Tag Archives: Digital marketing

May 10, 2016 · 9:48 am

Quit Yelling At The Kids

Any of us who are parents have felt the need to yell at the kids.  Maybe it’s during the terrible twos when every request is met with “no” or maybe it’s when they want to know “why” to any statement that passes your lips.  It’s hard not to use the words you swore you’d never utter: “because I said so.”  Hopefully, you resist the urge to yell as well, since the tone and volume become way more important than the actual words.

There is a business lesson in there, one that’s supported by some research from the folks at Lithium Technologies.  They asked the Harris Poll people to look into how effective ads were in social media news feeds.  As this report summarized it, the research:

…found that 74 percent of millennials (ages 20 through 39) and Gen-Z respondents (16 through 19) object to being targeted by brands on their social media feeds. Even more ominous for brands: 56 percent of the nearly 2,500 respondents to the study said they have reduced social media use or eliminated it altogether due to ads in their news feeds.

In other words, not only are you turning off your target to your stream by force-feeding them messages but you might just be enticing them to be less visible to you as they migrate to other, less cluttered environments.  We all need to remind ourselves that social media is about connecting with friends.  Shouting at them, especially if that about which you’re shouting is not about them but about your brand, is misguided.  It’s the person you invite into your home for a cocktail party that becomes the unwanted center of attention, singing loudly, dancing around, and otherwise embarrassing themselves.  Party over.

The report has a good reminder: we build trust by talking with, not at, our customers.  So quit yelling at the kids, won’t you?

 

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March 28, 2016 · 10:53 am

Home Base

I had a potential client ask me if having a website was still a big deal or if it was a good strategy to use the plethora of platforms to engage with consumers. I have a strong feeling about that, and it’s that digital homelessness is a really bad idea. Let me explain why.

I’ll deal with facts before I get into my opinion (as I’ve encouraged you folks to do many times here on the screed). Let me quote from a Digiday article of last November:

Referral traffic (desktop + mobile) to the top 30 Facebook publishers…plunged 32 percent from January to October, according to SimpleReach, a distribution analytics company. The more reliant the publisher on Facebook, the bigger the hit: Among the top 10, the drop was a steeper 42.7 percent.

Those results line up with those from social traffic tracker SimilarWeb. It found that The Huffington Post’s Facebook traffic fell 60.1 percent, Fox News’ dropped 48.2 percent, and BuzzFeed’s Facebook visits fell 40.8 percent. Across all 50, the biggest drop in traffic in the period took place from January to February, when publishers’ Facebook traffic fell an average of 75 percent. There was a smaller but also significant drop from March to April.

Maybe it was an algorithm shift, maybe it was that the publishers weren’t offering content that was click-worthy.  That proves my point – you can’t know.  If it was the former, you’re at the mercy of a gatekeeper.  I’m not singling out Facebook – Instagram just went to an algorithmically determined feed, as has Twitter.  The point is that without a home base you are at their mercy.  Why?  Because you can’t market for yourself.  “Like Us On Facebook” does a world of good for Facebook and little for you, in my opinion, because while a consumer might like you, they might never see you.

Yes, you can buy ads on any of the aforementioned platforms to drive traffic.  Is that any different from buying search ads?  I think it is.  Search is targeted differently and can be better integrate with site analytics than can any outside platforms.  Putting that aside, with so much in our business lives out of our control, why would we give up anything that can be completely ours?  Having a well-designed and maintained website – a home base on the web – is one of those things.  That’s how I see it.  You?

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March 21, 2016 · 11:46 am

Call First

Do your friends just show up at your house around supper time?  Do any of them knock on your door unannounced as the game is starting so they can watch on your big screen TV and drink your beer?  I suspect most of them don’t.  It’s common courtesy to call first, isn’t it?  Even those folks who might have a standing invitation of sorts will generally do so, if for no other reason than to see if you’re home. 

I find it interesting, therefore, that many marketers don’t think about the same common courtesy.  That thought came to mind as I read the latest State Of Content report from the Adobe folks.  You can read the whole thing here (pdf), and there is a lot to digest.

Consumers understand the benefit of content recommendations, as long as those recommendations respect privacy. In the US, 73% believe they are meant to enhance the viewing experience. At the same time, 62% believe they don’t respect privacy.  In other words, sure, you’re a friend but you’re also showing up without calling.  Most Americans who use digital media (82%) are comfortable with sharing at least one piece of information about themselves in order to improve the recommendations they see. In other words, CONSUMERS ARE WILLING TO SHARE INFORMATION, BUT EXPECT RETURN ON VALUE.

Calling first means making the consumer comfortable about data collection. Those who are uncomfortable with predictive recommendations believe companies can do something about it, and the biggest thing companies could do is to ask permission to collect their data.  That’s why 63% trust content from a friend or family member and only 23% feel the same about content from a company whose products they don’t buy.

So how about it?  Are you calling first, or are you just showing up?

 

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