Consumers have embraced mobile devices with a vengeance. Marketers, faced with new and constantly evolving attitudes and behaviors that accompany always-on everywhere access, are scrambling to play catch up. Think about it. Almost half of all email is opened on a mobile device and a third of e-commerce takes place on either a smartphone or a tablet. Then think about the amount of social media and gaming that gets done on-the-go and you realize how fast things changed and how much faster they will change as mobile payments, more sophisticated apps and big data play larger roles in providing utility, speed, information and entertainment to consumers. This puts an enormous burden on designers and marketers not only to catch up but to anticipate and proactively serve the growing expectations of mobile users. We have to rethink how we create mobile assets by partly abandoning and party adapting what we’ve learned about creating websites and digital experiences. As a rule of thumb, the fewer clicks; the better. Consider these 7 important user design factors. Rendering. While the debate between adaptive and responsive design advocates rages, the bottom line is … if your content doesn’t render properly on mobile devices your brand Read more…
“Instagram resembles a modern day bazaar – one that I visit on my phone when I have a free moment.” Jenna Wortham wrote in The New York Times. “A huge part of the appeal is that the goods I’m perusing are sandwiched in my Instagram feed between my friends; selfies and pictures of snow covered spots where they’ve stopped during the day. Stumbling across an unexpected and gorgeous find … on a special app like Instagram brings with it the excitement of discovery not unlike the titillating thrill you get when coming across a rare find at a flea market.” Photos and fifteen second videos are the coin of the realm. Pictures communicate fundamental ideas and emotions without a need for translation Instagram might be the absolute proof that a picture is worth a thousand words. Now my favorite data geek, Dan Zarella, studied 1.49 million photos from 538,000 users on Instagram to distill what he calls “The Science of Instagram.” These data-derived insights can be used to master this evolving medium. Consider these five selected observations. More Tags Equal More Likes. The easier you are to find; the more people find you. With up to 30 tagging options per Read more…
Ninety nine percent of social posts create no engagement according to new data from Social Flow. An unrelenting blizzard of posts that come and go quickly, an ADD public addicted to social and mobile media and brands using a two-way channel with a one-way mentality are contributing causes. Nobody can really keep up with the torrent of social media posts so its no wonder that 9 out of 10 die alone in the dark. Too many brands bring an old school media mentality to social networking. This mismatch of expectations seriously contributes to the absence of engagement. Too many marketers think of social media as a fast, cheap add-on channel. They fantasize about creating a video, an ALS-like stunt or a meme that magically goes viral. Yet these very same marketers process, homogenize and neuter posts in the pre-planning process. The objective is to mitigate risk rather than optimize engagement. By attempting to push cleaver or relevant brand messages, intersect with consumers, or be relevant and useful, posts are written or developed and filtered through legal teams. Since its impossible to guess when the right topic will reach critical mass, its no surprise that this sausage factory approach delivers a Read more…
Content is considered to be a silver bullet. Every brand is becoming a publisher based on the assumption that content, as much as product or price, is the ultimate consumer aphrodisiac. According to Rebecca Lieb of Altimeter, “Content is the atomic particle of all marketing – paid, owned and earned. Content must be executed correctly for it to be effective across the marketing ecosystem as well as across the broad enterprise.” Yet in an environment boasting millions of tips, tricks and hacks, billions of reviews, how-tos and infographics, trillions of recipes, diets or exercise routines and zillions of videos on every conceivable topic, savvy marketers want to know what content is the strongest lure, how much content is enough, which combination of content is the most potent and which kind of content converts users into buyers fastest. PR guys believe, as a matter of orthodoxy, that 3rd party endorsements and opinions are the best. The appearance of neutral expert insight or opinion trumps the credibility of branded information or user generated content. New survey data from Nielsen, commissioned by inPowered found that 85 percent of consumers seek out expert opinion, 69 percent liked to read expert reviews and 67 percent Read more…
Retargeting is emerging as a killer app for lead generation and e-commerce. The products that mysteriously follow people around the web no longer freak out consumers. And marketers are reveling in the better than average response and conversion rates. A new six-month study of 215 retargeting campaigns that generated 800 million impressions, produced by AdRoll, not only documents this phenomenon but indicates that Facebook is becoming a dominant and effective retargeting platform. Their evolving direct response ad units and mobile placements are fertile ground for even greater results. And since mobile ad units are new and underutilized the CPM costs are 57 percent lower than retargeting in the NewsFeed. Marketers are experimenting with several different units in different combinations. The News Feed ads (FBX) on desktops combine a large visual with sufficient space or both sell copy and social elements like comments and sharing. The right hand column is smaller and feels like its designed for high frequency. And now Facebook will match brand website visitors with Facebook users and serve ads exclusively on the basis of the match. This Website Custom Audience (WCA) play adds incremental targeting and gives marketers more options. Combining Facebook units with standard web retargeting Read more…