Marketing Guru Ashok Lalla Talks About The Past, Present And Future Of Digital Marketing !

Ashok Lalla

Ashok Lalla has been in the field of marketing for the past 16 years. After driving digital marketing strategy for brands such as Infosys and Taj Hotel Resorts and Places, Mr Lalla is now an Independent Digital and Marketing Advisor and continues to work with some of the top brands in the country. In this interview with Techstory, Mr Lalla talks about how digital marketing has evolved over the past 16 years and how brands can mix online and offline marketing strategies to design a winning campaign.

You have been in the field of marketing since the time internet was not in widespread use. How do you think the way companies look at customers has changed from then to now?

Back in 2000, when I started out in Digital Marketing (called Internet Marketing back then), brands in India were just beginning to discover the Internet. Most focused on building websites (mousetraps they believed the world would beat a path to). Soon they discovered that traffic did not come naturally and then focused on spending on Search to drive their brand’s Internet visibility. Ecommerce wasn’t really a focus for most.

16 years on, the Internet has evolved enormously and not surprisingly, the way brands look at it has evolved too. Today, most brands look to drive their presence beyond just websites and look for more than just traffic to their websites. They seek everything from driving brand visibility to creating brand preference to driving direct and indirect sales to using digital as an important means of delivering customer service and getting consumer insights and feedback.

Marketing has evolved from a common message to all consumers to different messages to different groups of consumers to personalized messages to every consumer. Do you believe that marketing is more and more becoming a function of technology and the company with the best technology will win the branding game?

In theory, digital allows brands to deliver unique messages to their customers. In reality, there is still a lot of push of conventional messages delivered through various digital channels and content formats.

Technology is just an enabler and a means to an end. The development of appropriate brand messages to various audiences is still the task of brand custodians. Technology merely helps connect brands to consumers faster, further and in newer ways.

In times when marketing is becoming more and more personalized, what according to you is the future of mass marketing techniques such as television and print advertising?

Television and print has a role to play in the marketing mix and is unlikely to go away anytime soon. The crores of rupees routinely spent by ecommerce brands in India on print, TV and outdoor advertising to drive traffic to their online stores is testiment to this.

That said, we are seeing more integration of TV and social media and even with print and social though to a smaller extent.

What is changing is how the digital footprints of print and TV channels is growing and evolving beyond just being an online version of offline content. This change is seeing brands seek to build better integrated communications strategies, and also accepting the reality that conventional linear narrative is passé. Over the next couple of years we will see this integrated space evolve further and it’s use get more sophisticated too.

Do you think review sites that allow customers to provide feedback about brands is putting a lot of pressure on companies? Do you think customer becoming the king can affect companies in a negative way? How do you think companies can best handle this situation?

Customer online reviews and their using digital to express displeasure or demand service is growing. Brands are gearing up to recognise that digital (and more so social media) is becoming the default channel for customer expression. Several have already adopted means of listening and responding to feedback in realtime. More evolved brands have even integrated their social channels with their CRM systems so they can respond appropriately to their customers.

Outraging and overly demanding customers is something brands are learning to deal with online, as outrage can spread quickly. At the same time, consumers are also learning to accept that while acknowledgement of their feedback online maybe quick, the actual resolution may take longer, and often require offline intervention and interactions.

What are some of the latest techniques that companies are using in the field of digital marketing?

Taking an integrated approach to digital marketing as part of the larger marketing and business approach is the best way for brands to leverage the true potential of digital. Unfortunately, we still see many brands take a siloed approach to digital and even treat channels and platforms within digital and social independently.

There is a huge lack of clarity about ROI of digital marketing. What do you think this is still the case? What according to you is the solution to this problem?

Most brands still look at lower order metrics from digital such as views, likes, shares, visits… As brands evolve to understand digital better and take a more integrated approach to it, they are seeking to go beyond these relatively trivial metrics to more meaningful marketing and business metrics. Achieving this requires a better integration of digital marketing with the rest of marketing, as well as investing in systems that integrate metrics across channels and roll them up into marketing metrics.

What are some of the biggest challenges that digital marketers are facing today?

