“Forget SUCCESS, Remember DIGITISATION”: Four i’s To Ensure Mobile Marketing Glory

The word ‘success’ doesn’t have any I’s in it… But it should. In fact, it should have four of them! Because four I’s are what you should be addressing when attempting to achieve a successful mobile advertising strategy for your organisation. So, because our English language has failed to consider digital marketing strategies as the basis for the way they’re spelled, let’s take another word:

Digitisation.

Remember digitisation – remember four I’s – achieve total mobile dominance. Perfecto!

Individualise, Involve, Integrate, Initiate.

But first…

Why should organisations care so much about mobile advertising?

Mobile marketing is a crucial component of any successful marketing plan; we’re progressing into a reality where not having access to a mobile device or being reachable at all times is against the norm. Compare this to fifteen years ago, and the picture is quite different. “The world of social media is evolving at warp speed; what is considered science fiction today might be reality tomorrow.” (Kaplan, 2012, 136) If you want to be a real competitor, it’s imperative that you address this mobile trend and utilise it to its full capacity, otherwise you risk lagging behind more innovative and fierce firms.

According to smartinsight.com, mobile media usage has been greater than desktop and other media since July 2015, with US figures showing mobile digital media usage at 51% in comparison to 42% on desktops. Despite the use of successful mobile marketing being an obvious necessity for competitive firms, Bosomworth (2015) claims that advertisers are still missing out on huge opportunities regarding mobile advertising; from total internet advertisement expenditures of $50b, only $13b is being spent on mobile-specific advertising.

Come on, guys! There is literally billions of dollars’ worth of opportunity being foregone (even more disturbing is the total expenditure on print advertising in comparison to consumers’ consumption time spent on print advertising… some firms clearly haven’t gotten the consumer-movement memo…).

Source: smartinsights

The four I’s presented in this post are designed by Andreas M. Kaplan (2012), and can be examined in greater depth in his paper “If you love something, let it go mobile: Mobile marketing the mobile social media 4×4”. This is simply an outlining and attempted contextualisation of them, because they are so absolutely relevant and necessary for successful mobile marketing implementation (or digitisation, as I like to put it).

1. Integrate your activities into your users’ life to avoid being a nuisance

The use of a mobile device in contrast to a desktop varies when it comes to the level of intimacy involved in user interactions. No, I don’t mean like when Raj falls in love with Siri in Big Bang Theory, but there is an increased sense of trust initiated between a consumer and organisation when the consumer consents for that organisation to contact them on their personal mobile device. If firms are too intrusive and bombard mobile users with obnoxious advertising, pressure to complete surveys, unnecessary alerts at 2am in the morning (the absolute worst), then they run the risk of betraying a very precious consumer-organisation relationship before it even has the chance to come to fruition. Instead, try targeting mobile users when content is relevant – for example, send a little message when they’re in close proximity to a sale, or if they’ve shown interest in a particular trending subject that relates to your product/service. The trick is to be an enhancement in the consumers life, not an intruder.

2. Individualise your activities to take account of user preferences

This is a given; mobile devices typically only have one particular user, unlike traditional desktops which may belong a collective group such as a family. Marketers should capitalise on this. Accessing attitudinal preferences and enabling location tracking on devices allows customised content to be delivered to certain mobile users, hence creating a tailored experience that will reach the appropriate target market and achieve better results! Kaplan (2012) highlights that campaigns employing generic, instead of customised, content often perform less well. Undifferentiated advertising may more economically efficient than tailored approaches, but its effect on mobile marketing is quite unimpressive.

3. Involve the user through engaging conversations

Consumers are demanding, they want something and they want it now. What’s so great about mobile marketing in this regard? We have the ability to optimise on real-time response activities that create highly engaging conversations with both current and potential consumers. Utilise this capability by connecting with consumers on mobile devices through interactive schemes. You’ve probably encountered this before in marketing scenarios where you can ‘check in’ or ‘scan’ particular locations in exchange for some form of reward. By employing these mobile advertising efforts, you are enhancing the consumer-organisation relationship and encouraging participation with your brand.

4. Initiate the creation of user-generated content

This is what Kaplan & Haenlein (2012) refer to as the Holy Grail of mobile social media usage. At the end of the day, despite what an organisation says about itself, nothing is more credible than our best friend (or potentially worst enemy): Word of Mouth. Ensure your mobile marketing activities give consumers the opportunity to share positive thoughts and feedback with other users. Similarly, also ensure that negative comments are heavily monitored and addressed ASAP. If you’re unsure of how to turn negative feedback into a golden opportunity, here’s an interesting article on 7 ways to handle a negative comment by Linda Doell (2015) (). Otherwise, if you’re after a more cynical (but amusing) read, try 5 Ways Brands Respond to Negative Social Media Comments.

