Online Generation Z trends 2018

Chart of the day: Know how and where to target Generation Z consumers in 2018

Generation Z, also known as post-millennials, are the latest generation to take to online media consumption, adopting a social and mobile-first approach to online research channels.

Targeting millennials has, in the past few years, become a buzzword for any business that wants to delve into the minds of consumers who want more brand engagement, charity-inspired campaigns, and tech-savvy marketing. However, Generation Z are, what some call, the future of social consumerism. Starting from the mid-1990's (approx 1995) these are the generation who live and breath online, where social media, staying connected and latest trends are vital to daily life.

By these dates, Generation Z are approximately 21-22 years old, starting their careers or in full swing knowing who they are and where they want to be. It is the generation where traditional advertising might not cut it anymore, they aren't looking at billboards because they're looking at their phones and they aren't listening to the radio because they're playing iTunes, Spotify or Youtube for music needs. So getting online and advertising on these platforms is crucial to planting the seed for purchase.

In Global Web Index's Trends 18 report, we find proof for our general thoughts - Generation Z is primarily a social/ mobile-first generation. Social networks and mobile apps are used more often than millennials for online researching and can be channels that represent the most influencer for buying decisions. This is no shock given the rising trend of influencer marketing appealing to younger generations.

Brands are using vloggers and social influences to promote their products on social platforms where they can't reach their audience.

To reach Generation Z consumers think about:

1. Buyer Personas 
2. The social platform they are using - using the same strategy across all social platforms may not work. different platforms have different social feed algorithms so potential reach is limited if each individual social strategy is not defined. on top of that, each social platform is used for a different reason, make sure you're in the right conversion on the right platform, or else you risk poor reach and engagement.
3. When your audience is online - posting content and social updates is only good if your audience are online to see it
4. Content - what content do they want to see on each platform (you don't want to be posting blog post links on Instagram - use visuals to attract their attention)
5. Have you thought about ephemeral and user-generated content? - get your audience involved. Younger audiences want to be more engaged and feel valued by brands - have your customers send in pictures of them using products etc. this will also create a great 'public' brand ambassador program with real-life testimonials. Using ephemeral content will keep the social-savvy Generation Z constantly checking social media (more than they are now) for content they don't want to miss.

 

• Source: Global Web Index - Trends 18 report
• Sample - Over 80,000 internet users aged 16-34
• Recommended resource - Social Media Strategy guide 

source https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/black-friday-2017-email-report/

5 Christmas website design strategies to inspire your creativity

The best Christmas Website designs and landing pages of 2017

Christmas time is upon us and if you’re a retailer, then I’m willing to bet that you have put up some Christmas decorations somewhere. If you have a brick-and-mortar shop, then you might have a tree up with some presents underneath. After all, you’re in the Christmas spirit and you want your shoppers to be in a jolly mood while browsing around your shop. Your website should be no different! Getting your browsers into the Christmas spirit is essential, after all, the more festive they are the happier they are, and the happier they are the more likely they are to purchase your products.

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There are lots of strategies out there for you to use this Christmas to motivate shoppers. Let’s look at a few examples and see why they work.

The Christmas promotion

Paula & Chlo

A new gift for each day of Christmas can ensure some repeat visitors/buyers

Paula & Chlo has been running these “12 Days of Christmas” campaigns for a few years now with much success. They will generally give away a free gift with qualifying orders on specific days (e.g. Get X gift for every order over £50). What’s interesting is that they will actually tell you what the free gift is for each day so shoppers can plan ahead. Pure genius! Some of the shoppers might want more than one free gift, so this can lead them to split their order into two visits. If the customer had only planned on purchasing £80 worth of goods, but needs another £20 in order to get those two gifts, they might end up spending a little more to qualify for that second free gift. Besides that, this promotion will probably lead to more page visits overall and thus, increase the chances of a shopper finding more products that they love if they’re visiting for the second time.

The subtle Christmas design

United Colors of Benetton

Colourful yet Christmasy (without ever mentioning the holiday!)

Their homepage doesn’t actually mention Christmas anywhere, although they did hold a Black Friday sale. Famous for their minimalistic, yet colourful design, their homepage reflects this perfectly. No strangers to controversy, it’s likely the lack of any specific holiday being mentioned was very intentional as United Colors of Benetton likes to promote peace between religions, cultures, and lifestyles, so they probably don’t want to polarize any demographic. Still, despite the absence of tinsel, Christmas ornaments, and Santa Claus, this basic design still instills a Christmas feel with the subtle reds and greens.

The B2B free gift site

Trusted Shops

Unwrap the gift by hovering your mouse over them

Marketing yourself to other businesses can be challenging sometimes. In B2B, Christmas marketing starts even earlier than for B2C shops. Trusted Shops has created a Christmas landing page to offer some free whitepapers as “gifts” to small- and medium-sized businesses. The design is minimalistic as well, but undoubtedly “Christmasy”. It's fun and interactive as hovering over the wrapped packages leads to an unwrapped version making it feel like you've unwrapped a present.

Using meaningful graphics and minimizing the menu options (which is one technique we advise in our perfect landing pages article) are some of the strategies used with this page in order to increase conversions. Graphics need no explanation, but why no menu options? Sometimes less is more. Giving customers fewer options on where to click will help them click on the intended links. The Christmas countdown timer on top of the page also adds a bit of urgency to the customer’s decision making process by utilizing the opportunity cost concept, where time is a strong factor in decision making.

