Marketing Goes Mobile: The Secret To Successfully Connecting With Consumers

(repost from Entrepreneur byline)

Brand marketing is no longer about getting your logo in front of as many eyeballs as possible. It's about making a connection with consumers. Brands can achieve this by showing personality and creating memorable moments that will grab people's attention.

The way people consume content has fundamentally changed, and as a result, marketing is evolving at unprecedented speeds. From spending an hour reading a magazine and consuming every word and image, to spending just about two seconds per post on Instagram, people’s behavior has changed, and attention has become the most important currency.

The attention economy is fast, furious, and can be perplexing for brands built on traditional marketing tactics. How does a brand keep up? How can they connect with people when their audience is so fickle and fleeting? The answer is simple: mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel, digital marketing strategy aimed at reaching target audiences right where they spend time most- on their devices. Mobile phones are now the most common consumer accessory- everyone has one. And rarely is it not in our hands, or, at the very least, within reaching distance. This is a complete transformation of modern lifestyle. According to a survey by The Media Lab, 99% of the UAE population owns a mobile phone, and of them, 96% own a smartphone. A total of 8.75 million people across the region are active internet users via their mobile phones, with people spending an average of seven hours a day interacting with media through the internet.

When a brand is developing their marketing strategy, it must be mobile-first, or else, they will fail to capture and maintain the attention of consumers. This includes everything from copywriting to creative media, intent behavior, and conversion funnels. Mobile-first must be the primary consideration for every aspect of your strategy.

Does this mean we should turn our backs on traditional advertising? No, but the strategy must evolve in order to stay relevant. Brand marketing is no longer about getting your logo in front of as many eyeballs as possible. It’s about making a connection with consumers. Brands can achieve this by showing personality and creating memorable moments that will grab people’s attention.

Consider, for instance, US delivery platform Postmates and dating app OkCupid, both of whom are still bullish about the billboard space. Their creatives are smart, unique, and drenched in brand personality. Why does it work? Because the content is so good, it’s shared on mobile. These are the kind of ads you snap a photo of to share with friends via WhatsApp, or upload on to Instagram.

Right now, consumers are spending the majority of their passive time on their mobile devices. Here are the top three points to consider when creating a mobile marketing plan for your business:

1. Be data-driven  According to the Marketing Rule of 7, the average person will see a brand seven times before converting. People are bombarded with ads on all platforms at all times. Consumers have ad fatigue and content-induced lack of focus. It is crucial that brands learn to understand their consumers, both existing and future, and use this data to help inform decisions. Too many marketers have an inside-out approach- they push who they want to be, what they want to do, and how they want to communicate, without bothering to really understand their consumers. It’s time to transition to an outside-in approach. Understand who your consumers are, what they do, and how they want to be communicated to. Let your consumers drive your marketing strategy.

2. Make meaningful content With mobile marketing, brands are able to reach audiences across multiple channels, sometimes up to several times in a single day. The Mad Men days are over. Brands need to think in a completely new way about content creation. It’s simply not enough to push high-gloss images with the hope they will connect with consumers. You need to create authentic, relatable content at scale, and on demand. Focus on the why, not the what of your brand. Create bitesized content that can be consumed on-the-go via a mobile phone. Most people skip a YouTube ad as soon as they’re able to, so ensure your message and USPs are clear and present in those first five seconds.

3. Think 360 Make sure your mobile marketing strategy has influence on all customer touchpoints, including post-sales communications and community building. Maintain a clear focus on virality, and turn your customers into an extension of your marketing team. Real customers become advocates, sharing your brand with their inner circle who are more likely to listen to someone they know and trust, and, therefore, convert. Brands must prioritize lifetime value (LTV) over customer acquisition cost (CAC). At Surkus, our core focus is to help businesses connect with their ideal customers through custom activations, tailored to their interests and needs. Through our mobile app, consumers discover brands and try out their offerings, gaining rewards for doing so (free products, cash rebates etc). By controlling the way in which a consumer meets and interacts with their brand, a business can actively encourage loyalty and return customers. They can also derive useful insights and data post-campaign, helping to fuel future digital marketing campaigns.

