10 Ways to Boost your Digital Marketing Strategy in 2016

Here are powerful ways to boost your digital marketing efforts in 2016

1. Focus on Mobile Marketing:

Mobile marketing has increasingly become the focus area of every Digital Marketer and Brand, but no one has cracked it completely yet. Brands are still figuring out what sort of Mobile marketing strategy is best for them and how much of it.  But, every marketer needs to understand that Mobile marketing is not just about, Apps and Mobile sites it’s whole lot of other things too and how important is Mobile Marketing for your Company?

Year 2016 will witness Mobile as the biggest digital marketing avenue amongst all, with every other brand, social media & Tech giants designing and developing their products with specific focus on Mobile to get a bigger piece of the Mobile User base. Remember the Google algorithm change that considered your Website is Mobile responsive or not, that’s just 1 example.

So, now is the time for every marketer to up the ante on Mobile Marketing and design new strategies with larger focus on Mobile.

2. Use Identity based Pay-Per-Click:

Google Adwords came up with a surprise for all digital marketers with their Customer Match targeting in September 2015. You can now target people basis their email address and Mobile Numbers, you can now reach new users similar to your customer list with its Similar Audience targeting, which means better and more qualified leads.

It’s more like your Facebook custom audience & Look-a-like targeting option, but even better because now you can reach your existing customers or new customers on – Youtube, Gmail and Search.

3. Engage audience with Live Video Streaming:

Videos are the most popular content marketing medium and this is evident with the engagement of users with Videos and growth of Youtube. (Must Read 9 Content Marketing Strategies that will dominate 2016)

Brands need to break the clutter of thousands of Ads and social media to grab their user’s attention and engage them. How?

The answer is live video streaming, it is a tactic used by few but can be a very impactful content marketing strategy if used creatively to engage your audience.

Meerkat, Livestream, Broadcaster, wirecast cam, periscope are few popular live video steaming apps with social sharing and instant messaging options.

4. Advertise on Instagram:

Instagram Ads should be part of your Social Media + Mobile marketing strategy as it an awesome way to target user’s on-the-go with carousal ads or a 15 second video.

Since, many brands have yet not started with these, it will help you give better visibility due to less clutter.

5. Show Interest in Pinterest:

We know how Pinterest is creating interest amongst Brands with its buyable pins, but soon it would be launching its ‘Animated Cinematic Pins’.

These cinematic pins will act like video snippets when a user would scroll on it. Brands would be able to target specific users basis their interest with these animated cinematic pins.

It would also be interesting to know that majority of Pinterest users (approx. 80%) use it on their handheld devices and 45% of the users are searching for inspiration or while shopping. Pinteresthas already rolled out a keyword heavy guided search last year.

Now it is important for Digital marketers to show interest in Pinterest and promote their Brand and engage with their target audience.

6. Make your Customers your Marketers:

Word of mouth is still one of the strongest medium to increase sales. For a positive word of mouth or let’s say to make you customers as your brand marketers, use your Customers experience and testimonials as content.

Make use of channels like – Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Meerkat for your customers to market your brand. Think out of the box…be creative!

7. Content Re-marketing:

Its clichéd, but we know Content is King. Content marketing works, be it engaging users or for your SEO perspective.

So, what is content re-marketing? It is very similar to re-targeting, but the catch here is to re-target your website visitors or let’s say existing and would be customers with engaging content that compels them to make a transaction.

Engaging a user with great content will make them share it further with their family and friends giving your Brand better reach to New audiences.

8. Create an Omni-channel experience:

What is an omni-channel? As per definition – it is a multi-channel approach to sales that seeks to provide the customer with whether the customer is shopping online, by telephone or in a store.

#Snapdeal became the first e-commerce company in India to create an omni-channel experience for its users.

Omni-channel is great way to create a seamless customer experience especially for brands with brick-&-mortar and online sales options.  Digital marketers of such brands can come up with innovative strategies to use this technique.