Fully integrated Christmas campaign

John Lewis

Their iconic TV advert is integrated into a full online Christmas campaign 

John Lewis is famous for creating a build-up that has the British public eagerly awaiting their new festive Christmas TV advert, often featuring an iconic song, from The Bear and the Hare to Monty the Penguin to this year's Moz the Monster. They have a dedicated landing page for Moz, which features all parts of their Christmas campaign, integrating offline advertising with online marketing. Their landing page design fits the same design and style as their advert and together creates a well-rounded and beautiful landing page that captivates the hearts of the British public. This year John Lewis teamed up with Barnardo's, a UK children's charity, to raise awareness and funds from sales from Moz mugs and their Moz soft toy. Overall, their landing page creates a full experience of the whole campaign - and if you're one of the few that haven't seen the TV ad, they have it on their landing page to help you follow the story of Moz. The emotional connection can lead people to purchase - having all the products associated with Moz will increase sales.

Simply inspiring

Starbucks

Can’t you just smell the Christmas spirit when looking at this image?

Sure, Starbucks promotes their non-profit endeavors. In fact, “Responsibility” is even in their navigation bar, which reveals an almost endless supply of charities and projects that Starbucks is involved with, ranging from nutrition to the environment – something every big brand should strive for. However, when it comes to design, their amazing product images make me smell the cinnamon and gingerbread drift through the air. The headline is clear, simple and compelling as well. Either it’s the post-lunch sleepies speaking or it’s clever marketing. Either way, I totally want a tall “cup of merry” right now!

Promotional

Paperchase

This is a classic Christmas page in many ways. Wrapped gifts, Christmas trees, and Christmas ornaments. What else is missing besides Santa? With tons of cute products designed especially for the holidays, they have a lot to promote. To bring a uniform feel to their thousands of items, they are heavily promoting the “3 for 2” Christmas promotion throughout their homepage and website with those orange stickers that are pretty hard to ignore.

Conclusion

There are a lot of ideas out there for redesigning your website for Christmas. You can inspire your customers in so many ways: be subtle, be direct, promote a sale, or simply make them hungry (or thirsty!). Either way, Christmas “decorations” for your homepage or landing pages can really motivate them to take action this holiday season if done properly.

source https://www.smartinsights.com/user-experience/website-design/5-christmas-website-design-strategies-inspire-creativity/

7 great resources to inspire your agency marketing initiatives

If you're trying to market an agency, these 7 resources and our new 'Marketing your Agency' guide will help you

Where do you turn to, to check your Agency’s new business framework is as comprehensive and potentially as effective as it could be? Well if you're reading this, then Smart Insights is one of those places. But there are other ‘new biz’ coach or consultancy voices out there with lots of experience to share. So I thought it would be useful in this post - that accompanies our recent guide about marketing your agency  - to share a few of those with you.

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Marketing an agency

As part of my work with agency clients, I talk about taking a structured approach to raising their profile, promoting their services with a sound value proposition and working through a coherent new business framework. Much in the way, they will do with clients but often don’t for themselves - falling foul of the cobbler’s children syndrome!

Taking time to read or watch the thoughts of new business experts (a subset of the ‘agency growth’ field) can pay dividends in terms of where you focus your agency resources and efforts to acquire new clients.

That’s something I do myself, even though I’ve worked alongside and at one point directly in new business units over the past 25 + years. I ‘get’ (or at least hope I do!) best practice agency new business approaches but you can always learn from others.

Things change and you need to flex your activity accordingly: if you are still doggedly only using cold calling as a new business approach you’re in trouble. That’s an extreme example but hopefully, it illustrates why staying on top of what’s working is a good thing to do!

To keep on top of new approaches (or to confirm my recommendations are still working in the wider agency world) I have a public agency growth Twitter list. The list is dedicated to agency growth practitioners and as a subset of that, I include dedicated new business consultancies and coaches. The list is set up as much for myself as anyone else but I hope it is useful for agencies everywhere.

Agency marketing resources

By way of showing the mix of resources you can access to stimulate your new business activities, I have handpicked 7 for you. These range from ‘big consultancy’ to growth-hacker.

Some of the thinking overlaps but each has a great take on the changes that required in an agency’s new business toolkit and their thoughts on what are perennial, effective approaches. Have a read through these resources, you’ll gain lots of ideas around making your agency attractive to the types of clients you really want and having a consistent pipeline of leads in place.

• John Heenan - John has a great approach to explaining the new business goals for every agency.
• Michael Gass / Fuel Lines - No new business resource list would be complete without the insightful posts from Michael.
• Jody Sutter - Jody has lots of experience in marketing and new business for creative businesses and that comes across in her regular blog posts.
• RSWUS - Representing the big consultancy camp is RSWUS, their blog is regularly updated and has many an insightful new business article.
• Jason Swenk -  he is a prolific content creator and insight provider across written posts, video and podcasts. He covers more than new business but that’s the focus of this post so have a look here at an example new business vlog from him.
• Entourage - Entourage are a business development business helping agencies across their biz dev strategy, profile development and communications. I particularly like their ‘reconnaissance’ series of videos with client-side marketers, explaining what they look for in an agency and what types of approaches work for them. See the Union Roasted Coffee interview as an example (above).
• Vin Clancy -  Vin is a ‘new breed’ of business development thinkers, looking at innovative marketing approaches a.k.a growth hacking. Some of his ideas might well work for you away from the ‘write content, share content’ approach that is maybe easy to settle on.

