Yellow Ad Network

  Yellow Ad Network is one of the biggest buyers of interactive inventory on the internet, or any interactive advertising format.  

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Top 5 Lead Generation Techniques for Business Success

We have observed a shift in attitude towards lead generation over recent years.

More advertisers are allocating significant budget to lead generation tactics as part of their customer acquisition plans. This is particularly effective for automotive brands, where lead generation is utilized as a key tool to generate consumer interest, reach potential new buyers and develop internal CRM databases.

Indeed, our experience has shown that this channel is one of the highest converting and most efficient when compared to other digital media in this sector. Implementation and execution of any campaign is integral to ensuring its success. We have outlined our top five recommendations for ensuring a successful lead generation campaign in the automotive industry below:

1) Consider the information you collect from the consumer and how it’s presented to them. Leads are generated through a number of different communication methods such as on-site overlay, email and mobile. Whatever the source, the customer should feel comfortable in terms of the data they are providing and how it will be processed. Additionally, having too many required fields will lead to a higher page drop-out rate, with a negative impact on conversion and therefore costs.

2) Build relationships with the specialists For this type of campaign, the majority of the leads will be generated through automotive publisher specialists. As a result, it is crucial to build strong relationships with these partners to ensure that they fully understand the business and campaign objectives, alongside promoting the latest car model content and creative assets. Partners are continuously improving their site and targeting capabilities – some marketing tactics may fall outside the traditional lead generation spectrum and may require looking at a hybrid CPL model.

3) Understand true ROI is key Setting up a process whereby conversion feedback from the manufacturer can be shared between stakeholders is essential, as it will allow publishers to identify which part of their campaign has the highest conversion and allow them to optimize accordingly. The most common optimization tactics involve ensuring the right content and messaging is used in the right part of the customer journey and through incentivizing publishers with a large reach, through monetary gains, to drive the highest possible lead quality.

4) Utilize best practice to process personal and publisher data Compliance in terms of personal data is a key concern for today’s online consumer and therefore all data collected from a lead generation campaign needs to be handled with the upmost transparency. The customer should be fully aware of the opt–in procedures to receive either a call back or further communication from a manufacturer in order to make the most of that lead. Additionally, a data verification software should be used to ensure that all the lead data provided by the publishers is of highest quality and that only valid leads are being paid for.

5) Don’t let an online lead become cold Lead quality is one of the top priorities for lead generation campaigns. If call centres are used as part of the campaign, as they are with many of our clients, it is important that the customer is contacted by the dealership as soon as possible to ensure the lead doesn’t turn into a cold lead.

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AppNexus hosted its first ever Learn ’N Hack http://goo.gl/jQq1C3

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Watch the sizzle reel from AppNexus' inaugural Learn ’N Hack

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Five superpowers of banner ads we've overlooked

Banner ads have gotten a bad rap over the years -- and it's mostly our own fault. For years, digital marketers have focused on click-through rate as the key to success. In the immortal words of the first AT&T banner ad, "Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will." If we've learned anything in the last 20 years, you actually won't. Industry standard click-through rates are less than one half of a percent, so it's time to move past that metric and focus on what banner ads do well.

Building awareness

I'm not quite sure how digital marketers overlook this key component of banner advertising benefits -- maybe because it's too hard to measure (clicks, after all, can be tracked with an ad server or web analytics). Brand awareness is the foundation of any businesses marketing success. Traditional media is the bastion of brand awareness (after all, a 30 second spot on the Super Bowl cost more than 4 million dollars this year). There have been countless studies over the years that clearly demonstrate the impact banner ads have on brand awareness. In 2010, released a study that showed higher offline sales lifts from brands that ran online campaigns compared with similar campaigns that ran on TV. and other studies are great, but not every brand can afford an in-depth study, so here's another way to demonstrate the impact your display ads have -- monitor search traffic to your site. As you might expect, a natural reaction to higher levels of awareness is an increase in site traffic and, more specifically, increases in site traffic coming from branded organic search traffic. Sure, Google is blocking 90 percent of your keyword search data, but you can still see the remaining 10 percent and usually another 10 to 15 percent of your traffic from Yahoo/Bing. So take a look at those data before and during your campaigns -- if your ads are placed right, you should be able to see a noticeable shift in the search traffic for your brand and/or product terms.