9. Search Ads:

You must be wondering what’s new about search ads, it’s been there for ages now and every digital marketer has used it sometime or the other. Well, you are right! But, but one should understand how powerful this ad type is…it is the best form of native and pull advertising. Again, what’s new?

For starters, you can target Ads based on demographics of your TG with Search Ads, the only thing needed is to get your Adwords account white-listed by Google for Search Ads demographic targeting (it might take a little more than week for Google to whitelist the account for it) and start saving on unwanted clicks and cost.

I have successfully used Search Ads with demographic targeting in #Pearson and #BorderlessAccess, saving on cost and reaching out to more relevant TG.

Second, with every brand coming out with their own App and with the increasing challenge to drive discovery and installs for their App. It becomes even more important for your App to appear in front of your audiences search results for new apps on Play store. So, how do we ensure visibility? By running search ads or search App install ads on Google play and increase chances of your App discovery and install.

10. Capitalise on Thank You Pages & Transaction e-mailers:

Thank You pages and Transaction mailers are untapped gold mines. They are the most unused elements, which if used properly can lead to increased customer experience, sales and engagement.

Thank You pages can help drive secondary conversions and help engage your customer from lead registration pages on their first transaction.

Whereas, Transactional/ Thank You e-mailers place your content directly in your lead or customers inbox, unlike your promotional mailers that land in the Gmail promotional tab (NOTE: If you check your database at least 60% of your customers would be using a Gmail id).

It has been seen that, Thank You and Transactional mailers leads to a 2x increase in Open Rate and CTR and increase conversions and engagement with a brand. Do not ignore the power of good Thank You pages and Transactional mailers.

This is just the start, digital world will certainly grow manifold in 2016 manifold keeping all digital marketers on the edge to innovate and create something amazing with their marketing minds.

Source : http://bit.ly/1JrSgR9

3 Types of Apps That Will Dominate Consumer Attention in 2016

According to data shared by Flurry Analytics, the average US mobile users spend 86% of the Smartphone time on apps. Apps continue to dominate the mobile web.

In fact, a year earlier in May 2014, it was noted that 60% of the total media time was consumed by mobiles and among them 51% was eaten by app surfing, says comScore.

The app ecosystem is only growing year-on-year as more industries and business categories are being brought not only online, but onto the mobile device.

Let's look at the trends that are slated to dominate in 2016--the year of apps, as this industry matures.

Mobile Commerce

Mobile commerce transactions are expected to top $115 billion by the end of this year and climb to $142 billion in 2016, according to a report from Forrester Research. In fact, mobile commerce now accounts for nearly one-third of all U.S. e-commerce sales, according to an analysis of data from Internet Retailer's newly published 2016 Mobile 500.

The same numbers for mobile commerce are growing at a much rapid pace in Asia as compared to the US.

Mobile commerce is slated to dominate online shopping trends in 2016 as more and more existing online retailers create specific strategies for capturing the attention of the mobile audience and those that aren't online yet, are going mobile first.

Video Streaming

According to comScore, 100 million internet users watch online video each day. The average user spends over 16 minutes watching online video ads every month and 64% of website visitors are more likely to buy a product if they've seen a video about it first.

According to Cisco, by 2017, video will have accounted for 69% of all consumer Internet traffic. Video-on-demand traffic alone will have almost trebled. For smaller businesses or startups, video is far more cost effective in today's times when the production costs have reduced considerably.

"Here's a real life example, I just finished creating a series of educational videos (45 videos in total) using only my iPhone 6+, tripod, a $300 lighting and backdrop kit and a video editor from Upwork. In total, costing me ~$1500 to produce quality videos such as my guide on publishing on Linkedin," Sujan Patel, co-founder of Content Marketer tells me.

YouTube alone receives more than 1 billion unique visitors every month and this number is slated to grow as apps such as Periscope and Meerkat gain popularity and brands start to accept video (live streaming and recorded) as one of their content marketing channels.