The top 3 challenges for marketers in India today would include:
– Cracking the integration game effectively. This is true both at the marketeer end and the agency end. Everyone is talking integration but most are still struggling with its effective implementation.
– Understanding the real digital opportunity in India where English continues to be the major language of the Internet and data speeds and access creates challenges in reaching and influencing consumers.
– Going beyond the mindset of giving discounts and freebies as the only way of acquiring customers. This has become almost endemic in the ecommerce space with most brands unable to think beyond discounting as a marketing strategy.

(Image Credits: Freepik)

Marketing Guru Ashok Lalla Talks About The Past, Present And Future Of Digital Marketing !

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing and Advertising

A new generation of megabrands like Facebook, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Twitter haven’t spent a dime on traditional marketing. No press releases, no TV commercials, no billboards. Instead, they rely on a new strategy—growth hacking—to reach many more people despite modest marketing budgets. Growth hackers have thrown out the old playbook and replaced it with tools that are testable, trackable, and scalable. They believe that products and businesses should be modified repeatedly until they’re primed to generate explosive reactions.

Bestselling author Ryan Holiday, the acclaimed marketing guru for American Apparel and many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians, explains the new rules and provides valuable examples and case studies for aspiring growth hackers. Whether you work for a tiny start-up or a Fortune 500 giant, if you’re responsible for building awareness and buzz for a product or service, this is your road map.

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Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

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Marketing start-up Ahalogy pins its future on Pinterest

Search for oat-based recipes on visual bookmarking site Pinterest, and it will bring up a screen of oatmeal porn.

Images of gooey oats covered in strawberries, chocolate chips, drizzled with glistening honey take over the screen.

Click on the top results and the majority probably will have something to do with Quaker.

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The images, or “Pins,” as they’re referred to on Pinterest, might redirect to a recipe on Quaker’s site. They might go to a food blog post sponsored by Quaker. Or, subtly, in the background of an image, there might be a big tub of Quaker oats, hovering behind an enticing bowl of oatmeal.

Coincidence? Not exactly.

Quaker’s ubiquity in those oat-based search results is largely the effort of Ahalogy, a marketing start-up that specializes in Pinterest. The company exists to help brands like Quaker, Kraft and Toms shoes get their products in front of Pinterest users, while also not annoying anyone.

Unobtrusive advertising? It’s a tough one. That’s why Ahalogy co-founder Bob Gilbreath has created a company of nearly 50 people working exclusively on Pinterest. Nothing else.

Some marketers might call Gilbreath and Ahalogy crazy. He would say his company is ahead of the curve.

Some marketers might say he’s taking too big a risk. He would say Ahalogy is primed for the reward.

And some might ask: What on Earth is Pinterest, let alone a Pinterest-focused marketing firm? Gilbreath would laugh, sigh a little, then laugh again.

Pinterest is an image-based search engine. Type in anything you want — 2007 Ferraris, knee-high boots, Thanksgiving ideas and, yes, oatmeal recipes — and it will pull up hundreds of pins that people have uploaded. Some might lead to other websites. Some might just be images. If you want to save a pin for later, you can click the “Pin it” button, which saves it to a board. It’s like Google and scrapbooking rolled into one.

And Ahalogy believes that there’s big money to be made from it. The Cincinnati company has raised $7 million in funding from investors such as Hyde Park Ventures and CincyTech.

It doesn’t do other forms of marketing. There’s no Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat team. There’s no backup plan. If Pinterest ceased to exist, Ahalogy wouldn’t exist. At the same time, it does not belong to, nor is it part of Pinterest.

How’s that for an existential threat?

Gilbreath laughs. Maybe he is crazy. He’s pretty sure he’s not.

“I can see this movie playing,” he said, spinning his index finger in the air like film going through a projector; someone peering into Ahalogy’s office could have easily mistaken his gesture for “crazy,” though. “I’ve seen the same model repeat again and again.”

A marketing veteran who got his start at Procter & Gamble, platform skepticism isn’t new to Gilbreath. He saw it with the Web in the 1990s, when television advertising was king and “Internet” marketing was thought to be a joke.

He saw it with the rise of Facebook, when marketers were hesitant to figure out social media because they thought it was a fad.

And now he’s seeing it with Pinterest, which recently cracked 100 million users.

But Gilbreath knows there is more to it than being first.

Early players in the Facebook game, like marketing firms Buddy Media and Wildfire, were successful (and later acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars by Salesforce and Google respectively) because they bet on the right horse. Being first to, say, Bebo or the now-defunct Piczo wouldn’t have helped them much.

