Author: Team Position Squared

Paradigm Shifts – From TV to Digital, From Desktop to Mobile

The numbers are in. The verdict has been delivered. The paradigm shift is official. According to new research from Standard Media Index, digital media siphoned off more than $1 billion in advertising revenue from the US TV market, with 87% of those dollars drained out of the Big Four networks – NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox. SMI tracked agency investments over a nine-month period spanning October 2014 to June 2015, an interval that corresponds with the broadcast calendar.

New segments like the digital video market are growing at a blistering rate. With spend on pace, it is poised to hit $7.77 billion by year’s end which is a little over 10% of the $70.6 billion TV market.

Not Convinced? Let Facebook Be Your Guide…

Three years after Facebook started running ads on its mobile properties, mobile advertising accounted for 76% of Facebook’s $3.8 billion in second-quarter advertising revenue, which was up 43% year-over-year.

Facebook’s mobile user base saw even steeper growth, with mobile monthly active users up 22% and mobile daily active users up 29%

In the second quarter, the average price of an ad on Facebook rose by 220% while the number of ad impressions Facebook served dropped by 55%.

Is your business strategy in line with the digital and mobility revolution? Use the comment box to share your thoughts.

July 31, 2015
Let’s Get Personal
I’m a regular at my neighborhood café, so every morning Jinny the barista greets me with a smile and a hot ‘Skinny Cappuccino’. She knows exactly what I am looking for. And she knows much the same for a couple of dozen other regulars. It’s called personalized service. It makes me feel good, and I keep coming back. So think about the last time you opened your web browser and went to Amazon.com to buy a book. You may have had one title in mind, but you came across a few more recommendations from Amazon, all suited to your taste. Again, it’s called personalized service and it gets your attention. Amazon is doing the same thing Jinny does, but for 76.2 million users per month.

Personalization comes in many shapes

Offline Personalization

Motorola could have rolled out the Moto X customization experience – or personalization experience – in a conventional way, but instead published the world’s first interactive print ad in WIRED.

Offline Personalization

How to attract a millennial audience? Try using bright shiny things with many, many moving parts. Forever 21 and Breakfast teamed up to bring Instagram pictures to life using a giant, digitally synced adjustable billboard, a contraption that includes some 200,000 parts.

The machine renders versions of Instagram photos hashtagged ‘#F21ThreadScreen’ and cameras stream the process live at f21threadscreen.com—and send users auto-edited clips of their photos being rendered.

Online Personalization: Emails

Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks suggest Friends, Posts and Interest Groups to ‘Pin’, ‘Tweet’, ‘Follow’ or ‘Post’, as the case may be. The vast volumes of data gathered in the process epitomizes what’s personal.

Online Personalization: Website

Amazon USA offers 200 million products in 35 categories. How to find what you want? Amazon simplifies the process with website personalization. By analyzing your previous behavior Amazon promotes products and makes informed suggestions according to what it “thinks” you may want.

Online Personalization: Social Media Networks

We’re all on Facebook all the time. It gives us a personalized newsfeed of what’s happening with our friends and groups. At the same time we are generating data that gives shape and meaning to out digital personality. LinkedIn does much the same while giving us personalized updates from our professional network.

Online Personalization: Retargeted Advertisements

Here’s an example of an ad for a motorcycle insurance company, ICICI Lombard. I had recently been on their site, but this is the Tech Cocktail website. As you can see I have been re-targeted with an ad for ICICI Lombard’s policy.

Given all that, you would think that personalization and marketing would be a natural fit. But it has yet to work out that way.

Personalized marketing is a sadly underutilized strategy even though it’s highly effective.
- Businesses that personalize web experiences see an average 19% increase in sales. (MarketingProfs)
- 71% of companies fail to personalize their websites. (Dynamic Yield)
- Personalized marketing emails receive 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates. (Experian)
- 70% of companies don’t personalize marketing emails. (Experian)
So much to do, so little time… budget…?

Mobile, of course, has brought with it a greater push for personalization and marketers are responding, particularly with real-time efforts. April 2015 polling by Researchscape for Evergage found that 58% of marketers worldwide used real-time personalization—defined as data-driven personalization completed in less than 1 second. Among the 42% not using it, nearly eight in 10 intended to do so within the next year.

Personalization – Tips and Tricks

Personalization versus privacy

Each geography, market and target audience is different. Be mindful that what resonates in one market might not be received the same way in another.

