Andrea

Student from NYU studying Marketing

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Innovative Digital Marketing Idea

My idea about digital marketing is an app regarding fashion information.

Through my observation for years, there is hardly a fashion blog that makes me satisfied in terms of sending me information in daily base via an convenient platform such as an app. There are fashion savvy that do have opinions and visions about fashion but they own their individual websites which makes it tiring to check all the websites. There are Instagram accounts related to "stylish" but not so much taste;  there are also fashion magazines/online blogs…however, in this mobile trending world, we should have a really high-end fashion app, shouldn’t we?

What I am proposing here is an app where we can gather some mainstream fashion domains such as department stores, fashion bloggers, photographers, etc. to report in a same platform that will send content (runway shows happening around the world, trends for next season, comments about fashion events, etc.)to audience when they subscribe.

Before launch, our team are going to work on the following parts:

Realize the target customer. We run data about the followers and readers of these popular bloggers,  magazines, etc. and     decide who is our target audience

Design of UX/UI. We hold focus group to learn how people use and feel about our app and make improvement base on that.

Understand our users: we keep tracking the data and share them with our partners to help them write better posts.

The strengths of this app will be as followed:

It guarantees taste. One of the most challenging thing of fashion related things are different taste. That is why I suggest we use mainstream fashion leaders: department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdales; fashion bloggers such as Chiara Farragani, models such as Kennel Jenner, etc. They are more likely to provide high-end fashion and latest information

Audience can get all the information that they want and keep themselves updated with just one app. Right now the organizations/individuals we mentioned had their own separate websites/app. It will probably too much work for our audience to follow up. They just want to open one app and reach everything they want about fashion and style. That makes them more efficient to select and read.

It provide a platform for all the stores/bloggers/models to raise their exposure as well as to compete in the same place. Audience will notice at once probably the product they want only available in Neiman Marcus exclusively. They probably will have their own preference about the bloggers after reading and comparing couple of their blogs. It will be a healthy competition and will improve the overall quality of the information available for our audience.

When we get to certain amount of users, it will become an amazing platform for every reporter to do promotion and advertisement. Eventually, it will be powerful in the fashion industry in many aspects.

Are you looking forward to my presentation about the idea that I mentioned in a more thorough way? 

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To trust or not to trust? Your campaign attribution data

Hi there, the topic we are getting into today is about if you should trust the data who indicates you the campaign that seem to attribute the most?

Sometimes people see the data shows their email campaign brings the most amount of purchase, and then they decide that in next season, email should be invested more money into. The question comes: Is that a wise decision to make?

Here I want to tell you an ancient Chinese story called "Three people make a tiger"

Long time ago, there were four guys living in a beautiful village and a mountain couple miles away. The mountain was deep and dark. Rarely people went there. One day, one guy told another, "Hey, do you know someone claimed that he saw a tiger in the mountain. It probably will come down to the village and eat people!"

He replied, "Oh, that is ridiculous. I don’t believe that."

One day later, a second guy told that same person, "Hey, do you know someone claimed that he saw a tiger in the mountain. It probably will come down to the village and eat people!"

He replied, "Hmm...That sounds scary but I don’t believe that."

One day later, a third guy told the same person, "Hey, do you know someone claimed that he saw a tiger in the mountain. It probably will come down to the village and eat people!"

He shouted, "Wow! It really could be a tiger in the mountain and it might come down to the village. We must tell other people and protect ourselves!"

The end of the story is that there was no tiger at all. But what truly I want to take away from this story is that the three story tellers all contributed to convince the other that there was a tiger in the mountain. Could you define which one contributed more? It is hard to say. It is the order that confuses you and makes you think that probably the last one is the most persuasive, but it might be wrong. When you start to feel full while eating the eighth cheese burger, would you say that you can skip the former seven ones, get directly to the eighth and it will still make you full?

The same principle applies to your advertisement campaign too. Probably you are doing campaigns on TV, subway, SEM, and emails. Even in data, it shows that in most cases people complete a purchase after reading your emails, it doesn’t mean that the former three guys didn’t do their jobs. Probably it is because the audience are in the subway without signal, or their laptops are not with them when they are watching TV, or they are really in the middle of something when seeing you advertisement on search engine but they decide to come back later. If your email campaign is a good team player who can talk, he would tell you that all other buddies have played important roles in your campaigns like the other seven cheese burgers.

It is said that your customers need to be reached 6 times before they make actions about your products. All the 6 times matter, and please do not treat the last one as your youngest daughter like Beckham ;)

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Three things you probably don’t know about search marketing

1. How do you determine if your website is mobile-friendly?

After you and your team design and launch your website, are you sure it is actually mobile friendly? Or what if you just happen to neglect this very important point when you are designing. Google want to make sure that every site owner's web is friendly for mobile user, so they issued a new type of site owners if their site is not mobile-friendly. The warning can only be seen by the owners when their website shows up in the search results, while regular users will not detect anything ever happened. This is a pretty good tool for you to go back and check, right?

