Big Data and advanced analytics

de McKinsey Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum le 19 décembre 2012

Big Data is plenty big, and it’s getting bigger. By using advanced analytics, companies are figuring out how to turn that data into value, sales, and growth to beat out the competition.

iSketchnotes from Content Marketing Strategies Conference 2012 with iPad app Paper

Social Marketing, Listening and Engagement

A 2010 presentation but still up-to-date: Implementing Social Marketing for business and communication, a remix of some previous ideas and some new approaches by David J Carr, Digital Strategy Director, Chemistry Communications

2012 Edition: 15 Business & Marketing Trends That Matter

Top Ten Marketing Trends for 2012 | Business 2 Community

Top Ten Marketing Trends for 2012 | Business 2 Community.

I recently gave a presentation to an MBA class at the Simon School of the University of Rochester.  I told the students that this was the most exciting time in my lifetime as a marketer.  And I wasn’t just blowing hot air — I really believe it.  If you look at my top marketing trends for 2011, several have changed significantly and this is exactly why marketing is so much fun; there’s a lot happening and it’s keeping us on our toes.

So here’s what I see in store for 2012:

1. The customer is still king. This one is left off many of the lists that I’ve seen, but, as good marketers, we should remember the customer is behind all of these trends.  We have to get rid of our “campaign mentality” and learn to think about engaging customers with meaningful dialogue and relevant, timely information.
2. Big data is getting bigger. I said last year that the line between technology companies (a.k.a “Big Data”) and marketers is blurring.  We have all heard that the amount of digital data is doubling every two years.  What is important is looking at these customer interactions over time.  But it doesn’t have to be just big technology companies that can harness the data and use it for marketing.  New technologies and cloud computing have opened up all sorts of possibilities for smaller marketers as well.
3. SoLoMo – a new and powerful combination. You might think I’m being overly inventive by getting social, local and mobile combined in one trend. Google’s Matt Cutts coined this term but it’s probably better explained by a recent example on Black Friday of this year.  The New York Times reported that advertisers lured customers away and stole competitor sales while they were waiting on line to make a purchase – an awesome combination of social, local and mobile all being used together.
4. Cloud computing helps marketers too. I recently wrote a blog post describing this trend in more detail. Cloud computing helps marketers by giving us more accessibility to new technologies, reducing costs of marketing infrastructure (like servers and storage), easier scalability and low barriers to entry, which enables a more uniform playing field.
5. Show me the money. Dave Frankland from Forrester Research (www.forrester.com) recently called the tight budgets we’re seeing “post-recession austerity.”  I look for this trend to continue in 2012 as marketers face tight budgets and increased demand to show ROI.  That’s especially true with emerging media like social, which has matured and now needs to be evaluated for return on investment just like other channels.
6. Email’s death is greatly exaggerated. Spam filters and the threat of an opt-out registry haven’t dampened the growth of email.  In a recent interactive marketing forecast, Forrester predicted that email spending will continue to grow by 10% during the next several years, but marketers will focus the campaigns more using analytics.  Our B2B clients echo this forecast as we continue to see more dollars earmarked for email and lead generating programs.
7. The world has gone app crazy. The proliferation of smart phones and tablets has made us (and me) go app crazy.  And it’s not just applications like Facebook, Twitter andAngry Birds; people are using them for business applications.  For example, I used the app Evernote to store clipped data and emails in order to write this blog post.  George Colony, the CEO of Forrester, recently proclaimed that the internet was dead and that applications are taking over.
8. Attribution is the holy grail of marketing. Last year I took a bit of a leap by including touchpoint attribution as one of my top trends.  When I explain to marketers that attributing success to the right channel or channels is key to effective use of marketing dollars (especially with more and more multichannel campaigns), their eyes light up and the quest for more information on attribution begins.  In a recent study by Unica, marketers said their top two priorities are “turning data into actions” and “attributing success to marketing.”
9. Content marketing takes off. We’ve known than relevant content has always been important to drive web traffic, but blogs, case studies and white papers are now being considered an important part of the marketing mix.  As social media matures, marketers will need to provide visitors to Facebook or Twitter with meaningful content to get fans to return.
10. Right touching – right time multichannel marketing. This is a bit complicated to explain in a cursory fashion, but conversations and customer interactions that are taking place in social media are being harvested by social listening platforms.  These dialogues are being turned into campaigns that drive the right offer to the right buyer at the right time.  Sounds simple, huh?