Language and Culture

Think globally but act locally. Campaign messages and content assets must be translated and localized. Message tone, brand positioning and even colours (oops, I mean colors) must be appropriate to the language and culture of the market.

Audience Data

To execute large scale personalization identify the relevant data. A combination of explicit (demographic and/or firmagraphic) and implicit (activity-based) data sourced from multiple systems may need to be reconciled or integrated.

Data Audit

Once the relevant data for personalization is identified, it needs to be synthesized in the primary marketing database and analyzed for hygiene and completeness. Complex personalization is executed through data-driven rules that cannot function at an impactful level without a high degree of standardization and completeness at the database field level.

Technology

Evaluate the marketing technologies needed to support the level of personalization that programs or tactics require. Marketing automation platforms (MAPs) contain features such as field merges and the ability to render modular content based on data-driven rules to produce email and landing page personalization at scale. Additionally, programmatic site retargeting, social and mobile retargeting, reverse-IP and cookie lookup, and third-party data vendors provide options for rendering a personalized experience based on explicit and implicit data points that can exist outside the marketing database. Web conversion optimization tools can execute rules-based personalization on an organization’s Web properties to engage and qualify site visitors with a more relevant browsing experience. Finally, automated contextual call guides for tele prospecting teams can deliver personalized interactions during the tele qualification phase of the marketing and sales process.

Testing

Make a culture of testing operational in any modern marketing organization. It’s critical. Don’t assume that personalization is making content, assets, and messaging resonate better with audience microsegments. Personalization initiatives should be tempered with an organization’s ability to plan and conduct meaningful testing to verify personalization’s contribution to a measurable increase in awareness, engagement and response.

What’s your favorite example of personalization that you use on a daily basis? Drop it in the comments. Would love to hear from you.
July 30, 2015
Twitter Launches Event Targeting

Marketers will be able to leverage real-time strategies to reach people engaged with major live events by using Twitter’s new event targeting feature. With this three-stage tool at the ready, brands and marketers can more accurately map new event-based campaigns

Think real-time events and trends like Super Bowl, Grammys, the FIFA World Cup, or Wimbledon. Marketers have relied on manual efforts and guesswork to figure out hashtags, keywords and accounts. With event targeting you can now activate around live moments. It’s quick and easy.

We’ll help you discover and plan for these highlighted moments, learn more about the participating audiences through valuable insights and, with one click, create a campaign that delivers the right message to just the right users as the event unfolds.

How It Works?

Event Calendar

Visit ads.twitter.com and navigate to the Tools tab. Select “Event calendar” from the dropdown menu. Choose the live events that match your brand’s marketing strategy and goals. For help drilling down to the right selection you’ll find filters by location, date or type of event. Marketers can explore all events months in advance.

Event Insights

To see more information about an event, click on the event and select View More Details.

After identifying events to target, drill down into each event and learn more about the audience based on the previous year’s data — total audience reach, device breakdown, gender. You can also view the highest engaging Tweets from the previous year to get a sense of how the event conversation played out on Twitter.

Event Activation

Click on the Create Campaign link to choose a campaign-based objective and launch a campaign that targets the event.

Target events of your choice with one click campaign creation. Event Targeting may be combined with other key targeting types like gender, language and device so you can reach the right segment of an event audience.

Let us know how you plan to leverage Twitter’s Event Targeting as a part of your marketing strategy?

July 29, 2015

Best of the Week | How To Optimize Content For Conversions, and much more…

This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

Optimizing Knowledge Graph for B2B Brands

From the Position² Blog This Week:

How To Optimize Content For Conversions
Content marketing across your website, emails, social media and more can fuel web traffic and leads, but most marketers struggle to align content with a conversion funnel. How can you create and distribute content that will engage relevant audiences? Read this blog to find out!

Best of the Week Video
Controlling search engine crawlers, blocking & redirecting bots, optimizing crawl budgets and indexing strategies helps in better ranking. Watch this video by Rank Fishkin to learn the nuts and bolts about leveraging these tools.

White Paper: The Rapidly Changing World of SEO

Get a head start in your quest for search engine optimization by going through this insightful white paper. Download this White Paper to know:

How important SEO is & why it should concern you?
Various ways in which you can deploy SEO
How to combine Social Media with SEO?
SEO best practices and a road map to getting there

Download the complimentary SEO White Paper now

Search-Engine-Optimization-White-Paper-position2

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July 24, 2015

Final Verdict: Programmatic Is Here To Stay
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently issued its first revenue report on programmatic display ad revenues in the US. The bottom line: Programmatic buying and selling accounted for more than half of the display advertising revenues generated in 2014.

