Twitter’s Tailored Suggestions: A Blessing or a Curse?

Twitter announced last week that the site will soon start tracking its users browsing activity outside of the site in order to provide what they call “tailored suggestions.” The goal, according to Twitter, is to help you (the user) find more relevant people to follow. It’s obvious, however, that the move is also geared toward making Twitter a more attractive site for advertisers.

This change is exciting for most marketers. After all, the more data Twitter can pull in about its users, the more accurately we can target the customers we want to reach. In the B2B realm, where data about our targets’ activity on sites like Google could tell us a great deal about the buying decisions they’re in the process of making, this change could be especially impactful. But we can’t help but wonder whether Twitter users drive users away who feel that this is an intrusion on their privacy. What’s your take?

Marketing Mantras from The Art of Marketing Conference – Part Four

It’s been a couple weeks since the Art of Marketing conference, but our minds are still buzzing with great ideas and inspiration from the speakers. We have really enjoyed sharing some of these ideas with you as part of our marketing mantras series. Last week, we shared our thoughts on the importance of social media as a two-way conversation. Before that, we discussed metrics and relationships. Today, we’d like to close off our marketing mantras series with mantra #4: Be different.

Several Art of Marketing speakers cited this crazy statistic: As a human race, we create as much content every 48 hours as we did from the dawn of man through 2003. Talk about information overload. So how do you stand out? You do something different.

All of the speakers touched on this idea, but no one expressed it as well as Seth Godin. He said that most marketers are stuck on the idea of reaching what he called “the boring middle.” They run ads that reach everyone and try to make their products things that everyone will want. But the truth is, there are very few products that appeal to the masses. Technology has facilitated the birth of niche groups who want unique things sold to them in unique ways. If we leverage this opportunity correctly, niches can be far more profitable for marketers than the boring middle. Today’s marketer must be adept at identifying these niches, making something original for them, and showing them how it will add value to their lives. It’s really as simple as that. So tell us, what are you doing to be different?

Image via Always Alice.

Making the Move Into Mobile

Mobile has been an especially popular topic among marketers since Facebook announced their $1 billion acquisition of mobile photo app Instagram a few weeks ago. As Mashable reported, it has become increasingly clear that mobile is where the money is. But where should you focus their mobile marketing dollars? Here are the top three areas we recommend.

Your mobile site. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re missing a huge group of potential customers. Mobile browsing is expected to outpace desktop browsing by 2014, so your site should be just as user friendly on a mobile device as it is on a computer (if not more so). This doesn’t mean simply making sure your regular site can appear on a mobile device. Want to learn what it takes to design a great mobile site? Check out this Get There post.

A mobile app. Not every brand needs a mobile app. However, if your customers spend a lot of time away from their desks, and you can package a common task related to your product or service as an app, the rewards can be great

A mobile ad. Mobile advertising has come a long way. Simple display units used to be the only real option in the mobile ad space, but thanks to advancements in our mobile devices, we now have the opportunity to run rich media ads, SMS message ads and everything in between. As “pay with your phone” services like Google Wallet take off, mobile advertising is likely to become even more exciting.

Where are you placing your bets in mobile?

Image via Mobile+Local

Marketing Mantras from The Art of Marketing Conference – Part Three

Are you (or any of the clients you work with) hesitant about jumping into social media because you don’t know what to say? If the answer is “yes,” then Gary Vaynerchuk, who we saw speak at The Art of Marketing Conference, would say you’re approaching it all wrong. Instead of broadcasting information and talking about yourself, Gary would tell you to listen to your customers, respond to what they’re saying, offer to help them, and thank them for their business in unique and personal ways. That brings us to the next mantra in our marketing mantras series.

Marketing Mantra #3: Social media is a two-way conversation. 

We could elaborate on this ourselves, but with his enthusiastic speaking style and penchant for dropping the occasional swear word into his presentations, we thought Gary might be more exciting to watch.

Check out this video for Gary’s suggestions on maximizing the potential of social media through conversation and a simple thank you. You can find the other posts in our Marketing Mantras series here.

Why social advertising will win

Last week, news broke that social media advertising had surpassed search and would soon overtake display as the area of highest media spending among advertisers in the United States.

Some people might be surprised, but we’re simply wondering what took so long. Social advertising offers several key benefits that make it an especially smart choice for advertisers who want to maximize the ROI of their media buys. It’s about time marketers took notice! Here are just a few of the reasons we love social advertising:

• Narrow targeting – When we sign up to use a social network, we typically provide a good deal of information about ourselves to the site. For example, we might tell Facebook how old we are, where we went to school and what we like to do in our free time (by filling out the hobbies section). Social networks can then turn this data into filters through which advertisers can target their ads. Want to reach only self-proclaimed fly fishing aficionados in the Pacific Northwest or newly engaged 22–30 year olds in Illinois? Facebook makes it possible. Other social networks are also targeting their ads in similar ways based on intelligence about their users.
• Relevance – The amount of personal information we share with the social networks we use also allows the sites to serve us highly relevant ads. For example, after changing my status from “Student at The University of Wisconsin,” to “Alumni of The University of Wisconsin,” Facebook began serving me ads for a variety of companies that were hiring in Wisconsin and the Midwest.
• Shareability – Social ads are viral by nature. Let’s take Twitter’s promoted tweets as an example. When a company sends a promoted tweet, it shows up within a user’s stream as if it was sent from one of their friends or connections. The user then has the ability to retweet the promoted tweet to their followers, and greatly increase the reach of the message. Well-crafted promoted tweets from major companies have reportedly been retweeted upwards of 18,000 times.

