Category: Digital Marketing

Channel Planning

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Effective marketing considers both channels and communication techniques needed to enable customer acquisition for particular service or product categories. Each channel has its weaknesses and strengths, costs and benefits, limits and freedoms, and must be scrutinized carefully to understand how it will or won’t improve the campaign strategy. Therefore, let’s discuss how to determine which digital and traditional channels to use for your campaign.

Target audience measurement

First, measure where the potential audience is spending their time. Determine who you want to target; for instance, are you targeting an older demographic that primarily uses TV, email, Facebook, and radio – or are you targeting Gen Z, who are heavy users of TikTok, CTV and new digital media platforms. Use top content creators and brands in your vertical and analyze their audience engagement across several channels. Meaningful metrics to use include content engagement, audience size, video views, and mobile app usage.

Allocate marketing budget across multiple channels

Establish an overall budget for the campaign and then divide the budget amongst targeted channels. Understand that doubling the campaign budget of a high-performing channel may not proportionally increase performance. Therefore, never rapidly invest a massive amount of money in campaigns. Instead, consider running more ads, targeting new markets, or more keywords to determine which channels are getting more results in terms of reach, impressions, views, and conversions.

Determine how to schedule the campaigns across multiple channels

A campaign schedule will help keep you organized; however, there’s no one-size-fits-all perfect schedule. The ideal timing and frequency of the campaign across multiple channels will depend on your targeted industry and audience, among other things. Moreover, some channels can be active during the campaign’s life, while others will provide a better lift by overlapping during specific moments in the campaign. For longer campaigns, this is more difficult as you must adequately plan the budget for the campaign’s duration. For example, a campaign that will be active for 3 months may not necessarily have all paid channels running during the entire duration to be cost-effective. Therefore, campaign scheduling is essential to enhance your chances of achieving goals. 

Track campaign channel utilization

If you’re not using a campaign management platform, create a spreadsheet to document which channels have been utilized for campaigns. Use spreadsheets for items like content and financials. For example, you can track ad spend, budgets and ROAS (return on ad spend). Spreadsheets can also be used to manage campaigns, ad effectiveness, social media posts, blog calendars, web traffic, SEO, and many other metrics.

Gather learnings for creating your next channel plan

Do some in-depth market research to find which platforms your audience is using more in that timespan and mold your campaigns and content to their expectations. Then, you need to constantly track the results to determine how well the campaigns and channels are performing and what tweaks should be done. Essentially, channel planning is all about delivering what the customers need and where and when they need it – vital knowledge that’s driven by data.

Conclusion

By integrating digital and traditional marketing channels, you can attract a potential audience in their preferred way; furnish and motivate sales and marketing teams, and maximize your chances of achieving your desired business goals. 

Rolanda Gregory ©2022
All Rights Reserved.

Cookies, Privacy & User Data

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Businesses understand the value of the data they collect about customers. Firms can predict sales trends, send out targeted advertising, and improve their products through this data. However, for consumers, data collection is a privacy invasion and a practice that can be abused easily, leading to the suspicion of many businesses. Furthermore, for data collection, web developers now use cookies to offer convenient website visits, but it’s a vulnerability to your privacy.

What are cookies?
Cookies are small files that are sent to your devices to monitor and remember specific information about you, such as your login information, details about your shopping cart, etc.

Why do companies use cookies?
Cookies let a business owner recognize users and recall their individual preferences, such as politics versus sports news. They’re also used to customize advertising to personalize user sessions. Moreover, e-commerce businesses use cookies to track items customers previously viewed to suggest other relevant goods.

How the EU has set the stage with its groundbreaking GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) requirements
GDPR regulates the way businesses manage and process personal data. After 25 May 2018, GDPR constituted the greatest change to the EU’s data protection rules in over two decades. The GDPR rules apply to the companies if they use personal data and are based in the EU. Personal data includes name, numbers, health records, location, banking, income information, cultural preferences, etc. GDPR allows firms to use personal data under certain conditions and forces them to implement additional security measures like strong encryption.

What upcoming changes we can expect in the US
The CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) passed on 1 January 2020, and industry experts considered it a landmark piece of user privacy rights legislation, as it needed specific businesses to disclose all personal data they have about a user whenever that user requests. Now, California, Colorado, and Virginia are only the tip of the iceberg. Given that multiple states have some kind of consumer privacy legislation at some stage of proposal or consideration, enterprises can expect several other states to enact new privacy legislation. This will, however, become a nightmare for marketers if we have to deal with a patchwork of laws from state to state; what, in essence, will be needed is a national consumer privacy act to make it easier for marketers to operate.

