calling a call center. And it makes sense: Issues are often resolved within 42 seconds. Such a quick customer service process helps you get back to more pressing matters while impressing and retaining customers.
According to research, 53% of people prefer shopping with businesses that they can message directly. This is why it is necessary to not only have a Facebook account but also be active on the Messenger platform. Remember to let consumers know what times you will be online and ready to answer questions. Waiting long periods of time without any idea of how much longer the response will take can frustrate customers.
Using Facebook Messenger for marketing is another great opportunity for small businesses looking to get the most out of their advertising budget. The ads cannot seem too pushy or “salesy.” Instead, focus on creating friendly and natural conversations that mention different reasons or benefits why users should continue communicating with your business on Messenger.
Facebook Messenger Ads
Click-to-Messenger ads can be placed on Facebook, Instagram and directly on the Messenger home screen (currently just for the mobile app). The Messenger icon appears on your ad, regardless whether the ad is an image, video or in the carousel format. The best CTA buttons for this type of advertisement are “Learn More” or “Send a Message.” Businesses have the option to create a greeting during ad creation. When a user clicks on your ad, a Messenger conversation will open with your business. If this message was created, it is the first thing users will see. Otherwise, users will be provided a message showing them how to proceed in Messenger.
On Facebook, businesses can also create ads that are placed directly on the mobile Messenger home screen. If consumers do click on your ad, they will be sent to a landing page of your choosing or a Messenger conversation with your business.
Sponsored messages are another type of ad offered on the Messenger platform. These ads are best to re-engage previous customers or Facebook users that have previously interacted with your brand. Sponsored messages are sent to existing threads, which makes them perfect for last-minute sale reminders and updates.
The Future Of Messenger For Business
As technologies continue to develop, there will be even more opportunities for small businesses to take advantage of Facebook Messenger marketing. There are already 100,000 chatbots available on Messenger today.
These chatbots can take the form of a personal assistant and utilize artificial intelligence like Facebook's M assistant. M can perform many different tasks like reminding you of birthdays or even help you get a ride with Uber or Lyft. M marks the beginning of partnership opportunities with Facebook’s chatbots and AI.
When this kind of technology becomes easier to manage, smaller businesses and organizations will surely be able to create their own projects with M. Using AI to incorporate your business’s expertise and service into a digital personal assistant will increase awareness about your small business and possibly even sales.
Once small businesses are also able to create their own AI-powered chatbot add-ons, it is another platform to advertise products and services. For example, a fashion brand could recommend new stylish pieces from their collection when a user provides their taste as well as clothing size. A restaurant could create a type of interactive menu or offer a delivery service directly from Messenger.
Ultimately, marketing professionals and small business owners will have to wait and see how Facebook Messenger develops as a platform. While ads are available wide-scale and deliver impressive results, it will be interesting to see how chatbots or AI influence social media marketing strategies for small businesses.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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a5aafb611f096fecb5ef116a7f7e043e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/08/31/five-ways-to-put-sales-into-motion-with-video-marketing/ | Five Ways To Put Sales Into Motion With Video Marketing | Five Ways To Put Sales Into Motion With Video Marketing
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Videos are virtually everywhere, mostly because they are incredibly engaging. And whether we find them funny, touching or appalling, we certainly don’t struggle to find them. However, posting just any video means it’s likely to get lost in the abyss than be a game-changer for your business. To complicate matters, more views doesn’t always equal more revenue, which may leave you asking yourself: Why aren’t my fans becoming clients? Are my efforts really helping my bottom line?
The most valuable marketing inspires your audience to become long-term, free-spending regulars, and video is no exception. Yet, it won’t happen without careful strategizing.
With how-to or tutorial videos, you can introduce your business to your ideal audience. By incorporating video into email outreach and driving conversions with interactive elements, you form connections with fans and future guests. And when you use your videos’ descriptions and comments, you generate interest in your offerings that lead to increased revenue.
So, if you aren’t getting the results you want from video marketing, consider the following to transform your passive campaign to active:
Captivate With Motion
Quickly capture your viewers' attention when they scroll through their newsfeed using visually stimulating footage that begins with movement. Nearly half (47%) of Facebook video ads’ value, for example, comes from the first three seconds, and only 46% of viewers watch a video until the end, according to data compiled by Vidyard.
Give viewers a compelling reason to stick around for more. Show your business in action to highlight the atmosphere and ambiance. Energetic clips incite a sense of fear of missing out, commonly known as “FOMO,” the holy grail of event promotion. For example, if you’re running an event, it’s the sweet spot where people are so afraid of missing out, they can hardly stop themselves from attending.
Spark Conversations
Video is an effective way to start conversations so that your viewers can form a community. Doing so is advantageous to customer satisfaction, raising it by as much as 20% while lowering the cost of serving them by the same. It can also increase revenue by up to 15%.
For starters, keep captions open-ended, and avoid statements to garner replies. Craft responses that provide fans with the notion they’re talking to someone instead of being talked at, and use the dual purpose to encourage further engagement from fans. Most importantly, acknowledge when people answer your questions or comment to show both the commenters and any other viewers your concern for their thoughts and opinions.
Go Live
Live streaming’s in-the-moment nature makes it one of the most authentic ways to approach content. With live video, you can do almost anything: Q&A, demos, breaking news, recurring series, contests, behind-the-scenes and more.
Instagram Live is ephemeral, making it perfect for flash specials and teasing new products. On Facebook Live, invite viewers to click the follow button so they receive notifications about future broadcasts. Viewers can comment during streaming, so determine how you or a team member will respond to comments during the broadcast.
Facebook recommends streaming last at least 10 minutes, so have a plan before getting started. For every moment you’re live, there needs to be something keeping viewers engaged.
Combine With Email
Integrate videos with your other campaigns to get more mileage from your efforts. Email is still profoundly compelling, particularly because of companies’ focus on other forms of digital marketing. In a 2013 eMarketer study on the benefits of using video in email marketing, 55% of respondents reported that including video resulted in higher click-through rates, and 41% saw an increase in sharing by including video.
To combine video and email, add a play button to a static image, and link to content hosted elsewhere. Alternately, you can embed your video directly in the email. Introduce a video series that you send to subscribers weekly, and test using the word “video” in the subject line. Feature interviews and testimonials, and add a personal touch by speaking directly to subscribers. And always include a call to action.
Transform Viewers Into Clients
Before producing any content, determine your goal. If you’re sharing a new product, create a video for that page. If you’re promoting an upcoming event, create a video for that, too. When you keep your message clear, response rates increase exponentially. But remember to limit each campaign to one call to action -- too many can confuse prospects and lead them to opt for none.
Dedicate the final few seconds of your video to incorporating your contact info and a call to action telling viewers their next step. YouTube enables you to include website links, channel subscriptions, polls, related videos or even to fundraise. Facebook facilitates the inclusion of website links and lead generation forms.
Motion graphics and typography within your video reinforce your call to action on platforms without such interactive features while allowing your message to be heard by the 85% of viewers who don’t turn on audio. URLs at the beginning of the video’s description text guides viewers to additional details and can be invaluable for those who like to skip ahead.
Humans are visual creatures; we enjoy pictures and adore video. As social feeds are increasingly taken over by video, marketers are expected to embrace it for all its worth.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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ea3601c9650664cffc365ab03502121f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/09/10/understanding-the-difference-between-influence-marketing-and-influencer-marketing/ | Understanding The Difference Between Influence Marketing And Influencer Marketing | Understanding The Difference Between Influence Marketing And Influencer Marketing
It’s love at first sight: with your friend’s new sofa, or maybe your boss’s handbag. You want to know where you can get one, but you never get a chance to ask. Or maybe it's a dress worn by a celebrity on the red carpet catches your eye. You sift through one Google search result after another to find it. You even post a picture on your social media, hoping friends can help.
Every time something like this happens, it represents not just a dissatisfied shopper, but also a lost sale. Monetizing the influence of these contexts, something I've been working toward within my own business, can be an enormous marketing opportunity. I call it “influence marketing.”
Influence marketing should not be confused with “influencer marketing,” which focuses on individuals pushing products to consumers. Instead, it's about the power of content or context and empowering consumers with relevant data throughout the entire path to purchase, from brand awareness and consideration to purchase decision, which includes comparing products’ quality, price, popularity, proximity and even relatability.
In a world hyper-saturated with advertisements, an influencer waving a new “must have” lip gloss on Instagram can become just another part of the whirl. In contrast, influence marketing doesn’t push products but rather presents them in the context of a narrative. The success of eco-friendly marketing, like Patagonia’s “Don’t buy this jacket” campaign, shows the power of an authentic, positive narrative.
To create a shoppable world, we first need to categorize sources of influence.
Categorizing Influence
I divide influencers into three categories to better define my influence marketing concept: micro, macro and mega influencers.
Capitalizing on the Influence Marketing Courtesy of Mavatar
Micro influencers are everyday people, including those we know, who typically have fewer than 10,000 followers. They create content, or what I call “shoppable context.” They are a powerful force with a high engagement rate: 80% of Americans seek recommendations before making a purchase. Spotting a sofa in the comfort and sincerity of your cousin’s house, for instance, creates a context that sells.
Despite their high engagement rate, micro influencers are not an official part of the value chain because they’re small fries, even if they could be considered the most powerful force in the aggregate.
Macro influencers range from social media notables with tens of thousands of followers to celebrities with tens of millions. This large and influential group has been one of the main drivers of influencer marketing so far. Because they advertise to a wider audience than micro influencers, brands often work with them through affiliate networks or agencies.
While there are many examples of macro influencers making tons of money from brand and product endorsements, it is often less clear how much sales they actually generate.
Take David Beckham, for instance. The former soccer player earned 30 million pounds annually from brand and product endorsements. From the affiliate sales point of view, based on our own experience with 30 top retailers and the traditional affiliate network's average 5% commission rate, his endorsements should have created 600 million pounds gross merchandise value (GMV). But the reality is no one knows whether he's overpaid or underpaid.
How much influence on brand sales does Beckham possess? Does his influence still sell after his contract ends? Maybe if he could accurately monetize his influence, he could afford to be more authentic, relevant and selective about his endorsements.
As we move from micro influencers toward macro influencers, we see higher potential payout opportunities, but experience less authenticity. Consumers could be more likely to trust their friends than David Beckham, as world-renowned as he may be.
In my opinion, as a former journalist and publisher, mega influence is created by a collective consciousness that influences consumers even more than superstars like Beckham do. Sources of mega influence include mainstream media, movies, TV, red carpet shows, festivals and experts. These influencers set trends, swaying millions of consumers with their content or context.
Studies show that video -- be it a YouTube video or Hollywood blockbuster -- profoundly influences product awareness, as people watch video not only for entertainment but also to learn about new trends. This influence drives people to buy, leveraging the power of storylines that create immediate and powerful emotional connections between consumers and products. Accurately monetizing this diffused mega influence has proven difficult because it’s impossible to accurately measure its extent.
Using Micro And Mega Influence
I previously mentioned that I believe blockchain has the power, DNA and bandwidth to make influence marketing a reality, scale digital marketing and enable micropayments. For micro influencers who are too small to get paid using traditional accounting and brand management, we use blockchain technology to automatically reward them with micropayments to realize peer-to-peer advertising, as GDPR and FCC limitations imposed on influencer marketing become a bottleneck.
We've found that mega influencers, who create shoppable content and engage with millions of consumers, can also see rewards via micropayments on blockchain. For instance, a movie studio could be instantaneously paid via blockchain for any sales generated by content connected to a film.
The benefits of blockchain-backed influence marketing for micro and mega influencers don’t necessarily exclude macro influencers. David Beckham could also leverage blockchain to support and endorse products he loves for his fans to shop. He would get a fair commission for the sales he generates, making his value more accurate, affordable and authentic.
There have been a number of blockchain-based technologies introduced to the industry, such as the new tech from Comcast’s Advanced Advertising Group that uses blockchain within a network of participants to allow brands to make media buys on both broadcast and over-the-top (OTT) TV. Computer giant IBM is another big player in the space, as reported in Forbes. But perhaps more exciting is the effect of this technology in pull model advertising.
I believe blockchain could become an industry standard to realize cross-pollination efforts between media, consumers and retailers to make the world around us shoppable and track influence to sales dollars.
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061064681e20d5dfdcb27eb433870659 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/09/13/beyond-the-blog-seven-creative-influencer-marketing-tactics/ | Beyond The Blog: Seven Creative Influencer Marketing Tactics | Beyond The Blog: Seven Creative Influencer Marketing Tactics
Is blogging dead? According to Google’s search results (as of this writing, anyway), there are over 34 million answers to this question, all of which vary by author opinion.
In my experience as a previous blogger and current CEO of an influencer marketing agency, blogging is alive and well, but it sure does look different. Blogs have evolved and changed over the years from static, text-centric webpages to an incredibly diverse variety of content including copy, imagery, photography, videography and more.
Today’s thriving influencer marketing industry started with banner ad-driven blogs, and just as blogs have changed, so have content creators. Influencers now produce complex marketing campaigns via various forms of media, seamlessly weaving brand messaging into their own opinions and recommendations.
Sponsoring a traditional blog post is still a great influencer marketing activity, but if you’re looking for creative alternatives, there are plenty:
Go live.
Brands can sponsor an influencer’s live feed on social platforms, including Instagram or Facebook. Livestream collaborations can take many forms -- real-time product unboxing, Q&As, fashion haul try-ons, cooking, activity and destination promotions, behind-the-scenes footage at events -- with brand mentions creatively included throughout the broadcast.
This option can be particularly well-suited for brands with initiatives they're not always associated with -- for example, a food brand that has a charity they want to promote.
Sponsor a podcast.
