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• "Have you clicked attending?"
• All Fun and Games in Digital Marketing
• Blog Action Day - Inequality in Digital Marketing
• By far the best and most innovative store on Instagram?
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• Google Opinion Rewards
• How to use twitter to brand yourself
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• Purely Mobile Post
• QR Codes are they a failed tool?
• Remote working
• Try Offline Buy Online
• Virtual Teams
• apps
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Google Opinion Rewards

Data in marketing is important, whether it's big or small, refined or general, it all paints a picture which marketeers can use to increase effectiveness in their techniques and approaches. Google has a huge role in this as you'd expect and have several platforms from alerts and analytics of specific sites to the way consumers use their products. They also have the old school approach of surveys. Though in today's day and age, with people always using their mobiles and only doing anything if they get something out of it, Google came up with Google Opinion Rewards.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zpKBS9pL-o[/embed]

(source:https://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home)

It's surprising how little people are willing to spend in app stores. When you consider that consumers will buy a chocolate bar purely from impulse for $3 but not a $0.99 app and instead use the lite version with ads, the sudden offer of app store credit becomes a lot more appealing. I've used the app for a few months and have earned around $15  worth of store credit. The questions range from gender and age to if you are planning on buying car insurance or know a certain YouTuber. The issue of how much information you reveal and privacy then arises and whether a consumer would want a corporation to know this information. You can reject surveys if you don't want to answer them though the survey's are scaled on the depth of information gathered. The more information you tell the more money you get.

(source: Google rewards app)

Personally, I don't mind answering the questions because I don't believe there is any threat with telling particular information to Google. Plus, being able to buy apps to try out that you wouldn't normally is fun. By combining market research and subsequent consumers making purchases from the credit they earned in their app store, Google has created a rewarding digital marketing strategy that gives value to all parties.

Have you or would you use Google Rewards to earn store credit? Or is your privacy not worth it?

FrontBack - Newest social network app, creativity is key

I love change and I love new things. I often browse the new apps section of the app store to see what new and exciting things are around. Recently a friend of mine told me about an app called FrontBack. In the day of social network apps being a rarely unique, I was interested to see how this one was different. Essentially the premise is that there are two square photos that you take on top of each other in a post. The suggestion is that you take a front photo of you and a back photo of what you’re doing but people are getting creative with it.

I thought of how this could be used in digital marketing and the first thought was celebrities both generic and online celebrities like youtubers and bloggers being used by companies to take a photo of them using their product and their face so you know it’s them. This is because you can’t upload an image to the app, the photo has to be taken within the app so you know it’s the actual person’s account.

Some general ideas of how other industries could use the app may be fashion brands if they could utilised the unique nature of the app by mixing and matching various clothes. Designers and artists as well in displaying their artwork and folios. The app is only in its early stages and any adverting would deter consumers so the mentality of twitters creating content and growing first before generating revenue.

Check out the app and let me know what you think, could you see a use for this in the digital marketing world?

All Fun and Games in Digital Marketing

As someone who likes to play the odd game or two on their computer for some fun (mostly racing for those interested) I use a game hub/store/social media program called Steam just like every other PC Gamer. Steam is owned by Valve and works on the fact that CDs are fading out in technology, so when you  buy a game, you just pay and download it on Steam. They're also heavily conscientious that gamers like to play with their friends and others online and the social media aspect to it, while it isn't really based on profiles and status updates is more so used for chat and invitations to join people's games in a seamless way.

So how do they digitally market their games? Well, a Gamer can never be satisfied with just one game, they have to have the latest and greatest and the ones to play with friends. To convince people to buy the games, they run special discounts every day on certain titles of up to 75% off. But the real driver for gamers to make purchases come when Steam has its annual Steam Sumner (us sumner) sales.

These sales are huge in the community and are well known for making the temptation of 80% off a pack of games irresistible to gamers that just have to catch them all. To put it in perspective of how users buy games, according to steam, 37% of the games purchased on steam haven't even been played. That's pretty incredible to have a third of the products you sell not be used. This isn't because the gamers don't want the games, they do because they bought them but they mostly stick to the games they love as 98% of the time users are playing the top 20 games on steam.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FbCjJ30ggM[/embed]

(for context, the guy in the video is Gabe Newell creator and managing director of Valve)

The beauty of steam is that because it is all online and digital (no discs) you can buy games for your friends so you can play together .This is actually popular because people enjoy games more with friends and are willing to pay for their game to have greater value. Every time you start steam, a window pops up of all the sales or new releases that are on steam. Users don't find this intrusive as they appreciate steam constantly giving them discounts, it's been built into the experience of steam. The digital marketing technique of Valve is such a natural part of the user experience that users can't keep up with the rate at which they purchase games.