Ever since we've adopted video as a content marketing channel at Arkenea, we've seen a considerable spike in traffic and engagement.

Connected Apps

According to these statistics, the global Internet of Things (IoT) market is slated to grow at CAGR of 31.72 % by 2019. IoT product and service suppliers are expected to generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion in 2020. By the time we step foot in 2020, more than 5 billion people and 50 billion things will be connected to each other.

The fitness and health industry is spreading the much-needed awareness in a category where the technology exists, but not as much of consumer adoption due to lack of awareness.

But that's just one category - wearables. The entire spectrum of connected apps is touted to grow in 2016 as vehicle manufacturers start to integrate connected devices within the cars.

The other area is a better connected home as Apple's HomeKit evolves and more manufacturers adopt to bring intelligent products to market.

Are you leveraging any of these trends? If so, would love to hear your plans for the coming year in comments below.

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Socializing Your Brand is Not an Option but a Must.

With the increasing popularity of Facebook and Twitter, almost every single company that has a website is on social media. For some people, social media marketing is just a fad that can provide advantage while it lasts. And then there are others who think it’s a lot of hype around something that holds no advantage. However, socializing your brand has become more important than ever before. 

Is Social Really Important?

Almost a decade ago, marketers were pondering over the same question, thinking that it’s just a fad and will fade away in a few months or a couple of years. It didn’t. Social media is here to stay and has become even more powerful as more and more people network on it.

If you’re looking for one good reason to get social media services for your website, we have a reference list for you.

1. Two-way Immediate Communication

If your customers are upset over something, they don’t want to wait for 30 minutes while their call is put on hold. And they don’t want a 24 hour waiting period for your email. They want a quick response. Your social media service should be active on the network and reply to complaints as soon as possible. This lets other people see how helpful you are, and thus it increases your sales.

2. Transparent Communication

When a customer brings up a complaint regarding your products or services, others can read that. And when your team replies to their concerns, your fans can see how you replied to the comment. This builds a positive brand image. When communication is transparent, it helps both sides. While you build a positive image, customers get their complaints resolved quickly – so it’s a win-win situation.

3. More Conversions

You can’t make new customers with each new post, but when you solve a customer’s complaint, other people will start liking your brand. Also, your posts and replies will reflect your brand essence. Make sure that no matter what the customers say, you have to reply with a positive tone. This will build a positive aura around your brand that will encourage conversions.

4. More Followers 

When a fan experiences positive communication with your brand, they will share this experience with their friends on social media. This is the main reason this platform is called social – people discuss their good and bad experiences. If a person had a bad experience with your company, they will discuss it with their friends, and this will not be good for your brand image. When you get social media marketing services from a good company, you can turn all customer communications into positive experiences and gain more followers.

Remember, being on social media isn’t just about posting content, but also about resolving customer issues. As you answer their questions and resolve their issues, your business will be a bit more vulnerable, but if you have the right social media services, this risk is certainly worth taking.

Source : http://bit.ly/1KFfL33

The 10 Startups That Are Changing Social Media

Innovation can take the world by storm in just a matter of months, sure, but it can also take years to change the market through a slow shift implacable as the tide. Whether causing explosive change or subtle, here are 10 startups that are impacting social media today:

1. Bubbly

Self-described as “like Twitter and Instagram for your voice,” Bubbly is a social media platform that allows users to create voice recordings and share them with family, friends, or followers. The voice recordings can be accompanied by text or a picture, but the focus is the voice recording element, the differentiating angle for this social media startup.

Based out of Singapore, Bubbly currently has 40 million users worldwide, primarily in Asia and the Middle East, and has received nearly $50 million in funding. In 2014 Bubbly was acquired by Altruist Technologies, a large Indian mobile social networking company, and this year the company is poised to break into the European and American markets. In a visually driven market, Bubbly is proving that audio can be just as successful in a social media startup.

