Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Five Ways to Use Location-Based Marketing Right Now

by JD Nyland | June 29, 2015 | 1,543 views

Location data is everywhere. It's embedded in the photos we share, the GPS-enabled apps we use, and the online transactions we make. And, today, users are more willing than ever to share location data with brands in exchange for more personalized content and tailored promotions.

That's really the idea and the promise of location-based marketing—using location data to boost engagement, offer more personalized experiences, and build loyalty with users.

For us marketers, understanding more about a user's location provides valuable insight into intent. If users are standing near a retail location, they may be expressing interest in your brand. The opportunity to engage users at such a critical time is what makes location-based marketing so exciting.

The technology is still new, but right now you have ways to experiment with and use location-based marketing to enhance your campaigns and boost ROI.

Here are five areas of location-based marketing that have plenty of room for experimentation.

1. More Meaningful Personalization

Personalization is critical for a mobile-first strategy. So what can you do to improve mobile personalization?

Start with effective user segmentation. Dig into the data and learn as much as you can about your users: their preferences, the content they're most engaged with, the offers that appeal most to them, and their favorite app features. Then, use such data to identify the content, promotions, and cadence at which you should be sharing via mobile.

Even simple things such as incorporating first names and curated shopping lists are effective ways to personalize the mobile experience.

2. Providing Relevant Content

Content is the glue in the engagement construct. If your content is effective, it holds users' attention. If your content is irrelevant, the bond is broken and users are more likely to ignore your future communications. Location-based marketing requires effective content.

Brands are experimenting various ways—using creative tools like augmented reality, macro- and micro-maps, and beacons to provide useful information. For instance, a hotel, upon a guest's check-in, may provide a video about spa services to the customer who's shown interest in that via an app.

Or take the South by Southwest Festival. This year, the festival used more than 1,000 beacons to communicate with attendees about networking opportunities, events going on nearby, and other useful info.

The content was not merely inherently relevant; it also provided unique incentives for users to stay engaged.

3. Rewarding Loyalty

Providing incentives for using your app boosts engagement and loyalty.

For instance, you might provide users with an exclusive promotion or use a reward points system. Some retailers provide users with rewards for completing actions, such as points for visiting a physical location, or opening a map while within the store. Thus, brands are able to not only reward a customer who has shown interest in the brand but also enables them to gain insight into the user's in-store preferences.

Another effective strategy that brands are implementing: mobilizing their loyalty card programs. If your most engaged customers are in the proximity of one of your locations, you can deliver relevant content in real time. You might send a notification: "Hi! You have earned $5 off your next order!"

That's what's interesting and exciting about location-based marketing: the ability to provide incentives when they matter most.

4. Using Location Data to Enhance In-Store Experiences

More than half of consumers say they use a mobile device while shopping.

If they've opted into sharing location data, that fact allows you to better calculate customer dwell times, understand traffic flows, and recognize where customers are interacting with beacons and display devices.

Location-based marketing makes it easier than ever to refine the in-store experience to better serve customers. And not just at retail locations. Store heat maps can be used in stadiums, hotels, museums, airports, and more to improve traffic flows, reconfigure layouts based on region or seasonality, and refine merchandising displays.

5. Taking Advantage of Mobile Wallets

Mobile wallets are much more than just a method of payment. Just think, in our actual wallets or purses we store things like loyalty cards, coupons, and recipes. Applying this concept to your location-based marketing strategy, your focus should then be on how to take advantage of mobile wallets—not just mobile payments—to interact with customers before, during and after a purchase.

One example would be enabling customers to easily save coupons on their smart devices. For instance, if a user has saved a coupon, you might send a reminder to use it when the user is in the proximity of one of your retail locations.

Mobile payments are an important piece, but don't forget to take into account the entire wallet.

A Few Final Thoughts

Marketing to the mobile generation requires creativity, and location-based marketing is all about combining that creativity with technology to provide personalized, real-time experiences.

Of course, we are dealing with what's still a new technology, and there are many kinks that need to be worked out. For instance, there's a fine line between an app that provides relevant, cost-saving, and personalized content, and one that's, well, annoying, irrelevant, and (worst of all!) creepy.

But the key is experimenting with finding that balance now—because location data has the potential to ring in a new era in marketing.

Friday, June 26, 2015

#SocialSkim: Snapchat's 3V Ad Format, Plus 11 More Stories in This Week's Roundup

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by Angela Natividad |

June 26, 2015

| 309 views

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This week we'll introduce you to Snapchat's 3V ad model, where to buy 360° VR-friendly images, a better way to track social ROI via Google, and a Twitter offering that highlights products and places (and how to buy or book them). Skim to stay connected.

The future of mobile video is vertical. Snapchat's going hard on video: Its 100 million active users now consume over 2 billion daily. So it's launched a new ad format called 3V, which stands for Vertical Video Views.