Do you know of any companies which consumers buy products from faster than they can consume?

Try Offline Buy Online

We've all heard about the struggle which retail stores are facing in Australia as a result of having to compete with online retailers. It's a simple fact that online retailers are able to price their products cheaper than physical retailers simply because they have a lower costs base. Some retailers, like Gerry Harvey, the chairman of Harvey Norman, has insisted that tariffs on imported online goods should be introduced. Meaning, that we reduce the consumer's ability to get a much cheaper deal online, thereby making the domestic physical in-store purchase more appealing. I'd like to see the reaction of consumers if that went through.

Everything is digital; it is up to retailers to adapt to this change and recognize how it can compete using digital marketing. Many stores now have their own online outlets along with their physical stores. There are perks to buying online and there are perks to buying in store. On one hand you have convenience of shopping at home and saving a lot of money and on the other hand you have the comfort of trying or testing products before you purchase them to make sure they're exactly what you want. So what happens if a consumer wants both of these? Well, they go in store and try the product they're interested in and then they go home and purchase it online from a different retailer at a reduced price, this is called "showrooming" and it has become a problem for retailers.

I admit that I am guilty of showrooming. Last year I made the decision that I wanted fresh new Nikes, so I went online and had a browse around and I eventually found the style of shoe and colour I wanted. However, for me, I have to try runners on before I buy them. So I went into the city and walked into a store which specialized in sports shoes and found the pair I was interested in and tried them on. They felt great and I decided I'd buy them, the only problem was the price in store was $240. Nope, sorry, instead I went back online to EastBay.com, the website which I used to help find the shoe I was looking for and paid $160 for the same pair which included delivery. That's a massive saving. So much so that now, I will always look online before buying runners.

in store

eastbay

It made me think; do digital marketers have an unfair advantage over physical in store marketers simply because of the platform, budgets and the digital reach they have to add value for consumers? Or could stores fight back and offer a better in-store experience, return policies, stock exclusive items or run online campaigns too? Well, there is also the reverse trend with "webrooming" where people browse online and then buy in store though generally this is a natural purchase decision process from the same stores website. Either way, brick and mortar stores need to become more savvy with marketing, especially their digital marketing as this is the direct competition to the online stores.

Have you ever "showroomed" or do you know of a way that companies have competed with this?

Blog Action Day - Inequality in Digital Marketing

On the 16th of October (US Date), the annual Blog Action Day occurred. Blog Action Day is basically a massive digital marketing campaign focused on bloggers creating content to raise awareness and discussion about a particular topic. You sign your blog up to participate and you are then emailed the years theme. This years theme is inequality, so I've decided to join in with the thousands of bloggers and discuss this issue. Though perhaps not in the way you'd expect, given this is a digital marketing focused post it will be a different style of inequality.

So what inequality could there be in the digital marketing world? Well there is one small company which has a little bit of influence on the way digital marketing operates. That company is Google. If I type in "Google's market share" into.. well... Google... it comes up with 67.6%. That's a lot. This issue was recently mentioned by economist Jean Tirole which won him this years Nobel prize for economics. His piece discussed the regulation of monopoly and oligopoly organisations and markets and questioned regulation in the digital industry and if Google operates in a monopolistic fashion.

One way in which this inequality could be quantified is Google's influence with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Marketers pay massive dollar to have their advertisements placed at the top of the google search results but they also spend a huge amount of time and money in optimising their sites and triggers to be in line with the latest SEO. This year Google updated its algorithm to Hummingbird (they do this regularly though this time it was a larger update) and marketers made a huge fuss and it was massive news in the marketing industry. While the update didn't have a large affect on SEO, it made the marketers worried. Instead, it focused on making sure websites that produce relevant and updated content were rewarded.

So why do marketers become so alert and cautious when Google announce an update? Well, whenever someone wants to know something, the general response is "Google it". It has become a verb in everyday language, that's its power along with its market share. Google basically have rules for marketers to abide by so that their website are successful in searches. If marketers don't follow this, then they're left in the digital dust. Google say "jump" and marketers say "how high?". But are Google doing this for the benefit of consumers by making websites accountable for creating better content? Well, normally monopolistic companies don't progress as they have no competition and therefore no reason to; but we all know how progressive Google is. The question is, do they have too much influence on the direction the internet and digital marketing takes?

