Grow Your Business: Using Social Media and Traditional Marketing

Grow Your Business: Using Social Media and Traditional Marketing by Dan Arens, Business Growth Advisor.  Available from <http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/story/33572146/grow-your-business-using-social-media-and-traditional-marketing> [Posted: Nov 02, 2016 4:59 AM CST  Updated: Nov 02, 2016 8:39 PM CST]

Who can forget the epic commercial of the tiny little Chihuahua saying “I think I need a bigger box?” That advertisement ushered in a new era of marketing for Taco Bell. The year was 1998. Since then, with the advent of social media, the world of branding has changed forever. How did it happen and what can we do about it?

Several decades ago a few television networks, film companies, magazine corporations, and newspaper publishers virtually controlled what consumers saw and heard. Consumer marketing companies had to ‘pay to play’ in the market if they were looking to introduce, secure, or build their product. If you wanted to market your product, it usually involved some form of media in order to establish your brand in the marketplace. Traditionally, advertising was the vehicle of choice. All of that has changed.

As technology advanced in the form of devices like the digital video recorder, the consumer began making a turn toward more selective viewing by skipping ads, which resulted in giving them the power to select what they wanted to see. The internet itself gave the consumer the opportunity to avoid having to read anything that was hardcopy related, such as a newspaper or a magazine. Branding was undergoing a sea change in the shifting of power from the consumer marketing companies to the ultimate decision maker, that of the individual consumer or customers themselves.

According to Douglas Holt, the author of How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding, social media has played a pivotal role in our culture. It has taken society away from mass marketing to having a direct impact on societal groups, via social networks. The members of each social network have become the individual influencers for product purchases. Holt calls these individual groups crowdcultures.

As Holt points out, metrics compiled over the past ten years support the position that standard branding approaches are failing to deliver in the social media arena. He says “In YouTube or Instagram rankings of channels by number of subscribers, corporate brands barely appear. Only three have cracked the YouTube 500. Instead you’ll find entertainers you’ve never heard of, appearing as if from nowhere.”

Red Bull, a well known energy drink is a seemingly successful story of bridging the gap between traditional marketing and the utilization of social media. They are maintaining their presence with standard branding techniques, while they are also ranked number 184 on YouTube with slightly under five million subscribers. As a means of comparison, author Holt points out that Dude Perfect, a YouTube phenomenon that shows “trick shots and goofy improvised athletic feats” does much better than Red Bull. Dude Perfect is in position 81 with about 8 million subscribers.

Holt believes ‘crowdcultures’ are now the influencers and innovators in the branding process. With amateurs and individuals producing their own quality video content, consumer marketing companies are unable to compete. He cites Dove soap as an example of a company that used ‘crowdcultures’ and social media for initiating campaigns that supported cultural change in the beauty industry. Dove soap took the position of supporting “real beauty” as Holt says, they “tapped into this emerging crowd culture by celebrating real women’s physiques in all their normal diversity- old, young, curvy, skinny, short, tall, wrinkled, smooth. Women all over the world pitched in to produce, circulate, and cheer for images of bodies that didn’t conform to the beauty myth.” For a glimpse of what the crowd culture can do, go to www.YouTube.com and use the keyword Dove Soap.

While the traditional branding model was more from the top down in the use of advertising to promote and solidify a brand strategy, the social media approach is more along the lines of a bottom up approach for branding. The creativity developed by consumers (with or without the help of a marketer) appears to be a key in the success of a social media strategy.

It is clear the dynamics of product branding are very fluid at this time in the social media arena. It is also quite obvious that most businesses are being challenged with how to get involved. From a business growth perspective, author Holt suggests that you identify your current culture, look at alternatives that will “open up an opportunity”, identify some ‘crowdcultures’ that might work in your industry, strive to get the word out in that industry, and then continue to change your message as the culture changes.

