Mackenzie-Marketing

An Integrated Marketing Graduate Candidate At New York University, A Blog For Digital Marketing.

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Customer is not the kind of straightforward creature

Although market is data-driven, measurable and analytic, the basic core of marketing human-oriented. Analytic tools are to help marketers understand potential customers and not to control marketers for making decisions. Lazy marketers may only rely on data analysis and do not spend time to think about what customers needing or expecting. This is harmful for the whole marketing industry.

The last click attribution is the tool that those unprofessional marketers love the best because they do not need to consider anything but to ask for more and more money on the channel that contributes the most sales revenue. For example, if emails work the best for product A, they may ask for hiring more writers to prepare the written materials. If search ads work the best, they will ask for more budget on search. But we, clever marketers, have to consider that how could people commit their email addresses if they do not show interest on out product or the high bounce rate for search ads because a lot of random people do not have specific demand from us?

If we want to sell products to humans, we have to think like a human. Stop underestimating the complicity of human-beings! We know how complex we are when we want to buy something! Sometimes, we compare all platforms for only 1 product, search all information throughout the internet, ask all friends for recommendations, or ask as many questions as we can to the business assistance. However, something we just grab something without considering how much is it. Different situations, brand reputations, cultures, people we are being with, or even whether are the reasons to change our behaviors. How could the last click means everything to us?

Everything in marketing matters, he media channels, the content, the logos color or even the spoke persons. Last click attribution is totally dead! 

I remember when I wanted to buy an expensive knives set for my mom as a birthday gift. All I knew was she loves cooking and wants to have an amazing knives set. Unfortunately, I had no idea on stuff in kicten. I searched for a long time, and finally figured out that I wanted a Wüsthof Classic 36-Piece Knife Block Set from a magazine. I searched the price on their websites, talked to the business assistant, followed their social media, gave them my email address, and clicked on the display ads from 3rd party stores, However, when I checked my wallet. Okay, I could not afford the set. Around 2 weeks later, I received an email from them. It said they were doing promotion for the 24-Piece Knife Block Set. Amazing! I checked out immediately. That email is my last click contribution, but could we say email is the most important thing? I do not agree with it at all. If I did not see the ads from that magazine, check more information from their social media and business assistant, I would not consider about that. Especially, I bought a different set at the end.

It is an integrated marketing epoch, we will only hurt the brand based on last click attribution. Final decisions depend on all previous interactions. Customers will evaluate each touch point before making their decisions.

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Augmented Reality will become a decisive tool for digital marketing

AR helps Customers make decision

Augmented Reality is a great tool for integrated marketing. It could seamlessly cooperate with offline marketing, out of home campaign, App marketing, QR code, email campaign, and brand interaction. Brands can easier entertain customers with more specific information to attract them to interact. Thus, since many brands have their own apps, they can plug the AR function and collect individual user interactive data to better understand prospects' behaviors and find out the decisive reasons in purchase decision. For example, Timberland made an AR campaign to allow people “try on” the product in front of the store. Once the camera tracked a person’s face, he or she can try on Timberland’s clothes in a simulative background without entering the store. People can directly know if the clothes fit them well with the specific environment that they want. If people feel good about the clothes, they can send the product code to their emails. Let’s imagine, if this campaign happens on a busy street or sets in a bus station, the camera identifies a man, who may have installed Timberland’s app in his phone, knows his gender and age, shows him how he looks like if he wears the brand’s new arrival clothes. He is likely to show intent to interact with ads. Once he finds something amazes him, he can scan the QR code and the clothes will automatically put into his shopping cart. What he is going to do is to check out and wait for his clothes. No need to explain more, a purchase email should be sent at the same time. BTW, the possibility of return could reduce by AR because he knows exactly how it would look like. 