Podcasts have become mainstream entertainment, with influencers and YouTube stars joining the ranks of those producing this immersive audio medium. Advertising breakthroughs are a common option for sponsorships, or the episode could organically mention a product or service as part of the topic (e.g., a parenting podcast focused on outings with baby sponsored by a stroller brand).
According to Neilsen, "the podcast listener tends to spend more at the grocery store on a weekly basis than the average American." Since this audience typically spends more, getting your message in front of these consumers is a must.
Contract content.
Many influencers are available to hire on a freelance basis to produce signature digital content on a brand’s behalf. Keeping up with the constant need for new, engaging branded content is sometimes not achievable with internal resources. Bring in influencers to help with photography, writing and videos -- the sky’s the limit. Bonus: The resulting material can be cross-promoted from the influencers’ platforms to increase reach.
Plan a social takeover.
An increasingly popular move is for a brand to have an influencer temporarily take over their social accounts, which can coincide with a promotion (driving sales) or designed to boost engagement in brand follows and shares. Influencers typically hype the takeover from their own social accounts, building trust by association. Both influencer and brand can benefit from this type of collaboration: The brand gets exposed to new audiences while the influencer gets the credibility of being publicly valued by the brand.
Hire an ambassador.
Influencers can make perfect brand ambassadors at events like trade shows or conferences. They can participate in trade show booth appearances, host branded parties or receptions or simply attend with the goal of boosting brand engagement by posting photos, video and commentary about the event.
Gather data.
Curious about how your target market will react to your new product or service? Poll a like-minded influencer’s audience to get an early read on things. Easy one-click polls are a popular feature in Instagram and Facebook and a great way to gauge interest.
Boost a newsletter.
Newsletter services are an interesting (and more private) alternative to public blogging and social media, and some influencers are using them on their own or as a supplement to their web presence. Promotion opportunities are similar to blogs, with branded content naturally woven into the influencer’s images and copy.
With all of these options, it’s important not to be overly rigid in your requirements. Influencer marketing works best when brands can be mentioned and promoted organically. Establish permissions, goals and brand assets, then allow influencers to work their magic, whatever the medium. In the end, there are plenty of ways to go beyond the blog to hit your specific key performance indicators.
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61db0d7ddd140e2909b3c910fac9a162 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/09/14/your-blueprint-for-a-successful-live-broadcast/ | Your Blueprint For A Successful Live Broadcast | Your Blueprint For A Successful Live Broadcast
The era of ubiquitous live broadcasting is most certainly upon us. Live video consumption on consumer platforms like YouTube and Facebook has shot up in recent years. And we have become accustomed to watching everything from our sister broadcasting her 5-year-old's birthday party on Facebook Live to professionally produced streaming concerts of our favorite artists on YouTube.
As with many consumer trends, live broadcasting is making its way into the corporate space and is now poised to transform the world of corporate communications. Our clients are already leveraging it to announce breaking news, align employees around key initiatives, launch new products into the market, and more.
The attraction is clear: Live broadcasting creates a sense of excitement for the viewing audience that is hard to beat and can produce incredible results. But for an important corporate broadcast of scale, it takes careful planning to ensure your message is delivered in the way you intend.
If you are ready to take the plunge and incorporate live broadcasting into your corporate communication strategy, here are 10 things you should consider to make it a success.
Think like a TV producer.
Consider the length, timing and storytelling arc for your particular broadcast and make sure you have a narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end. Don’t assume the same type of delivery that would work in a live meeting or speech will work for a live broadcast. You need more variety and shorter, punchier segments to keep the audience’s attention.
Consider a professional host or moderator.
Your executives may be professionals on stage, but under glaring studio lights and staring directly into the camera, they will be nervous. It’s more difficult to connect with a camera than a live audience, so consider hiring a professional host or moderator to keep things moving and to set your speakers at ease.
Check your tech thoroughly.
Make sure you have the required dedicated bandwidth necessary to broadcast from your location. If you are broadcasting to employees through an internal network, make sure the network can handle the traffic. For example, if all employees VPN in through a single point, your broadcast could place a significant strain on the system. Make sure to vet your plan thoroughly with your IT department.
Don’t shortcut rehearsal time.
If your broadcast involves multiple speakers or a panel session, conduct a "table read" via conference call to work out the kinks in the messaging. On the day of the broadcast, allow them ample time to rehearse and regroup.
Promote early and often.
Now you need to think like a television promoter to sell your live broadcast, whether your viewers are internal or external. Scheduled email and social communications can include animated countdown clocks and lists of hot topics to generate excitement. You can also run short video commercial teasers, starring speakers from your broadcast, that lets viewers know exactly what benefits they’ll get from tuning in.
Be interactive.
Part of the attraction of live broadcasting versus on-demand video is the chance for viewers to interact with the broadcast in real-time. Most live-hosting platforms have social modules that you can use to chat live, run polls, share photos and submit questions to moderators for executives and speakers to answer.
For example, during one global corporate broadcast, the executive greeted employees who were watching from headquarter offices throughout Europe and invited them to submit photos of their teams watching in the conference rooms. Photos appeared in real-time on the screen during the broadcast of employees enthusiastically waving from offices in Spain, France, Germany, Turkey and dozens of other locations. This added to the sense of team camaraderie even though the employees were watching from many different locations.
Be inclusive.
Make sure your broadcast isn’t only comprised of executive talking heads. Include a diverse group of employees at different levels or consider incorporating customers or industry thought leaders to reinforce your messaging.
Fake it 'til you make it.
You might want to consider a "look live" broadcast your first time out. Many livestreaming platforms allow you to stream a video as if it were live when it is actually prerecorded. While live interaction with the audience is limited using this method, you can still have a moderated live chat and Q&As answered by content ambassadors. This takes a bit of the pressure off, and your audience will probably never be the wiser.
Make sure it’s not 'one and done.'
At our agency, we use live broadcasting as a gateway to a larger brand experience. We help connect the audience to an online portal that also offers video content on-demand and the ability to explore and connect with other resources and tools. Remember that the true power of live broadcast, as with any video content strategy, is to produce regular, predictable content that your audience will grow to anticipate, on a platform they can easily navigate.
Don’t be afraid to consult a professional.
I see countless blogs that tout live broadcasting as inexpensive and easy. I’ve also seen a broadcast fail because a company tried to do it internally and lacked the know-how. Consider your need, budget and internal resources and plan appropriately. Know what you are getting into, and don’t get in over your head.
Live broadcasting is an incredible new tool that corporate communications professionals can leverage, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Using the blueprint outlined above should provide you with some key best practices that will set you on a course toward your first successful live broadcast.
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f9e3d7abc8830b2d3864a4293d4969dd | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/09/17/key-factors-in-identifying-your-brands-most-effective-influencers/ | Key Factors In Identifying Your Brand's Most Effective Influencers | Key Factors In Identifying Your Brand's Most Effective Influencers
Influencer marketing has become a trendy marketing tactic that bridges together brands and consumers by engaging the most influential people in specific industries. It isn't a new trend, though. In China, key opinion leaders are essential to most brands' marketing strategies. And in the U.S., many leading brands either have or are beginning to create influencer marketing plans. It's not a trend that's going away, so marketers need to pay attention to it.
Finding the best influencers for your brand is not easy. In a lot of ways, it's similar to picking a sports team. You can spend a huge amount of money on star players for your team, but that approach means you could miss someone who can consistently deliver but doesn't have that same kind of swagger. Brands are oftentimes choosing those influencers with the most followers or bravado, but not those who make an impact or have the actual reach you need.
At SmarterChaos, we have managed influencer campaigns for various major brands. We choose influencers based on their real engagement versus fake paid followers, and on relevant content, their constant engagement with their audience, their pricing and their authenticity with brands. We also identify them based on demographics, personalities, platforms they are strong on and much more.
We go through a rigorous process to select people who are not only influential, but who are the most influential for the particular goals a brand has. We always want to make sure the influencer is a good match for our brand's audience and that our brand will resonate with the influencer's audience.
There are a lot of questions you can ask yourself to try to figure this out.
Does the influencer match your brand personality? Is their content a good fit for the voice and tone of your brand? Does their audience actively engage in their content (like, comment, share)? And do the demographics match up -- not only the general demographics but the demographics of the people who are actually engaging with the posts?
Here's an example: If you have a jewelry brand that wants to reach women over 30, an influencer in the general sense of the word could be a celebrity who has millions of female followers over the age of 30. But a better influencer could be someone who has only thousands of female followers in that age range, but they regularly buy jewelry and comment about the jewelry they buy.
There's a difference between those two pools. One is broad and far-reaching, and the other is targeted but reaches the exact right audience. We look for the targeted influencers, the ones we know will convert.
Measuring a person's influence is a tough, subjective task.
There are so many things that can be looked at, and they can be sliced a number of ways. How much should you care about their overall number of followers versus their history with brands and their content or tone? Is their personality the most important thing, or are their engagement numbers the top metric to consider?
As a brand, you have to choose what works best for you. Different industries, of course, call for different influencers. Some platforms are better than others. For instance, Instagram is often better for fashion because of the pictures, and we see that Facebook might be better for some "mom" brands.
In addition, we measure the success of a campaign on the reach of the influencer's message, the engagement and the overall sales produced -- the sales that we can track as originating from the influencer.
Back to the sports analogy. Imagine you're drafting your best possible baseball team. Pulling in the flashy celebs will be pricey, and they might not live up to the hype. The opportunity with influencer marketing is to find the rookies or the under-recognized stars who get the crowds going and are consistent with their performance, game after game.
Here are a few tips to help you get started:
1. Look at the influencer's past. Do they write in a way that works for your brand? Are they brand-friendly? Do their posts seem to fit with your brand standards?
2. Consider your industry. Influencer marketing can work for just about any industry, but it has to be viewed through different lenses. The influencer strategies that work for a shoe company won't be the same ones that work for an insurance company.
3. Measure everything. One of the biggest mistakes people make is starting a campaign without a clear measurement plan in place. Be sure that you're tracking every single click, and that you're matching those clicks to your return on investment (ROI) so you wind up with a solid picture of how effective your influencer marketing is.
Don't get so caught up in the hype of influencer marketing that you forget to make sure all the boxes are checked. So slow down, make sure you're choosing the right influencers and set up a clear measurement plan. Engage the influencers who are right for your brand. Empower them to represent the brand to their followers. And make the most of this lucrative new marketing channel.
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8a538f3107eee7010bd2621222dcdf93 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/09/20/four-reasons-why-position-zero-shouldnt-be-your-main-seo-goal/ | Four Reasons Why 'Position Zero' Shouldn't Be Your Main SEO Goal | Four Reasons Why 'Position Zero' Shouldn't Be Your Main SEO Goal
It’s likely that your SEO goal used to be to reach the top ranking in the SERPs for as many pieces of content as possible. When Google introduced position zero, it’s probable that reaching rank zero became your new goal. (Position zero is the snippet of information that appears above the first result in some searches.) In actual fact, you should stop making this the main aim of your SEO strategy for several reasons:
1. Position Zero Can Be Impossible
Some types of content will never make it to position zero. This is because Google is often unable to display the information in one of the formats it uses for snippets. This also means that position zero is often something different from the top result.
The types of content Google prefers for position zero include:
• Step-by-step instructions
• Definitions that don’t appear in dictionaries
• Questions that require just a couple of sentences to answer -- more than that is too complex for position zero, whereas Google can refer to its database for single-word and very short answers.
• Price breakdowns
• Best-of lists
In other words, your content may be the most relevant to a query, but something else could still be picked for position zero. You just need to run a number of searches to see that the position zero result is often something off the first page entirely, simply because it fits better than any higher-ranking content.
In some cases, it is worthwhile to create content that is easy for Google to turn into a snippet. Other times, this presents too great a challenge. Furthermore, when it is unreasonable for the topic you are covering, attempts to do so could even lower the quality of the content.
2. It’s Unpredictable
It is possible that you’ll exert time, effort and resources into reaching position zero only to fail. The problem is that it is difficult to know what Google will choose -- sometimes, a different result comes up for the same user doing the same search later in the day. A better option is to strive to reach high organic and paid results, two things you can strategize for.
3. It Can Lose You Clicks
Position zero may provide users with all the basic information they need, meaning they decide not to click and read further. In this case, users will be missing out on content that delves deeper into the topic, which they could have found interesting and useful. Had these users read your content, you may have been able to pique their interest and gain leads.
4. Google Search Is Always Changing
What ranks as position zero today could change completely tomorrow. You need to remember that Google is constantly updating its algorithm, including what ranks at position zero. The search engine could even start using completely different ways to present such information. This has a long-term impact on your strategy.
Think of it this way: A considerable amount of your content needs to be evergreen. As your evergreen content builds up, Google will see that you have a long history online of providing quality, valuable information. For evergreen content to serve its purpose in your SEO strategy, it needs to keep receiving views and engagement. This is most likely to happen if it continues to rank.
If you create content purely for the purpose of reaching position zero (not for a high organic ranking) and Google later changes what it features at the top of the page, your content could fade into oblivion.
When Position Zero Is Desirable
None of this should dissuade you from ever attempting to reach position zero -- you just need to be smart about it. In some cases, position zero could be hugely beneficial, such as when it leads to greater visibility.
This can be true even when position zero leads to fewer clicks. For instance, users who click on a different result to position zero often do so because they realize that the featured content is not what they are looking for. The result for you is a lower bounce rate and fewer low-quality leads.
While Google’s exact algorithm is proprietary, if you decide to try for position zero, there are a few best practices to follow:
• Only attempt it with content that Google can turn into snippets.
• Optimize the content for long-tail keywords of at least six words. It is even better if the phrase contains a question word.
• Use the right code and tagging techniques to make it clear what your page contains.
