Five Digital Marketing Trends For The Festive Season

by with No Comment BusinessDigital Marketing

  Amidst celebrations, individuals are happy to spend substantially more than they would on regular days. This directly converts into enormous opportunities that brands can explore by strategically redesigning their marketing plans. It is 2020 and the power of social media and the requirement for brands to refocus their strategies through digital means has already been established. Along with the trio of food, fun and family, the festive season also brings fresh trends that brands can explore to give their marketing strategies a boost.

#Discount, discount and More discount

Undoubtedly the primary way to entice customers is through discounts. Although consumers already have a clear buying intent, they will be more inclined towards brands with better offers and maximum discounts. Leading brands like Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart have already announced their annual festive sales, almost a month before the festival actually begins. Marketers must closely audit consumer patterns, buyers’ personas, prospective buyers, cart abandoners and purchase signals. They could then use tools like Google in market, Google AdSense, etcetera to remarket to the target audience and may also send customised advertisements to re-lure them.

#People want more? Innovate.

Discounts and sales are a very common incentive used by every brand. Giving your services an innovative twist is the key to being more lucrative. Amazon came up with a special offer whereby festive goers could order last minute items they had overlooked earlier and Amazon promised to deliver it that same weekend with no additional cost. Businesses can also take a step further and turn into part-time bankers to lure in more sales. They can provide financial offers such as EMI’s on expensive purchases like television, laptops; down payment options; buy back options and others. E-commerce businesses like Amazon and Flipkart have accelerated their sales by broadening their payment options.

#Go Local

One way to fuel up your marketing efforts would be by connecting with the audience on a deeper level. A cultural-brand connect is a smart and personalised way to interact with the audience. If you genuinely want to join in the festive celebrations with your audience, it is important to speak their language. Going local and communicating with vernacular content is sure to make a great impact. Pantaloons customised its advertisements for its Bengali viewers- ‘Pujo maanei Pantaloons’. Pantaloons got talking to its consumers with a digital montage capturing a perfect blend of the Pujo sentiment and brand offers.

#Campaigns

The festive season is the perfect time for brands to switch up their social media plan. Brands could launch a campaign keeping in mind the celebratory mood and their target audience. They could use appropriate hashtags, run contests and conduct giveaways. Cadbury captured the merry mood in its #BadiFamilyBadiDiwali where the brand encouraged the audience to capture and share moments with their big family and incentivised them with an opportunity to be featured in an outdoor advertisement. Anil Viswanathan, the marketing director commented, “Over the years, Cadbury Celebrations has become synonymous to festivities in India. With an aim to reinstate the joy of gifting, we are encouraging the audience to celebrate festivals and share delightful moments with their loved ones because happiness shared is happiness multiplied.”

#SOS Influencers

Brands may have neglected the impact of social media influencers earlier but they must hop into the bandwagon during the festivities. Partnering with content creators may seem like an overdone trend but the reach capabilities of these influencers is unparalleled. Moreover, getting influencers on board with your campaign can further extend your audience base. HDFC Bank along with its marketing agency Kinnect executed ‘Make Every #WishComeTrue with #HDFCBankFestiveTreats’. With this strategy the brand got in touch with trendsetters on Instagram who were promoting other brands and capitalised on these advertisements. Almost every sponsored ad by Instagram influencers was followed by a HDFC story on how to purchase that product with a HDFC offer. Like the chief marketing officer, Ravi Santhanam said, “An Ad for and ad. This campaign is an ingenious way to create brand affinity and talkability amidst the over-cluttered festive space on digital. All our marketing efforts focus on being native and non-intrusive to users. This campaign did just that through the clever takeover of Instagram through influencers.”

So, is your business ready for the festive season? Following these trends would surely guide your business to build an alluring marketing strategy.

Why Outsourcing your Social Media Marketing is the Best Thing to do in 2018

by with No Comment Social Media

With most social networking platforms reaching their all-time high figures, in terms of the number of users, Social Media Marketing has undoubtedly become one of the most popular ways of reaching out to your target audience. If done properly, it can provide very high ROI and help shape your brand’s image.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)is very important for your brand and it needs to be done in a proper manner. Many people have this notion that it is an easy task, and the basics of Facebook and Twitter will help them sail through. In reality, it is much more complicated and requires the knowledge of a professional.

SMM is more than just advertising across social channels. It requires the knowledge of various software and apps for managing your marketing campaign. It also demands an ability to create quality content which will be a hit with your target audience. You need a continuous campaign, across various social channels, curated specifically for your target audience.

