Snapchat: The King of Millennial Micro-Moments

In 2015, Snapchat put the world on notice that the app is an advertising force to be reckoned with — maybe theadvertising force to be reckoned with. Named Adweek‘s hottest digital brand, Snapchat commanded a reported $750,000 for brands to place ads, and the millennial darling reported more than 6 billion videos daily. Snapchat will become even bigger in 2016 as brands learn how to apply the app to create micro-moments for the surging millennial population.

Snapchat has accomplished something nearly impossible: opening its door to brands while retaining its essential coolness among a loyal user base composed largely of millennials. In fact, big brands climbing onto the Snapchat bandwagon may have helped the app transcend a reputation as the go-to platform for sharing racy photos. Here are some of my favorite examples of brands that relied on Snapchat to increase their own coolness quotient:

• McDonald’s became the first brand to sign up for a sponsored geofilter, or a special content overlay (akin to a digital sticker placed on Snapchat photos and videos) that can be accessed only at certain locations. Customers across the brand’s 14,000 U.S. restaurants could decorate their Snapchat images with playful illustrations of fries and double cheeseburgers, creating tremendous engagement for a brand that needs it.

• Dunkin’ Donuts took the geofilter ad concept a step further to generate demand by offering free cups of coffee on National Coffee Day (September 29). Snapchat users who clicked on a geofilter of raining coffee beans could get a free medium cup of coffee, but they had to unlock the image either at or near a Dunkin’ Donuts store to get their coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts also used Snapchat to run video ads on the ESPN Discovery Story on Snapchat as part of its sponsorship of ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown.

• In November, Sony Pictures Entertainment made innovative use of Snapchat Discover channels, which consist of dedicated content for publishers such as CNN and Mashable. Sony launched a temporary channel devoted exclusively to the movie Spectre as part of a worldwide marketing blitz to promote the 24th official James Bond movie. The channel consisted of behind-the-scenes content (such as photos from different shoot sites) shared across 17 countries. The exclusive nature of the information shared made Spectre exist comfortably alongside all the publishing-oriented channels.

These three brands are all using Snapchat to capitalize on “micro-moments,” which Google defines as real-time moments of consumer discovery that occur on mobile devices. Micro-moments are little touch points that can add up to big moments for brands who are present with compelling content when consumers are on their mobile phones to find places to go and things to do.

Google characterizes micro-moments as “the new battleground for brands.” In a seminal report,Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile, Google notes that we check our phones 150 times a day. Brands have an opportunity to create contextually relevant content that will engage consumers when we’re checking our phones to perform tasks. Writes Google:

Thanks go mobile, micro-moments can happen anytime, anywhere. In those moments, consumers expect brands to address their need with real-time relevance.

What Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, and Sony realize is that millennials are creating more and more of those micro-moments. In 2015, millennials surpassed baby boomers as the largest share of the U.S. voting population. As Google notes, 87 percent of millennials always have their smartphones at their side.

In recent weeks, Snapchat has made it easier for brands to create micro-moments through micro targeting. Snapchat has been offering “audience bundles,” or users grouped by different themes such as “world news and culture-themed package.” The themes correspond to readers of different media such as Mashable and CNN that have Snapchat sections. According to Adweek, Snapchat can already target content by gender and for users over the ages of 18 and 21.

Given the size and influence of the millennial population, Snapchat becomes an increasingly important option for brands. Businesses that want to capitalize on Snapchat would do well to:

• Be contextually relevant. Content that strikes the wrong tone and fails to engage in a playful way will fail. Many other brands besides the ones I’ve cited have learned how to create contextual content on Snapchat, including Taco Bell, which does an excellent job gamifying Snapchat on special occasions such as Valentine’s Day.

• Create “next moments,” or actions that occur after a brand and a consumer find each other. Dunkin’ Donuts created a next moment by encouraging Snapchat users to walk into its stores and receive a free cup of coffee.

As Snapchat builds out its targeting capabilities to justify its advertising rates, I believe next moments represent a huge opportunity for brands on Snapchat in 2016. Enterprise brands with multiple locations can and should tap into the Snapchat geo-filtering feature to create customers at the local level. So long as businesses stay focused on creating the right kind of contextual content, brands will win and so will Snapchat.