The format will appear as vertical videos (an especially mobile-friendly format that Snapchat's coined) that appear in full screen to ensure 100% viewability. Because CEO Evan Spiegel knows pre-rolls are "annoying," 3V ads will appear among premium content in its Discover platform as well as within Snapchat's curated content.

And to ensure brands get creative help in building native content (not necessarily limited to Snapchat), it's partnered with the Daily Mail and WPP to launch a digital content agency called Truffle Pig.

1. It's never been easier to produce a cool video

A new app takes the Final Cut agony out of producing a super-short, snappy, and shareable video. Nutshell's model is genius: It asks you to shoot three photos—except that it's also recording everything that happens between them. The video is ready, but the photos become a focal point that you can jump to for quick editing. Add animations and text in a snap, then share the results across your socnets. Better yet? The format is vertical, making it mobile (and Snapchat) friendly.

2. Facebook: the future of mobile ads is image-rich and 360°

Say goodbye to boring images and basic autoplay. Facebook used the Cannes Lions to share its vision of mobile advertising's future: Instead of static images, users will be able to scroll through high-density images or GIFs. It's also using 3D modeling to provide 360° views of items when people drag their finger across the screen.

The result? A more engagement-friendly Facebook presence, and a beautiful way to set yourself apart. These offerings are still in concept mode, so watch this space.

3. Need some 360° stock imagery?

Getty Images is now selling 360° imagery, made especially for the Oculus platform owned by Facebook. Images include high-profile news, sports, and entertainment events, including the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the Cannes Film Festival. Find them at the Oculus 360 Photos app in the Oculus store.

4. E-commerce comes to Snapchat

Snapchat's partnered with shopping search engine Shopstyle for an interesting e-commerce experiment. Five style bloggers are joining ShopStyle and online retailer FarFetch to promote their outfits on Snapchat stories. When people watch them, they'll be driven to a "Shop Snapchat" store on ShopStyle's site.

The benefit? Because Snapchat's more casual than other platforms, influencers have more human, relatable faces there—and that may trigger faster conversions. It's hardly a Buy Now button, but Snapchat's on its way.

5. Google Analytics is now your social-ROI tracker

Google's cut a deal that gives it direct, real-time access to what's going on Twitter, adding to Google's existing deep access to socnets like Facebook, reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, SlideShare, and more.

From one dashboard, see which socnets actually bring you the most practical benefits on a super-granular level. To take advantage, join Google Analytics, verify ownership of your sites, add www and non-www variants, then activate the demographic and social tools.

You'll soon start getting metrics like which socnet is generating the most conversion, who spends more time on your site, how much traffic comes from paid ads and content versus earned media, and so much more. Why wait for an agency to tell you?

6. Twitter introduces impulse-buy-friendly product and place pages!

Now it's easier to discover, research, and convert on products and places on Twitter: The company's launched dedicated pages for each, featuring images and video about products alongside descriptions, prices, and options to buy, book or visit the website for more information.

The product's still in beta mode, and it's working with select influencers and brands. A list of them is here.

7. What do people do most on Facebook?

GlobalWebIndex answers: Top behaviors include clicking Like (69% of users age 16-24, 68% of all users), sending direct messages (57%/54%), reading an article (54%/52%), commenting on a friend's photo or video (54%/52%), and logging in just to see what's happening (52%/47%).

GWI points to the last behavior and notes its presence in the top 5 is "very much in line with the move toward more passive forms of networking on Facebook." The interest for marketers is that visible Facebook activity doesn't tell a complete story about your ad conversion probability; passive users are still very present and able to respond to ads.

8. Where the teens are hanging out

Digiday's compiled a list of seven apps with huge teen fanbases that brands should keep on their radar—especially because there's little brand penetration so far.

Among our favorites are Dubsmash, a lip-syncing app that's been downloaded over 50 million times since its November launch, and the hashtag-searchable Popkey, which lets users send pop culture GIFs in their messages. (Starbucks has already created 21 branded GIFs just for Popkey.)

9. Measure content marketing like a statistician

Need more insightful ways to measure your content marketing? Curata's Pawan Deshpande provides seven content marketing metrics that will make your math professor beam. They include different ways of measuring sales and production.

Below, an equation for measuring content backlog. If your result is less than one, visitors want more content from you. If it's more than one, you're producing content too fast for people to consume it. And if it's a perfect 1, pat yourself on the back—your production is just right.

See the article for a description of the variables.

10. Where's trending on Instagram?

You read that right. Instagram's latest update makes it easier to search for specific images, discover new ones, and check out trending tags and places. Users can search for images by location, people, and tags. And a new "Explore" page for US users will show what tags—and what places—are trending right now.

Trends will be both local and global, giving you a full glimpse of what the world in social photography looks like right now.

11. We'll Wrap With a Shout-Out to Dads.

A belated Happy Fathers Day to dads, father figures, and mentors. In recognition of your impact, we give you this ad from UK detergent brand's Fairy Non Bio, which showcases the importance of hugging while breaking down a less-discussed gender stereotype: The idea that young men don't want or need physical affection from their dads. #NeverStopHugging!

