Brands doing well today are placing the mobile phone at the centre of their marketing strategy. This is because the millennial generation has a very different definition of product research, doing most of it using around a whopping two hundred interactions with the phone daily. The automobile industry for example has been revolutionized by Uber which has maximized car rides rather than cars parked. MaaS Global from Helsinki in Finland has also created solutions for people to reach destinations using any mode they prefer. The beauty industry has undergone tremendous change with TV ads no longer as relevant as millennials follow YouTube stars more than television or cinema ones. Thus Clinique adopted a pure digital marketing strategy involving Swedish YouTube star Zara Larsson over the campaign Play With Pop to create an online ‘beauty corner’. Nike has always highlighted how anyone can be an athlete. For a much smaller brand in Under Armour, the challenge was multifold. So they acquired My Fitness Pal which calculates calories consumed and engages in weight management. In this way Under Armour was able to interact multiple times with consumers on a daily basis. This was further compounded after their partnership with cloud based platform for wellness- Mind Body. For similar engagement, Starbucks has initiated Mobile Order and Pay. Part of the reason for their success was a CEO recruited from the software industry who had the foresight to initiate such a mobile first strategy.

Source:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/best-customer-journeys-place-mobile-center/

Uploaded Date:10 July 2017

Social robots are a new brood of them which can perform all functions of traditional robots but in addition, also feature humanoid like features such as social interactions. That is why a 2017 Robo Cup Home Social Robot League has been set up to feature such social robots from all over the world and take part in a competition for most realistic behavior. Teams from Australia and Japan are particularly potent at this. A layer of added emotional intelligence is built into such robots. Another aspect they possess is social intelligence which allows them to collaborate with others at work. This business innovation is no longer mere theoretical, but indeed being used by organizations such as the Commonwealth Bank and Stocklands which runs retirement homes and shopping centres.

Source:https://www.cmo.com.au/article/621416/why-marketers-should-take-note-social-robots/

Uploaded Date :10 July 2017

Ever since the advent of the internet and its subsequent boom in the 1990s, management experts have talked of the disappearance of location as an important business factor. Businesses do not need to physically reach the customer nor do the latter need to be present where any seller is, as all of it can be managed by the cloud. This trend however is reversing in a different way. Location is fast emerging as a key driver of digital marketing thanks to the rapidly expanding base of mobile phone users. A survey done by the Pew Research Center claims that a staggering 95% of American adults possess and use smartphones. In another study, it was understood that four-fifths of social activity was done using such phones. When tagging is done using phones, then the location emerges and this is crucial business intelligence for marketers. They can engage rather than interrupt customers’ lives using location data as Snap is doing using the Snap to Store application. Location based marketing improves certain aspects such as the marketing appearing more human. It also allows the brand to leverage the ripple effect of social shares. Competition can be tracked by studying geo-targeted ads of competitors.

Source:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/location-first-marketing-strategy-pays-off/

Uploaded Date:07 July 2017

Online shopping is set to become the most popular retail mode in the years to come. Thus unsurprisingly, the digital marketing budgets of most organizations is rising with the cumulative coming out at 118 billion US dollars by 2021. However dividing this budget equitably into different activities is time consuming and financially inefficient. Thus, various marketing activities need to be bundled together and used as integrations. One such is Google Analytics as it allows tracking of highest traffic sources but also provides crucial business intelligence on lead conversions. Then there is the Google Search Console that tracks keywords that are not otherwise easily visible. Double Click enables quicker reporting of data and subsequent analytics. Call Tracking is another important function allowing multiple benfits. It allows measurement of landing page’s performances. It also lists the destination they went to – physical or virtual- post the call made. Another tool called Optimizely provides the iteration for productive A/B Testing.

Source:http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Editorial/Industry-Insights/5-Online-Marketing-Integrations-Successful-Businesses-Use-118962.htm

Uploaded Dare:01/07/2017

Managing online reputation is extremely important for brands’ digital marketing efforts. In order to succeed in this, certain tools have been identified. One is Brand 24 which is ideal for social listening and monitoring online brand mentions. Another is Naymz which tracks the brand’s social influence across social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Then there is Go Fish Digital. This monitors mentions specifically across forty complaint websites driven by Google. This reduces the work pressure of sifting across networks. Review Trackers allows business intelligence to be gathered about brand feedback from across eighty plus review sites. And then there is Reputology which in addition to monitoring social mentions, also has the added feature of sending customizable response emails. It includes a suite of analytical tools.

Source:http://www.business2community.com/branding/5-best-reputation-management-tools-2017-01868998#pPOe6Kj6kr536aF7.97

Uploaded Date:01/07/2017

A study commissioned has released a set of interesting statistics on digital marketing trends for this year. These trends may further be divided into email marketing, Omni-channel marketing, digital advertising, social media marketing and mobile marketing. For emails, it was realized that it had a six times greater click-through rate than tweets. Transactional mails meanwhile have eight time greater opens and six times great revenue. The open rate for personalized mails was greater by about five percent than those without. In order to engage customers who abandoned shopping carts, its best to send them multiple emails. Marketing research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) claims that the ROI for emails was four times higher than any other method. Also more than eighty six percent of businesses confirmed a willingness to raise email marketing budgets. Omnichannel shoppers provide a third greater lifetime value than others using a single channel only. As per Visual Capitalist, the two giants of media sites are Facebook and Google with a combined share of over fifty seven percent. Native adds boost conversion by a factor of about three-fifths. Marketing Sherpa confirms that adults aged between 18 and 34 tend to follow brands on various social media handles. However, most do not follow brand owned profiles. Mobile video traffic will increase by about three-fourths as per Cisco. Mobile email opens have increased by almost a triple since 2014. Even the conversion rates from smartphones can now nearly match desktop rates.

Source:http://www.business2community.com/marketing/50-statistics-latest-marketing-trends-strategies-2017-01865218#hsgkKomfEjUisAm3.97

Uploaded Date:29/06/2017

Back in 2012, automation seemed to be the next frontier to capture in marketing. Now several companies and most industries use automation to some extent. Yet it has not proven to be the all-powerful solution as it was expected due to certain drawbacks and three major misconceptions. The first of these is that apparently automation can cover up for a lackluster marketing programme. While it is a great engaging platform, fancy tools will inevitably fail if the planning itself was faulty to begin with. The second misconception regards the people to be employed. In manufacturing or agriculture the personnel numbers have been cut down, but this does not apply to digital marketing. While mundane tasks may get automated, more employees are needed to work on analytics, creative and strategic aspects of the game. Thus it isn’t necessarily a cost-cutting tactic. The third one is that marketing automation can run on its own. This is inaccurate as constant monitoring and surveillance are needed. The staff or agencies cannot be eliminated. In order to make the best use of automation, the most important ingredient is the right talent recruitment. Tools are plentiful but it’s the people who make use of them that can create the greatest impact.

Source:http://www.business2community.com/marketing-automation/fully-automated-marketing-machine-isnt-delivering-results-expected-01866519#LR0Gmw2EHD3XcBZA.97

Uploaded Date:27/06/2017