2014 marketing insights report

table of contents

Contributors

The Death of Digital Marketing

Your Are a ProductSocial media walks the tightrope

Big DataYesterday’s news in more ways than one

Build a Comprehensive Marketing Plan for Your Star Customer

Dead Mouse

Measuring Influence

Put Content at the Center of Your Search Engine Optimization

Taming the Asian Dragon

Design Trends to Kick Off 2014

Be a Better Client The design review

HTML5

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contributors

steve ellis CEO@steveellis

“We are simply a new generation of marketers – digital natives who have grown up with technology playing a central role in our lives.”

sally YatesHead of Influence@sallyyates

“Exerting maximum influence means getting the right message, delivered in the right way by the optimum channel.”

evan WestenbergerWeb Content Manager @evanwest

“Expect to see the adoption of HTML5 continue to increase.”

paul burcherCreative Director

“We’ve been tackling new design and interaction challenges with the advancement of natural user interfaces like voice-, gesture-, and touch-controlled devices.”

mark pinsentDirector of Content Strategy@markpinsent

“There’s an old mantra in social media: if you’re not paying then you’re the product.”

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Deborah hanamuraDirector of Marketing@debhanamura

“With computer-to-brain interfaces a proven reality, are we ready for bionic, brain-to-brain experiences?”

andrew martinPresident@andrewcm

“The integration between offline marketing methods and online technologies means that almost anything can be digitized.”

mandy emelAccount Director@mandyemel

“All-star customers hit the trifecta: great brand, confident spokesperson and a passion for your business.”

sean DonovanRegional Director, APAC

“Asia Pacific region dominates the social media landscape, despite the fact it has one of the lowest internet penetration rates in the world.”

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the Death of Digital marketing

The term “digital marketing” has been around for decades, yet its definition is still largely fuzzy. “Digital” is typically centered on the internet or electronic devices. In the past its key technologies for marketers included websites, social media, banner advertising, and SEO. However, quick evolution has led to the emergence of a more dynamic set of tools, including mobile, applications, and online video.

To understand what digital marketing actually is, it’s easiest to start by defining marketing. Connecting brands to consumers in interesting ways is a simple way to define marketing. In that context, digital marketing is simply the range of technologies that have been added to the marketing mix to expand how companies communicate with and engage their audiences.

But with digital technologies becoming more embedded in the way we do business and communicate with one another, is the term “digital marketing” still relevant?

Marc Pritchard, Proctor & Gamble’s global brand-building officer, made an interesting speech at Dmexco last year in which he suggested that digital marketing is dead – quite a controversial statement that caused many “digital marketers” to sweat. In his speech, Pritchard described digital as the toolset that marketers can use to engage their audience in new, creative ways. According to Pritchard, the success of a campaign comes not from the digital technologies, but from the idea itself.

Within a marketer’s toolbox there are a range of instruments: TV, social, mobile, print … the list goes on. On their own, these tools don’t do a great deal to benefit a company; they’re simply a means to an end. The trick comes in how you use these tools to communicate a message to the audience.

Therefore, digital marketing may just be the tools we use to communicate to our customers via online channels. It’s certainly not separate and independent from other marketing efforts.

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The death of the digital marketer

In the past many companies used “digital” to define the range of skills particular employees had – whether they were experts in social media, had a profound knowledge of email marketing, or could build a website. But today, as more companies integrate digital channels into their marketing strategy, having knowledge of and experience with digital tools is a prerequisite for any marketer. That said, we can no longer call ourselves digital marketers. Digital is the norm, not a unique selling point. We are simply just a new generation of marketers – digital natives who have grown up with technology playing a central role in our lives.

An amalgamation of two forces

Traditionally, digital and offline marketing techniques have been considered to be separate, and while a campaign might include elements of the two, many marketers would perceive them as individual entities. But the two actually complement each other surprisingly well. In the offline environment, consumers can immerse themselves in physical experiences, while the digital world provides the data and knowledge required to deliver customers the experiences they really want.

Arguably, this is a modern-day extension of above-the-line and below-the-line marketing strategies that many brands adopted in the past. In this instance, offline techniques mimic above-the-line marketing, as they are broadcast to mass audiences. Meanwhile, online technologies mirror below-the-line strategies where marketers use data to drill into their audiences and target those most relevant to their brand.

The two by no means need to be separate, and innovative companies already recognize this and find ways to marry the two. We now see outdoor advertisements at bus stops with scannable QR codes, TV shows using hashtags to encourage social participation, and Shazam-enabled advertisements. The integration between offline marketing methods and online technologies means that almost anything can be digitized.

