9 Interesting Digital Marketing Stats

Live streaming is becoming a popular tool for brands

1. Lots of brands have tested Periscope and Meerkat

Live streaming marketing vendor Brandlive surveyed 200 executives from retail and consumer goods brands and found 44 percent of their businesses ran a live streaming event last year. Meanwhile, nearly 25 percent of businesses were impressed enough with the results on apps like Periscope and Meerkat to increase their live streaming budgets this year, and 39 percent stated the video tactic is integral to their larger marketing mix.

2. Facebook adds 1 million advertisers in one year

The social network said 3 million businesses have now advertised on its platform, up from 2.5 million just six months ago. A year ago, Facebook had 2 million advertisers. 

3. Social advertising continues to blow up

Facebook-owned Instagram revealed that it now has more than 200,000 advertisers on the visual social platform. What's striking about that figure is that the app only opened its advertising to all marketers about five months ago. 

4. The Internet of Things is burgeoning

Marc Jones, chairman and CEO of Aeris Communications (which provides machine-to-machine Internet of Things services), said at Mobile World Congress his company has 7 million devices on its network, doubling last year's 3.5 million connected devices.

5. BuzzFeed's growth is crazy

Also at Mobile World Congress, BuzzFeed chief Jonah Peretti said the viral site now has 6 billion monthly content views, up from 100 million in 2012.

6. Long live the e-reader

It's been more than five years since the iPad debuted, but e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook are not yet obsolete—even though many predicted their demise when Apple launched its tablet. New York research firm eMarketer prognosticates that e-reader users will actually increase by 3.5 percent, to more than 86 million people this year. 

7. Apple finally gets social

The Cupertino, Calif.-based electronics giant was averse to social media in recent years while every other brand jumped into social media with both feet. Well, Apple launched a Twitter page on Thursday morning, and it garnered 25,000 followers in the first two hours. After the first six hours, that number grew to 65,000 followers. 

8. Mobile retail ads on the rise

RetailMeNot learned that 87 percent of merchants planned to increase their mobile advertising budget this year. Two-hundred retail decision-makers participated in the digital coupon vendor's study.

9. Digital lead generation wanted

Sixty-one percent of marketers say increased lead generation is their top automation goal. That's according to Direct Marketing News, which cited an Ascend2 study that surveyed 239 executives. 

  Follow on twitter : @patosins

 Source : http://bit.ly/1TUScNs

The Advantages of Working for a Startup

There are many different risks that appear when working for startup companies. Over 75 percent of startups fail, so it is quite obvious that job security is something that is not a given, no matter how great the initial project is. Short-term risks are definitely high and the pay is not normally high when you are initially hired.

While the disadvantages are obviously numerous and should not be taken lightly, many are still highly interested in finding startup jobs. You have various different sites to help you find a startup job. The demand is high for these jobs, but why is that? Mainly: a startup job offers many advantages that often can’t be found in other traditional jobs.

Motivating Growth Environment

One of the advantages of working for a startup company is that the companies will encourage individualism and creativity, and strict hierarchy normally doesn’t really exist. This basically means that you will get a lot of freedom. The workers manage to directly influence the evolution of a startup, making this highly attractive for those that want to make a difference.

Working in a startup is something that is normally associated with risks but it is also something that is attractive because of the environment offered. Combine this with the potential growth that is much higher with a corporate job and you have something that is attractive for a large part of the population, especially younger people.

Attractive Extra Perks

The salary that you get in a startup job is normally lower than what you would obtain something else but the business owners do manage to attract many through extra perks. For instance, the company can allow you to work from home or can offer free meals. We can also highlight the fact that for many that look for a startup job it is the satisfaction of doing a really good job that is enough. While many work for salaries, some are attracted by other things.

Quickly Gaining Skills and Experience

The startup environment is naturally one that is sped up. You basically end up learning everything that you need to do in a much shorter period of time as you are forced to do this. Many skills can be gained and all those can be added to the CV.

A problem with the larger corporations is that job descriptions naturally limit duties. This is not actually the case in a startup since working there will force you to move to other duties and to constantly adapt. You can even end up mastering a brand new job, making you a lot more valuable for the future employer.