Grow Your Business: Using Social Media and Traditional Marketing by Dan Arens, Business Growth Advisor.  Available from <http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/story/33572146/grow-your-business-using-social-media-and-traditional-marketing> [Posted: Nov 02, 2016 4:59 AM CST Updated: Nov 02, 2016 8:39 PM CST]

3 Ways To Make Your Email Marketing Work For You

3 Ways To Make Your Email Marketing Work For You by Lisa Manthei.  Available from <http://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/3-ways-to-make-email-marketing-work-for-you-01112016/#_>. [Nov 01, 2016 1:23 PM ]

Email marketing is king; it’s used in more than 90% of organizations. Well-executed email marketing strategies can net 3,800% ROI, with 20% of companies reporting returns north over 7,000%. Even with the explosion of new marketing technologies, marketers will forever turn to email as a mainstay. But even though the current email marketing strategies have worked in the past, doesn’t mean they will continue to work the same in the future. The days of the stock-standard email blasts are nearing an end. It’s out with the old, in with the new.

So, let’s take a look at some of these new approaches you can use to revitalize your email marketing to drive success well into the future.

Blast the Blast

Many brands pour their time and resources into creating homogenous content and email marketing campaigns that appeal to the masses. For some organizations, these strategies really work. But organizations must continue to adapt and change with their customers, no matter how effectively traditional advertising has been proven to perform in the past. According to DMA, over 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, rather than one-size-fits-all campaigns.

Consumers are turning to brands that provide meaningful and personalized experiences. Marketers who have adopted this personalized principle have noted a 760% increase in revenue. Personalized marketing matters, and proper execution requires three key actions:

1) Segment your customer base.
2) Provide dynamic content.
3) Utilize your email automation solution to create workflows that help ensure your sends are timely, relevant, and hyper-personalized.

Don’t Forget Mobile

We live in a fast-paced, constantly connected world. Gone are the days where leaving the office meant truly unplugging. Mobile has allowed us (read: forced us) to be constantly connected with the digital realm. The average person will check their phone 46 times per day. Second only to sending and receiving text messages, consumers most often check their phones to read and respond to emails.

Email marketing with a focus on mobile optimization is no longer a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have. Over 53% of emails will be opened on a mobile device. Take a moment to click into your mobile inbox. Note that you can only view the sender information, the subject line, and about the first 10 words of your email. These items absolutely the most crucial elements to email performance.

Marketers must craft an engaging or personalized subject line with an impactful first line in order to move mobile-readers to open their email. Make sure your email marketing campaign passes the mobile test. Send a test email to your own mobile device. Odds are that you have received a multitude of marketing emails in the last hour alone. Compare the subject line and first line to others in your inbox. Would you open it?

Video & Animated Content

Consumers have become accustomed to marketing emails littered with text and static content. It’s time to shake it up. Incorporate dynamic content into email marketing campaigns through the inclusion of video and animation. 2016 has been the year of the GIF. Many retailers have managed to effectively use these graphics via social media and email marketing campaigns. Video is another important component to add to your emails. Videos provide the opportunity to show consumers about the brand or promotion, rather than to simply tell.

According to Wistia, marketing emails that contain videos receive a 300% higher click-through rate than those without. Through the use of services like Vidyard’s Personalized Video feature, companies can now take video one step farther, and connect with email subscribers by weaving unique details into marketing videos.

The platform allows you to personalize a single video to deliver a unique, individualized experience to thousands of viewers. You can see some examples of their work here. This tactic takes care of both the personalization and the need to inject dynamic content into email marketing campaigns.

While the market is constantly evolving, email marketing is here to stay. As with every facet of marketing, marketers must constantly be changing and adapting to the new and now in email marketing in order to stay relevant and top-of-mind for consumers. These new approaches can help your email marketing campaigns work for you.

