Five Tips To Remember Before Tapping On Digital Marketing

Before starting to do something related so digital marketing, you should notice some tips that may aid you to have a general understanding of it. Digital marketing is an emerging tool for marketers but it would be much better if you are careful about how it works and pay attention to avoid making some mistakes.

1.There Is No Digital Strategy, Just Strategy In A Digital World.

There are no rules as everything is changing so fast. Nevertheless you still need to consider about the following things. First, think about your target customers’ persona and how does that translate online. Second, what problems they have and how would you help them solve the problems (motivate them to take the action) online. Lastly, the reasons why you are valuable and you need to know where to reach your customers online as well. And it’s interesting to find that many procedures here are circular instead of being linear. So it’s normal that we never stop modifying anything after analyzing the results and it seems that there is no end here.

2. Content Is Fire, And Social Media Is Gasoline.

Yes, content is the KING and social media drives the most engagement across your marketing mix. So it’s not a smart move for you to just hire some unexperienced interns to handle with your social media platforms – social strategy is playing a critical role in your overall digital strategies, so you are supposed to invest much manpower and material resources into it. After brainstorming ideas, an editorial calendar targeting 3~5 topics should be created to guarantee the efficiency. What’s more, there are many forms of paid media embedded in the social media platforms and they are very effective and measurable. You can regard SEO as content marketing, too – you are optimizing online content.

3. More Searches Take Place On Mobile Devices Than Desktops.

Therefore, keeping enhancing the user experience on mobiles is very important. You can know whether your website is mobile friendly by going to Google Mobile-Friendly Test and entering your web page URL. Nowadays, it’s getting more and more difficult for marketers to decide the attributions for each campaign – customers may search the products on their mobile phones first and make the payments on their laptops afterwards. In fact, it’s said that 93% of people who used mobile to research go on to make a purchase. As a result, you should be aware of your RANKING on the Google search engine results pages both on the mobile devices and desktops – there are two bidding systems.

4. Different Trends In Different Countries.

Although technically speaking the trends are global, the popularity degree of each trend is slightly different in different countries. For example, in Asian countries, the QR code is much more popular than it is in western countries. Similarly, email marketing is almost useless in countries like China but it’s still the most effective marketing tactic in America. There are some other intriguing high-tech trends for marketing including augmented/virtual reality and wearable devices that you’re expected to savvy.

5. Big Data Can’t Tell You Everything.

It’s hard for you to track EVERYTHING on the internet (like the dark social part) and it’s easy for you to get overwhelmed by the tons of information you have collected. Big data is both art and science – how would you interpret the data and show the conclusions matters much more. For marketers, measure what matters most. Focusing on the right metrics and attributing the value across the journey will prove the impact of our marketing and tell the effect of our investments. To measure KPI (Key Performance Indicators) with measurement tools, the first thing is to determine your marketing objective and the marketing channels. Another thing is concerning on the “whales” more when you are doing customer-centric measurement, the segments of your customers who completed high-value purchases. Find them and retain more then. Last but not least, never forget that the aim of digital measurement is to understand and optimize the contributions that digital activities make to the desired business.

Beyond Shooting A Goal

Are you crazy about Pokémon Go recently? Are you busy searching for creatures all the time and capturing them by tapping on the ball and flicking it up towards the Pokémon as if it is in the real world? Are  you familiar with the scenario? Let’s see a video first.

In fact, McDonald’s promoted its fry boxes during the 2014 World Cup exactly in the same way. “Consumers were able to align their smartphones with a graphic element on the box, triggering an interactive overlay which appeared to jump out at them. Consumers could continue to interact on their phones by flicking a finger to shoot a goal within the display.”(Refers to Why Augmented Reality Marketing Will Be Huge in 2015, by NewsCred) So this technique – augmented reality, is not that unfamiliar to us since it has been already applied to the marketing world.

What is augmented reality marketing

As you have seen from the above, augmented reality provides companies an opportunity to combine various elements (especially the visual ones and the motion ones) to attract  their customers in a more fantastic way, usually through the apps.

What are the shining points

You will get the points by imagining the following scene – It’s my favorite one.

From the video we can see that IKEA has made it possible for its customers to have a previous look about how the new furniture fit in their home. It’s very useful. What’s more, it brings a lot of pleasure in a family because the family members get to take amusing pictures by this function. It seems that they are enjoying the moments and I think it’s a good way for a company to engage their customers as well. Furthermore, the video conveys messages which echo the brand mantra of IKEA – best design (brand function), family (descriptive modifier), fun (emotional modifier). Therefore, IKEA is advocating its brand culture by the means of exploring augmented reality to some extent. In a word, augmented reality is a powerful tool which is truly multi-functional and innovative, helping companies to attain multiple goals at the same time.

What is holding it back

It’s not about creating something new uncertainly but enhancing the existing experience. Therefore the challenge for the marketers to implement it is that whether augmented reality can always add values. Customers won’t scan every product when they are shopping – so it’s critical for marketers to figure out the contexts in which their customers are willing to do this and finally spend the money on their goods.

It’s fashionable but also promising in the long term

It’s true that for entrepreneurs and investors, AR and VR are the catchwords like big data in their mouths in the past two years. Then you may think of the famous saying, “Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it…” However, from my point of view, AR is another story, different from big data. It’s like a magic which could help you to realize your dreams – trying on different clothes and different makeups, going to all the places in the world and having all the furniture at home – and in turn, the companies sell their products.

