Author Archives: reynersean

IMC in the 21st century

When you think of an IMC Campaign, you might think of channels like social media, sales promotion, TV and Billboard ads, Radio commercials, or direct marketing. But what does IMC have to do with all these channels?

IMC Campaign seamlessly combines all those channels into a strategy to communicate the same message to customers across multiple channels. Before IMC, there is an Omni-channel that has the role of distributing one message across multiple channels. However, there is no story in it. It’s just a plain message telling people to buy our product. These days, people are more interested in the brand’s story and how the brand identifies itself to the people. In order to do that, you need to approach integrated marketing communication. In another way, IMC is having an initiative launched over many channels. It could be online or offline. The point of IMC is for you to use experiential storytelling to amplify your brand’s message and unify your brand experience across all channels.

It’s not easy as it may seem to integrate marketing communication. If your messages are interpreted differently across different channels, there will be miscommunication between people who manage your channel. As a result, your customer will get confused by the messages. Let’s take the Kendall Jenner-Pepsi Ad as an example. Many millennial and generation Z members do not appreciate ads that show a lack of social awareness. In this campaign, Pepsi tries to spread a global message of peace and unity amid the Black lives matter movement. In my opinion, it’s good for Pepsi to show initiative on social awareness, but the message being presented by them in the ads was misinterpreted. The lesson we can learn from Pepsi is to review every IMC activities you will launch. Communicate with your team to get the right message to your customer.

You probably want to ask yourself a few questions before launching an IMC campaign. What is the main focus of your business?, What are your brand objectives or strategy? What kind of message you want to spread to your customer? Other than that, you might need opinions from people outside your team to avoid mistakes like Pepsi did.

Internet of Things and Big Data : The Secret Tool for Marketers

For years, the Internet of Things has been involved in people who rely a lot on technology for their everyday lives. Security devices and self-quantification apps are what most people used from the Internet of things. However, marketers have different ways on how to use IoT tools. Marketers see the Internet of Things like a map rich with consumer information, habit, and preferences.  It will assist marketers in marketing practices. So in what ways do Internet of things stands in the digital marketing world?

One of the most precious pieces of information for marketers is consumer behavior. Traditionally, marketers use surveys, interviews, or focus groups to understand consumers. But with the traditional way, they need to put so much time and resources to get the information. So what kind of tools do marketers approach to get this precious information? ‘Big data.’ In the marketing world, big data can be described as a field of large and diverse information on past consumers that are derived and used to improve business operations.  Big data and the Internet of tools are a perfect combination for marketers to collect data and information on past consumers. But how does the combination work? Using a vast network of sensors tools from IoT to gather large amounts of data and information on consumers’ behaviors.

Let’s take a simple example to understand the combination. Suppose you have a website for your customer to use. In that case, you can use sensor software (Internet of Things) to check how many people visited your website or the amount of time they stayed on your website (Big Data). These pieces of information are crucial for those of you that want to maximize your website’s conversion rates. You can use this information to design a better website or to show relevant content on your website. Netflix is one of the large companies that maximize the use of IoT and Big Data together. By collecting a boatload of data and analyzing their subscribers’ personal taste when using the platform, Netflix can display subscribers’ favorite show or movie genre on the recommendation platform.

In a way, combining both Internet of things and Big Data is a revolutionizing way for companies to operate their marketing activities. Other than this combination, do you think there is a more efficient way to collect customer insights?

Winning the Pizza competition using Mobile Marketing and Innovation

The strategy of mobile marketing has been used by businesses in many industries. Let’s take the food industry as an example. These days, the most convenient way to order food is through mobile apps. Many restaurant chains in the world use apps like UberEats, Deliveroo, and etc. Some restaurants made their own app so that customers can directly order from them. Dominos Pizza is one of the most successful companies to make a positive impact through mobile apps. In 2010, they were the first fast-food restaurant chain that develops a convenient online pizza ordering app in Apple’s Appstore. It had accumulated 14.2m downloads just after five years since the app was released in Appstore. In 2018, Dominos apps developed for both iPhone and Android account for over half of all Domino’s sales.

