Ltap Research

Monday, August 25, 2014

The Big Brand Theory: adidas Inspires Action

Posted on August 25th 2014

Adidas was founded in a rivalry between brothers Rudi and Adi Dassler. The former went on to found Puma, while Adi brought about adidas, which is a portmanteau of the founders name. Today, adidas is the world's second-largest sportswear maker, second only to Nike.

Lia Vakoutis, head of digital strategy at adidas America, joined me in an interview to discuss the brand's approach to social media. Like many sportswear manufacturers, the social media audience can be quite diverse. A died-in-the-wool soccer fan is not likely to be interested in your content on golf. adidas has, as a result, developed many different pages to address the different audiences.

Vakoutis explains, "Social Media is all about making a personal connection with your fans without compromising what your brand stands for. adidas is driven by the passion to make athletes better and we strive for that to come through in all of our social media efforts. No matter what type of athlete you are, whether it be Basketball or Football or Soccer, our goal is to give access and inspiration that you can’t get anywhere else."

That personal connection is engagement. Vakoutis says of engagement, "For us it is all about inspiring action. Whether that means releasing a tweet honoring our US Players after a hard fought match in the exact moment the game ends or asking our fans to train side by side with some of the best in Football during the offseason. We are always looking to share stories that our fans care about and ultimately inspire them to take an action."

How does a global sportswear company measure success in social media? Vakoutis responds, "Our goal is always to drive constant conversation and desire through social. Every platform has its own unique way to drive social action with likes seemingly to be the most consistent. However, we don’t overly concern ourselves with likes. It is more about driving an action that is truly social and allows a fan to share their action with their own network."

Vakoutis adds, "Measuring sentiment is another key performance indicator for us as we want to always have our finger on the pulse of what response our fans are having as a result of our social efforts."

For many of us in digital marketing, one of the greatest challenges in social media is the incessant change. Vakoutis says, "We are constantly learning and evolving based on how the social landscape changes. A couple of years ago most were looking at social as a “free” marketing opportunity. Now it is nearly impossible to get your message seen without paid support. Knowing it is called social media for a reason, we’ve planned for this and continue to evolve our content strategies to ensure paid media and social stories go hand in hand."

In speaking of the challenges in digital strategy, Vakoutis concludes that the greatest challenge is "ensuring we stay ahead of the curve and allocate the appropriate funds to the channels where we think we can make the most impact is something we are very focused on."

The Power of Push [Infographic]

Push messaging is a powerful tool to re-engage users who have left your app. But just sending generic, broadcasted messages to all users in your app is a poor strategy!
Over half of app users opt-in to receive push messages. Those users are allowing marketers to contact them outside of the app, and a wise app marketer will reward those users by sending personalized, meaningful content. This allows users who left your app to re-engage and move towards the actions that you want them to take, increasing engagement, conversions and in-app revenue!
power_of_push

how to create awesome in-app and push messaging content ebook CTA

Monday, August 18, 2014

People are Plugged In

We Basically Never Unplug

Here's a chart that's both surprising and unsurprising.

People in the United States rarely unplug from gadgets according to a survey by CivicScience. As you can see, 43% of those polled say they never unplug. And 17% say a few times a year.

CivicScience seems to have cast a very wide net for its definition of "unplug" with TV, internet, smartphones, etc. counting.

We first saw this at Fred Wilson's blog. He got it from Brian Fitzgerald at the WSJ. Both Fitzgerald and Wilson ask their readers how often they unplug.

For what it's worth, I would say I never unplug entirely. I always check the internet even when I'm on vacation. I enjoy it. I like seeing what's going on in the world. I don't check email as much, but that's about it. It doesn't stress me out too much, unless I see the wrong email.

Anyway, what about you? Do you unplug, do you feel like you need to, or even want to?

Friday, August 15, 2014

After 1.5 Million Posts Analyzed, Here is the Perfect Facebook Post

Do you know how to craft the perfect Facebook post?
Being on the Facebook News Feed has become as hard as being on Google’s first page.
The fierce competition and recent changes in the algorithm are turning this almost impossible, and what makes the difference often times comes down to small details, testing and optimizing every single aspect of your content.

TrackMaven analyzed more than 1.5 million pieces of content on 6,000 Pages, here is what they said…
“We found that when the various elements of a Facebook post are strategically crafted, the viral reach of posts is extended in the News Feed.”
Now, let’s take a look at these different items TrackMaven is calling the nuts and bolts of the perfect Facebook post:

Word Count

I know you’ve probably heard that short posts get better performance. It’s a myth. I’ve seen many people use Facebook pages pretty much as if they were blogs, Mari Smith is very successful writing long posts (John Haydon points it out in this post).
This study backs it up with data, posts with 80-89 words get double the engagement (6.19%) that those with 70-79 words (3.42%).