AR helps Brands understand customers

Brands are able to track people who interact with the AR campaign especially if they scan the code and build up a holistic customer profile: location, gender, age, favorite clothes, jobs (from the simulative environment), income level (clothes level), and family status (if the camera is powerful enough to capture who they are with). As soon as the brands have individual profile, they can utilize big data to simulate a lot of messages, such as what clothes should send to individual or the frequency of following emails to optimize the email campaign. Since preferences are easier to be tracked via AR, brands can utilize a lot based on the data. Everyone has different preference and wants to be treated differently. People want to be seemed differently. It is hard for brands to reach out everyone differently by now, but the possibility would come out from AR. When  AR marketing brings entertaining information, people are more likely to share their preferences with or talk to the brands. 

AR improve Digital Marketing

To achieve these, AR needs more technical efforts and marketers need to create new digital metrics, such as the number of times that AR is triggered and the length of time that people interact with AR. The more marketers can learn from AR, the more likely that they can create personalized profile for each customer. Big data are necessary for AR marketing, which will improve digital marketing a lot. Currently, everyone is treated similarly, getting same information. If AR and big data can actually participate in digital marketing, individuals will be treated and evaluated more like a real person. Since brand can understand each person, ads can be specific and don’t need to be hard sell any more. Promotional ads won’t be annoying, social media posts won’t be boring or irrelevant, and emails won’t be general and meaningless.  

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Giants’ Simulation Competition

Previously, we always assumed Google was a wonderful search engine because it delivered the most relevant search result to us and Amazon was the best ecommerce store because it sold everything we want. They did not overlap and finish their own jobs perfectly. But now, everything is changing.

Google strives to become a great search engine to lead more people’s preference and usage, which finally will return in a big amount of ad serving service income. Amazon sells its products at the smart price and attract more people to buy within its access. Both of them are evolving. Google is selling a lot of products via its own store. Amazon is developing its search engines with multiple supported database. They are invading the other sides’ territory. They are fighting for the same thing: consumers’ purchase intent. Therefore, as a marketer, we have an additional sales channel and a advertisement platform.

Although Google and Amazon have different “DNA”, they are growing to look the same. For example, People can finish their purchase on Google’s interface, including product exploration from different brand, checking out, and delivery service, which allows Google to collect their order information. Thus, the products on Amazon are quite overwhelming, so it gives business owners an opportunity to push their products in front of consumers’ eyes, ads, a simplified version of Google AdWords. BTW, both of them are also developing their logistics and robotics system. We may receive our packages from a driverless car or a drone. Sounds excited?

Fall back on the marketing perspective, we’d better allocate our budget on Amazon Ads if the products present on Amazon and on Google since we want our prospective notices us. It takes time and resources to determine the strategic scale on the allocation for different platforms.

Source: https://searchengineland.com/giants-collide-googles-impending-showdown-amazon-294689

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Emails Marketing Is Catching Your Eyes

Since Unilever announced that they are going to cut the marketing budget, the whole marketing industry started thinking the marketing budget allocation again. Are we optimizing our budget? Marketers are questioning about this. They come up with an idea that email marketing looks like a brighting star.

#1 Email Marketing is much affordable than other marketing tools

As soon as the brand has the email list, they are able to send out emails. If they want to have better services, they can register services like MailChimp. MailChimp is not free, but it is much cheaper than Google AdWords or OOH Ads. Thus, the upgraded function provides more professional services, such as email multi-testing, which allow them to test more variables for the email campaign at the same time. We can explore our emails a lot via these specific email marketing platform.Moreover, the ROI works better on Email too. Since people who give the brand their email address know something about the brand and have the intent to know more, they are more likely to be convinced to purchase the products or services than the new customers. Therefore, the less cost and better returned value make Email marketing stand out.

#2 Content customization

Since the brand own the full access and design of their email campaigns, they can set up different email plans for different segment, different life cycle, different touch points, different purposes. Under each plan, they can specify each email with different time, content and recipients. In the emails, they can send out a link for White Paper, images, articles, a link for videos, set up different greeting and structure, communicate with audience with different concepts, etc. Marketers have much freedom on emails.