2. Is SEO just about good content?

While many people such as me as a marketing rookie are still thinking SEO is about good content, experts have provided us many tips other than content.

Speaking of this, you will probably think of promotion such as buying ads another way to boost your traffic. However, have you thought about adding more backlinks will also matter? According to the research, there was very strong positive correlation between top-performing content with organic search and the number of backlinks that content had. Remember to seize any chance that can add backlinks to your website. 

3. What is Google Panda?

Google’s Panda is a search filter/ranking algorithm meant to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results. Google released a "slow rollout" of Panda 4.2 starting on July 18, 2015

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Three reasons why marketers will increase investment on email

Did you hear from the report of marketing spend in 2016 that email spending has been increased by 59.7%? Why is that?

Here are three reasons that will help you get it clear : )

Most of your email ROI comes from segmentation.

According to DMA national email client report, 77%  of ROI comes from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns. It is critical that you have tailored information for your clients to their inbox. It must feel different when you are addressed by your own name instead of general "sir or madame". I personally will be more likely to open emails with title or first line as "Hey Andrea, we have found more what you love" or "New season recommendation from your previous purchase" to see what they have to say to me. Sometimes these information are more attractive than a discount or free giveaway. You have to spend some money either ways on discount rate or segmenting your customers. People are eventually looking for what they want instead of cheap products that they don’t want. Please believe your customers are smart enough to understand that they would rather buy one piece of right thing than 5 pieces wrong things. So doing segmentation and targeting will be a smarter choice.

Your customers open your content in different platforms  

66% of marketers say that their e-mails are opened on a mobile device more than 31% of the time. Have you done enough design for mobile-friendly user experience? Have you spent enough money on testing your content on both Apple and Android system? Would it be different on various apps from which people read their emails? Even though people just open your email via their computers, does your content compatible with various browsers? People will lost appetite within a second if your content cannot be loaded on their whatever device. And your message will fail to deliver. That sucks.

People base their decision to open an email on the sender's name.

According to Campaign Monitor, 68% of Americans say they base their decision to open an email on the ‘From’ name. That is a brand thing! Let's talk about how to build up your email brand. We cannot deny that every email with your name on the sender's name is a brick of your brand building. It takes 6 touches to get your customer actually do something to your product. It probably takes less try to make your customer hate your brand. Regarding they check emails every day, you want to be very careful about the content that you send them everyday. Invest some money on training your email composers and make them expert. That will help a lot on building up your brand.

Are you ready to increase your budget on email marketing? 

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Cares from the Building Where I live - Transactional Messages

When you signed a lease with a new building where you want to spend anther year, did they ask you for your email address? At that time, you probably think it is just a part of signing process till you start receiving emails from your building manager.

In my building, I think these emails are more sweet than annoying. Besides building news and account updates, they also send me notifications when my packages are delivered or when I am trying to send out a return through our doormen. We have in-house dry clean service, so when my dry clean item is ready, they well shoot me email too. They will notify me about maintenance cases and  follow up with the process via emails. Of course, during holidays, they will give me best wishes as well as thoughtful tips just in case I am out of home visiting family members or traveling.

The content of these transactional emails build up a relationship between tenants and the building. They made tenants feel like they have a lovely butler that takes care of their daily life. They are watching the all operations around the building as well as each individual there. They make tenants feel secure and homey living there. Additionally, the person who record the event such as package return or maintenance will be the exact person that you talked with to make the request. People feel like their needs are followed up seamlessly.

With time passing by, tenants link their emotions with the building emails such as "I am so excited" from a new package, "they got my back" feeling from a maintenance request, "share a happy holiday mood" from holiday tips. What coming along is that the tenants build up an image of the building as helpful, reliable and thoughtful. Thinking about these building employees whose job seems to be helping you everyday, you don’t want to leave that building any more. The first year tenant then become a loyal tenant. What a customer retention plan! Just as simple as a transactional email.

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Some Imagination about Mobile Use in Marketing

Since your best friend forever switches from the mate that you play with together since kindergarten to your mobile phone, marketers are sneakily buying it in so that they can target you better and recommend a tailored series of products/service to you. ----Is that sweet to be a marketer? So how exactly would mobile be used in marketing in the future? I have four things to talk about.

 Programmatic advertising

Thanks to the database of Google, Facebook, and other internet companies, programmatic advertising has been more mature than ever. These companies are like little "maid" that keeps track of your preference, interests, and daily activities that may change or may not change frequently. But anyways they know, they care and they take actions. These data make sure the buyers' message reaches their target audience and meanwhile save a lot of budget. As audience, we will not be bothered by the ads that we are totally not interested. In the opposite, what we see will be tailored recommendations.