Targeting

OK, so assuming we’re in agreement on the awareness side of things, let’s talk about reaching the right people. In the last paragraph, I referenced running ads during the Super Bowl. What a great way to reach a lot of people (more than 110 million viewers last year). But how many brands really need to reach an audience that large? And for those that do, how many are really in their target market? On a smaller scale, take a look at your local television station and one of your favorite prime time programs. Do you really believe that everyone watching that show has an interest or need for your product? You can get pretty granular with TV audiences (particularly with cable), but you still can’t get as specific as you can with online. Online targeting is a lot more like direct marketing than traditional media buying. When buying household mailing lists, you can get incredibly targeted — street address, household income, number of people in the home, etc. The list goes on and on, but the trouble with direct mail is that the cost of delivery is incredibly expensive — it’s not uncommon for direct mail pieces to cost $1 or more (including postage) per household delivery. With display advertising, you can put all those same data overlay and reach your audiences for a few dollars per thousand.

It’s time to move all your media to display

So, display ads are the panacea, and you should move all your dollars to display today, right? Not even close! Media mix is still incredibly important. Much as I’d like to, I can’t impart the emotional impact of a TV ad in display. I can’t place a display ad in front of a prospect actively seeking my product like search ads can. I can’t get the visual impact of a billboard or distribute the depth of information I can with direct mail. But we also need to stop looking at display just from a click-through rate perspective. Brand impact and awareness are important. If no one is aware of your product, you’re not going to get sales. So take advantage of the superpowers of banner ads and build awareness with the right audience in unique ways that inspire them to act.

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Ten Social Media Marketing Mistakes Businesses Must Avoid

Social media is an integral component of any successful digital marketing strategy. With 74 percent of adults using social networking sites, the opportunity to increase your site’s online exposure to new customers cannot be ignored.

 Top social media marketing mistakes to avoid While the ROI of social media marketing remains hotly debated, there is no doubt that it can be a great tool for optimizing your web presence—or total nightmare experience depending on the execution of your strategy. Here is a list of social media marketing mistakes to avoid, and ways to ensure your campaign’s success.

 1.       Paying for fans and followers.

Having thousands of fans, followers, and likes leverages the power of validation and social proof, especially since visitors tend to take positive action when they see others have already shared the page.

 However, social media sites have algorithms that track and analyze user engagement and interaction, including the number of people interested in an account’s updates as a percentage of total followers. When businesses have low engagement rates, platforms limit the reach of certain accounts because the numbers indicate low relevance and interest among followers. Therefore, fake followers only serve to hurt brands in the long run.

 Instead of wasting money on paid fans, spend more time on creating your strategy and increasing your fan base organically. Considerations include:

· Having specific, measurable goals with timelines.

· Creating a system or set of policies for updates, such as the types of posts allowed and how employees should respond to feedback, criticism, or suggestions.

· Identifying the appropriate corporate persona and tone via social media.

 2.      Using too many social networks.

Research shows that marketers generally focus on three social networks: LinkedIn (91 percent), Twitter (85 percent), and Facebook (81 percent). However, the three social networks you should focus on depend on your niche or industry.

 Recent research shows that the largest social platforms of 2014 were:

 Facebook, 1.28 billion active users

Google Plus, 540 million active users

Twitter, 255 million active users

Instagram, 200 million active users

LinkedIn, 187 million active users

Pinterest, 40 million active users

If your primary demographic is women and your site relies heavily on images and graphics, you should allocate resources to Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. If you offer professional advice, services or products, LinkedIn and Twitter will yield the best results. The networks you dedicate time to should yield the highest ROI for your niche and target demographic; otherwise, your time, money, and resources would be better spent elsewhere.

 3. Failing to use (or optimize) hashtags.

Harness the power of hashtags by creating your own. If your own hashtag gets picked up, then you’ll have a viral thing going. It is critical that you create a hashtag that has a specific message, one that’s interesting, engaging, and free of ambiguity.

 Brands should also be using trending hashtags. This can help spike your reach and inject your brand into trending conversations. So, how do you find trending hashtags that you can use effectively?

 Use tools such as Hastagify.me to identify hashtags that are related to your business.

Then use RiteTag.com to tell you when a hashtag is overused, and that you should choose another hashtag to piggyback off of. This way, your content won’t get lost in the sea of tweets and posts.

4. Isolating social media marketing from other activities.

The focus on social media marketing is so high that some marketers forget the other assets of the business. In order for social media marketing to reach its full potential, it has to be tied in with a business’s website, blog, product pages, and other digital platforms—the essence of the web presence optimization (WPO) framework.

Setting up and growing a business blog is critical to your brand’s long-term success. After all, followers don’t want to click-through to product pages from Twitter, but are more than willing to check out interesting news, tips, advice, or guides.

 For instance, if you manage a skincare product company, linking to a page selling acne medicine won’t get you many visits. On the other hand, blog posts titled “Top Skin Care Experts Reveal Secrets” or “How to Feel Confident in Your Own Skin” will get tons of engagement. The added benefit is that consumers will also develop positive associations with your brand.