In essence, with so many options available to people at any given time of the day, the brands that win are those that cut through the noise to create meaningful connections with consumers. Consumers want to feel seen. They want to feel understood. Great marketing is the culmination of memorable touch points across all relevant channels until the consumer finally trusts your brand enough to convert. Mobile marketing and clever content will accomplish this.

A Social Strategy for Social Good During Coronavirus

(repost from Talking Influence byline)

In times of uncertainty, marketers must band together and move forward. Here's how brands can leverage social media and influencers for the betterment of society during times like these.

As the worry surrounding coronavirus continues to socially distance our society, it simultaneously shines a light on the positive power and scale of social media to connect people all over the world – both young and old. Social media is bringing us together in times of anxiety and quarantine, to share our stories and to find moments of joy amidst the chaos.

In the advertising world, while in-store and physical activations may temporarily suffer, the power of social media is stronger than ever as brands seek ways to continue to digitally connect with consumers.

With social power comes social responsibility

Brands have a responsibility to use their influence for good by conveying information that will benefit society in a time of crisis. As key pillars of unity, brands must continue to serve, entertain and inspire their consumers.

Are brands impactfully and authentically leveraging this social influence? Are cleaning brands advising what products are necessary (and how to use them) to most effectively kill germs? Are hand sanitizer brands educating consumers about proper use cases? Are suppliers of non-perishable goods promoting what essentials are best to stock up on during what is becoming a run on our grocery stores? And are these grocery stores spreading accurate information to dispel our concerns that the nation will run out of toilet paper?

If you take a look at Instagram, it’s the consumers, not brands that are leading the positive and inspirational narrative. Brands are missing an opportunity to join the conversation to strengthen their bond with consumers through being present when they’re needed most.

It’s essential brands understand the importance of joining the conversation in a sensitive and thoughtful way that doesn’t come off as self-serving. Below are a few strategies around how brands can use their social influence for social good.

Enter the conversation with resonance and relevance

To start, we are seeing brands scale up their social strategy and capabilities to tastefully enter these critical communications and, above all, deliver messages of education and hope.

The Ad Council is partnering with the White House and ViacomCBS to deliver educational messaging around social distancing across social media, digital streaming platforms and television leveraging the hashtag #AloneTogether.

In the private sector, Postmates is using heart-warming copy in their email marketing to offer free delivery nationwide to encourage consumers to stay home and support local businesses. Target and Whole Foods are allocating opening hours for vulnerable and elderly shoppers. Walgreens is placing caps on high-demand items such as toilet paper. Ford, Hyundai and General Motors have initiated programs to help buyers as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread financial uncertainty. And a Netflix Party Chrome extension is even enabling friends to live chat while remotely watching their favorite series and movies together.

Create the right content

Once you have the capabilities in place, can you position your advertising, through copy or creative, in a way that shows that your brand is in touch by trying to help people find strength and joy in a hard situation? For example, now might be a great time to promote a streaming fitness service so people can still stay at home, stay safe, but workout and feel good about themselves. Barry’s, Hot8 Yoga and Peloton are leveraging social streaming services to offer the public free, on-demand virtual classes to help people stay active and healthy from home.

When it comes to bringing your social strategy to life, engaging influencers that authentically mirror your customers’ needs, wants, and – frankly these days – fears, proves particularly necessary in times of crisis. It puts a human face to your product message, while also striking the right tone when delivering the information your customer needs to hear. Additionally, brands should acknowledge when determining how to activate their influencers that there is a huge audience of people streaming or staring at their devices for the next couple of months hungry for content and activities.