2. Kenshoo

A huge aid to marketers, Kenshoo is the global leader in agile marketing software, allowing users to create and manage mobile, search, and social marketing campaigns. The company is bridging the gap between search and social data, connecting user search queries on Google, Yahoo, and Bing with advertisements on Facebook and Twitter, an incredibly useful tool for any company with the budget to afford it. Kenshoo also provides tools to analyze data from social media in order to find target audiences and optimize the campaign’s performance.

Kenshoo is backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Sequoia Capital, among others, and the company produces over 1 trillion digital advertisements a year that in turn provide over $350 billion in annual revenue for clients. Kenshoo’s success is no small matter, and this startup is changing the way that businesses interact with the world of social media.

3. Periscope

Sorry, Meerkat, the crown goes to Periscope. Meerkat is a live-video streaming app released in February 2015 that allows users to broadcast live streams through Twitter. Meerkat caused quite a stir in late winter/early spring of this year, acquiring a loyal following and making noise in the social media world. But when Twitter noticed Meerkat’s success, the company turned on Meerkat and acquired Periscope, a similar live video streaming app in development, in March 2015. Shortly after, Twitter blocked Meerkat’s access to Twitter’s social graph, limiting Meerkat’s compatibility with Twitter and damaging its growth.

Both apps are good and are together pushing live video streaming into the forefront of social media this year, but Periscope has the more intuitive interface and the backing of Twitter, giving them an edge. In August 2015, Periscope announced that it had over 10 million user accounts, and this only 4 months after launch, a further sign that the balance between Periscope and Meerkat is shifting in Periscope’s favor.

4. Frilp

Frilp is the latest startup entering the social network of recommendations and reviews, but it plans to upset the models of TripAdvisor and Yelp. Frilp (short for Friend’s Help) aims to spread recommendations the way they would in real life: through your network of friends, family, and acquaintances. Frilp uses your social network, your work place, and address book to create your Frilp network, in which you can then ask specific questions or look at your network’s posted reviews for ideas on where to eat, shop, or explore.

The company is only in Beta testing, but once it’s officially released, this app could change the way people approach online recommendations and references by reducing information overload and providing that information through a source you know and trust rather than a stranger.

5. Conspire

A social networking tool gaining steam, Conspire wants to rectify LinkedIn’s wrong: that LinkedIn has grown too large for its own good, making many connections meaningless. Conspire requires access to your email (it doesn’t see the actual email, just who you are talking to) and analyzes your contacts and emails and learns how strong your connections actually are based on how frequently you talk to them. If you want to meet someone, Conspire shows you who to ask to make the introduction by following the strongest path to the desired contact.

The site also has the useful benefit of teaching you how to email better. Users can see their average response time with specific contacts, as well as the contact’s response time to them, helping them to identify if they are being over- or under-communicative. Conspire is only as effective as the breadth of its network, and while the company has not released any actual figures as to how many users it has, there are over 70 million people in the network created from users’ emails. Not bad for a company just two years old.

6. Unmetric

It’s no secret that social media analytics is useful. It can help improve your business or even predict the results of political elections. Unmetric is an intelligence and social media analytics startup for branded businesses. The company provides several useful tools, from providing lists of successful campaigns to inspire clients with ideas to comparing clients’ social media campaigns with those of their competition. No other service provides as comprehensive a look at what branded social media campaigns are succeeding and how they do it. The startup also provides real-time updates of clients’ campaigns, so if unusual activity is occurring, whether it’s positive or negative, clients know immediately and can take action accordingly. With branded clients like Toyota and American Airlines and agencies like Edelman, Unmetric is getting recognition from high profile clients for its in-depth analysis drawn from over 150 million pieces of microcontent on the web.