We can no longer call ourselves ‘digital marketers.’ Digital is the now the norm, not a unique selling point.

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You are a proDuctsocial meDia Walks the tightrope

We’ve become very used to social media tools and online services being given away for free. Social networks, blogging platforms, image sharing, micro-blogging ... just register and away you go. But there’s a necessary value exchange. By giving us a useful service for free, the provider wants something back. And it’s our data they want, from which they extract value by using it to allow advertisers to present targeted commercial messages. In this instance, therefore, we become the product.

There’s a balance to be struck in this exchange of value. Is the usefulness of the service worth the intrusiveness of the interruption? This is nothing new of course. I was talking sports with a client in the US recently. He’d just started watching Premier League football, which he could now pick up on cable. One of the best things about it, he explained, was that the action wasn’t interrupted by commercials, so rare was that to a US TV viewer.

Commercial UK television channel ITV picked up the rights to Formula 1 TV coverage in the in 1997, and was the host broadcaster for the next decade. Suddenly an audience that had been used to uninterrupted race coverage for decades on the BBC found commercial breaks inserted into the race (often and inevitably when something interesting was taking place on the track). It created an uproar amongst

viewers. The coverage may have been free, but we were only prepared to put up with so much interruption by the paymasters. When equally commercial Sky took over the coverage, it was smart enough to know that ad-free races were critical to keeping the audience happy.

So, balance is important when you’re walking the tightrope of user experience vs. commercial need. And as social media platforms mature – and particularly as they do such grown-up stuff as list themselves on the world’s stock markets – this balance becomes trickier and trickier.

Take Instagram. It’s a wonderfully simple and useful social platform that captured the imagination and exploded in popularity. So much so that within a very short time and with only a dozen or so full-time employees, Facebook bought the company for an astounding $1 billion. This for a company that at the time and for a good while afterwards hadn’t created a single cent in revenue, let alone profit.

Clearly, with Facebook having paid such an incredible amount of money for Instagram and having floated it on the NYSE (to huge scrutiny), there needed to be a commercial model in mind. Sure enough, Instagram has announced that advertising has come to the platform. And if you ever needed to understand the sensitivities around placing commercial messages into a user’s stream of content, search for “Instagram’s first ad.” Suffice to say, reading the comments on that first ad would give many brands pause for thought about paying to promote their own messages, even though it was a success by many other measures.

There’s an old mantra in social media: if you’re not paying, then you’re the product.

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I’m a firm believer that “paid” can be employed to help “owned” gain traction amongst target audiences. In fact it’s difficult to avoid a strategy that combines both. But the quality of that owned content will always be where I put my focus. After all, there’s no point throwing away advertising money if what you’re pushing isn’t aligned to the audience’s interests and passions. As my mum would say, that’s “throwing good money after bad.” There’s another old adage that still holds true: it’s not that people don’t like marketing, it’s that they don’t like bad marketing.

Stock markets are fickle and sensitive. When a Facebook executive stated recently that the company was seeing teenagers being less active on the platform, the 14% increase in the company’s share price following otherwise strong results was instantly wiped out. We will continue to see the markets nervous and sensitive to any signs that users may be leaving social platforms or reducing the time they spend on them.

Every free social media platform is walking the experience/advertising tightrope. And while the phrase “if you’re not paying, you’re the product” may be true, every individual has the power to take themselves off the shelf. When that happens, the customers – and make no mistake that in this context the customers are the advertisers – will stop spending.

statsSocial media has reached middle age. The fastest growing segment of social media users is now adults aged 45–54. Fifty-five percent of this age group now have a profile on at least one social network. (State of Search)

Furthermore, 75% of social media users “object to major companies and platforms using their personal information for commercial purposes.” And just 12% admit to having their purchases influenced by Facebook “Likes” or Google “+1s”. (Relevanza)

Half of all social media users under age 35 follow their online friends’ product and service recommendations. (TECHi)

• Social media … to engage or to advertise? Turns out agencies are slightly more likely than in-house marketers (81% vs. 75%) to advertise on social networks, while corporate marketers are significantly more likely to utilize “free” social media tools (89% vs. 71%).

• Seventy percent of brand marketers (and 60% of agency professionals) view social media advertising as more valuable for building brand awareness than for driving direct response.

• But – contradicting the statistic above – 66% of brand advertisers want to see a measurable sales bump from social media advertising.

• Sixty-four percent of advertisers surveyed indicated they expect to increase their paid social media advertising budget for 2013.