Purely Mobile Post

I spend roughly 1hr on public transport each day to get to and from uni. I use my phone as much as the next person on these joyful trips. So I figured, why not write a post using purely mobile tools and see if I can maintain the visual and layout standard which I expect across all devices while still writing relevant content. Whenever I'm using my phone on these daily trips I like to scroll through my twitter feed and read articles people have linked or get some work organised for uni. If a site I go to isn't optimised for mobile, it's immediately frustrating. I'm generally interested in or need to work with the content I click on so I don't leave the site straight away but most consumers would before the wasteful download of a banner ad even loads.

So why, as a producer of content would you want to inconvenience or frustrate your consumer from the get go? You wouldn't, and even though it's just pinching the screen to zoom in, that's the mobile world we live in. We expect easy to read, use and navigate user interfaces, and if we don't get these it annoys us.

Screenshot_2014-10-14-16-17-04.png

There is no question that we use our phones in excess and that it's a key platform to communicate and interact with consumers. But the fact there are still non-mobile optimised sites is pretty shocking. Even my simple free WordPress theme has an inbuilt mobile version, and it looks awesome. I shouldn't be impressed with mobile sites. They shouldn't wow me that a company displays their content in an easy and convenient way to navigate and read, but it does.

So if you have a blog yourself or a website and it isn't mobile optimised, then why not? It isn't hard to do and it will reduce that "bounce rate"  marketers hate so much. Most likely the only effort it takes it ticking a box that says "optimise for mobile devices" and you're in business.

Screen-Shot-2014-03-13-at-12.38.54-PM.png

What's your experience with mobile optimised or non-mobile sites? Any sites that have gone a step further and done something different?

Also, this WordPress mobile app is pretty good! Almost easier than writing and formatting on a computer. Can you tell the difference?

How to use twitter to brand yourself

The most important way to look at twitter is as a multi-way conversation, not one way. I recently decided to “up my game” on twitter and start using it properly and found that my interactions went up 200% and my followers up 50%. One thing to remember though is that follower’s isn’t everything, the most important aspect of twitter is creating content which delivers value, whether it be in the form of your passion, knowledge, opinion or personality.  So here are some tips on making your own brand on twitter.

1. Identify your style. What do you like to see on twitter and what do you post. You can express this in your description of your profile, it helps those know what to expect but it’s mainly just what you tweet about for me it’s business, sports and personal tweets. Personal tweets help get your personality across and encourage engagement.

1. Follow. On twitter you can follow anyone, it doesn’t matter if you know them or not. Follow the type of people or twitter accounts that interest you, whether it’s sports teams, celebrities, news outlets, business reporters, bloggers or individuals. To get started you need to follow people so check out the “who to follow” section on twitter and follow anyone you think are mildly interesting at first, if they don’t post content that appeals to you then you can easily unfollow later.

1. Interact with the people. Reply and retweet tweets you find interesting; it helps people find you who also have an interest in the content that they follow from the person you’re interacting with.

1. Hashtag. If you’re joining in on a conversation, make sure you use the right hashtag but don’t always go too overboard with them if you want to be taken seriously.

1. Be creative. Whether it is an article, video, picture, fact, theory or observation, make your tweets creative and interesting and people will engage with you. My best one was photo shopping a tweet from Natalie Tran the popular YouTuber:

[embed]https://twitter.com/ChrisGordon_8/status/508520422451589120[/embed]

Finally, Twitter is a massive community and people will try and get follows for follows or you may lose some followers after you tweet about a topic that wasn't the topic they followed you for. Don’t worry about it; they will just miss the good content you post. The end goal for twitter if you’re trying to brand yourself is to create or join in on conversations and bring value with what you’re saying, whether it’s professional, personal, opinionated or humour, just be yourself.

Keep track of your Twitter analytics here

By far the best and most innovative store on Instagram?

Today I stumbled upon without a doubt, the best Instagram store I’ve seen and I’ll tell you why.

The general Instagram stores that you see consists of images of items with a link in the description of the website or an email which you send the product code too. For a place like Instagram which is supposed to be fun, vibrant and creative, that seems like a pretty dull way to sell a product.

I’ve even seen friends try to make it in the online world of retail shopping using websites and Instagram. They set up the store Instagram account and then purchased followers to give the brand some more credibility. The only trouble with that was that the photos had next to 0 likes and there were over 10,000 followers that had been attained within 1 week of launch, not a very subtle number to buy and ultimately wasn’t effective.

So when I saw this take on an Instagram store I knew I had to blog about it.