So there you have it, “four eyes see better than two” as Kaplan (2012) informs us! If you’re aiming to achieve a solid and effective mobile marketing strategy, then ensure that you consider these four points.

Forget ‘success’, remember ‘digitise’!   

Alright, so that doesn’t have the motivating undertone I was hoping for, but you get my point. Have you heard of any other mobile marketing tips and tricks? How do you feel organisations are making the most of their mobile efforts?

Sources:

Bosomworth, D. (2015, July 22). Mobile marketing statistics. Retrieved August 23, 2015, from http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/

Kaplan, A. (2012) If you love something, let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile social media 4×4. Business Horizons, 55, 129-139.

Kaplan, A., & Haenlein, M. (2012). The Britney Spears universe: Social media and viral marketing at its best. Business Horizons, 54(2), 1.

Marketing Analytics and the World’s Most Famous Butt

Marketing Analytics and the World’s Most Famous Butt

Yes, you read that correctly; while seemingly possessing no relation to one another, there is a definite positive relationship between marketing analytics and a glorious butt. Bear with me, I promise I’m not just click-baiting you…

Firstly, let’s lay down the foundation for this post: in order to demonstrate results and achieve progression in digital marketing, it is imperative that some fashion of performance management exists. As so famously put by Bob Napier (1960’s), “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” It’s no hidden truth that majority of firms have an established online presence, but the way in which marketing performance of such a presence is evaluated and modified with a view of improving performance is still somewhat ambiguous (Chaffey, Ellis-Chadwick, Johnston & Mayer, 2006). Fortunately, as with most provocative disciplines, this has resulted in a magnitude of performance frameworks being established that can assist in the assessment of digital performance outcomes.

Whilst there are an endless amount of frameworks now being circulated, there in one commonality that should emphasised: quantifying marketing results so that we can attach meaningful, calculable numbers to them. After all, why is the CEO going to hand you a budget for something that you can’t prove any economical return on? They want to invest in their various organisational departments, not just gift you with some moolah because, in some Freaky Friday event, they’ve decided to be entirely altruistic in nature and throw profitability goals out the window.

So what marketers are really hungry for is a way to create, track, analyse and report meaningful data. And SNS, specifically Instagram, have become a hotspot for achieving such objectives. Why? Because we have access to some handy-dandy numbers (yay!) that allow us to measure reach and engagement of marketing efforts.

As all marketers know, measuring awareness and engagement is an important aspect of assessing the achievement of marketing objectives, and these are two things that social networking sites do really well. Per-follower engagement for Instagram posts are reported to average 4.21%; a significant statistic that proves 58 times more engagement per follower than that of Facebook and an approximate 120 times more than Twitter (Elliot, 2015). With such impactful and quantifiable results, it’s no surprise that digital marketers are hungry for follower-intensive posts; and what better way to achieve that than by targeting instafamous users, and using them as a marketing communication tool?

And this is where the world’s most famous butt becomes relevant in our discussion. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Jen Selter’s greatest asset, click here to have a browse of Jen’s Instagram account. For a quick rundown, here’s what we know about Jen: she’s 22 years old, has 6.8million Instagram followers, and (perhaps most importantly) has a gluteus maximum that looks like it was hand-crafted by Aphrodite herself. Why is she the focal point for this blog post? Well, according to various sources (theladbible.com, 2015; squanderguy, 2014; Chris Illuminati, 2014; thenetworth.com, 2015) she has a current net-worth of approximately $500,000 and has received up to $50,000 for a single sponsored Instagram post.

Why?

Let’s bring it back to the ‘numbers’ topic: Jen has access to an astonishing 6.8million Instagram users – that kind of exposure for an organisation is arousing in itself. Each photo Jen shares appears to average close to 200,000 ‘likes’ per post; that means that not only has the post itself gained exposure to a potential 6.8million people, but at least 200,000 have proceeded to the stage of engagement with the post. They’ve indirectly said, “hey, I like this…” and made a conscious effort to show their satisfaction with the content. The use of ‘likes’ and exposure to followers is of such high interest to digital marketers because it quantifies marketing efforts and provides firms with data. And what can we do with that data? Analyse it! Halleluiah!

If you’re not quite ambitious enough to reach 6.9m followers on Instagram, accounts with followers of around 200k are reported to have an income potential of $5,000 – $7,500 per month, according to Brian DiFeo (founder of The Mobile Media Lab).

And don’t worry; organisations aren’t just after women with great assets.

Justin Livingston dropped his former job at Amazon in their social media department to become a fulltime “Instagram influencer”. At age 25, he earns enough to live comfortably by simply sporting brands like Ralph Lauren and Armani Exchange on his Instagram (and now at events). There are entire organisations dedicated solely to representing these Instagram influencers, and caution people not to be limited by what they’re influencing – whether you like to photograph current events, antique chairs or delicious looking pastries, if you gain a considerable following then there may just be a firm who want to use your profile for a slice of marketing action!

