5 Trends in digital marketing and questions you should ask your company...
1. Think Ahead and Fail Faster. How are you prepared / able to do this?
2. Listen & Respond. Do you know what's being said about you? What should you be doing about that?
3. Make it Personal. How are you pooling all that you know about your customers to give them a better experience?
4. It's a Visual World. How are you making things more visual, simpler, more intuitive?
5. Mobile shoppers. What are you doing to improve the the experience of your customers using their mobiles...?
24. A Creston Communications company
How could you make use of an army of content
creators?
How could your digital interfaces evolve to be
simpler, more intuitive, more visually stimulating?
Good evening.My name is Chris Moody. I am from The Real Adventure.We are a CRM Agency who aim to build great relationships between brands and their customers.We are 80 people, based in Temple QuayYou may have noticed that I’m not Chris Buckley from TMW. Unfortunately he hasn’t been able to attend tonight, but as we work for his sister company, and are far more locally-based, I’m delighted to be here.I shall try and talk about a number of themes in a short time, some of which (but not all) talk about social media. Hopefully they will be food for thought. I will be around for a while afterwards if you want to ask me about anything else…!I’m doubly delighted to be here with people associated with the Bristol Balloon Fiesta. Having grown up in the Cotswolds, this has been something I’ve known about since my childhood through Points West’s coverage, the terrific sight of summer skies filled with balloons, and actually attending the event.It truly is an iconic part of Bristol that has international fame.So much so that when we decided to add some colour and decoration to our offices…
…the balloons provided us with a striking way to display our key clients’ logos…
5 themes – a few points on each plus a question for you to take away.No all of these will be immediately applicable to all of you in the same way, but they are real dynamics and they are happening. So if you don’t act soon, you may well be forced to later…
My first theme considers the unstoppable forces of change that are still driving technology that we all use.Gordon Moore - The power of computing devices doubles approximately every 18 monthshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_lawThinking about what you could do now will be obsolete by the time you’ve done it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularityThe rate of change is INCREASING.My 7-year-old daughter’s ipod shuffle has more than 40,000 times the memory of the ZX Spectrum I had as a teenager.This is almost mind-blowing if you try and think about it, but in practical terms it becomes very real…
A tale of two Popes…
3-D Printing is becoming a reality. Already for less than $3,000 you can create your own models.This has massive implications for model makers, toys, someone has even used this to create a gun.
We have to be able to adapt in the ever faster pace of change & innovation.Of course, we’ll fail sometimes. But that’s ok. If we fail fast.
Eric Ries pioneered the lean startup movement (iterative, frequent releases)Popularised the Minimum Viable Product. MVP is about releasing just the right set of features to get valid feedback from early adopters. Use techniques like signup page to guage interest / demand.What’s the point of investing huge amounts of money, time & effort creating something that people might not want to use. OK, so we can test. But better still, build fast…build the bare minimum…. then launch. Get feedback & adjust. Gain first mover advantage. Fail by all means, but Fail FAST.This may mean having projects or teams working on different time horizons – with some thinking and work specifically targeted at 12, 24, even 36 months down the line…
My second theme is more immediate, and tackles a ‘must-do’ for businesses that, while it’s always been true and vital, has never been more important.Social Media and technology have democratised customer service, inasmuchas it’s now very, very easy to get a company to listen to you.It’s more important than ever that your customer service systems are well-integrated, so that everyone knows what everyone else is doing.Because any part of your company can make a mistake. But now it’s more likely than ever that this could impact on all of you…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/10021466/How-Twitter-transformed-the-power-of-consumers.htmlOnly last month Virgin Media’s billing system sent a bill to a customer who had recently died. And for good measure applied a late payment charge.The man’s son-in-law was understandably upset. So he tweeted about it. And it’s been shared over 90,000 times, as well as receiving national media coverageTo be fair to Virgin, they responded immediately and made charitable donations. But not everyone is so switched on…This week there was a fairly ugly confrontation between a CINEWORLD Twitter feed manager and a customerhttp://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/62614-how-should-you-respond-to-awkward-customers-on-social-mediaLast summer a customer posted an open letter, that he accepted was a rant, toOdeon Cinemas on their Facebook page.For some reason it was met with silence, and soon spiralled out of control. To date it’s had over 25,000 comments and 295,000 Likeshttps://www.facebook.com/ODEON/posts/523396924342167Both of these will have had the potential to reach well over a million people, not to mention the mainstream media coverage they’ve receivedWhy is this important? Because as social media becomes ever-more normal, more and more people will use it as their preferred, first-choice channel. If you are there, they will expect you to respond. If you’re not there, they’ll probably talk about you anyway.Are you listening?