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big Data YesterDaY’s neWs, in more WaYs than one

Matthew Fontaine Maury was a promising U.S. Navy Midshipman assigned to a desk job after a crippling injury. Far from wallowing in his misfortune, however, Maury took it upon himself to analyze all the available data regarding the passage of naval and commercial ships across the world’s oceans. After plotting and analyzing more than 1.2 million data points, he published the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic, which resulted in huge efficiencies in journey times and navigation. Maury didn’t publish it as an e-book, because his book was released in 1855.

So anyone who thinks that big data is new is sorely mistaken.

The foundation of real-time marketing using big data is yesterday’s news. It’s hundreds of years old. What’s new are the tools and techniques to sort, manage, and use the data.

Further, big data is all about yesterday’s news. What happened yesterday that we can capture, store, analyze, and use to make our business and its products and services more compelling? What are our customers buying, at what time of day, in what weather, on what device, with what form of payment, and in response to what stimulus? What else are they discussing? And how can we use that to inform our proposition and marketing tomorrow?

How much data does it take to be considered “Big”?

It’s all relative. What represents a significant amount of data to a shopkeeper serving a few thousand customers in a single town would be the smallest drop in the ocean of Expedia’s data repository.

We should talk less about big data and more about “all the data” that any business can lay its hands on. And further, the data is simply a means to the insights it can deliver, which help businesses create and market products that better meet customer needs and desires. And that means that the visualization of data – enabling employees throughout the organization to make use of it – is going to be an imperative in 2014. Businesses must add qualitative insight from non-technical parts of the business to the quantitative value that data can bring if they are going to thrive.

Way beyond early adoption

Industries that employ dynamic pricing – airlines, for example – have been important leaders in big data for years. To the consumer, there may be no rhyme or reason to changing airline ticket prices from one hour to the next, when, in fact, the changes are the result of a complex analysis of real-time buying behavior allied to historical and environmental data.

Not only that, but exposing the results of data analysis to consumers during the purchasing process can move them further along the funnel. It was only yesterday that I was given the added sense of urgency over a ticket purchase by a message telling me that four other customers were currently looking at the

“More businesses operate in a sector where dynamic pricing applies than you might imagine.”

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AnYOnE WHO THInKS

THAT BIg DATA IS nEW

IS SOrELY MISTAKEn.Eight-five percent of organizations have big-data initiatives in place, but just 15% have an adequate ability to rank use data and analytics to transform their business

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same flight and there were only three tickets left at that price (who knows, there might have been 40 tickets left at tomorrow’s lower price!) Hoteliers are similarly enthusiastic users of data, and the more they can feed into the engine (preferably “all of it”), the more effective their marketing will be.

More businesses operate in a sector where dynamic pricing applies than you might imagine. Data can empower businesses to propose spot offers and discounts and to give a salesperson the flexibility to strategically tweak pricing. The more data you collect on buyers’ sensitivity to pricing the better the results.

“Mash up” to get ahead

The true power of data comes through the ability to mash up and cross-analyze disparate sets of data. When I worked with a manufacturer of high-pressure washing equipment for domestic use, the company had sales data for the previous fifteen years, allowing us to plot the peaks and troughs of the annual sales cycle. Further, when that data was combined with historical weather data, we discovered that in those years that had an early spring, the company struggled to meet demand because consumers rushed to prepare their gardens for the good weather. Similarly, a late spring meant stock sat unsold on shelves for weeks, often ultimately discounted to sell.

Today, the company employs extremely accurate long-term weather forecasters as part of its business-planning process, and has seen results in efficiently managing its supply chain and meeting consumer demand.

It’s likely that your business has historical sales data. But are you cross-analyzing that with external environmental data to deliver new insights? Even the smallest coffee shop might increase sales by promoting a festive drink a few weeks early if it knows there’s a cold snap coming. This is about using all the data you can lay your hands on, not just your own.

Big data is predicted to be a $50 billion business by 2017.

builD a comprehensiVe marketing plan for Your all-star customer

You’ve found the sweet spot in marketing when one of your customers puts their reputation on the line and becomes a vocal advocate for your business. One of the most compelling tools in your sales team’s armory is a positive customer reference, and the investment in a comprehensive customer marketing plan can generate significant return.

All-star customers hit the trifecta: great brand, confident spokesperson, and a passion for your business. Limiting yourself to one or two disjointed marketing exercises is wasted potential when you get your hands on one of these rarities. Your all-star customers can help you reach a larger audience and drive your message through multiple targeted channels. The most obvious marketing deliverable is a case study, but the typical case study has a limited audience. If you use the information you gather during the case study process in a broader campaign, you can hit more audiences in different ways with little additional effort.