#3 One-On-One Communication

Emails tend to be an one-on-one communication, which demonstrate the clear identifiers. This kind of communication can be very personal and specific. We can design the emails for different segments by different tones under different setting and situation to make the specific segment feel that they are talking to us personally. The authenticity in emails is really important, useful and attractive for marketers. People looks forward to read targeted content in their different life cycle. Emails can achieve this requirement very well. Specifically, we can set up content for different consumer journey.

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Transactional Email Campaign Is Much Difficult Than You Assume

A Sharing Of Walgreen Online Order Experience

For some reasons, I needed to print out some of my photos. Walgreen came up to me at the first second, so I just made the order with 35% off promotion code. The second I finish the order, I got the confirmation email.

The title of the email is “Great news! Your order has been received.” That sounds great and precise. The email looks well in different size of browsers, which is very user-friendly. The header looks a little bit confusing for me when I see the “sign in or register to start earning points.” Does Walgreen really know who I am? I have registered and made an order, and Walgreen was asking me to register again in a transactional email? Moreover, I did not purchase anything else in Walgreen, but they also show me the whole navigation bar. The content of the bar is redundant and irrelevant within this email. Using the website structure to build up the email template for a customer who just finished the order does not show enough welcoming for me.

The message in the email is nice and lovely. Walgreen strategically puts credibility in the message. However, the thing makes me unhappy is that they did not shoot me an email to let me know they were ready for my photos as promised. Actually, I had been worrying about this before I came to the store 3 days later. The order should be ready in one day. I thought they would convince me that I would not have the opportunity to come to the store again just because they missed my order. Thus, I do not want to mention how many promotional emails I got after the order, although I told them that order could be the first and last. I would be surprised, if they would not do this.

Following down is the information for my order and the store. It is clear and provide enough guidance. At the end of the email, Walgreen demonstrates the brand promise and show some extra services, which is very clever to let customers know more about the brand.

Days later, Walgreens asked me to fill in a survey, which is another upset experience for me. They do not response to their customer feedback via their surveys. It makes me feel that I was wasting my time to fill in the forms because they do not care about how I feel and think. I told them that my photos were wrong cut and ruin some of them and I was not satisfied with that. However, I did not receive any response and even sentences. Yes, I may go to Walgreen again if I need to print some photos because the service is very affordable. However, I would choose some brands else as soon as I know some brands provide the same price.

For me, emails are subjective to everyone. They may like them, click on them, and read them just based on their personal preference and current situation. It is hard to satisfy everyone. I suggest that email marketers should test multiple version of transactional emails, figure out the best one based on the objectives, and try to better understand what their consumers are expecting, if they want to optimize their transactional email campaign.

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Three Google tools to modulate the Mobile battlefield: Mobile-first index, Mobile Scorecard and Impact Calculator

On SEO standpoint, CTR are the 3 most important factors to contribute the performance. Although Google does not provide their actual algorithm about how they evaluate page. CTR, not representing Click Through Rate here, is Content, Trust and Relevancy. Content stands for valuable, unique, and differentiated messages for their target audience. Good content, long-existence and well-known authority can offer up Trust. Relevance is determined by inbound and outbound links, relevant audience and targeted keywords. However, none of these above mentions about page speed, even though we know people will leave the page if the it could not show up within 3 seconds.

Since Mobile is exceeding Desktop side on page consumption, brands tend to realize that they need to improve their mobile version, user-friendly. Their “Kings” prefer this channel, so they have no choice but to obey. However, what should the web developer care about? Is it enough to when it shows up because content, images and structure should keep consistent? No. Mobile page speed!