Facebook posts with 80-89 words get double the engagement (6.19%) that those with 70-79 words...

Click To Tweet

My advice, get your message across in a way that will accomplish the goal for that specific post, whether it takes 10 or 300 words. The point is not to be afraid of the word count.

Visual Content

We all know visual content gets more engagement. According to this analysis, posts with photos get an average of 2.35 interactions per post, while text-only posts get only 1.71.
Of course you have to consider that 88% of Facebook posts do have an image.

After Hours

Turns out posting after hours (5pm – 1am EST) can get you 11% more interactions than those published during working hours.
This makes sense even without looking at the data, people should be more likely to interact with content when 1) is not overwhelmed with daily activities, and 2) is receiving fewer promotional messages on the screen.

Weekends

Posts published on Sunday can get 25% more likes, comments and shares than those published on Wednesday, but only 18% of the total posts are published on weekends…
Which proves my previous point: Test posting at times when there is less competition in the News Feed.

Facebook: Posting on Sunday can get you 25% more Engagement than Wednesday, but only 18% of posts...

Click To Tweet

Hashtags

I recently shared my opinion about Facebook Hashtags on PostPlanner. I basically said that I don’t really see hashtags making a big impact.
TrackMaven says that posts with hashtags see an average of 60% more interactions. I’ll be paying closer attention to this in the following days.

Questions

Posts that ask a question get 23% more engagement. This is obvious, a question is a form of call-to-action.
To me, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the post has to be a question, but that if you’re writing about an specific topic and you’re sharing your point of view, you can close the post with a question to generate engagement.

Facebook Posts that ask a question get 23% more engagement

Click To Tweet

Infographic

I should also mention that TrackMaven has a free ebook you can download here.

Mad money: Advertising trends we’d put our money on

Lg2's Nellie Kim and Chris Hirsch play the advertising stock market, with buy/sell/hold advice on robots, big data and more.

Staff

2 hours ago

By Chris Hirsch and Nellie Kim
As advertising creatives, our work is often influenced by so-called “advertising trends of the future.” We attend ad festivals and conferences in hopes of picking up on the latest industry buzzwords in an attempt to predict where the ad-tide is headed next. Agencies sprinkle these prophetic terms into client presentations and expect clients to buy whatever it is we’re selling. But what if the tables were turned? Would we dare invest our own money into the very trends we try to convince our clients to put their ad dollars towards?
That’s why we decided to put ourselves up to the challenge of determining which trends we’d buy into, which ones we’d sell and which ones we wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot T-square we stole from the studio. Because much like the stock market, nothing determines your belief in ad trends and their future success more than having to put your own money where your mouth is.
TREND: Big data
DECISION: Hold
ANALYSIS: In the current market, “big data” is a hot commodity and has been for a while. Albeit not rare since its abundant and bottomless data mines allow for anyone and everyone to get their marketing hands on it. It’s the secure investment of choice for those who feel weary about its more theoretical counterparts like “storytelling” and “branded content,” and it provides the cold-hard numbers that marketers often need to see in order to feel secure with their investments. Big data surged into the market a few years back, but has since plateaued as it becomes more apparent that its practical conversion is limited to online consumer re-targeting and from time-to-time, information about which websites to advertise on. We will eventually attain big data from more meaningful sources (see: The internet of things) and develop better systems to convert it into actionable insights, but until then, we would hold off on investing into it too much as we still need to figure out how to use it in its most effective form for our advertising and marketing needs.
TREND: The internet of things
DECISION: Buy
ANALYSIS: Everything will eventually be connected to the internet, and that’s why the internet of things is an emerging market already having a huge influence on the global advertising economy. This can be seen in things such as wearables, which provide health-, biometric- and geolocation-specific information to individuals and marketers. Such is also true for connected thermostats, baby monitors and an array of other mundane-looking household items. And as an industry, we all know that something should really be taken seriously when it has its own award show, as proven by the Postscapes IoT Awards. And it’s only a matter of time before the IoT Awards will count towards the strategy Creative Report Card rankings, right? The transference of data between our things and the internet will definitely change the way we live our lives, making it a low-risk investment to us as advertisers. It also makes advertising creatives like ourselves excited about newly-found creative opportunities within everyday ordinary objects that we would have otherwise never considered.
TREND: Storytelling
DECISION: Buy
ANALYSIS: There’s nothing like a viral Stefan Sagmeister video to bring the value of storytelling down. That’s why we think it’s a great time to buy in! While its opponents point out that it’s not even used by those who can legitimately call themselves novelists or feature filmmakers, we think – “why not?” as it’s been proven time and time again that there can never be a price put on a great story. Whether it’s in the form of a charming TV script, a rewarding video that makes you look at a brand through a different lens or even an “About” page that at least offers some form of entertainment, storytelling can add value by way of a connection with the audience that all the tech advancement in the world can’t buy.
TREND: Robots
DECISION: Sell
ANALYSIS: Although we’ll see growth in the “bot” industry in sectors such as manufacturing, we don’t see it as a sustainable investment for our advertising purposes. Despite interesting creative applications of Arduino technology, companies that tout success in open-ended conversations between their chat-bot and consumers, and forecasts that robots could eventually take over the ad-buying process, one thing is certain to us – they’ll never be able to replace what makes our industry truly special, and that’s creativity itself. Much like big data and its surplus of information, it’s what we creatively do with that information that makes us as an industry unique and irreplaceable by even the slickest of bots. So, it’s a sell for us, unless of course you enjoy the occasional bot spam, and knowing that prices for this tech might actually be driven up by the click-happy bots themselves.
Advertising trends and buzzwords will continue to come and go, and ad dollars will continue to follow. But much like picking a stock or a company to invest in, we should only invest our ad dollars in something that we truly understand. And for ad agencies, it really shouldn’t even start until we fully understand a client’s business.
Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to go invest our money in the robot we created to write this column for us.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

