Less is more in digital media era

Check my slides  less is more in digital media era

 “more about the less in digital media era”.

 Enjoy those key points about less is more in digital media era

1. We have been told in marketing if you want to get more you need to do more, you need to give more flyers to get a potential customer. In digital media this is not necessarily true to get more engagement from your customers, you need to do less.
2. Don’t post  un-relevant posts to your brand on Facebook, don’t use cute memes if its not relevant to your brand.
3. Create a target profile and then think where do your target market exists ? in which  social media platforms ? only post what is relevant to your brand and what is grab your target market attention.
4. Always follow a strategy that goes with you positioning statement. (refer to my blog of positioning if you like to learn more about positioning).
5. Create relationship with your customers. its crucial to listen to your customers and respond positively to them.
6. Coca cola always pay attention to their marketing strategy they are brilliant in marketing in general and digital marketing as well.

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Are you Trendy Or T-Rex ?

Trendy and T-Rex, what those two nouns have in common ? Beside the fact that both words start with the letter T.

Trendy (noun) means a trendy person, place, object, or idea ( ref1)

T-Rex (noun) is a type of dinosaur that became extinct 65 million year ago. (ref2).

in Today’s very fast digital growing age, keeping up with the newest social media platforms is very hard. Some people are out of date as T-Rex and others are not very Trendy either. However, if you are business owner or marketer you need to be up to date .

Not only for the sake of being up to date,  but also for the sake of growing your business. The rule of standard marketing channels (TV, Newspapers) is not as huge as before (not surprise ! ). Therefore, as a marketer or business owner you need to continually investigate where your potential customers are spending their precious time!

Why?

Well, so you can reach those prospects, and market your services and/or products to them. That way, when those prospects want to make a purchase, they will consciously choose your brand over others !

In the crowd of social media platforms I will write today about the rule of  Instagram in business. Instagram has 200 million active users. This number made it a very good platform for business especially if it could be shown visually, ( I can’t recall of any business that couldn’t  be captured by images !)

To make the best use of Instagram, don’t ignore the special rule of hashtags # . when you put images of your products attach all the hashtags that refer to the category of your brand, also attach the hashtag of the location and  your brand hashtag.

Hashtags will attract new followers to your instagram business account. But, there are also another tactic that you could follow to expand your followers further such as posting images during the right time. You can’t  know for sure the best time for more engaged users, until you try and observe. After observing,  post during the time of the day that has more engaged users with your brand images.

visit shopify e-commerce university for more information about Instagram for business.

Don’t forget to share this post if you think its useful.

Social Media Marketing, Santa and Skateboarding

In this post I will walk you through a case study that shows what smart and big companies are doing to promote their message over social networks like Facebook and how they develop their message.

In summer do you like skateboarding?

what about winter ?

Santa Clause, of course.

Here we are going to study Coca Cola strategy in their marketing campaigns over Facebook. The reason I have chosen Coca cola because there are extremely successful in marketing, positioning their brand and selling their products. Coca Cola has 90,183,323 likes on their Facebook page. So how they are doing it? 

Engagement, of course and interaction, yes again. Coca Cola focused less on direct promotion of the product and more on fans and their stories. They let people feel connected and they have something in common which is, Coca Cola ! as a fan if you feel you are part of a community, you would be more willing to like the pictures of people around the world drinking cocoa cola and you would be more willing to share their stories.

So what skate boarding and Santa have to do with Coca Cola?

Well, Coca Cola has a theme that  goes with the season, when its winter, they make contests and campaigns of Santa and kids. if its summer, they show a picture of  Coca Cola with a question regarding skateboarding. The message they want to convey is “we are here living the moment with you in every season.”

More information about this case study could be found in  AMS magazine in the following article Facebook Case Study: Marketing with Coca-Cola.

I know it’s an effort of years that Coca Cola put into their positioning and marketing.But, it’s always advisable to look at them as role model and follow their tactics in keeping people engaged and interested in a soft drink !

if you like this post or if you have more ideas about Coco Cola marketing campaigns please share it  with us in the comments.