What Should You Do?
When you bear all the above in mind, it is clear that rather than focusing all your energy on reaching position zero, you’ll do better by gaining the SERP landscape. This means reaching position zero in some SERPs but also working to achieve high organic rankings and throwing in some PPC.
In this manner, you’ll be able to take up more landscape. The results: you’ll improve brand awareness, bring users the most relevant content for their queries and prevent wasted time on impossible goals. Even if these were not the results you were looking for, they’ll provide you with benefits in the long run.
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aad86c2f0da431606c049d2dd5fddb0b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/09/28/seven-creative-ways-to-incorporate-livestreaming-into-your-marketing-mix/ | Seven Creative Ways To Incorporate Livestreaming Into Your Marketing Mix | Seven Creative Ways To Incorporate Livestreaming Into Your Marketing Mix
Video marketing is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity. As the CEO of IntraLink Global, a branding and integrated communications agency with an award-winning video department, I can attest: video makes brands relevant. According to one report, 96% of B2B companies use video in their marketing campaigns, with 73% reporting positive results to their ROI. And why not? Video can promote your brand message and boost SEO while increasing engagement with potential customers.
The newest trend is livestreaming video. According to Brandlive, nearly 95% of brand and agency executives said that live video would be an important part of their 2018 marketing strategy. And the best part? You can recycle live video footage into regular brand videos -- it’s two for the price of one.
Why Go Live?
Facebook launched its Live product just a few years ago and is already seeing great results: Nearly 2 billion people have watched Facebook Live broadcasts, and broadcasts from verified pages have jumped 1.5 times in the past year. Facebook users consume 100 million hours of video every day, and current numbers suggest streaming is just going to get bigger. Livestream reported that "81% of people watched more live video in 2016 than in 2015."
Simultaneously, the livestreaming video industry is predicted to reach $70 billion by 2021. And by 2019, the total U.S. digital video advertising spend is expected to surpass $14 billion, nearly half of which will come from mobile video.
If you're thinking about how to incorporate more video into your marketing mix, consider these tactics:
1. Product Or Service Announcements
Create your own news by making a product launch a live media event and allowing your fans to react in real time. In 2016, Land Rover used streaming video to launch the Land Rover Discovery Landmark. Earlier this year, the brand tapped live video streaming again to launch the Range Rover Velar from the Design Museum in London.
2. Major Events
Consider livestreaming video for a major speaking engagement, sports/entertainment event or business function. For example, Tough Mudder began livestreaming fitness events in 2014. By 2016, Tough Mudder events were viewed 14.5 million times across Livestream and Facebook and engaged more than 2.5 million participants.
3. Newsworthy Interviews Or Appearances
Enhance an existing PR event by livestreaming a major press conference, celebrity spokesperson appearance or topical interview with your CEO. Fandango used livestreaming at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego, conducting live celebrity interviews onsite that garnered thousands of views.
4. Behind-The-Scenes Tours
Deepen customer engagement by providing behind-the-scenes guided tours. Show your audience how you make your famous sauce, how you protect the planet or what it takes to mount a live production 30 minutes before the curtain goes up.
5. Live Q&A Sessions
Augment any product or service introductions, market trending campaign or company crisis with a Q&A. You can lead the discussion and appear more sensitive during a recall, more knowledgeable on a complex product, or more in control during a merger or acquisition. For example, Cisco's CEO Chuck Robbins staged a live Facebook Q&A from Cisco Live 2017 in Las Vegas.
6. How-To Video Playgrounds
Do your how-to videos live. Instructional videos take on excitement and urgency when your audience sees you demonstrating a product and providing how-to tips in real time, not recorded months ago. Build in live give-and-take banter with viewers. On Facebook, followers have the opportunity to opt in and are notified when you are live. Keep in mind that the video remains on the page after the live event.
7. Contest Campaigns Or Promotion Kickoffs
Consider announcing major marketing initiates live. A live announcement creates urgency and excitement. However, be sure to deliver great video so your audience will tune in throughout the campaign. Consider your audience when selecting a social media platform.
For instance, in 2015, the BMW's "Whatsnext" campaign on Periscope did just that. Periscope was an ideal platform for BMW, but other platforms may be better tailored to your specific campaign. For example, to promote the premiere of USA Network’s hit show Mr. Robot, the network used Twitch, the world’s largest social gaming platform. The team created a three-day livestream event that gave the appearance the stream was being hacked. It won the Shorty Award for best live contest promotion.
A reachable goal is to produce at least three of these types of videos over a 12-month period. However, I highly recommend that your business or organization produces numerous live videos throughout the year. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to utilize content to drive thought leadership. But video marketing and video livestreaming can cut through the content clutter and help your brand stand out.
Lastly, keep in mind that your videos are a reflection of your organization and brands. They should be engaging, look professional and communicate clear and powerful messages.
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afd525e809bf76b24fcc908f3df12097 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/08/thinking-of-marketing-to-asian-americans-here-are-three-tips-to-get-you-started/ | Thinking Of Marketing To Asian Americans? Here Are Three Tips To Get You Started | Thinking Of Marketing To Asian Americans? Here Are Three Tips To Get You Started
Recent research has opened marketers' eyes to the mind-blowing potential of the burgeoning Asian American market. In case you haven’t heard, the buying power of Asian Americans could reach $1.3 trillion by 2022, according to this year's Multicultural Economy report from the University of Georgia. And the hit film Crazy Rich Asians, which has earned the title of highest-grossing romantic comedy, helped further focus the marketing industry’s searchlight on this group.
If you’re looking to tap into this promising market, here are three tips to help guide your strategy to build an Asian American focused practice.
Identify Your Subset
According to Michael Soon Lee, president of EthnoConnect, there is no such thing as an Asian American market.
Wait, what? Well, more than 19 groups of Asian origin currently reside in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center. And each major subgroup of the Asian population has significant differences in language, culture and buying habits.
The danger for brands just beginning to market to Asian Americans is the tendency to think broadly in terms of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Pacific Island and South Asian descent.
“This is what often derails multicultural marketing efforts aimed at Asians in the United States,” says Lee. He advises marketers to look more closely at the market they want to target. He goes on to explain that the first step is to "determine what generation they are in this country. New immigrants are first-generation while the first ones to be born here are second-generation and so forth."
For example, Asian American millennials are one of the most affluent subgroups, with 34% making $50,000 or more annually, according to Neilsen. Details about this group -- such as the fact that they prefer Apple over Android mobile devices, as we found in our own survey of Asian Americans -- will help you know how to reach them. Or suppose you want to connect with first-generation Asian Americans. With this group, your messaging will likely be more effective if it’s in their native language.
Know Your Subset
Some characteristics and values, such as an emphasis on family and education, can be found among many Asian groups, and this can be a good place to begin. But as your marketing in this area matures and progresses, you’ll achieve better results by narrowing your focus to two or three subgroups and creating campaigns that resonate with each group.
Detailed marketing data is available on any group of consumers that you identify as your ideal customers. So, there’s no longer any reason for generalized marketing campaigns.
Of course, in marketing, as in life, familiarity should breed respect. Only when you genuinely esteem a people and their culture can you connect in a meaningful way.
Test The Waters
Once you've selected and researched the subsets to target, you can build campaigns to reach each one, customizing your content, creative and imagery according to what you’ve learned about what appeals to each group.
Keep in mind that brand loyalty and an appreciation for quality are two traits common across all Asian American groups. So, whichever subgroups you're marketing to, be sure to focus on benefits that effectively convey the value your brand offers.
Then, track your results with each campaign and make adjustments based on what you learn.
It takes effort to really get to know an audience and what motivates them to purchase. But marketers who design campaigns to reach specific segments of the Asian American market are finding the results well worth it.
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e860b4d8a09e63d96c3c524cce4a5d77 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/09/how-to-augment-roi-with-these-five-digital-marketing-strategies/ | How To Augment ROI With These Five Digital Marketing Strategies | How To Augment ROI With These Five Digital Marketing Strategies
Pexels Pexels
Digital marketing is growing by leaps and bounds and is a boon for businesses, as it generates enticing results in a short amount of time. For businesses today, operating in the contemporary world and facing cut-throat competition has led to an increase in customer expectations. As a result, successful business leaders are amalgamating traditional and digital marketing methods to generate revenue.
In the past, generating leads through methods like TVCs (TV advertisements), hoardings and paper ads brought tremendous results, but these strategies have largely been replaced by digital marketing, which has brought a revolution in the marketing industry with immense benefits.
Increasing revenue and improving return on investment (ROI) is an essential focus of every business, and as the CEO of a digital marketing firm, here are a few practically proven, useful insights that have helped our business to expand, along with tips to help you do the same.
Data Is A Gold Mine
Understanding the significance of data is the stepping stone for success in business. One must know how to use it for analysis and planning. Using data is important, as apprehending significant details like where leads are coming from and which potential users are clicking on ads can help inform your strategy.
Data is growing at an expeditious rate but is still underutilized by many marketers today, according to research by Teradata. Make use of data analytics tools to collect relevant information about data. Google Analytics, for instance, can help you judge where traffic is coming from, including the location, IP address and whether leads are referrals or not.
A strategic process is followed when signing into an analytics tool and an HTML or JavaScript code is embedded in the website header and enabled on every page. This helps to better judge the visitor's activity and to know whether the data is organic (data that comes through Google SEO) or direct data. This acquaints us with useful knowledge such as where the most traffic is coming from, allowing you to target those particular areas with online advertisements. It is a great way to not only gain new customers but also enhance ROI.
Mobile: The Shape Of Things To Come
More people -- younger generations, especially -- have come to rely on smartphones, according to data from Pew Research Center. This shows a need for increasing the use of mobile phones when it comes to marketing. It is expected in the foreseeable future that mobile marketing will generate the majority of online traffic.
Create responsive and mobile-friendly websites to create the maximum lead through smartphones, resulting in higher mobile conversions. It is the demand of the present era for businesses to take full advantage of mobile technology and accommodate the growing online traffic in order to enhance ROI.
Rule Of Social Media
Social media is a wide-ranging platform for businesses. To make full use of it, initiate an in-depth study on all the various online sources and platforms. This helps in scrutinizing where your target audience is most active.
It is a myth that online success is related to the number of likes or shares a business has. Your key performance indicators (KPIs) should be your priority, which includes the amount of traffic you're seeing and whether you are generating leads off your lead forms. This can greatly help in increasing ROI.
For example, we leverage platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to raise brand awareness by posting articles, client case studies and blog posts.
Conversion Optimization
A boost in sales revenue is often directly proportional to customer acquisition. Customer conversion rate optimization needs to be the first concern of businesses. Conversion rate optimization is simply the method of acquiring the most online traffic to your website so that potential visitors are converted to customers.
Take a look at your website's functionality from your client's perspective. For instance, do you have attractive landing pages? An important aspect to consider is that your calls to action must attract the attention of online visitors. This method is quite budget-friendly and brings out marvelous results.
Content Is King
Content is not just confined to writing long blog posts and articles; eye-catching images and videos can be just as effective. Either way, content should not be flashy but user-oriented. Developing user-friendly content must be the motto so that appropriate information is passed to the clients.
Overall, businesses must focus on writing the most effective and on-topic information. Visuals can be added to make content more attractive but be smart with your image choices. Accurate, relevant information will bring more visitors to your website and can help in converting them into leads.
Using analytics and the aforementioned strategies can be a blessing for your organization and can remove the barrier between you and high ROI. Create a campaign based on these tips and check the results at the end. Developing a report at the end of search campaign that covers which plan of action worked, amount of money invested and how much revenue was generated can help businesses make more rewarding decisions. This will help in developing effective marketing strategies that can result in a higher ROI.
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921c0c9508306c18d5f87a2246cf4240 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/10/can-you-compete-with-amazon/ | Can You Compete With Amazon? | Can You Compete With Amazon?
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So, you’ve had a breakthrough and have come up with the “next big thing” for retail. Maybe it’s a new boutique or e-commerce platform, or maybe it’s a new consumer product. Whatever the case may be, we’ve entered a new age of retail, and any business team needs to ask themselves one big question: Can we compete with Amazon?
Amazon’s Market Value
The retail giant has been gaining market share by offering lower prices on thousands of consumer products in virtually every industry, and it’s paid off. Recently, Amazon reached the trillion-dollar mark, being only the second company to do so (Apple was first just a month before).
You may be wondering how they accomplished such a Herculean task, but consider this: Amazon has been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to online shopping and shipping to your home. It was among the first to offer impressive shipping speeds with Prime memberships, plus the company embraced drones for delivery options and even built more warehouses to accommodate large metro areas.
And that's not all: Amazon is always looking at the big trends and making highly intelligent moves. For example, healthy eating and finding organic food choices are trends that have been on the rise for some time now, and consumers have been willing to pay more for those choices. So what did Amazon do? It bought Whole Foods, the largest, fastest-growing organic food chain. No wonder it reached the trillion-dollar mark.
Paying attention to what consumers want outside of the online arena and giving it to them in a new format is brilliant, and something to think about if you are trying to compete in the e-commerce space.
Customer Satisfaction
In many cases, once a company obtains a certain level of success, the customer satisfaction rating slowly declines as the corporation has bigger things to deal with. With Amazon, however, customer satisfaction appears to be one of its keys to success. Earlier this year, in a Harris Poll on corporate reputation, Amazon was ranked in the top 10 for the 10th year in a row. And Amazon topped the ACSI Retail Report for the eighth year in a row.
Smaller businesses can make customer satisfaction a priority by being clear in their return policies and by offering personalized help when needed. We all feel more appreciated when we feel a connection with someone, so allowing your customers to make a personal connection with you and your business can go a long way.
