At present, the number of people using Snapchat, while growing, is dwarfed by similar figures for Facebook and Instagram. Snapchat also shows the greatest of age-wise disparity among the major social media platforms, as its usage is clearly higher among young adults and those below thirty years of age. As per marketing research conducted by the Morning Consult, Facebook users number just short of a billion and a half, while Instagram which is also now owned by Facebook stands at five-hundred million daily active users. But there is nothing to despair for Snapchat, because it is by far the newest of the lot, and only went public in 2016. On the contrary, Snapchat has seen the highest rise, pegged at double digits. In a bid towards expansion, Snap must not make the mistake of purely adding numbers. The exclusivity is exactly what gives Snapchat is unique allure. The same study by Morning Consult, shows how Facebook is by far the largest tool for maintaining friendships, relations, business contacts or for following brands. Snapchat fares poorly in the last two, but better in the former, quite the opposite if Twitter or LinkedIn. Brands still find Facebook as the best medium for digital marketing due to its vast reach across age groups, but Snapchat appeals to those under the age of thirty, so being increasingly tapped into.

Source:https://morningconsult.com/2018/02/26/how-adding-users-could-backfire-for-snapchat/

Uploaded Date:12 March 2018

A study was recently conducted jointly by SAP, Shift Thinking and Siegel + Gale to understand what makes brands click in the ongoing digital age, as opposed to an earlier generation. It was found out that traditional brands try to position their brands in the minds of the customers, while digital natives positioned their brands in their lives. The former focused on selling, the latter on usage patterns post purchase. A clear example of distinction is between a departmental store and Sephora or Ulta. The former would want to somehow convince the customers to buy the product, while a Sephora would demonstrate to them how to use the same. Customers looked up to legacy brands with awe, but the digital ones as more useful to them. Examples of this dichotomy can be observed in the pairs such as Dollar Shave versus Gillette, Red Bull versus Coca-Cola, Venmo versus American Express or Visa, and Tesla versus BMW. Legacy brands marketed through traditional means, while newer ones are making use of digital marketing techniques. Another example may be cited of the difference between the kind of data Hilton would track as opposed to the upstart Airbnb. For Hilton, the content in the advertising was important, while for Airbnb the crucial bit of business intelligence to be tracked was what customers said after using. While this study mainly focused on the B2C segment, the trends are largely similar even in the B2B space.

Source:https://hbr.org/2018/02/the-most-successful-brands-focus-on-users-not-buyers?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_monthly&utm_campaign=technology&referral=00208&spMailingID=19097281&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1201766625&spReportId=MTIwMTc2NjYyNQS2

Uploaded Date:12 March 2018

At its peak, Pokémon Go had forty million daily active users. This is a number which far surpasses even other giants such as Tinder, Snapchat, Facebook or Twitter in terms of in-app engagement. While the craze has predictably died down, the entire episode provides some stirring lessons for the world of digital marketing. It worked best because here the lines between reality and digital got blurred. And this was possible due to the advent of Augmented Reality (AR), which has been around since the 1960s, but never quite as sophisticated as now. AR has long lived under the shadow of its better-known sibling Virtual Reality (VR), which has seen the launch of Sony’s PlayStation VR and the acquisition by Facebook of the Oculus Rift. AR though is now gaining more live followers, as evidenced through the huge popularity of Lego’s Digital Box. AR is also very useful in daily functions especially in retail as shown by furniture retailer IKEA and eyewear’s Warby Parker.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Why-Augmented-Reality-Will-Be-the-Next-Revolution-in-Retail?gko=dbc10

Uploaded Date:23 February 2018

While most brands have taken advantage of social media platforms, enabling them to boost their digital marketing efforts, sometimes the ubiquity of such tools can also be a hazard as it literally became for Proctor & Gamble (P&G). Its washing detergent Tide has multi-coloured versions to be tossed into washing machines. The colours instead attracted youngsters who started posting pictures on social media about this. P&G was then contacted by the American Association of Poison Control with several of these cases. The company’s rapid response to this grave situation was one very well dealt. To begin with, they removed the videos of the Tide Pod Challenge from YouTube. A peer level influencer was then recruited to drive home the message against this practice. That influencer was New England Patriots’ Rob Gronkowsi. Legal and medical experts were also drawn in to speak out on social media against such things and for parents to be more vigilant.

Source:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/fallout-tide-pod-challenge/

Uploaded Date:06 February 2018

Due to the decline of traditional marketing, firms have increasingly been looking at innovative means to reach the final consumers. This has happened due to the erosion of trust among traditional media. In addition, even digital marketing does not seem to serve the purpose any more due to the proliferation of bots and unviewable ads, making it difficult to gauge where the real customers are. Thus, brands have increasingly been on the lookout for influencers. However, beyond mere influencers, some firms have started leveraging the affluent audience. The affluent make up only about a sixth of the US population, but are in control of 68% of national net worth. They spend more than two and a half times that of usual customers. In addition, their influence percolates down as the masses tend to follow their fashion statements. Ipsos has a unit titled the Affluent Intelligence Group which gauges business intelligence on this affluent category. In particular, right on top of this group are the “Affluencers” who spend more than the merely rich, but are also followed wide due to their reach. They tend to be among the early adopters of new technology, experimental and tech-savvy. Their footprint is particularly high on certain product categories such as alcoholic beverages, jewellery, automobiles, travel and home decorations.

Source:https://marketingland.com/influence-affluence-leverage-affluencers-229026?utm_source=googlenewsstand&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed-channel&utm_content=socialmedia

Uploaded Date:13 December 2017

While marketing was earlier a lot dependent on gut feelings and an instinct about the market, today, automation tools allow for greater precision in ad spend. However, excess pondering on the Return on Investment leads to these marketing channels on really understanding the customer’s needs and preferences. A report was prepared based on a survey of five hundred companies by management consulting firm Bain to see what differentiated the top twenty-five percent of these companies in their marketing efforts. They are three-and-a-half times more likely to involve employees that are aware of the customer’s end-to-end journey. Their marketing strategy is nearly twice as likely to be aligned to customer rather than channel needs. A similar level of enhanced importance is accorded to customer lifetime value. Marketing leaders with a difference hone their skills in three different ways. Firstly, target segmentation is based on overall customer value. Business intelligence tools must be used to glean deeper insights about customer experiences and priorities. Data must be used to develop hypothesis on customer choices. The marketers must get to know who the customers are and their individual worth to the firm. So once the high-value customers have been segregated, techniques need be employed to connect with them.

Source:http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/customer-lifetime-value.aspx

Uploaded Date:27 October 2017

Some strategies work better than others when it comes to either innovating new business models or fending off such possible disruptions. Three each of offensive and defensive strategies have been identified which will ensure that digital marketing thrives. The first such offensive strategy is platform play. This implies that common platforms need to be leveraged to enhance the value distributed via a value chain such as what Accord does. At geographical locations where an incumbent firm cannot reach, it may seek to combine with another to provide new marginal supply as done by Swedish retailers such as Ikea and H&M. Products disbursed must include digitally enabled services such as P&G’s Bluetooth empowered Oral-B toothbrush. A defensive strategy is re-bundling the existing product and service lines to customize towards the specific customer requirement. Well thought-out investment must be made in digital distribution channels. Significantly, companies must keep track of the cost efficiency involved.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/07/6-digital-strategies-and-why-some-work-better-than-others?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert&referral=00563&spMailingID=17765360&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1080043582&spReportId=MTA4MDA0MzU4MgS2

Uploaded Date:16 August 2017