Should You Work For A Startup Company?

The truth is that working for a startup company is definitely not something that is for everyone. You may want to try it out though since startups can help you to grow at a much faster pace than regular jobs in large corporations. For many, this is the largest advantage associated with working for a startup.

 Source : http://bit.ly/1QryE0S

5 Big Changes Coming to Social Media in 2016

It’s been a memorable year in social media. 2015 saw the birth of live social streaming, with apps like Periscope and Meerkat winning over early adopters. Snapchat fully shed its reputation as a niche network and now counts more than 200 million active users. Meanwhile, video dominated social headlines, with Facebook users now logging an estimated 8 billion video views a day(even more than on YouTube, by some counts).

What does 2016 hold for social media users? Expect to see new technologies fundamentally change how we interact with social media, opening up new options like shopping and enabling us to share ever-more vivid, real-time experiences. But new functionality and the widening universe of social options also threaten to leave some users in the dust. Here’s a peek into the crystal ball at five trends that will change how we use social media in 2016:

Virtual reality comes to social media: “Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.” That’s what Mark Zuckerberg wrote after Facebook acquired Oculus, the virtual reality company, for $2 billion back in March 2014. Well, we won’t have to imagine much longer. Facebook has already begun incorporating Oculus technology into its 360 Video. The unique videos, which have rolled out on News Feeds, allow users to experience scenes from different angles (looking right, left, up, down, etc.), on both web and mobile devices, creating a more immersive experience.

Right now, there’s 360 Video available from the likes of Vice and The Disney Channel and a really cool clip from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Expect to see more immersive videos in 2016 as publishers and even brands catch up with the technology and begin creating more content. As for true, fully immersive VR, the consumer version of the Oculus Rift headset is slated for release in early 2016, opening up even more interesting possibilities for our News Feeds. Meanwhile, Oculus VR has already released a new “social” appcalled Oculus Social Alpha, for use with the Samsung Gear VR headset. The virtual movie-watching app allows you to “sit” in a theater and watch a video in real-time with other users — perhaps the first truly social application of Facebook’s new technology.

Social shopping takes off: Over the last year, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest all unveiled or upgraded in-line buy buttons, which allow users to purchase clothes, crafts, gadgets and more without ever leaving their feeds. In many respects, this development is long overdue. We’re already discovering and talking about products on social media, and four out of five people say that posts from friends directly influence buying decisions. Plus, overseas in China, Korea and elsewhere, social channels have long incorporated ecommerce functionality.

So far, the primary stumbling block in North America has been ease of use. To buy on social media, we’ve had to click out to other sites (always problematic on smartphones) or we’ve been offered limited selection (a lathe now defunct Facebook Gifts). But innovations like Pinterest’s Buyable Pins now let users browse color and style options and pay, all without leaving the platform. In 2016, expect to see networks’ role shift from being channels whose primary function in ecommerce is providing referral traffic to being platforms where users make purchases directly.

Facebook Live takes live streaming mainstream: 2015 started off with lots of excitement about the new crop of live streaming apps, which allow users to broadcast live video to their followings. By late summer, Twitter-owned Periscope already boasted 10 million active users, and just this month it was named by Apple the best iOS app of 2015.

Expect to see live streaming reach a whole new, mainstream audience in the year ahead as Facebook rolls out its own mobile streaming functionality, generally referred to as Facebook Live. Already being beta-tested among a small number of U.S. iOS users, the feature allows for instantly sharing live video using the Facebook platform. What’s key here is that you don’t have to download a special app or leave Facebook to use the new video functionality. If Facebook Live rolls out as expected, it’s likely to not only dominate other live streaming options but also to fundamentally change the way Facebook’s 1.5 billion users engage with the platform.

The social media skills gap at work widens: With the explosion of workplace social networks like Slack (which recently saw more than 1 million users logged in at the same time) and the imminent launch of Facebook at Work, using social media in the office has gone from taboo to requirement. Businesses are incorporating social tools to streamline internal communications, to help sales staff reach customers, and, of course, for marketing and advertising. The problem is that front-line employees aren’t up to the challenge. Among 2,100 companies surveyed by Harvard Business Review, just 12 percent of those using social media feel they use it effectively. Even millennials brought up on social media are falling short: “Because somebody grows up being a social media native, it doesn’t make them an expert in using social media at work,”explains William Ward, professor of social media at Syracuse University.