Marketers should focus on cookieless targeting
As more tech companies start to eliminate 3rd party cookie tracking, advertisers must be prepared to rely more on cookieless tactics to segment and target potential audiences to provide them a personalized experience and leverage data for informed future decision-making.

Is it possible to do cookieless targeting?
The online advertising landscape has been focusing its attention mainly on cookie-based targeting. However, advances in AI and machine learning have opened up numerous opportunities for intelligent targeting, which doesn’t require user-profiling and is privacy-friendly. One way to do this is contextual targeting, which provides marketers the opportunity to view and react in real-time to insights acquired from live content consumption. This dynamic data will help target and scale campaigns just as efficiently as a cookie-based targeting method.

What are Consumer Responsibilities?
Cybercrime is a huge business; therefore, as a consumer, it’s essential to learn about the data organizations collect about you and how they use the data to earn revenue (in many cases, they sell and share your data with 3rd party companies which you may be unaware of the relationship and scope of the data-sharing agreements).

Moreover, to limit tracking – clear your cookies regularly, minimize the use of browser extensions and ad-ons, turn off cross-site tracking in your browser, and use privacy-oriented browsers and search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Brave. And when you navigate to a site and see this type of message, don’t be afraid to click ‘Manage Cookies / Do Not Sell My Personal Information to gain slight control of the amount of data being tracked about your browsing habits.

This website uses cookies

Key Takeaways
• Consumers are wising up to the dangers of data misuse – companies can lose their audience if they fail to protect user data.
• Specific data privacy regulations differ from state to state; however, core principles include transparency, accountability, and confidentiality.
• Consumers are not off the hook and are indeed accountable for their data protection.

Rolanda Gregory ©2022
All Rights Reserved.

Performance Marketing: Optimizing ad spend to achieve campaign goals

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A digital marketing strategy that is driven by results is termed performance marketing. It is ideal for businesses looking to reach audiences at scale since results are based on how end-users interact with campaigns and content.

Moreover, performance marketing works when advertisers pay either publishers or agencies to design and place advertisements for the organization on several performance marketing channels — search engines, social media, embedded web content, CTV, videos, and more. Rather than paying for an ad in a conventional way, advertisers pay based on how well the ad performs by measuring the number of impressions, clicks, shares, or sales.

An important factor of performance marketing is determining how to optimize ad spend to achieve campaign goals. Let’s take a deep dive into some tried-and-tested tips I have discovered to do this the right way.

  • Determine your KPIs (key performance indicators) and ROAS (return on ad spend) goal

A KPI is an effective metric used to measure performance. There’re 3 main groups of KPIs.

Social engagement – Defines how content performs on social media.

On-site metrics – Defines how content influences website visitor’s behavior, for instance, bounce rate and time spent on site.

Conversion metrics – Defines how content turns potential leads and campaigns to sales.

First, determine what you need to measure and ask yourself these questions.

  1. What timespan will you measure the metrics across?
  2. What’s a realistic growth rate?
  3. How will you achieve the desired results?


After setting your KPIs goals, set a realistic goal for the average ROAS you would like to achieve. It’s essential to determine ROAS goals to evaluate the ad campaign’s performance quantitatively. Then, a mix of insights, a dash of data crunching, and research will put you on the right track.

  • Set a realistic budget

Setting a realistic budget, whether it’s based on the percentage of revenue or fixed income, makes it simpler to allocate resources effectively and measure the campaign’s results. Ask yourself these questions:

  1. What percent of the budget can be spent on marketing?
  2. What’s your CLV or LTV (customer lifetime value)?
  3. What’s your funnel/conversion process?
  4. What’s the conversion rate?


To set a realistic budget, you should know what a lead or a visitor is worth and what the customer lifetime value for the business is.

  • Target your campaign to the optimal audiences

Successful advertising is the ability to reach an audience who’ll be most interested in the offered service or product. If you need to get the right eyes on your ad campaign, you must target the optimal audiences. To do this, gather information about who your potential audience is.  What are their demographics? Consider things like hobbies/interests, age, gender, location, salary, discretionary income, and education. The more information you have about the ideal audience, the better you can target them. Knowing your audience also enables finding look-alikes of your highest performing audience segments.

  • Monitor campaign progress for effectiveness, paying close attention to burn rate of budget, CTR (click-through rate), conversions, and revenue

Monitoring campaign progress for effectiveness allows determining if the campaign is working correctly and how the marketing tactics are performing. Therefore, use elements that can be assessed and quantified easily, such as clicks, actual sales, and profit. 

