February 03, 2014

How Esurance's $1.5 Million Giveaway Won The Super Bowl Post-Game [THE BRIEF] Advertisement Good morning, AdLand. Here's what you need to know today: The Super Bowl is over. We made it, everyone! We'll probably be chatting about the game for the rest of the morning, but then it will be back to business as usual here at Business Insider Advertising. If there's a topic you think we should be delving into, feel free to send me an e-mail at ataube@businessinsider.com (no obvious self-promotion or PR pitches, please). Esurance might have won the Super Bowl from a social media perspective by airing the first ad after the Super Bowl. In it, actor John Krasinski explains that the online car insurance company saved $1.5 million by airing its commercial after the game instead of during it, and had decided instead to give that $1.5 million to a lucky person who tweets #EsuranceSave30. Naturally, my Twitter feed was full of the hashtag in the moments following the game: AgencySpy reports that Ogilvy London's worldwide managing director on its Dove account, Erica Hoholick, is headed to TBWA\Media Arts Lab to become its president. Hoholick previously spent six years as a managing director at TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles. Teen Vogue has signed a group of popular Instagram users to do several native advertising campaigns, including a live Instagram fashion show. California-based agency Pitch promoted executive creative director Xanthe Wells to chief creative officer. The agency also hired TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles alum Gage Clegg to be a group creative director. Ad Age released its Agency A-List and named Grey its Agency of the Year for 2013. Academy Awards sponsors Coca-Cola and Hyundai will not return for this year's Oscars, which takes place March 2. Digiday counted down the top five real-time marketing moments of the Super Bowl, with @DiGiornoPizza getting the nod for the best branded tweet of the night.

How to Use Psychographics in Your Marketing: A Beginner's Guide

by Alisa Meredith

February 3, 2014 at 11:00 AM

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This post originally appeared on Inbound Insiders, a new section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to the Inbound Insiders section.

Picture this: You’re running specials every week on Facebook, discounting your three-day, in-house nutritional counseling program more than you can afford ... but still, no one is buying your amazing, anti-aging, weight-loss product.

What gives? Is no one interested in losing weight, lowering their cholesterol, and feeling younger? We doubt that's the case. What could really be at work here is that you're probably ignoring psychographics.

To give you a clear definition of what psychographics are and some ways you can use psychographics to support your marketing efforts -- with a specific example, to get you familiarized -- continue below.

What are psychographics?

The best way to define psychographics is this: Demographics explain who your buyer is, whilepsychographics explain why they buy. Demographic information includes gender, age, income, marital status -- the dry facts. Psychographic information includes things like their hobbies, spending habits, and values.

You can only effectively reach your target audience when you understand both their demographics and psychographics. The combination of both sets of data starts can form a clearer picture of your buyer persona.

To give you an idea of how psychographics play a part in developing your buyer persona, let’s create a very basic persona, based upon what we know about the ideal customer for a nutritional counselor.

Demographic Information:

•  Female
•  Aged 45-65
•  Married with children
•  Dealing with issues of weight gain, diabetes, lack of energy, or hormonal imbalance
•  Household income of $100K+

Psychographic Information:

•  Concerned with health and appearance
•  Wants a healthy lifestyle, but doesn’t have much free time
•  Enjoys going online in the evenings (big fan of Pinterest)
•  Tends to favor quality over economy
•  Finds fulfillment in her career and family
•  Values time with a small group of friends

Looking at the two lists above, it’s easy to see why you need both to put together a complete buyer persona. Use demographics alone, and you have only a very hazy outline of your audience. You understand her challenges, but not where to find her and what really moves her to action. Psychographics gives you so much more insight.

How do you obtain psychographics?

Now that we understand what psychographics are, how do we go about acquiring them? We outline two major methods below: interviewing your current clients and investigating you website analytics.

1) Interviewing Existing Clients

Take five seconds to think of your best, current client. Next time you talk to them, ask them some questions that can give you a clearer picture of who they are and what they want.

For instance, you can ask if they've seen any good movies lately (maybe they prefer TV shows or watching videos online?), found any great holiday deals (what's on their shopping list this holiday season?), or made any New Year’s resolutions (what are their personal and professional priorities this year?).

Depending on your relationship with the person, you can tell them exactly why you’re asking and be more direct. If you’re not in a business in which you have that kind of relationship with customers, do you have any friends who are similar to your ideal client? You could ask them the same questions.

The point is, when you ask the right questions, you can find out what this client does for fun, whether they're a bargain-hunter, what motivates them, and what their personal goals are.

