5 + 1 Huge Digital Marketing Trends You Can’t Afford to Ignore

"Digital marketing is a discipline in flux", says Jonathan Gardner. We face an onslaught of shiny new technologies and platforms that promise to “change everything.” Marketers are creating similarly breathless headlines, proclaiming the next revolutionary devices/apps/social networks.

Yet, even smart marketers don’t know what changes the future will bring; but they do need to be aware that their industry is changing every day. For instance, to reach consumers marketers need to be increasingly mobile, engaging, relevant and aware of the contexts in which we currently operate. 

Here are five digital marketing trends as identified by Jonathan Gardner:

1. Location Services

2. New Ad Formats

3. User-Generated Curation

4. Advertise by Format

5. Integrated Marketing

Read more on these trends here. Would love to add Hybrid Retailing as the 6th trend, wherein there is a seamless integration of the ZMOT and the FMOT, specifically with the use of mobile devices. 

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Deals May Get You in the Door, but They Won't Build Relationships.

2010 & 2011 were all about "deals". Everyone chased the "new & shiny objects" However, there is an increasing concern on the value of the "deal customers". Marketers have avidly sought social-media fans in recent years, often using deals or sweepstakes to boost numbers. But are they really attracting the right people? 

Data from social-media analytics firm Colligent suggest many brands have attracted lots of deal seekers. And while these consumers may be profitable, they're not the most-effective brand advocates, according to some analysts and social-media executives. 

Brands that build fan bases using sweepstakes "end up with a very difficult time trying to get those fans to engage," said Justin Kistner, director of social products at analytics firm WebTrends. "They were never with your brand in the first place. They just wanted a chance to win that iPad," he said. "We call it garbage fans." 

Twitter now is even touting its relative lack of deal-seekers among brand followers as a selling point vs. Facebook. 

Read more here on Adage.  Also read here about "deep discounting"

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Understanding Frictionless Sharing

The term frictionless sharing refers to one’s online activity on his or her social network and connected personal profiles being automatically shared without having to click a button. Anticipating a potential decline of social button usage, Facebook launched frictionless sharing so that the volume of content on Facebook would continue to grow at an accelerated pace. Frictionless sharing potentially eliminates the need of social buttons as a way to share content with social network connections. When end users approve frictionless sharing applications, all media consumption is automatically posted to their profiles for the world to see.

Many companies like Spotify, The Washington Post, and The Guardian have already adopted frictionless sharing, and we can expect more companies to do the same as people grow tired of clicking multiple buttons to share content across their social networks. While frictionless model continues to be controversial – especially around the invasive quality of its functionality – some reports suggest that many people have come to accept information sharing as the price one pays to participate in social networking. However, it’s only a matter of time before the passive sharing of content causes too many privacy violations to be ignored – forcing more people to question the need to “pay a price” at all.

Read more of Frictionless Sharing and about Building Connected Brands without Disrupting here

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The Social Media Advocacy Model

In theory, as social media becomes more common place, organizational audience engagement objectives, strategies and tactics should evolve past acquisition towards advocacy. Mark Smiciklas is quite sure some consumer brands are heading in this direction but, in his experience, many companies and agencies still seem to be focused on driving audience awareness and using “likes” and “follows” as success metrics.

To spark some discussion on the topic Mark thought it might be helpful to present an encapsulated view of advocacy. This brilliant infographic aims to present advocacy at a glance, explaining where it sits on the audience relationship spectrum while visualizing the steps organizations can follow to move connections towards becoming advocates.

Here are a few notes on the process and the model:

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Key Points About Integrating Traditional and New Mediums

Some brands have been forged in the digital fire while others have had to (or eventually will have to) jump into it. The biggest problem Michael sees here is we are trying to treat these two entities as one.

These are two very different situations and need to be treated as such. Those outside the bubble, who did not build their business in these channels are interested in what digital has to offer, but they don’t always need it just yet. It’s not that there isn’t a juicy opportunity, but balancing multiple channels (especially a mix of traditional and digital ones) is no easy feat.

Michael writes that we often try to show traditional brands the success digital brands have experienced. It is alluring, but it isn’t always relevant. Rather than enticing prospects with purely digital examples like Zappos or even those who have long had digital efforts like Levis, one needs to understand a few key points illustrated wonderfully here in a recent post by Michael Schechter.

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Digital Marketing Outlook. 2012.

