Digital

Mobile Innovation For Brands

Between smartphones and tablets, the world we live in has become overrun with constantly connected creatures. And that’s not a bad thing — especially for marketers. There are more ways for brands to engage with customers than ever before. But the battle for attention is fierce. Every time a person turns their head or turns a device on, there is an opportunity to reach them in some form. And using mobile to do just that is one of the most innovative and intriguing paths for marketers to explore and tap into.

To be successful, a mobile marketing strategy must identify the main benefit it can provide to consumers and create an experience that taps into that through mobile websites, apps, text message alerts, augmented reality or social media. Search engine optimization (SEO) and search also play a crucial role in any mobile marketing strategy. Here are some simple ideas to get your juices flowing:

A consumer packaged good (CPG) brand that calls a kitchen cupboard home can add value by using its catalog of recipes — complete with cooking timers and interactive elements — in a mobile app to help customers plan dinner.

A local car dealership can increase leads and inquires by using mobile display and rich media ads to serve consumers based on search inquiries and geographic location while also directing traffic to its inventory and incentive offers. The dealership can also boost organic search results by optimizing its website and online content for mobile and SEO.

A local restaurant or supermarket can launch an text message campaign where users opt-in to receive exclusive coupons and discount codes. By assigning unique codes to be redeemed at purchase, results can be tracked easily to determine success and adjust accordingly.

A health care organization can use a secure mobile-optimized website that allows patients to check-in for appointments, fill out and submit information, provide waiting times and even provide a “what to expect” guide while waiting.

Any brand can turn its mobile advertising into an activity. Gamification is a term we haven’t heard much lately, but the concept remains solid when done correctly. Offering discounts and incentives through collecting items or unlocking achievements gives customers a reason to interact with brands and keep coming back for more.

Here at SKAR, we’re constantly looking for creative and innovative ways for our clients’ brands to connect with consumers and develop lasting relationships with them. If you’re looking for help or direction, don’t hesitate to contact us through the website or on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Senior Level Marketing Lessons

Mar 29th, 2013

by Bill Roberts.

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A recent eMarketer study shows that about half of the 65-and-older population in the U.S. uses the Internet, and a headline on the study reads, “Seniors still lukewarm on Web activity.”

Lukewarm? Depends on how you look at it.

The AARP takes a “glass half full” attitude toward its half-digital senior audience. This nonprofit organization uses every marketing tool in the kit – including the Internet and social media – to reach and engage its more than 37 million members. (By the way, since there are 77.5 million adults age 55 and older in the U.S., the nonprofit has captured nearly half its total market.)

AARP’s strategies, as explained by Tammy Gordon, AARP’s director of social communications, offer lessons for any marketer.

Last Veterans Day marked the first time AARP posted an offer on Facebook: a 30 percent membership discount, with 10 percent of membership dues going to the USO Warrior and Family Care program. That’s a nice way to connect with your target’s interests. Last October AARP remade its YouTube presence, changing it from a virtual video storage site to an online channel with dedicated programming. The most popular feature is money-saving tips from Jeff Yeager, the self-proclaimed “Ultimate Cheapskate.”

Gordon said AARP has enlisted expert help to improve the ways it attracts, engages and serves members.

Bryan Boettger, chief creative officer at The Buddy Group, AARP’s interactive agency, said the far-ranging content on the AARP website and YouTube site has been organized in the style of the websites of major newspapers like The New York Times. Why? “Newspapers manage a large amount of content and a large variety of content,” Boettger explained. “And newspapers are what [AARP’s] audience is very much used to.”

Caroline Winnett, chief marketing officer of NeuroFocus, another AARP consultant, said AARP screens are designed with fewer distractions and clutter and less scene-switching and peripheral motion than is normally found in the online world. “Motion in the periphery in general always attracts a great deal of attention,” Winnett said. “The younger brain might find that more fun and entertaining, but the senior brain is going to get distracted and have trouble going back to the main message [at the center of the screen].”