Aside from those seven resources, there are several great agency growth podcasts. A couple that features discussions around new business are the Creative Agency Podcast and the Small Spark Theory podcast (sat in the blog but also on iTunes) from Lucy Mann at Gunpowder Consulting.

There’s larger list of specific new business coaches and consultants on a post I put together but I think those above have plenty for you to initially absorb and to spark ideas from!

Let us know if there is a particular trusted source of new business knowledge that you regularly refer to.

Download Business resource – Marketing your agency effectively

A best practice guide with case studies and checklists on how to effectively market your digital agency.

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source https://www.smartinsights.com/agency-marketing/growing-a-marketing-agency/7-great-resources-inspire-agency-marketing-initiatives/

The best email marketing tactic

Chart of the Day: Most effective email marketing tactics ~ Part 1 of 2

This is a two-part series, where we will look at the most effective email tactics and those that are the most difficult to implement.

What is a tactic?

Tactic - noun
An action or strategy carefully planned to achieve a specific end.

Step 1: Where do I start?

Before you even begin to think about the strategy, you need to decide what end result you want. What does success mean for your email marketing? Does it mean:

• Opens and clicks
• Revenue
• Subscriptions
• List growth
• Brand awareness
• Customer satisfaction
• List growth

Step 2: What tactic do I use?

In our chart below, there are 7 tactics that have been used, with varying success. There are many others that you can use, for example, A/B copy testing, asset creation, refine campaigns and more. What I would say, my little email geeks, is to only focus on one at a time.

Step 3: Look at what peers have used

In the chart below, it is good to see what other peers have found most effective in the various tactics. I want to add a slight disclaimer here. This looks at tactics that were effective, however, please remember that it doesn't mention how they measured their success.

Message personalization was the most effective (44%) and social sharing (41%) was one of the top two. While mobile responsive design (31%) and automated campaigns (19%) were the least used email marketing tactics.

When an email tactic works, we walk with little strut

Final thoughts

It is always good to have a look at what our peers are doing and what works for them. However, what works for them may not work for you. If you are trying to increase your subscribers it's best to create a plan with the aim of implementing one tactic, for instance, social sharing and then track the performance. If that doesn't work, try something else. And if eventually, you aren't reaching the numbers you want, it would be time to look at why your tactics aren't working.

• Source: Strategy and effectiveness of email marketing in 2017 by Return Path, in partnership with Ascend2
• Sample Size: 88 B2B and B2C business leaders and marketing decision makers
• Recommended Resource: Email Marketing Strategy Guide

source https://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/best-email-marketing-tactic/

Black Friday 2017 report

How successful were brands in their 2017 Black Friday campaigns?

Each year, online retailers make new records during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping period. 2017 is no exception. ContactPigeon, a marketing automation platform for 200+ eCommerce brands, recently analyzed over millions of emails and eCommerce transactions for a sneak peek into how Black Friday 2017 has shaped up. The most interesting insights were summed up in an infographic.

Key findings include:

• Online sales are record high: +14% revenue increase, compared to same 24-hour period on Black Friday 2016.
• More retailers are using email for Black Friday: +11% overall increase in total volume of emails sent on Black Friday 2017, compared with Black Friday 2016.
• Email marketing is still strong: Email alone as a channel makes up 23% of sales attribution on Black Friday 2017.
• Desktop is (still) the Black Friday king: Despite the growing mobile usage, the majority of the open and order conversions takes place via PC and Mac desktop. 51% of all Black Friday orders are made on desktop platforms, with average click rates of 43% and conversion rate at 7%.
• Android on the rise: On devices, Android tops iPhone this year in terms email consumed and conversions. 21% of the emails are open on Android devices compared to 17% on iPhone.
• Emojis are not game winners: Two-thirds of Black Friday emails contain emojis in their subject lines. However, use of emoji alone doesn’t ensure higher conversion to sales. In fact, sales email without emojis shows a 1.5x higher conversion rate than the ones that contain emojis.
• Most active hours for shopping online this year are 10am, 9am, noon and midnight (12AM Black Friday). Order conversion rates are 4.8%, 4.1%, 4.0% and 3.3% respectively.

Key Trend = Marketing Automation

Email marketing has been around for many years and its penetration as a marketing tactic is undisputable. However, as competition increases, the necessity pushes retailers to evolve and step into “next generation” email marketing, thus investing in Marketing Automation and personalization. The sales conversion for triggered emails, such as abandoned cart and browse reminders, delivered during Black Friday 2017 was 3 times higher than standard newsletters.