Furthermore, the burn rate describes how fast a campaign is spending its allocated budget. Keep a watchful eye on the levels of spend to ensure there’s a direct correlation in conversions. Burning through your campaign budget too swiftly without results leads to an underperforming scenario in which you may not be able to recoup. Besides that, it’s also vital to monitor impressions, CTR, conversions, and revenue to determine how many users are visiting the website and performing the desired actions such as filling out a contact form, making a purchase, downloading a spec sheet, etc.

  • Gather learnings and optimize elements such as creative, copy, CTA (call-to-action)

The content builds excitement and interest, and the promo, CTA, and creative encourage the visitor to dig deeper and become a paying customer. An appealing ad with a persuasive call to action is the fastest way to generate leads and double the conversion rates. However, since every business is different, continually analyzing and testing helps determine what works best for your potential customers, resulting in a campaign that converts to leads and purchases.

Wrapping Up

Performance marketing is an effective and creative way to diversify your audience and expand reach, all while obtaining valuable data and insights. Find out the approaches that optimize your ad spend and work best for your brand and customers. It doesn’t matter where you stand in the performance marketing space; there is always room to grow!

Rolanda Gregory ©2022
All Rights Reserved.

How NBA Team Memphis Grizzlies Uses Walls.io

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“We Wanted a More Aesthetic View of Our Social Media Posts Across Our Brands”

A photo shot from the view of a Grizzlies player who is sitting on the floor. Four of his teammates are standing around him helping him up.

by Andie Katschthaler April 18, 2019 4 min read

Many of our customers are loyally returning to Walls.io for all of their events, setting up social walls on big screens for their audience. Others have an ongoing social wall for their brand and embed it on the brand website.

But once in a while, we have one of those customers who really make full use of their Walls.io accounts, running multiple walls, embedding them, showing them off at events and generally putting lots of work into the presentation.

We’re very happy to count the NBA team Memphis Grizzlies among that type of customer. The Grizzlies switched to Walls.io from a competitor and have since set up multiple social media walls, all to an impeccable standard. They’ve fully integrated social walls with their online marketing strategy.

Use case: Multiple social walls across various properties to enhance brand experience
Website: Grizzlies.com, GrizzGaming, Memphis Hustle, FedExForum
Campaign duration: ongoing
Channels connected: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest


Social wall design follows website design

The walls are being used to showcase social content on various websites the Grizzlies are running. The content of each wall is adapted to the website it’s embedded on, and all social walls are styled to fit the look of the site as well.

Here we have two different social walls; one is embedded on Grizzlies.com, the other one on FedExForum.com. The two walls are styled completely differently, each one adapted to fit the website it’s embedded on.

Screenshot of Grizzlies.com website with the social wall embedded. The wall is styled to blend in with the website’s design and colours.
The social wall on Grizzlies.com.
Screenshot of FedExForum.com website with the social wall embedded. The wall is styled in to blend in with the website’s design and colours, for example by using tile colours in the three FedExForum colours blue, orange and purple.
The social wall on FedExForum.com.

We’ve been told that, In due time, a social wall will likely also be shown on a big screen at the Grizzlies arena. That is one way to use Walls.io that obviously excites us a lot and we hope to soon be able to tell you more about this project.

We wanted to know what drew the Grizzlies to Walls.io and how social walls are working out for them. Rolanda Gregory, Vice President of Marketing, told us about how her department is using social walls and shared some plans for the future.

Why did you start using a social wall and what do you hope to achieve with it?

We started using a social wall because we wanted a more aesthetic view of our social media posts across all of our brand website properties. We wanted the social walls to have a natural flow with our other website content instead of having it feel like an afterthought.

We’ve found that it’s a great way to pull in content from our various social media platforms. For our websites, the walls provide fresh, timely and relevant information that our fans find important. We are also able to post promotions and ads within the social wall content.

Walls.io TIP: With Walls.io, you can create custom content like ads, for example, and upload it directly to your social wall as sponsored posts.

 

How did you find the process of setting up the social walls and integrating them on the websites?

It was actually quite simple. Our Marketing Technology team, led by Albert Hughes, was able to transition from our previous solution to Walls.io very quickly. The social walls also allowed for better branding and configuration of the layouts. The ability to be able to use an embed or iFrame provided greater flexibility for our websites.

How are people reacting to the use of the social walls?

The feedback has been great as the layout of the content looks much better and is easier to read.