Highlights of the Report
- Online programmatic display with $10.1 billion in revenues in the US in 2014 accounted for a little over 20% of overall ad revenues of $49.5 billion and 52 percent of the $19.6 billion display market
- Banner ads generated roughly 80 percent of the display programmatic revenues
- 2015 will see more inventory and spends for mobile and video formats
- 70 percent of the programmatic revenue came through open auctions
- Ad tech firms and publishers took in programmatic revenues in a 55-45 percentage split
“Sizing the programmatic market has proven both challenging and illuminating, as we learned more about how that sector moves ads and money. Once we garner deeper understanding of how things work and where standard definitions and best practices are needed, we will also gain insights into where greater opportunities exist for publishers and advertisers to capitalize on programmatic channels.”

— Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics and Measurement, IAB

Key Takeaways from the Report
- Standardization and adoption of programmatic definitions for a robust sizing of programmatic revenues
- Increased dollar transparency to justify stronger overall revenues from programmatic as compared to traditional direct sales
- Increase quality of premium inventory
- Striking a balance between cross device and cross platform targeting and addressing concerns around user privacy and data collection
- Standardization of viewability metrics, greater control over brand safety, ad verification and performance measurement solutions to build advertiser trust in the programmatic eco-system
Are you part of this fast evolving programmatic eco-system? Let us know the challenges you face and the benefits you receive using programmatic over traditional direct sales model.
July 24, 2015
How To Optimize Content For Conversions
If the content you create to captivate your target audience is filled with deep insights and captures attention with your expert grasp of the subject matter you will convert your audience to clients who willingly advocate your brand or organization by sharing your content – infographics, blogs, and social media posts. Follow the step-by-step formula in this blog to optimize your content for conversions.

Step 1: Take a Tried and True Asset

Just 22% of US marketers have a specific process in place to reuse and repurpose their content. More often than not, marketers are sitting on a gold mine of unused content. A content inventory will help you get started. It gives you a clear picture of where existing content can be found, how well it performs, and what gaps remain unfilled.

For example: A 20 page whitepaper created three months ago, can be repurposed into an infographic, PDF, a video with voice-over and a 10-slide powerpoint (TWEET THIS!).

P.S. This blog is a repurposed infographic.

Step 2: Create Multiple Compelling and Cool Looking Formats

Great content can make a significant impact when repurposed across multiple delivery methods. Relevant portions from an eBook or whitepaper can be used both as blog and social media posts. Convert webinars into videos; create a blog post from the slide show.

People respond to visual information better than plain text. A picture is worth a thousand words because everyone is naturally wired to remember images far longer than they will ever recall a clever tag line.

Posters are one of the most effective types of visual content. Make sure to use a poster maker to create visually compelling posters that will leave a long-lasting effect on people.

Step 3: Syndicate and Link Back to Your Website

Even though you have created stellar content that is relevant to the needs of your audience, there’s so much competition and content it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. So double down. Submit your content everywhere: social media, blog directories, online PR websites, niche communities, forums and user groups for your products or solutions.

Over a period of time you will see:
- Increase in website traffic
- Upward boost in sign-ups (newsletter, gated resources, contact us, etc.)
Step 4: Build Lead Capturing Landing Pages

Kudos! You are just over the hump and you are seeing a significant rise in your website traffic. But where is all this traffic going?

According to MarketingSherpa’s Landing Page Handbook (2nd edition), 44% of clicks for B2B companies are directed to the business’ homepage, not a special landing page. Furthermore, of the B2B companies that are using landing pages, 62% have six or fewer total landing pages.

MarketingSherpa cites the number one reason for landing page failure is a marketing department that doesn’t know how to set one up or a marketing department that’s too overloaded to get the job done. (TWEET THIS!).

Ideally, every offer should have its own landing page. The user who clicks a specific post or link and gets to your landing page remains engaged with the same messaging, and that leads him to your call to action (CTA). The advantages of landing pages are multi-fold:
- Landing pages help generate more leads
- One offer = One Landing page: Gated offers are a crucial lead generation source in your marketing efforts
- Capture information about your prospects and understand your audience better
- Thank You Pages and Email Responders will help you close the loop with your leads in real-time
Our verdict: The More Landing Pages You Have, The Merrier Your Numbers Shall Be!