7. Flipboard

Flipboard is, in essence, a sort of Pinterest for articles and RSS mash-up. The site handpicks content from trusted sources all over the internet and presents them in a beautiful format, sorted by topic. Flipboard allows users to tailor their Flipboard feed according to their interests and also to curate their own magazines by “flipping” articles and photographs to include them in a personal magazine-styled format that can then be shared with other users.

Originally a mobile app that released in 2010, Flipboard has remained an independent entity and has amassed 70 million monthly users as of June 2015, a jump aided by Flipboard’s website, which launched earlier this year. With this growth and a recent $50 million announced for Series D funding this summer, Flipboard is poised to go bigger with its content curation platform.

8. SocialFlow

SocialFlow is a software company that provides analytics on social publishing and advertising and works with their clients to increase their brands’ visibility and business by posting content on social media at optimal times when more of the audience is active online. Partnered with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+, SocialFlow is one of the biggest social media analytics companies out there with clients such as Pepsi, Walmart, eBay, L’oreal, and Redbull, among others. With an additional $5 million in funding acquired this year in July, SocialFlow will continue to grow and push its social media optimization through the rest of this year.

9. 500px

The banner on 500px’s website reads, “home to everyone’s best photos,” and the banner isn’t lying. 500px is a photo community of photographers and fans of beautiful shots alike. Users can follow specific photographers or like individual photos and see what their friends on the site follow and like as well. The posted photos are also available to purchase and use as stock photos for web, print, or reselling purposes (with different price points for each). Andreesen Horowitz has invested in both 500px’s Series A and B funding rounds, the second of which occurred this past July for a total of $13 million. Pricier but with high quality than its primary competitor Eyeem, 500px is on the campaign to support high-end photography and usher in a new bar for quality photographs in a larger market.

10. Yik Yak

Probably the most well-known company on the list, Yik Yak is the app everyone loves to hate (and also happens to be valued at ~$400 million). In the past year, most of Yik Yak’s coverage has focused on the anonymous bullying and racism that has occurred on the app, but these are always issues with anonymous content hosters. For those not in the know, Yik Yak is an app in which people can make short Twitter-style posts anonymously that can then be voted on by readers. The catch? The newsfeed only includes yaks from within a 1.5 mile radius of a phone’s location (though they’ve sinced added a “peek” ability that lets you read yaks from other areas but not vote or comment on them).

Given the restricted location of the app, Yik Yak became wildly popular on college campuses and has active users at 1,600 US colleges today. The question now is can they survive the negative backlash the app has received because of its ability to host cyberbullying. Yik Yak has been blocked on high school campuses, and the company is actively working to make the app’s content more constructive, but only time will tell if their efforts work. Whether people continue to “ride the Yak” or not, the app has shown how popular location-based posting is, for sports arenas and college campuses alike.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PVTFhm

Why an Instagram Tweak Spells the Beginning of a Multibillion-Dollar Industry

Last week, Instagram — the image-based social network with more than 300 million users — made a change that barely received notice outside the tech world. It officially switched on its API, or application programming interface, for ads.

The reaction, or lack thereof, was predictable. APIs aren’t generally the stuff of front-page news. On a technical level, the change means that ads can now be posted on Instagram by just about anyone, using online tools that plug directly into the network. On a practical level, it means that the Internet’s newest advertising behemoth is officially open for business. Thanks in part to the new API, Instagram’s current mobile ad revenue of $595 million a year is expected to rocket to $2.8 billion by 2017 — leaving even giants like Twitter and Google in the rearview mirror in the U.S. market.

For marketers, Instagram has long been a coveted target. The network is believed to havepassed Twitter and LinkedIn in terms of active users, and to now be second in size only to Facebook (its parent company) among U.S.-based social platforms. Moreover, while growth at Twitter and Facebook is largely plateauing, Instagram expanded at an incredible 50 percent clip in 2014. And its users are considerably younger than those on other major networks: A full 44 percent of people on Instagram are 18-29, versus just 23 percent on Facebook and 33 percent on Twitter.