3 Ways To Make Your Email Marketing Work For You by Lisa Manthei.  Available from <http://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/3-ways-to-make-email-marketing-work-for-you-01112016/#_>. [Nov 01, 2016 1:23 PM ]

Why mobile marketing is harder than ever — and what you can do about it

Why mobile marketing is harder than ever — and what you can do about it by Chantal Tode.  Available from <http://www.retaildive.com/news/why-mobile-marketing-is-harder-than-ever-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/429592/> [November 02, 2016]

rom slowing sales and exploding phones to the rapid advances of chatbots, digital assistants and virtual reality, it has been a tumultuous year for mobile. For marketers, the upshot is that reaching smartphone users has never been more complex.

With mobile’s unique and personal use case as well as a fragmented landscape, connecting with users has always been a challenge. Early on, the consensus was that — beyond ads — an iPhone app was the best jumping off point for building relationships on mobile.

But this thinking is changing as apps prove beneficial for only some brands. More importantly, a new integrated vision of the computing experience is emerging that seeks to connect users to relevant online information more seamlessly than opening and close multiple apps.

It all sounds pretty cool, but marketers still have practical concerns: Should they be thinking about developing apps? Or chatbots? Or is it better to take a wait-and-see approach?

“Apps are still the gold standard and most easily understood by users,” Tobias Dengel, CEO of mobile app developer WillowTree, told Marketing Dive. “However, we see a distributed universe emerging where users expect to engage with their chosen brands and services via apps, but also chatbots, digital assistants and integrations into other apps.”

The app conundrum

The need to reach mobile users is more important than ever. Mobile commerce is expected to account for 32 % of online sales this year, up from 26% last year, according to eMarketer. And more than half of consumers’ time spent online is now coming from mobile apps, per a recent report form comScore.

Despite these figures, many marketers are still trying to figure out a mobile strategy.

While apps are popular, Forrester’s research revealed that a significant majority of time is spent with just five apps — typically, popular social media and messaging apps. That means that brands can invest millions of dollars and create a fantastic app but still may have a hard time breaking through and getting used.

“Already today not all brands need an app — not all have the loyalty and offer the utility to justify the investment when consumers won’t download it, or will and then not come back,” Jenny Wise, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, told Marketing Dive.

There are exceptions, of course: The Nike+ app is successful, for example, and apps are a must-have for airlines and banks. Apps can also work well for brands around big events like the Olympics, ski season or home buying.

But mobile is not all about apps anymore.

The chatbot opportunity

The inherent challenges with apps are the reason why a number of brands have jumped on the opportunity to build chatbots on Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps. The thinking is that with a much smaller investment, marketers can engage users where they are spending much of their time.

So far, chatbots appear to work best for quick interactions where opening an app to execute a task would introduce too much friction. But it is still early days for these experiences and they may not be a good fit for everyone.

“Many of these are still evolving and don’t offer the best user experiences,” Forrester’s Wise said. “For example, ordering flowers through 1-800-Flowers on Facebook Messenger can only be done in a linear fashion — the consumer can’t go back and change the date once they are on the next step. That’s not a great experience. So right now, these are tactics available to early adopters who have a test-and-learn objective.”

Will digital assistants dominate?

Digital assistants have also caught the attention of marketers, with many building skills — mini apps that execute tasks — for the Amazon Echo while others are looking forward to the opportunity to build similar interfaces for Google’s new Home hub, powered by its digital assistant.

Opportunities on digital assistants could be more significant than chatbots and may replace the need for an app for some marketers because adoption levels are expected to be strong, with consumers leveraging these interfaces throughout the day for numerous activities.

As consumers spend more time with voice-controlled digital assistants, they are likely to begin to expect these kinds of interactions from brands, particularly if these platforms are able to build a one-stop shop that keeps consumers engaged.

“Digital assistants won’t replace apps for all brands — namely, those that have the brand loyalty that drives app users in the first place — and the digital commitment and data maturity to offer high-quality experiences that can compete with this digital assistants,” Forrester’s Wise said. “But for those brands who don’t have a captive audience or deliver high-value experiences, digital assistants will offer stiff competition for consumers’ attention in mobile moments.”