Customers who shop online have a higher rate of conversion, buy from us more frequently, spend more per visit, hold the brand in high regard, and are less costly for our franchisees to serve.

David Wild, CEO- Domino’s Pizza

Before all those successes, Dominoes struggled to implement mobile marketing strategies as they were underutilizing their mobile app. Their digital channels did not come out with the results they expected. After failing to show any positive results, Dominoes decided to work with “Future Platforms.” They specialize in designing digital platforms for brands. So what changes after the partnership? Future Platforms create a digital platform for Dominoes that start efficiency aspects, making it easy for customers to order pizza. If the process of ordering a pizza is easy, people will keep coming back to order your pizza through the apps that they used before. This will subsequently create customer loyalty.

Additionally, they pursue innovation as one of their strategies in developing digital platforms. They came out with the infamous Pizza tracker. Since the release of that feature, it has been copied time to time again by other restaurants that provide delivery service. Following this success, Dominoes has continued to design and innovate more features to make ordering as easy as possible for the customer as both Dominoes and future platform realises that its innovation that must have been the purpose of this success.

While innovation can definitely show great results, but it could also be copied. As more digital platforms are being developed, the industry are getting more competitive in implementing mobile marketing strategies. What do you think on innovation as a major aspect in Mobile Marketing strategies? or do you think there is another aspect that could improve mobile marketing?

The Integration of SEO and PPC in your Digital Marketing Plan

When you have a business running or selling on online platforms, SEO and PPC are the two choices for marketing your product or service online. Professional service industries such as medical clinic or law firms and other industries like restaurants, pet clinic, etc have been using either SEO or PPC. If one works so effectively, why not have both SEO and PPC combined in your digital marketing strategies?

“Although PPC and SEO are technically two separate concepts, their objective is the same- to obtain visibility, traffic and revenue from search.”

Kloda 2018

Investing in SEO and PPC campaigns will help your business grow by creating a cohesive and effective marketing campaign. Especially programs like Google Adsense, run by Google itself, hold 90.31% market share for worldwide search engines. So if you are implementing both SME techniques, how does it impact your business?

If you are trying to find a tax consultant or an auditor in Google, you will most likely come up with 2-3 ads on the top of your search page. They are called Paid search results created by PPC. Below the PPC ads, they are organic search results that are created by SEO. So if your business is willing to invest in both PPC and SEO, the chance of people getting exposed to your ads will be higher. It creates a double exposure, as your brand name is listed in paid search results and organic results.

In a way, the data you obtain from the PPC campaign could be used to improve your SEO content. Since SEO takes a little longer to show up in search pages, using PPC could show you immediate results and spot which keywords are more or less effective. To gain relevant search results, keyword targeting is a crucial part of your strategies. Thus, you can improve your keyword targeting using past data from PPC ads.

As you can see, there are many benefits from integrating both SEO and PPC campaigns. I would love to hear more on the implementation of SEO and PPC strategies. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment!

Social media Influencers: The future of Marketing?

Social media Influencers, or what many companies from small businesses to big brands acknowledge them as the future of marketing. In the 21st century, brands want to avoid paying large fees to marketing firms. They prefer operate their marketing strategy in-house by using social media influencers. When you go into Instagram or Facebook, the chances you see people promoting brands or products in their profile are very high. These people are so-called by the social media communities as, Influencers. While you all have most likely heard about the term ‘Influencer,’ do you really know what they actually do on the social media platforms and what kind of impact they can give to brands?

In a way, Influencers are great storytellers. They deliver brand messages to online communities on social media platforms. Influencers usually create unique stories surrounding the brand and demonstrate why its product or services could solve a problem or even fulfill a need. With the number of digital consumers increasing every year, influencers can spread brand messages and expand their reach throughout social media platforms. Over the years, with more users using social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, etc.), the number of influencers has increased. As their impact and presence on social media platforms have skyrocketed, even big brands are approaching them. Without further ado, let me introduce you to some of the well-known brands that work with influencers.