 5. Overselling.

One of the biggest mistakes marketers often make is pushing their brand too hard. Don’t be overly promotional and forget to share some value-added content. This means brands shouldn’t only broadcast their own posts, products, and company-specific information. Showing the consumer you care about their well-being, regardless of whether they buy your product, is critical to developing a loyal fan base.

 6. Not using visuals to drive engagement.

The power of visual content cannot be overstated. For example, on Twitter:

 Photos average 35 percent more Retweets

Videos earn 28 percent more

Famous quotes get 19 percent more

Tweets with numbers achieve 17 percent more

Hashtags receive 16 percent more

With a high volume strategy, the boost you can achieve with a visual aid is too good to past up.

 7. Including the full URL in the description.

When you paste a link in the status field, Facebook generates a clickable image/excerpt. The link you’ve pasted is thus redundant, should be removed and a catchy description should be incorporated. The bare link should never take the place of your description.

 An expansion of this concept can be applied to Twitter—don’t use long, full URLs in your Tweets. Marketers should leverage URL shorteners (including Twitter’s own) to leave space for other users to respond or share. Also, URL shorteners such as Bit.ly or Google can help you track the number of click-backs.

 8. Sharing too much at once and overwhelming your followers’ feeds/streams.

Sharing posts one after another within a few minutes time is a good way to get people to unfollow you or overlook all your posts. Businesses should use scheduling tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite to space out tweets and posts for optimal sharing times. For Facebook, marketers can visit “Insights” then “Posts” to see what times most fans are online.

 On the other end of the spectrum, sharing infrequently or irregularly will make your followers forget you. Create a regular posting schedule so your readers know when to expect new content from you.

 9. Ignoring comments/tweets.

Whoever is responsible for your social media marketing strategy and message should be responsive to customers by replying to comments on Facebook, tweeting to customers on Twitter, thanking followers for Retweets, and proactively engaging with others, including influencers.

 Similarly, brands must deal with negative messages as quickly as possible. If you ignore this aspect of your marketing efforts, you’re bound to lose credibility and followers. Sometimes turning a negative experience into a positive one by rectifying issues can earn a company life-long customers.

 10. Not measuring results.

To optimize results, businesses need to analyze their social media marketing efforts. Is your reach growing? Are you engaging more followers month after month, or are your engagement stats decreasing? Is your social message consistent with your mission statement and branding? If possible, can you calculate an ROI? What metrics are important to you?

 Whether you’re getting positive or negative results, analyzing and understanding your performance is crucial to a successful marketing campaign. But remember, it’s not just about getting more followers, comments, likes, etc. You can be growing your account every month, but if your effort isn’t translating into sales revenue, lead generation, growing your email subscriber list or whatever your goal is, you are wasting your time.

 Final Word

  While the idea of going viral and earning thousands of shares and likes is exciting, businesses should always keep in mind that social media is a tool within a broad, overall marketing strategy—every aspect of which must be laser focused and executed. By avoiding these social media marketing mistakes, marketers can prevent setbacks and further grow their online presence.

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5 Ad Operations Disasters

Running an efficient ad operations group is difficult atbest. It gets much worse if you allow yourself to fall victim to one of several common disasters. Before we discuss how to steer clear of these storms, we'll do a quick recap of the current ad operations environment.

 I always find it's important for publishers to distinguish between the problems that are unique to their ad operations group and those that are inherent throughout the entire industry. Every publisher has to deal with the following difficulties:

 1.       Taking an order all the way from "quote to cash" (RFP to invoice) is relatively inefficient and involves more steps than it should.

2.       Ad operations are often run with a "patchwork" of applications, instead of a single, integrated solution.

3.       Ad server envy. Most publishers look at theirs and worry that the one down the street must be better.

4.       Internet ad inventory is difficult to predict, manage and report on, because each publisher has a unique traffic and targeting profile

5.       Third-party ad serving is making a mess of reporting and invoicing for all publishers.

Late creative complicates the delivery of ad campaigns.

If this sounds like your company, congratulations! You are dealing with the same common problems as everyone else. Why? This is due to the relative immaturity of the applications and processes that run this part of the business. By applying improvisation, workarounds and custom solutions that are specific to their needs, most publishers manage to create solutions that allow them to conduct business with some semblance of order.

 But this common environment is just the tip of the iceberg, and publishers have to take care to navigate carefully. Otherwise, they run the risk of experiencing disasters of titanic proportions.

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Top 3 Tips to Optimize Your Retargeting Campaigns

Retargeting is picking up steam in the PPC world, and with good reason. While display campaigns get lower click-through rates than search on average (.5% and 4% respectively), retargeting ads allow the innate branding opportunity found in display advertising to expand to targeting transactional users who are more likely to convert. This is especially helpful for the 67% of folks who abandon their shopping carts – people who have already expressed interest in your product, but for whatever reason, didn’t convert.