Want a larger sampling? Send out a customer survey and be honest. Tell your customers you want to better understand what they care about. Most people are more than happy to share when companies reach out to find out more about their wants and needs.

2) Investigating Website Analytics

Prefer a more behind-the-scenes kind of investigation? Look at your existing site content and previous special offers. What has moved people to click, call, or buy in the past?

If you haven’t been paying attention to this, it may require some testing, but it can be extremely effective, as people’s true motivations are revealed by the actions they take. They may not think of themselves as bargain-hunters, but if that discount code really worked for them, it’s good for you to know.

How do psychographics impact marketing?

Getting psychographic data is important, but applying it to your marketing is how you make it effective. How would you do this? Let's continue with our ongoing example about the anti-aging, weight-loss product. We've gathered some hypothetical data using the techniques outlined in the previous section, so now let's apply our data to our marketing strategy.

Once you understand what is important to your persona, you’ll know where to find her and how to motivate her. You’ll know how to give her what she wants and learn what she doesn't want -- in other words, that offering deep discounts isn’t going to get her to buy. Instead, she wants to hear that your nutritional counseling service has worked for others and how it will give her better health without a huge time commitment. So, make sure you highlight customer comments to that effect.

For example, if she’s spending her free time on Pinterest, you can stop spending money on Facebook or newspaper and magazine ads. Instead, use her love of Pinterest to your advantage by sharing time-saving household and nutrition tips and giving her ideas for fun things to do with family and friends.

Then, you can watch what your persona repins and analyze what that tells you about her. Did she love the one about the smiley-face veggie platters for an after-school snack? Give her more ways to help keep her kids eating well. If the "girl’s night out" inspirational quote went over big, give her more ways to have fun with her friends. If her career and family are important to her, share articles highlighting the impact that good health has on job performance and ways to make exercise fun for kids.

Knowing more about your persona's hobbies, interests, and values will help you develop or adjust your overall marketing efforts, as the psychographics you secure can paint a clear picture of who they are and what motivates them. Before you know it, you’ll have more qualified leads than you thought possible.

6 SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS THAT WILL IMPROVE YOUR MARKETING

DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU NEED TO PUT A PERIOD IN FRONT OF YOUR TWEETS? BRING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES UP TO SPEED WITH THIS USEFUL LIST OF UNIQUE TIPS.

BY BELLE BETH COOPER

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When it comes to helping you out with social media, we often like to categorize things. For example, we’d write about the optimal timing of your posts, or how to come up with the best headlines, and the like.

What happened over the last few weeks though is that we collected a number of awesome tips to post on social media, that didn’t quite all fit together. So we thought, why not creating a list of unique tips, that might not have that much in common, but are hopefully still very useful for you!

So, here we go, a list of six rather random social media tips to help you improve your marketing today:

1. STOP MAKING THE MOST COMMON TWITTER MISTAKE

Here’s a quick tip about a mistake that is made all the time on Twitter. In a HubSpot post, Jay Acunzo was kind enough to offer up his own experience with this for us to learn from.

Here’s Jay’s Tweet, which he used as an example:

The mistake is an easy one to miss, but it all comes down to the very start of the Tweet. Starting a Tweet with a username (this one starts with @HubSpot) means thatonly the sender, the person mentioned and anyone who follows them both will see it.

In this case, Jay and HubSpot will both see the Tweet in their timelines, and anyone who happens to follow both Jay and HubSpot will see it in their timelines.

Of course, anyone who scrolls through Jay’s whole Twitter profile would see it as well, but we want to focus on getting your Tweets into the timelines of your followers.

So, how do we solve this? If you really want to start your Tweet with a username, add a period to the beginning, like this:

Gary Vaynerchuck even created a 44-page slideshow for this one Twitter mistake. It’s definitely worth flicking through it:

So next time you want to Tweet about someone, don’t forget to add a period at the beginning if you want all of your followers to see it!

Of course, writing great headlines for Twitter, can often be a big pain in general, so we collected some of the best tips here.

2. SCHEDULE YOUR UPDATES TO POST JUST BEFORE OR AFTER THE HOUR

Convince & Convert founder Jay Baer shared a great tip in this Social Media Examiner post for scheduling your updates at just the right time.

If you’re trying to reach business people like marketers, office workers or managers, this is especially handy. Jay sets his Buffer schedule to post updates just before or just after the hour. He does this to catch people who are checking social media just before or just after a meeting.