Walls.io TIP: Like the Grizzlies, you can use Walls.io’s extensive customisation features to make your social wall look just the way you need it, whether you’re embedding it on a website or showing it off on a big screen.

 

What other plans do you have for your social walls in the future?

We are currently working on plans to use social walls in-arena for events and campaigns. Meaning that for a specific game or event, we will display a large social wall in-arena and run a hashtag campaign to engage with event attendees.

Due to our satisfaction, we are also looking to extend social walls for our GrindCityMedia.com personalities, as well as integration into our mobile app.

Use social walls to keep innovating

How one NBA team uses social walls shows us how important it is for brands to keep innovating and how social tools like Walls.io can help with that. Social walls are a creative and dynamic tool, so keep changing it up and finding new ways to use them to implement your marketing strategy.

The Grizzlies’ plans to show a social wall in their arena is a fantastic example of that. A big wall where matches take place will let fans engage with the Grizzlies and each other at the most important point of contact. Similarly, the plans to integrate a wall into the mobile app will create another point of interaction between brand and fans, deepening the connection and brand loyalty.

A diverse group of Grizzlies fans are posing for a picture. They are dressed in t-shirts that feature the team mascot Grizz (a blue bear) and say “Memphis Grizzlies”.
Fans love finding new ways to engage with the Memphis Grizzlies, whether it’s online or offline.

Don’t be afraid to experiment

Brands with a diverse portfolio can use social walls for different websites, purposes, etc. It’s fairly easy to design and adapt each wall for its use. And you remain flexible — show a social wall on a big screen or embed it on your website. With Walls.io, you have many options.

Don’t be afraid to use social walls in many different ways. Sometimes you’ll want the social wall embedded in full width on your website, other times a sidebar widget is all you need.

Screenshot of the MemphisHustle.com website. The left two thirds of the page are covered with news articles, the right hand third is taken up by the social media wall in a sidebar. The width allows for posts to show underneath each other in a scrollable column.
Here we see the social wall on the Grizzlies’ MemphisHustle website incorporated prominently in a sidebar on the right. Social walls in sidebars are fully functional, of course, they’re just narrower.

Time to set up an awesome social wall for your own brand

Play around with the customisation options to see what you can do

Create a free social wall now!

Remember, if something doesn’t work for you, you can always change it back or try something different. Adapting your social walls is easy and fast with Walls.io.

Yahoo! Account Breach!

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It’s just been announced that Yahoo! experienced a data breach that caused more than 1 billion accounts to be compromised.  Hopefully everyone knows not to store or transmit sensitive information on ‘public’ email systems, meaning email providers that give you a ‘free’ account as they’re often the target of hackers.  Also your emails are searched for marketing and sales opportunities.  In any regards, if you have a Yahoo! account, keep a lookout for suspicious activity – and consider moving on to a different platform.

The Ever So Dependable Facebook Metrics

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fb

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Facebook is still discovering and fixing issues with its metrics algorithm.  When the majority of your revenue is comprised of selling advertising, it’s key that your customers trust the product in which they’re investing.  We all understand that Facebook has worked hard to monetize a difficult product, especially as we move towards a true mobile first world.  As Marketers mull over options for social spend, Facebook will need to reassure the market that their platform is effective in reach, engagement and especially conversion.  And they’ll need to work even harder to regain trust.

 

Acquiring a New Testing Platform

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Website Optimization

If your Marketing department is not taking advantage of using an optimization testing platform to conduct A/B and multivariate tests, or if you’re using a proprietary system, here are a few reasons to consider utilizing one of the many platforms now available to marketers.

2 Main Reasons for Implementing an Optimization Testing Platform:

  1. Allows you to easily run marketing A/B and multivariate tests so you can optimize your website content thereby increasing conversion rates and engagement at a faster pace.
  2. We’ve all experienced prioritization issues when it comes to competing for technical resources, now there’s a work-around.  If your test is restricted to front-end/graphical user interface changes (such as testing call-to-actions, page layouts, text or imagery), there’s no need to involve IT and wait for development resources until you have a sure winner.

Important Features to Consider:

  • Easy to use drag and drop interface that includes in-page and in-line editing via a WYSIWYG editor.
  • A side-by-side view of what the changes are in a test (current vs proposed view of the page or elements) will become important as you start using the testing platform.  Believe it or not, some major platforms do not have this capability making it cumbersome to understand and see the changes without going through unnecessary steps.
  • Ability to stop a test upon reaching a customizable threshold.  While most platforms will automatically stop a test after a certain date has been realized, not all platforms will allow you to customize a threshold.  For instance, once a test hits 1MM page views, or exceeds a 5% CTR.
  • While permissions should be a standard include, a customizable workflow is a must-have option.  This will allow your organization to route new test changes to different departments and team members (such as to Copy, Graphic Design, and Compliance) as necessary for edits, review and approvals before new tests are published.