So there you have it: my take on 2012.  While these trends may or may not be around next year, I can assure you that the changes we’ll see in 2012 will make our lives as marketers very exciting.

Resources:

Research for this article was gathered from Abnormal Marketing, Seattle pi, Business 2 Community andCMO.com.

Infografik: iPhone vs. Android – Social App Usage | mobile zeitgeist

Infografik: iPhone vs. Android – Social App Usage | mobile zeitgeist.

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[Source]

Infographic: Digital Marketing Budget Trends for 2012 | 6S Marketing

Infographic: Digital Marketing Budget Trends for 2012 | 6S Marketing.

Update October 12th, 2011: Today we released the 2012 Digital Marketing Budget calculator, developed upon the fact that companies are currently allocating 25% of their total marketing budgets to digital marketing. You can see this stat, and others, in the infographic below or try our budget calculator out for yourself.

Over the last few years, businesses and marketers have been seeing a tremendous shift away from traditional marketing towards interactive methods like social media, e-mail marketing and search marketing. The shift necessitates serious reconfiguring of marketing budgets to include these digital marketing channels.

Below are statistics 6S Marketing uncovered during research to determine what percentage of marketing budgets organizations are currently allocating towards digital marketing, and what we can expect to see digital marketing budgets to look like in 2012. We’ve also created an infographic to illustrate these, and a digital marketing calculator to help businesses determine what they should be allocating to digital marketing in 2012.

What are Companies Currently Budgeting?

SEO and social media marketing currently make up 70% of online marketing budgets. Overall, 24% of budgets were spent on digital marketing in 2011. Although the percentage of budgets that include online marketing tactics increase every year, 28% of organizations are in the process of moving their marketing budgets to digital channels.

A Focus Towards Online

It makes sense that organizations are starting to reshift their marketing budgets to the online world based on what today’s consumers are spending their time doing online. 35% of today’s consumers spend 180 minutes or more (3 hours) online per day. The activities they do the most are check emails (94%), search (87%) and research products (78%). If businesses have not already capitalized on this, they should be moving their focus online to where consumers are spending their time and actively searching and researching products to acquire them while in the buying cycle.

Digital Marketing Budget Infographic

The infographic below illustrates these and other 2012 Digital Marketing Budget Trends.  The embed code for this infographic is below. Feel free to use as you wish but please do not reformat or change the infographic  .

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</a>

Social Media

When social media first came onto the marketing landscape the natural question from ROI-eccentric marketers was “What’s the ROI?”. When polled, 57% of companies that used social media in 2011 named their company blog as the source for generating the most customers. 57% also named LinkedIn as generating the most business for their companies. 48% named Twitter, and 42% named Facebook.

Mobile Marketing

In 2012, 75% of marketers plan to include mobile in their budgets. Why? By 2013 it is predicted that over 60 Million North Americans will be smart phone users. This isn’t a surprise that so many will use smart phones but what organizations should be taking note of is the new technology smart phones will include, more specifically the iPhone 5.

The next generation of smart phones will include Near Field Communication (NFC) which allows for simplified transactions, data exchange and wireless connections between two devices in close proximity. It is a technology that is expected to become a widely used system for making payments directly from a smart phone, eliminating the need to pull out a credit or debit card each time a consumer wishes to make a transaction. Google Wallet was recently released which turns smart phones into a virtual credit card, but at this time, only works on the Sprint Nexus 4G. Long story short, marketers need to start thinking about how they will use mobile marketing tactics to benefit from this technology to ultimately generate more sales online.

Stay tuned to our blog tomorrow, when we will be launching an interactive infographic that companies can use to determine their 2012 digital marketing budgets.

Reckitt Benckiser launches crazieRBrands with The Workroom and TAMBA | The Drum

Reckitt Benckiser launches crazieRBrands with The Workroom and TAMBA | The Drum.

 

Reckitt Benckiser launches crazieRBrands with The

Reckitt Benckiser has today announced the launch of crazieRBrands, a suite of eight online and mobile mini-games created by The Workroom and TAMBA.