Why I would recommend it

Let’s have a look at some numbers below.

Refers to Why Virtual And Augmented Reality is A Ripe Target For Marketers, by David Bolton

As we talked before, augmented reality gives emotional footprint, which can not be replaced or surpassed by other current techniques. AR is far beyond shooting a goal in a game or an app. It contains a world that your customers may not want to leave even for a while in the future. And it is worth mentioning that there are some augmented reality softwares offering services to the companies for marketing purposes, which makes it accessible for everyone who desires to tap on this technology. Last but not least, will you forget the fact that Pokemon Go craze sees Nintendo share price increase 86% in a week adding 15 billion to the company value? I don’t think you will.

After all, it’s not that easy to get tired of your Pokémon right?

big data in the digital marketing era

In recent years, big data has been a hot issue in the whole world and it seems that this trend won’t hit the wall in the following years. As for marketers, big data is playing a more and more important role when they are enacting marketing strategies.

What is big data?

Big data refers to the ever-increasing volume, velocity, variety, variability and complexity of information. For marketing organizations, big data is the fundamental consequence of the new marketing landscape, born from the digital world we now live in. The benefits brought by big data to a company are influenced by the compatibility as well.

What can we do with big data?

Big data can tell us much information about customers even beyond our imagination. But there are some limitations and we can’t trust every bit of data we get due to the low efficiency and accuracy of the data processing. Sometimes it could be confusing even misleading. It’s said that less than 10% of companies get to use the data they have collected effectively. Therefore, it’s not easy to deal with a large amount of numbers in the right way and get what exactly we want.

Source: Big Data, Bigger Marketing

Source: 7 Limitations Of Big Data In Marketing Analytics

Is data itself enough?

We can make future marketing decisions based on past behavior the data provides but hold the fact that data alone is not enough. For now, visualizing data derived from big data is very welcomed. Marketers tend to conduct analysis of the market on the basis of the data they “see” intuitively. However, in my opinion, there are still two other critical points when it comes to new campaigns. First is the timeliness. Second is the creativity. I don’t think it’s possible for big data to give us adequate advice about these two facets. Of course, forecasting the trends is one vital mission of big data, nevertheless expecting the breaking news in the future is not what big data is good at. Marketers always need to make good marketing plans catering to the current affairs, especially the ones that happen out of people’s expectations to attain the optimal effects. There is no doubt that “out of expectations” means they are unpredictable for any analysis tools we have, including big data. Furthermore, perhaps big data can tap on human nature and tell you some conclusions drew from the behavior analysis but it can’t teach you how to fascinate your customers by what kinds of creative methods. You still demand some knowledge that big data may not tell you now.

A successful marketing boss without advertising？

About one year ago, the group marketing director of Pret A Manger, Mark Palmer, was confident that he could boost the sales by improving the in-store experience without much advertising: “For us, ad spend is improving the menu or optimizing the impact of our window displays. We don’t put out paid for traditional ads and that is unlikely to change.” (Pret A Manger’s marketing boss on succeeding without advertising, By Thomas Hobbs)

How about now?

The above screenshot indicates a type of native advertising because it showed up unexpectedly while I was browsing what my friends had posted on Facebook. According to this campaign, it advocates consumers to try Pret A Manger’s new drinks for summer by adding a link to its official website. The campaign has been placed on the homepage of the website, so it’s obvious that it’s an important promotion for the company lately.

What is this?

Based on this kind of paid advertising, Pret A Manger gets to reach its target customers by choosing certain traits of audiences when it creates the campaign.

Facebook Ad Basics

It can also provide opportunities to reach the existed customers by the email addresses the company has already collected linked to Facebook, as well as the new customers by looking for lookalike audiences, under privacy security. The core competence is that Facebook exposes relevant ads to its users depend on their interests, which has guaranteed that it is an useful and powerful tool for the businesses.

What does the bill look like?

Compared to banners, promoting the business in this way tends to cost more.

How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?

It seems that you have a lot of freedom when you decide to release the ads-you can choose how much money you are planning to spend on the ads each day-even only $5 a day is acceptable. However, there are tons of brands on Facebook desiring to reach the customers at the same time. Thus you have to bid for the more chances-after all, it’s impossible for Facebook to display so many ads for one user a day. It would push customers away and cause losses to both of Facebook itself and the advertisers as well.

How would I like it?

Yes, I like it for two reasons. First, although it feels a little “helpless” that I may have to bid for the ads, especially if I were the owner of a small business, Facebook charges advertisers only when the ads reach the people on Facebook and there is an upper limit of cost that I can set and change at any times. No matter how much budget I have, I can always make some progress. At least it gives me a feeling that every penny I spend would be worth it.

Secondly, the function of Track Actions on Your Website makes it much easier for me to assess the result of each campaign and compare the effects, which would help a lot to my digital marketing activities in the future. It can tell me how to improve my campaign and how the visitors behave on my website, which offers further insight into the analysis of consumers’ behavior. To realize this function, all you need to do is inserting a small code given by Facebook before running a campaign.

All in all, it’ simple to use the tool, free to make budget, easy to reach the customers, achievable to evaluate the results.