123 eGuides

1 Minute Advice: Is Advertising Too Intrusive?

A recent survey of U.S. Internet users, as cited by eMarketer, indicates that 71 percent of users believe  "ads are more intrusive than they were three years ago." In addition, 74 percent said "I see more ads now," and 79 percent agreed that "ads are appearing in more places now."

There is at least one good reason consumers are more sensitive to advertising -- they are spending a lot more time with media. Not only that, consumers are increasing "second screen usage." eMarketer believes that 186 million people will watch traditional television while simultaneously browsing online with a digital device at least once per month during 2018.

The sensitivity to advertising could be a warning sign to marketers. Almost one-third of consumers will likely use an ad blocker this year. That means marketers will have to find other ways, such as sponsored content, to break through to consumers.

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Put Your Marketing Money in Mobile

In the next few years, mobile is where the action is when it comes to marketing. According to Marketing Charts, reporting on new research by communications agency Zenith, between 2017 and 2020, global mobile advertising will reach $72.6 billion. That amount is large enough -- but it is even more impressive when you consider it is projected to be higher than the total amount of new money invested in advertising during that period. That's because mobile will actually "steal" money from desktop Internet ad sales.

Desktop Internet advertising, along with advertising in magazines and newspapers, will decline during the time period, while TV, outdoor, cinema, and radio advertising should increase. The stunning fact, however, is that mobile advertising is projected to be more than 10 times higher than the increase in television advertising, which is the next largest increasing ad category. A separate forecast indicates that mobile advertising in the U.S. will account for half of all ad spending by 2022. 

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Multichannel Marketing is a Must

The consumer (and therefore your customer) is using multiple devices and consuming multimedia, every hour, every day. This reality demands a multichannel marketing strategy which, by its very nature, is more complex for the modern marketer.

Ajit Singh, digital marketing manager at WebEngage, has some valuable advice for marketers regarding multichannel marketing tactics. He suggests making excellent use of targeted, personalized content, employing push notifications, practicing social media retargeting, using well-timed SMS messages for marketing, and taking advantage of messenger bots. Singh offers numerous examples of each tactic in his excellent article for MarketingProfs (free registration required).

Writes Singh, "Multichannel marketing means getting in front of your customers wherever their attention is. The organizations that do so are generating great results. The technological hurdles are getting even lower. By investing in these technologies now, you're setting yourself up for greater success in 2018 and beyond."

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: Retailers Benefit from Omnichannel Customers

The omnichannel customer -- someone who buys both from the traditional bricks-and-mortar retail store as well as from an online store -- is the ideal retail customer. Why? According to eMarketer, although omnichannel customers make up just 7 percent of all customers, they are responsible for 27 percent of all retail sales. That is more than the 44 percent of online-only customers who account for 24 percent of all retail sales.

eMarketer quotes Jaysen Gillespie, VP of analytics for Criteo, the company that provided the data, who says, "Omnichannel shoppers represent a significant opportunity for brands, as they are the customers that tend to spend more compared to offline-only or online-only customers. Retailers that are successful in combining offline and online data are able to apply more than four times as much sales data to improve marketing efforts, contributing to the higher lifetime value of the omnichannel customer."

In related data, online sales continue to be robust. In 2017, according to eMarketer, US retail ecommerce sales were estimated to have reached $454.9 billion, an increase of 16.3 percent over 2016. Total US retail sales increased 4.4 percent in 2017.

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: How a Brand Stays Relevant

We don't often focus on individual brands in this blog, but here is a superb example of how one brand maintains its relevancy. The French brand Lacoste is well-known for its trademark crocodile that appears on its shirts, but read how Lacoste came up with a creative idea to switch out its logo as it teamed up with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This is from the "Save Our Species" website:

"The Lacoste team has created 10 limited edition polo shirts, where its iconic crocodile leaves its historic spot to ten threatened species. Together these rare reptiles, birds and mammals champion the plight of all known threatened species. The number produced in each series corresponds to the remaining population sizes in the wild as estimated by IUCN species experts. ...

The crocodile. This is how the French tennis champion Rene Lacoste was nicknamed in 1927 for his tenacity on the court. Today, the Lacoste logo still symbolises the will and commitment the brand invests into each action it undertakes. Taking the capsule collection from concept to launch has been achieved in half the time it usually requires for such a project and testifies to the dynamism which businesses like Lacoste can bring to the global extinction threat:  a universal challenge which many agree is of utmost urgency to environmental sustainability.

For IUCN in its 70^th anniversary year, not only is this an opportunity to engage with business to help achieve its mission, but it also fits with the SOS open partnership approach which invites support from all sectors of civil society to bring their respective skills and competencies to bear in scaling up the fight on extinction."

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.