  We previously shared some best practices for running a remarketing campaign. This post focuses on what to do with a remarketing campaign once it succeeds – or fails – and how to ensure long-term customer engagement, retention, and repeat purchases.

Optimizing a Successful Remarketing Campaign

For the purposes of this post, we define a successful remarketing campaign as one in which a user becomes a customer within the timeframe of the campaign. Here are three things to do to keep performance high in your successful remarketing campaign:

  1. Keep them as customers by adapting the campaign to similar products

The very nature of remarketing campaigns is following a transactional prospect until they convert on your product. Retaining a user as a client means adapting the offering to suit their needs. If a client just purchased a Nikon D3100 Digital SLR camera, they don’t need to see an ad of the same product, or another camera following them around. This could cause buyer remorse at the feature/functionality level, or make the client believe they could get a better price if they had waited on making the purchase. If they see a compatible lens or memory card promoted, they will be much more likely to convert. Google performed a beta-study of its dynamic remarketing product, and users found there was a “2X increase in conversions and 60% reduction in CPA.” which proves the relevance of product suggestions among the converted.

  2. Don’t keep following them around with the same ask

One of the reasons sales folks get a bad reputation is the bad seeds who bombard prospects with the same ask, but no new information. Keeping a converted client on a remarketing campaign without updating the ask conveys one of two terrible things about your brand: you don’t know your customers, or you don’t care about your customers. The first few weeks are when you want to have flawless service associated with a purchase. Make sure your clients know how much you value their business by not making redundant asks.

  3. Brand affinity is important

It is important your brand maintains a level of selectivity in where it promotes itself. When a successful remarketing campaign concludes, it is important to assess whether the client opportunity can be expanded on the domain it was initially captured on, or whether another domain would have better success. While remarketing is a fairly automatic process, it is important the purchase history makes sense to the user, even if on a subconscious level.

  Optimizing Retargeting Ads that Failed

For the purposes of this post, we define remarketing failure as a campaign that failed to convert the user to a customer in the allotted time of the campaign. Here are three ways to fix a failing retargeting campaign.

  1. Assess how long the campaign ran. Did you annoy them away?

Similar to the successful campaign that continued following a user around with the same product, bombarding a user who shows passing interest in your product will not turn them into a customer. If anything, they will turn against your brand, and likely go to a competitor for the product you could have provided them. To avoid this remarketing faux pas, ensure frequency capping is enabled on all campaigns, and the length of campaigns falls within industry standard. This can range from one to three months, with up to three views of the ad per day. That said, there will always be exceptions to every rule, which is why each remarketing campaign should be strategically put together with a clear idea of the runway available to capture a customer, as well as the sensitivity to advertising in your industry. (Note that Larry believes the fear of annoying your customer is overstated, since retargeting ads convert much better than regular display ads even accounting for fatigue; see below.)

2. Brand disconnect: Did you break the 4th wall of user experience with a nonsensical domain?

We’ve all seen examples of this – browsing on our favorite destination site when BAM, a completely irrelevant ad smacks us in the face. Not only does this interrupt our engagement of the destination site, it makes us question what the advertiser is thinking. I likely don’t want to look at baby adverts if I’m on a sports site. Conversely, I likely don’t want to see advertisements for season tickets if I’m reading about newborn care. Even if the user showed mild interest in the product in question, it makes no sense to follow them onto non-relevant domains.

  3. Are you targeting demographics that can convert, or aspire to convert?

One of the biggest puzzles advertisers attempt to solve in their campaigns is filtering out irrelevant impressions (i.e. folks who are not likely to convert/yield wasted spend). The danger of remarketing is that the default is to include all IP’s that interact with your brand, which does not factor in folks who are aspirational researchers, as opposed to transactional shoppers. There is an inherent income disparity in the Internet population, and even though most folks are on the Internet, a premium product likely only cares about those in certain income brackets or age brackets. Remarketing is behavior based, but someone who wants a dlsr camera may not be able to afford it. Bombarding a student who wants their first meaningful camera is a waste of spend. Targeting a user who is researching for their next camera with a purchase window of 30-60 days is a meaningful target.

  Retargeting is an amazing tool, and has equal opportunity to succeed or fail based on strategy used in creation, execution, and follow-up on the campaign.

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Email Marketing 2015 – A New Hope

Fans of Star Wars will know the reference ‘A New Hope’, it’s the subtitle to the first, ground-breaking film Lucas released in 1977. It’s now 38 years later—fans and nerds alike are pacing in circles waiting for the December release of episode 7. What does this have to do with email marketing? Nothing. Everything.