Brick-And-Mortar Sector Comparison
For generations, brick-and-mortar retail outlets have led the pack as far as where American consumers shop. This remains the case, with 90% of spending taking place in brick-and-mortars. However, the market share of these locations is far less than the Amazon giant. This CNN article contrasts Amazon with the brick-and-mortar sector and suggests that you would have to add up the valuations of the 14 largest big-box retailers (from Walmart to AutoNation) to reach Amazon.
What This Means For Small Businesses
While many new small businesses won't be able to directly compete with Amazon, there are ways you can be successful without feeling like you need to overcome the impossible.
Here are two ways of staying relevant in the space:
• Go where consumers already are. For some, this is a classic “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em” scenario in which a business can just place its products for sale on Amazon itself. For many, this has proven to be a successful endeavor, keeping the lights on by letting Amazon take all the credit.
• Create highly specialized products and services. By narrowing your niche and focusing on a very small percentage of the market, a company can succeed by gaining loyal consumers who know you are the only place to get what they need. No matter what the case may be now, the reality is that Amazon has proven itself as an innovator, and it will continue to find ways to keep its market share.
What may have worked for small businesses two years ago may not work today, and what works today may not work tomorrow. Being nimble and finding ways to pivot and grow as a small business may be just the thing you need in order to survive.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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88832b208230f78ae6ad0c0054b15b3e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/16/does-the-evolution-of-chatbots-include-replacing-humans/ | Does The Evolution Of Chatbots Include Replacing Humans? | Does The Evolution Of Chatbots Include Replacing Humans?
Technology drives change in the workplace and, of late, artificial intelligence has been discussed as the "next big thing" that will dramatically change customer interactions.
As our society has become more interconnected and automated, constructs such as chatbots are revolutionizing how online businesses, customer service departments, sales and marketing take place. But is this a good thing?
As the founder of a web design company, I understand that it's important for our team to stay on top of trends. Because there are many bottom-line benefits to using chatbots, this feature is something we always recommend to our clients when building a new site. Below, we'll dive into some of those benefits, as well as how you can get started with a chatbot for your own brand.
What is a chatbot?
According to Investopedia, "A chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation through voice commands or text chats or both."
The roots of AI (and thus, chatbots) go back to the '50s with Alan Turing's Turing Test, which tested the ability for a machine to utilize intelligent behavior similar to a human. Advances in chatbot technology moved slowly, and a new breakthrough would come approximately every 10 years -- until 2010, when Apple released the iPhone app Siri.
Development has increased rapidly, with many companies developing chatbots. Some even pair it with a messaging app or virtual assistant, which then provides a more in-depth experience. For example, Salesforce launched an SMS chatbot in 2014, which now includes Facebook Messenger.
The compound annual growth rate of chatbots is just over 24%, with the global chatbot market expected to reach $1.25 billion in 2025, according to a 2017 report from Grand View Research.
An Extension Of Live Chat
Before live chat became a viable option, there were only two ways you could contact a company with questions: phone or email. Both options require patience to obtain results.
Enter live chat, a real-time messaging application connecting customers to a business. It’s convenient and can directly affect a customer’s decision making process if they are making or considering making a purchase and have a question. Our society has become a real-time culture where we want and expect immediate satisfaction because of the level of connectivity we now have. Now, automation has been added to live chat, which is where the evolution of chatbots currently stands.
Assisting Customer Service And Marketing Automation
One area where companies like Salesforce feel chatbots will make a significant difference is with “micro-moment exchanges." In an article from September 2017, Meredith Flynn-Ripley, vice president of mobile messaging for Salesforce, discussed how chatbots could relieve agents from doing mundane tasks such as information gathering, which would free up more time to handle problems a bot cannot.
Another area in which they can improve business is marketing automation, primarily due to availability. It can be difficult to staff an office eight hours a day, let alone 24 hours a day, but chatbots are on the clock 365 days a year.
Additionally, a chatbot integrated with Facebook Messenger has access to 1.4 billion monthly active users on the platform. According to a research study from HubSpot, more people were more perceptive when being engaged via Facebook Messenger compared to email. The average open rate of Messenger broadcasts was 80% versus 33% with email.
How You Can Get Started
Identify goals. A chatbot should solve actual problems your business is facing. Step into the customer’s shoes, and follow the customer journey, looking for areas where a chatbot can enhance and improve the journey. Examples would be answering basic questions, assisting a process such as purchases or informing customers about promotions.
Decide between platform or development. There are a handful of credible platforms available to build bots from, such as ManyChat or Chatfuel, or you can develop one from scratch. While the development option likely will take more time, it will also result in a more customized bot. An existing platform is generally faster and less expensive to get started with. However, there is less customization, and there may be interface issues with multiple channels.
Outline the design. You must imagine the various ways a conversation might go from beginning to end from both sides. Then, you can craft responses to help move the conversation forward, accounting for unexpected responses as well. Remember to make use of "yes" or "no" buttons for quick responses, offer options in your questions to direct the conversation and use variety in responses to vary the experience. You can give your bot a small dose of personality, reflecting your brand tone.
Consider and add channels. Chatbots can be used across multiple channels and are savvy enough to connect conversations on those platforms. Decide which channels you want to operate on, and then design your conversation flow to work with those channels.
Include a human connection. You should always include an option to connect to a live person for help. By not including this option, you risk losing leads.
Test and revise. You should review the onboarding process, verify any links provided are working properly, check that responses fall within text limits on platforms used and try weird phrases to confuse your bot and see how it responds.
Launch and monitor. Study interactions between the bot and customers, and look for ways to improve interactions.
Will chatbots replace humans?
For now, chatbots won’t replace humans. While certain functions could be replaced to provide a faster, more efficient interaction with customers, AI will continue to be limited. Companies do not wish for an experience like when Microsoft's Twitter-trained AI, Tay, went on a xenophobic rant.
It is much easier to limit chatbots and AI to specific scenarios and options rather than open the door for a negative experience, which could affect the brand or even create security issues. At the same time, the ability for chatbots to handle an unlimited amount of chats simultaneously is a fantastic support tool. But until they develop empathy and human problem-solving skills, they won’t be able to replace us.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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e9c97a4f346067370b25aea1ab65d6c6 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/18/agile-marketing-five-tips-to-do-it-right/ | Agile Marketing: Five Tips To Do It Right | Agile Marketing: Five Tips To Do It Right
Agile marketing purports to make marketing departments more effective by using agile software principles that allow marketers to move faster in response to customer-centric needs. Agile marketers work in sprints -- focused, one- to two-week projects -- under a scrum master in cross-functional teams. In our practice, we have found the fail-test-succeed iterative nature of agile to be extremely helpful in ensuring that business-to-business (B2B) revenue growth is based on the right drivers, especially locking in customer value.
Structuring teams to allow them to pivot midstream can prevent losses due to a stubborn resistance to letting go of existing low-value programs. Finally, the one-and-done mindset of annual or biannual marketing planning can create lumbering, non-responsive tactics that do not allow our stakeholders to move to meet market demand. Agile takes care of these pain points neatly.
Following are five ways to make your marketing department more agile, with a very important caveat before you start: Make sure your internal (marketing department) and external (e.g., agency) teams are aligned for speed as opposed to a careful and plodding approach.
1. Prep your culture.
The only way agile marketing works is if you can go beyond silos and assure fast sign-off and responsiveness from all of your stakeholders. This doesn’t sound like most companies, does it? While this sounds great on paper, without solid change management practices and executive sponsorship, you might be in for an uphill battle.
I advise "lunch and learn" and other informal consensus-building team meetings prior to any change. Because you must gain their input prior to the change, your staunchest opponents can become your biggest cheerleaders.
2. Stay data-driven.
Using agile requires up-to-the-minute data, and that means excellent marketing automation capabilities. As a Gartner article explains, "According to the Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2017-2018, marketing analytics now gets the greatest share of marketing budget spend among 13 marketing capabilities and 62% of CMOs say they will increase analytics spending in 2018.”
This includes letting executives in on more granular information via dashboards that you’ve designed so well, they won’t prompt an anxious call from the top floor.
3. Learn to love failure.
Agile marketing only works if your teams become comfortable with being wrong. Because agile works on a test-fail-retest cycle, some of what you’re doing won’t work. That’s really the beauty of it: These ideas are the ones that will have the most customer impact and the best chance of success.
The good news is that no matter how many things you get wrong, agile marketing allows you to reap the benefits of all the right things you do and repeat them more frequently to achieve better results. I have worked with marketing teams that were unable to admit that the underpinning of most of their activities was built on shaky ground. These types of teams aren't able to leverage failure as one of the most important tools in their arsenal to grow closer to the customer. Thus, they can't safeguard the revenue-generating power of a truly customer-centric marketing team.
4. Stay committed to the process.
When we gain more frequent feedback from the projects in our marketing mix from a wider group of stakeholders, we follow very stringent reporting guidelines. We do this to ensure the testing and retesting of strategies doesn’t threaten team members and sponsors who might otherwise feel vulnerable when their “pet” projects are taken off the docket or changed significantly based on inputs from the sprints.
These teams have various levels of comfort with change. In my experience, commitment comes when these stakeholders and team members experience greater returns more often and witness cost-savings based on the ability to throw out what’s not working much faster than before. Commitment to the process and the ability to create nimble ways to react to customer data without getting caught up in pet projects -- or in emotional reactions to missteps -- will be crucial to your agile empowerment.
Frequent dashboarding of commonly agreed-upon key preformance indicators (KPIs) shared in a collaborative project platform will help scrum masters use real-time reporting to alleviate these issues. Creating a matrix of measurements that turn up red-yellow-green when triggered allow all of those involved to understand when cost-risk guardrails are being breached. (This isn’t difficult when you’ve got the right MA tool).
5. Create a discipline-driven framework.
Experts like McKinsey also coach us to place a person with solid agile experience as a scrum master. This person runs a team of cross-functional decision-makers who have been individually empowered to work on these projects. All of this takes a lot of discipline, but it’s OK to work with the idiosyncrasies of your company to empower agile marketing appropriately.
I understand how some might write off agile marketing as a difficult sell for stakeholders. It signals a sea change from dictatorial marketing programs to transparent, cross-functional empowerment for niche experts like analysts, developers, designers, UX gurus and managers savvy enough to let them do what they do best.
The best agile marketers create impactful programs backed by solid business intelligence whose worth is measured iteratively and whose direction can change on a dime. I have used agile marketing to enable better organizational responsiveness to customer mandates. In doing so, we were able to prove our worth again and again. We may fail fast, but we succeed even faster.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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b85cc803b35f81d3ad202423bd724509 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/19/14-ways-print-advertising-can-provide-new-audience-potential-for-your-company/ | 14 Ways Print Advertising Can Provide New Audience Potential For Your Company | 14 Ways Print Advertising Can Provide New Audience Potential For Your Company
Print advertising is not dead. In fact, some people prefer print to digital. According to a study by MarketingSherpa, when asked which advertising channels they trust most when making a purchasing decision, 82% of respondents said they trusted print ads in newspapers and magazines.
Not only can printed ads help with building brand trust, but print advertising can also help a brand reach a wider audience. But how can you create a standout print ad that also complements your digital campaign? How can you make sure your printed ads are effective?
To help answer those questions, 14 members of the Forbes Agency Council offer their advice for the most effective ways to approach print advertising.
Members of the Forbes Agency Council offer their best tips. Images courtesy of FAC members.
1. Break The Pattern
Create a print ad that veers away from the patterns surrounding it. If a publication features mostly text, include bold colors and images in your ad. If a magazine contains primarily photographs and art, your ad should emphasize content and blank spaces. Tie your print and digital campaigns together using the same creative concept to ensure consumers recognize your brand across both mediums. - Timothy Nichols, ExactDrive, Inc
2. Keep The Branding Consistent
Keep the branding consistent across all mediums. Whether someone sees your ad while flipping through a magazine or surfing the web, make your campaign instantly recognizable. Disruptive print campaigns need to speak directly to consumers. Including a recognizable hashtag on your print campaign can help tie together offline and online campaigns. - Bernard May, National Positions
3. Use Your Best Posts As A Guide
The most powerful social posts work just like great print ads -- compelling visuals paired with insightful headlines. Comb through your best-performing posts. Find what they have in common and use that to inform your print work. Uncover which visuals and headlines were most relevant for different audiences, and use those insights to vary your messaging in a relevant way across publications. - Jess Cook, TMV Group
4. Focus On Targeting, Offer And Design
As with digital, the best print ads succeed when you do your research, target smartly and then back it up with a great design. For example, we just created a print piece for one of our higher-end clients. We researched the marketplace, decided what the ideal driving distance was for a real client, targeted homes that had a combined income of over $90K and created a nice piece. It worked like a charm. - David Kley, Web Design and Company
5. Make Your Print Ads Interactive
Print ads don't have to just sit there and look pretty anymore. By using a combination of QR codes and customized mobile phone apps, a print ad can create interactivity between the brand and the consumer. Merging the real world to the digital world is an enhanced brand experience that most people will find memorable and will want to share with friends and family. - Henry Kurkowski, One WiFi
6. Keep It Short
Keep the copy to a minimum. You only have a few seconds to capture the reader’s attention, which you won’t accomplish by inserting whole paragraphs into the ad. You should have an eye-catching headline, a couple of sentences of copy, and clean visuals that tell a cohesive story about your brand or the solutions you offer. - Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
7. Create A Call To Action
Print ads that create a call to action and provide benefits both offline and online are the ones that are typically most successful. They will stand out and typically be more memorable, as a person has a reason to hold onto it and not throw it away. - Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
8. Remember The 'Rule Of Seven'
It takes at least seven exposures for a consumer to act on a message. When you identify your consumer's journey to purchase, build a campaign that connects with the target when they are online and offline. Using print and digital together to tell the campaign story is not only cost-efficient, but also incredibly effective when the consumer journey is clear. - Katie Schibler Conn, KSA Marketing + Partnerships
9. Share Only A Part Of The Story
It may sound unorthodox, but in my experience, leading with a print piece that ties directly into a campaign interactive generates traffic. Make sure the print piece doesn't let too much out of the bag; don't tell the whole story. It has to be a tease and hook your audience. Otherwise, what's the point of going any further? If the print piece says: "Go here and win," then I know it's probably a sweepstakes, which may lose me. - Paul E. Benninghove, Phalanx Digital Inc.