You can find the full report here

ContactPigeon is an all-in-one marketing automation startup specializing in eCommerce. ContactPigeon offers a suite of sophisticated features that allow eShop owners to react with personalized triggered campaigns, so as to maximize the possibility of converting to sales. Founded in 2014, ContactPigeon has raised funds from VentureFriends VC and is currently trusted by some major brands like L’OREAL, Follie Follie, the BODY SHOP, ABB and others.

source https://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/campaign-analytics/black-friday-2017-report/

Social media listening tool comparison

Updated report shows the why, what and how of selecting social media listening tools and engagement

‘Listen!’ is the first step towards creating a social media strategy. To listen effectively you need to choose the right tool. There’s certainly no shortage of choice. Back in 2009 Smart Insights created a comparison of 36 of the best-known online reputation monitoring tools including free and paid tools. Since then, there has been an explosion of new tools on the market, with top vendors developing features beyond listening, monitoring, analysis, or social media management, making the selection process now even more bewildering. Our free tools guides has a select number of services.

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This guide will recommend the best types of tools and the most popular alternatives in each category based on our experience and talking to other marketers.

Access the Essential Digital Marketing Tools 2017

In order to enable companies and individuals to make effective decisions about the selection and use of social media monitoring tools and services, this November’s Social Media Monitoring (SMM) Tools and Services Report 2017 by Ideya Ltd provides overview and comparison of social media technologies to help you make the right choice! It is the most comprehensive report currently available on the market, offering analysis and elaborate profiles of 173 social media technologies.

To save you time, Ideya has conveniently categorized the featured social technologies into 8 classes, based on the type of social tools they offer. They include:

• Social Media Listening Tools
• Social Media Monitoring
• Social Media Analytics
• Social Media Intelligence
• Social Media Management
• Social Media Marketing Tools
• Social Media Customer Care Tools,
• Social Suites.

The 92 page-long report extract below, also published on SlideShare has a good level of detail on how to approach the selection process, a listing of all tools and detailed sample profiles of 7 tools (out of 173 profiles available in the full report). Those that are included in the Excerpts are: (1) BoomSonar, BoomSonar SA, (2) Lucidya,  Lucidya, (3) NodeXL, Social Media Research Foundation, (4) Sprinklr, Sprinklr, Inc., (5)  SemanticForce, SemanticForce, Inc, (6) Talkwalker, Talkwalker, and (7) YouScan, YouScan Limited.

What are social media listening and monitoring tools?

Simple social listening platforms provide a basic capability of capturing online and social conversations based on the specific search query, offering key insights through the analysis of those conversations.

More advanced Social Media Monitoring (SMM) platforms, on the other hand, may provide several functions and offer listening, monitoring, analytics and often intelligence and engagement capabilities. Some top vendors are developing features even beyond monitoring, listening and gradually converging with other types of platforms (e.g., content management, social advertising, social media marketing platforms, etc.), or creating social suites that integrate several social point solutions within one integrated product that can address multiple social business use cases.

Furthermore, more advanced SMM tools are employing artificial intelligence (AI) in various ways to improve data discovery, data analysis and engagement function to get ahead of competition. Some forms by which AI is making an entrance into social media marketing and customer care are image recognition, ad targeting, chatbots, smart alerting, tailored recommendations, and others.

As a result of these rapid innovations, making an educated choice about which social technology and services can best address your needs has become a more complex.

How do social listening tools help in marketing campaigns?

SMM tool metrics and measurements are designed to evaluate company activities and inform an overall social media strategy. Companies should develop marketing campaigns based on the insight gained through social media monitoring, focus on the highest potential markets or groups identified through market segmentation and influencer analysis and identify optimal time for engagement.

The metrics may involve statistics about the share, reach, sentiment, impact and speed of conversations about the company. These parameters can be used to assess the company image and perceptions before and after campaign and measure campaign effectiveness and identify trends that lead to new marketing and product tactics. Many tools also offer day parting metrics showing the effectiveness of an outbound message at different times of the day to identify optimum posting time and frequency.

To measure the value of your social media activities, you should also look at the overall results your company is generating and carefully examine how social media was engaged in increasing your bottom line through growing revenue and increasing efficiency looking at the incremental revenue after a particular promotion, number of conversions, lead generation effectiveness, number of leads per dollar spent vs. traditional advertising campaigns, and others.

 

In the area of Marketing and Communications, Ideya says that social media monitoring tools typically assist organizations in:

1. Acquiring real-time social marketing insights to inform social media marketing and communication plans
2. Optimizing design of marketing and advertising campaigns based on customer insights and comprehensive audience analysis and targeting, researching the interests, preferences, demographics, and other aspects of an audience group
3. Developing social content strategies to promote products and services and engage with current and potential customers across social media channels in real time
4. Monitoring and applying'word of mouth' consumer recommendations as a form of direct advertising by identifying and engaging with key influencers, generating buzz, and establishing and building relationships with key influencers
5. Making better decisions about campaigns and brand extensions with a clear understanding of the key factors influencing brand's health
6. Supporting rapid social marketing engagement, and
7. Developing performance metrics

I’d add that they’re also useful in getting insight about customer perception of product categories and how your products or services are considered relative to competitors. This can help inform new product development.

As Ideya states in the report,

"if used properly, social intelligence offered by SMM tools can create true value for businesses by supporting every area of their business. Benefits can range from understanding consumers’ needs and behaviors, competitive landscape, creating risk management plans, increasing customer experience and satisfaction, to executing smart product development and marketing campaigns."

Depending on the maturity and complexity of the SMM platforms and its key features, some tools can also support social media marketing professionals in social media publishing, business development, sales and lead generation, SMM, analysis, and engagement, conversation management, and SEO.