We’re a week into 2015 and I’m predicting we’ll see much of the same behavior that characterized email marketing circa 2014. My hope is that good holiday sales, a rebounding economy, and the general prosperous gestalt that seems to be everywhere finds its way into marketing budgets to adopt tools that ensure the ongoing success of email as a channel.

  Here’s what you should be concerned with in 2015 that you may have tabled behind more ‘important’ initiatives in 2014:

Your transactional mail is just as important as your marketing mail. That’s right! Transactional mail, you know that welcome message that nothing short of a ‘first date’, or the all-important password reset that let’s you use your account or make a transaction, these things have to be prioritized over the batches of 20% coupons that you’re sending. I’m guessing there are still oodles of companies out there that have no clue if their transactional and triggered messages are getting stuck behind batched campaigns. Spend the time to get it right: get the password reset out first, make sure welcome messages don’t arrive 3 or 4 days later with the information someone needs on day 1, and that receipts and confirmations that decrease calls for customer service get to where they’re going without being impeded by sales messages or newsletters.

Yep mobile is still important. If you’re not responsive all the time then half of your audience isn’t getting the same rendering experience as your other half. With the number of devices in the wild today you have to assume that your email is viewed on dozens of different mobile devices and browsers on displays stretched to extreme letterbox proportions (and curved—coming soon to a desktop near you). So the importance of ensuring a smooth experience regardless of the device or platform is paramount. Part of a mobile device’s unstated purpose is to diminish the barriers from browse to buy by deep linking to a native mobile app via a received email; if the initial rendering of the email is poor the likelihood of using an app as the next step in the customer journey is scant at best.

Inbox & Verse were unleashed by the Sith! Don’t worry, the sky isn’t falling because Google decided to reinvent email by launching Inbox, nor is IBM’s Verse going to cause CTRs and open rates to plummet. These are efficiency tools that were built in hopes that people agree to the fact that Google and IBM both know much better about how and what you want to read and experience in your inbox. When Google Tabs were launched the industry cried foul and proclaimed that the sky would fall. We’re still here. I predict that these tools will have a limited following and if their algorithms are worth their salt they will simply prove out that the most engaging brands and communications, the ones customers want to read, will remain top of mind and top of inbox. That is all.

The proof is in the pudding. Now what?! Here’s what you need to know: depending on whom you read mobile traffic accounted for 45% of all online traffic during the holidays. Nearly a quarter of all online sales were generated via mobile. And finally, more men shop on smartphones than women, this is true in my house given my wife uses my Amazon account (or orders me to use it). The fact of the matter is that every holiday season results in a wealth of data—it’s stacking up all around you, petabytes of behavioral analytics that you should leverage throughout the year. My prediction is that some of the potential, and here I stress potential, that like the force, it’s all around you, it’s really up to each and everyone one of us to use the data at our fingertips in meaningful ways. The holidays are not an event; it’s the gift that should keep on giving through out 2015 and beyond.

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Five Proven Tips to Close Larger Sales

When financial advisors look at their peers, it’s common for them to wonder why there can be such a large success gap between advisors who appear to have comparable skill levels. If you’ve wondered about this issue as well, the answer generally comes down to how good a financial advisor is at selling themselves. Because advisors all offer services that clients need, the big differentiator comes down to how individual advisors present themselves to potential clients.

If you’re at a point in your own business where you’re ready to move to the next level, here are five things you can do to increase the size of client sales that you’re able to close:

Explicitly Target Higher Level Clients

Many advisors get stuck in a rut of focusing on less than ideal clients because they know they can easily close them. While moving up the value chain may involve some rejection, your business will never get to where you want without taking this leap.

Focus on Selling Solutions

Although financial advisors offer services, the most successful ones are those who position what they do as solutions. While many people may not care about the technical details of managing a stock portfolio, they do care about knowing that their kids will be able to afford college or that they’ll be able to live comfortably during retirement.

Emphasize Objectives and Challenges

This is related to the previous point. By framing your offerings in a way that emphasizes what someone is trying to achieve and the challenges that need to be overcome in order to accomplish that objective, you can put your pitch into a language that’s really going to resonate.

Know How to Determine Budgets

You don’t want to simply charge more for what you do just because a specific client can afford it. However, what you do want to do for clients with a higher net worth is tailor solutions that will provide them with even more value. In return for this increased value, they’ll be happy to pay a higher price for your offering. But before you go down that road, you need to spend some time looking at your qualification process and ensuring you can correctly identify your most promising client leads.