When conducting an RFP for a new optimization testing platform, be sure to keep the above points in mind.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Marketing Technology Landscape 2016

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Marketing_Technology_Landscape_2016

Chiefmartec.com has updated their annual Marketing Technology Landscape.  The new design makes it easier to find companies.  It’s broken down into the categories of Advertising & Promotion, Content & Experience, Social & Relationships, Commerce & Sales, Data, and Management.  If you plan to implement a new marketing platform, be sure to review the updated landscape for potential vendors to include in your RFP process.

Omni-Channel Campaigns…Connecting the Dots

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Intersecting circles

When launching a new service, product or startup, it’s important to do so from an integrated and connected perspective. Marketing campaigns should be planned strategically across all available marketing channels. If a particular channel isn’t utilized it’s important to understand and notate why.

Creating awareness and buzz is best done in concerted partnership across multiple marketing channels, leveraging the audience and strengths available in each channel.  Omni-channel marketing ensures that you’ve covered all the bases.

Once the purpose, theme, budget and schedule are determined, drilling down to analyze each marketing channel is necessary.  Campaigns aren’t one size fits all, so a strategic play on how to utilize digital, traditional and out-of-home, as well how as how key tools such as targeting and segmentation impacts your messaging are important. How you communicate on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, can be decidedly different from Email Marketing, Radio, Banner Ads, Direct Mail, PPC or DRTV so it’s necessary to create customized copy for each channel that ladders up to your overall campaign theme and message.

Measurement is crucial in understanding what roles marketing channels play in the performance of your campaign.  Implementing multi-channel attribution tools can assist in this area.  While you may not see a direct conversion from some channels, knowing which channels are introducers and influencers are just as critical as knowing which ones are closers.

When launching marketing campaigns, do not do so in separation.  Leveraging at least multi if not omni channels will yield better performance.  I have witnessed organizations that launch campaigns in isolation – with different teams being responsible.  The email team is launching a totally different campaign and message than the social team, etc. with no integration or coordination from the top.  Creating an editorial and acquisition marketing calendar will help coordinate the efforts of multiple teams, and ensure everyone is on-message.

On your next campaign, utilize omni-channel marketing to engage consumers on their turf and to see a lift in performance.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Building Your Social Media Strategy

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Social media buttons on on the modern keyboard

As an organization focused on either B2C or B2B, it’s important to determine what your Social Media strategy should be.

While we all know it’s important for businesses to be on social media, it’s equally vital to first understand what you’re trying to solve for.  Do you have a need to respond to customer issues and complaints, promote new product or service offerings, conduct polls and surveys to obtain data, build a community, etc?

Once it’s determined what you’re trying to solve for.  It becomes easier to build the strategy and tactics to execute on each objective.

While social media marketing might mean something different to you, here are some of the tasks and goals that may be beneficial.

  • Determine which social media sites/apps are best suited for your business.
  • While paid social can help spread the news of your brand and/or promotion, count on organic as your long-term approach.
  • Define your communications calendar and determine your communications cadence.
  • Post consistently.
  • Listen across all social media and communications platforms to understand impacts to your brand and business.
  • Respond rapidly, but diplomatically to any negative content and posts. Remember the spotlight is on you.
  • Sometimes intervention is needed.  Ensure you have a mechanism for determining when a post/comment deserves a more ‘intimate’ response away from all the public eyes on social media.
  • Engage consumers when they post positive feedback about your product or service.  This allows you to build a relationship with them.
  • Review your performance and optimize your creative, messaging, campaigns, etc.
  • Use targeting to ensure your message meets the appropriate audience.
  • Evaluate the numerous social technology tools that are available so that you can adequately build your social infrastructure.

Building a social media strategy takes a lot of reflection and knowledge.  Managing the day-to-day communications and engagement takes a lot of proactive work.  Ensure that you understand your organization’s limitations and strengths when it comes to planning and executing on social.  During the initial stages, it may be wise to enlist the expertise of a social media agency to steer you in the right direction.

Social media marketing can work for any organization if the right strategy is in place.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Better Than Google Glass?

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Contact lens

The move by Samsung to create a ‘smart’ contact lens could make the likes of Google Glass obsolete.