As social media sites grow, their advertising platforms are likely to become even more advanced. We can’t wait to see what’s next. Have you made social media a key component of your media plan for 2012?

Sentiment Analysis as a Digital Metric

While we’re on the topic of rethinking how we approach metrics, we can’t help but mention this great article on sentiment analysis that Kevin Randall, our Director of Brand Strategy and Research, wrote back in 2008. Sure, turning our attention to metrics like conversation rate, amplification rate and applause rate like Avinash Kaushik recommends could revolutionize the way marketers look at social media measurement. But we think these metrics could be even more powerful when used in conjunction with sentiment analysis, which Kevin delves into in the article. Kevin was inarguably ahead of his time to recognize the importance of sentiment analysis back in 2008. Now that a few years have passed since his article was written, we’d love to know: are you incorporating sentiment analysis into your metrics plan? How else are you measuring the results of your social media efforts?

Marketing Mantras from The Art of Marketing Conference – Part Two

On Monday, we shared the first of a series of “marketing mantras,” or big ideas about the future of marketing that we took away from last week’s Art of Marketing Conference. Let’s keep the series rolling today with a big idea about metrics.

Marketing Mantra #2: Metrics Matter (and we might not be measuring the right ones)

Metrics have always been an important part of our business. However, as the media environment has changed, so has the process of measuring results. We’re now swimming in more data than ever before, and unless we can figure out how to make sense of it, we can easily drown.

Art of Marketing speaker and Google employee Avinash Kaushik thinks we’re approaching digital marketing metrics from the wrong angle. We’re trying to adapt traditional metrics to fit new media, and it simply isn’t working. To compensate, many marketers pull more numbers than they know what to do with and simply become overwhelmed. Instead of measuring impressions, page views, followers and friends, Avinash recommends we look at conversation rate, amplification rate, applause rate and economic value per visitor. He even directed us to a handy tool called True Social Metrics that makes generating these numbers fairly simple and straightforward.

Though his presentation wasn’t as heavy on metrics-related content, Gary Vaynerchuk echoed Avinash Kaushik’s idea that we need to reassess our priorities when it comes to metrics. Instead of counting fans and followers, he recommends we get to know our online communities so that we are capable of assessing and growing their value. We’ve been moving toward this approach for a while now, but Avinash and Gary gave us the extra push we needed to re-evaluate how we measure success in social media.

Marketing Mantras from The Art of Marketing Conference – Part One

Last week, we spent a day at the Art of Marketing Conference learning from some of the most highly influential voices in the field: Keith Ferrazzi, Avinash Kaushik, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mitch Joel and Randi Zuckerberg.

Each of the speakers brought a unique perspective to the table, but there were some common threads between their presentations that we think all marketers need to pay attention to. Call them marketing mantras, if you will. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing a few of the top ideas that we took away from the conference and plan to incorporate into our work.

Marketing Mantra #1: Relationships Rule

We all know that the Internet has profoundly changed our field, but we sometimes fail to realize how much it has affected the expectations of our customers. Until recently, marketing was primarily a one-way activity. Advertisers were the senders and consumers were the receivers. Thanks to the Internet and social media, that’s no longer the case. Consumers now have the opportunity to interact directly with brands, and they expect companies to engage them in real, meaningful ways.

Building relationships is more important than ever before. Keith Ferrazzi recommended that we all stay on top of our game by developing what he calls a “people plan.” He suggested identifying the 25 most important people to the future of your company or brand for the year, and then focusing to build strong relationships with them. Seth Godin developed this concept on the idea of tribes that he has written about in several of his books, and recommended that we all focus on that small, niche group of people who will come together around the unique value our brands offer. Gary Vaynerchuk recommended that we start listening to our consumers in social media, learning about their lives and then interacting with each of them on a one-on-one basis. These are slightly different ways to look at the task of relationship building, but they all emphasize the fact that strong relationships are the mark of a strong brand.

You’ll find the rest of our Marketing Mantras posts here.

Do you know the communication style of your target customer?

Have you ever taken the DiSC, CSS or other similar communication style/personality assessment? Many of us took the CSS last week, and while the assessment uncovered some interesting insights about our own personalities, it also got us thinking about how we communicate with our clients’ target customers.

The CSS (Communication Style Survey) classifies respondents into four primary styles: thinkers, feelers, sensors and intuitors. While the test is meant to help us understand our personal styles, it also gives us a great deal of information about how to best communicate with people who are in other categories than our own. For example, in taking the test, we learned that most thinkers can never get enough facts and details, while sensors prefer to receive just topline information that gets straight to the point.

While the CSS says that only those who take the test themselves can truly identify their communication style, it’s often pretty easy to categorize people  we know into one of the four groups based on the descriptions. It’s also common to find people with certain communication styles working in particular professions. For example, CEOs of major companies are likely to be intuitors, while small business owners are likely to be sensors and nurses are likely to be feelers.  This could be incredibly useful from a B2B marketing perspective. It means that, as long as we truly understand our target customer, we should be able to make a pretty good guess about the communication style they prefer, and then tailor our communications accordingly. If we’re dealing with a group of thinkers, we may choose to present information in detailed charts and graphs, while we might choose to use creative visualizations of information for intuitors. What do you think? Could making an educated guess about the communication styles of our target customers have a positive impact on marketing?

Image via First Capital Internet Marketing Consultants.