For brands interested in taking advantage of chatbots and digital assistants, Wise recommends trying to deliver shortcuts for consumers to relevant information, thinking in terms of conversational interfaces and leveraging artificial intelligence to increase consumer insights and build better, more proactive experiences.

Hybrid solutions

Chatbots and digital assistants may also exist in tandem with apps for some marketers. But no matter which combination of chatbots, digital assistants and apps marketers choose to leverage, one important difference in how they develop mobile engagements going forward will be the need to focus on voice-driven experiences.

“We see more of a hybrid solution where the user moves between voice and visual communications,” WillowTree’s Dengel said. “The fastest way to send information is through voice, but the fastest way to receive info is visual.

“Speak your request and then see the answer in the app — and your starting point for speaking could be anywhere — within an app, or within the Messenger app or Siri, or within a 3rd party app,” he said.

It will also be important for marketers to have strong mobile Web content as mobile’s next generation evolves. Already, more searches are completed on mobile than desktop and the shift will only continue as digital assistants gain steam. This is one reason Google is developing a mobile-first strategy for its search index.

“Before apps or chatbots, job one should be ensuring they have a mobile-optimized — or in Google’s terminology, a ‘mobile friendly’ — site,” said Gartner‘s Michael McGuire.

The options don’t stop there for compelling ways in which to engage mobile users. Savvy marketers are also exploring virtual reality as a way to immerse mobile users in engaging content while resourceful brands such as Taco Bell and Hershey’s are teaming up with popular apps like Airbnb and Uber, respectively, for promotions to engage their users.

The good news is that investing a couple of million dollars in a quality app is no longer a necessity. The bad news is that with so many different ways to build relationships on mobile, marketers have their work cut out for them when it comes to picking the one tactic — or a combination of them — that fits best for their brand and goals.

“There is no one silver bullet,” said Julie Ask, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. “Marketers need a portfolio of experiences on mobile.”

Why mobile marketing is harder than ever — and what you can do about it by Chantal Tode.  Available from <http://www.retaildive.com/news/why-mobile-marketing-is-harder-than-ever-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/429592/> [November 02, 2016]

Bigger is better: Symantec announces world’s largest set of threat data

Bigger is better: Symantec announces world’s largest set of threat data by Ashton Young.  Available from <https://securitybrief.com.au/story/bigger-better-symantec-announces-worlds-largest-set-threat-data/> [November 02, 2016 11AM]

Following their acquisition of Blue Coat just three months ago, Symantec recently announced the first positive spin-off.

By combining the two company’s threat intelligence, Symantec has created their Global Intelligence Network (GIN), which they assert is the world’s largest and most diverse set of threat data.

Combined, the companies leverage more than nine trillion elements of security data, applying the data-crunching force of artificial intelligence to enable analysis. Symantec now protects 175 million consumer and enterprise endpoints, 163 million email users, 80 million web proxy users and processes nearly eight billion security requests across these produts every day.

Symantec CEO, Greg Clark says they now have unparalleled visibility into the entire threat spectrum, with views into the darkest parts of the web and malware trade craft.

“By fast-tracking the integration of the threat intelligence capabilities from Symantec and Blue Coat, Symantec products are now blocking 500,000 additional attacks per day for our endpoint, email, and web security customers,” says Clark. “Drawing out those kinds of results from data is only possible by using artificial intelligence, which gives our threat researchers a vastly augmented ability to spot attacks earlier than anyone else.”