Big Data and Big Decisions

With the existence of Internet and social media there is a lot of data available for free. This data can offer information about everything such as consumers’ buying habits, their needs and concerns and even their attitude and way of thinking towards certain product.

If you have big company, small one or you are an individual entrepreneur looking forward to open your business, making use of the available data whether it’s online or offline data might be vital to the success of your business. It will help you in making better decisions. However, the question is

How to make sense of the big data?

The availability of big data could mislead sometimes and could reflect inaccurate information. Here, where companies such as environics come to play, environics is analytics company that uses multiple tools such as Geoscape® Intelligence System GIS, PRIZMc2 segmentation, ENVISION. These tools use targeting algorithms to parse the big data and then provide visualization and insights of the demographic, geographic, psychographic and other factors of the potential consumers. Even if your company is small or you are just starting, considering those data and using one or more of those tools might change your plan tactics and might provide you with different business decisions.

“Big data is good, but big data with analytics is big deal.” Jan Kestle, President, Environics Analytics.

David Spitz in Harvard Business Review blog suggests to not only use tools but to use math. To make use of big data we don’t only need software analytical tool, but also we need business expertise that can interpret the data visualized and calculated by those tools. Depending on the budget and the size of your company, consider investing in your current employees by training them and exposing them to those tools to serve your company in more efficient manner.

Guerrilla Marketing

The first time I heard about this term when I was reading a case study about Barak Obama marketing campaign. Everybody recognizes the massive success of this campaign in 2008, which returns partly to the guerrilla marketing strategies or sometimes referred as grass root marketing.

This pictures is taken from http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75359.html 

To define guerrilla marketing is basically an advertising tactics that use un-conventional methods to create social buzz. In another words guerrilla marketing revolves around taking the prospects by surprise and creating a lasting impression on them which usually produce maximum results. Small, medium organizations use guerrilla marketing. However large organizations also use this type of marketing along with traditional marketing strategies such TV, radio and print to reach to more audience. more about guerrilla marketing here.

This pictures is taken from http://blog.mobileweb.be/tag/presidents/

In Obama election, the campaign made a phenomenal use of new media and guerrilla marketing. The campaign utilized all social media such as flicker, twitter and facebook to provide the user most recent updates. Citizens received campaign ads directly on their mobile phones. And then they received personalized thank you SMS message From Barak Obama. That effort in mobile marketing and guerrilla marketing strategies was a success in Obama campaign and produced in excellent results comparing with other parties who didn’t use guerrilla marketing. More about Obama case study here. And more examples of successful guerrilla marketing campaign can be found here.

this image is taken from http://crossfitexp.com/2014/07/22/wednesday-7-23-14/#sthash.C0jIG3qH.dpbs

Guerrilla marketing mainly uses imagination to create the social buzz and grab prospect attention, however, sometimes this type of marketing doesn’t go right and provide negative attention. So, whenever you are considering using Guerrilla marketing for your company consider the worst case scenario that can happen. If it would generate more negative response than positive then it would be a good idea to alter techniques. Example on campaign that wasn’t successful is the video of Shark in Lake Ontario that cause frightening in the general public. which after six days Discovery Canada admitted the finned creature was a life-like model. (more details about this campaign here ).

What do you think of guerrilla marketing? share your thoughts in comment section, personally I think guerrilla marketing is very good advertising technique but consider using it with caution 🙂

Enjoy your weekend.

Positioning and Branding Strategy.

Are you hitting the target?

Positioning simply is how you want people to perceive your company’s product or service. It is the first thought that comes to their minds when they hear about your service or product. To hit a target successfully is to understand how your offering can be set apart from other competitors. How your product or service can satisfy the customer in away that is desirable by the customer.

Another definition of Positioning ( as defined by whatis.com), is the process of identifying an appropriate market niche for a product, service or brand and getting it established it in that area .Working without a positioning and branding strategy is like shooting with a blindfold. You can’t really know if you hit a target or not. Positioning is to get into the customer’s mind and create an impression; this impression should serve the product.