A smart contact lens has far reaching possibilities.  The virtual augmented reality potential is limitless.  Even erasing the need for those pesky 3-D glasses needed for movie watching.

And of course the amount of data available to marketers would be remarkable.

What I’m not so certain of are the privacy implications.

In any regard, the patent that Samsung has for this Blink technology moves us a step closer from wearables to embedded human technology.

Learn more at Digital Trends.

January 1, 1970

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iPhone

If you have pranksters for friends, please do not allow them to trick you into manually changing the date on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to 1-1-1970.  For some odd reason, there’s a bug within Apple’s framework that will prevent 64-bit iOS devices from booting up.  This means your device will basically become a paperweight.  Yeah, and trying to restore it from iTunes doesn’t solve the problem either.

Apple is investigating the issue, but in the meanwhile – refrain from setting your iPhone 5s, iPad, or iPod touch to 1-1-1970.  That is unless you’re under federal investigation and think this is easier than fighting to turn over your encryption key.

Learn more about this issue here.

Role of the Business Card in the Digital Age

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image

I’ve often wondered about the seldom used box of business cards that sit in one of my desk drawers, as well as the stack that occupies a small place atop my desk.  While they contain useful information, they’re often left behind.

I’ve forgotten to carry them when attending important vendor meetings, or when interviewing a potential new hire.  I realize at those moments that I’ve just made a business faux pas. Although one that’s glanced over by almost everyone as I’m also seldom alone in forgetting to carry them.

Once upon a time, business cards were critical in making first impressions, establishing methods of communication, and demonstrating that you are a professional.

Today, they have been somewhat displaced by smartphones that allow us to enter our contact information directly, and sites such as LinkedIn.

In today’s world, I do believe that business cards can continue to be an effective marketing tool for entrepreneurs and executives as it’s a piece of yourself and your brand that can be left behind as a reminder.  This is amplified when time is of the essence, phone batteries are low, or you want to be sure your email address doesn’t get misspelled.

For me, this serves as a reminder to keep them at the ready.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Invest/Maintain/Kill

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Yahoo!

Invest/Maintain/Kill:  These are words to live by for any organization.

Today, we’re starting to learn about the impact of Yahoo’s Invest/Maintain/Kill List.  While it may initially sound threatening, cold or insensitive, it is a strategy that all organizations should utilize.  And use often.

As an organization, it’s important to constantly evaluate, measure and plan for the future as it relates to your core competencies, technological advantages, people, strategic partnerships, and any other competitive advantages.  Having a strong indication of which of these items should be further invested into, maintained as the status quo, or subtly decommissioned or killed is key.  It helps to keep your organization nimble and focused on its most critical objectives and goals, while keeping aboard the talent and people who will best contribute to reaching those objectives.

I applaud Yahoo! for taking these necessary and crucial steps.

Learn more about the changes at Yahoo! on re/code.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Twitter Departures

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Twitter

Major changes in leadership at Twitter indicates that the company has major challenges with its business model.  Trying to stay relevant to its target demographic and competitive with other Social Media platforms is a huge undertaking. Let’s just hope for Twitter’s sake that its users don’t depart as quickly as its top brass.

Read more at re/code.

 

No More IE

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MS Edge

It feels like only yesterday that we were hard-coding web dev fixes for older Internet Explorer browsers.  You know for the users that simply wouldn’t upgrade from IE 7, 8 or 9.  For some Marketers it was just a tad bit too much traffic to shut off altogether so we continued to Band-Aid fixes.  Well at least now we finally have support from Microsoft.  As of today, Microsoft will only support IE 10 and Edge for its consumer-base.  It’s about time.

Hmm, I wonder if Edge will topple Chrome from the throne.

Learn more about the transition at Microsoft

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Is Display Advertising Dead?

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Dunkin-Autism 300x250

I’ve often heard Marketers mention that they’re unable to optimize their display campaigns to perform as well as their Paid Search campaigns.  This has led some of those Marketers to believe that their banner ads are ineffective.  While this could be true, they may be jumping to conclusions without having all of the pertinent data.

When it comes to effective demand and lead generation, it’s not necessarily a good idea to think of it simply as last-click, first-click or distributed.  There are other important factors such as view-throughs.  View-throughs are important because they assist in actual conversions by providing intangibles such as brand recognition.  Without the view-throughs and awareness of the promotion and brand, the conversion may not happen.  However, many organizations are not equipped to realize this potential.  It can be solved for by implementing multi-channel and multi-touch data attribution tools which track all campaigns (digital and traditional) and utilizes formulas and proprietary algorithms to accurately weigh the value of views, clicks and ultimately the conversion itself across all marketing channels and devices.