Once you’ve identified your customer advocate, the next step is to work hand-in-hand with them to create a long-term customer marketing plan.

We’ve been working with customer advocacy programs for 25 years, and we’ve refined the process and learned a few lessons along the way. Successful customer marketing programs always include the following best practices:

get buy-in

You must gain support – both internally and externally – for your plan. Your leadership team must support the customer and the whole plan, and understand the goals and objectives of the campaign. The last thing you want to do is get your customer fired up about a co-marketing effort, only to find out that your leadership team has other priorities and won’t fund the campaign.

Once internal support is secured, it’s time to engage your customer’s team, including senior executives, communications and PR teams, and the legal department, which will help secure approvals down the line.

You’ll have to sell your plan, because it will demand your customer’s time, which is in high demand within their own organization. Before you approach your customer, you should be able to answer the first question that most of them ask: “What’s in it for me?”

Remind your customer’s leadership team that you are providing a great way for their experts to demonstrate thought leadership in their field. It will deliver positive exposure to their customers, build relationships, give access to products and programs, and create valuable networking connections between senior leadership at both companies.

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Identify the best activities for your customer

Once you have your customer on board, you need to determine what kind of marketing strategies you can set up, considering the resources available and budget. In addition to marketing efforts, the customer’s willingness to speak with press is highly valuable, and PR (and analyst relations, when applicable) should be part of your agreed-upon marketing plan, along with keynote speeches and events.

As your relationship with the customer grows, you can create more elaborate marketing assets like a microsite that showcases all of the great work you’ve done together, packaged in a beautiful, sharable experience. The key is to continue to build that relationship with the customer – demonstrating the mutual value exchange – which makes more complex asks easier to approach.

Work smart

It pays to work smart. You should use your customer’s time efficiently. For instance, you can get a lot of information from interviewing members of the business for a case study, and then repurpose this interview content for blogs, social content, and creative briefs for videos or ads. Consider all of the different content outlets that you plan to use when you create your interview plan.

This process can make or break trust with your customer. Numerous deliverables with many people involved means that things could quickly spiral out of control. Deliverables that haven’t been reviewed or approved could be released by accident, or the customer could start to feel taken advantage of if there are four people asking for their time to review something. Some ways to mitigate this are to: • Consolidate review loops. Hold some projects

for customer review until you have the majority of work that needs their review/approval.

• Identify one point of contact. The customer shouldn’t have to contact one person for written content, another for video, a third for social, etc.

And remember to help the customer out! Be aware of how much time they’re investing in helping you and ensure that time is reciprocated. Taking them out for a nice dinner never hurts.

There is a lot of work involved in successfully marketing a customer story so it might pay to get an agency to do the heavy lifting. Look for one that you can build trust in and one that has a firm grip on all the customer marketing activities you want to undertake.

Only 25% of B2B marketers use content marketing for customer retention

89% of B2B marketers cite customer testimonials as the most effective form of content marketing

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Before you approach your customer, you should be able to answer the first question that most of them ask: “What’s in it for me?”

DeaD mouse

You used to control the mouse. Are you ready for the mouse to control you? Natural interfaces, which are any human-to-machine interfaces, are moving inside the body. The implications for experience design are not to be ignored.

It all started with the mouse.

Doug Englebart died at age 88 on July 2, 2013. An electrical engineer responsible for a raft of original thinking concerning human cognition and computing, Doug gave the world many gifts, perhaps most notably was the computer mouse. Initially demonstrated as early as 1968, the mouse, in conjunction with the keyboard, has been our predominant tool for interaction with computers for more than 30 years.

Shortly before Englebart’s passing, a report was published in the February issue of Scientific Reports detailing an experiment in which researchers electronically linked the brains of pairs of rats, enabling them to communicate directly via implanted microelectrode arrays. The electrodes were implanted directly on the surface of the rats’ brains, and they enabled two-way communication via thoughts.

In August, University of Washington researchers performed the first non-invasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher.

By September, the first mind-controlled bionic leg was demonstrated by Zac Vawter, a 32-year-old amputee at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. When Vawter wants to move the leg, a brain signal travels down his spinal cord and through peripheral nerves, and is picked up by electrodes in the bionic leg. A version should be available to more than 1 million Americans within five years.

What would Englebart think of this shift toward NUI that not only surpasses the classic mouseclick, but actually leapfrogs touch, voice, and gesture navigation? With the computer-to-brain interfaces a proven reality, are we ready for bionic, brain-to-brain experiences?