Jay Hawkinson is a digital marketing professional with 20 years of sales, marketing and merchandising experience including organic search optimization, paid search advertising, local search, mobile and social media. Jay joined SIM Partners in 2006 as an equity partner and currently oversees mobile, social media and emerging technology at SIM Partners as the senior vice president of social and emerging products. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1Pah3q6

5 Marketing and Branding Tips to Scale Your Online Business

Scaling an online business isn’t rocket science -- it’s actually much easier than many people believe. When you combine a winning product or service and a solid foundation to build on, the sky’s the limit. 

Use these five simple marketing and branding tips to help you scale your online business and experience increased growth.

1. Make it ridiculously easy for your customers to buy your product or service.

It’s amazing how many businesses make prospects jump through multiple hoops in order to make a purchase -- my own marketing agency was guilty of this as well, until recently. While our main offering is custom-tailored online-marketing consulting, we also offer several à la carte services.

The problem was that, previously, a prospect had to contact us via phone or our website to order one of these stand-alone services. When we did a little digging, we found that the majority of these inquiries didn’t require any selling -- people simply wanted to make a purchase.

So, we made a switch, making it easy for prospects to purchase these à la carte services directly from our website. And the results have been great so far: Sales are up since we eliminated that previous hoop that a prospect once had to jump through. 

Experiment with eliminating steps and making changes that create a ridiculously easy path to purchase. 

2. Track every conversion metric humanly possible. 

You have to know your numbers -- if you don’t know, down to the penny, how much it costs you to generate leads and sales, you will crash and burn.

Cost-per-lead (CPL): You need to know how much it costs to generate every form of lead, from email submits to phone calls. A blended CPL won’t work -- you need to be as specific as possible. If you are able to generate email leads for $1 each and phone leads are costing you $8 each, but converting at the same rate, wouldn’t it be wise to push all of your effort into producing more email leads? 

Cost-per-sale (CPS): All of your data works together. For example, your conversion rates and cost-per-lead are going to help you determine what each sale is costing you. Business 101 tells us that if the CPS, plus cost of goods sold, is lower than the sales price, it's profitable. But you need to dive a bit deeper. Where are you pulling the lowest CPS from? Can you open up the faucet to generate more sales from that avenue? 

You need to also know what your different landing pages are converting at and where your top-performing lead sources are. You are never going to find a winning combination that you can “set and forget” -- constant monitoring and optimizing are required.

3. Seek out media exposure to highlight your expertise.

Getting yourself and your brand out there is crucial if you want to scale. There are plenty of opportunities to score free media exposure if you are willing to put in a little work. 

If you aren’t already registered with Help a Reporter Out, or HARO for short, do that now. With more than 35,000 journalists seeking insights from experts, there is a very good chance you will come across several exposure opportunities if you put in the effort. Consistency is key if you want to find success using this strategy.

HARO sends out three emails daily, full of opportunities. Many people read through them for a few days and then give up if an opportunity doesn’t fall into their lap. Don't let this be you.

Instead, stick it out and put some effort into your responses -- journalists receive hundreds of replies to each request, so you are going to need to stand out. Make sure you avoid making these stupid press outreach mistakes.

4. Set up email automation sequences to nurture, promote and convert 24/7.

Every type of business can use email automation. Restaurants can build a list that automatically sends out ecoupons for specials and discounts on notoriously slow days to drive foot traffic. Ecommerce stores can create segmented lists and send special offers to customers based on their previous purchase habits.

Information products can capture an email address and automatically market to that prospect, sending enticing information and discounts, until that prospect pulls out his or her credit card and converts.

Just like every other form of online marketing, email automation requires extensive split testing and constant optimization, but when you fine-tune your efforts, email automation creates a system that promotes, nurtures and converts sales 24/7 -- even while you sleep.

5. Maintain consistent social media branding and cross promote.

Social media is such a powerful branding tool, and it’s important that you think about the big picture when establishing social accounts for your business. Using the same handle on every platform makes it easy for your customers to connect with you across all of the channels they are active on.

It will benefit you greatly if you use a handle that’s easy to remember and available on all of the networks you will be actively promoting on. For example, I use the same handle for my personal brand on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

You should also be cross-promoting your social media accounts in an effort to get your audience connected on as many platforms as possible. Someone following your brand on Twitter might not be connected on Facebook, which could be his or her preferred social network. A simple “Make sure to connect with us on Facebook” tweet could get people to like your Facebook page and then engage with a future Facebook post, leading to that hoped-for conversion.