Reaching those users through advertising, however, hasn’t been easy. Instagram has been famously cautious in rolling out ads. The network began testing the waters with photo-based ads in late 2013, adding video ads last year. These stream by in feeds alongside ordinary photos, distinguishable only by a small “sponsored” disclaimer. Reception was largely positive and initial results encouraging: The visual format helped “cut through the noise,” in ad lingo, and users reported 2.8 times higher recall compared to traditional online ad formats.

But companies had to pay a minimum of $200,000 to purchase these ads, and — in a “Mad Men”-era throwback — orders had to be negotiated individually with a special Instagram sales rep, then forwarded on for final approval. This process allowed Instagram to keep a tight lid on the look and feel of ads, and to ensure that users weren’t swamped with spam. But few businesses had the resources, or patience, to make Instagram part of their ad campaigns.

With Instagram’s new API offering, however, all that has suddenly changed. Ads can now be purchased by just about anyone, using online ad-buying tools offered by official Instagram partners. Rather than negotiating over the phone with a salesperson, businesses can now log onto third-party sites to create, target and place an ad — self-serve style. For marketers, this means the ability to automate and scale the ad-buying process. They can also compare results — apples-to-apples — to digital buys on other networks like Facebook or Twitter, verifying the returns on their Instagram investments.

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With Instagram’s new API offering, ads can now be purchased by just about anyone, using online ad-buying tools offered by official Instagram partners. The move has been called “one of the most anticipated moments in the evolution of advertising.”

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While these changes might not seem earth-shattering, experts aren’t sparing thesuperlatives, calling the move “one of the most anticipated moments in the evolution of advertising.” Comparisons have already begun to flow in to Facebook’s original ad API launch back in 2011, which spurred the growth of a $15 billion-a-year ad marketplace.

Indeed, much of Instagram’s ad potential rests in the data treasure trove collected by its parent company. In June, Instagram opened up ad-targeting tools that tap into user data from Facebook profiles. This makes it possible to laser focus ads to a virtually limitless number of interest groups, from twentysomething yoga lovers to baby boomers into RV travel. The network has also souped up the look and functionality of its ads. Special buttons on images now let users “shop now,” “learn more” and “sign up,” while “carousel” ads showcase multiple images at once.

But will opening the floodgates to ads turn off Instagram’s dedicated users — who now post well upward of 70 million images daily — and lead to an exodus to newer, sexier apps like Snapchat? The network is hoping that its slow, careful rollout will help avoid the kind of user backlash that has plagued other platforms. The “native” format means ads look a lot like normal posts — indeed, in trials top-performing ads received tens of thousands of likes from enthusiastic viewers. At the same time, users have the option of clicking “hide this” on unwanted ads. This feedback is used to further refine targeting — ensuring that, for instance, extreme-sports lovers see ads for Red Bull, not Pampers.

Of course, paid ads aren’t the only option for businesses hoping to reach out to Instagram users. A new wave of tools is also making it easier for companies to connect the old-fashioned way — by posting eye-popping images and building a following over time, just like the rest of us. Third-party tools that allow users to schedule multiple posts in advance and monitor comments and likes have long been available for use with Twitter and Facebook. But Instagram was a stubborn holdout. In fact, for years, the most common user request at Hootsuite was to build exactly this kind of Instagram integration. But with recent changes, it’s now possible for ordinary users to queue up posts in advance and launch coordinated campaigns using these tools.

For marketers, this all adds up to one message: Instagram is finally open for business. The network offers an uncommon blend of substance and style — Facebook-powered analytics plus fashion-mag aesthetics. It’s mobile-first (indeed, mobile-only): A key factor, considering that fully three-quarters of Facebook’s revenue now comes from mobile ads. And it’s uniquely positioned to reach young, socially active users. If the network can find a way to keep both users and advertisers happy, it may well be on its way to solving a multibillion-dollar ad riddle in the years ahead.

Source : http://on.recode.net/1fzYy2W