The consequence of this social media skills gap can be seen in mounting corporate social media gaffes, from misused hashtags (see #WhyIStayed) to scheduled posts gone awry, not to mention trillions of dollars (yes, trillions) in lost productivity and business value. In 2016, expect to see social media training finally begin to make its way into the workplace in an effort to close this gap — similar to initiatives launched when office software suites and later email and the Internet itself emerged as critical business tools. A number of online offerings now provide self-paced lessons and video modules designed for the workplace. (Hootsuite is giving our course away free.)

Social media customer service gets a lot better: Customer service on social media has always seemed like a great idea. Why wait on the phone when you can Tweet and get an answer immediately? But the reality has been quite different. A new study of 500 top retailers shows that only 20 percent answer questions sent via Twitter and 54 percent respond via Facebook. And the average response time ranges from 27–31 hours! Not to mention that not all customer service problems lend themselves to being handled out in the open in a public forum.

Fortunately, change is on the horizon. In the latter part of 2015, both Twitter and Facebook significantly upped their customer service functionality. Twitter ditched the “mutual follow” requirement for its DM (Direct Messages) feature, meaning companies and customers can now contact each other directly and privately. At the same time, it lifted the standard 140-character limit for Direct Messages, so DM now makes a great one-on-one channel for tackling customer issues. Facebook, not to be outdone, has launched a beta version of Messenger Business, offering a new chat-based avenue for companies to have real-time, personal conversations with customers. Considering that Messenger has more than 800 million users, it’s not hard to see it evolving into a ubiquitous, mobile-friendly channel for customer service in the years ahead.

Perhaps the biggest change in social media is the accelerated evolution of networks into “everything platforms.” Twitter isn’t just for blasting out 140-character updates anymore: It’s for one-on-one messaging, video-sharing, customer service and more. Facebook isn’t just about connecting with friends: It’s now (or soon to be) a workplace productivity tool, a video sharing and streaming platform, a place to shop, etc. Similar transformations can be seen across LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat, among other networks. Social media has become less a discrete thing that people do than a natural component of everything they do. And that trend shows no signs of slowing.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PkKSKb

16 Marketing Goals for Your Business in 2016

Every business needs to have goals. They could be financial, strategic or marketing in nature, but you still need to have them.

I have goals for my business. I’m heading into year 5 of ME Marketing Services and 4.5 years in I have reached a major goal/milestone, financially speaking. Looking towards this next year I need to have more marketing-focused goals to keep up that milestone, which lead to this post. It never hurts to take a look at the goals any business or business owner should have when it comes to the promotion and marketing of a business.

With 2016 rolling in, let’s take a look at 16 marketing goals for your business…

1. Focus on quality content. This year, focus on the quality, not the quantity of your content. Yes, you’ll need to produce a lot of it to make waves, but put some effort into sharing things that will be meaningful to your community. According to a study by the content marketing company Fractl, “64% of writers wish they saw more infographics, mixed-media, data visualizations, images, videos and interactive maps”. Share the steak, not the mashed potatoes.

2. Have a content marketing plan. This probably should be first, but this list is in no particular order. Content is a crucial piece of marketing. Roughly 80% of businesses will use content marketing in 2016 and beyond. This is what you publish on your website, share on Facebook, pictures you post to Instagram. You can’t go blindly into content marketing. Have a plan. If you don’t have one, start here.

3. Find new ways to distribute content. If you’re blogging – great! If not, this is the year to start! This year, find new avenues to get your content out. This could be signing up for Triberr or guest posting on other blogs. You could also tap into your alpha audience and have them ignite your content. BuzzSumo and Fractl analyzed the 1 million most-shared articles within a 6 month time frame in 2015 and found that the top million articles showed that the most engaged platforms, in order, were – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

4. Make something other than Facebook a priority in your social media efforts. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is a huge player, but there’s more out there for businesses than the big blue brother. If you haven’t tried Instagram, try it. Maybe venture into Twitter. Branch out this year.