As Jennifer Power, an L.A.-based talent agent, so eloquently puts it; “When you have a person with 2 million Instagram followers, that’s direct consumer advertising. It’s a no-brainer.” The Federal Trade Commission states that disclosure is necessary in social media when the user is receiving payment for a post (CNBC, 2014), but that the requirements of disclosure may be as simple as a “thanks (brand name here)” in a caption.

Sponsored posts also often contain ‘discount codes’ in captions, which allows consumers to get some form of benefit –usually financial- when purchasing the featured product or service. Whilst this discount may appear to be solely for the consumers’ benefit, it also allows firms to see whether the successful transaction is a result of their sponsored marketing efforts. If a transaction occurs and you’ve input “jensbutt10” in a promo code during the checkout stage, the firm can relay that purchase decision back to the sponsored post, and conclude that the marketing effort did provide a financial return.

Don’t be restricted by Instagram: this quantifiable performance measurement is evident through various response options such as ‘favouriting’, retweets, ‘shares’, subscriptions etc. The reason why Instagram, Facebook and Twitter (and SNS in general) are of such high interest is because they simplify the ability for firms to track exposure and engagement. Take a look at this video that shows just how much the ‘top 10 highest paid youtubers’ are earning – a large slab of which comes from advertisers and sponsorship from hungry marketers! 

Traditionally, site-visitor activity data and interaction is collected using log file analysis web analytics tools (Chaffey et al. 2006) – and of course, this more in-depth and analytical method is highly regarded and a crucial component in any credible online performance measurement system. They offer far more comprehensive data such as top pages, entry and exit pages, path or clickstream analysis showing sequence of pages viewed, country of visitor origin, browser and operating system used, referring URL and domain etc (Chaffey et al. 2006). But this doesn’t undermine the use of sponsored posts on instagram; they’re massive complements to each other and are clearly beneficial to both the firm and the recipient of the sponsorship!

So, what do you think? Would you be happy to advertise on your personal digital spaces to earn some extra money? What do you think about marketers using consumers as a means to get their products out into their ‘followers’? 

Sources:

Chaffey, D., Ellis-Chadwick, F., Johnston, K., Mayer, R. (2006) Internet Marketing: Strategy, implementation and practice (3rd ed.). Essex, England: Pearson.

Illuminati, C. (2014, December 26). Jen Selter Earn $50k per Ass Shot. Retrieved August 17, 2015, http://www.brobible.com/girls/article/jen-selters-ass-allegedly-worth-half-million-dollars/

Saiidi, U. (2014, April 11). Modeling on instagram? Don’t laugh. It can pay big. Retrieved August 16, 2015, from http://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/11/instagram-influencers-models-make-thousands-working-on-instagram.html

The Lad Bible. (2015, January 8). You Won’t Believe How Much Jen Selter Earns for a Booty Picture. Retrived August 17, 2015, from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=click+bait

The Net Worth. (2015). Jen Selter. Retrieved August 16, 2015, http://www.the-net-worth.com/2015/05/jen-selter/

Creating an Online Community: Razer’s Cult-like Success

Marketing is everywhere. No matter where you go, what you’re doing – they will find you, even on your personal e-spaces like Facebook. Actually, scrap that: especially on your personal e-spaces. You clicked on some sweet shoes on a website banner? Bam, in your newsfeed days later. Googled a hotel for your weekend bender? Oh, hello hotelscombined.com, fancy seeing you on my Facebook! Left that completely unnecessary but incredibly cute dress in your e-cart on boohoo.com? Don’t worry, they’re going to remind you about it on the right side of your Facebook window in about an hour. Feeling a little creeped out and pissed off about the intrusiveness of all this marketing? Don’t worry – according to recent studies (Hodis, Srirmachandramurthy & Sashittal 2015) you’re not alone.

With the digital and SNS phenomenon that’s hit us right in the face, it’s no surprise that companies have jumped on the opportunity to market their products and services. 92% of social marketers use Facebook for advertising, and when Facebook owns 18.4% of the global advertising market, why wouldn’t they? (if Facebook marketing statistics really get you going, feel free to check out a list of 75 of them here.) It seems fairly logical – Zephora recorded that in May 2015, worldwide there are over 1.44 billion monthly active Facebook users. However, Hodis et al. (2015) reported disappointing click through rates for traditional Facebook ads and highlighted that organisations aren’t seeing a significant economical return on their digital marketing investments. So the big question is – why the heck not?

The issue doesn’t reside in digital marketing itself; the issue resides with the way in which digital marketers are attempting to use the platform.

They key is to create an online community.