All this is seldom possible with a small in-house marketing team. They may not be as well equipped with the intricacies of social media marketing. Also, social media is time-consuming and it may not always be possible for them to look into this. As a company which is just starting up, you have numerous other tasks to look after. In such a case, outsourcing your social media marketing will be your best bet. The past year was a huge year for social media, with the number of Facebook users reaching 2 billion, and these figures will continue to grow in 2018. Outsourcing your social media will have the following benefits.

Save Money

If you don’t outsource, you will need to hire a professional. This will probably be more expensive as apart from the salary you will have to look into other benefits and overheads. Working directly with a b2b agency will provide you more value for money. Also, you won’t have to spend on any software, tools or training as they will already be equipped with the same


Expertise

Social media doesn’t just involve sharing posts. It also involves analysing huge amounts of data and figuring out a proper strategy based on the results. Marketing agencies catering to social media will have many experienced members who actually enjoy doing all this.Moreover, tools and technology are developing at a very steep rate and it will be difficult for you to keep up with all this. The coming year might also see newer forms of social media emerging or new advertising formats across channels. All this should be left to the professionals. As stated before, social marketing is not as easy as it appears.

Response Management

If you are busy, there are chances that the queries on social media platforms, by your customers go unattended. This will be better handled by a separate agency. So if you have a product launch or a team outing, you need not worry about your social media presence fading out. Marketing agencies like ours provide continuous solutions and ensure your presence across social channels at all times.

Targeting your audience

If you cannot answer questions like who you are targeting specifically, and where is there presence likely to be found, it is best that a third party handle your social media handles. They will research your target audience, find out how and where to target them and generate leads for your company.

If you are not convinced enough, just have a look at your social media marketing outcomes. Is your in-house marketing team or the underpaid intern able to generate enough leads? If the answer is not satisfactory, you are probably not doing it right and should look towards outsourcing your social media marketing, in the coming year.

7 Hand-picked Digital Marketing Campaigns That Were Savage in 2017

by with No Comment Digital MarketingSocial Media

Digital marketing has become a crucial step towards generating leads and promoting the brand among the audience. The past year had witnessed various innovative digital marketing campaigns. Let us have a look at the six of our top picks, below.

Heineken – Worlds Apart

https://youtu.be/8wYXw4K0A3g

Heineken launched one of the most effective campaigns as of 2017, attracting worldwide acclaim. The 4 and a half minute video demonstrated a social experiment, wherein people were grouped into pairs and each pair was given some furniture to assemble, into a bar counter. Post this, they were shown videos through which it was revealed to them that the person they had been paired with, had vastly contrasting opinions. The feminist had been paired with a man who believed in patriarchy, a climate change denier with an environmentalist and a transgender with a person who did not support this notion. They are then offered an option to walk away or have a discussion over a bottle of beer. All of them choose to do the latter. Though the ending was evident (being an advertising campaign of Heineken beer), the content kept the audience hooked. It had 3 million views, during the first 8 days of its launch and was largely praised for tackling social issues properly, something which the Pepsi ad, launched at the same time, failed to address.

Airbnb – We Accept

Another ad which had the notion of diversity and acceptance, and was a memorable campaign of 2017.The ad depicted faces of people with different nationalities, races and gender, including immigrants, disaster survivors and refugees, along with textual slogans saying  ” No matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love, or who you worship, you deserve to belong,”  The campaign was a direct attack on Trump’s discriminatory immigration policies which had come to light during the same time.

The New York Times – The truth is hard to find

‘The truth is hard to find’ was a full-fledged campaign to showcase the importance of journalism, in today’s era. There were print ads and various versions of short video ads which targeted the liberal audience. The video ads were a series of photos along with a narration by the photojournalists who captured them. Video ads depict extreme conditions including ISIS bombings and Syrian refugees, depicting the hard work and dedication the journalists put in. Simple, yet very effective the NY Times campaign was an instant hit among the viewers.

Apple – Shot on iPhone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpUa7YvhUJo

Whether or not you are an Apple lover, you cannot deny the fact that the ‘shot on iPhone’ ad campaigns, made an impact. Among them, ‘The Earth’ ad touched many hearts. With beautiful, high – quality nature-themed photographs, and a narration from the book Pale Blue Dot, this was a reminder of taking our planet more seriously. This was an extremely memorable ad of Apple’s ‘shot on iPhone series’, in the past year.