10. Leverage The Power Of QR Codes
In my opinion, one of the easiest ways to have your print ad complement one of your digital campaigns is to leverage the power of QR codes. All smartphones and tablets are equipped with the capability to scan a QR code and lead a potential customer to wherever you need to take them online. It really is a seamless way to link your real-world ads with your digital presence. - Matthew Santos, Foxtail Marketing
11. Know Your Audience
The best way to leverage print and digital together is one of the most obvious but, surprisingly, often overlooked parts of advertising strategy: know your audience. Know who they are, where they are and what they want. The best creative ever won't move the needle if it's in the wrong place. If you don't know, do your research. Research can tell you who, what, where and how to speak to them. - Carey Kirkpatrick, CKP
12. Use Augmented Reality
To stand out, you need to create a campaign where traditional media meets modern media, and that's where augmented reality (AR) can come to the rescue. Incorporating AR technology to print advertising can enhance your audience's experience and create a viral sensation. Print advertising is indeed not dead, but implementing AR to print can do wonders and complement the digital campaign. - Cagan Sean Yuksel, GRAFX CO.
13. Align With A Single Message
If you are running a print campaign that complements a digital one, it is important that both campaigns are aligned with a single message so that the audience gets it from multiple places, adding to their list of touchpoints. Additionally, even print ads can and should have a call to action. - Stefan Pollack, The Pollack PR Marketing Group
14. Make Your Efforts Work Together
This isn't just about standing out in the context of where the ad is found, the right wording, or the tech/AR/digital or amplification. This is about using print as a touchpoint for truly integrated marketing. Make your images, message, tech and amplification work together in a single ad that still feels simple, classic and incentivizes your consumer to pay attention. - Craig Greiwe, Rogers & Cowan
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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7c65add49c83ff1c2d715c782bd1f8d8 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/24/planning-your-2019-social-media-calendar-13-tactics-to-step-up-your-game/ | Planning Your 2019 Social Media Calendar? 13 Tactics To Step Up Your Game | Planning Your 2019 Social Media Calendar? 13 Tactics To Step Up Your Game
In recent years, social media platforms have evolved from simple communication channels to full-blown news and entertainment hubs. From Facebook Watch to this year's innovations like IGTV and Snapchat’s Story Ads, social platforms are stepping up the game to keep its users engaged and entertained -- and your company shouldn’t be too far behind.
If you want to keep up with the latest social media trends, you’ll have to reevaluate your strategy with an eye toward the future of this ever-evolving industry. Below, Forbes Agency Council members share 13 ways to step up your social game in 2019.
Members of Forbes Agency Council share their top social media tips. Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Take A (Brand) Selfie
Businesses need to see the value and art of first-person or "selfie" video content. Consumers are becoming less accepting of traditional promo-based messaging. A selfie approach to video content on Snapchat, IG stories and IGTV makes brands more relatable. Viewers spend hours watching friends on Snapchat and IG Stories, so befriend them with content that offers a firsthand look at your brand. - Stephen Rosa, (add)ventures
2. Segment Your Social Audiences
Most companies don't ever take this into consideration when they are running ads. Understand where the prospect is in relation to their problem. When marketing to someone who doesn't know they have a problem vs. someone who knows they have a problem, the message is very different. Social media is about segmenting audiences so you can be relevant to the right audience at the right time. - Imran Tariq, WebMetrix Group LLC
3. Deliver Quality Over Quantity
As social platforms evolve, businesses jump onto these trends and flood the platforms with subpar content in an attempt to ride the wave. This causes the very customers they're trying to attract to tune out before they've even processed what businesses are trying to communicate. Curb the impulse to produce content for the sake of doing so. Be purposeful. - Mae Cromwell, PACIFIC
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
4. Jump On The Video Trend
Begin leveraging video and visual content as much as you can. Explainer videos are one of the hottest things right now, but you must remember to keep all these videos short. Thirty seconds to a minute is the prime target range. Using these videos in ads will also help you stand out in the ad networks. - Matthew Santos, Foxtail Marketing
5. Invest In Data Research
Invest your time and money in data research. Brands that understand and continuously optimize their social media marketing strategy are winning the client retention war. They are targeting the right audience, spending the lowest click cost and they are present on the most converting platforms. Numbers don't lie -- brands that prioritize stats and trends will be the ones we notice in 2019. - Raffi Keuhnelian, INexxus
6. Focus On Worthwhile Platforms
Stop chasing every new social media platform and every tactic. Instead, find the ones that deliver the most return for you and double down on them. Doing so will not only provide greater returns but also prevent you from spreading yourself too thin with unproven efforts. Planning, preparation and execution don't mean chasing your tail. - Craig Greiwe, Rogers & Cowan
7. Craft A Meaningful Brand Narrative
Optimize your brand narrative to step up social in 2019. It’s not enough to create a social calendar based on product or company messaging. Your content needs to be evocative and compelling to lead audiences to an action. Evaluate your brand story and ensure it is inspiring and stands tall among the social clutter. Ground your social content in that message and it will surely rise above. - Keri Witman, Cleriti
8. Create Genuine Connections
No matter the platform, people connect most with authentic stories they can relate to or that evoke emotion. Brands should continue to focus on making connections with their audience. As social media evolves, consumers are getting better at identifying inauthentic content and using the algorithms to ignore it. Stand apart with authentic stories and imagery around your brand messaging. - Nicole Mahoney, Break the Ice Media
9. Engage With Industry Influencers
As social media platforms like Instagram continue to establish impressive audiences, it's time to think outside of the traditional social advertising box. More users, specifically millennials, look to influencers for their recommendations on products, experiences, what to watch, etc. Reach out to a prominent figure in your field and ask if they will review and promote your product in a post. - Jason Kulpa, UE.co
10. Keep An Eye On Emerging Technologies
Businesses should consider new technologies awaiting 2019 and adapt them to their social media strategies. One way to improve your social media blueprint is exploring the rising opportunities with podcasts and smart speakers (Amazon Alexa, Google Home, etc.). Use them to extend your online presence as a form of blogging with tidbits of news and inspiration. Be focused and be flexible with your approach. - Lauren Shirreffs, 2Social
11. Consider Using Chatbots
Chatbots are here to the rescue. AI and chatbots will impact how businesses will function. It's on the top list of 2019's digital transformations. Many services can be provided without humans. Eventually, chatbots will give businesses the conception of how their clients talk, which will improve the response to their requirements. - Cagan Sean Yuksel, GRAFX CO.
12. Create A Solid Social Strategy
IGTV, Snapchat Story Ads, Facebook Fundraisers and everything else are tactics, not strategies. The No. 1 way to up your game is to up your strategy. Do research (like an audit and comparative analysis). Learn about your audience. Test drive messaging and positioning. Building a solid, research-based strategy will give you look-back performance metrics and help you make a leap in 2019. - Carey Kirkpatrick, CKP
13. Become An Early Adopter
Do not hang around to see if anyone is going to leap to use IGTV and if it works for them before deciding to try it yourself. Experiment with every new tool that comes out. You'll quickly discover if it will work for you or won't be a hit, and you will get a huge boost as a trendsetter by being the first to try it successfully in your industry. - Brandon Stapper, Nonstop Signs
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f2cbe06171d5e9c80cdb3da86c66eeee | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/25/why-we-hired-a-culture-operations-specialist-and-why-you-should-too/ | Why We Hired A Culture Operations Specialist (And Why You Should, Too) | Why We Hired A Culture Operations Specialist (And Why You Should, Too)
In the eight years since founding Logical Position (LP), a digital marketing agency headquartered in Portland, Oregon, the company has grown by leaps and bounds. What began as a three-man operation has since morphed into nearly 500 people with offices spread across the country.
Through trial and error, good advice and plenty of teamwork, we’ve successfully managed our growth. However, we never wanted to sacrifice the working environment we’d somehow created along the way. For us, culture means more than just parties and Ping-Pong. While those are great perks, we believe culture extends into the entire employee experience. And the heart of our culture can be explained through our culture operations specialist’s role.
What Is A Culture Operations Specialist?
A little more than two years ago, our leadership team realized we needed to start taking steps to preserve a company culture we all valued, especially as we opened offices away from our Portland headquarters. We decided the best way to tackle this would be to give an employee the responsibility of managing our corporate culture by paying specific attention to the employee journey within LP. Make no mistake -- this role would not replace the traditional human resources positions we’ve had filled for the last six years.
Today, our culture operations specialist holds a diverse set of responsibilities that revolves around understanding and enhancing the employee experience. In order to ensure a unified culture across all teams throughout the country, this person coordinates training sessions, manages cross-office employee communications, plans companywide events and oversees employee committees focused on extracurricular outings. But on a broader basis, this role acts as an advocate for our employee team, serving as their eyes and ears.
While creating a position dedicated to managing corporate culture might not be the right step for every company, investing in your own corporate culture can pay dividends. But first, you need to decide what the word “culture” really means.
What Does ‘Culture’ Really Mean?
At other companies, a positive culture might mean kegs flowing on Friday afternoons or an abundance of practical jokes being played on one another. And while we do have our share of fun, our culture means more to us than this. It’s about inspiring, connecting and fostering an authentic community among employees in order to help them achieve their goals.
If you’re looking for ways to connect with your employees, a great place to start is by recognizing major achievements and milestones. That could take the form of companywide events celebrating major accomplishments. You could also recognize individual hiring anniversaries or give baby gifts to your new parents. Whatever course you take, it should be done in an effort to make each of your employees feel valued as an important team member rather than an anonymous cog in a giant corporate wheel.
Beyond milestones and achievements, we want to provide our employees with opportunities to define and direct their own experiences within the company. For example, our A.C.E.S. (activities, community, education and social) committees are four employee-led groups that organize multiple activities and community initiatives.
If you are also operating a multiple-location business, you might consider creating similar events to help connect your employees with each other. Another consideration would be ensuring that all satellite offices remain consistent. Simple actions like choosing the same furniture, paint colors and music from office to office might help your employees feel at home wherever they’re working.
Why Is Culture So Important?
Making intentional investments in your employees and encouraging a positive corporate culture can directly contribute to your bottom line. For example, we’re a large agency, and as a result, clients and employees alike could easily become lost or overlooked amid the hustle and bustle of it all. But if you intentionally create an environment where employees can thrive and where they feel valued and appreciated, then that attitude will naturally trickle down to your clients.
A good goal is to make every client feel as though they’re receiving the same attention they would from a boutique agency, while still enjoying the resources a large outfit has to offer. This begins and ends with your culture management efforts because, in our opinion, satisfied employees lead to satisfied customers.
We believe so strongly in the connection between employee satisfaction and client satisfaction that our culture operations specialist sits next to our customer journey specialist, who's responsible for tracking and improving client experiences. Moreover, our in-house data scientists have begun tracking employee journeys using the same tools and analytics they’ve used to track client journeys, all in an effort to lengthen employee longevity the same way they would with a client.
What Are The Results?
By every measure, our efforts are paying off. Our business continues to grow, and our employees are hitting anniversary numbers we’ve never seen before. This is backed up by external data points as well. LP won local workplace awards before we hired a culture operations specialist. But after we began instituting culture initiatives, we were named Inc. magazine’s third-best place to work in America.
More than two years later, I can say we’ve been successful in preserving our company culture. Recognizing that our unique culture was responsible for much of our early success, we understood that simply scaling our operations wouldn’t be enough to safeguard our continued growth. What began as an experiment has now become a requirement as our culture operations specialist continues to engage us in building upon the core values we set out so many years ago.
If you’d like to create employees who are happier, more engaged and more motivated -- especially through a growth phase -- making strategic investments in your workplace culture and your employee experience are great places to start. Based on our experience, we believe you’ll find these efforts rewarding not only to the business, but also to the people who make it work every day.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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d73db27b42097ee164e4393f68169734 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/29/it-takes-an-agency-to-raise-a-creative-idea-here-are-four-strategies-to-spur-it/ | It Takes An Agency To Raise A Creative Idea: Here Are Four Strategies To Spur It | It Takes An Agency To Raise A Creative Idea: Here Are Four Strategies To Spur It
Mad Men protagonist Don Draper would go into immediate culture shock if he were dropped into a modern agency setting. No longer does just a handful of writers and artists control the creative (with drink and smoke in hand, no less). Now, everyone’s opinion counts.
Collaborative creativity has turned agency life upside down. Account services personnel are just as likely to bring innovative concepts to the table as graphic designers; in fact, the former may outdo the latter in terms of fresh, novel ideas.
In this rearranged agency atmosphere, managers and CMOs have to learn how to bring forth everyone in-house to ratchet an agency’s creative currency, as well as how to succeed in an ultra-competitive marketplace. After all, agencies no longer vie exclusively with each other; anyone with a modicum of marketing ability can jump into the space. Consequently, leaders must improve their organization’s collective value proposition with on-demand creative that continuously raises the bar.
Generating Ideas In A Collective Environment
How can agencies develop a culture where creativity isn’t seen as a flighty muse but as a scientific problem-solving technique? The key, according to one of my podcast guests, social media speaker and consultant Jason Keath, is to see creativity as a process rather than an innate talent. Keath views creativity as a teachable group sport: All it takes is a coach willing to lead a team to creative victory through old-fashioned trial and error.