According to Symantec, their integration with Blue Coat means that they are now the only vendor to connect endpoint, email and web protection across a single integrated intelligence platform. Symantec asserts that already their new GIN has led to a series of significant protection improvements, in addition to discoveries of new attack campaigns. Examples include:

  • Shared threat telemetry: Because Symantec and Blue Coat productsn are now automatically exchanging millions of malicious files and URL threat indicators daily, more than 500,000 additional attacks are being blocked every day for endpoint, email, and web security customers.
  • Cyber espionage campaign discovered: Despite popular belief that the Chinese cyberespionage group ‘Buckeye’ had largely stopped their operations, the combined threat intelligence of Symantec and Blue Coat was able to determine the group was in fact still highly active. These discoveries enabled Symantec to enhance its protection capabilities against the Buckeye group.
  • Sophisticated financial heists outdone: Symantec and Blue Coat’s combined telemetry led to the revelation that since January 2016, an attack group known as ‘Odnaff’ has stolen millions of dollars from victim financial institutions.
  • Not a great time for phishing: Symantec has developed a technology that analyses new websites in real time by comparing them to screenshots known phishing sites. This technology is applied to more than 1.2 billion web requests every day, and has already fouled 137,000 new phishing campaigns since its release.
Bigger is better: Symantec announces world’s largest set of threat data by Ashton Young.  Available from <https://securitybrief.com.au/story/bigger-better-symantec-announces-worlds-largest-set-threat-data/> [November 02, 2016 11AM]

Smart home vulnerability: Tips for staying internet secure

Smart home vulnerability: Tips for staying internet secure Article by Alex Talevski, Swann Security CTO. Available from <https://securitybrief.com.au/story/smart-home-vulnerability-tips-staying-internet-secure/ > [November 02, 2016 1PM]

Connected Home devices are now a common feature in our everyday lives. Most consumers use smartphones, tablets and smart TVs that are connected with powerful internet driven features.

For this level of sophistication to be available, cloud connectivity is necessary. It enables us to access entertainment, social media, games, fitness applications, recipes, karaoke and many more, on-demand. All of this would not be possible and nearly as rich without the cloud.

Where such devices readily connect to the internet, they are exposed to vulnerabilities and attacks that could directly access other devices in your home, thus the potential to gain access to personal data.

Security around personal data becomes even more tricky where the internet connectivity relates to the smart home. Wherever such a threat exists, it could expose a way to unlock your door or disarm your alarm. Fortunately, the risk of such an intrusion is highly unlikely but it must be carefully managed.

Security is only as effective as the weakest link. Therefore, it is important to secure you entire home network and the devices that connect to it. It will not only save malicious Smart Home concerns but is also great practice to secure all other private data and services.

To mitigate risk, Swann Security solutions use the following security provisions;

  • Multi factor authentication
  • Bank grade data encryption
  • Unique device keys and passwords
  • Closed network device access
  • Hidden user and home details
  • Finally, we frequently update devices Over The Air (OTA) to address new vulnerabilities and threats

Malicious attacks can be prevented by applying the following 6 tips and tricks for each applicable device in a Secure Home;

1. Use strong and unique passwords for all accounts and users: Use a number, capital letter and symbol to make a unique device key and password.

2. Change passwords frequently (once every 3 months is good practice) and enable multi-factor authentication to make it harder for your systems to be hacked.

3. Do not share your network, smartphone and device credentials with others. Hide the user and homes details in your settings to prevent any breaches. Creating a separate network for devices and your security system can be an additional precaution.

4. Set your smartphone to lock and require authentication for unlocking. Try to use a strong PIN. Swann Security systems, their security provisions include bank grade data encryption to assist with your pin security.

5. Use good anti-virus and anti-malware scanners and enable closed network device access.

6. Frequently Backup all data on PCs, tablets and phones. As well as update to ensure is up to date. If you have a Swann product, this can be done through their ‘Over the Air’ (OTA) abilities to address new vulnerabilities and threats

*Swann Security Customer Survey – March 2016

Smart home vulnerability: Tips for staying internet secure Article by Alex Talevski, Swann Security CTO. Available from <https://securitybrief.com.au/story/smart-home-vulnerability-tips-staying-internet-secure/ > [November 02, 2016 1PM]