A large part of Ahalogy’s confidence comes from the belief that, in addition to being first, the firm is betting on the right platform. And, judging by San Francisco-based Pinterest’s $11-billion valuation, they’re not alone in thinking that.

“In general, I would say it’s not a good idea for a company to focus on one platform,” said Betsy Sigman, a professor of social media and technology at Georgetown University.

“But I don’t think this is risky for [Ahalogy] because Pinterest is an unusual social media company,” she said. “It’s a premium company in ways, because people go there looking for something; something to do, something to buy.”

Pinterest knows this, which is why it created its Marketing Developer Partners program (of which Ahalogy is a member) to point brands in the direction of marketing firms that “get” Pinterest.

The platform is about discovery and the future, said Pinterest’s head of marketing developer partnerships, Michael Akkerman, and “Ahalogy produces authentic and compelling content that’s beneficial [i.e., not annoying] to both the Pinner and the brand.”

And Pinterest really is a game changer, said Raman Sehgal, Ahalogy’s vice president of marketing.

Ahalogy’s 2015 media consumption study found that 89% of people who use Pinterest daily have bought something they saw on the platform. And 85% of daily users also said they open Pinterest on their phones and look at items they’ve pinned when they’re in a bricks-and-mortar store (Buying oats? Try Quaker!).

More than half of the platform’s most active users said they have not seen or noticed ads — “promoted pins,” as they’re called — on Pinterest. And those who have seen them largely don’t mind.

“That’s unheard-of,” Sehgal said. After all, people hate ads. A 2014 report from PageFair and Adobe found that around 144 million people in the world use ad blockers. Undocumented millions more probably wish they did.

But on Pinterest, it’s a different story.

“It’s more about the inspiration,” said Kim Johnson, an early Ahalogy hire on the client success team. “People use Pinterest like they’re curating a personal magazine, so they’ll save things from around the Web onto their boards.”

Around half of Ahalogy’s business is in the software it sells that helps brands optimize their images, track how certain pins are performing and schedule pins to publish at times of high traffic.

This part isn’t unique. Other companies have created similar analytical tools, and many digital agencies also offer Pinterest marketing.

Toni Box, senior director of social media and content services at agency PM Digital, said that for some brands, it just doesn’t make sense to invest heavily in Pinterest.

“It’s really about having that broader view,” said Box, whose agency’s work includes Pinterest and email marketing. “Working with an agency like ours, you’re going to have knowledge from all different verticals instead of just one.”

Ahalogy is so far the only firm to offer a singular service: to help a company “win” at Pinterest.

“Say Kraft [one of Ahalogy’s clients] wants to advertise its cream cheese on Pinterest,” Johnson said. “Putting a picture of a tub of cream cheese on Pinterest isn’t going to help.”

“Lots of people might see it,” Sehgal added. “But then what?”

“So maybe we’d do a dip recipe pin, because that’s useful, that’s something people would actually save,” Johnson said. “And when you click through, it’ll take you to a recipe on Kraft’s site.”

“Or we’ll find a blogger who has already created a dip recipe that has gotten really popular on Pinterest, and see if Kraft can sponsor it.”

Ahalogy has 40 clients, including Kraft, Kellogg’s Town House crackers, Toms and Quaker. For each brand, it will create as many as five to 10 pins per day. Its designers will try them in every variation: a pin with text, a pin without text, swapping out images, tagging them differently, adding a logo, removing a logo.

The company’s early results have been promising, driving product sales and raising brand awareness unseen on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. More telling is the fact that many of the big brands that signed up with Ahalogy when it launched in 2012 have stuck with it.

“They’ve been an extremely valuable strategic partner,” said Zachary Wyer, Kellogg’s brand manager on Town House Crackers, which has worked with Ahalogy for more than two years and has seen most of its user growth and engagement happen on Pinterest.

“The cracker business is more than 85 years old, and even recently consumers still think of us as a formal, oval cracker,” he said. “We’re hoping to change that perception of the business, and we think Ahalogy is the perfect partner for it. They have the savvy on the platform few agencies do. That’s part of the reason we chose them.”

tracey.lien@latimes.com

Twitter: @traceylien

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Chad Ian Lieberman Originator Talks about The Future of Virtual Reality Treadmill

(1888PressRelease) Mr. Chad Lieberman Internet Marketing Consultant examines how big virtual reality has become as Virtual demonstrated their most recent version of WalkEstate.