Requirements for social listening tools and technologies

So that’s the 'why' of social media listening tools, but how do you decide? Issues to consider when selecting social media tools are summarized in the following table:

The following graph illustrates how tools differ in terms of product features but also shows that the SMM technologies are continually introducing new product features.

SMM Product Features - Percentage of SMM Products (200) Offering Specific Feature

Indeed, the number of SMM Tools offering the Campaign Management and Monitoring feature has increased significantly in the past several years. According to Ideya’s 2017 Report, the number of featured tools offering Campaign Management and Monitoring feature has grown from 73% in 2016 to 77% in 2017, while the number of the tools offering publishing and workflow management capabilities grew by 4% and 3% respectively.

Similarly, about 83% SMM tools offer API integration - a very valuable option for organizations with complex social media programs, which is five percent (5%) more than in 2016. The above graph also demonstrates increased focus on segmentation by location.

Do check the report out! For more information, read the Report Excerpts below or download them from Ideya’s Website:

Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services Report Public Excerpts 2017, 8th Edition by lmilicideya on Scribd

source https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-analytics/social-media-listening-tool-comparison/

Latest Gartner Hype Cycles

Evaluating technology options for innovation in marketing - do you know your Hype Cycles?

If you're involved in marketing strategy development, you will be constantly making judgements and doubtless arguing with colleagues about which digital technology innovations are most relevant to your organization. In this article, we compare different examples of Gartner's well-established Hype Cycle tools which serve to highlight the adoption of new technology services within marketing technology.

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You'll see we have updated the post for different years, so you can see how technology trends have changed as techniques like content marketing and personalization have moved along the Hype Cycle.

The 2017 digital marketing Hype Cycle

Gartner has just published their digital marketing and advertising Hype Cycle and their recommendations on technologies marketers should focus on in 2018. Gartner's hype cycle for digital marketing is particularly useful for Smart Insights readers to consider their investments in marketing technology in the year(s) ahead.

In their analysis, Gartner proclaims that AI Invades Marketing which I think is overstating the real-world day-to-day use in most businesses. Certainly, martech vendors are busy building in machine learning and AI features into their applications, but our research suggests that many businesses don't have the fundamentals of 'Always-on' marketing in place just yet. I do agree with their suggestion that:

"AI is a thread weaving its way through the entire marketing and advertising technology landscape. Exercise diligence in vetting claims and recognize AI’s transformational opportunity over the next decade. AI for marketing: Be wary of lofty claims of AI-powered marketing. Establish test criteria and conduct pilots and proofs of concept to vet such assertions".

Other on-the rise technologies to consider for investment are:

• Ad Blocking
• Customer Data Platforms
• Real-Time Marketing [Personalization, not real-time PR]
• Personification
• Augmented and Virtual Reality marketing
• Cross-Device Identification
• Virtual Personal Assistants
• Programmatic Direct Advertising

Conversational UI doesn't feature prominently but is included in the tech hype cycle below. Other techniques which we have featured in previous Hype cycles are now in the mainstream including Content Marketing, Personalisation, and Programmatic.

The Gartner Hype Cycle model for technology innovation

You may well know the Gartner Technology Hype cycle since this has been published for over 10 years, over time they have added a comprehensive range of hype cycles covering technology applications like Ecommerce, CRM and ERP. Many of these are only available to subscribers, but Gartner does share some of the broader hype cycles through their blog/press releases and we share them here to raise awareness of these useful tools.

The latest Gartner 2017 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle highlights many innovations:

Many of the early deployment 'Innovation Trigger' techniques are less relevant for marketers compared to the those related to AI which is now at the 'Peak of Inflated expectations'. One that caught my eye is Conversational User Interfaces. This is a useful application for marketers to consider since it includes using marketing chatbot examples, which we have featured on our blog this year. It also includes voice interactions through the likes of Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Amazon Alexa/Echo.

Other technologies include marketing applications of machine learning which platforms like Google. Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Salesforce are deploying, with their mega budgets and research teams are working on integrating into their services. They include, for example, Augmented Reality, Cognitive Expert Advisors (described above as AI Chatbots), Smart Data discovery (of which Predictive Analytics is one approach) and IoT integration including the Connected Home.

For comparison, here are the hype cycles for the previous years.

The Digital Marketing hype cycle for 2015

This report showcased some really interesting trends. Wearables are currently ascending the peak of inflated expectations, and with all the hype around them, they could have quite a long fall into the trough of disillusionment. Mobile advertising is now headed straight for the plateau of productivity, which is where it will rightfully sit given most web traffic now comes from mobile.

2017 emerging technologies hype cycle

2016 emerging technologies hypecycle

The 2015 Hype Cycle report identified 5 mega-trends which will play out over the next few years. These were:

•  1: Digital Business Moves Toward the Peak of Inflated Expectations
•  2: IoT, Mobility and Smart Machines Rapidly Approach the Peak
•  3: Digital Marketing and Digital Workplace Quickly Move Up
•  4: Analytics Are at the Peak
•  5: Big Data and Cloud Make Big Moves Toward the Trough of Disillusionment

Let's see how these compare to the 3 mega-trends predicted by 2014's report:

• Brain-Computer interface
• Virtual Reality
• Virtual Personal Assistants and Smart Advisors 

Brain-computer interfaces still seem a while away for most of us, but there has been big strides in the interfaces, especially for controlling robotic limbs for people who have lost their legs or arms. VR was also a big trend of 2015, as was virtual personal assistants, with Facebook launching 'M' in beta, and Siri, Google now and Cortana all battling for market share.