Because if you are, and your team are switched on. You can deliver a great experience, that more people than ever will get to hear about.A mommy blogger in the US and her son were disappointed that McDonalds changed the range of toys in their Happy Meals.She tweeted about it. They listened and responded, sending him the only Superhero he hadn’t got. And he was thrilled.http://allthingsfadra.com/2010/08/hey-mcdonalds-im-lovin-it-2/
Apart from Zappos & Dell who I mentioned earlier, Best Buy is a great example of this.They are one of the biggest retail tech chains in the US. They have a wealth of expertise within their retail network – all who are able to provide technical advice & help for customers who come into their stores.However, increasingly, people research their purchases online…and it’s a complicated, crowded experience with lots of jargon. HDMI. PVR. DVI. HDCP. So BB wanted to extend that expertise out into the wider online world – and have done so by creating the ‘Twelp Force’ – an army of volunteer employees who answer questions via twitter. They are there to help potential customers by demonstrating their expertise in providing technical customer service … not to push product.In the first year, they answered 32,000 questions. Their average response time is 15 minutes. Programme sentiment was 5/1 positive. And customer complaints have been reduced by 20%.
This third theme is about personalising experiences. Being smarter with data. And using that for to benefit your customers.
Sky Adsmart effectively downloads a catalogue of ads to your Sky+ box and then depending on what it knows about you, shows different ads.So in Coronation Street Ford might show three different ads in the same ad break, but viewers would only see one. Exactly which one would depend on their demographics and/or preferences
With multiple devices in many households, smart televisions and so on, people can make contact with companies in many different ways.We should ensure that everything we do is connected…. All the data should be pooled so we have a complete digital model of our consumer.Whether that is… location data, online shopping baskets, email responses, website visits, calls to customer services…That way we can deliver more relevant, more personalised content & services, which people are increasingly expecting as the norm…
But we must also be aware of the privacy issue…The EU is currently discussing changes to data & privacy regulations that could (in their draft form) make everything I’ve just said irrelevant.You certainly don’t want this to be explicit or feel like a Big Brother experience…
Visual world – in which a picture tells a thousand words (like the picture from Rome)This is from my family trip to Paris. I’ll happily explain the gnome later!Driven by mobile phone – and the human desire to record and share their experiencesYou may start reading about this as ‘life-logging’ and there are already new bits of kit that help people take photos every 60 seconds to record their whole day. Increasingly common among ‘the young’ who are moving away from Facebook for some aspects of their life (their parents are on there, for goodness’ sake!) and using newer social networks like INSTAGRAM, PINTEREST, TMBLR or SNAPCHAT, where everything is visual…Everyone is a content creator. Everyone wants to capture, store and (sometimes share).
E businesses evolving to reflect this changefacebook, ebay, twitter, google – all have overhauled their service to promote and feature images and AV. Facebook imagery effects edge rank. Google search results promote images and videos. Youtube is the second biggest search engine. Facebook is pulling video into it’s news feeds.Wifi and 3G removing barriers to file size and rich formatsWeb without words
Launch of new crowdsourced image sites, not just image libraries – spaces for brands to engage with consumers. As brands we need to think about how we connect with, and compete with this immense demand, and supply, for rich media. With everyone as a content creator, how do we:Create content with social currencyProtect and sustain our creative lookBe original
My last theme is about mobile phones …
30 million people in the UK now own a smartphone. More than half the population.In some demographics (e.g. new mums) it’s much higher (75%)More internet sessions now take place on mobile devices than on desktops. How does your website look on a mobile?79% of smartphone users use their phones while shopping84% of smartphone shoppers use their phones in store. 1 in 3 say they use their phone instore INSTEAD of speaking to shop staff…At fixture digital connection is ‘now’, Asda has introduced wifi into all its stores. Other retailers won’t be far behind.Augmented reality, NFC (information and payment), video tutorials, loyalty, campaign activation – all need to be delivered seamlessly in store. And remember, our smart phones and google glasses will take us directly to the right fixture – browsing will become a thing of the past.
There is a great report about this by the Google Shopper Marketing Councilhttp://www.google.com/think/research-studies/mobile-in-store.htmlIt is affecting loads of product categoriesIt’s important to help people FIND you, not only on the web (90% claim to use their mobile to do research about shopping online)……but also YOUR ACTUAL LOCATION (36% say they use their mobile to find directions to a store location)
4 notes from Google about this…If they can’t find you on their mobile, they might never find you at allThey’re often looking for different things with their mobile (directions)CLICK for Showrooming build
Audi is developing an app that can recognise the Audi logo and transform that into an augmented reality experience through a mobile phone or tablethttp://www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/audi-to-transform-all-logos-into-ar-triggers/4006668.articleIn print advertising, posters, brochures…