Step 5: Don’t Forget Your Tracking Codes

If you cannot measure content, you cannot manage content. Decide on your KPIs and then measure all your content efforts against the baseline KPI numbers. Broad KPI areas to track for different types of content are:
- Consumption metrics
- Sharing metrics
- Lead metrics
- Sales metrics
The process of content creation, distribution, tracking and analysis is an iterative cycle. You learn each cycle what your audience likes, and improve the process. The continual improvement results in enhanced lead quality, brand advocacy, happier prospects and loyal customers.

Bravo, if your numbers are off the charts! If not, continue reading…

Challenges Marketers Face

Marketers face serious challenges when creating and implementing in-house a sustainable content marketing strategy. The 2015 B2B Content Marketing Trends—North America highlights the major challenges that B2B Marketers face:
- Producing engaging content 54%
- Producing content consistently 50%
- Measuring content effectiveness 49%
- Producing a variety of content 42%
- Gaps in Knowledge and Skills of Internal Team, Lack of Integration Across Marketing and Budget were a few other challenges
I Can’t Do It All – Outsource Content Marketing

Creating a culture of capturing expertise within the organization and converting it into engaging content takes consistent time and effort. Bringing in an agency can help you fill some or all of the gaps in content strategy, content creation and distribution – right now.

An agency partnership provides:
- a different perspective
- variety and diversity in skills
- functional expertise
- industry specific expertise
“Marketing has changed more in the last two years than in the previous fifty.” – John Watton, EMEA Marketing Director, Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Is your marketing organization equipped to take advantage of every opportunity and overcome these challenges? Let us know your thoughts on content marketing, the pain points, the best practices or how unicorns are awesome!
July 22, 2015
Instagram – Yet Another Platform For Advertisers
Instagram has 300 million monthly active users and plans to open up the platform for advertisers. Jim Squires, director of market operations at Instagram, speaking with eMarketer’s Debra Aho Williamson, talked about how advertisers will be able to use Facebook data for targeting and how the ad buying process will change on Instagram.

What can marketers and advertisers expect going forward?
- Instagram will introduce direct-response ads, the ability to buy ads via an API (application programming interface) and enhance its specific targeting capabilities
- In addition to the video, photo and carousel ad formats, the new Action-oriented ad formats will allow users to take an action directly from an ad to sign up on a website or buy a product or download an app
- Instagram will maintain advertisement quality and creativity with a complex system using negative feedback rates, ad engagement rates and comments on those ads as input parameters
- Advertisers will be able to use ‘Custom Audiences’ to mix their information with the Instagram and Facebook platforms to get a holistic picture of their ad campaigns
Let us know your thoughts on how to fold Instagram into your social marketing strategy.
July 21, 2015

5 Updates from Google for Mobile Devices

The nature of digital marketing will not stand still, not with Google constantly creating new ripples for marketers all over the world. Here’s a look at what’s in the pipeline:

Purchases On Google

The much-anticipated “buy button” in Google search ads is here but it’s not really a button. Called ‘Purchases On Google’ mobile users will be able to click on search ad results and go directly to the dozen or so retailers currently participating in the test. Response thus far has been enthusiastic and positive.

“Purchases on Google will simplify our customers’ ability to search for items on Google and then buy with Staples.” said Faisal Masud, Executive Vice President of Global E-Commerce, Staples, Inc.

“Customers increasingly want to shop on their own terms. Purchases on Google facilitates that flexibility while maintaining the merchant’s ability to own the customer relationship.” says, Peter Cobb, eBags Marketing EVP and Shop.org Chairman.

By clicking anywhere on the ad the user is taken to a merchant-branded gateway landing page hosted by Google. The consumer can buy the product immediately using his mobile device.

New Mobile Shopping Ad Formats For Voice Search

Google has started to show new ad formats that include rankings and ratings when consumers search using voice. In this example rankings 1 to 3 have been displayed in the search results for the image on the left after making as voice search.

Expanded Product Listing Ads (PLAs) When Viewing The Carousel On Mobile

When users swipe to see more in the PLAs on their smartphones, Google will now expand the ads to show the full product title as well as extensions like product ratings and nearby availability. This functionality will roll out to Chrome for Android this month, and iOS in the coming months.

Google Now In-store Cards

Local Inventory Ads have been performing well so a lot more of them will begin showing up in mobile search results. Also coming online, the Google Now in-store card that appears when a user is near a store. It will show sales, closing hours, loyalty card information and more. Also, look for the Google Now price drop card. It will showcase significant price decreases on products the user has previously browsed.