The Digital marketing Hype cycle for 2014

The emerging technologies trend report is the best known Gartner hype cycle, but is in fact, one of many hype cycles covering activities from Big Data to Ecommerce.  Also, this year Gartner has released this report specifically on Digital Marketing which will be of particular interest to Smart Insights readers.

 

Gartner Hype Cycles for technology and marketing in 2013

For reference and comparison to previous years., we have included the Gartner technology maturity adoption curves from previous years. In July 2013 Gartner released their Digital Marketing Hype Cycle - you can see some interesting commentary in this Slideshare kindly recommended by Jon Clements in the comments to this post and we added this in December since it's sure to be of interest to Smart Insights readers.  We cover many of these in our 2014 digital marketing trends post. Digital marketing specialists may be surprised to see some established techniques such as content marketing, attribution, responsive design and mobile analytics only at the innovation trigger stage although some of these are reaching the peak of the hype cycle.

In August 2013, Gartner followed with their Latest 2013 Hype Cycle of emerging technologies. If you don't know it, this is one of the best ways to find out about the upcoming technologies which may affect digital marketing.

Marketers who follow new technology will not be surprised to see Big Data nearing the Peak of Inflated Expectations along with wearable technology. Scary-sounding new technologies to watch include the Brain-computer interface, Human Augmentation, and Neurobusiness.

For reference we also have the 2010 and 2009 models from when I first wrote this post. It's interesting that those rising up the "peak of inflated expectations" currently those looking most relevant for marketing are Video search, Augmented Reality, IP TV are not mainstream still, probably consigned to the "Trough of Disillusionment".

Gartner Hype Cycle 2009

Here is my summary of the 5 stages of diffusion of innovation used by Gartner - it can be useful for explaining to colleagues your strategy when you have adopted a "wait and see" approach because you don't want to waste time implementing a solution that never gets out of the "trough of disillusionment". Alternately, in digital marketing, many smaller, nimble companies have gained an edge amongst early adopters of an approach such as social media or Web 2.0.

1 Technology Trigger - The first phase of a hype cycle is the "technology trigger" or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.

2 Peak of Inflated Expectations - In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.

3 Trough of Disillusionment - Technologies enter the "trough of disillusionment" because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.

4 Slope of Enlightenment - Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the "slope of enlightenment" and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.

5 Plateau of Productivity - A technology reaches the "plateau of productivity" as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.

Selecting alternatives for marketing innovation

Selecting amongst hundreds of alternative projects is a challenge I commonly hear when talking to digital strategists. One approach I have developed when consulting, to help with this, is the matrix below which we describe along with other alternatives in our guide and template to justifying digital marketing investments. Of course, this structured approach won't fit the culture of all organizations, but even a simple unscored version of this is useful within a workshop to help discuss the relative merits of different digital projects.

Forrester produced a "HERO" Project Effort-Value Evaluation tool which works in a similar way.

source https://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/marketing-innovation/technology-for-innovation-in-marketing/

Online advertising grew over 11% in the first half of 2017

Chart of the day: Online advertising grew 11.5% like-for-like in the first half of 2017 in Europe.

€2.6 billion spend on advertising was added during the first half of the year, across search, display and classifieds/ directories.

Research by IAB and IHS Markit shows marketers are increasing online advertising spending. The report focuses on advertising in Europe only.

In this chart of the day blog post, I will update you on latest research by IAB Europe and IHS Markit, with charts from their Adex Benchmark from the first half of 2017.

Search advertising is leading and display advertising has grown the fastest, interestingly online video is up 20%.

As shown in the chart above, search advertising dominates online ad spend, but there is a huge jump in growth of over 13% for display advertising.

The report also found that most growth is online advertising spend is on mobile, with mobile search and mobile display dominating spend. Desktop display advertising saw a small decline.

Is mobile the where most of your ad budget is going? We're glad to see marketers realise the power of mobile ad spend, even I personally have been buying many more Christmas presents on my iPhone. And yes, I have nearly finished my Christmas shopping and it's not even December yet!

• Source: IAB Europe & IHS Markit
• Sample: Reported data from local IAB's.
• Recommended resource: Don't forget the power of TV advertising, discover how TV may be the safe choice in our blog post

 

 

 

 

source https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-advertising-grew-11-first-half-2017/

Baby boomer marketing statistics

10 statistics and reasons why you should turn your marketing attention to baby boomers

Baby boomers are born between 1946 and 1964, there are around 74.9 million baby boomers. That's an audience of 74.9 million that need to be reached. Because of the buzz built around millennials, it has become easy to market to that generation. But what about baby boomers, how are marketers reaching them and seeing an ROI. Marketers will usually be looking to reach one of the following generations to promote their product or service:

• Baby boomers – born between 1946-1964
• Generation X – born between 1965-1980
• Millennials – born between 1981-2000

The generation that often gets overlooked is baby boomers. We have been looking into the behavior of millennials and now we will explore baby boomers. The following stats can help marketers target and reach out to this generation effectively.