Source : http://entm.ag/1OKErKB

7 STEPS FOR AN EFFECTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PLAN

With 2016 under way, one thing is clear: social media is now a vital marketing channel for businesses of all sizes. The common question a few years ago, “why should our business use social media?”, is now being replaced with, “how can our business grow with social media marketing?”.

As a social media marketer, this makes me very excited. What doesn’t make me excited is how many businesses are still trying to market on social media without a documentedstrategy. In this post you will learn the seven steps your business must take to create an effective social media marketing strategy.

STEP 1: AUDIT YOUR CURRENT SOCIAL PRESENCE

“Know thyself. Know the customer. Innovate.” – Beth Comstock

Before you strategize about where you are headed, take a quick look at where you are. A few areas to consider when auditing your business’s social media presence are:

• Which networks are you currently active on
• Are your networks optimized (photo and cover images, bio, URL, etc.)
• Which networks are currently bringing you the most value
• How do your profiles compare to your competitors’ profiles

STEP 2: DOCUMENT WHO YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER IS

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker

You will want to get as specific as possible with this part. For example, if you identified your target market as parents it would be ok. However, if you identify your ideal customer as a parent that lives in the United States, is between 30 and 50 years of age, earns over $70,000, primarily uses Facebook and has an interest in outdoors activities you will have much more success.

Even the best marketers will fail if they are marketing to the wrong audience. Answer the following questions to help you come up with a highly focused buyer persona:

• Age
• Location
• Job Title
• Income
• Pain Points (that your business can solve)
• Most Used Social Network

STEP 3: CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA MISSION STATEMENT

“What makes you weird, makes you unique and therefore makes you stand out.” – Dan Schawbel

Your social media mission statement will drive your future actions, so make sure you put some thought into it. This statement will make it clear exactly what you plan to use your social media presence for and should reflect your brand identity. Keep in mind your ideal customer when trying to create this statement.

An example mission statement might be “to use social media to educate current and potential customers about digital marketing, with a focus on social media marketing.” Once you have this statement documented, it will make it simple for you to decide what to share and create.

If it doesn’t align with your mission statement, forget about it. Businesses that post randomly without a guiding mission will fail. People follow experts, not generalists.

STEP 4: IDENTIFY KEY SUCCESS METRICS

“If you cannot measure it you cannot improve it.” – Lord Kelvin

How will you determine if your social media marketing efforts are successful? I am not just talking about gaining more followers, I am talking about making money. Afterall, it is hard to rationalize spending time and money on something that isn’t improving the bottom line.

A few metrics to consider measuring are:

• Conversion Rate
• Time Spent on Website
• Reach
• Brand Mentions
• Sentiment
• Total Shares

STEP 5: CREATE AND CURATE ENGAGING CONTENT

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet.” – Bill Gates

Sadly, many businesses jump straight to this step. Hopefully this post has made it clear that there are several vital steps that you must take before you start creating and curating engaging content to share on your social media channels.

Let’s now discuss the fun part, posting to social media. You know who your ideal customer is and you used that information to create your social media mission statement. Armed with this information it should be easy for you to begin creating and curating content. So, what exactly is considered content? Here are a few examples of content you could create:

• Images
• Videos
• Blog Posts
• Company News
• Infographics
• eBooks
• Interviews

The list of content ideas goes on and on, but make sure you focus only on forms of content that align with your mission statement, as well as your skill set. Content is what fuels social media, so it is crucial that you consider creating high quality, engaging content as a top priority.

I strongly recommend that you create a content calendar that outlines how often you will post to each network, which topics you will share and when you will share them.

STEP 6: INVEST IN A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT TOOL

“We live in times in which ordinary people can do amazing things using the right tools”

Most marketers have a secret, they leverage tools to boost their productivity. Ok, maybe it isn’t a secret, but without tools marketers would face constant burnout (many do even with tools). When it comes to social media, having a social media management tool allows you to scale your efforts with ease.

One of the main benefits of a social media management tool is the ability to schedule posts ahead of time. Remember that content calendar you created? Make sure your scheduled posts in your social media management tool align with your content calendar.

“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” – Ronald Coase

This may be the most important step when it comes to succeeding on social media. Even the best social media marketers rely on trial and error. It might seem basic, but tracking your results, analyzing the data and then making tweaks to optimize them is crucial.