Offer Three Options

When you give a client a proposal, it shouldn’t be limited to just one option. Instead, it should have three options. In most cases, the second option will be the one the prospect is most likely to take. The power of having three options together is it anchors the price and really drives home the value of what that client is going to receive from you.

Although it does take time and effort to implement the strategies we covered, doing so is one of the best investments you can make in the success of your business.

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Five Predictions for Digital Advertising & Marketing

2014 was a huge year in the advertising and marketing tech sector. Companies have come and gone; been acquired, consolidated and become fragmented. The data available to marketers has increased exponentially and we are beginning to see opportunities widen as efficiencies and scale are achieved in programmatic, online video and native advertising. Marketers have also started to make use of emerging technologies like 3D advertising while taking a serious look at wearable technology and how the Internet of Things (IoT) will affect the industry.

As we look forward to the coming year, all signs point to 2015 becoming another exciting year of growth rooted in technology. Here are some of my predictions for the coming year:

  More Technology Operated In-House

We will see an increase in the use of marketing tools operated in-house, steadily transferring power and responsibilities from agencies back to the brands themselves. With data now at the heart of all marketing activity, brands are less willing to part with their invaluable customer data, and as a result, will be less willing to outsource the technology needed to manage and maintain this data.

  Tech Goes Mainstream

We’ll see ad tech providers take bigger steps to simplify their external communications by eliminating superfluous acronyms, and instead, actively educating brands and agencies about how to gain to the most amount of value from their technology. In turn, this will improve the overall usability of the product, and will eventually mimic the processes and structures of familiar technologies.

  More Actionable Data Available

Innovation in marketing and advertising technology is far outpacing most companies' abilities to understand, absorb and, most importantly, use the advertising technology effectively. We will see more vendors respond to this by ensuring their tools contain truly provide insightful measurement, metric and analysis functions.

  Surge Of Cross Channel, Cross Device

Currently, consumers frequently see the same exact content distributed across multiple channels, which leaves brands with no real concept of the overall impact of their media investments. Therefore, brands will increasingly look to engage audiences across channels and be able to track their engagement with specific targeted individuals.

In the coming year, we’ll make better strides in cross channel/cross device targeting, attribution and measurement. In turn, this will allow brands to truly understand when an individual has seen or engaged with an advert across various channels, and how they reacted to the brand messaging on each device.

  Continued Market Consolidation

We’ll continue to see more consolidation in the market. Automated/programmatic technologies will continue to provide a lucrative business opportunity for brands, however, there is a limit to how many of these solutions can survive in an already saturated market. In that sense, we will see more single function tools become integrated into current platforms, or join forces to create new platforms.

[yellowadnetwork-blog]

Digital Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2015

The only constant is change.

 From technology trends to changing business models to evolving consumer behaviors, there’s a lot to consider in order for today’s marketers to really have a handle on what’s important about what’s next.

 Old digital tactics and mastering individual channels are being overcome by the need to create a common brand experience across the digital experience on and offline. Customers expect to access and consume information across platforms, apps and devices and in order for brands to “be the best answer” wherever buyers are looking, they’ll need to figure out what’s next and where to focus.

 To capture some of what’s important for digital marketing in 2015, I reached out to some of the marketers I’ve worked with and come to know over the years. It’s an inspiring collection of marketing brain power and experience represented by brands like Cisco, IBM, Dell, Google, Intel, Marketo and LinkedIn as well as industry thought leaders like David Meerman Scott, Ann Handley, Jay Baer, Ekaterina Walter, Mark Schaefer, Ardath Albee, Brian Clark and many more

Ann Handley – Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

Is it 2015 already…? And I just learned to routinely write 2014 on my checks…(darn it!)

  So here goes: In 2015, I’m thinking about two things:

 1. We’re taking the notion of “”brands are publishers”” and pushing the boundaries of that further.

 How that plays out: We’ll focus on enormous empathy and customer experience (and not just more blog posts). (That doesn’t mean blog posts aren’t important, for the right company and the right customer. But it means we consider if that’s the best approach, rather than making a post the default.)

 We’ll focus on more relevance and new inspirations (rather than just the tried and true).

 And we’ll focus on being generously useful. 2015 really will be the year we create and curate content our customers will thank us for. Which leads me to…

  2. Marketers become ridiculously proud of their writing!

 In our online social world, we recognize that all marketers are writers. Everybody writes, and that’s true whether you are the Chief Content Officer or Marketing VP or the mar-com manager. Our words are our currency – they tell the world who we are, as Beth Dunn points out. They can make us look smart or they can make us look stupid – and so being able to communicate well in writing isn’t just nice; it’s necessity.