5. Go offline and do something in-person. You could spend your entire marketing budget and time on just social media and digital marketing, but that won’t reach everyone. Not everyone in your target audience is online, so go to some networking events or attend a conference. Go talk about your business!

6. Find strategic partners. This could be online or offline. Find others with similar mindsets and businesses that compliment yours. If you’re only handling social media for clients, align yourself with someone who does web design or SEO. I’m sure you have some common clients or potential clients you can refer each other to. Likewise, if you are a brick and mortar store, selling flowers for example, partner with a local furniture store to display some of your arrangements. This is free marketing people, take advantage!

7. Have realistic goals. Wouldn’t we all love to rake in six figures because of our marketing efforts alone? For some businesses, you may be able to. For some, that’s not realistic. Whatever you do, set a realistic goal. Sure I’d love to make $1 million this year, but realistically that isn’t going to happen. Setting up unrealistic goals will only leave you feeling depressed at the end of the year.

8. Give away something for free (if you can). Like a moth to a flame, nothing brings in potential customers like free stuff. This could be a 30-day trial or something with purchase, offering something as a bonus or benefit will extend your business. Keep in mind your bottom line though, you don’t want to give away the farm.

9. Outsource what you can’t handle or are not good at. Look, us marketing people (and business owners too) hate to admit we can’t do it all. We feel we should be able to do it all. Well, we could if there were more than 24 hours in a day and a had a maid at home, personal chef at home, live-in nanny, chauffeur, etc. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but outsource what you are not good at. This could be social media marketing, advertising campaigns, graphic design, etc. You’ll appreciate the time you’ll get back and the knowing someone who is capable is handling it for you.

10. Be proactive and ready. There’s nothing like having Thanksgiving Week slip up on you and you have nothing planned for Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Know what’s coming up for your business and be prepared. Likewise, if you see something brewing (an upset client or something that could be really bad or really good for your business) know what you are doing to do when it happens – have a press release or a campaign ready to celebrate or combat it.

11. Be prepared for the unexpected. You can always be proactive but there are times things will come out of the blue and throw you off-course, in both good ways and bad. Unfortunately you can’t plan for everything (a notion that drives me crazy, personally) so know the unexpected sometimes happens no matter how much of #9 you do.

12. Try something new for your business. If you’ve never really spent much time making videos, start! Wanted to advertise in something local – go for it! Go outside your comfort zone and try something new. Maybe it’s time to update your branding (stay tuned this June for ours!) or your website.

13. Find a business mentor. Having a mentor is something that is very underrated. All business owners and marketing professionals need to have someone they can look to. This could be for advice or guidance or for help in an area they are struggling with.

14. Be a mentor. If you have the knowledge and know-how, mentor a new business owner or marketing professional. I do this through the internships my business offers. It allows college students to get real-world experience before they actually enter the real world.

15. Make it a point to track everything. To see the full-scale results of your marketing efforts, you need to track the analytics (Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, etc.). Make sure you know what’s working and what’s not. Analytics is the first place to start.

16. Have fun. Marketing is fun. From campaign creation to seeing the fruits of your labor, no matter how small, marketing is the fun arm of your business. Enjoy it!

Whew. 16 is a lot, but all of them are attainable by any business, regardless of the size.

Source : http://bit.ly/1kSkqZY
 

Quote of the day.

7 Ways For Startups To Build A Strong Social Media Following

If you’re a startup, operating on a limited budget, it becomes essential to focus your marketing on low-budget marketing strategies that are proven to work. You need to make every penny count.

Social media is essential to any new startup’s marketing plan because it offers free and low cost ways to promote a new website. Social can work better than techniques like SEO to build traffic in the initial states of promoting a startup.

Here are seven ways that startups can build a strong following on social media.

1. Create buyer personas

Buyer personas are an inbound marketing strategy that help you hone in and focus on the right target audience. With a limited marketing budget, the last thing you want to do is to throw money away on marketing to an audience that is not interested in your products or services.