AARP also has had help from Yammer, the enterprise social network, to make sure that messages are coordinated across departments and channels. Gordon said, “We share training opportunities and crowdsource problems. One of my favorite moments of last year was looking at Yammer and seeing other people solving problems and not relying on me.”

The strengths of social media engagement fit well with AARP’s marketing goals: build AARP membership, provide content that members value and keep members engaged in a variety of topics. Gordon said she tracks social metrics including reach, activity, engagement, joins and renews. She’s glad to engage members online, but her ultimate aim is bringing them into the real world.

“We want to take that online action offline,” she said, “whether it’s renewing membership or showing up to volunteer at a hunger event in our community, or calling a member of Congress. We want to drive traditional actions via Facebook.”

Sounds like a strategy for any marketer.

Rich Media Spoken Here

Mar 25th, 2013

by Bill Roberts.

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One of the hot new trends in advertising is rich media – those interactive ads that ask you to click a button and then give you more information (which also may be interactive) depending on your choice. SKAR has been doing rich media work for clients for a while now, so we were surprised to see this new study.

The study focused on companies (like SKAR) that provide rich media ads and said 88 percent of them found the creation of such ads to be “stressful to very stressful.” They said it takes a long time to complete rich media ads (40 percent said longer than three weeks), and there were complaints that rich media campaigns are expensive, cumbersome and plagued by delays.

Don’t be scared by reports like that.

When done right, rich media ads can be changed quickly and achieve great results with no more trouble than other kinds of advertising. At SKAR, we partner with MediaMind to get a treasure trove of analytics in real time, and we’ve been pleased with the outcomes. Here’s an example:

East Texas Medical Center, one of our clients, has been promoting a free Heart Guide pamphlet that provides valuable information on heart problems and ways to contact the ETMC Cardiovascular Institute, the center for heart care in East Texas. To promote the Heart Guide, we created a multimedia campaign that included rich media banner ads. We designed the ads in a “roll over to expand” format to encourage a high interaction rate.

In these rich media ads the first frame asks the user, “Are you at risk for heart attack?” When the user rolls over the message, the second frame poses six questions about risk factors like family history and smoking, and the user is asked to click on all that apply. The third frame tells whether the answers place the user at low, moderate or high risk for heart attack; there’s also a button to click to ask for the Heart Guide. Here’s the third frame we initially used.

A week into the campaign, Jenn Bunnell, SKAR’s assistant director of media, looked at the analysis of the rich media ads (love that quick feedback!) and noticed that there’d been nearly 25,000 expansions (these occur when a frame expands because someone rolls a mouse over it). That seemed like a good number, but while users were spending an average of 137 seconds on the site – answering the questions, looking over the risk assessment – only 21 people had clicked through to ask for a Heart Guide. She suggested copy changes, and the client and SKAR team agreed.

Within a few days we put up this new frame, which promotes the content of the Heart Guide and more directly asks the user to get a free copy.

Bingo. Click-thrus increased dramatically, and by the end of the three-week campaign there’d been 307 requests for a free Heart Guide through the rich media ads. Moreover, analytics showed there had been 202,866 expansions with an average duration of 154 seconds. The client’s happy because that’s a lot of East Texans being exposed to important information through ETMC. We’re happy because that’s an important step toward making those East Texans not just customers of ETMC but lifelong brand advocates.

If you’re interested in using rich media in your marketing and advertising, contact SKAR today. And by the way, you can see the finished sequence here.

Make Room for Instagram (And Vine)

Mar 19th, 2013

by Bryan Gottula.

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You know about Instagram. Even if you’re not familiar with the name, you’ve undoubtedly seen the filtered photos of people’s lunch or a cool sunset that your friends are sharing on their social media profiles. Despite Facebook and Twitter’s hogging of the big headlines and attention in the mainstream media, Instagram is just one of a number of social networks that has been steadily carving out its own niche and stealing users’ attention spans from the big two.