 Are you thinking writing doesn’t matter in our video/podcast/Instagram world? Actually, it matters more. Good writing is like an iceberg – use your best words to convey depth under the surface. That means you’re got to choose those words well, and write with economy and the style and the end reader in mind (there’s that empathy thing again!). That’s true whether you’re writing a listicle or the words on a Slide share deck or the opening paragraph Lee wrote at the top of this post… :)

Jay Baer – President, Convince & Convert

It’s already happening, but 2015 will be the year of paid amplification. With content marketing reaching near-ubiquity, the success pendulum will swing toward boosting consumption of content. That will put a new focus on math, testing and optimization as content production and content distribution become equally important.

Mark Schaefer – Executive Director, Schaefer Marketing Solutions

As far as 2015, there is a vast change on our horizon that will be led by augmented reality and wearable technology. This change will be so profound in fact, that I think we will look back at this revolution as something that is as important as the Internet itself.

 By the end of 2015, wearable technology should be gathering enough steam that we will begin to see some early marketing applications. What does marketing look like when the Internet surrounds us like the air that we breathe? Fascinating to think about.

Pam Didner – Global Integrated Marketing Strategist, Intel Corporation

Marketers have been advised to create and tailor different formats of content with customized copy for highly fragmented marketing channels from TV and print to various social media platforms in order to reach their target audience. It’s the right thing to do.

 Digital marketing will continue to morph and promotion channels will be further fragmented. The major change for 2015 is NOT about digital marketing. The major change will come from Marketers by Going Back to Basics: reevaluate the target audience, determine what works and what doesn’t. Re-prioritize and be smart about resource allocation and investment.

Mike Stelzner– CEO, Social Media Examiner

Major change in digital marketing: Those that pitch are becoming ignored. A little bit of selling here and there is great, but those marketers who do nothing but sell, sell, sell, are gonna get ignored, dismissed and overlooked by consumers and prospects. Get cracking folks, it’s time to actually care. That means dedicating more resources to things that are harder to track, like answering customer questions and providing more value online.

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Mobile Marketing Trends for the New Year

A new year is upon us, a chance to make positive changes in our lives and get a fresh start. The impending New Year also prompts companies to evaluate their 2014 marketing strategies to see what worked and what could be improved upon.

Mobile marketing has skyrocketed in recent months, as evidenced by record Black Friday sales on mobile devices, and there is no reason to believe this will change any time soon. Between the need for mobile-friendly websites and the widespread use of apps, marketers are scrambling to accommodate these new technologies and target consumers more effectively.

After scouring the internet for mobile marketing trends, here are five things that marketers should keep on their radar in the coming year:

Apps are still making an impact

Companies across industries are reaping the benefits of a mobile app, especially retailers, the media, and consumer services companies. Apps offer a mobile shopping experience, exclusive deals, and personalized content for the mobile user.

However, do you need to have both a responsive website and an app?

Generally speaking, having a responsive website is a necessity; people are accessing content from a variety of devices nowadays, and a website that’s not compatible across devices won’t see as much engagement and return visits. A 2012 Google study found that 74% of people said they would return to a website if it worked well on their mobile device. On the other hand, 55% expressed that a poor user experience would hurt their opinions of that brand.

Determining whether or not you need an app on top of a responsive website comes down to knowing your audience and what their preferences are. If you are targeting a very “connected” market, need to provide educational resources, or have a product or service that consumers purchase regularly, then having an app is a great supplement.

Apps allow another opportunity to get in the consumer’s mind and hopefully put your brand at the top for consideration. Your website serves as an information powerhouse, the place where people learn how your company can meet their needs. An app complements by providing a personalized, branded approach and keeping people engaged with a more “human” element to marketing. This keeps your prospects sticking around longer and potentially turning them into customers.

To keep up with the rapidly expanding variety of apps on the market, make sure yours is customer-focused, easy to use, and creates an experience that will make the user want to come back and use it again. Keep your apps up-to-date and looking current so customers recognize your company as such, but don’t overdo it with constant updates. I can probably speak for a lot of people when I say that getting an alert to update my Facebook app every week gets old fast.

Be careful with your advertising

Ads are everywhere, this is nothing new, but it seems that consumers’ perceptions of advertising have changed a bit. With the amount of technology readily available to us, we really are in the driver’s seat. We can say “yes” to watching an ad on the side of a webpage by clicking on it, or we can choose to skip an ad that plays before our favorite YouTube video. That’s why it’s more important than ever to understand your audience and the types of ads that they are receptive to.

Mobile app tracking tool AppsFlyer breaks consumers down into four categories when it comes to mobile marketing:

those who ignore marketing completely,

those who are indifferent,

those who want to control what marketing they consume,

and those who are open to receiving marketing messages and are indifferent to what types of content they receive.