Nike

Nike is one of the biggest brands in the world that work with famous athletes or celebrities. Based on my experience browsing through social media, I can say all these years, they have been gaining a lot of attention in social media. In the past, Nike had been successful in promoting their brand even before social media exists. One of the examples is the Jordan brand, where they collaborated with NBA star Michael Jordan. And that has been one of the huge successes of Nike. Now with Social Media, Nike is even more successful in spreading brand messages to people. The best example to show their success is to look through the social media presence of the soccer megastar, Cristiano Ronaldo. Here are the statistics behind Ronaldo’s value to Nike. He is the most-followed person on Instagram; 21.7% of the overall total posts promote Nike via a Hashtag. Those posts generated over 450 million total interactions through likes, comments, shares, retweets, and views on videos.  Not only Cristiano, but Nike has also worked with other famous athletes such as Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Tiger woods, etc.

Sephora

Sephora is one of the most well-known retailers that sells personal care and beauty products. Sephora has a more unique influencer marketing program than other brands. Sephora puts part of the program’s decision-making into the micro-influencers’ hands that they recruited to become ambassadors of their brand. They are called #SephoraSquad, and their approach to this marketing campaign is to personalize the brand as a diverse group. The squad represents a different type of demographics ( age, gender, ethnicities, etc.) to put it another way. Through this method, Sephora was able to capture broad and niche audiences. The post-reaction to this campaign is a feeling of acceptance , acknowledgement, and respect for people with different online communities’ demographics.

Bottom line, I personally think that social media influencers are a less costly and effective way to perform marketing activities or campaigns. However, I would like to hear your opinion about it. Do you think influencers are the future of marketing? Or are there any more methods you feel are better than having social media influencers as part of your marketing campaign? Leave a comment down below!

How companies optimise Free Social Media Applications?

Every day millions of people use social media apps to communicate, entertain themselves, or conduct the business promotion. Tech companies have made apps like Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube available for free. Business enterprises have been exploiting these 21st-century tools by advertising their product or services to potentially millions of social media users. The evolutions in the business world have manipulated the functions of social media to become one of the vital tools for marketing strategy especially in brand health and brand development.

How companies Exploit Free Social Media Apps?

Social Media Marketing cannot function well if no content is published. Why? Because the content itself is something that could connect business enterprises to customers by sharing and posting to them. So having valuable content is a must to every business that promotes its product and services.

“A good and valuable content can help to drive the engagement on the social media, and it is vital for the social media marketing campaign”

Ahmad, N, S, Musa, R, & Harun, M, H, M 2015

When talking about companies taking full advantage of social media, one company came into my sight, GoPro. They have large social followings that include; 10 million likes on Facebook, over 2.1 million followers on Twitter, and over 10.3 million subscribers on Youtube. GoPro optimizes their social media platforms successfully by creating value, promoting products, and interacting with its customers. So how do they use all the social media platforms? For every different social media platform, GoPro has different uses it. For example, they used Facebook as a platform to communicate, promote their products and reach out to potential customers. While Instagram is used for showcasing the quality of the camera to give experiential value to customers. And lastly, they used Youtube for uploading videos about tips and tutorials on how to use their cameras.

That being said, each of GoPro’s social media account has a different content value. They recognize what each platform is best suited for and created strategies for all the platforms to get the most out of each one of them.

One other company that impresses me in optimizing social media is Burger King. The brilliance of Burger King’s Marketing team arises from their 2019 marketing campaign where they like old tweets of large followings influencer, Casey Neistat. It created confusion and spark curiosity in the social media community when Casey found out that his old tweet had been liked and tweeted out about it. Burger King ends up having a massive presence on Twitter where their actions had been liked and retweeted by hundreds and thousands of users. This action was all intentional by Burger King, where they wanted to take advantage of using Twitter to create an effective campaign when introducing their new products. As seen here, by creating a little spark, Burger King could already dominate the social media platforms in terms of presence.

Different companies have different strategies when using social media platforms. It has been proven that many companies are successful when using it, but it could also cost companies a massive loss if mistakes were made when publishing content. Thus, the business enterprise needed a clear content marketing strategy before it is presented to the public.