Along with Instagram, one of the most intriguing of these networks to watch going forward is Vine – the video sharing app made by the creators of Twitter. The two apps have a similar feel in terms of its interface and user experience in which users follow a stream of pictures (Instagram) or video shorts (Vine) from their friends or accounts they have opted in to follow. Users also have the ability to share their photos or videos across their different social networks with integration available for both Facebook and Twitter.

Both of these social apps represent a great opportunity for businesses’ social efforts. Sharing photos and quick video shorts has always been an effective way to engage with users, and these two apps make that experience as simple as ever. Brands can also increase their engagement by creating exclusive promotions that encourage customers to share their own photos and videos as user-generated content. Sound interesting? Here are some tips on getting started:

Determine a series of hashtags and focus on those. Perhaps, the quickest way to generate some eyeballs is through the use of hashtags in your photo captions. By strategically using both popular hashtags and those that are unique to your brand, you can categorize your photos or videos appropriately while increasing visibility.

Interact with comments from followers and explore hashtags. A big part of social media is being social. Don’t just push out messages and walk away. See what people are saying about your photos and others while actively participating in the conversations. It helps define your brand voice and helps users feel like they are talking to a real person instead of an automated robot.

Show off your work. Or your customers. Or your customers’ work. Some of the best photos and videos are the ones that are just simple and fun. Spotlight your product or recognize and thank your customers for using it. You can even ask them to submit their own photos and videos and share them with your audience — making sure to credit the source, of course.

Combine your efforts with other profiles. Don’t limit your activity to the individual platforms. Photos and videos are great content for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, blogs and so on. Just be sure to keep things on strategy and focused to your overall goals.

The potential of Instagram, Vine and so many other social tools is seemingly endless and changes by the day. For help on navigating the waters, get in touch with us @skaradvertising or on Facebook.

Medical Mobile Apps

Mar 11th, 2013

by Bill Roberts.

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Mobile apps are as much a part of modern medical marketing as the reminder call for doctor appointments. Here are some examples.

One of SKAR’s clients, East Texas Medical Center, offers consumers a free, handy iPhone app. It helps the user do a lot: find a doctor, hospital or clinic associated with ETMC; keep track of medications; access emergency contacts; watch educational ETMC videos on medical and fitness topics; and keep up with news from ETMC. We help our client promote the app throughout the website and on advertising and collateral materials. It’s popular in East Texas.

Doctors like mobile apps too.

Here’s a report on a study showing that physicians prefer the convenience of mobile apps when, for example, they’re checking on potential drug interactions before writing a prescription. They’d rather use mobile apps on smartphones than a program on a desktop computer. The study, done by Epocrates (which is, no surprise, a medical mobile app developer), also said more than 40 percent of physicians are recommending apps to their patients (patient education was the most recommended kind).

Medical mobile apps are popular worldwide.

The European pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and mobile provider Exco InTouch have launched a pilot program for a sophisticated mobile app for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The app not only educates patients on COPD, it includes a Bluetooth-enabled inhaler that automatically reports data on the patient’s breathing. Cool!

And consider this related development: Researchers are using Twitter to catch colds.

As this blog post explains, scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are using Twitter to track influenza activity in the U.S. They monitor tweets, looking for keywords like “flu,” and then map outbreaks and trends, using the information to supplement other public health data. As writer Ellen Beck says, “Twitter is growing up, evolving from a simple message system into a public health research tool.”

If you’re involved in medical marketing and you’re not using mobile apps – please contact SKAR for immediate relief.

The Facebook “20 Percent Rule”

Mar 8th, 2013

by Bryan Gottula.

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It’s been a few months since Facebook rolled out its latest annoyance to marketers. The 20 Percent Rule — as it’s become known — limits the amount of text on a promoted image or cover photo to occupy no more than 20 percent of the image’s real estate. While it does only apply to content that is supported with advertising dollars, it’s created plenty of headaches for brands and marketers alike.