The easy way to get into person’s mind is to be the first ( Positioning: the battle for your mind). Think about the positioning of those brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Harvard University, Apple, BMW. Each one has sophisticated positioning that associates with our emotions and trust. Lets think about Microsoft, when we hear this name we know that this name is worth the money, we can trust their software and it’s the name of the company behind the most famous operating system program namely Windows and Office. Same for Johnson & Johnson this brand provoke our childhood memories and our trust over generation. So when Johnson & Johnson are selling their talc powder for example of extra money we go and pay for it, not because of the special talc powder that they sell but for the name Johnson & Johnson and the whole experience that was initially created by their successful positioning.

The Question is how let your company’s product or service stands out from the crowd. Here the next stage is coming from an understanding of differentiation, which is what sets our product or service apart from its competitors. If you can’t be the first then you have to “THINK DIFFERENT” and propose a positioning statement that gets the perspective customers to think at your product or service differently.

As a big Apple fan myself and ios programmer, I was interested to know how Apple could stand out from many other products and competitors. I found in ( TIMES blog) where it explains how in 1984 Steve Jobs first unveiled MAC. Tim Bajarin stated that “my reaction was that MAC that is introduced by APPLE did not look like any PC vendors that was known at the time such as IBM and compaQ”. Apple positioning was being different. This difference came from “pillars” of Apple, which are Think different, at that time in 1984 and till this time definitely what sets them apart from the crowd is to “Think Different”. Apple lead the innovation of MP3 player, smartphones, tablets and more. And most importantly Apple brand positioning is their innovative sleek designs and products.

It’s helpful in creating the company’s positioning to ask those questions:

• First is to think about target market, To whom is this product or this service?
• Second is to think what are the problems that would be solved by our service or problem.
• Third is what are the other competitive product or service?
• Fourth how are we different from them?

Successful positioning is key to attracting more customers to your company. In other words the successful positioning is hitting the target.

More examples on positioning? (Here)

In the above link, the author explains some of the most famous positioning, Subway and their 6 grams of fat slogan, Dominions and their 30 minutes or free slogan, Timberland 100% waterproof slogan, Volvo safety slogan.

How to stand up as a start up?  How to create your positioning as an individual?, this was explained by (Sean D’Souza ). For example, TimberLand shoes products have many qualities such as Hand stitched, 20% harder soles, warmest shoes and 100% waterproof. The company chose 100% waterproof for their positioning. Then they build their whole store around that. The point is you have to be specific in your positioning.

To be specific is very important in positioning and branding for instance, Dominos Pizza (30 minutes Or free). They could’ve choose their positioning statement something like very soon delivery but they chose to be specific. Simply because any pizza company can copy very soon delivery, then the positioning of Dominos in prospective customers would be no longer significant.

Positioning in digital media is to take your message across all the media and to leverage digital platforms for greater sales, brand awareness, and ROI. By across all media channels I mean everything that is viewed and can be shared over the Internet, from email marketing, Youtube ads to social media platforms such Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instgram.

“Sticking with a strong story pays off for the likes of Nike, even in a multi-channel market”, Marketing Week

This is very important tip to keep in mind if you want to succeed in your positioning, you need to consider not only to be specific, but also, to be consistent especially if your first positioning is successful. The reason behind that people will remember your positioning over years and will have same impression every time they hear about your brand name. Example on that is Nike and their slogan “Just Do it” they didn’t change it for 14 years. Just Do it Campaign was a success and it produced a profit and ROI, (more details is in the Marketing Week ). Being Consistent is engaging the customer and at least promising the customer that you can depend on us for that!

For Digital media and Positioning. Its important to know that digital media adds more to the nature of your positioning, basically because if the company position itself at specific category and then somebody’s experience the opposite and then disseminate this on social media. Then as a company you should be engaged with social media and other media channels and confident enough to justify the reason behind this lack of delivery. For instance Volvo and its safety car positioning, if individuals experience lack of safety in their new line of cars then Volvo should justify this lack of delivery and at least stop manufacturing this specific line of cars.

Remember Positioning is to choose a specific consistent impression for your brand and to back it up in your products or service.

What is your favorite company and what is your impression about it? Is that consistent with their positioning?