It’s essential to know where your customers fall so you can target appropriately.

Mobile advertising is a crucial part of the marketing mix, but remember that not everyone is going to be a fan of it. When Facebook announced that they were going to start monitoring the number of ads displayed in a user’s newsfeed, they were praised for it.

This doesn’t mean we should ditch advertising altogether; we just have to be more strategic in how we reach our target audience. By allowing people to opt-in to email marketing or advertising, then you aren’t wasting your energy on people who are indifferent or uninterested.

The rise of mobile pay

People have been making purchases on mobile devices for a little while now, but like every other technology, something easier and more efficient is bound to come along.

The latest trend indicates an increase in using mobile pay, where you can simply hold your phone in front of an electronic scanner to make a purchase. Mobile pay is being regarded as a potential solution to identity theft and fraud because shoppers will no longer need a wallet full of credit cards that are susceptible to being stolen.

While this isn’t something that is going to be unanimously adopted overnight, all signs point to mobile pay as the predominant form of payment in the future. We are already seeing a similar form of adoption when it comes to store loyalty cards, where cashiers can simply scan a barcode on your phone and you receive store rewards and discounts. Some stores have this feature right in their mobile app, and for those that don’t, you can use the Passbook or Key Ring apps that come standard in your smartphone.

  Video will continue its upward climb

According to a study by eMarketer, we should expect to see the number of people consuming video on a digital device top 200 million in the U.S. in 2015. That’s almost two-thirds of the population! While we’ve already seen the largest expected transition over to mobile, with about 23% of people using smartphones to access video content, this number will continue to rise (just at a slower pace) in the coming years.

This doesn’t mean we should abandon ship when it comes to more “traditional” devices. Desktops and laptops are still the primary means of accessing video, so companies are now faced with the challenge of appealing to a large number of devices and making sure their content is easily accessible and compatible.

What won’t change is the impact that video has from an advertising and entertainment perspective. How many times have we heard that if you aren’t using images or video in your marketing that you’re missing out? Whether you’re catching up on Modern Family reruns or checking out a how-to video for a recipe, video plays a critical role in the consumer experience.

Keep branding consistent across mediums

Companies are beginning to be more strategic in their marketing approach, ensuring that users have the best possible experience when interacting with their brand. How often do you find yourself using multiple devices throughout a search process? Probably quite frequently. Because of this, it is essential to provide a seamless transition between physical locations, websites, mobile sites, and apps to keep a consistent brand image.

There are so many things to keep in mind when it comes to your company’s marketing strategy that it’s seemingly impossible to focus on every one of them. The best way to determine which tactics to pursue is to look at your analytics to see what’s already working and what isn’t. Then analyze your customer base; who are these people, what type of marketing content do they like to interact with, and how frequently do they want to engage with content? If you can answer these questions, you’ll definitely get your New Year started on the right foot.

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5 Essential Strategies for Digital Marketing in 2015

If you want to get the most out of digital marketing in 2015, the time to start planning is now. By starting the year with a clear plan of what you want to accomplish, you’ll be able to make the most of all your efforts. Since digital marketing is such a broad discipline, I want to take a look at five essential strategies to help keep your efforts on the right track:

Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment

One of the great things about digital marketing is it’s fairly easy to test new channels and tactics. Although you can spend all day reading about whether or not you should be utilizing a specific platform, the best option for your business is to run a test and let the data guide you. Since taking this approach is all about keeping your business agile, it’s important to ensure that you have the right team and resources in place.

Focus on the Big Picture of Content Marketing

While metrics like shares are useful for judging how well content was received, that’s definitely not the only thing that should matter. You’ll find that staying focused on the big picture helps to keep your content marketing moving in the right direction. And if you’re wondering what the big picture is for this digital marketing effort, it’s being able to position your business as an industry thought leader. The impact that type of positioning will have on your brand is extremely valuable.

Mobile is Here to Stay

If you look at your Google Analytics data, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll notice a significant increase in mobile traffic over the last year. Some clients that I work with are now receiving nearly 50% of their traffic from visitors using a cellphone or tablet. Since the popularity of portable devices is here to stay, it’s important that everything from your website design to advertising efforts takes this reality into account.

Understand the Maturation of Social Media

Over the last few years, most social media platforms have been a bit like the Wild West for marketers. However, now that Facebook and Twitter have significantly matured, businesses need to adapt to the new realities of marketing and advertising through these networks. While there’s still a lot of opportunity, it’s important to avoid getting too attached to a specific tactic that may not be viable for much longer.

Consider Social Influencer Opportunities

The main reason that businesses should look for opportunities to work with social influencers is not only do these individuals reach huge audiences, but those audiences are highly targeted around very specific topics.

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