“Virtual Reality treadmills are a thing right now, even as we wait for the commercial release of the VR headset from WalkEstate. The design has been on Virtue’s workbench for more than two years, and will likely be launched before the year ends,” described an excited Mr. Chad Lieberman.

Chad Ian was addressing a discussion on present and future technological advances for common life applications in a recent summit help in New York City, among a crown of technology experts and lovers from all walks of life.

According to Mr. Lieberman, the technology is intended for home consumers, and already has 4,000 preorders just waiting for the launch of the devices. The WalkEstate is currently in the manufacturing phase, and will begin shipping out to consumers before the end of 2016, he says.

Further describing it, he stated that the treadmill was accompanied by tracking pods and special shoes with which users can run and walk while sucked into a game. It also has a harness for support, giving the very concept of VR another useful application.

“Physical movement takes your enjoyment of VR to the next level, which is why the WalkEstate is so awesome. The player can walk and jump 360 degrees within virtual environments. Imagine if you’re in a real war zone with all that comes with it – actively pursuing an enemy, getting away from danger, hiding – the whole nine yards.

Amid general skepticism, Mr. Chad Ian Lieberman Internet Marketing Expert stated that the immediate demand indicates that virtual reality is something the market is ready for. “It’s just that it hasn’t until now been done right and hasn’t been affordable for the average consumer.”

In conclusion, he was sure the VR treadmill will really change the VR experience for most homes. At the very least, there are 4,000 people who believe in it, and the number can only go up.

About Chad Ian Lieberman New York

Chad Ian Lieberman New York started over 9 years ago, and it boasts a cumulative experience in easy and cost effective search engine marketing services, including search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, online reputation management, linking and PPC management to help businesses of all kinds remain competitive and increase their visibility on the major portals and search engines. Its services have been developed to suit a variety of business needs, with bespoke packages for specials needs of each client. They provide the comprehensive search engine marketing solution, from strategic consultation to in-depth reporting systems in the US, Canada, France, UK and many other countries. Learn more at http://6wseo.com/Blog/Chad_Lieberman/

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Chad Ian Lieberman Originator Talks about The Future of Virtual Reality Treadmill

Fox Affils OK On Fall, Worried About Future

After getting a look at what the network plans for its fall schedule, the affiliates held a closed-door session without Fox officials, during which they discussed the apparently vexing issue of how to increase the leverage of the affiliate body in its dealings with Fox, particularly the terms Fox demands at affiliation-renewal time. And the closed-door session revealed a palpable undercurrent of worry about the future vitality of the network-affiliate relationship as alternative means of distributing network programming are developed — means such as on-line streaming scenarios in which broadcasters would play no role.

Fox affiliates appeared enthusiastic about the future of Fox network programming following a rousing presentation in which the affiliates got a look at the shows Fox is developing for this summer and next fall.

But behind closed doors, at a meeting without Fox network officials in attendance, the affiliates sounded a lot less certain of where they stand in Fox’s future plans.

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The program presentation was the main thrust of Fox’s annual full-affiliate meeting held Tuesday in a hotel ballroom in Las Vegas during the NAB Show.

In the meeting, affiliate representatives heard from Dana Walden, co-chair (along with Gary Newman, who did not attend the meeting) of Fox Television Group since last July, and David Madden, president of entertainment for Fox Broadcasting since last July as well. They also heard from Fox Sports President Eric Shanks, who ballyhooed Fox’s planned coverage later this year of golf’s U.S. Open and the Women’s Soccer World Cup — both coming to Fox for the first time.

Walden and Madden showed clips of the new comedies, dramas and unscripted shows under consideration for summer, but mostly for next season.

The comedies include a fantasy football comedy called Fantasy Life; a “comedy-horror” anthology series titled Scream Queens; and Grandpa, a family comedy starring John Stamos.

Brand Connections

The dramas are: Minority Report, adapted from the Steven Spielberg movie, and produced by him; an updated Frankenstein; Lucifer, a satanic drama from producer Jerry Bruckheimer; Autopsy, a police procedural; and Studio City, a primetime soap set, like Empire, in the recording industry, about the rise of a teen pop star and her family.