The mini-games are designed to raise awareness of RB’s corporate brand amongst the college, MBA, and early careerist demographic, with each of the eight games based on a brand: Face Invaders is based on Clearasil; Down the Pan is based on Harpic; and Smooth Operator is based on Veet. It is part of a long-term multi-channel brand awareness campaign that launched in April to reach graduates and people early on in their business careers.

crazieRBrands includes leaderboards, where people play for their consumer goods company and have the opportunity to win a top score prize, of a trip for two, worth nearly $13,000, to one of eight destinations worldwide – New York, Cape Town, Bangkok, Geneva, Barcelona, Iceland, Brazil or India.

Claudia Bach, marketing and PR manager at RB, said: “Game playing brings out people’s competitive spirits, and these are just the sort of people who would fit in at RB. We believe these mini-games will put RB top of mind amongst early careers people. And while all of the games share the same simple click mechanic, TAMBA and The Workroom have made each game quite different and fun in its own right.”

Transform Your Marketing

5 Reasons for Brands not to Outsource Social Media Marketing – Kent Lewis

Source: http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2011/03/14/outsourcing-social-media-management/

Posted by Kent Lewis on March 14th, 2011 at 5:52 am

On March 9^th, an employee of NMS, Chrysler’s outsourced social media marketing agency, sent a highly offensive tweet that insulted Detroit drivers. For details, see the AdAge article, “What Lurks Behind Chrysler’s F-bomb? Social-Media Turf War.” Although it was deleted nearly instantly, the effects were lasting: the NMS employee was immediately fired, and shortly thereafter, Chrysler fired the agency. Both organizations received black eyes, which leaves many brands and agencies wondering if they are next. Not me.

As a career digital marketer running two agencies, I’ve instilled in our collective corporate cultures the concept of transparency, honesty and integrity. At Anvil Media and Formic Media, client education and training is core to our values and purpose. As such, we’ve built our social media marketing practice around the concept of developing and implementing an overall social media strategy that empowers employees within the brand to manage its presence in social media. This approach addresses and alleviates many of the issues exemplified by the Chrysler Twitter incident.

Most marketers agree engaging in social media is not an “if” but a “when.” The challenge, however, is defining the “who” and the “how.” While our approach of training and empowering in-house employees to manage social media is transparent, it does require an accepting corporate culture, discipline and a long-term commitment to be successful. For corporate marketers still considering outsourcing social media management, however, I’ve outlined 5 reasons not to outsource social media management.

Authenticity

I don’t think anyone can rightfully disagree that employees are in a much better position to truly represent a brand than an outside party (agency, consultant, etc.). The premise is simple but powerful: it is easier (and more transparent) to train existing employees how to represent a brand than train an agency on the nuances of a brand’s unique offerings, differentiators and culture. Due to relative transparency in social media, outsourced social marketers are often easy to spot, which can risk blow-back from brand enthusiasts.

Vested Interest

Nobody has a greater vested interest in the success of a social media programs than employees of the brand itself.  Essentially, an employee has one job, and is committed to their success within the company. An outside agency, while motivated to please the client, employs account teams that typically have multiple clients. The difference may seem subtle, but if an agency loses a client, the account team may still keep their jobs. As such, failure may be an option for some agency employees.

Control

If Chrysler had followed best practices of other automakers (internal teams reviewing on all outgoing messages), the offending tweet would have never gone out. While you could argue it was a process oversight, there is simply no replacement for the control when a brand manages a team in-house. Refer to Authenticity and Vested Interest for additional justification.

Empowerment

Keeping employees engaged and motivated can be challenging, particularly during tough economic conditions. Empowering employees to support social media initiative can be a powerful alternative to financial challenging increases in benefits and compensation. Rewarding and recognizing socially-savvy employees who create success can also convince other naysayers to become believers.

Professional Development

Whether an employee is responsible for R&D, sales, customer service or marketing, training them to become socially savvy can reap dividends. As the employees build their expertise with social media, the likelihood they can identify opportunities and challenges increases dramatically. Since social media is the world’s largest focus group, where do you think the next big idea is most likely to originate, in house or online?

Getting Started

Regardless of who develops the initial social media strategy, it must incorporate essential elements to maximize success: detailed industry research, strategic planning, process, tools training and measurement. To minimize risk, programs should start small and iterate rapidly based on feedback and success metrics. Based on experience, brands often see tremendous benefit from looking for social media expertise outside the walls (yes, agencies and consultants) to both expedite the learning curve and implementation timeline. I’m biased, of course, in saying that Anvil and Formic Media are excellentresources for social media training, but please don’t ask us to manage social media as your outsourced agency.