As technology becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives, it is a logical next step that it will become embedded into our bodies. The cyborg gap is closing, and it’s only a matter of time before these advancements in mind control make their way into commercial ventures, with gaming and social

“With computer-to-brain interfaces a proven reality, are we ready for bionic, brain-to-brain experiences?”

media at the top of the list. Rather than invest in a variety of devices each of which performs a specific set of tasks, people will be the devices, using internet connections to control and communicate with other people and things.

NUI is not limited to consumer and/or infotainment applications. The focus on the way we productively work will intensify: the notion of the “work desktop” has been profoundly influenced by a broadening of users’ interaction expectations and preferences fuelled by an increasing challenge from the demands of Bring and Choose Your Own Device (BYOD/CYOD) and flexible work style policies. When you consider the potential impact that brain-to-brain interfaces can have on collaboration, a vision of the future virtual workspace starts to come into focus.

Designing for cyborgs

We’ve been tackling new design and interaction challenges with the advancement and high adoption of natural user interfaces like voice-, gesture-, and touch-controlled devices. The demands on our industry to create intuitive and highly functional experiences that work with mind controlled interactions will be intense. The role of User Experience will take on heightened importance once the interface is removed and the entire experience is contained within a human body and communicated via the web.

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measuring influence

Klout considers itself the “standard for influence.” That’s a big claim. The Klout Score, in one neat package, gives you a number from 1 to 100 that pinpoints your influence rating. If it were truly that simple, determining influence wouldn’t be the subject of much ongoing debate. The debate normally starts with the question, just exactly what is influence? Until that is squared away, there is simply no right way of measuring it.

Influence is many things and happens both online and offline. Klout and its peers only measure your online social influence so it’s missing a massive part of what I’d define as true influence. Influence is also more than a numbers game. Let’s be clear, quantitative measures are certainly part of it, have relevance, and make interesting reading. The size of your community, how often it interacts with you, when it does, by which preferred channels is valuable insight, but it’s not the be all and end all. Qualitative insight is essential – for example, the tone, the relevance, or the context. Human interactions are complex and have many layers. This is where human insight is invaluable. It provides intelligence that can’t (yet) be measured by an algorithm.

Your unique influence ecosystem

Another key factor is defining the ecosystem that is right for your objectives. By first clearly defining what your objectives are, you can then identify the true influencers that will enable you to get to those goals. Without an end game, you’re just making noise and hoping it has some influence. Objectives give purpose and provide a commercial approach that ensures campaigns remain focused.

There are also many traps in defining the sphere of influence that will deliver the results you need. An easy one to shout out is not to simply choose your influencers based on numbers. Just because an influencer has a large community it doesn’t follow that they are a key influencer for what you are trying to achieve. This is, again, where the human touch is invaluable. Influencers change rapidly, and so any defined ecosystem may also constantly evolve. Determining who should be in it takes skill. Influence works in multiple directions – where the PR wishes to influence a journalist, the journalist will similarly influence the PR. Where one spokesperson works for one sphere, they may be less influential in another.

What of the message?

Exerting maximum influence means getting the right message, delivered in the right way by the optimum channel. Sounds simple enough, but different influencers will respond to different triggers.

Influence is about getting your audience to take action

It is changing an opinion or a behavior. Ultimately, for any business, it’s about sales. The buying cycle has multiple phases: awareness, research, evaluation, and post-purchase. It’s a cycle, so it’s never- ending. Different parts of the cycle need different styles of influence. An analyst report will be key at one point; a positive customer reference at another. The channels vary according to the phase as does the sphere of influence.

All of this suggests that there is no simple way to measure influence. The complexity of the interactions demands that multiple methods of measurement need to be employed to determine the level of influence, there is no one size – or online tool – that fits all.

“Are algorithms the key to measuring influence, or are traditional methods still best?”

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stats• Only about one in four (26%) agreed that they are

able to measure their social activities. Social Media Marketing Industry Report – Socialmediaexaminer.com

• Nearly nine out of ten (88%) of PR practitioners agree that output alone is not a sufficient measure of PR in any context.

• Around half (53%) of PRs say they measure and evaluate media output using qualitative metrics.

• Nine out of ten (91%) agree that measurements must be transparent, understandable, and replicable to be valid, suggesting that there is a strong need for sensible measurements in PR.

• Six out of ten (59%) agree that they always demonstrate the principles of best practice in measurement and evaluation to their client or employer, with a quarter (27%) disagreeing.

• Eighty-five percent of PRs would not use a measurement tool if they did not know how it worked, 82% if they didn’t know how it was calculated.

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Search is crucial to a digital marketing strategy. Ranking high in searches can mean the difference between success and failure. But many businesses that focus solely on traditional technical nitty-gritty of SEO (black-hat strategies) to beat the system have been sliding down the rankings.