Google takes the actual actions to weight Mobile. From 2016, Google has started to use mobile content for all search rankings. The project started because the majority of Google search are mobile, but Google’s index was desktop only. To organize the worlds’ information and make it universally accessible and useful, Google has to rearrange their algorithm system to make it compatible with the universal usage. Therefore, with the mobile-first index, the bot would look at the mobile version first and then fall back on the desktop version if mobile version is absent. This index system is going to roll out in the near future.

Moreover, Google launched a Mobile Scorecard and an Impact Calculator tool last month. Google speak loud about the importance of mobile page speed by actual data. The Mobile Scorecard would illustrate the time for loading a mobile page and compare different sites at one screen, which help marketers clearly understand their mobiles pages and their competitors’ ones at the same time. Google AdWords have emphasized Mobile since 2013, but it is the first time that Google utilizes a set of tools to illustrate the significance. Beside telling people the time to load a mobile page, the Impact Calculator tool would demonstrate the money that brands are missing out on the slow loading speed. The actual amount of money could help marketer to pitch to their supervisors or web development department colleagues about the importance of mobile page loading time.

This is a wonderful chance for new brands who do not have much trust from Google to compete with the monopolists. Since user data are becoming easier and easier to collect, Google has the ability to translate the numbers into understandable “language” from customers and to restrain and manage the search market direction. As for now, marketers should put Mobile and the loading speed the priority first and utilizes the Google tool and their knowledge to keep improving. 

The tool link: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/mobile/

Source:

Schwartz, Barry. “Google Begins Mobile-First Indexing, Using Mobile Content for All Search Rankings.” Search Engine Land, 4 Nov. 2016, searchengineland.com/google-begins-experimenting-mobile-first-index-hopes-expand-upcoming-months-262527.

Schwartz, Barry. “Google to Move More Sites to Mobile-First Index in Coming Weeks.” Search Engine Land, 21 Feb. 2018, searchengineland.com/google-move-sites-mobile-first-index-within-next-several-weeks-292660.

Ginny, Marvin. “The Big AdWords Update: Enhanced Campaigns Puts The Focus On Mobile.” Search Engine Land, 6 Feb. 2013, searchengineland.com/the-big-adwords-update-enhanced-campaigns-puts-the-focus-on-mobile-147626.

Marvin, Ginny. “Google Releases Mobile Scorecard & Impact Calculator Tools to Illustrate Importance of Mobile Page Speed.” Search Engine Land, 26 Feb. 2018, searchengineland.com/google-releases-mobile-scorecard-impact-calculator-tools-illustrate-importance-mobile-page-speed-293021.

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Hey! dude, you want people to get into your offices for a single pale photo?

WeWork, the big guy at collaborative workspace in the US, offers multiple office plans for different demand. Its target audience falls into freelancers or startup workers or some people who do not want to rent a whole big traditional office which also charges a lot for a long-term contract. WeWork provides amazing amenities, communities and services in the locations they love. I love the co-sharing economy idea within this business. However, I do feel they need some extra efforts for their online advertising/ marketing campaigns. Please! Do not underestimate the coworking space competition and your prospects.

I have seen the below photos many times via my Facebook and Instagram. I have to confess, I am not a social media fan, so Facebook and Instagram are the only social channels I normally use. I should have seen it much earlier than I realized it was an ad from WeWork. Personally, I assume I do not belong to its audience profile because all my few posts have no relationship with entrepreneurship, start up or business, which makes me kind of interested in Facebook’s algorithm system. Well, WeWork may be broadcasting.

Although I barely post anything online, I care about my friends, so I always scroll my friends’ stories, post, or ins when I am free, which takes me a long time. Therefore, I have not read through everyone’s message in detailed for a long time.  That normal and unattractive photo for WeWork can hardly attract my attention. My friends also “agree” with me, only 7 likes clicked. That photo shows nothing about WeWork’s mission, passion or culture.