For example, he cautions against pitting “good” versus “bad” ideas against the other. In his world, an idea isn’t inherently terrible. In fact, bland ideas often lead to spicy ones. Thus, creative brainstorming sessions require participant suggestions that might be limited or subpar in order to reach snappier solutions.
One way to get over this “It’s a horrible idea, so I won’t repeat it” hurdle is by using technology to anonymize recommendations. Prior to a meeting, the leader could ask for 10 solutions to a creative problem, sent via email or downloaded confidentially into a platform. When everyone’s ready to tackle the creative problem, the dozens of anonymous ideas can be judged on their merits. This tactic takes away the stress of retribution, embarrassment and judgment and allows for a more free discussion.
Cultivating Creativity In Agencies
Feel like your agency has lost its creative street cred? Try these strategies to enable creative growth among individuals and teams:
1. Foster a spirit of self-growth.
I've found that some of the most creative people share a core competency: They constantly seek fresh experiences. Then, taking what they’ve learned, they connect the new ideas to familiar areas.
By linking the known and unknown, they push the walls of their comfort zones without totally leaving a safe bubble. Case in point: An avid antique enthusiast might learn to reupholster vintage furniture pieces. By combining his two pursuits, he can explore a novel avenue without getting flustered or overwhelmed.
2. Push yourself into adventures.
Don’t forget to take a few risks yourself, too. These don’t have to be big adventures -- just experiences you’ve never tried before. As we learn from the teachings of neuroplasticity, every new thing changes the way we view life. Besides, stellar output requires stellar input; if you want different outcomes, you can’t keep doing the same old, same old. Give yourself tons of raw material in the form of constant learning opportunities, and you’ll spark creative fires.
3. Choose one safe -- and one scary -- option.
When brainstorming alone or in a group, stop yourself and others from merely selecting tried-and-true approaches. Instead, come up with two solutions: one that’s safe and another that’s a little wacky or weird.
When it comes time to present creative ideas to a client, you can be fairly certain you’ll hear “yes” to the safer option. However, your client will appreciate that you’re not phoning in your services. Plus, if you do get the chance to try something a bit crazy, you’ll have an opportunity to showcase your agency’s unique abilities.
4. Take a field trip.
The last time your team members took a field trip was probably in elementary or middle school. Change that by leaving work early to head to the zoo, hit the trails or even see the latest movie. You’ll end the field trip with a shared experience and more creative inputs. Do this regularly, and you should start to see creative streams flowing more freely as employees discuss different solutions than they might have otherwise.
We’re not living in the 1960s, so why should we run agencies that belong in yesteryear? By mixing up the way we view the creative process, we avoid traps like team ennui and predictability. Challenge everyone on your roster to become creative powerhouses, and be amazed at the imaginative, inventive concepts they ideate.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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cd44884de4b2098c1267f7b07e395f2b | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/10/30/how-generation-z-is-shaping-todays-marketing-tactics/ | How Generation Z Is Shaping Today's Marketing Tactics | How Generation Z Is Shaping Today's Marketing Tactics
As brands are planning for 2019, they are looking for tactics that can deliver measurable and meaningful impact. At IDM, we pay attention to trends that could have long-term payback if you start investing in them early enough. And we found the trends that are likely to impact marketing in 2019 are closely related to the rising buying power of Generation Z.
Gen Z is already surprising marketers and breaking the mold. A recent study found that 40% of the total spend will come from this group by 2020. As such, brands should strive to reach this demographic early. The importance of this group’s opinions and preferences continues to become evident. So, who are they?
Who Is Generation Z?
As Generation Z begins to come of age, their digital behavior, preferences and cultural outlook will begin to factor more prominently in the marketing landscape. Though not entirely different from the generation that precedes them, a recent GlobalWebIndex survey found several differences worth noting between Generation Z and millennials:
• Gen Z spends more time on social media.
• You probably won't reach Gen Z on Facebook -- they prefer Snapchat.
• Gen Z is more brand-conscious and loyal
• Status matters -- brands need to make Gen Z look and feel the part.
Above all else, brand actions or behaviors appear to matter more than brand statements or proclamations. Because Gen Z has more access to information than previous generations, they are easily able to find out if a brand is acting on its marketing promises. Gen Z is quick to call out brands on social media if they aren't doing enough or are acting unethically. Gen Z’s sense of reality is shaped by the screen, and they have answers for everything by using online intelligence as a natural extension of their brains.
The Rise Of Micro-Influencers
In 2016, influencer marketing spend on Instagram was estimated by eMarketer to reach $570 million. What's more, a 2017 study by gen.video and Geometry Global revealed that consumers trust influencers even more than they do friends or family when it comes to purchasing decisions, paving the way for micro-influencers. A micro-influencer is an everyday person with a social media following of at least 10,000 to 100,000. Because they are more authentic and relatable, they can have tremendous sway over the opinions of their audiences.
While brands have less control over a micro-influencer’s output because of their commitment to their personal brand and authenticity, their niche visibility and reach -- along with lower cost -- make them a wise investment.
For instance, we recently managed a partnership between Carrie Rad and O’right shampoos. Carrie is a micro-influencer on YouTube and Instagram, and she incorporated the shampoo brand into a video on how to get your life together after traveling. This is optimal because her audience looks to her for self-care and wellness tips, so the placement feels natural. This kind of placement builds brand awareness while also establishing trust in the brand.
Purpose-Driven Business
As made evident by the latest Nike campaign with Colin Kaepernick, Gen Z consumers are increasingly focused on supporting businesses they believe are purposeful. To gain Gen Z’s support, a company’s actions must closely match their stated purpose. This generation is adept at making choices about purpose and values. An effect of being surrounded by technology and digital content for their entire lives, they also know how to filter out content that lacks relevance and purpose to them.
If two products are equal in price and function, a corporate purpose may be a deciding factor in which brand Gen Z consumers will buy from and advocate for. Community consciousness is a defining characteristic of this generation, and they use their digital aptitude and influence to get behind initiatives they believe will make a difference in the future.
What's Next?
Marketers have to work harder than ever before to outsmart the competition. The art of engagement is now down to a science, and with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), a lot of marketing tasks like media placement and campaign optimization will likely become automated. The key is to look ahead to anticipate Gen Z's future digital needs and give them instant satisfaction while keeping them engaged and connected.
To start, consider revisiting your brand positioning and messaging to evaluate how well you're able to relate to this generation of consumers in terms of transparency and authentic messaging. If your company is already employing marketing technology to reach Gen Z by tailoring your messaging to what matters to them, then you'll need to continue pushing harder to appeal to this group. However, if your company does not tailor communications to this audience, you should make it a priority if Gen Z is your target. As with everything else, Gen Z will push our society to revisit our beliefs and our boundaries, including how authentic brands are.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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4c41c39c8755c1d46d75684983fcd217 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/07/how-to-prepare-your-agency-for-ai-and-machine-learning/ | How To Prepare Your Agency For AI And Machine Learning | How To Prepare Your Agency For AI And Machine Learning
Gone are the Mad Men days of high-margin retainers, scotch and sodas at lunch, and leaving at 5 p.m. We’ve all heard it before: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will eventually replace us. There is no denying that artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly prevalent in almost every industry, including advertising and marketing. It can provide more personalized marketing opportunities through relevance and scale. AI allows marketers to better interact with their brands, services, technology and audience.
In fact, AI and machine learning technologies have already integrated into our day-to-day platforms to tailor campaigns to consumer intent “in the moment.”
The Google Marketing Platform (which launched in June of this year), for example, combines DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) and the Google Analytics 360 Suite to help you easily and conveniently plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences. Custom algorithm for search engine marketing (SEM) uses machine learning to increase viewable impressions for premium placements. This gives brands the opportunity to achieve higher impressions with a much lower cost per mille (CPM). The automated bidding feature uses AI technologies and real-time bidding for inventory across mobile, display, video and social.
Additionally, third-party platforms like RapidMiner use predictive marketing algorithms to determine the success of a campaign before it even launches. The platform drives revenue and reduces risk by unifying the entire data science life cycle, from data prep to machine learning to model deployment.
With sophisticated platforms such as these in the market today, who needs humans?
Don't be in a hurry to pack up your cubicles just yet. In my opinion, the biggest gap in agencies today is the lack of knowledge or understanding of these platforms and the value they can bring to teams. The agency model of the future is one that combines platforms and people -- a team that can strategize and execute using the power of platforms but also apply human insights to support campaign success.
So, how do we implement change? Here are a few ways to prepare your teams for this paradigm shift in your current agency offering:
1. Revisit Your Positioning
Agencies will always need human capital to execute flawlessly, but make sure that your existing services speak to innovation. Clients want agencies to tell them what’s next. Prepare your teams to speak to the updated services offerings, and integrate the new messaging into your existing credentials presentations. Most importantly, hire professionals who can support the new value proposition.
2. Attend Conferences And Webinars
Conferences and webinars are worth the time and investment. By taking a day or two to attend, you and your staff can stay in the know on the latest emerging technologies within the AI and machine learning space. These events can also strengthen your agency's thought leadership. The content learned at these events can turn your employees from new learners to experts. This demonstrates that your agency is doing its due diligence to stay innovative and learn about the latest technologies that can be used for upcoming client engagements.
Attending these conferences also provides meaningful content for your shared media channels. The content captured at conferences can bolster your agency's social following just by posting or livestreaming relevant content.
3. Form Partnerships
Strengthen your offering by forming partnerships with emerging platforms. Seek out partnerships with businesses that will provide added value to your agency offering. Additionally, make sure partnerships are based on similarities, like shared goals, but do not have any conflicts of interest with your existing client roster.
By forming these partnerships, you can share valuable resources, from knowledge and consumer bases to subject matter experts. These partnerships can also provide increased awareness and visibility to your organization.
The agency model is changing. By taking an audit of your existing services, forming partnerships with emerging platforms and staying in the know, your agency will be set up for success.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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ce97e35ea0c626a3be832ed9c82126bb | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/14/the-forgotten-generation-lets-talk-about-generation-x/ | The Forgotten Generation: Let's Talk About Generation X | The Forgotten Generation: Let's Talk About Generation X
Millennials have relentlessly been at the center of branding and marketing conversations over the last few years. Marketers will not stop talking about them -- often with misguided and unfounded generalizations.
This level of hyper-focus, and what some might call a bit of panic, is no surprise: This generation of over 70 million individuals is projected to overtake baby boomers in size and are wildly different in their attitudes and behaviors. They’re so different from their predecessors that we continue to be fascinated by them, constantly dissecting and re-dissecting their actions to find the best ways to connect. So, what’s getting lost in the shuffle? Or rather, whom?
Generation X (ages 38-53) has essentially fallen off the radar among marketers. They are often referred to as the "slacker generation" or the "forgotten middle child." For our youth and young adulthood, baby boomers sucked up all the oxygen in the room, dominating our political, educational, business and social arenas. We were always under the shadow of boomers.
Many of us grew up as latchkey kids with both parents working or as part of a divorced household. We witnessed the beginning of ATMs, started our careers around the dot-com boom (and some busts as well), lugged around large cell phone suitcases and reached adulthood just when the internet became a daily part of life. We saw the Berlin Wall fall, the Cold War end, Communism disintegrate and saw the end of Apartheid in South Africa, all to a backdrop of grunge and disillusionment.
This cultural backdrop has defined a “work hard, play hard" generation that is now at the pinnacle of their careers. Many of us are homeowners and have families of our own. So, here we sit in this powerful time with money, resources and influence, and we still aren’t in the mainstream conversation. We’ve watched the culture interest shift from boomers to millennials like we're a flyover state.
Yes, our size is smaller than the boomer and millennial generations, but we are not insignificant. At 66 million strong, why have we faded into near obscurity in the marketing conversation? Gen Xers are spending more than their counterparts, spending one-third more annually than the celebrated millennials.
Despite recent studies showing that Gen Xers continue to struggle with debt, some of these studies also show that they aren't too worried about this debt. Even though they are struggling to save for retirement, they are well positioned to become the wealthiest generation -- above boomers -- within the next few years.
Gen Xers also have a lot of influence on other generations, which makes them powerful. Roughly half of Gen Xers are financially supporting both a parent and a child at the same time, making financial decisions that can affect all three generations. And as reported by Business Insider, Gen Xers make significantly more money each year than their younger counterparts. In my home state of California, Gen X workers take in a whopping $18,000 more annually on average. Not surprisingly, they spend more too, averaging 11% more than baby boomers and 33% more than millennials.
Additionally, our generation is poised to become the dominant group running businesses and politics. So, why do we still feel like Ducky at the prom from the 80s cult classic Pretty In Pink? Savvy marketers would do well to remember Gen Xers, not only as a spending powerhouse but also as a strong influence on the other generations.
Here are some tips for reaching out to this forgotten generation:
Don’t delete Facebook.
There is no doubt that Gen Xers are technologically savvy, but traditional online marketing methods still work effectively with this group. They are more likely to react to social media advertising on online platforms such as Facebook and, to some extent, Instagram. Facebook is especially an appealing source given they make up the highest concentration of users, around 45 million.
Communicate through email.
Email marketing communications is also a more effective channel for this group as they are constantly checking email both at work and home and across all of their devices (smartphone, iPad, Apple watch, etc.). We were there when email as a form of communication was created and it continues to play a big part in our lives.
Offer coupons.
Gen Xers still like to get a good deal and, yes, this means coupons. While it may not look like your grandma's coupon clipping file box with scraps cut from flyers or newspapers, it’s not too far off. This group is willing to search the internet to look for cost savings from coupon codes offered online or digital coupons.