The ad was created by Leo Burnett London and Holler, part of the latter's team worked on Always' #LikeAGirl , slated to win many a Lion at the Cannes Festival of Creativity this week (it already won big in the Facebook Awards).

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Four Reasons to Take Advantage of Facebook's Evolving Video Strategy

by Shawn Kemp |

June 25, 2015

| 393 views

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Facebook is investing heavily in its video service, working hard to grow its video reach and ad efficacy. And it's making inroads.

In August, Facebook achieved a billion more desktop video views than YouTube, according to comScore, and now serves up more than 3 billion video views every day.

Such a strong upswing of video views on Facebook can be attributed to a few things. First and most obviously is auto play. Facebook video auto plays in the newsfeed, driving video views and interaction. Second, more people are watching videos as they can now play easily on smartphones. A full 65% of views happen on mobile devices! And, lastly, the Facebook algorithm serves content that people interact with. So, the more videos people watch, the more videos the algorithm serves, creating a cycle of video views.

Moreover, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg noted about the future of Facebook, "One of the big trends will be the growth of video content on our service."

That quote is not lip service. Video helps keep people on Facebook, which in turn drives ad revenue. Facebook doubled down on this bet at the F8 Developer Conference, launching an embedded video player that allows users to embed Facebook-hosted videos anywhere.

Here are four reasons marketers need to begin or expand native Facebook video marketing and two things they should know as they dive in.

1. Third-party video link posts underperform

Though Facebook still allows marketers to post a link to a video on YouTube, Vimeo, or an organization's website, there is no reason to do this as it will appear as a static thumbnail rather than a Facebook auto play video.

In some cases, Facebook may not even show the visual thumbnail. The link will be there along with text, but the static image won't show.

For video to perform, it really needs to be hosted by Facebook. The reasons why Facebook is moving in this direction—and why it's going out of its way to reward video posters—should be obvious...

Greater traffic, engagement, and time on its site mean more ad revenue for Facebook.

2. Native video is rewarded

Facebook has updated its algorithm to reward video, increase its relevancy, and cater to the dramatic rise in viewership. Here's how Facebook explained this change on the Facebook blog:

"The improvement we are making today considers whether someone has watched a video and for how long they watched it. We're adding that to the factors we considered previously, which included likes, comments and shares. This change will affect all videos uploaded directly [natively] to Facebook."

Proving that the algorithm change is working, videos now get roughly 10% more promotion than images. And even though the number of photos still dwarfs videos, video gets much more pull.

3. Native video boosts organic reach

Videos show a 135% increase in organic reach versus image posts—and an astounding 148% increase among fans, according to Social Bakers. Organizations needn't look further than the news feed to understand why: It's a more natural way to share videos with friends, and auto play makes it easy to engage and interact with videos.

Helping to drive this phenomenon is that Facebook video is highly shareable (both on desktop and mobile) helping it outperform YouTube.

This chart from SocialBakers highlights just how engaging Facebook video is...

Clearly, companies that choose to post native video are cashing in on the dynamic market change, boosting organic reach that had been declining for many.

Though this boost may not last forever, Facebook video is on the rise. In fact, the number of native Facebook videos is trending to overtake YouTube by the end of this year.

4. The algorithm also likes video view ads

Facebook offer two ways to promote a video.

First, by boosting a video post or second, through a dedicated video views ad. Today, 27% of all videos are promoted. Though 17% of photos are promoted, there is a very large volume of photos, which means that promoted video is still far more effective at reaching audiences.

Additionally, Nielsen has found that the longer users watch, the more value a video ad has.

"Results show that from the moment a video ad was viewed (even before one second), lift happened across ad recall, brand awareness, and purchase consideration," Nielsen notes. "And, as expected, lift increased the longer people watch the ad."

And for users who watch the video to finish, Facebook video ads offer a call-to-action on the last screen of the video. This is a great place for advertisers to insert action—whether that be watching a longer video on an organization's Website to driving email newsletter sign-ups. Regardless of the action, quality video coupled with a strong call-to-action is performing exceptionally well.

Focus on Quality

With all the benefits of Facebook video, note that quality still matters. An engaging photo will still get more reach than a lackluster video. The better the video, the more entertaining, the better the production quality, the more engagement it will get.

Because Facebook users share video that they want associated with their social personas, organizations should ensure that above all else, their video is shareable and has a production level that people would feel comfortable being associated with and sharing.

Feel Free to Experiment

Not every audience is the same, and there isn't a formula for the ideal Facebook video. As such, organizations should conduct A/B testing with content types, length, and calls-to-action.

Get the audience involved and issue a call for user-generated video content to get an idea of what video the audience is drawn to. As other brands experiment with Facebook video, marketers should take time to learn from others' mistakes and successes while watching for best-practices to emerge.