How to Promote Your Content Using Paid, Earned & Owned Media

by Chad Pollitt

August 13, 2014 at 12:00 PM

This post originally appeared on the Insiders section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Insiders.
Some people think content promotion isn’t complicated. It’s just making sure content is optimized for the search engines, sent to an appropriate email list, and then broadcast it socially, right? If only it were that simple.
Search algorithms aren’t as reliant on on-page factors for determining relevance anymore, organic social reach is declining, and not every brand has a huge opt-in email database at their disposal. As a result, brands that wish to rely on these tactics must have patience -- or double down on promotional efforts.
The amount of patience required is dependent on the level of inbound adoption within any given industry. For example, a bee keeper just getting started with inbound marketing might see results faster than a new marketing agency, since marketing as an industry is highly saturated with content. Unfortunately, most enterprises aren’t patient enough to wait 6, 8, or 12 months for the return they need to justify their budgets -- they generally get one quarter to prove a program's worth.
So if you're a late inbound adopter in a competitive industry and you want to grow fast, you need to get creative with how you promote your content. The graphic and explanations below detail some of the best paid and earned media tactics for promoting content. These tactics can empower newer inbound adopters to see results quicker, help agencies reduce churn by driving client results faster, and allow enterprise marketers to show a return within a quarter.

The Tactics of Content Promotion

Content Coverage

This is perhaps the most powerful of the three content promotion channels. Earning attention for a brand’s content can drive brand awareness, traffic, and conversions. Here are a few ways you can get more content coverage.

Media Relations

This is a tried-and-true stalwart of public relations (PR), but it doesn’t have to be all about pitching brand, product, and service stories to journalists and editors. Marketers and PR professionals alike can pitch a brand’s ebook, guide, study, etc. if it’s prudent to the audience of the publication. Below shows the growth in leads (in purple) from one link to an ebook featured in a story on Inc.com.

In total, this one link drove over 800 incremental leads in 30 days. The day after it was published, 20% of the total website visitors downloaded the ebook.

Influencer Outreach

Also known as influencer marketing or influencer advocacy, influencer outreach is quite similar to media relations, though, typically, the people targeted are influential in their industry and aren’t necessarily journalists or editors. Influencers can be bloggers or people that amass large social followings around their industry expertise.
The result of outreach can lead to something as simple as a social share, a direct or indirect endorsement on a blog, or full-on collaboration with a project or campaign. The example below helped drive nearly 5,000 unique website visitors to the article and over 500 Google +1s in just two weeks.

Bylined Articles

These result when media outlets invite company executives with a very specific expertise to write for them. Some are one-and-done, and others are a series of articles or even a weekly column. Bylines cost nothing, but it takes time to research the media and pitch them why a brand’s executive should write for them. Once a byline is earned, citing ebooks, guides, studies, and blog posts can drive copious amounts of traffic and conversions.