Baby Boomer Statistics

1. 60% of people in the 50 – 64 year age group, which is most of the boomer population, are now on at least one social media site. Facebook is by far the most popular social media site for baby boomers (Colorado University, 2016)
2. About 60% of baby boomers spend time reading blogs and online articles as a source of information and intrigue, and about 70% enjoy watching videos about products and services (Forbes, 2017)
3. Baby boomers spend 27 hours per week online, which is two hours more per week than those who are between 16 and 34
4. Baby Boomers are 19% more likely to share content compared to any other generation (Digital Trends, 2016)
5. Videos that are slower paced and have a great deal of information are more likely to appeal to Baby Boomers than faster-paced videos with too many visuals (QuickSproat, 2017)
6. It might surprise you to learn that 96% of baby boomers use search engines, 95% use email, and 92% shop for products and services online rather than shopping in stores and shopping malls (Forbes, 2017)
7. More than half of Leading-Edge Boomers will visit a company website or continue the search on a search engine after seeing something on a social networking site (DMN3, 2016)
8.  70% of the disposable income in the U.S. is controlled by Baby Boomers. As Boomers become increasingly social media-savvy, they may become the key to the success of many brands (Nielsen, 2016)
9. Boomers devote the most time to linear or broadcast TV. Boomers clock up over 3 hours per day on linear TV, Millennials are on a lower 2 hours (Global Web Index, 2016)
10. Baby Boomers were much less likely to switch channels while researching products, predominantly utilizing email and websites before making the purchase (Smart Insights, 2017)

What does this tell marketers?

To reach Baby Boomers marketers will need to consider the following:

• Baby boomers have money and are willing to spend it with the right information and in-depth research. In the US more than 70% of the disposable income comes from baby boomers.
• They can be reached on social media, there is a myth that they don't use social media, but Baby boomers now spend 27 hours per week online there are plenty of opportunities to grab their attention. In fact, half of people aged 50 to 64 are on social media, Facebook being their main platform. Look at how you can reach this generation through retargeting on Facebook and informative posts.
• Boomers buy products and services for others, not just themselves. Neil Patel says ' Boomers love to invest in educational products and services, especially for their grandchildren. If you can market your products in this way, you’ll grab their attention. They value education, loyalty, and authenticity, and any kind of content or product that fulfills that goal will be of interest to them.'
• Baby Boomers are active online shoppers. According to one source, 66% of people over 50 in the United States routinely make purchases from online retailers. Don't be afraid to push online sales with this generation, especially if you are pushing your products through email.
• They are influenced by what they see on social media, and most of the time it’s focused on finding more information. More than half of Boomers will visit a company website or continue the search on a search engine after seeing something on a social networking site (DMN3, 2016). Therefore ensure your marketing strategy includes these marketing activities to effectively meet them where they look.

Baby boomers as a whole tend to be hard-working people prone to spending money and learning new things. Thye like to be fully informed about products and services, and they want to interact with their brands in a personal way. When a brand makes a promise they expect you to deliver. On the plus side, they are willing to wait for your messages and communication much longer than millennials, therefore can be more understanding.

Having a better understanding of this generation can help inform your 2018 marketing strategy if this is an audience you aim to reach. Start looking at how you can tweak your marketing message to appeal to this large segment. They are spending more than ever and spending more online, don't miss this huge opportunity.

 

source https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/baby-boomer-marketing-statistics/

How Blockchain technology will transform digital marketing

Blockchain has revolutionary applications in marketing and will be good news for both publishers and advertisers

Blockchain has been a hot topic in the tech world ever since Bitcoins emerged from obscurity to become the obsession of nerds the world over around 2013. Marketers love finding shiny new technologies to distract them from their day jobs and have enjoyed hopping on bandwagons to prove their down with the latest trends ever since some bright spark realized that newfangled printing press things could be used to churn out flyers to promote the latest in powdered wigs and ruffs.

But whilst marketers have been all over other trends, such as the growth of Snapchat or Live video, like a rash, they've yet to properly 'get' what the blockchain can actually do for them.

I think this is in large part down to two key reasons:

1. Blockchain is the result of mind-bogglingly clever cryptography and thus very hard to understand. This makes it much harder for marketers discern meaningful implications than say Facebook Live video, whose implications are obvious.
2. Blockchain is intrinsically linked to Bitcoin. People only know Blockchain as the technology behind bitcoin, and so marketers tend to focus on the shiny bitcoins and not the underlying blockchain technology. This is to their detriment, because whilst the implications of bitcoin have probably been massively over-hyped. The implications of blockchain are going to be enormous.

So using those two assumptions about why marketers have struggled to understand and embrace blockchain technology, this post will try to tackle both, in turn - first by explaining blockchain in simple terms to make it easy to understand, and then by introducing all the fabulously interesting uses for blockchain that have nothing to do with bitcoin. If you already know your hashes from your decentralized ledgers than skip the first bit and head straight to the second .

What is Blockchain?

As Einstien said- 'Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler'. Blockchain is a complicated beast, but it's the essential principles can be simplified. Essentially it means everyone stores a record (like a transaction) rather than just a central authority (like a bank). Everyone's records are synchronized, and no one can game the system because everyone's records have to match. If I changed my blockchain to say you'd paid me £200, then the system wouldn't allow it, because my records wouldn't match with everyone else. This, in essence, is what makes blockchain 'unhackable'.