Content’s impact on your SEO

Both Google and Bing have changed their approach to content and how to rank sites. There was a time when you could game the algorithms with carefully chosen key words and back-end tagging. Now Google and Bing both use increasingly dynamic and complex algorithms to determine the value of a page’s content.

Google focuses on site behavior and credibility of incoming links, while Bing focuses on social behavior and the freshness of content. In both cases, the response that your consumers have to your content will make or break your discoverability. Further, your content’s life off of your website is just as important as your on-site content. Make it shareable if you want to improve your rankings.

In short, if you want to rank number one on search engines, you must have a content strategy.

A quality content marketing strategy starts with understanding your customers and producing the right stories in the right format, at the right cadence for your audience. The most important thing that any marketer can do to improve search rankings is focus on stories that have meaning for their audience, and then tell that story consistently on the right channels.

If you are running a content factory that focuses on high-volume publication without proper followthrough, then you are not engaged in SEO – you are engaged in a massive waste of time.

Successful content communicates without selling – which helps brands build powerful customer relationships. The search engines track the quality of those customer relationships and use that data to determine how your business ranks.

It’s a simple concept, but it isn’t necessarily simple to execute. Marketers struggle with an abundance of choice, a lack of data or insight, disparate publishing systems, and – perhaps most importantly – old habits.

How to create content that will resonate with your customers

Step 1: It begins with a storyYour business has a story to tell – and I’m not talking about a list of features and benefits. I’m talking about the real and relatable impact that your product or service has on the people who use it. Find your most powerful story, and then remix it into a variety of formats based on the places where your customers hang out. The format should address the customers, where they are in the buying cycle, and the environment in which the content is being consumed. Make it interesting!

put content at the center of Your search engine optimiZation

“Successful content communicates without selling – which helps brands build powerful customer relationships.”

content is kingIt’s a simple concept, but it isn’t necessarily simple to execute. Marketers struggle with an abundance of choice, a lack of data or insight, disparate publishing systems, and – perhaps most importantly – old habits.

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Step 2: Help your audience find your storyYour strategy must include online and offline channels – how does your story fit into advertising, PR, events, websites, banner ads, etc.?

Amplify your story across channels – promote and sell the story, not the product. By creating a compelling story that builds curiosity, your customers will inevitably find their way to your brand and website.

How? There’s no single recipe for success, but you can start by:• Promoting posts on social channels.• Pushing your story to the front page of your

website.• Making sure that the right people in your

organization know about the story, and are ready to talk about it.

• Using it for PR, case studies, and speaking engagements.

• Linking to it in the footer of your email. • Including it in company newsletters and email

programs.

Step 3: Engage Every hour, enough information is consumed by internet traffic to fill 7 million DVDs. And just a few years from now, it’ll be four times larger than that. Search engines don’t want you to pump the web full of useless or uninteresting content – consumers need content that will delight and engage.

Social media also factors into rankings. You don’t need to wait for someone to respond on your company’s social channels – find people who have a similar interest and are active online. Tell them about your story, and ask them about theirs.

Bottom line: You are not a content factory

Your job is to understand the stories behind your brand, and to create authentic connections with your customers. The stories will do the selling. You just do the telling. Start with one great idea and tell it ten different ways.

Start with one great story and tell it ten different ways

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statsMobile search queries will overtake desktop search by 2015

76% of marketers who have strategic SEO campaigns in place invest in content marketing; 92% of marketers say content creation is either “very effective” or “somewhat effective” for SEO

Any company with serious global ambitions is highly likely to either have launched or shortly plan to launch in the Asian markets.

And it’s easy to see why – against a backdrop of a stagnant global economy, the Asia Pacific markets have growth potential. Not only that, but the sheer size of Asia Pacific – more than 4 billion people in Asia with more than 1 billion (28%) of them on the internet – means that there is potentially a huge, easy-to-reach audience for your product.

However, for marketers this opportunity is not without difficulties – not least of which is the cultural and socio-economic differences around the region. At Metia, we have compiled a crib sheet to highlight the key opportunities and challenges for marketers entering this diverse part of the world.

Considerations for a digital campaign in APAC:

Content

• Does your content resonate well in Asia in terms of messaging, imagery, language, colors? Research and localize where necessary to make your campaigns more effective and ensure you do not commit a cultural faux pas.

• Consider different ways of conveying your message. Often imagery resonates better, and with such a diversity of languages, content such as infographics are an effective way to communicate to many people at the same time.