There is no need to say video advertising is easier to attract people’s attention because people are afraid of missing something interesting. In this current social media era, people prefer to post an image with a few words rather than a long article because nobody is reading on social posts! The flashing and colorful frames can catch their eyeballs because human beings used to earn their lives by hunting the jumping and running rabbits. Now, marketers should utilize this immanence to “hunt” people’s attention in reverse.

WeWork should use videos on their marketing/ advertising campaigns unless they assume everyone know who they are, what their services are, why they are the best/ competitive collaborative spaces, and why everyone is beloved with WeWork. Especially none of its messages, photo and words, in their marketing are telling people why people should take WeWork into their consideration. WeWork offers service for people, but I barely see a clear human face. I do not tell if people working at WeWork are happy, upset or frustrated from the photo because it tells nothing. Thus, it is hard to tell the difference between WeWork and other office space from that photo. The space in that photo could fit into any company. However, those confusion can perfectly be answered by a good making video. As a company reaching $20 Billion, I suppose they deserve a more oriented and targeted plan for the upcoming marketing plan.

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Landing Page Does Not Work Alone

This comes from an authentic customer experience of Muji. Personally, I love its style and have bought many products from it. Every time I walk into the store, am passionate and happy to walk around and get something into the basket. I listed my email address to its system and followed its social media. Every time I receive an email with promotion messages, I am excited to explore, hope I can find some good deal, and buy something I like.

This week is an unfortunate week, my kettle was broken occasionally. I needed a new one to make coffee or tea. The grateful moment is I got an email from Muji, titled “Get to cleaning! - New promotion on our Cleaning System Series!” If I were not a fan of Muji, I would not open the email because I do not have the intention to buy some “cleaning” stuff at all. I just clicked on it with a little expectation.

At the first glance, it actually only mentioned about a promotion for cleaning stuff. However, as I rolled down a little bit. I saw a white and cute kettle.

I thought they would have some deal for a kettle because the image is about a kettle, so I clicked on it.

However, under their kitchen appliance series, there was not a kettle at all. I was disappointed, so I switched to Amazon and decided to buy one which has a “Amazon’s Choice” tag. When I was exploring for the kettle, I saw some much more affordable rice cooker. The price in Muji is a little expensive for me. I wanted to compare the one in Amazon and the one in Muji, so I made a comparison.

This rice cooker is only $25 and it has many information to help me better understand it. However, the product information in Muji is really limited. It is hard to make a decision to purchase a $156 rice cooker with limited info. Especially, I cannot even see the comments without logging in, but the comments in Amazon are available. I assume Muji expects that everyone comes to its websites makes decisions without making a research and comparison, which may be hard to accomplish.

Muji also had a fake social account issue this week. “MujiNewYork” claimed to give each of its first 5000 followers a $50 dollar gift card. Many people posted the screenshot into their Instagram story. However, it took Muji more than 10 hours to react to that fake account and got many terrible comments on its authentic social media account. People were yelling Muji posted fake information and fooled its customers. Muji just reported the account and updated a post to tell people they are fooled. Muji was innocent in it, but it should react faster and have a better reaction on it. As a loyal customer, my passion on Muji decreased a lot in this week.

There are several points I learned from this experience.

1. The image for a landing page should not show inexistent product.

2. The landing page should not anticipate that their customers have 100% trust on the brand and will purchase the product with limited information.

3. The person who is responsible for Email campaign should cooperate with other department to double check everything in the email is correct and available.

4. The email title should be accurately demonstrate and does not mislead recipients. Make sure it accurately demonstrates the content and satisfies prospects’ expectation.

5. Marketing content deserves more attention. We should protect the brand online image and quickly defend ourselves.

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Chobani fights hard in a duplicated and imitated yogurt market

Chobani is striving for providing delicious, nutritious, natural and affordable Greek yogurt. They do not blend the ingredient totally and is brave enough to transparently show ingredient, labeling and how products are made. Chobani has versatile types of flavors. To broaden their product lines, they also have non-Greek yogurt and “TOTS” for kids. Thus, they also have Chobani Cafés and Chobani Incubator to develop its business.