Each previous step should be re-evaluated after you have had time to analyze the results of your marketing efforts. Let the data drive you. If it is telling you Facebook or Twitter is your most effective channel, consider doubling down.

A great social media strategy is never set in stone. It is a constant work in progress that changes when necessary. So get out there, create a strategy and start optimizing it as you continue to grow and learn more about your business and your audience.

Source : http://bit.ly/1ZvS857

Simply Fresh !

Web Design Trends of 2016.

Web design is constantly changing. Even the hottest trends of 2015 may not survive in 2016 – a saddening fact that we will call the circle of life.

But the good news is that the internet is still evolving and developing. Fresh and new ideas are always popping around us. If you would like to know the web design trends of 2016 then just continue reading.

1- Motion Animation

Did that photo just moved now? No need to check your eyes. Those subtle animations that make you to look again are called cinemagraphs and they are the new trend in web design. Cinemagraphs are a series of videos or images edited into a continuous loop.

Cinemagraphs in other words, can be said as a mix of photographs and video- which gives us the benefits of motion storytelling, all without buffering. When you look at how Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck, the two photographers who invented the term “cinemagraph,” use this trend in their website design, you can see that they have a background picture of Paris on constant loop and that the entire cinemagraph is less than 3 megabytes only. This even shows that you can load cinemagraphs on your mobile device.

If you want to know how to do cinemagraphs through Photoshop then here’s an awesome tutorial.

2- Background Video

Although cinemagraphs are great, don’t overlook the beauty of background video, which got into this list before.

While I love cinemagraphs, they are quite difficult to produce – it takes some sweat, tears and blood to produce those three seconds of beauty. However with background video there is minimal effort or error. Watch The Go Go Boys:

Notice how the background video changes between multiple mini-scenes. These background videos help brands to share their unique stories in a way that go beyond still photos.

3- Friendly Micro-Experiences

Internet in the early years was so impersonal. Words and phrases like “fatal error,” “submit,” and “invalid input” didn’t help things. Everything was functional and not very good … or human.

But fortunately nowadays the trend is moving towards human and user friendly experiences. It’s completely okay to add some humor and flair into your website. Creating “micro experiences” or playful little moments on your site will delight your visitor and encourage them to engage more.

Sprinkling personality throughout your website is what will make you stand apart from your competitors. Don’t be reluctant to use everyday language to humanize your brand.

4- Parallax Scrolling

If you have played an old school Nintendo game, then probably you are familiar with parallax. Parallax is the visual effect that you see when the background image moves slowly than the foreground image. It creates a sense of depth, which is really great because you are looking at a 2D screen. For example, check out this game of pet prince Borisz Kutya:

5- Smoother Opt-Ins

Opt-ins of the pop-up variety is really annoying right? Yes and no. If you are researching all day like I do then it can be annoying, but if you are a casual surfer like most, then it can serve as an effective way to get information freely. An opt-in that pops up when you are reading something may be unsolicited, but that doesn’t mean that it is not welcome.

Pop-ups are not the only type of opt-ins trending these days but applications like Welcome Mat helps you to customize it with images or video to make your visitors feel special.

6- Illustrations

One of the more pleasant design trends is illustration. Instead of photos and videos there is also a move towards including hand-drawn doodles, even if they are done in Photoshop. This type of illustration is unpretentious and folksy. It is an alternate to the digitizing of the web.

7- Mobile-Friendly Design

In April this year Google made a decree that all websites should be mobile-friendly if they want to rank higher in search engines. And that brought about the death of Pinch to zoom.

This is actually a good thing because 50% of the people use mobile to access the internet as against desktop computer. Chances are, a large portion of your users are visiting your website through their tablets and smartphones. Are you making them to double tap and struggle? So if you don’t want to lose your users to your mobile-friendly competitors, then make your site mobile-friendly.

Get Ready for 2016

Web design is fluid. One year something is hot and the next year it is a cold leftover but you don’t have to keep up with all the trends instead follow what is best for you. In this way you will both feel comfortable as well as satisfied.

Source : http://bit.ly/1mZFyPA

The Secret to Predicting Startup Success in 2016

When it comes to investing in startups, one thing is clear ... nobody knows the outcome. This can change that.

What's the best way to measure a startup?

Profit is non-existent for most startups. Even revenue can be elusive at the early stages. And what's the magic number for users or customers? 100? 10,000? 100,000?