InboxDollars

We should also consider how consumers feel about banner ads.  They are often identified as being synonymous with malware – and not to mention annoying.  And more often than not are totally irrelevant to the consumer.  To make display impactful, it should be carefully targeted to the appropriate audience and not cast as a blanket online.

On your next digital campaign, try combining a content article with a relevant banner ad to see an incremental lift in clickthroughs.  Be sure to ad contextual text ads in the mix as well.

So as far as display advertising being dead, no it isn’t.  It should simply be looked at through a different lens, as it’s further up the marketing funnel than PPC.  Create your display advertising strategy to achieve upper to mid-level funnel brand recognition.  Couple on the use of bidding and targeting tools to create bottom of the funnel lead generation conversions.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Optimization Testing vs Diminishing Returns

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Optimization Testing vs Diminishing Returns

The benefits of continuous improvement and optimization of web and mobile presences are a given.  Optimization testing provides Marketers with concrete evidence that the changes implemented are either valid or yielding a negative conversion rate.  Marketers are under extreme pressure to increase RPS (revenue per sale) and CR (conversion rate), while also decreasing cart abandonment and CPS (cost per sale).  Thus optimization testing is leaned on very heavily.

It should go without saying that too much of anything (well almost anything…) does not lend good results.  While many organizations strike a good balance between creative trailblazing and sticking with the tested, tried and true, others seem to use testing as a crutch.  They simply over-test.  From running test after test on button colors, below the fold copy, to even the hair color of people in images used on landing pages.  It becomes clear that Marketers in these situations do not have a clear understanding of larger impacts that will move the needle.  Instead they’ll opt for a .4% CR win.

What’s important to understand is that each element of your website or mobile app should be optimized, but there’s a point where it’s good enough and incremental changes simply won’t give you big boosts to CR or RPS – this is unfortunately, the Law of Diminishing Returns.

I encourage Marketers to optimize and realize the results of good testing, but do not allow testing to paralyze your creative strategy.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Knowing Your Audience

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When it comes to marketing, knowing your target audience is key.  Sophisticated organizations understand that there is no one size fits all when it comes to advertising.  Therefore these organizations utilize targeting, segmentation, look-alike models, and personalization to ensure that the content of their marketing campaigns speaks directly to the intended audience.

Historically, the financial and investment services industry has been very buttoned-up and conservative when it comes to marketing.  However, that’s changing with the likes of companies such as Wealthfront who are shaking up the financial status quo.  Wealthfront understands the relationship between its message and its audience.  The following commercial runs on cable TV channels frequented by Generation Y viewers, that you simply wouldn’t expect from a financial services organizations – yet, this is the very thing that is setting Wealthfront apart from the competition.  It really gets interesting at 0:43.

However, let’s not be fooled.  Wealthfront chooses it content and messaging carefully when advertising on more conservative cable television channels such as FOX News.  See what runs there.

Notice the lack of lifestyle images, people, humor and butt-grabbing.  Instead the visuals are of graphs and value propositions.

Knowing your customer base and target audience is instrumental in creating the right types of marketing campaigns.  How you message to your target demographics should remain consistent through the entire customer journey – from lead generation to retention marketing.  Your customers aren’t cookie cutter, and your marketing campaigns shouldn’t be either.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Why Do I Need a Personal Brand?

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Branding Green
As a politician, athlete, celebrity, executive or entrepreneur it may be obvious that developing a personal brand is essential. What may not seem as apparent is that everyone should give thought as to what their personal brand is. Branding is all about perception. If you place a negative perception about yourself, product or service into the universe, then people will perceive that as reality. Likewise if you carefully craft a positive and measured persona about who you are and what you stand for, people will take that as face value.

Creating and cultivating your personal brand is all about strategy and it can be extremely difficult and tedious. The upside however is very rewarding because it allows you to control the message about who you are. If you do not take control, others will. A great deal of introspection is required to really focus on your past behaviors and decisions, beliefs, accomplishments, short-comings and goals to build a full view of what your brand should be. For many, it’s wanting to be seen as a rising star, potential CEO or a no-bull politician ready to shake up the status quo; or simply as boxer Floyd Mayweather has said, ‘The Best Ever’. However, if your past actions do not align with your stated objective, a great deal of cultivation will be needed to close the gap. This is especially true if you have a negative online persona. Slander and negative content is easily found about many people online and it can be explosive to a person’s personal goals. Handling and defending it quickly and proactively is a must.