Chobani has a full range of media list. It has Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube. In its own media, Chobani talks a lot about the ingredients and the recipes to emphasize its versatility and transparency. Chobani wants everyone to know that it is not just an ordinary yogurt brand. It wants to say, Chobani is good, Chobani comes from Greeks, Chobani is healthy, Chobani is natural, so it has many campaigns to talk about how good food is important to people, how Chobani strives to producing healthy yogurt, and how Chobani can help people to have a better life. Based on its impressive and powerful branding strategy, Chobani is becoming bigger and bigger. It also sponsors team USA and utilizes hashtag “#NoBadStuff” to re-energize the brand and show the yogurt can empower people for the goodness. The sponsorship campaign can also attract male audience who is interested in health, fitness and sports.

However, in a competitive market, Chobani has to fight with many competitors. No need to say Dannon and Yoplait, there are some new competitors like Siggi's and Noosa who are resonating with millennials. Chobani plans to spend 35% more on marketing in 2018. Moreover, Chobani redesign its logo and product packaging, which is a good way to people to discuss about. It uses serif front and hand-painted style to recognize the imperfection of the fruits. Chobani expands its possibility in food as a “food-focused wellness company” and broadens the its positioning to “fighting for happily ever after.” Chobani aims to go beyond the yogurt and become the substitute ingredients like sour cream and cream cheese. Chobani believes that if people eat yogurt throughout the day with some snacks, they will attain more nutrition in their life. It wants to enlarge the overall yogurt market share, not only its own market share, which is very inspiring and stunning. As Chobani is expecting to change the position of yogurt, sponsoring influencers may be able to accelerate the whole process. Since people consume more and more videos online, reaching out popular YouTubers who are famous for cooking food to showcase their utility on Chobani can inspire more people to try Chobani into kitchen time.

[mackenzie-one-blog]

Stop the competition between digital response and branding to optimize the benefit of digital marketing

As a marketer, I strive to provide customers value that is profitable for the organizations in my projects. In my thought, both physical and psychological benefits are included in customer value. Direct response marketing and branding should strategically work together to build up a successful brand. They do not work as the opposite sides of the same coin.

Branding experts are always good at telling impressive stories to make people learn, remember, and recognize the brands. Normally, they demonstrate the unique and impactful messages, the valuable brand equity and the reasons to choose the brand. Marketers hope target audience would create preference and would have impulse toward products in a long-term perspective. If we do not represent our brands in this digital marketing era, they would be defined and introduced by our competitors, irresponsible press, and our previous customers who may not have positive user experience on us. Since we cannot control the messages online, we will lose the last chance to stand out. Good to have digital marketing, branding marketers can better understand consumers via direct communication, such as online reviews and comments. Branding campaign also can be tracked and analyzed in nowadays. We 

Branding takes time to spread to people’s mind and to get people familiar with the brand, direct response advertising can immediately ask people to take action, normally, to buy. We can boost sales via direct response in a short time. Thanks to the digital era, we can create different direct response campaigns to test ad copy, to track sales results, to monitor the reactions from different segments, and discover the most effective channels. All those insights are able for us to learn, to refine, and test the campaign again. Especially some companies reduced the marketing budget in 2018. Direct response marketing can calculate and determine if their campaigns are getting the best ROI and make a better decision next time. However, if we do not pay attention to branding, direct response would not be optimized. People may buy your products because of discount. However, as soon as the promotion finishes, people who do not have the brand image in mind will leave you away and start chasing other promotions, which may result in an endless and unhealthy price war.

The optimization for digital marketing is to unify branding and direct response. Once we create a branding campaign and broadcast to people, we are also interested in to see if people search the brand on Google, if the direct response advertising shows up at the right time, and if sales is facilitated by the ads. The cooperation between branding and direct response should offer a fluent journey for customers to explore the brand.