• Is your content optimized for mobile and smartphone use? Mobile is very popular in APAC – nearly 2.5 billion of the world’s 4.3 billion mobile phone users this year will be in Asia-Pacific. An average of 80% of the developed countries in Asia are using a smartphone compared to 60% in the US. Video consumption on smartphones is especially high in APAC.

• If in doubt, test it. Paid social content or display advertising can be a cost-effective way to trial messaging in different regions to see which resonates best with your target audience.

Language

• Do you need to translate any content? Does your audience in Greater China prefer simplified or traditional Chinese? Understanding and catering to these language preferences are vital.

• Don’t forget your website – if you’re going to run multilanguage campaigns, ensure that your audience can digest the content in their preferred language once they hit your website or risk high bounce rates. It is also vital for local SEO.

• Before committing to local language web pages or social media properties, make sure you have enough resource to update them and respond to any issues or your efforts may backfire.

Channels

The secret sauce for any marketing campaign is communicating it through the most appropriate medium:

• Email is popular in Asia Pacific – especially for B2B – but delivery rates can be low. Counter this by appropriately localizing your email content to specific audience segments. Increase open and clicks by ensuring your email is optimized for viewing on a mobile or smartphone, and ensure your emails comply with regional communication and data protection laws. This is especially important in China.

taming the asian Dragon

The Asia Pacific region dominates the social media landscape, despite the fact it has one of the lowest internet penetration rates in the world.

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• Social media is huge in the region, and the usual suspects of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are popular here. However, there are differences between how they are used – for instance, Facebook is used in many Asia Pacific countries for business more than informal conversations. There are also many regional platforms (especially for China), so make sure you do your research and know where and how your target audience is talking.

• Mobile is extremely popular, so brands are getting creative in using this medium as part of their marketing mix – especially gaming. Also hugely popular are messenger services such as WhatsApp and Line, so it is well worth considering if you can leverage them as part of your messaging.

In summary, there is a huge potential for marketing your brand in APAC using digital, but to be successful it requires a specific approach. Five tips to take into account before launching your digital campaign in Asia:

1. Avoid the “one size fits all” approach. Research your audience and tailor messages accordingly, including translation to local languages.

2. Take cultural considerations into account. 3. Identify where and how your audience

communicates.4. Research local holidays when scheduling your

campaign. There are varied cultural, national, and religious festivals. For example, Chinese New Year is a huge holiday across many countries, so campaigns shouldn’t go out before or during this period.

5. Most importantly, try it, test it, and tweak it. We recommend taking a phased approach when marketing in APAC for the first time.

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imperfectionVisual design is trending toward more natural and diverse imagery. Expect to see more multi-race models, “imperfect” faces, disabilities, and alternative lifestyles brought into the mainstream.

globalizationGlobal events like the Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup are going to drive a spike in global backdrops and a celebration of diversity in styles, tones, and patterns.

person-alityBig brands will mimic individual real personalities by producing campaigns that look personal. Camera angles will mimic “selfies” and Instagram filters, and food photography will take center stage as a reflection of popular social content. Fonts will mimic handwriting.

the World is flatComplex visual concepts will be balanced by flat compositions, free of unnecessary embellishments like shadows, texture, and dimension. This year will see a spike in sans serif fonts.

Design trenDs to kick off 2014

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graphic Design elements Will look more like real life

Design is a business tool.

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The most exciting time to be working with an agency can be during review meetings – when creative concepts are presented. Leading up to those meetings, you (the client) have provided a project brief and defined the campaign goals, and the design team has applied their experience, intuition, and insight to produce concepts.

The first design review is followed by rounds of revision, accompanied by debates over approaches and elements until the process concludes with an approved design.

The nature of those debates is what we’re talking about in this post.

There are two types of criticism that come during design reviews

Objective Criticism: This criticism is tied to tangible facts and data. For example, if you are presented with a design with the wrong version of your company logo, it is a fact that the logo should be updated. Objective feedback is specific, explicit, and trackable. A good sign that your feedback is objective is that it’s simple to explain how and why a change is being requested.Subjective Criticism: This criticism is tied to intangible impressions and preferences. Design and art are cousins, but design is not just art; design is a business tool. Subjective criticism is harder for designers to navigate because yes, you are the client, but it’s difficult to discern if your rejection of orange is applicable to the target audience. Subjective criticism is harder to explain.Whether the criticism is objective or subjective, it can always be constructive. Here are some tips to give useful feedback to designers:

Do: Start with your overall impressionBefore you dig into the finer details and feedback on a design, provide a “big picture” assessment of your take on the effectiveness of the design. “Overall, I think we got the concept right/missed the boat” will help

to guide the conversation about the specifics. If you dive into the small adjustments that need to be made before providing the overall impression, the designer loses sight of the big picture and business goals.