Here’s Jay’s example:

Meeting is scheduled from 1-2 pm. Meeting lets out slightly early at 1:57 pm, and attendees check Twitter on the way back to their desk. Meeting goes a little long, and that dip into social media occurs at 2:03 pm.

Jay also makes a note that scheduling Tweets around common lunch and dinner times (if you can--time zones can make this a bit difficult) is a good way to make sure more of your posts are seen. When look further into the science of timing, there’re alsosome other great tips beyond Jay’s ideas.

3. FOLLOW OR FAVORITE ALL PEOPLE RETWEETING YOUR ARTICLES TO GROW YOUR AUDIENCE

One tip that I learned from Leo when I joined Buffer was to keep an eye on who shares my content on Twitter.

Just by monitoring mentions of my username, I can find people who are interested in the posts I write, and then quickly follow them or favorite their Tweet.

This is a good way to gather more followers who enjoy your content. You can also use a Twitter search to find people who aren’t mentioning you by name.

Try searching for your website’s name or URL, your full name and any specific keywords or hashtags that you use. If you don’t have time to reply to all of the matching Tweets, a quick favorite can help you make contact with those users.

Being able to get more Twitter followers with a number of tips that simply show gratitude are my favorite, since they’re completely non-intrusive and build on your previous efforts. We’ve written about more examples here.

4. KEEP AN EYE ON FACEBOOK’S CHANGING GUIDELINES

Facebook has had some pretty strict guidelines for running promotions on your Page in the past, and it’s always a good idea to make sure you’re not in breach of any of these. In fact, their recent big algorithm change, turned the Facebook marketing worldupside down.

What you might not know is that Facebook has actually lifted some of the rules for running promotions (they’re fond of changing things at Facebook). A recent Socially Stacked blog post looked at five of the guidelines Facebook has removed:

1. Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App.

You can now run promotions on your Timeline or by using a third-party application.

2. You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app.

Now that you can run promotions on your Page’s Timeline, you can require a Comment or Like on your post for entry. You still can’t ask fans to enter by sharing your post on their own Timeline, though.

3. You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.

Not only can you ask fans to Like or Comment on a post to enter your competition, but you can use Likes as a voting feature now, as well.

4. You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism.

You can actually use a Like on your Page or a check-in to your business as entry into a promotion, now. Since Likes aren’t differentiated for promotions, however, the Socially Stacked team don’t recommend using this option.

5. You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines) or Pages.

Facebook has relaxed this guideline, so that you can now use the comment stream, status updates, your own blog or website, and even email or Twitter to notify winners.

Being in the know of Facebook’s changes is crucial, especially as they’re changing things so often and frequently.

5. ADD A COMPLETE ADDRESS TO FB SO PEOPLE CAN CHECK IN

If you have a local business, or you manage the Facebook Page for one, this tip can improve engagement.

If you add a full address in your Page’s settings, your fans and local visitors can check-in to your business on Facebook.

You’ll need to make sure your Page is registered as a local business in the business type section for this to work, so it’s not for everyone. If you are a local business though, why not take advantage of this feature! For more Facebook tips, be sure to look at our Facebook section where we highlight a lot more.

6. GET MORE YOUTUBE SUBSCRIBERS WITH THIS POP-UP

For those of you who use YouTube as a main marketing channel, this is a great tip. It’s a really simple, easy way to increase subscribers to your channel.

This post on the Gleam Marketing Blog explains how to add a small light-box pop-up to your YouTube page, encouraging visitors to subscribe:

All it takes is adding this extra bit of text to the end of your YouTube URL whenever you share it:

http://www.youtube.com/user/S2Games?sub_confirmation=1

Pretty easy, right?

What other social media tips do you have that I missed? Let us know in the comments.

Image credits: Nonprofit Tech for Good, Gleam Marketing Blog, HubSpot

--Belle Beth Cooper is a content crafter at Buffer and cofounder of Hello Code. Follow her on Twitter at @BelleBCooper.

Mobile marketing: Why push notifications are the marketer’s new power tool

by Michael Della Penna

Take a minute to think about your best customers… Now take a minute to think about the customers who have downloaded your mobile app… Chances are, they’re one and the same.

What’s more, of those who download a brand’s mobile app, 68% opt-in to receiving push notifications from that app, according to Responsys research.

If you haven’t started developing a strategy to strengthen your customer relationships using push, now’s the time to start.