This diagram helps explain how it works:

So what makes blockchain so great? It means we can extend trust without the need for a central authority. This sounds like a fairly academic point, but trust is actually the foundation of the entire digital economy (and the physical economy for that matter) and the companies that currently exist as central authorities stand to be massively disrupted by blockchain.

Money itself is trust. A unit of currency is a trust token. A coin has value because you trust that other people will accept it in return for goods or services, and the institution that protects that trust is the central bank. If you thought no one had any faith in your coins and notes, then you'd stop using them pretty sharpish, and find something people did trust the value of.

The implications of Blockchain for Digital Marketing

There are many areas of the digital economy where we need to turn to a central authority to ensure trust. A great example is programmatic ads. If a random website you never heard of said 'put your ad on my site, it'll get seen by millions of people', would you trust them? Nope, me neither. You have no way of knowing they'd be telling the truth about the number of people viewing it. And even if you a built a system whereby you measured the number of views of the ad yourself rather than trusting the host, you still wouldn't know if those views were real people or just bots put on the page by the owner to crank up the view counts and make them money.

This need for trust has led to the success of central authorities in the digital advertising world which can be the arbiter of rules which work to ensure trust.

1- Disrupting display ad networks.

The most successful of these central authorities are Google and Facebook. Google makes well over four billion dollars a year from it's Google Display Network. This is where Google acts as a middleman between website owners who have traffic and advertisers who want clicks to their site. 

If they trusted each other, the advertiser and the site wouldn't need Google as an intermediary taking a share of the profits. But they don't because without Google acting as a trustworthy central authority, the advertiser can never trust the website owner not to be using dubious tactics to boost its own revenue at the expense of the advertiser.

If Blockchain can verify that every user is a genuine user with 100% accuracy, and verify the website owner is only charging the advertiser for genuine clicks through to their site, then the website owner and the advertiser don't need a central authority to arbitrate their agreement and can cut out the middleman, saving them both money.

So now you can start to see the massive implications blockchain has for the world of digital marketing. There's probably no bigger threat to Google's revenue than the blockchain. It represents the same kind of threat to big tech giants as bitcoin does to big banks. Let's be clear though, this is good news for advertisers and site owners. They get to keep more of the revenue for themselves and won't have to pay a third party in future.

2- Beating online ad Fraud

The distributed ledger that is the blockchain isn't just able to keep a 'un-hackable' record of transactions. It's also able to keep a 'unhackable' record of people's digital signature- that is, who they are. This means people will be able to prove they're a real person in a way that doesn't involve giving away personal details that could be subject to data breaches. This kind of technology has already been developed, and it's just a matter of time before its use becomes more widespread. Microsoft is already working on building it's own blockchain based digital identification system, and other tech giants are sure to see the potential of integrating it into their own systems to prevent many types of online fraud.

This will allow for much greater scrutiny of who is clicking on ads and who is seeing ads.

Ad Fraud is endemic and a huge problem. It cost advertisers over 7 billion dollars in 2017. Solving it would boost the cumulative effectiveness of online ads by 7 billion dollars. Advertisers seeing better returns thanks to the defeat of ad fraud, and not having to pay middlemen like Google would mean higher ROI and higher profits. That, in turn, means they'd be willing to invest more money in digital advertising, which would be yet more good news for digital marketers. Provided you've been playing by the rules are not inflating your views with bots of course!

3- Changing revenue models for publishers

At current all transactions online need to be processed by a third party, like Paypal, Stripe or Worldpay. These businesses need to cover costs like server infrastructure, staff, and marketing. On top of this, they make a profit. They do this by charging a fee for each transaction. For pretty much all of today's purchases, these fees are very reasonable. If you buy a watch or a dress or a fridge online, the fee paid to clear the transaction with the third party will only be a minuscule part of the overall cost of the object, so it doesn't prevent the purchases.

But with the blockchain you can transfer any amount of money (in digital currency), no matter how small, at no cost whatsoever, because there is no third party having to pay for servers and staff and marketing. All the transactions are stored in the blockchain, which is distributed across all users devices.

This means no payment fees whatsoever, which opens up the possibility of microtransactions which could create a whole new revenue model for various publishing sites.

How much would you pay for a web page without ads? £1 - nah. 1p, nah. 0.5p, maybe? How about 0.1p. Now you are talking. Without blockchain, these kinds of tiny payments just wouldn't make sense, because transaction fees with the third party would be higher than the revenues from each transaction. But with the instant and free transactions offered by blockchain then it starts to make sense.

You could be faced with a little pop up in the corner of publishing sites which says something like 'want to view our content ad-free?- just click here to pay 0.1p per page you view'. Or you could have sites that are only available to fee payers, but the fees of less than a penny per page view would be low enough that it wouldn't put people off in the way it does to web users currently.

Publishers shifting to this kind of revenue model will mean the supply of web properties offering ad space will decrease (or increase slower than it would), but as demand from advertisers for ad space will remain the same, ad prices will increase. This will mean microtransaction supported sites will, in turn, be good for ad revenue based sites, as they'll be able in to increase their cost per click.

If you're interested in learning more about how blockchain will disrupt existing industries and transform the global economy for the better, I can't recommend this recent TED talk on the subject enough.

source https://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/marketing-innovation/blockchain-technology-will-transform-digital-marketing/