Brands should look at their content and ask some critical questions. Are you driving people with a call-to-action that still promotes social distancing? For example, are you driving people to e-commerce vs. brick and mortar? It’s important that your brand is NOT encouraging behavior that is against COVID-19 suggested protocol.

Write the roadmap, together

Your response depends on your product or service, your message, and authenticity. But regardless, all brands need to make this decision on how to engage and then commit to it, understanding there will be some level of risk involved.

This is the time for brands to focus on purpose over profit and show consumers, desperate for positivity in a time of uncertainty, that their values run deeper than top-line profits. As we are in the thick of a public health crisis with no roadmap and no end in sight, the time to activate social networks for good is now.

In the process, we may just tap into the true authenticity of social media and start using these platforms as the communities they were designed to be. In times of uncertainty, we as marketers can’t stand still, we must band together and move forward.

Introducing GLOW Women's Network

The world’s most impactful businesses are made up of dedicated and hardworking women whose talents, skills and commitments are critical to the company’s success. Although great strides have been made in recent times to uplift women, still, more can be done. Just 4% of Fortune 500 companies are led by a female CEO, and 25% of global businesses have no women in senior management roles.

We founded GLOW in April 2019 with one goal: bring likeminded women together who are all passionate about empowering each other in personal and professional ways. Since launching, we've hosted monthly events and curated a network of nearly 100 highly engaged and influential women in business in LA.

We couldn’t be more honored and excited with how the community has grown and evolved. From helping members find new jobs or pursue a promotion, to imbuing them with the confidence to launch that business they’ve always dreamed of, the community has given women the energy, community and support needed to become their best selves.

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Presentation: Taulia Case Study

Facts tell but stories sell. Creative storytelling is critical for maximizing results. Discover how Taulia uses storytelling and humor in video to disrupt a legacy industry and generate demand.

In this presentation, I discuss how we conceptualized marketing strategies, developed award-winning campaigns, leveraged technology to track and analyze, and used content to drive huge amounts of pipeline - all with only four marketers.

This presentation covers the components of a great brand story, how to create a multi-channel distribution strategy, Taulia’s marketing playbook, analytics dashboard and optimization techniques.

People-to-People: A Different Approach to Enterprise Marketing

(repost from Business 2 Community byline)

Fellow marketers often ask me: is it hard to market into the enterprise, where you have to engage businesses rather than consumers?

My answer is always the same: here at Taulia, we don’t market to businesses, we market to people. In fact, I don’t even like to use the phrase “business-to-business.”

Why? When you use that word, it’s easy to lose sight of what makes up a business: people. A business is faceless; it doesn’t have emotions and a personality, it doesn’t stay up at night worrying about the bottom line and strategizing best-business-practices to stay competitive. It’s a shell, a logo. A vehicle for innovation, for innovative people. If you think of potential customers as businesses, and not as individual people, you’ve already lost.

That’s why every time we produce any type of content, for any stage in the funnel, whether it be humorous videos, email messages, or ads, we focus on the individual person who we’re creating the content for. Understand their individual needs, preferences and pain-points; what drives them, what keeps them up at night and what they want to accomplish, and then map your company’s benefits directly to their motivations.

After mapping the benefits, it is absolutely key, regardless of where the person is in the funnel, to simplify your message and give your brand a personality.

As a marketer, differentiation is key, and we’ve found that the most effective way to do this is by making messages funny, and ultimately, making your brand likeable. All people have a sense of humor and a natural attraction to not only likeable people, but likeable content, companies and brands. After making your audience comfortable by being creative and unique, you then you need to build trust through valuable, credible content. We find that letting our customers and products speak for themselves is a great way to build credibility, but I’ll save that for another post.

Marketing is about understanding what motivates and drives people. Your potential customer likely doesn’t wake up thinking about the product you’re trying to sell them. So it’s important to think about who they are personally, because that will help you understand what they do wake up thinking about—and will inform you about the best way to appeal to them. And remember: you’re not marketing from “business-to-business,” you’re marketing from “people-to-people”