Creating a buyer persona will help you focus only on those people that are likely to purchase what you have to offer. When creating your buyer personas for potential customers, you need to list:

• Their job and demographic information
• What a day in their life looks like
• Their challenges or pain points
• Places where they access the information they want
• Their most common objections to making a purchase

Understanding all these aspects of your buyers will help you focus your marketing and content to appeal to the right buyers at every stage in the sales funnel.

For example, this is what a buyer persona might look like for a startup like BigBasket.com.

2. Create a responsive website

With a majority of internet users now accessing the web from their mobile devices, your startup website needs to have responsive web design and be easily accessible on all mobile devices.

Google’s “Mobilegeddon” update made having a mobile-friendly site a ranking factor in the Google search results. That means, if you hope to use SEO to get traffic to your website, your design needs to be responsive, so it adapts to any mobile device that it is viewed on.

The alternative is creating a mobile app, which is an expensive proposition for a startup, and not really necessary if your website is responsive. If you use WordPress to build your website, it is easy to download a free or low-cost theme to make your website mobile friendly.

3. Create a social presence on select channels

One of the biggest misconceptions startups have is that they need to build a presence on every social network. This only means you’ll spread yourself thin and remain unfocused in your marketing strategy.

While I would recommend creating an account on all social networks, just to make sure no one else takes charge of your brand name, you need to focus your efforts only on those networks that your buyer persona is spending the most time on.

For example, for the Busy Mom Persona above, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram might be the best networks to focus on because these are thenetworks most frequently accessed by women. The more focused your efforts, the mbore successful your social media marketing campaign will be.

4. Invest in social advertisements

The fastest way to build a strong following on a network like Facebook is with paid advertising. Facebook Like ads can grow your following, while Promoted post ads can boost engagement on your best content.

Facebook advertising is still relatively low-cost, especially if you’re advertising to an audience in India. For just a few rupees a click, you can grow your network to thousands of targeted fans and followers.

On Twitter and Pinterest, it is still easy to build a following without advertising. But if you’re in a hurry to grow your numbers and get your startup in front of more people, explore Twitters follower ads and Pinterest’s Promoted Pinsoptions.

Set aside a budget for social media advertising and you will be able to build a strong social media follower base in a much shorter time.

5. Start a blog and post regularly

While your social media profiles are your outreach posts, I highly recommend that you make your blog the hub of your social presence. Publishing a regular blog is great for SEO, and also provides you with original content to post on your social networks.

Make sure your blog is setup to capture leads and emails from blog subscribers. There’s no point sending traffic to your blog, if you’re not generating targeted leads that you can add to a follow-up email campaign.

Your blog is an essential component of your sales funnel, so invest some time and effort in publishing posts that target the challenges and pain points of your buyer personas.

Publish content in multiple formats, like video, infographics and PPT (Slideshare) to reach those customers who prefer consuming content in these formats. Spend some time learning how to make your content stand out from the clutter.

6. Invest in social customer service

Social customer service is such an important aspect of social media today, that it’s no longer an option whether you should invest in it or not.

On average, 40 percent of customers complaining on social media expect a response within an hour, and 32 percent expect a response within 30 minutes. It would be wise to hire a dedicated social media manager to answer queries immediately.

Social networks like Facebook have even introduced features that display how quickly customers can expect a response from their favorite pages. If you respond to 90% of messages and maintain a median response time of 5 minutes for all replies sent, your page will qualify for a “very responsive to messages” icon.

As a new startup, you can build an advantage over more established competitors if you show your fans that you are super responsive to their queries and concerns.

Facebook also allows Page admins to reply to comments left on their Page with private messages. This can help you respond to personal requests and handle customer-specific information more effectively.

Facebook’s “Saved Replies” feature gives you the ability to use canned messages when communicating with potential customers on your page. This can help you cut down on the time you spend responding to frequently asked questions.

On Twitter, response times have to be quick, or else customers are likely to complain and spread negativity about your brand. To learn how to create a social customer service program that gets results, read the 2015 Definitive Guide to Social Customer Service.

7. Hold contests and promotions

The best way for a new startup to build visibility and buzz on social media is with the help of contests and promotions. Offering free versions of your products, discounts, or prizes, can help you get a lot of new followers and fans in a short amount of time.