Reward their loyalty.
Gen Xers like loyalty programs and the primary drivers are to save money and receive awards for purchases they make. In a recent study about loyalty, more than 88% of Gen Xers join loyalty programs to save money, with the rewards coming in as a close second at 71%. Brands should consider this behavior and appeal to this generation with rewards programs that resonate on these levels.
Straddle brick-and-mortar and online.
This generation grew up loving to shop at malls and, of any generation, they are still very likely to enjoy shopping in-person. However, they have seamlessly embraced online shopping, making them a hybrid generation. They are also more likely to make unplanned purchases at in-store than any other generation while they are shopping.
Gen Xers are a force to be reckoned with. They have huge buying power and influence over other generations and are expected to live longer than boomers. Brands and marketers should not gloss over this generation and need to understand how this group is maturing. They want to be heard, not forgotten, and marketers would do well to pay attention.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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ab3ca5eb6261afd1d041e13eee24c18e | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/26/13-effective-methods-to-help-you-keep-customer-loyalty-while-rebranding/ | 13 Effective Methods To Help You Keep Customer Loyalty While Rebranding | 13 Effective Methods To Help You Keep Customer Loyalty While Rebranding
Modern technologies have enabled companies to get to know their target audience better than ever before. As such, many businesses choose to use customer data to evolve in order to suit their customers’ needs. Rebranding is an effort to better a company’s connection with their audience, but it can leave intended consumers unsure.
So, what is the best way for companies to shift their brand in order to better speak to today’s customers, while also minimizing a divided reception? Below, members of Forbes Agency Council share their most effective methods for shifting their branding, while retaining new and old customers alike.
Members of Forbes Agency Council discuss rebranding. Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Involve Your Audience In The Journey
Consumers no longer live at the end of the funnel. They are influential brand citizens, expect to have a voice and often have a lot to say about a brand and its positioning. If you enroll them as advocates and partners in the process, rather than springing dramatic shifts on them, they'll be more loyal and prone to defend the new branding or positioning among their peers and external audiences. - Daryl McCullough, Citizen Relations
2. Maintain Functionality
After a brand reconstruction, your app and website should retain similar functionality so consumers don’t get confused. Changes to your copy may deter divided customers, so be sure to refrain from overhauling your layout or design. Additionally, sending out a mass email to your users explaining any changes or shifts in your product will keep consumers updated and aware. - Timothy Nichols, ExactDrive, Inc
3. Don't Depart From Your Main Message
People are often resistant to change, but you can minimize drama by shifting in a direction that is new but not unfamiliar to your base. Do this by highlighting aspects of your values or mission statement that are more aligned with the direction you're going in. If the message is different but still familiar, you have less chance of hard resistance. - Brandon Stapper, Nonstop Signs
4. Pick Your Creative And Strategy Team Wisely
When looking to shift your brand to speak to a new generation, those are the consumers who should be directly involved in the strategy and brainstorming leading up to the shift. A creative team comprised exclusively of the target consumers will allow the organization to capture vital messaging, brand reactions and create a brand that truly speaks to its demographic. - Danielle Sabrina, Tribe Builder Media
5. Prepare Your Audience For The Change
Most people don’t like change. Period. Brands need to keep in mind who they are trying to attract and whether or not a rebrand is worth losing a percentage of their existing customers in order to gain a new client base. Brands should also launch “something new is coming” campaigns to prepare the public, priming them for the upcoming rebrand. Launch the campaign and start listening! - Bernard May, National Positions
6. Focus On Making It Easier
Data today provides a vast variety of options. But many consumers are overwhelmed by too many choices, causing them to be less satisfied and abandon a brand. Regardless of the shift, companies succeed as they build valuable relationships with customers and make the user experience more comfortable and more robust for them to buy and consume what they truly desire. - Cagan Sean Yuksel, GRAFX CO.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
7. Communicate Why You're Rebranding
Companies that want to rebrand for a modern audience need to own the shift and transparently communicate why they’re rebranding, who they’re speaking to and what they’re doing differently to be better. Transparency on key learnings, research and development and future goals will ensure a seamless transition, especially if a comprehensive customer service protocol is accessible and responsive to Q&As. - Scott Kellner, GPJ Experience Marketing
8. Lose The Meek And Weak Marketing
You can't make everyone happy -- and that shouldn't be the goal. As long as you stay authentic and don't try to be something you're not, then be bold. You may polarize consumers, but at least they are talking about you. While some people didn't like that IHOP converted to IHOB, everyone understood that their menu was broader than just pancakes, perhaps for the first time. Mission accomplished. - Sean Looney, Looney Advertising & Branding
9. Do The Math
Deciding on a dramatic rebrand for a long-established brand requires a very calculated assessment to weigh the potential gain from new consumers against the potential loss of established and loyal customers. If that proves out, the next step is to map out a plan that includes strategies for engaging the at-risk brand loyalists in the rebranding process. - Keri Witman, Cleriti
10. Focus On Appealing To Your Core Market
It’s hard to avoid a divided reception during a rebranding. Companies seeking to rebrand should analyze their key markets and gauge their reaction. A perfect example is Nike’s Colin Kaepernick campaign. Though it seemed like a gamble, it’s clear Nike ran the numbers and determined that their core market would approve. The outliers were inconsequential against the support of their key consumers. - Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design
11. Keep Early Adopters In Mind
Maybe people really are more divided than ever. But if there's one trait most people share, it's resistance to change. Whether you're looking to expand your market or remain relevant to your existing customers, don't leave your early adopters behind in the dust. Keep in mind the core products and promises that led your most fiercely loyal customers to become loyal in the first place. - Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
12. Be True To What You Believe In
Authenticity is at the heart of any successful rebrand. If your brand promise and value proposition align with the redefined brand, you will have a better opportunity to succeed. If the rebrand is seen as a superficial shift to chase a trend in the market, it has less of a chance to be accepted. - Chris Cavanaugh, Freeman
13. Shift Your Brand Gradually And Consistently
Truth: As you read this, your brand is becoming outdated. The best way to shift your brand is to do it gradually and consistently all the time. Have you ever looked at an old picture of yourself after gaining weight? You might not have noticed before, but it's glaringly apparent now. Avoid a similar effect on your brand by listening to the market and making small changes to adapt it every year. - Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai
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14194466493b2ff32dbc05c56c221436 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/26/stirring-dragon-the-rise-of-chinese-luxury-brands/ | Stirring Dragon: The Rise Of Chinese Luxury Brands | Stirring Dragon: The Rise Of Chinese Luxury Brands
In 2013, the Chinese government sought to diffuse social tension by imposing a ban on TV and radio ads for luxury goods. This was meant to address the country’s widening gap between the rich and poor, although Beijing also claimed to be concerned about the effect these ads had on values and creating a “bad social ethos.”
By that time, the Chinese consumer had already become the world’s top luxury spender, snatching the crown from the Japanese buyer in 2012. This is unlikely to come as much of a surprise given the country’s massive population and its swiftly rising number of affluent consumers. According to a McKinsey’s 2017 report, Chinese shoppers spend more than 500 billion yuan (about $71.9 billion) annually on luxury goods, which accounts for nearly one-third of the global market. And Gartner expects this share to reach 40% by 2024.
What remains somewhat under the radar is China’s growing clout as a luxury brand's incubator, not merely a country of luxury consumers. With Chinese buyers embracing homegrown brands, the big names of Western luxury might no longer carry the same weight only a few years from now. Yes, China’s wealthy still loves themselves some Prada and Gucci, but they are starting to turn to local designers or foreign-based ones of Chinese descent whose work mirrors their roots and exudes a sense of national and cultural pride.
Many might scoff at the idea, but Chinese luxury brands are a reality and likely to become a force to be reckoned with sooner than we expect. Let’s take a closer look at how they are exploiting their advantages and slowly turning the tables on their established Western rivals.
Upgrade To Glamour
In recent years, we have seen China shake off its image of “cheap.” It’s almost inconsequential now that iPhones are assembled in China -- the country no longer needs this tenuous link to luxury fame. It now has brands such as Hisense, Huawei and Xiaomi, which are changing perspectives on “Made in China.” And these are only a handful of the Chinese companies that have become global players and helped create a new image for Chinese-made goods.
Here’s another important development: Being Chinese has become glamorous. Local celebrities are replacing Western faces in advertising campaigns and even ousting the piping-hot Koreans.
International Brands Take Notice
If you have any doubt about the sway of Chinese luxury brands, just consider what the big industry names are doing. For a while now, foreign brands have been creating collections that embrace the local culture (especially for Chinese New Year), establishing a connection between luxury and Chinese heritage.
Global heavyweights are even launching local brands to incorporate Chinese aesthetics and traditions into modern-day products and increase their appeal for Chinese buyers.
The Edge Of Chinese Brands
With so much interest in their market, Chinese brands are using every advantage they have. For starters, they can now hire managers who have previously worked for international luxury powerhouses. In this way, Chinese companies get access to the codes of luxury, so to speak. They also invite foreign designers to create their collections, thus getting the international touch.
In another clear sign of their steady rise, Chinese luxury brands are opening shops next to top global players in big malls across Beijing, Shanghai and other key cities.
Perhaps more importantly, Chinese brands have an immediate access to the largest luxury consumer base, one that they know and understand very well. The result? Greater agility and relevance than Western counterparts. Local luxury players can make better use of the massive Chinese ecosystem created around Tencent’s platform WeChat, thus providing services their foreign rivals might have difficulty duplicating.
There is also the matter of capital, and that is plentiful in China. Fosun, which started out as a private equity outfit, became famous in France when it bought Club Med. It proceeded to invest in other international luxury brands and topped it all by launching Fosun Fashion Group with aspirations of rivaling Western luxury conglomerates.
The Nationalism Trump Card
As China becomes increasingly important on the international scene, its people are feeling a resurgence of national pride, and local luxury brands are reaping the benefits. London-based designer Yang Li summed it up quite well, telling Business of Fashion: “As the market becomes more developed, a greater sense of confidence in what it means to be Chinese is leading to a growing desire to communicate individualism, personal identity, and a Chinese mindset.” The shift to national brands is already underway, and tensions on the global scene might accelerate it.
Let me finish by noting that I have lived in China for eight years. I’m only saying this because I have firsthand experience of how quickly things change in this market. Actually, the speed of change is so fast that it never fails to surprise. I believe the battle for the affluent Chinese consumer has just started, and local brands have a solid chance of winning it.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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5b26913ec6c3b70bfebf2b5a50a6129a | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/27/four-reasons-why-your-2019-marketing-budget-should-target-hispanics/ | Four Reasons Why Your 2019 Marketing Budget Should Target Hispanics | Four Reasons Why Your 2019 Marketing Budget Should Target Hispanics
The Hispanic community is one of the largest, most dynamic consumer bases in the U.S. marketing landscape right now.
According to Nielsen, in 2016, the nation's 57 million Hispanics reached $1.4 trillion in buying power. That's expected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2021. Hispanics in the U.S. also have the highest population growth rate -- the population is expected to double over the next 40 years.
And yet many companies still don’t carve out the resources and budget to address the Hispanic market. If anything, they'll typically focus strictly on translation rather than adapting and transforming their campaigns for this market. But reaching this demographic is much more than simply speaking the language.
Hispanics also have subcultural differences dependent on their heritage and place of origin. This is not to suggest that brands should tailor their campaigns to Caribbean Hispanics or South American Hispanics, but rather they should be aware of existing cultural differences. From generation to first language to education, each subculture can have unique attributes depending on their location within the U.S.
Businesses need to develop messaging with their audience in mind. In the age of hyper-competition, being able to connect strongly with an underserved group can be a competitive advantage for brand sales and growth.
Here are four reasons why you should strongly consider targeting Hispanics:
This demographic tends to actively engage with brands online.
Companies strive to reach customers who actively engage with their brands. According to a Nielsen report, 92% of Hispanic households have access to the internet and agree that it's a great outlet for gathering information and recommendations. The report also observes that "the need for connection to their community, culture and family, as well as to brands, trends, the news and the rest of the world, is a driving force behind Hispanics’ varied and over-indexing usage of the internet."
According to Viant research, Hispanic shoppers are active within their communities online and turn to social to research, review and advocate for brands. Nearly 50% of survey participants report they have participated in an online discussion involving a brand or have used a brand’s hashtag, compared to 17% of non-Hispanic shoppers.
The Hispanic market might be dismissive if you only focus on changing the language, so develop a campaign with them in mind from the start. They can be great ambassadors for your brand once they recognize that their culture and values are being represented.
Including culturally relevant elements can drive engagement for an online campaign. If you speak to their cultural sensibilities such as food, family and traditions, you may be able to resonate with Hispanics online. Hispanics want brands to embrace their cultural relevance. They want the opportunity to sustain their cultural identity while also being immersed into mainstream American culture.
Shaping your campaign to be culturally relevant to the Hispanic audience can play a prominent role in customer acquisition and, in turn, foster invaluable brand loyalty.
They are early adopters of technology.
The Hispanic demographic is highly receptive to exploring new ideas and consuming all types of media. As early adopters of new technology, Hispanics are a great market to target for introducing new concepts. They were the first to adopt smartphones and are likely to watch movies and browse the web on their gaming console. Essentially, this tech-savvy group is the trendsetter in the digital media market.
Further, Hispanics spend more than 52 hours per week on their smartphone, using apps or the web up to eight hours more than non-Hispanics. With 80% of Hispanic adults accessing the internet through mobile devices, it's important to consider aiming your digital-focused campaign toward them.
They're community-focused.
The Hispanic market is community-focused and highly values word-of-mouth recommendations. For instance, a Hispanic consumer is much more likely to buy into a product if another family member already has a favorable opinion of it. This family-oriented mentality leads to strong community engagement.