Fox’s unscripted shows in development include a show called Knock Knock, in which unsuspecting, but presumably deserving families, receive an opportunity to improve their lives around.

Walden also talked up the upcoming return of The X Files to Fox. And she stated the network’s continued enthusiasm for its stalwart music-competition series American Idol. “We’d love nothing more than to bring the show back and do another year with the current panel [of judges],” she said, adding that negotiations are ongoing.

“We have bold and original scripted series that stand out from the crowd, live events and specials that drive circulation and offer strong promotional support, and quality aspirational unscripted shows that inspire and delight fans of all ages. It’s a new day at Fox Broadcasting,” Walden said, positioning the presentation and, in promising a “new day at Fox,” acknowledging and addressing affiliate complaints over the last several seasons about the woeful state of Fox’s primetime ratings (with the obvious, and hope-giving, exception of the new megahit Empire).

“We’re confident in our slate and our incredible team at Fox, whether in programming, affiliate marketing or distribution, this team has new focus, determination and dedication. Thanks again for your partnership and support,” she told the Fox affiliates.

But affiliates, while showing outward enthusiasm and support for Fox’s development slate, are privately worried about the continued strength of that partnership in the years to come.

In their closed-door session without Fox officials, affiliate representatives discussed the apparently vexing issue of how to increase the leverage of the affiliate body as a whole in its dealings with Fox, particularly when it comes to the terms Fox demands at affiliation-renewal time.

One tactic that came under consideration in Tuesday’s meeting was the possibility of holding another one-day “fly-in” meeting this summer in a centrally located city of station-group owners and group heads to formulate strategies for countering Fox’s demands.

Fox affiliates held such a meeting last July in Dallas, even though Fox officials were dead set against it, and communicated to the Affiliate Board that they felt that way.

Billed in the trade press as an “emergency” meeting, some Fox affiliates credit the meeting for presenting a show of force that was effective enough to get Fox to back off of limited-term demands it was making of stations whose affiliations were up for renewal.

After that meeting, some affiliates say, Fox “loosened up [its] limited term demands” and agreed to increase the length of affiliation terms in last year’s negotiations with some 50 affiliates.

An informal show of hands for or against arranging another such meeting this summer seemed to draw more yeas than nays. It was unclear, however, if the meeting will come to fruition — a logistical challenge more than a philosophical one that depends primarily on whether the participants can agree on a day that works for most, if not all, of their schedules. The idea remains under consideration.

But Tuesday’s closed-door session revealed a palpable undercurrent of worry about the future vitality of the network-affiliate relationship as alternative means of distributing network programming are developed — means such as on-line streaming scenarios in which broadcasters would play no role.

The affiliate representatives at the meeting were even asked if they believe that the Fox network, and the other networks too, are already talking about going into the future without local broadcast affiliates attached to them.

Fox Affils OK On Fall, Worried About Future

Is video the future of email marketing?

Despite being a mature medium that’s been around for more than three decades, the future of email (for marketers) still looks bright. Forecasts about emerging email tactics usually highlight personalization using marketing automation software, and the increasing importance of mobile, but one trend has received somewhat less attention: the integration of video.

Until a few years ago, integrating video into email was difficult because it required third-party plug-ins, which didn’t play well with email clients. The file size of an attached video was also too large for an optimal user experience. Waiting minutes for your audience to download your video isn’t the best way to get them to engage with your brand.

With the emergence of HTML5, interoperability between plug-ins and email providers has become much less of an issue. In addition, the application of progressive playback allows users to watch part of a video without requiring them to download the entire file, making playback faster.

With the technology in place to support video, it’s poised to become a large part of email.

Why video belongs in email

Inbox competition
Email marketing never really went out of style, though it has perhaps been overshadowed by social media and search engine channels in recent times. But consider that there were 3.6 billion email accounts in 2013 — as well as the prediction of 4.3 billion by 2016 — and it becomes clear that the email market is huge.

This means there’s a great deal of competition, so differentiating your brand in the inbox of your audience is paramount. Video can be the means to do so. A report by GetResponse found that using video in email resulted in 55 percent higher click-through rates, 41 percent increased sharing and forwarding, as well as 44 percent more time spent within the email.