Spend some time coming up with a creative idea for your contest. Use videos to announce your contest, and upload your videos directly to Facebook, so you can benefit from the viral nature of Facebook shares.

Use social ads to advertise your contests and promotions to a targeted audience of buyers. Contests and promotions can create a lot of positive publicity and word of mouth for your brand on social media. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1m7mazL

Your daily updates of Fresh Ideas.

7 Strategies This Loud Digital Marketer Used to Reach More Than 300,000 Subscribers

If you follow digital marketing, Derek Halpern needs no introduction. The insightful, intelligent posts he publishes to his Social Triggers website are so widely recognized that he’s able to boast of more than 300,000 subscribers who anxiously await his updates.

But I wanted to know more about him than just the stats of his success, so I brought him in for an interview. 

Here are seven of the best lessons that came out of our conversation:

1. Never lose your integrity.

Halpern’s first major success was as the owner of a celebrity gossip site that racked up an impressive 40 million visitors a year from 2006 to 2007. The problem was that he dreaded waking up and spending another day making fun of people.

Even though he received a pretty attractive buy-out offer for the site, Halpern eventually shut down the company just to keep his integrity (and his sanity) intact.

2. Own your work.

After shutting down his gossip website, Halpern’s next move was to a Fortune 100 financial company. He stayed on for two and a half years before struggling with the frustration that he wasn’t 100 percent in control of his end results.

Taking ownership of your work is the only way to ensure that it lives up to your standards. If you can’t do that, you’ll find yourself constantly plagued by discontentment and hard-to-overcome challenges.

3. Consistency isn’t key.

Halpern launched his popular Social Triggers website after leaving his financial job and working for a few years as a marketing consultant within a friend’s software company. Upon his entry into a crowded market, however, he quickly realized that the standard “publish often, publish regularly” advice wasn’t going to cut it for his new website. Instead, he decided to focus the majority of his efforts on content promotion.

“If you write a post that 1,000 people read, chances are there’s another 1,000,000 people in the world that could use that exact same article," Halpern says. "So instead of just putting a bunch of content together and hoping something hits, you should focus your time on creating the best article on a certain topic, and then on getting that resource into the hands of as many people as possible.”

4. Apply the 80/20 rule to content creation and promotion.

Ultimately, Halpern wound up spending 20 percent of his time creating content and 80 percent of his time promoting it -- a strategy that led Social Triggers to attract 70,000 subscribers in 16 months. That’s an impressive feat for any blog, but it’s even more impressive when you consider the vast competition he was facing within the noisy digital-marketing space.

For those who are following in his footsteps, Halpern recommends the following schedule:

• Publish one great piece of content every 10 days.
• Spend the next nine days trying to get that content piece into the right hands (what Derek calls the “drafting” technique).
• Spend three to four months building relationships with influencers before asking them to help promote your work.

5. Increase conversions with content upgrades.

Despite the reach of his site and the relationships he’s built, Halpern still invests tens of thousands of dollars each month to promote his content, which means he has to convert that traffic.

One of Halpern’s favorite strategies for increasing on-site conversions involves looking through his site’s analytics to find his most popular posts and adding a content upgrade to them (typically, a free downloadable file that complements the initial article). This helps him capitalize on the traffic he’s already getting with content he’s already created.

6. Be memorable.

Halpern is known for his big personality and his “take no prisoners” attitude. But while he concedes that part of that comes from his natural persona, he does play things up to make his interactions with his website visitors more interesting.

“You very rarely get attention from the public eye by being a little extroverted or a little introverted," Halpern says. "You gain trajectory by being loud and obnoxious and by going a full 10 on whatever it is you want to do to become memorable.”

7. Think beyond productivity.

Finally, when I asked Halpern for his favorite productivity hack, he actually surprised me by arguing that we shouldn’t be so focused on productivity, especially if you’re in a creative role. He sees the two as almost being mutually exclusive and argues that people need to go easier on themselves about their workloads.

“When you give yourself permission to do that, you don’t stress yourself out when you’re not productive, and it frees up time for you to actually be productive,” Halpern says.

Source : http://entm.ag/1WKoUUg

Learn business and marketing tips every day. Download the Fresh Ideas News app now!