Syndication

This tactic was a cornerstone of the newspaper business for many years and turned some journalists into cult celebrities. While not a cornerstone of the internet, having content syndicated to other websites serves the same purpose -- getting content in front of many more eyeballs. Any calls to action or citations leading back to landing pages in the original content can drive massive amounts of conversions over time. Just be sure that you're covering all of your SEO-bases when having your content syndicated.
Below is an example of one of several syndication relationships Relevance.com has. Each one credits the original source of the content, as seen below. If you're ever getting your content syndicated, make sure that the syndicated post links back to the original.

Content Distribution

In Ryan Skinner's Forrester report, “Put Distribution at the Heart of Content Marketing,” he talks about traditional online ad networks and the quickly growing ecosystem of paid content distribution channels. Native distribution is more conducive to content marketers than banner ads and lacks the pervasiveness of banner blindness. Below are a few ways you can use this type of promotion for your content.

Native Advertising (Content Discovery Networks)

Networks like Taboola, AdBlade, and Outbrain are quickly growing. With more than 90% of companies admitting to content marketing adoption, it’s not surprising -- with so much content out there, people are looking for any edge to get noticed. Outbrain reports a 6% clickthrough rate across its network of 100,000 publishers.
These networks allow marketers to get their content in front of very large audiences while simultaneously helping traditional media outlets grow revenue -- something many of them haven’t been able to do for more than a decade. You can see an example of what native advertising typically looks like below.

Advertorials (Sponsored Content)

This is another way for brands to tap into another website’s audience. Brands using this tactic pay to publish articles on other websites or media outlets. The pieces usually look and feel much like the unsponsored content on the media site, but is denoted with a "sponsored" tag or sticker. Popularized by Forbes, online advertorials are beginning to crop up all over the Internet. However, media buying for sponsored content is still in its infancy. Pricing varies widely across the media -- from six figures to a couple hundred dollars.
Here is an example of how one website features advertorial content.:
dr7

Native Social

Advertising helped both Facebook and LinkedIn experience stock price spikes when these programs were announced. Both networks have successfully given brands the option to move advertisements from the doldrums of banner ad space into users’ newsfeeds where these sponsored posts look very similar to typical updates.
Marketers who choose to use social networks for native advertising should experiment. Some are more conducive to blog content and visuals while others are best suited for landing pages. Cost per click can vary between $0.25 to over $20 on networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Native Newsletters

These have been around for quite some time. Most marketers can likely find several examples in their inboxes now. Some companies that have amassed large email databases will allow marketers to pay to include their branded content or offers in their newsletter.
If you pay for native newsletter distribution, your rate can be a part of a broader sponsorship package, cost per click, cost per action, or cost per lead. Paying for placement in a newsletter is another way for marketers to distribute their content in a native manner.

Content Broadcasting

Unfortunately, broadcasting is exclusively what most marketers use for content promotion today. For some it can be highly effective, but for others it can feel like no one is listening. It’s exceptionally difficult to get needle-moving results for companies just getting started with inbound marketing in an industry that’s embraced it already. For content broadcasting to have a big impact, a brand needs an existing audience.

Social Media

This is a tried-and-true broadcasting channel for brands. Unfortunately, Facebook is slowly, but surely, limiting the organic reach of brands -- and it's possible that other social networks might follow suit. So if you're going to beef up your social media distribution, know that you're at the mercy of the social networks and that algorithm changes could affect your future successes. I'm not saying don't be on social media, just be aware that you have to play by the social networks' rules to be successful.

Email

Email is highly effective channel for content distribution, too. Valuable content can be delivered to subscribers, leads, customers, and partners. Whether it’s a one-off campaign, a regular subscription, triggered automation, or nurturing, email works. Unfortunately though, without a significant email database to tap into, brands don’t have anyone to broadcast to. Over time, though, you can build this large, opt-in database and then regularly distribute your content to them.
As marketers, we’re used to telling our customers to be patient with inbound marketing -- that it takes time. But it only takes time if broadcasting is the only content promotion channel used. By leveraging the content promotion landscape and the tools of the content promotion ecosystem, marketers can get faster and better results.

Here Is Everything You Need to Know About the Millennial Consumer

They've cut every cord—except to mom and dad By Melissa Hoffmann

August 13, 2014, 9:08 AM EDT
Technology

No demographic is as appealing to marketers as millennials, those folks born between 1981 and 2000. Many articles and studies have focused on reaching this elusive adult consumer, who has money and eschews traditional methods of communication in favor of a life largely spent online.

Here are some stats about your favorite target audience from three recent studies examining millennial behavior.