 GPS service

Do you remember that your newly-downloaded apps will ask you if you want them to use your location when you are not using the app? They are probably seeking opportunities to promote something to you at a right time. By right time, it probably will be when you are getting closer to their stores. Honestly I didn’t receive much promotions when I get to some stores. Last time I entered a GNC store, my app just sent me a dispensible welcome message. That means this function is still developing.

However in the future, I think it can be more thorough on that. For instance  you might get a detailed discount information depending on you former search. It will probably even direct you to the right section using a store map so you can save time on lingering around (even though that is not a bad thing for merchandisers). And eventually you might be able to check out with the scan function on your phone and pay with Apple pay. What happens next will be your receipt saved in your phone, your personal data base built up more thoroughly, recommendations made in the future more for your taste.

 Chat tool expression

Emoji is so dated, limited and frustrating when you cannot find a right one which happens all the time for me. Let's see how chatting tool stickers work.

What emoji cannot express, you can find them on stickers. This is actually very big, because everybody uses their chatting tools such as wechat, line and kakaotalk, and everybody is always eager to express themselves. A cute, proper, thoughtful design of expression package will make our chatting even more vital and engaged. Meanwhile, the cartoons are promoted.

Whatsmore,  as long as you can design a pervasive sticker package, any theme can be promoted. You can make do it for TV show characters, famous bloggers, even U.S. presidents. Once people think the stickers are expressive, they use if everyday. I remember how I know this Japanese bear called "Kumamon" only from the stickers of my friends.

High-tech device

What if we can place an order with our eyes instead of fingers, probably with an special contact lenses? Or just our raw eyes. At that time, mobile probably will perform just as a remoter or a supporter to help our eyes work smoothly. What a convenience path for shopping! Does it sound like a disaster for shopping mania people but heaven for marketers?

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Landing Page of Open Table

OpenTable is an online booking service for dining. It is pretty convenient to use and just like everyone else, I signed up with my emails and get my booking status as well as promotion information from them.

Here is one of the promotion that I received from email. The title is "March Insider: 1,000-point tables & spring dining" This is how it looks when I open the email.

Actually what drove me to open the email at the first place is not the 1,000 points inventive, but the curiosity about "Spring dining" (and plus the eager for the resource of this blog). What is special for dining in spring that you have to say about? Because I have no idea what the points are going to be used for.

With Curiosity, I clicked the "Find a Table" link, and it shows up so many options about where I can dine tonight! These look nice but if I am detailed enough to still remember that a 1,000 points incentive is what the original email about , I will find that there is only one table at one specific time which is "17:45"tonight that has 1,000 point available for me. And I think, that is gotta be one more. Thus I scroll down the list. As all you can expect, yes that is the only one that match the advertising! Sneaky sneaky.

Then in the same email, if you scroll the email, you will find more ads. This is right down to the points incentive promotion. "Are you a real New Yorker?" ----that is a pretty provoking title. When people come to a city to live,most of them want to be one part of the city. So these people will click the link.

So they click the link, and here is what they are going to read:

"The 10 Most Legendary Restaurants in NYC" sounds vintage, authentic, and must-try. And this is not only an advertising that the OpenTable did for other websites. These restaurants are available on OpenTable too if you see the little red links down each restaurant saying "MAKE A RESERVATION ON OPENTABLE". And then you will go through these typical steps. Probably you will sit in that restaurant with your lovers or friends. Two more customers triggered by this email advertising.

I think this second link is actually making more sense then the first promotion because they lead subscribers to read something that could make them interested. And then step by step, the advertising guides the audience to pay attention to these restaurants, want to try it, book a reservation, and dine inside. The landing pages of the process are perfectly connecting to each other. It is like a one package service, the purpose of which is to provide convenience for the customers to dine wherever they want. But eventually we will find that "wherever they want" place is just where the marketers want them to dine.

For the first promotion, I have couple suggestions. In the landing page, if there is a small session that tells audience what the points can be used for, then they will probably be more motivated. And of course, if there could be more tables than just one, it will be less like a "fake” incentive.

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Social Storytelling, a Newborn of Marketing

Mummy, mummy, I want you to take me to the park? And can I have some milk? Mummy I missed you. I can’t do anything without you.

Yea, that's how I think about the relationship between social storytelling and marketing. The prior is a new family member of family that was just created by the mother Marketing. It will not replace marketing because it is just a part of it. Even though reading the cases mentioned earlier in the textbook such as Pure Michigan and Red Bull, I see storytelling as one of the strategies that really matter. It is similar to content advertisement which tend to stand at the point of customers, think about where their originally needs are, and persuade them to buy the product by providing what they need. Social storytelling provides customers a personal feelings that they are somehow related to the brand, or the brand is related to something that they care. Brands are trying to connect with their audience by this strategy. However, they still need other marketing tools and plans to do research, to identify the audience, to create a marketing campaign and last but not least, to reach the audience. 