Do: Ask the right questions • Right Question: “Does this meet our goals?”• Wrong question: “Do I like this?”

Assumptions are the enemy of learning, so if you aren’t sure about something, ask the designer. Designers will be prepared to explain choices made in the design, and their explanation could be delightfully unexpected. If you don’t like the color orange, ask the design team why they chose orange, and how using orange in the design will help the design succeed.

Don’t: Hold backThe last thing we want is for you to politely tolerate a design that you have serious reservations about, only to bring your concerns up at the last minute. Talk about concerns early in the process to avoid big problems further down the line.

Don’t: Prescribe solutions It’s one thing to say that the “buy now” button is getting lost in the design, and it’s another thing to say “put the ‘buy now’ button here.” Tell the design team what they need to accomplish, and then let them determine the best way to accomplish it. Good designers have years of experience and training, and while it can be difficult to defer to someone else, it’s the right call when it comes to such a specialized field.

Bottom lineThe design process is highly collaborative, and the goal of everyone involved is to launch a killer campaign that produces results for your business. It’s the agency’s responsibility to collect and respond to feedback effectively, and it’s the client’s responsibility to give feedback that is actionable, clear, and driven by business outcomes.

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be a better client the Design reVieW

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right questionDoes this achieve our business goals?

Wrong questionDo I like this?

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Website development and content consumption have been forever changed. Gone are the days of installing special software to watch video, or to listen to audio. New and innovative experiences are now made possible with HTML5. We have seen a steady increase in the interest in and adoption of HTML5, which benefits both developers and consumers. With HTML5, user experiences have been improved, and innovative experiences have been created.

HTML5 expands on the capabilities of HTML—a programming language that many developers already use. HTML5 is easy to use and is becoming a common development language. It can be used to display content across the web in browsers, smartphones, tablets, Smart TV’s, and more. It has native support for video, audio, apps, and more. It can even be used to detect a user’s location, which can provide personal experiences.

The Art of Stars website uses HTML5 to track IP addresses. It translates the IP address into a physical location, and then displays the constellation above the user’s location. There are other Android, iOS, and Windows Phone applications that do this, but Art of Stars is natively supported by web browsers. This is unique because it doesn’t require a user to download an application, and everything is done within the browser through HTML5.

There are a few other reasons why people are choosing to develop with HTML5, too.

Instead of building a native application for a specific device, developers have been producing hybrid HTML5 apps, which can save time and money. As an alternative to an application for every platform, HTML5 can be used across multiple devices and systems. It does not require manual updates because they can be made automatically, which ensures that the user experience is always current, both on mobile and in the browser.

There are some HTML5 apps that can only be displayed within browsers on desktops or laptops. These applications are more advanced than what can be used on mobile. Some of the advanced features include fully immersive 3-D worlds. For example, Three Dreams of Black lets users not only hear a song, but also see it. They fly through and interact with a virtual environment. With the advances in HTML5, it’s only a matter of time until the smartphone experience catches up to what is available on the desktop.

One of the coolest examples of what can be done on the desktop with HTML5 is This Shell. Users have two minutes to put a puzzle together, and instead of images used for the puzzle, pieces of a music video are used. If the puzzle is put together in time, the user can download the song for free. This is an intriguing approach to marketing, and only possible with HTML5. By creating engaging content for consumers, developers can offer special incentives after someone interacts with their brand.

During the next year, expect to see companies pushing new boundaries in user experience with HTML5. While many devices and browsers support HTML5, there will be a surge in HTML5 as W3C finalizes the standards for the language in 2014. Additionally, technology think tank Gartner predicts that HTML5 will become a mainstream enterprise application development environment in this year.

Within the next year, expect to see the adoption of HTML5 continue to increase, and prepare for some amazing online experiences. To learn more about what can be done with HTML5, view the current working draft of the language from the World Wide Web Consortium. Also, keep an eye out for the standards for the language to be finalized later this year.

html5 VIDEO STAr

WEBSITE DEVELOPMEnT AnD COnTEnT COnSuMPTIOn HAVE BEEn fOrEVEr CHAngED.

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About MetiaIn business for 25 years, Metia is a leading marketing strategy, design, and development firm with global offices in London, Singapore, New York, Seattle, and Austin.

We know the technology sector: the innovators; the trends; their applications; the use cases; their business and cultural implications. Metia delivers programs that influence key decision makers, deliver fantastic user experiences, develop deep customer relationships and build vocal communities of advocates.

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