So now what? If you’re interested in learning how to best build your personal brand there are a few options available. There’s always the Do-It-Yourself method. If you have a marketing background, this may be a good option. If this is not the case, working with public relations firms that specialize in personal branding and reputation management can be a great solution. If you reside in the EU, it’s as easy as submitting a ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ request to Google.  This essentially erases negative and misleading content about you from search results.

And don’t let all the hard work of building your brand fall by the wayside. After you’ve polished your online brand, be sure to proactively manage your online reputation. Being proactive and responding quickly to negative interpretations about your brand is key to being effective in accomplishing your goals.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Damage Control – What to Do When a Social Media Problem Occurs

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After the Storm of Social Media Damage

You’ve probably heard of Applebee’s blunder on social media. A pastor wrote on a receipt that he shouldn’t have to give an Applebee’s waitress 18 percent when he only gives God 10 percent. An image ended up going viral that led to Applebee’s social media representative writing a defensive comment in reply to it. Applebee’s followers fired back with 10,000 negative comments. The company was then accused of deleting those comments and blocking users, which can be viewed unfavorably by social media users.

This situation is frightening, but it’s preventable. People online will express their opinions, but it’s how you react to them that matters. It’s never a good idea to reply defensively to negative comments. Handle situations like this one professionally by always staying positive and providing the best customer service.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.

Beating FSU and Ending Season 13-1

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University of Houston Football Peach Bowl Champs

Go Coogs!  Congrats on the 38 – 24 W against Florida State University.

NCAA Football: Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl-Houston vs Florida State

Dec 31, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Houston Cougars quarterback Greg Ward Jr. (1) gestures from the field in the first quarter against the Florida State Seminoles during the 2015 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl at the Georgia Dome. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

Marketing Across Multiple Social Media Platforms

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Girl on Couch with TabletSocial media is one of the most affordable and effective methods of marketing available today. Zappos, Ford Motor Company, and Burger King are just some of the many companies that use it. What’s great about social media is that you don’t have to be the owner of a huge company to use it. No matter the type or size of the business you own, you can use social media to market it. Before you jump in though, it’s important to understand how to use social networks effectively.

Challenges of Social Media Marketing

Business owners often complain that posting on multiple social media networks is too time consuming and it doesn’t have a high return on investment. While many people experience this, it’s usually because they are not doing it in the right way. If you know how to save time and make social media marketing effective, it will keep you from dealing with the same challenges.

How to Save Time

You don’t have to be strapped to a computer to post an update on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Google+. You can schedule posts to go out at certain times of the day on all the social networks you are using to market your business. This way you can go about your day without having to worry about providing your audience the information they look for from you.

Facebook allows you to schedule your posts on their platform. For Twitter and Google+, you will have to use a social media marketing tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite. These programs will publish posts for you at times it believes your audience is most likely to use the social networks you specify, or you can select the timing for the posts yourself. For sites such as YouTube and Instagram, you will need to post them immediately, but the good news is you don’t have to post multiple times a day on those sites to be effective.

Making Social Media Worth It

Social media marketing builds your business’ brand. When you present your business name and logo repeatedly with posts, people start to remember them. As you post valuable information to your followers, people will start to appreciate you. They will share your posts and recommend them to others. Those people follow you and the cycle starts all over again. Many people will notice who is posting such great content and click on the link to the poster’s website. This is how a business increases its visibility online.

This all doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to build a following across multiple platforms because you have to test out different posts to find out what your audience likes the best. Some people love to watch videos, while others just like images or text-based posts. You also need to learn what time of the day your audience is online. A post may receive more attention in the afternoon when people are taking a break at work, or later in the evening after they’ve had dinner. The only way to figure it all out is to test it, which takes time, but it’s worth it when you find the times and the types of posts that receive the most attention.

Making Digital Marketing Less Overwhelming

Many companies such as Amazon, Red Bull, Visa, and McDonald’s have used social media to successfully market their products and services, but they have a team behind them handling it all. This team posts for them, handles comments, and works on increasing online visibility. Small business owners can do the same thing by hiring just one social media manager. This person can be in charge of your business’ reputation management by following what people are saying about your business, responding in a positive way, and giving social media users the information they want to read and share with others.

Social media marketing is what small businesses are using right now because it’s low cost and effective. Get started today simply by setting up an account on a social media network such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, or Facebook Pages. Before you know it, you’ll be increasing your brand awareness and bringing in new customers. That’s the glory of social media marketing.

Rolanda Gregory ©2016
All Rights Reserved.