We don’t want advertisements shoved in our faces. Facebook is our territory; it’s social media, it’s user-generated, and it’s meant to be our space on the internet. If we participate in or view something, it’s because we WANT to and on our own terms. So what can the digital marketer do? Become one with the consumer by creating an online community. Online communities hold a plethora of potential benefits, and brands should be actively attempting to create them (Jahn & Kunz, 2012).

Let me show you what I mean with a beautiful example: Razer. Simplified, Razer is a gaming company that is famous for its innovation of cutting-edge gaming technology and e-sports teams (oh, and it’s cult-like customer base).

In the digital world, consumers respond to a peer recognised form of leadership (Dahlander and O’Mahony, 2011); that is, we want to feel as though we’re on the same level as the organisation. Consumers are drawn to companies that capture humanistic mannerisms in their communications such as transparency and authenticity (Hodis et al. 2015). This is something that CEO of Razer, Min-Liang Tan, does exceptionally well. In fact, the mantra itself is the entire foundation for all of Razer’s activities – “Designed for gamers, by gamers.”. Min-Liang is essentially saying, we are one of you. And guess what? Consumers absolutely love it.

Evident by Min-Liang’s constant stream of status updates and relatable sense of humour, consumers feel connected to the CEO, and subsequently the firm itself. Min-Liang’s digital community success is highly attributed to his ability to validate consumers’ content by responding to it, which is a massive contributor to consumers being active participants and brand ambassadors (Smith, 2012). He often encourages consumer feedback through conversational prompts, refers to himself as ‘just another gamer’ and doesn’t hesitate to demonstrate interaction and connectivity with consumers by publicly replying to comments on all of his status updates. Essentially, he makes his Razer customers feel like they’re a part of Razer too – “for gamers, by gamers”.

Here’s another example of Min-Liang providing recognition to consumers that really highlights the immense amount of brand loyalty Razer have created in their communities:

[If an entire Facebook album created by the CEO for Razer tattoos doesn’t demonstrate recognition and encourage consumer loyalty, then I’m not sure what does. And check out that  super brand ambassador (*cough* complete fanboy), “Keli”. … “Our fans for life.” pretty much sums it up, I guess!]

Not yet convinced of Razer’s digital community ambitions? Take a look at Razer’s navigation menu on their official AU website – what’s the fourth link right up the top? Bam. Community. Click that badboy and you’re lead to a smorgasbord of online Razer communities to connect with and pledge your allegiance to. There’s a beautiful assortment of Facebook, twitter, steam groups, youtube – there’s even an option to sign up for your very own “Razer ID”, just in case didn’t have enough outlets to parade your brand loyalty. Razer even provides its consumers with the ability to volunteer to participate in their digital marketing efforts (check it out here).

Considering the power of e-WOM, the impact as a result of the successful creation of online communities for brands is unmatched. The brand ambassadors behind Razer’s digital presence are almost overwhelming, and sensational for the firm’s bottom line. Facebook marketing doesn’t provide adequate economical results? “Noobs”, scoffs Min-Liang as he swims in Razer’s billion dollar net worth (according to figures on Fortune.com, 2015). The firm’s 2011 financial reports recorded a profit of $250 million (Forbes.com, 2014), and whilst we can’t confidently declare that majority of the profit is solely a product of digital marketing, we can say that Razer is no underdog in harnessing the true potential of the cyber marketing platform.

So, are Razer taking it too far? From a marketer’s point of view, hell no. They’ve found their competitive advantage in the digital world, and it is absolutely working for them. Plus, the consumers appear to be incredibly pleased with the digital presence. Their approach to building an online community is so successful, it’s often been compared to a ‘cult’ like environment (Gaudiosi, 2015).  Sounds like they’ve achieved digital marketing perfection; it’s not in the form of obnoxious Facebook advertisements, it’s in the form of a friend.

What do you think? Do you have any other examples of organisations that have successfully created an online community? Let me know!

References:

Dahlander, L., and Frederiksen, L. 2011. “The Core and Cosmopolitans: A Relational View of Innovation in User Communities,” Organization Science (23:4), pp. 988-1007.

Forbes Staff. (February 26, 2014). Min-Liang Tan’s All-Seeing Razer Nabu. Retrieved July 10, 2015 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/2014/02/26/singaporean-with-sizzle/

Monica Alexandra Hodis, Rajendran Sriramachandramurthy & Hemant C. Sashittal (2015): Interact with me on my terms: a four segment Facebook engagement framework for marketers, Journal of Marketing Management, DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2015.1012535

Smith, A. N., Fischer, E., & Yongjian, C. (2012). How does brand-related user-generated content differ across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter? Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(2), 102–113. doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2012.01.002

Westenberg, J. (April 15, 2015). Razer’s Cult Appeal. Retrieved July 10, 2015 from http://www.indiethink.co/uncategorized/razers-cult-appeal/