The assumed premise behind the change is that Facebook wants to maintain what little parts of its roots that remain. Photos on Facebook are meant to be just that — photos; not promotional images and MS Paint-created fliers with obnoxious clip art and 200-word disclaimers. From a user standpoint, it’s a welcome change. Where the frustration arises, though, is that users aren’t the ones writing checks to Facebook, and the marketers who rely heavily on Facebook advertising are being forced back to the drawing board as campaigns are being paused and cancelled. (Full Disclosure: I understand the typical Facebook user could not care less about inconveniences for advertisers. That’s another topic entirely.)

Example: Ideal brand imaging for Facebook.

Example: An unfortunate casualty of the 20 Percent Rule.

Example: The type of image Facebook is trying to remove.

So what can we as marketers do to combat the changes? Nothing really. Marketers must simply just embrace the rule. Write and design your Facebook messaging with the limitations in mind similar to how you would an outdoor billboard. Focus on branding and communicate the BIG idea on the individual post. Save disclaimers and other nitty gritty space killers for post copy/photo captions or links. The amount of chatter in the average user’s News Feed is enough to compete with so stick to the basics and capture the user’s eye with powerful visuals.

Designers can refer to this simple guide from ShortStack on what exactly 20 percent represents.

What is CRM?

Mar 6th, 2013

by Lucas Droessler.

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What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? According to one of my marketing professors, CRM is “a companywide business strategy designed to optimize profitability, revenue and customer satisfaction by focusing on highly defined and precise customer groups.” Being able to regurgitate this definition would have gotten me an A in this course, but in a professional setting simply knowing that definition does little to no good.

The real question is how to utilize information technology for CRM. Again, if asked six months ago, my response would be: “We can utilize information through knowledge management and monitoring customer touch points.” Sounds good, right? But this still hasn’t answered how to do it.

The answer to the question is comprehensive behavioral data. It’s time to shift to a new model focused on capturing and responding to comprehensive behavioral data that lets the consumer and the prospect actions guide their own experience. How can one understand each consumer’s unique journey and deliver relevant content in real time and across various channels? The answer is by tapping the power of behavioral marketing automation – getting messages filled with relevant information, delivered at the right time and to the right location.

CRM entails all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service-related. The more useful way to think about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends. CRM often is thought of as a business strategy that enables businesses to:

Understand customers
Retain customers through better customer experience
Attract new customers
Win new clients/contracts and increase profitability
Decrease customer management costs

CRM solutions provide you with the customer business data captured through the customer’s behavior. This data helps you provide services or products that your customers want, provide better customer service, cross-sell and up-sell more effectively, close deals, retain current customers and understand who the customer is. Many aspects of CRM rely heavily on technology; however, the strategies and processes are the true key to CRM.

Good CRM strategies will collect, manage and link information about the customer with the goal of letting you market and sell services effectively. Here are a few types of analyses that are used in CRM to better understand the consumer.

Customer segmentation – process of breaking large groups of customers into smaller, more homogenous groups
Recency, frequency, monetary (RFM) analysis – identifies customers most likely to purchase again because they have bought recently, frequently or spend a specified amount
Lifetime value analysis (LTV) – projects the future value of the customer over a period of years.
Predictive modeling – process of trying to determine what the odds are that some other occurrence will take place in the future based on some past set of occurrences

In the last several years, the way in which customers relate to companies and their brands has changed dramatically. Social media and digital technology have allowed consumers to take control of their marketing experiences in almost every way, leading to the decade of the connected consumer.

While considering consumer preferences has long been an important step in delivering relevant and effective campaigns, focusing on the customer and buying experience will be crucial in 2013. To develop more rewarding relationships that lead to increased conversions and higher revenue now and in the future, companies will have to allow their customers be their guide, paying attention to the actions they are taking – or sometimes not taking – and allowing those behaviors to drive their campaigns.