What made it so brilliant was that it completely embraced the functions of Instagram and the layout of the photo grid on the user’s profile. You may be wondering, who came up with this? Believe it or not but it was the Russian marketeers at IKEA![vimeo http://vimeo.com/98909669]

(Source: http://vimeo.com/instinctmoscow)

The function of the account is that it doesn’t spam your news feed but when you go on their profile you’re greeted with what feels like a contemporary webpage complete with a banner up the top and tiles as menu selection. You tap on a photo which doubles as a category (i.e tables) the photo is then tagged with the various tables that are displayed in the picture and each table has its own profile which you can view and get information from.

What I like about this execution is that for some users, Instagram has become a getaway. There are so many Instagram luxury, nature and fashion blogs which takes users to environments they’d rather be and IKEA used this concept and delivered an immersive user experience with their store like no other.

If there was an Australian version of this I’d be following it for sure and would most likely browse the content as well.

(@ikea_ps_2014)

The IKEA Store: Direct link  or  @ikea_ps_2014 (be sure to use your phone for the best experience)

Go onto the profile and let me know what you think! Has this set the standard for Instagram stores?

"Have you clicked attending?"

Being involved in the student association for 4 years at uni, I’ve seen a lot of different techniques in the way in which the association and clubs have marketed to students. The main products which are being marketed are events but also things such as services, information and general advice.

So where does the digital aspect come into it? Well, obviously the main force behind any marketing campaign for a University association lies within Facebook and that small red notification at the top of the screen that communicates a message directly to the target. The use of posters and word of mouth advertising is important for those that haven’t “liked” the page or joined the group as it helps build hype around the place where students hang out but it’s the Facebook events which truly dominate the marketing strategy.

Not only does the consumer get the event posted in their calendar and all the information they could need, but they also get to see whose going and who isn't and they can then send the event to their friends who aren't on the list yet. The best example of a digital marketing campaign working at Uni was when a Full Moon themed party being run in the Melbourne CBD went around the student Facebook world like a grass fire. Usually for an event there will be more people that attend than the number that have clicked “attend”. For this Full Moon event there were 350 tickets available and over 1,000 people that clicked “attending”. Demand for extra tickets was incredible and the next year a larger venue was then needed.

IMG_20140822_004429-1 (1)

There is only one problem with relying so heavily on Facebook and that’s when Facebook decides to change its settings for pages or groups events. Facebook just recently did that and stopped the ability to invite the members of the group to an event. Normally the group which ran the Full Moon party would be able to invite all 4,000 of its members (not all of which have joined for the parties) but now it’s up to the host and attendees of the event to share and invite their friends and now this year’s party has just under 300 people that have clicked “attending” and a quarter of the number normally invited. Facebook is powerful but when it changes, it can cause a lot of pain.

I'm interested to know of any Facebook stories which you guys have and if you've run one, how did it go?

QR Codes, are they a failed tool?

QR (quick response) codes; you’ve probably seen them around and wondered if anyone has even used them. If you’re one of the rare few that have, you would’ve had to have searched for and downloaded an app first which looked really sketchy and unflattering. Then carefully lined up the barcode which sent you to a website where you were horribly disappointed. You then uninstall the app and haven’t scanned a QR code again. Well at least that was my experience and the feel that I’ve been getting when researching for this post.

(source: J6design.com.au)

So why do marketers use QR codes? Well the logical answer is because everyone has a smart phone and it’s easy to take it out and use. Plus it’s interactive which can be fun but mainly because it takes the consumer to the exact place the marketer wants.

It then leads to the question; do marketers put too much emphasis on the way a QR code works and its ability rather than getting the QR code to work as an effective tool? I say this because the time it took me to go through that annoying process to scan one, I was left so dissatisfied with it and the end product that I chose to ignore them from then on. What marketers should focus on is the ease of the user experience when scanning the codes and ensuring that the content is interesting, entertaining and worth their time. But for this to even be possible, the main smart phone software manufactures need to integrate a QR scanner into their stock camera app.

A friend of mine told me about one positive experience he had with a QR code a couple of years ago. He scanned a Halo poster on a bus shelter ad and won that poster and was ecstatic with the result. While he was happy with the product and experience, he hasn’t scanned a QR code since. Why? Because they’re “too annoying”.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvIJfUySmY0[/embed]

When searching for statistics for this post, there were a lot of positive stats in the 2011-2012 range though none in 2014 which showed a critical evaluation. The general feel was that QR codes are on the decline but marketers are still trying to hold them up as a successful tool for their potential.

Has the era of QR codes gone, or is it up to OS manufacturers to integrate a scanner to bring a revival or maybe technology has simply moved on to things like NFC (near field communication).

In any case, what has your experience with QR codes been?