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Digital Marketing Spending to Increase Across All Channels

While traditional digital channels such as search and email continue to dominate retailer marketing spending, social and mobile channels are growing in importance. Marketers are also seeking to improve data analytics capabilities to identify the most profitable channels and design the optimal marketing mix for driving engagement and sales. These are the top-level findings of a recent survey of 110 retailers conducted by Lauren Freedman and the e-tailing group, an e-commerce consultancy for merchants.

The report, “Surviving the Current Market Mania with a Solid 2012 Plan,” was sponsored by Bronto Software, the leading marketing platform for retailers and other commerce-focused companies. The free report is available for download at bronto.com.

Regarding revenue generation, merchants surveyed said that they expect top-performing channels will be SEO (31%), Mobile (mCommerce, iPads, mobile application – 30%) email (22%), paid search (22%) and social media (14%).

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Google unifies mobile, desktop Web experience with Chrome for Android

The newly introduced Chrome for Android mobile browser will enable Google to differentiate Android from iOS and could open up new marketing opportunities for brands. 

Chrome for Android, which Google introduced earlier this week, enables users to take a personalized Web browsing experience with them as they move from desktop to mobile and back again. The browser aims to simplify mobile Web use, therefore potentially encouraging users to spend more time on the mobile Web. 

Chrome for Android could open up new marketing opportunities for brands by enabling a more seamless cross-screen experience for users. 

While the experience between the desktop and mobile devices is currently disparate, with Chrome for Android, users can have a single experience. 

Read more here:

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70% impulse purchase - no more.

70% of the brand decisions are made in the last mile - we have been following this "theory" for years and I have written plenty about it on this blog. Retailers and brands have taken it for granted that attractive presentation and packaging profoundly influence most shoppers’ purchasing decisions. 

While Paco Underhill in his bestseller Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, described supermarkets “as places of high impulse buying…. 60% to 70% of purchases there were unplanned, grocery industry studies have shown us.” These prompted retailers to devote ever growing resources to in-store promotion.

However, new(er) research by Wharton marketing professor David R. Bell differs with Underhill, describing the idea that most supermarket purchases are unplanned as something of an urban legend. In a new research paper, “Unplanned Category Purchase Incidence: Who Does It, How Often and Why,” Bell argues that the amount of unplanned buying is closer to 20%.

The above research is extremely significant and while I still believe that the "last mile is the new prime time" (when compared to the traditional TV prime time), there are a number of reasons for Prof. Bell's findings to be relevant today. One of the primary reasons is the emergence of the internet as the Zero Moment of Truth for brands and its impact on the First Moment of Truth in the store.

The shopper today walks into a store with far more per-purchase knowledge, recommendations & peer suggestions than was possible in the times when "Why we buy" was penned about 12 years ago. It is time to dump the 70% theory and focus on multichannel strategies and web-influenced retail sales.

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Mobile content development strategy for tablets.

Forrester Research predicts that tablet sales this year will start to outpace notebooks. While it is clear that marketers cannot ignore the tablet as a channel, the mobile device landscape has become increasingly complex and confusing for brands and consumers alike. 

How do you incorporate the tablet as part of your mobile content development strategy? 

Doug Heise and Sascha Langfus list some of the best practices for building an optimized, engaging Web presence on the tablet here.

AaramShop has adopted the Web App approach which helps it deliver the best of both worlds, allowing highly interactive mobile apps for the tablet that is optimized from a usability and functionality perspective, but that can also be deployed to a wide range of platforms and devices. However, what really caught my attention was the need to distinguish between the mobile phone app and the tablet app. Clearly a lot of additional work to be done here.

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Six Social Media Trends for 2012

From the guy who gets his trends right - most of the times, here are 6 Social Media Trends for the year ahead:

1. Convergence Emergence. 
2. The Cult of Influence.  
3. Gamification Nation. 
4. Social Sharing.  
5. Social Television. 
6. The Micro Economy.

To understand the trends in detail read this post by David Armano on HBR

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A Framework for Keeping CPG's Relevant Online

Came across this comprehensive and insightful essay by Jordan Julien. He has arrived at the insights based on examining internal documentation, and conducting ethnographic studies, from four different global CPG's and finding correlations. 

 

The synthesis of this work has culminated into "The Ecosystem of Understanding", a framework for keeping CPG's (and everyone else) relevant online.

Jordan been able to extract 5 insights common (as under) to every CPG he has worked with; even the most innovative.

1. We don't know who we're talking to, but we like to pretend like we do.
2. We don't know why we're talking to them, but we know we should be.
3. We suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome.
4. We're inconsistent, but we're learning.
5. We're old, scared, and angry; but its only a matter of time before we're phased out.

Read more here

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Red Herring Global 100 Award for AaramShop

AaramShop has won the coveted Red Herring Global 100 Award for the year 2011, at the Red Herring Forum in LA. 