Paired with their knowledge of technology, this market is constantly connected and able to actively share the content they consume online with their peers. They listen to the opinions of others in their community, whether it be in person or online, but the former is where they are exceptionally present. Their online presence allows them to easily see what their friends and colleagues are talking about.
These interactions also create chances for discussions and an opportunity to get feedback on your efforts. As mentioned, recognizing their culture and values will help foster conversations about the content you produce.
Consider what brings this demographic together. Shared entertainment experiences that are community-focused such as sporting events and music festivals are great starting points for finding ways to be relevant to this group. Creating partnerships with Hispanic influencers can also be effective, as this group wants to see people online who reflect their culture and values.
With an importance placed on community, also look to opportunities where you can be environmentally conscious and involved in social causes supported by the target community. This will show the value and personalized care your company places on them.
They have (buying) power in numbers.
The Hispanic population is the fastest-growing segment and accounts for almost half of the U.S. population's growth. Hispanics also make up a large percentage of millennials, with 51% of the U.S. Hispanic population below the age of 30.
Hispanics are heavy media consumers, and Hispanic millennials are even more connected to media. They are a digital-first and socially progressive community that wants more choices. Providing content in Spanish is just the start of reaching them.
In the coming years, the Hispanic market will only continue to grow. These valuable consumers are loyal, receptive to new ideas and well-connected within the community. Being aware of existing cultural differences within this market is also necessary. Understanding Hispanic culture and values opens the door for key messaging opportunities to capitalize on this market.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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23b5c2c5b265aa9b0eff4aef1561c34f | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/27/three-factors-to-accommodate-explosive-business-growth/ | Three Factors To Accommodate Explosive Business Growth | Three Factors To Accommodate Explosive Business Growth
There's been a lot written about a company I used to work for that sold for billions of dollars about a decade ago. When I read those articles, the perceptions are often skewed to the people interviewed and their positions within the company. Now, a decade later, I'd like to share some insights on three factors I believe truly stood out that led to the company's success:
Sales: Remove roadblocks and reward accomplishments.
This company was always described as a "sales-driven" organization. The sales staff was incredible, disciplined and goal-oriented. They weren't afraid to turn over staff for underperformance and generously reward great performance.
Leaders must believe they can achieve goals that are exponentially larger than they've worked prior. They must encourage their teams daily, measure every effort and result, remove roadblocks to nurture and push prospects to the goal line and reward teams generously for their output. This often means that the sales teams that have gotten you to where you are aren't the same ones that will get you to where you need to be. It's always difficult to turn over good people, but if your sales staff doesn't believe they can get you where you need to be, then they need to be replaced.
Service: Empower your team to empower your clients.
The unsung hero of this company was its account management and customer service staff. While other leaders in the organization were often spotlighted in glowing articles, few people could tell you who ran the customer service department during the company's incredible growth.
While the sales department closed larger opportunities quarter after quarter, the complexities and challenges of the contract were always tossed over the wall to the services team. They were empowered by leadership to succeed and did everything possible to make it happen. When I launched my company, my first hire was a person whose job was to advocate for our clients to ensure success.
Your service leaders must be excited about the sales possibilities that are coming. Working closely with sales, service and account management can prepare for the impossible and mitigate onboarding risks. A service team mired in a process that can't remove impediments will put large-scale growth opportunities at risk.
Scale: Don't be afraid to invest.
The services department would have never been successful if it weren't for the company's ability to scale. At one critical point in the company, we had an outage that could have easily spelled doom for future growth. At the core of the issue was that investments weren't made that should have been. Leadership was quickly replaced, and the new leader immediately spent millions of dollars and redirected the path of the company to scale.
While competing companies could manage millions of transactions, we could manage hundreds of billions of transactions with an infrastructure that could continue to grow. Clients couldn't help but tout the capabilities of the system and the service teams that ensured success to their peers throughout the industry, and the ability to close monumental sales became commonplace.
Your organization must be relentless at investing in high-scale technologies and development resources that will outpace your competitors. I watched the company in question spend millions of dollars overnight to equip our developers with better, faster equipment. It was never treated as an expense, it was seen as a necessary investment in productivity. Decades ago, decisions like that took massive capital investments and could severely impact the bottom line of the company. Today, software rentals, cloud computing and hardware leasing options provide companies the freedom to scale and recoup their investment immediately.
What about marketing? Early in the company's history, we were truly blessed with marketing leadership that understood the power of a brand and consistent message. While marketing leadership changed over time, it honestly didn't have the impact that most people believe. The foundation of the brand and the continued success and growth of the company overshadowed any initiative that marketing could come up with. In its latter years, marketing for the company may have been one of the easiest jobs ever -- the company was destined to be great because of its sales, service and scale.
What are you doing to enable growth in your organization?
Years after I'd left the company, a vice president told me that you have to be willing to "get your nose bloody" when scaling your company. In other words, your leadership has to be willing to risk failure if you ever hope to see what your full potential is. Simply put, you can't predict what explosive growth will do to the company, you have to experience it and ride out the storm.
Explosive business growth requires a combination of all factors -- sales, service and scale. If you're weak in any one area, you will likely not attain it. While technology and funding are necessary, leadership is the lynchpin of predicting explosive growth within an organization.
You must have leaders who are agile, scrappy and risk-averse. You must have leaders who are willing to coach, educate and push teams to their full potential. And you must have leaders who are willing to replace people that are inhibiting growth.
Within each factor, a company must have the focus, discipline and unrelenting optimism that will drive the company forward. You're going to get your nose bloody from time to time, but you're also much more likely to reach your maximum potential.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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c83fa9872fbd8b69e631781aa9a67e6c | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/28/practical-ways-to-bootstrap-your-app-idea-into-a-startup-company/ | Practical Ways To Bootstrap Your App Idea Into A Startup Company | Practical Ways To Bootstrap Your App Idea Into A Startup Company
Everyone wants to build an app these days. The question for new developers-turned-entrepreneurs is how to go from concept to company to corporation without imploding along the way.
When it comes to creating and marketing an app, optimization is key. Not only must your app operate at the highest level, but also you must learn how to create it, fine-tune it and ramp up your marketing to beat out the competition. Your startup depends on it.
With more than 15 years of product development experience, my team and I have been providing an approach and plan to bootstrap startups based on app ideas for quite a while. We've helped both startups and Fortune 500 companies deliver their product ideas in a way that is sustainable and guarantees a future. Here are some practical ways to help you do the same:
Do Your Marketing Research
The first and most crucial step in generating your app idea is to test it against the market. No matter what concept you have in mind, someone has likely already thought of it and is touting it somewhere in the market.
If so, the success of current competing apps gives you an idea of how well your product will perform. Since competition will always be a factor, your goal is to determine how your app will stand out from all the other products.
Does your app have features that prove to be useful to consumers? Is there a demand for it? Will it prove to be marketable now or in the near future? The amount of research you conduct can answer these and other questions.
Get Feedback From Multiple Sources
The best way to fine-tune your app idea is to get feedback from a wide range of people at launch. Asking experts, peers, average users and techies what they think of your ideas can either sharpen the development of your concept or cause you to abandon the idea altogether.
When you gather feedback, try to get in-depth insight from people who know what they’re talking about and others who have no clue but just know what they like.
For instance:
• A web developer who can provide detailed user experience (UX) insight to help you improve the user screen.
• A marketing consultant who can help you target your demographic and assist with your online marketing campaign.
• An app junkie who can tell you what features they would use and which they would ignore.
• An app developer who can help you make your app more functional on various levels.
A common strategy app developers use to gain feedback is rapid prototyping. It’s a process of quickly creating the future state of a product and then validating its use or practicality with user groups, designers, investors or developers.
A rapid prototype is cost-effective and faster than building the entire app. It allows you to set the direction for your design by starting out small and then developing the design as you go. In rapid prototyping, you establish the solution, test it with users and then refine the idea based on the feedback.
Build Your Audience
Creating an awareness of your brand and your project is also crucial to success. This means promoting your project and keeping a steady stream of communication flowing to what will ultimately be your user base.
Start close to home and work your way out. Tell your friends, co-workers, peers and people in the industry who respect what you’re doing. From there, you can create a platform for your information.
Document everything. Stream live videos and photos, start a blog, build a web page and create a social page. This way, your audience can see the growth and development of your app from the beginning. By the time you release your product, your audience will be hungry to use it.
Choose Your Technology Well
If you don’t include games, servers or databases, mobile apps essentially fall into two categories: iOS and Android. Each platform has its own set of native apps, but hybrid apps do exist.
The type of technology you use depends on some core factors:
• Language (Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, Swift, Kotlin)
• The application programming interface (API)
• Android and iOs phone compatibility
• Web and desktop utilization
• The performance and purpose of the app
If you’re just getting started in the app world, you may want to opt for a native app platform, such as Reactive Native or Weex. Apps like these make it easier to create your product in half the time.
Find A Partner
If you’re going to hire a partner, you need to establish their role. For instance, are you hiring a code-savvy developer or will you need someone who understands the marketing side of your business?
Ideally, you’ll want to hire someone who is the yin to your yang. You create a balance in your partnership in which one person’s weaknesses are another person’s strengths. Make sure the role you create for your partner adds value to both your app and your business.
Here are some items to consider when choosing a partner:
• Portfolio of previous work
• Education
• Industry experience, particularly in your app category
• Your budget
• Cost vs. investment (i.e., Are they worth the money?)
• Ability to communicate
• Partnership mindset, not just a worker
Just Get Started
You won’t make any money simply because you have a great idea. Instead, you make money by turning your idea into an actual app that users enjoy time and again. So whatever your idea, sit down and start formulating a strategy to bring it into development. You never know if your idea is the next great startup.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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dd4f5cc73f68cebbf5adc8d4bd8fba46 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/30/five-ways-to-improve-your-email-marketing-content/ | Five Ways To Improve Your Email Marketing Content | Five Ways To Improve Your Email Marketing Content
It seems that some brands believe consumers don't open emails anymore. Or even worse, some businesses don’t think there's value in email marketing. If you are not sure how to create valuable content for your users via email, keep reading.
Why Does Email Matter?
In my opinion, the smartest place to advertise your brand is where there's more audience to see your advertisements. According to research by The Radicati Group, there were nearly 2.6 billion email users in 2015, which has most likely grown. Compare that to 2.23 billion monthly Facebook users reported from Q2 2018. Email is used by more people than Facebook.
By not creating an effective strategy directed to email users, your company could be losing potential clients -- a lot of them. Another benefit of having a better email marketing plan is that it's a chance to delight your current clients. Forgetting about them would be a huge mistake. Remember: a key to having constant earnings is to care about your clients before, during and after they buy your products. One of the goals when selling products and services is to show that you care about your audience, and email is one way to do that.
Creating Better Emails
If you already have an email marketing strategy but are seeing terrible open rates, you don't need to stop your efforts; you just need to upgrade your game. Here are some tips for improving your email strategy:
Understand its value.
First, you need the assurance that you’re making something valuable, so don’t underestimate it. People do read emails. According to McKinsey, "Email remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media -- nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined." The report also notes that nearly 90% of U.S. consumers use email on a daily basis, and the channel performs better than social media in terms of conversions and order value.
Send emails to people who actually want them.
In the way of making your company profitable, you need to focus on people who are interested in your brand. Cleaning your list of subscribers monthly or once a year is one of the best ways to only engage with users who truly enjoy your content. It’s easy to do and can help increase open rates.
In my experience, to keep your email list clean, you first need to make sure there are no typos in email addresses. Sometimes, it’s not that users don’t want your emails, but that you just didn’t write the addresses correctly. After that, you need to focus on inactive users. Identify contacts that consistently bounce with each sent campaign. Before deleting users, you can try a re-engagement strategy.
Once you've tried all the above, check for users who still don't engage, and delete them. We run through this maintenance process twice a year.
Switch up your formats.
It’s fine to send emails with images and videos to your clients, but I would also suggest sending alternative messages. Remember that doing the same for too long can get boring. Plus, in my experience, picture and video emails sometimes filter into an inbox's "promotion" tab.
Try to send text-only emails at least once a month. For example, send a more personal email written by an executive. When a CEO introduces themselves to clients, it can make a great impact on the company. And according to research by HubSpot, "Emails sent by a real person are more likely to be clicked on than emails sent from a company name." The company A/B tested emails with two different senders: one from "HubSpot" and another from "Maggie Georgieva, HubSpot." The first generated a 0.73% CTR and the second got a 0.96% CTR.
Text-only emails should be short, to the point and, overall, useful. One idea for a CEO-written email is to offer some simple but effective tips based on your experience or perspective as a CEO in your particular business.
Remember, you don’t have to stop sending visual emails; just mix formats once in a while.
Optimize for mobile devices.
According to research by Return Path, which analyzed over 27 billion email opens, 55% of users opened their emails via mobile devices. So, utilize device detection, pay extra attention to your header text and try using button CTAs more than link-based CTAs. Buttons tend to stand out more than links, especially when readers are scanning your newsletter quickly. I'd recommend adding at least one in your emails. Choose the right design according to your theme. Use the proper size with contrasting colors.
Understand that more emails aren't necessarily better.
Don’t become one of those annoying companies that send multiple emails in a single day. People will likely mark you as spam or unsubscribe. I recommend sending a maximum of two emails per week. And remember to not just send messages that are explicitly about buying. Create content emails -- not too many, but at least once a month.
Is email marketing dying?
According to various sources, email marketing is actually on the rise. With inbound marketing becoming more popular, it's no surprise.
People are still checking their inboxes, so don’t stop email marketing. Just adjust your practices to what's trending.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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