Overall, marketing is an integrated plan which cannot be simply replaced by a strategy which probably in couple years, be replaced by other strategies. So sad probably it is because when kids grow up they can’t raise attention of their parents any more. What a pathetic metaphor. I know that is not true. However in marketing industry where yesterday’s news becomes old fashion, that is probably how it works. 

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Heng Yuan Xiang’s Stupidly Funny Ad for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

What I am going to introduce is a very stupidly funny ad from Heng Yuan Xiang, a cashmere merchandiser, as a sponsor for 2008 Beijing Olympic Game.

The link is here. Please click and watch. Probably it will change your 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbs-wK28VMw&list=RDvbs-wK28VMw#t=10

The ad starts at the 10th second in the video. Basically the first two parts, including the brand name and the statement of its sponsorship, were being repeated 12 times, and the following part is three times each of the zodiacs name. These elements made up the whole 1 min advertising. It would have been fine if it was just distributed through video website so people could stop it at their wish. However, can you imagine that in 2008, every evening when I was eating with my parents at the dinner table while watching news on TV, the ad was being played every single night! Sometime it caught us off guard and we were just astonished by such an ad like----What planet did this stuff actually come from? And it was literally ONE MINITE!

Not for a long time, this ad was revoked from the TV station, at least from the news station that we were watching. Our peaceful dinner time was given back and we appreciated it with tears.

I regard an ad like Heng Yuan Xiang 2008 a really bad  marketing. This ad did raised the word of mouth and made it become a topic of entertainment, but it's only negative or null influence on the sales. Just  by looking at their cashmere in a shopping mall, the nervous reflex will cause people vomit right away.

I feel like since the idea was planned, this had been a mistake already. Why did they use repeating work to reinforce the brand? Why did’t they just tell a warm story? And why Heng Yuan Xiang, a cashmere brand, would even sponsor an Olympic game happening in August!

Still talking about the plan, I think instead of raising people's awareness in that "hilarious" way, they could have made an Olympic-related story. At that time there were a very popular ice-skating athlete couple. Heng Yuan Xiang probably could have told a story about they both wearing the cashmere after training or during the training in the break. Or, it could be in a valentine's day, they both picked Heng Yuan Xiang cashmere as a gift. People would appreciate their surprised and at the same time enlightened face. Then all of a sudden, the Heng Yuan Xiang brand is carrying such sweet and beloved emotion in the audience's mind.

When marketers are doing a video campaign, what they want is not merely word of mouth. They also want to build up a solid brand image and persona which will have positive influence on the brand's sales. Meaningless campaigns like the Heng Yuan Xiang one will step out of the stage eventually because of the inefficiency on branding

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Digital Marketing, is it better for branding or for direct response?

Two things that marketers care about most are probably brand awareness and sales/ROI. Sales/ROI significantly depends on customers’ response to the product. In the era when digital marketing is growing insane, what on earth does it benefit? Branding or direct response?

The answer is these two buddies are quite beloved and unseparated even in digital marketing. They are interacting with each other all the time.

Digital marketing is consisted of various parts such as SEM, social media, email, content marketing, display advertising, etc. People probably have a general instinct that social media, display advertising and content marketing are parts of branding and SEM and email belong to direct response, while I think it is kind of hard to tell exactly whether they are beneficial to one or the other. For instance, email. Probably people would think it is for direct response. When they check their email and find a discount reminder from Saksfifthavenue.com. They click it, start shopping, check out, and wait for your merchandise to be delivered. Woohoo! However, the images, the wording and the tone of the title are also part of the email. The way they look/sound influence your brand image construction. Imagine you receive an email titled "Cheap sales" from neimanmarcus.com. That is disaster. You probably would never consider it as a high-end department store.

Another example is social media. Marketers use them to promote events, spread brand information, connect with bloggers  and celebrities. Wow, that's branding! But, don’t you see there is a website link of these independent designers' online stores that they hope you will click and buy something from them after you go over their Instagram pages? That’s call to action for direct response.

The more I think, the more I feel that when we are doing digital marketing, we'd better regard branding and direct response as unseparated and interacting. Think of the brand as a push behind your customers, and in front the customers there is a pool of your products. The more powerful the push is, the more possibility that your customers will directly jump into your products to buy, to use, and to recommend. On the other hand, that how your target customer interact with the product is helping you better position your brand as well as customize it to meet their preference. If a marketer has missed this interaction, he/she might end up with a gap between the brand essence and its positioning. At the end the brand would lose the promise to her target customers.

So next time when we are managing social media accounts or writing emails to customers, keep in mind that we are working on both branding and direct response;)