Worldwide Breast Cancer – Know your lemons

The #KnowYourLemons was a light-hearted campaign which was aimed at spreading awareness about the serious issue of breast cancer. It had a catchy hashtag, and adopted a visual approach, in order to inform women regarding symptoms of breast cancer. The campaign gave women critical information about catching the disease in its early stages, and a common forum at Facebook to discuss issues regarding the same. The pictorial depiction, using a tray of lemons, would even help illiterate women understand the symptoms. This donation campaign became very popular and exceeded their fundraising by 317%.

IKEA – Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xxOvsyNseY

IKEA is an augmented reality brand, which launched an App ‘Place’ utilizing Apple’s ARKit. It lets the user visualize and place furniture in his room ( or any other place), at a real scale. Apart from having some fun placing random furniture here and there, the app actually helped make people sound decisions while buying furniture.The campaign soon became a hit, and the idea appealed to people instantly. IKEA has become one of the leading names in the AR industry, post this ad campaign.

Top 6 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch for in 2018

by with No Comment Digital Marketing

Looking back at 2017, it is an undeniable fact that Digital Marketing has grown to new heights. Numerous new technologies and emerging social media platforms have contributed to the development of this sector.

With the advent of new and better automation driven technology, availability of more and more data for better analysis, and a further rise in social media platforms we would be looking towards a more customer-centric approach of marketing, in the near future. Here are some of the top trends to look out for in 2018, in the field of Digital Marketing.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning:

AI and ML  have made their presence felt across several domains, in the past year. Tech-savvy marketers can use AI to for predicting customer behaviour based on data collected from various social media sites, blogs and other platforms. Making better predictions regarding customer choice will allow you to target the consumer in a more personalized manner, and make your ads more effective.
It is essential for a digital marketer to learn about and master the various automation tools that are used in advertising. Automation is the future, and incorporating it into your marketing strategies will only yield positive results.

Credits: http://www.futuretravelexperience.com

Chatbots

Chatbots are artificial intelligence-based virtual assistants which have become largely popular in today’s digital era. They provide the customer with real-time answers to their queries regarding the product. Chatbots are evolving continuously, courtesy the various machine language and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, which they are based on.  These are a fun way to boost consumer interaction. A chatbot engages, entertains as well as retains customers as well as improve social media presence.

Credits: www.slideshare.net

Micro-moments :

We rely heavily on our smartphones for instant information today. We tend to look up what to eat, what to buy, where to go, reflexively on our phones. These are called ‘micro-moments, in which decisions are made at the spur of the moment. It is definitely a field which digital marketers are looking forward to in 2018. Marketers are striving to provide location-specific, relevant user experiences by analysing these micro-moments in depth.

Dark Social

Many times, we share posts or articles privately, i.e not on social media. We copy a URL and send it via messenger apps, or email to others. This is known as Dark Social. These can’t be tracked easily, and are often clubbed together with ‘direct’ traffic by your web analytics team. It is a difficult area to identify and explore, but it holds immense potential. Around 84% of outbound sharing, is done through Dark Social. This is something which should definitely be on the radar of digital marketers in 2018.

Credits: www.medium.com

Video Marketing

Video content is known to provide the best ROI. Apart from video ads, live streaming has also gained momentum. With video formats becoming popular not only across sites like Facebook and YouTube but also across micro-video sharing websites like Instagram and Dubsmash, it has become a very effective means of targeting young audiences.
It is estimated that video content marketing will continue to grow throughout 2018. Social media marketers should lay special focus on live streaming as well.

Personalization

Today simple means of content marketing is not enough and customers want a more personalized approach. E-commerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart etc already use personalized recommendations for their customers. These are much more effective than generic emails sent out to all subscribers. With the increase in automation and predictive analysis, personalized content marketing will be on the rise in the coming year.

 

Top 7 Tricks To Make Your Content Go Viral

by with No Comment Digital Marketing

Top 7 Tricks To Make Your Content Viral - BrandyMyBiz

Any piece of media that becomes crazily trendy creates all the rage and generates thousands of views, likes, comments and shares overnight is known as viral content. It begins to assist you just as a charm bracelet or a lucky gemstone does since your brand gets heightened exposure and reaches a whole new level of population that you couldn’t even fathom. If you’re looking to create a buzz for your business or if you just want to become popular and achieve your own sixty seconds of fame, keep scrolling.  