The culmination of these stats produced 40 percent more monthly revenue for marketers who used video in email.

Given that email is relatively cheap, using video is an excellent way to not only increase engagement, but also improve returns.

Mobile first
The numbers vary: by some reports, mobile traffic accounts for 65 percent of initial email opens, while the Pew Research Center estimates a more modest 52 percent. Either way, mobile devices have become the new normal for email marketing. In some aspects — subject lines, responsive formatting, etc. — this has made email marketers’ jobs more difficult, but video actually fits right into a mobile email strategy. To begin, mobile devices are getting larger — the screen of the (now tiny) iPhone 5 was a full 17 percent larger than its predecessor. This increase in screen size across the market reflects the way users behave on their devices, i.e., they watch a lot of video.

Consequently, video will play a huge role in increasing mobile open-rates and engagement. Video also makes it easier to encourage subsequent opens from desktop browsers. While mobile may be the first touch point for an email, getting users to return and view content from their desktop is also important. Placing engaging video within the email increases the likelihood of multiple opens.

What’s still holding video back

Major email providers
Although HTML5 was a huge step forward for email video integration, it didn’t solve all the problems. Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo still don’t support video directly in email, and they account for about 37 percent of the email provider market. This makes sending truly integrated email video a gamble, though to what extent depends on the specifics of your audience.

Email clients that do support integrated video include iOS devices, Apple Mail, and Outlook.com (distinct from the Outlook desktop client).

To hedge your bets, it’s best to include a fallback image, such as a GIF or static image with a play button graphic that link to a landing page where the video begins to auto-play. It may sound strange to recommend launching an auto-play anything, but given the expectations of a user clicking through from an email, it’s logical to have the next page deliver the content without another click.

So while sending an integrated video to your audience can have a huge impact, it’s still a new and emerging strategy. Many marketers will more likely continue to play it safe and use GIFs as well as static images to persuade their audience to click through.

However, video integration with email can be incredibly powerful, and it’s quickly becoming standard practice to provide some type of video content — directly integrated or otherwise — through email.

Zach Watson is the content manager at TechnologyAdvice.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia at @iMediaTweet.

Is video the future of email marketing?

The Future of Marketing is Community

Much has been said in recent years about communities: what they are, how marketers can benefit from them, and how they’ll change in the future. Today’s marketers already know that online communities are important, which is a big reason why 80% of SMB’s are using social media networks to drive growth (Go-Gulf, 2014).

It’s crucial to understand, however, that creating a community means much more than just posting funny animal pictures to social media followers or tweeting about how awesome you are.

Let’s take a look at how the idea of a community has developed over time, how the best brands are building communities, and what marketers can do to make the new community concept work for them.

Communities Past & Present

In older times, the idea of a community was governed mostly by your location. Your community was the group of people who grew up around you, attended the same school, or went to work with you.

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The advent of digital communication has changed all that. Thanks to the Internet, people can establish communities with others who are across the street or across the globe. People can now join communities for almost any niche, interest, or goal, even if there’s no one around them with the same passions. Interested in Civil War reenactments? Join the Civil War Reenactment HQ and find an event nearby. Got a thing for cricket? Find a community to discuss strategies, match scores, and the latest player stories.

In a nutshell, this means that communities today are created more deliberately than they were in the past. As a result, communities have the potential to be much more engaging, because they are based on how people identify themselves, not who sits in the cubicle next to them. There are few things that people are more attached to than the fundamental ways they identify themselves: father, daughter, writer, marketer, baseball fan, and so on.

The Many Flavors of Online Communities

This change in the dynamic of communities can be observed in a microcosm on some of the more popular social networks. Take Facebook, for example. Like the real world, Facebook has a lot of people: 1.39 billion per month as of January 2015, to be exact (Search Engine Journal). Within that population, smaller communities exist: groups based on occupation, special interests, and etc. The same idea holds true for LinkedIn: the creation of industry groups, company pages, and discussion threads means that people can pick and choose which communities within a larger population that they want to be a part of.

This information is all great and interesting enough on its own, but what does it mean for marketers? Some of the most forward-thinking brands are already applying this new community concept in their marketing efforts.

How Marketers Should Leverage Communities

Savvy businesses understand that the old days of outbound, product-centric marketing messages are behind us. The focus now is on building relationships with customers and prospects by providing them with value.