This was a significant step further to the earlier Red Herring announcement of its Top 100 Asia award in recognition of the leading private companies from Asia, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

AaramShop had made it to the coveted list of Top 100 in Asia earlier.

We are thrilled to have received the award this early in our journey. AaramShop is the youngest company to have received the award this year. 

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FDI & the independent retailers.

Every news paper and show is saturated with the recently approved FDI in retail and its impact on the livelihood of millions of small businesses in India. I am sure everyone has an opinion on it. However, what caught my eye was the recent tweet by US President on his support for the small businesses in the US via the fantastic initiative #smallbusinesssaturday. I am sure this will add more fuel to the fire.

Our views & work at AaramShop is clearly focused at making the small business owner / independent neighborhood retailer competitive and relevant to the changing shopper behavior of the residents of the neighborhood. 

We firmly believe that the independent retailers have a number of unmatchable strengths which emerge from his proximity to the customers, willingness to provide delivery at the consumer's doorstep and years of relationship that have developed into a strong bond of trust. These, combined with increased accessibility of the storefront on the web, and the huge change in the way consumers use technology will make the local retailer more relevant to the consumer. 

AaramShop is already being used by over 600 retailers across 18 cities in India in the short 4 months of AaramShop's presence. 

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The Impact Of Technology On Brand Marketing.

Technology doesn't just give people a new way of doing things; it gives people a new way of thinking. The biggest impact of technology is the change it creates in people's perceptions.

In the absence of digital technologies, it would never occur to someone that marketers could be engaged in dialogue, much less dialogue at the point of contact. But the presumption of dialogue created by digital technologies goes beyond the technologies themselves.

People have learned a new capacity from digital technologies and they want to exercise it everywhere, even in low-tech points of contact.

Digital technologies operate instantaneously, so people are losing patience with anything that operates more slowly. The more liquid an activity becomes, the more people take it for granted, and once a capacity becomes commonplace in one domain, the more people come to expect it in other domains.

Technology doesn't just expand the power people have; it changes their ways of thinking as well.

Read more on this subject here:

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The increasing importance of video in digital.

YouTube responsible for 22% of all mobile bandwidth. 

Almost a quarter of all global mobile bandwidth is consumed by people watching YouTube videos, according to a new report from network management vendor Allot Communications. 

The global bandwidth share of the Google-owned video site was 22 percent in the first half of 2011, compared with just 17 percent in the first half of 2010. YouTube now accounts for 52 percent of all global mobile video streaming. 

Overall, video streaming now accounts for 39 percent of all mobile traffic and it grew 93 percent in the first six months of 2011. VoIP and IM traffic grew even faster at 101 percent, but they still only represent a total of 4 percent of all mobile traffic. 

This growth and change in media consumption patterns on mobile devices makes it apparent that digital communication should (and can) now have a large component of video content which is tailor made for the smaller screens. 

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Social Media & CPG / FMCG brands.

Came across this wonderful post by Martin Bishop, Director, Brand Strategy of Landor and thought it was one of the articles that needs to shared and read widely by all CPG / FMCG brand marketers. 

Martin captures the aspirations well when he writes that, though every CPG brand might wish to be loved so intensely, few reach the top of the relationship ladder. When you come right down to it, who wants a relationship with a bar of soap? Or as one commenter put it, responding to a blog post on the death of branding: “They buy something to drink because they’re thirsty. Not because they f****ng LOVE Coke!” 

Simply mimicking the behavior of brands that have highly engaged audiences doesn’t work; social media applications have to be aligned with the strength of a brand’s consumer relationships. There are too many examples right now of brands assuming that their customers care about them when the reality is that most customers couldn’t care less. 

It’s sad to see brands trying too hard. Of all the social media options, Twitter is perhaps the most difficult to use effectively without a resonant relationship. 

There’s got to be an angle.

If you think of social media as being primarily about communication, it’s difficult to see how most CPG brands can use it effectively. But if you view social media as an infrastructure supporting a wide range of activities based on connection, then more opportunities present themselves. 

Read the full article here and try share it around (you can also download it for keeps)

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Coca Cola face recognition machine integrates with Facebook.

This is another great social/ offline integration by Coca Cola Israel. 

This machine allows users to login to the Coca Cola app in real life using the face recognition feature, a very clever way to extend the offline experience to users’ friends and family through Facebook. 

Also look at the previous campaign Coca Cola village.

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Kraft Foods. Kay Slaven, Sr. Manager Digital Marketing. QR Seminar.