PLA Deep Linking To Shopping Apps

Google is running a pilot test with a small group of global retailers including eBay, Flipkart and Zalando to deep link their product listing ads to product pages in their apps rather than their websites. More retailers will participate in the test in the coming months.

July 17, 2015
Tips to Leverage Facebook for Business | Position² Blog
Looking to promote your business, enlarge your brand audience? Look no further than Facebook. With a constantly diversifying array of internet users signing up for Facebook, having a showcase on Facebook for a brand, organization, business, company or entity has become as critical as having a website.

Eight Ways to Boost the Visibility of Your Business Page on Facebook

1. Business Overview

Make sure all the information about your business in the following checklist has been included on your Facebook Business page.

In General
- Description(short & long)
- E-mail ID
- Phone number
- Address
- Map
- Ratings & reviews
- Vanity URL
For a Local Business
- Working hours
- Product price
- Parking
- Public transit
- Payment methods
- Specialties
In this example The American Museum of National History improves their Local Business Visibility by providing Facebook users planning their visit with relevant information.

In another example, Vinaka Cafe makes it easier for consumers to access this Local Business by posting information about their specialties, price range, their services and parking availability.

For B2B Business:
- Year Founded
- Awards
- Company Mission
Insite Software added all the basic information that describes their business: the year the company was founded, the address, a short and long description, the products offered and contact information.

2. Call-to-Action Feature

Facebook has added a CTA feature that helps users take actions important to the business. CTA buttons include such basics as Sign Up, Contact Us, Book Now, Shop Now, Play Game, View App, Watch Videos, etc. Businesses leveraging this CTA feature easily drive traffic to their website.

You can track the number of people who have clicked on your Page’s call-to-action button in two ways:
1. Hover over your Page’s Create Call to Action button and then hover over View Insights to see how many clicks have been received in the past seven days.
2. Go to This Week on the right side of your Page and hover over the box that shows the name of your call to action to see how many people have clicked that week.
3. Tabs and Apps

Tabs and Apps can be found below your Page’s cover photo. You can display up to 5 tabs below your Page’s cover photo, and up to 3 apps on the left side of your Page’s Timeline.
1. Tabs come with your Page when you create it and direct people to specific parts of your Page, like Photos and Events.
2. You can add apps made by third-party developers to your Page, build your own, or work with one of Facebook’s Marketing Partners to create a unique app experience on your Page.
You can customize your tab on Facebook.

In this example Dell Software has added a custom tab displaying all the relevant YouTube videos. This keeps the user within the Facebook channel.

4. Image Optimization

In order to optimize the images that are featured on the Page you first need to select the top 9 photos you want on the Page. It’s important to select images that best represent your brand because they are automatically chosen from the Business Page’s default photo album.

5. Featured Video

One of Facebook’s latest update encourages Pages to upload a featured video and show it prominently to people selecting your Video tab. This will also be featured in the About Us section.

6. Video Cards

Create and share personalized Facebook Video Cards.
1. Job Well Done
2. Goodbye
3. You Can Do it
4. Recommend a Client
To check out this feature, log into Facebook and go to the Say Thanks page.

7. Reviews and Feedback

This feature applies only to Local Business pages and will appear below the About Us section. By activating this feature users will be able to read other users’ experiences and ratings of the business. To have a better view of the comments click on the review session in the About Us section.

8. Posting Schedule & Target Audience

To achieve maximum engagement find the ideal time your fans are online and schedule posts accordingly.

Check your Facebook Insights to see when your fans are online. You’ll see data for each day of the week. Ideally, post half an hour before they are online so your post will appear on their news feed by the time they arrive.

Facebook recently added two new targeting options for page posts: Target Interests & Post End Date.

Use Target Interests to direct your updates to a narrowly defined group. You’ll receive greater engagement. Target them by their interests, gender, age, location, behavior, etc. Once you set this up, the Facebook Business Page will appear on users’ newsfeed as per the targeted interest.

Note: This feature needs to be enabled under the general settings at “News feed audience and visibility for posts”.

When you use the Post End Date option, you predetermine your post’s lifespan in the news feed. When the end date passes, the post will no longer appear in a news feed even though it remains on your page. This is an effective way to promote events and other time-specific posts.

These tips can be easily implemented on Your Facebook Business Page and there’s no fee attached to any action.

Stay tuned for the next segment. We’ll talk about how to improve your business with Facebook Ads.
July 15, 2015