The most effective marketers, however, are taking this idea one step further: they are making connections with customers and allowing their customers to create connections with one another.

Nike is one great example: in 2010, the sports giant created Digital Sport, an in-house marketing department designed to make sure that Nike could properly engage its community of customers and prospects. Today, Nike’s main Facebook page has nearly 23 million likes. They’ve also segmented their brand down into different units, creating communities for Nike retail stores, Nike Skateboarding, Nike Football, and so on. Outside of social media, companies like Microsoft and IBM have done an excellent job of establishing their own user communities, where customers can share insights and help each other solve problems.

We can even find examples of brands building customer communities outside of the digital world. Popular inbound marketing company HubSpot, for example, created HubSpot User Groups (HUGS) to promote real-world discussions of their marketing platform. Although HubSpot provides financial assistance and advice for these meetups, the scheduling, structure, and content of group meetings are all handled by group leaders, who are actual HubSpot customers, not company employees.

Key Takeaway: The best marketers don’t just add value for prospects and customers: they make them feel like they are a part of something. The future of marketing is not just providing valuable content to help people connect with your company, but establishing communities where people can come together to share their stories and connect with other people.

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Author: Bryan Kramer

Bryan Kramer is President/CEO of PureMatter a full service marketing agency in Silicon Valley, consultant, blogger, speaker, and marketing strategist. All opinions are my own…. View full profile ›

The Future of Marketing is Community

The Future of Marketing is Editorial Traffic – By Oliver Roup

The increasing uptake and adoption of cross-device web use is shaking up previously held assumptions about the most revenue-rewarding advertising streams available to merchants, publishers, and the affiliate landscape.

The most significant outcome has been the transposition of the banner ad from the standalone premier revenue position to a complementary method used alongside other innovative revenue strategies. Consider the growing number of mobile users who consume editorial content on small screens, which guides their purchasing behavior, and it becomes very clear that banner ads cannot remain the only advertising solution to speak to customers and drive revenue to publishers. There needs to be additional marketing strategies brought forward to effectively manage advertising efforts across multiple devices.

In the mobile heavy content consumption ecosystem, the advertiser’s landing page can actually serve as the ad, arrived at after being directed by links located within non-sponsored, unique, and informative online content. The “ad”, or lack thereof, should create a seamless channel from a publisher’s site to an advertiser via the publisher’s own content.

This positively reflects their brand and craftsmanship, rather than take away attention in an incommodious way. This marketing channel should equally reflect the advertiser’s brand and bring a seamless consumption experience to the audience.

It is not surprising to note that this style of content is increasingly created by enthusiast entrepreneurs on their editorial sites and mobile apps where their passion becomes the driving force of consumption. For example, PurseBlog, J23, and Audizine all epitomize this new phenomenon. The other positive outcomes of this approach range from the lack of additional overhead to content links being much more economical than search, display and native strategies.

The importance of this more mobile and cross-device world is repeatedly evident in mainstream news. Although mobile is yet to be most brands major revenue stream, they are seeing a sharp increase in both usage and influence.

Shockingly, even large traditional editorial houses have seen a turnaround in their dwindling readerships due to uptake of mobile and monetization strategies. The New York Times, for example, is growing due to programmatic and native marketing. Their EVP of advertising, Meredith Kopit Levien stated, “Only 10% of digital revenue comes from mobile. In the past year, though, mobile increased from one-third of user sessions to over half of user sessions”. Mark Thompson, Times CEO followed Levien’s claim stating, “Smartphone, tablet, and video, taken together, are now a significant reason why we turned what was a revenue stream that was in slight decline to a revenue stream that is growing healthily,” said Times CEO Mark Thompson.

Influential brands continue to tout their success with marketing strategies that rely on content created by online enthusiasts to drive consumers to their site or app. For them, marketing channels must be integrated across mobile devices where space is at a premium.

The future of marketing in our cross-device world relies on harnessing the power of enthusiast content, not simply relying on an ad unit.

Oliver Roup is Founder and CEO of VigLink
This article appeared in issue 29 of FeedFront Magazine, which was published in January 2015.http://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/feedfront-29

Tagged as: affiliate marketing, Affiliate Summit, feedfront, oliver roup, viglink

The Future of Marketing is Editorial Traffic – By Oliver Roup