  • Make it short and crisp

The enormous mass of viral content is short and to the point. Videos tend to range from around 30 seconds to one minute. Anything lengthy and you might lose your grasp and your audience. The same rule applies to blogs. People have short attentions spans and lose interest real quick so make it straightforward for them with to-the-point engrossing content along with using pictures, bullet points and subheadings or subtopics.

  • Make it relatable

People tend to love books and movies where they can identify themselves with the characters. The same thing holds true for blogs. If people can relate to it and apply it in their own lives, they are much more likely to discuss it with others. When something is special to someone, they will share it with their family and friends.

  • Make it genuine

Most people avoid videos or blogs that appear unrealistic, unachievable or overdone.  They must have an authentic feel. A simple “how to” guide, “Tips”, “points to keep in mind”, “look-book” etc is a good example, and video bloopers of behind the scenes or edited scenes of an exciting event is also a great example.

  • Be interactive

People prefer and love content which they can discuss and express their opinion about, and the more interactive your content is, the more likely it is to get public and promoted.

Interactive content such as quizzes, questionnaires, give your views, surveys are a phenomenal means to achieve this.

  • Give it a gripping title

With such vast amount of content available today, it is imperative to make an amazing first impression, or you’ll end up being sidelined.

Ensure that your title/heading catchy, appealing and inquisitive. Always ask yourself the question “Would I connect to this topic?” or “Do I really want to know?” or “Is this beneficial for me?” etc.

Top 7 Tricks To Make Your Content Go Viral

  • Choose your topic carefully

Keep in mind the content of your Blog, Post, Tweet, a Facebook share isn’t something that people would think about twice before discussing it with their friends & acquaintances.  Remember that when people hit “send” they are setting their reputation and status on the line by sharing it with family and friends.

  • Use lists and images

There is something about lists and images which are really appealing and alluring. The majority of the people just love lists and images. Usage of attractive pictures helps in conveying the message better and a huge percentage of the population are in favour of audio-visual messages and learning.

Also, if you want your content to go viral, make sure you have posted high-resolution images to grab your viewer’s attention and a comments section to get them interested and engaged.

Follow these tips and You’re good to go!

Happy Blogging!

To Resist Or Persist Attribution?

by with No Comment Digital Marketing

Leads and conversion on our websites are golden, so to whom do you attribute these little nuggets of gold? 

Last touch?  First Touch (if you could ever know what that is)…. One day? Seven Days? Last Year? Or do you abdicate your own POV to Google?

After all Google Analytics is easy to sell internally to cross-functional peers. Unless your communication plan is exclusively through Google – Google analytics attribution will not be enough.

Historically marketers have not been known as analytical numbers folks. However, as our craft has gone digital we can now attribute very crisp returns on our investments and evolve from an expense line on the P&L to a profit center. However, there is still an art to the math. Since consumers do not live in one “channel” of communication, we cannot attribute a single channel of communication for all the site traffic or sales. This leaves us the responsibility of creating unique attribution models appropriate to specific campaigns.

For example, You launch a new product on the Rachel Ray show. During the show, you tweet to your followers big thanks to Rachel Rayfor supporting your launch. Your site has been optimized so that search will bring your product up to the top of the search organically, as well as, sponsored search to be guarantee first position.  Pinterest has boards showing all the uses of this product and is now trending. Facebook live video aired from the Rachel Ray green room by your social media manager. There are also several affiliate marketing sites supporting your product launch. Who do you attribute the site visits and sales this week when you report back into the cross-functional team about the amazing success of your first week in the market?

brandymybiz - persist or resist attribution

Here is where persistence versus resistance is critical to maximizing the success of your product launch. Not every communication vehicle will be equally valuable, and this is where the real art of our craft begins. What do you dial up and what do you dial back? Persistent marketers will immediately start playing with the dials and watch daily, weekly and monthly impacts of all your channels to see where traffic and engagement are active. There is also a need to believe in your gut and if one channel is suffering, don’t assume it is the channel but more likely your execution in that channel. Test different target definitions. Test different content.

Be authentic to the channels and don’t be lazy with the same content plastered on all channels. “Consumer Speak” search terms are rarely a headline for a social post, so I’m sure you aren’t mixing those two, right?
Be persistent with our communication craft and take the attribution data from all the different channels not as a go/no go directive, but as a gauge for changing the dials to optimize and keep the traffic coming and converting.

Rebecca Fretty

President & CMO, PinkImperfection