However, the opportunity for push notifications doesn’t start and end with mobile apps. While the bulk of push notifications today are delivered on mobile phones and tablets, they are quickly expanding to reach all kinds of new internet connected devices – such as desktops, e-readers, entertainment systems, and even cars. In fact, the world will have more connected devices than people – 75 billion devices connected to the “Internet of things” by 2020. 75 billion. Wow. This opens up a whole new range of possibilities for marketers.

Now, think about this:

• What if you could gather additional knowledge about your customers, from every interaction on their connected devices?
• What if push technology wasn’t siloed from your other mobile marketing technologies like SMS and mobile display?
• What if you could orchestrate your mobile communications not just on the mobile device, but with other channels like email and display?
• What if push could be part of an orchestrated customer journey giving customers the information that they need, when they need it and on their device of choice?

The promise of push is very compelling, but when leveraged as part of a broader orchestrated mobile and marketing program, the possibilities are nearly limitless – which is why Responsys is strengthening its mobile investment with the acquisition of Push IO.

I couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities this opens up for our customers, especially with so many interesting developments happening in the mobile industry, including:

More connected devices = bigger opportunity for push

The number of U.S. smartphone users reached 74 percent of total mobile users last year, according to eMarketer. But as we just saw at CES 2014, the tech industry’s annual confab, smartphones and tablets aren’t the only connected devices that marketers can use to deliver push notifications. Priceline, the online travel service, just announced a deal whereby General Motors will install Priceline’s app on the navigation screen in some of its Chevy vehicles. Drivers can book a hotel or change a flight through the Priceline app, all before leaving their driveway for work. In return, Priceline gets the sale and invaluable customer data to inform future communications. Being where your customers are at their moment of need has never been more important in today’s increasingly connected world.

    

A bridge between the digital and physical worlds

Target and Wegman’s are among the retailers that have found ways to fuse the online and offline shopping experience with mobile apps. These apps help customers put together and track their shopping lists or navigate store aisles. Meanwhile, iBeacons placed in retail stores/aisles or near products also offer tremendous promise. When an iOS device running iOS7 is detected, users can receive information about a product or event based on their micro-locations – within 2 inches.  iBeacon signals may also be tied to apps and/or trigger messages on locked screens as you walk through the aisle allowing brands to share product alerts and/or information. Apps will increasingly redefine and enrich the in-store experiences that brands can create for their customers.

The ability to collect and connect customer data 

Apigee reports that 85 percent of smartphone users would rather “give up drinking water” than delete their mobile apps. That kind of loyalty isn’t lost on marketers, who rely on customer data to glean valuable insights into how mobile users prefer to interact with brands. For example, understanding activity at the individual level within an app can help marketers determine future offers and messaging for identified users across all channels.

New opportunities to reinforce messaging, influence and remind

Another exciting development is the ability to connect a customer record to Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). Why? Access to the IDFA will provide the link necessary to find and target users via in-app mobile advertising – which accounts for the lion share of inventory across most mobile ad exchanges.  Big ad exchanges are already running remarketing campaigns using the IDFA and as I predicted in my annualClickZ predictions – this will go mainstream in 2014.  More importantly, Responsys can do this today.  We are already integrated with AppNexus to support your orchestrated email and display programs and AppNexus’ expanded mobile capabilities now include the ability to purchase mobile inventory matched through IDFA.  Imagine the ability to orchestrate you targeted email, display and now mobile ads to customers.

Push is not just for apps

Available with the release of Apple OS X Mavericks, web push – the ability to push notifications to the desktop browser – is available now on the Safari browser. Responsys is once again leading the charge here will the ability to support this capability today. Expect to see other browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer get more aggressive with their own web push notification efforts as adoption increases. Users opt-in, just like they do with iOS, but web push offers marketers yet another opportunity to connect and engage with users in a highly personalized way on the web.

These are just a few of the many compelling reasons for this acquisition. Along with giving us the ability to connect the dots in a meaningful way for our customers, this acquisition brings to Responsys some of the best minds in the mobile industry – the Push IO team.  We found in them a partner who shares the vision and excitement we have for this space and its limitless possibilities.  We will remain focused on our continued efforts to innovate and stay tuned for more updates as we further integrate mobile and web push into the Interact Marketing Cloud.

To read more about our acquisition of Push IO, visit: http://responsys.com/land/responsys-acquires-push-io

Rela

11 Questions About Pinterest You've Wanted to Ask

11 Questions About Pinterest You've Wanted to Ask

1) Okay, I’m on Pinterest. Now, how do I get followers?

