Archive for the ‘Impact Marketing’ Category
How digital apps can drive e-commerce and m-commerce sales
With e-commerce spending reaching a double-digit share of all retail spending, online B2C marketers are devising push-and-pull strategies to grab the attention of consumers. These methods must provide assurance and convenience, while also standing out amongst other similar techniques in practice.
One way to do this is through digital applications, a slight shift from e-commerce to m-commerce. Not all shoppers are ready for this yet, but they soon will be and smart brands will be waiting for them when they arrive. Below are 3 ideas to drive online sales.
1. Blend Physical and Digital Interaction via a Unique Social Spectacle
Launch a provocative digital-based spectacle that causes consumers to gather in a physical space to engage with your brand and, ultimately, make a same-day purchase. Here’s how you do it:
- Connect the event with a phenomenon or cause (not related to the brand) that resonates with the target group.
- Include a digitally-based spectacle that consumers can interact with only through their mobile devices; the same tools they can then use to make a purchase.
- Bring consumers closer to the brand with a promotional offering they can’t resist.
Once they make the purchase on a mobile device via a digital application, allow customers to pick the most convenient route to obtain their goods (i.e. delivery or pickup).
While congregated, consumers can mutually influence one another’s purchases through group think, engendering effective social shopping.
If executed adeptly, the spectacle will wow the masses, including media. More importantly, it will induce multiple and instantaneous online purchases.
South Korean big-box retailer Emart did this with its ‘Sunny Sale-QR Code’ campaign. The stunt boosted sales and earned lots of free publicity.
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The Future of Market Research: 5 Innovations to Watch for in 2012
The great David Ogilvy once said, “I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.” Those words from the great David Ogilvy are as true today as they were then.
Market research professionals, firms and organizations from IBM to Forrester Research are projecting the next trend in market research to be “making the transformation from research to insight.” If you ask me, that’s what market research has always been. An effective market researcher should be able to plan, conduct, analyze, and report actionable market insights and solutions to clients.
If you can’t do that, you’re probably just sharing stats that you found on eMarketer. I’m not discrediting eMarketer, which is an excellent research provider, but I see many advertising and marketing professionals searching for and relying too much on the latest stat or trend instead of taking that data point and translating it to something of value. Does that trend even make sense for your client’s unique situation? Or are you simply trying to impress them? This is not a problem with the research provider, but the researcher himself.
Instead of projecting the next trend in market research to be “making the transformation from research to insight,” which should already be innately infused into the mantra of the market researcher, I project the future of market research to be the convergence, or mash-up, of emerging technologies and lateral creative thinking across industries with the discipline of market research.
We are all living in a perpetual state of beta. We all have the ability at any time, to analyze our past and present to optimize for the future. And for market researchers, now is the perfect time to seize the opportunity to innovate the industry in ways George Gallup could have never imagined. So borrow from other competitors, borrow from other industries, borrow from culture – use lateral creative thinking to expand your potential and create new methodologies to reveal new insights and solutions. Below are five examples of this approach, which will continue to grow, especially in 2012.
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The Adcom Group Launches New Let’s Move It! Website
The Adcom Group of Companies just launched the newly designed and developed Let’s Move It! website. The website was originally developed to be a consistent brand for Cleveland Clinic’s sport sponosrships. This year, Cleveland Clinic worked with The Adcom Group to evolve the campaign objective to be more of a wellness hub for the Clinic system, complete with a whole new redesign and site build. The website allows you to easily submit your wellness questions right on the homepage and acess videos, tips and articles on diet and exercise. Continue reading The Adcom Group Launches New Let’s Move It! Website
The Future of Marketing is…Social.
Audiences today do not want to be talked at. They want to be engaged in conversation. Social media gives us the power to do this, allowing us to define and control our brand. There is a shift from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities. Here are a few tips to take advantage of social media.
Facebook. To help spread the word about a new campaign, why not ask employees to change their Facebook status to announce your latest campaign? If you have 20,000 employees, most likely 10,000 of them have Facebook. With the average person having 100 friends, your announcement could receive over 1 million impressions for free. Ask employees to include their LinkedIn Profiles – now you have 2 million impressions for free.
YouTube. Create a YouTube channel dedicated to teaching people more about your industry. This channel would feature a series of short, focused videos that educate your audience on related topics that help position you as an industry expert. The videos could highlight benefits and features of your products.
Twitter. To help build and establish your company as an industry expert, top executives should create Twitter accounts to help position your company’s executives as thought leaders in the industry. Tweets should be business-related topics that talk about industry trends and forecasts. Zappos CEO has 1.6 million followers and is following almost 400K people. A total of 430 Zappos Employees have Twitter accounts. This presence helps Zappos engage and participate in conversations about their company.
Flickr. Flickr is a great way to help promote events that your company sponsors. Photos can be optimized to show up in search results and increase brand awareness. Using Flickr to increase branding opportunities for KeyBank’s sponsorship of a 10K race, the Key “Bank to Bay” gallery has alone received 6,000 views following the event.
The Po!nt
People visit social media sites every day, why not join them in what they are already doing?
5 Tips to Get Your Audience’s Attention
With the average person being exposed to 5,000 branded messages every day, how do you get your audience’s attention? Here are five tips you should consider when approaching your next marketing project. Continue reading 5 Tips to Get Your Audience’s Attention