123 eGuides

1 Minute Advice: Understand Mobile's Role in Consumer Shopping

The impact of mobile devices on shopping represents a massive upheaval for marketers who sell products through traditional stores and via online channels. According to Google, six in 10 internet users start shopping on one device but continue or finish on a different one, and 82% of smartphone users say they consult their phones on purchases they're about to make in a store. Interestingly, searches for "near me" have doubled in the past year, says Google.

Google has some excellent suggestions for how to deal with mobile's role in consumer shopping in this article on "Think Google." For example, Google discusses two ways to facilitate a shopper's mobile experience: 

• Be there: Identify the most important micro-moments and commit to being there, whenever and wherever a shopper is searching, especially on mobile.
• Be useful. In a consumer's moment of need, meet them by providing valuable information—whether it's product reviews, video tutorials, or the ability to purchase right away.

Read more from Google here: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/mobile-shoppers-consumer-decision-journey.html

1 Minute Advice: How Effective is Influencer Marketing?

According to Linqia, makers of an influencer marketing platform, influencer marketing was used by 86 percent of consumer marketers in 2016, and 94 percent of them found it effective. Influencer marketing is based on engaging influential individuals to demonstrate their support for brands or products.

The top benefit of influencer marketing was "Create authentic content about my brand," followed by "Drive engagement around my product/brand." Almost half (48 percent) of marketers who use influencer marketing said they would increase their budget for the practice this year. Still, 78 percent of marketers see determining the ROI of influencer marketing programs as their top challenge.

When it comes to social media, the two most important platforms for an influencer marketing strategy are Facebook and Instagram. Blogs were next in line, followed by Twitter.

Linqia based its study on a late 2016 survey of 170 marketers with the majority in the Consumer Packaged Goods segment. Almost half (43 percent) of the companies surveyed had 100 - 1000 employees.

 

1 Minute Advice: Data activation and personalization are "the heartbeat" of modern marketing

The consulting firm McKinsey believes "data-activated marketing based on a person’s real-time needs, interests, and behaviors represents an important part of the new horizon of growth." In a new marketing assessment, McKinsey suggests marketers need to move beyond CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to stay competitive. Instead, they should be thinking about a "CDP," or "Customer Data Platform" that allows for automated decision making.

According to McKinsey, "the CDP makes it possible for marketers to scale data-driven customer interactions in real time." But incorporating such a platform means a marketer must master four "D's": Data foundation, Decisioning, Design, and Distribution. This enables what the firm calls an "end-to-end personalization factory." The good news about a CDP is it does not require a brand new system. Says McKinsey, "Unlike a wholesale IT transformation, deploying a CDP isn’t a replacement of current customer-data systems, but rather an operational solution that can piggyback on existing systems. In our experience, many marketers already have a large part of the marketing-technology equation in house; they’re just not using it properly."

Read more about the notion of a CDP here: 
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-heartbeat-of-modern-marketing

1 Minute Advice: Is the Hashtag Marketing's Best Friend?

Hashtag (#), that little character previously known as a number sign, has become all the rage in social media. While it has been commonly associated with Twitter as a way to connect tweets to particular topics, the hashtag has now transcended Twitter alone. You'll find them all across the Internet.

The hashtag is basically a keyword with a character in front of it. As a means of categorization, it may be universally recognized, but interestingly, its application is different, and it has a different impact, on various social media, as explained in an excellent article by Kevan Lee on Buffer. For example, Lee reports the following:

• Tweets that use hashtags get two times more engagement than tweets without hashtags... but the ideal number of hashtags in a tweet is just two.
• Tweets with one or more hashtags are 55 percent more likely to be retweeted.
• On Instagram, the hashtag usage is completely different: Instagram posts with 11 or MORE hashtags have the highest interaction.
• Hashtags on Facebook? A whole different story: Facebook posts WITHOUT hashtags do better than those with hashtags.

These are some of the insights in Lee's article, along with tips on hashtag tools and usage. Read the entire article here:
https://blog.bufferapp.com/a-scientific-guide-to-hashtags-which-ones-work-when-and-how-many