Twitter Promotions

Feb 12th, 2013

by Lucas Droessler.

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Twitter promotions are a highly effective way of generating buzz and engaging your audience. A smart Twitter campaign can increase your followers, push traffic to your website, build brand awareness and even boost revenue. The greatest feature of Twitter is that anyone can interact with anyone else on the platform without having to like, follow or ask permission. This makes Twitter ideal for social media promotions. With so many possibilities, which promotion is best for you? Below are five effective strategies to help you decide.

Follower Milestone:

This type of promotion helps increase your followers on Twitter. This is a good strategy when nearing a landmark figure on or off Twitter. Set a follower target such as, 1,000 followers. Ask people to tweet at you guessing the time and date you will reach this milestone or offer a coupon/reward to everyone who follows before you hit that number.

Sweepstakes:

The concept of a Twitter contest is straightforward. Typically, you ask your followers to retweet a link to your website or mention your Twitter handle, company name or product in a tweet in return for a chance to win a prize. You can craft the contest in a way that best achieves your goal.

Lucky Tweet Competition – Each tweet that contains your chosen hashtag and @mentions your Twitter username is entered into the drawing. Example tweet: “We are giving away a pair of tickets to 3 lucky followers. Tweet us with #3FREE to be entered!”
Retweet to Win - This is simple but effective. Entrants are asked to retweet your message to be entered in a contest. When the campaign has ended winners will be picked at random from all the retweets. It takes literally a single mouse click (on the “RT” button) to participate in this offer.
Biggest Fan - If you want to promote your Twitter handle to as many people as possible, offer a prize to the tweeter who mentions your name most often in a given amount of time.
Spread the Word - If you want to increase your follower count, ask your existing followers to introduce you to their friends. Award a prize to the follower who introduces you to the most people (who become followers) during a certain period.

Twitter Poll:

This is a question-and-answer campaign. All you need to do is create question and post it. Winners can be selected by responding with the correct answer or be the first to answer. All entrants must @mention you in their tweet as well as reply with the correct answer. This type of competition is great for suggestions or feedback; for instance, this could be used to vote for a new dish, cocktail or design. This type works best if you already have an established Twitter audience. Example tweet: “To win a free stay in our hotel, answer this question: What year did we open? Tweet us now!”

Start a Twitter Chat:

Twitter chats are an excellent way to establish yourself or business as a thought leader on a given industry topic. To create a Twitter chat, simply decide upon a relevant Twitter hashtag for your industry topic and tweet about that topic (including the hashtag) at the same time every week. Encourage other people to join in the conversation and allow them to offer their input as well. Before long, you’ll develop a following of people who’ll regularly visit your Twitter chat for information that is that is moderated by you.

Host a Tweetup:

No matter what your company is, if you have a building, you can drive physical traffic to your business by promoting a tweetup. Pick a day and time, preferably after regular business hours. Invite local tweeters to come to your place of business to meet each other. You can even create an interactive Twitter invitation, using a free application like Tweetvite. Enlist the partnership of other local businesses by asking them to donate food and prizes for the event.

Promote the tweetup on Twitter and encourage your local followers to tweet the invitation to their followers as well. This is a great way to build a local social media community and get potential new customers by using your business as the hub of activity. Tweetups take time and planning but, if done correctly, are great for community image and branding.

Did this help make up your mind? Get Tweeting!

HAIL TO THE CHIEF OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Jan 22nd, 2013

by Bill Roberts.

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Ever since his victory in the Nov. 6 election, Barack Obama is not just the leader of the free world – he’s also the leader of the Twitterverse. As soon as his re-election became certain, Obama sent out the tweet “Four More Years,” accompanied by a now-famous photo of himself embracing his wife, Michelle. That message has been retweeted more than 800,000 times, setting a record.

It’s now the most-retweeted message ever.