In the book Startup Wealth: How the Best Angel Investors Make Money in Startups, Josh Maher interviews many legendary investors including Brad Feld, Mark Suster, Catherine Mott, Christopher Mirabile, Allan May, Joanne Wilson, and more. What heuristics did they use to know whether or not to invest in a startup?

Right now the answer is all over the board. There are no standards. Some people invest purely based on their relationship with the founders and do little to no due diligence. Others spend months or even years tracking a startup before taking the plunge.

I'd argue that Net Promoter Score (NPS) should be a required foundational metric behind measuring startups of every size. If you are a startup founder, it should be used as a KPI. If you are an angel investor, you should request it for due diligence. And if you are a venture capitalist, you should be requesting your entire portfolio to be reporting NPS figures to you.

Here's why:

Universal Applicability

Whether you are running a consulting company or a high tech mobile app... whether you have just one customer or tens of thousands ... whether you have no revenue or millions in profit ... you can still run NPS campaigns.

That's because fundamentally all businesses have customers. Even if you don't have revenue yet (maybe you are still building out your user base) you still have users. And with users you can have an NPS score.

With NPS, you ask just one question: How likely (from 0 to 10) are you to recommend my product or service to a friend or colleague? As long as you have some kind of product or service, you can measure NPS.

This makes NPS an ideal key performance indicator if you are trying to evaluate a startup.

TIP #1: Don't fret about the exact score.

If your potential investment is running an NPS campaign for the first time, the chances are that their score is not going to be that great. Many products find that their first score is not what they expect. That's what makes NPS such a powerful survey technique. It gives you an honest assessment of how well you are turning users into fans.

You might be hoping that they are in the high +70's like Apple. But as long as they are positive (and not net-negative), it should not be raising any big red flags at this point.

(After all, the real power of NPS is in the follow-up process)

The score is just a starting point on a journey.

So if you aren't overly concerned with the NPS score, how do you use NPS as a metric for evaluating a startup? Good question! That brings us to our second point.

Honest Customer Feedback

Most investors ask for customer references as part of the diligence process before investing. But this has always confused me. Whenever you ask for a reference, the people given as references are intrinsically likely to tell you good things, since they are often friends with the person in the first place.

But ideally, you would want a way to get a more critical eye for some honest customer feedback rather than just talking to the one or two best references that a startup can provide you.

If you have an NPS campaign as part of due diligence, spend most of your time evaluating the individual responses rather than obsessing about the overall score. And if you are not given all the individual responses, insist on seeing them.

The second question in a NPS survey is: What was the biggest reason for having given that score?

This open-ended question lets customers praise and vent about what they care about most. Reading through these responses will give you the most independent and honest feedback you can get when evaluating a startup.

Often, these responses will include the best and worst of a startup. People who love the service will tell you why they love it. People who are having trouble with the service will tell you why they are having trouble. Those problem areas can then be used as starting points for further diligence.

Many people underestimate how powerful NPS is, especially because it is so simple to implement with just two quick questions. But done correctly, these two questions really are the only two questions that need to be asked.

Implicit Accountability

Although I've already said that the first NPS score doesn't matter, I don't want you to come away with the impression that none of the NPS scores matter.

In fact, tracking NPS scores over time is a fantastic way to audit that progress is being made to improve the product or service.

After the first NPS campaign, you will know the top three biggest problem areas. The next time an NPS campaign is sent, if the same problems come up again in the same frequency (or worse), then it is a sign that something is deeply wrong.

Ideally, as an investor in startups, you should be able to keep track of all your portfolio's NPS scores over time. Comparing them to each other is a possible way to keep an eye on the investments that might need more of your attention. However, a better indicator is to make sure that all of your portfolio's NPS scores are steadily improving over time.

No other score that I know of can provide this kind of warning system no matter the underlying business model or source of revenue. NPS gives you a tool that uniquely can predict breakout success or imminent failure for venture capitalists.

 

Implementing NPS as a key performance indicator can easily be done whether you are a startup founder, an angel investor or a venture capitalist. And done properly, the results can be amazing. For example, after we implemented just one sales technique into our NPS process at Promoter.io, we were able to increase MRR by 32%. You can even use NPS to drive a marketing campaign. So add this tool to your diligence worksheet and ensure that all the startups you work with start tracking it today.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OCrAt6