As kind as the social media world was to Obama, it was just as cruel to Mitt Romney. When he lost the election he began losing friends on Facebook, and it was happening at the rate of 847 an hour, according to a Mashable report on Nov. 12, the Monday after the election.

Obama also has established himself as the leader among leaders. Three-quarters of the world’s heads of state use Twitter, according to a Digital Policy Council report, and Obama tops the list of the Top 10 such leaders. The American president has 24.6 million followers, compared with 3.8 million for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, 2.6 million for Abdullah Gul of Turkey, 2.5 million for Queen Rania of Jordan and all the way down to No. 10 on the Twitter list, Sheikh Mohammed of United Arab Emirates with 1.3 million followers. (Hmm. Sure are a lot of Middle Eastern leaders on that roster – could this explain the role of social media in the Arab Spring?)

Using social media not only helped Democrats in the 2012 election – it also positioned the party for the future.

As this blog noted, the re-election campaign’s social media initiatives engaged a lot of Americans who were too young to vote, along with the target of voters aged 18-29. As the blog writer put it, “Generation Z’s dominating presence in social media (more than 70 percent of them are on a social network!) has always made them enthusiastic listeners and eager participants.”

Of course, you don’t need to be a politician to want eager participants. Marketers are trying to learn all they can from Obama’s digital strategy.

This article said some members of a recent business panel titled “The Future of Enhanced Advertising” viewed the campaign’s strategic moves as though they were “Neil Armstrong’s first steps on Madison Avenue’s emerging technology moon.” One panel member said the Obama campaign took bold leaps in combining data from various sources, adding that most marketers are waiting for the cost of advanced data analysis to come down before making a similar commitment.

Wow. Big-business marketers (Coca-Cola is mentioned in the article) won’t spend as much money on cutting-edge data analysis as national campaign organizations? That says something about how much money those campaigns raise.

Four-Screen Convergence

Jan 15th, 2013

by Lucas Droessler.

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As most media professionals start implementing 2013 planning, it is clear that the changing landscape will impact the approach to the average consumer. Addressing the mass adaption of multiple screens will be one of the most significant changes we as consumers will see unfold this year. With this rapid adoption of digital devices, people increasingly are using multiple screens to perform the same activities. The most popular screens are smartphones, televisions, gaming consoles, computers, tablets and whatever other device you may be reading this article on.

New products coming to market are already taking screen convergence into account. For example, Apple TV redirects content from an iPhone or iPad to a television screen, allowing people to seamlessly engage with multiple screens to consume content or perform activities.

What does multiscreen convergence mean to marketers? With multiple devices comes more activities and content competing for the attention of your consumer. Based on eMarketer research, between roughly 50 percent and 70 percent or more of users are utilizing more than one device at a time.

It’s easy enough to say you need a TV, digital (desktop) and mobile strategy, but with advancing technology they are no longer separate strategies. Although each platform is different, the campaign as a whole should be consistent and work across all platforms. Marketers will need to be smarter in plan allocations to make an impact across multiple screens. See this infographic from Think with Google.

Analytics will need to adapt further to give marketers a clear idea of how users are engaging across screens. It will be important to determine which marketing platforms perform and which combinations of platforms are working together. You will see developments that provide more tracking and smarter ad deliver. With today’s rapidly advancing technology, media strategies must address these changes to stay visual in the multiscreen generation.

Here are some basic ground rules that can be applied to multiscreen campaigns:

Research and analytics are a must to allocate appropriate budgets.
Creating a consistent message is a necessity.
Creating a 360-degree experience will draw consumers in.
Hold the media department accountable and track everything.
A measurement plan is necessary before launching.
You can’t do it all, but you can do it all smarter!

Digital

Mobile Innovation For Brands

Rich Media Spoken Here

Medical Mobile Apps

The Facebook “20 Percent Rule”

What is CRM?

Four-Screen Convergence

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