It's intimidating to join Pinterest and see a big fat zero next to your number of followers, but don’t worry -- they’re out there. Building your reach on social networks takes work and time, but can really turn the dial up on traffic and leads for your business.

Because there are two options for people to engage with you on Pinterest -- either follow an individual board or your account as a whole -- there are quite a few ways you can get more people to follow you. A couple small things you can try include adding a Pinterest follow button to your website, pinning content throughout the day, letting your email subscribers and leads know that you're on Pinterest, and even following a few other people on Pinterest in the hope they'll return the favor.

2) Um ... what am I supposed to be pinning on Pinterest?

There are many, many things you can pin on Pinterest. But, before you start pinning, you should to be thinking about your strategy for visual content.

Marketers should invest in visual content as part of their overall marketing strategy, but when it comes to Pinterest, there are a few things that can help guide your decisions on what to pin.

Beyond regular photos, marketers can post articles, experiment with infographics, and even pin videos. You've just got to make sure, though, you’ve got your Pinterest board strategy down first.

3) So what's the difference between a pin, a repin, and a favorite?

Just like other social networks (especially Twitter), Pinterest has some lingo of its own you'll want to understand as you navigate the site.

A pin is essentially a bookmark, so when you find something on the web you want to keep or look at later, you can "pin" it to one of your boards.

Meanwhile, a repin is when you take an image that's already on someone else's board and post it to one of your own. When you do this, notifications are sent to let the other person know you've repinned something of theirs.

Same thing with anything you like: Pressing that "heart" button on a pin will send a notification to that person that you liked their pin.

4) Will people actually use Pinterest in the long run or is it just a fad?

Heck yeah they will. As mentioned, the site has millions of devoted followers. It's also popular no matter what time of day it is. For example, 4.8% of American users check out Pinterest at the office during work hours.

And just what are people doing on Pinterest? Well, they’re pinning pins, repinning pins (80% of pins are repins), creating boards, and following other boards of interest.

Very Pinteresting, if you ask us. Evidence hints that the site isn't dwindling in popularity anytime soon.

5) Isn't Pinterest just for women?

Nope. While women account for 80% of registered Pinterest users, plenty of men use it as well. While it's up to you to post content to the site and, in turn, find your core audience -- men, women, Millennials, older generations, students, professionals, etc. -- using Pinterest for business can help you drive traffic to your site, bring in leads, and even boost sales.

I could go on, but instead, I'll point you to more resources you can check out after this reading this post. Here’s our ultimate guide on mastering Pinterest for marketing.

6) I’m scared to ask my manager: How do I decide if Pinterest is good for my business?

Good for you for not jumping in with both feet on a popular social network just for the sake of having an account. Smart marketers know they need to evaluate if that new social network they're considering is worth their company’s time.

Here’s a good place to start: Are your buyer personas likely to frequent the site? What are your competitors doing on Pinterest? Once you’ve gathered that information, you’re better equipped to decide if Pinterest is a good social network for your company to have a presence on and if it’ll help with your overall marketing strategy.

7) Are businesses actually successful with their Pinterest marketing? Which ones?

Yes, and let’s get on the same page about one thing: You can do successful marketing on Pinterest whether you're a B2C company selling cars or a B2B company selling software.

For instance, Staples learned a lot by using Pinterest as a marketing channel. So has Chobani: Yes, the company sells yogurt, but it's using Pinterest to teach people more about the Chobani brand and lifestyle through the use of different boards and relatable photos.

8) Analytics. Data. Metrics. Do those even exist on Pinterest?

Yes, there are ways to measure your success with Pinterest. When thinking about the success of your marketing on the site, there are two things to consider.

One is how your account is performing on Pinterest itself. The second is the return on investment you’re getting by using Pinterest as a marketing channel.

With those two concepts in mind, read our blog post on measuring success on Pinterest. And if you have a Pinterest business account, the platform offers free analytics for measuring this stuff.

9) I assume there are some rules for Pinterest, right? What are they?

There are definitely "rules," but they’re not as hard and fast as you might think. Where Pinterest is concerned -- and, actually, where social media at large is concerned -- is that there’s proper social media marketing etiquette that you should always follow.

For instance, it's best not be too self-promotional, which can be tempting as a business that’s trying to bring traffic to their site. Pinterest actually has a webpage that discusses Pinterest etiquette in which they say, "We think authenticity -- expressing who you really are and what you’re really like -- is more important than getting lots of followers." So be sure to take this to heart -- otherwise, you’re at risk for being banned from the social site.

10) What’s another way to show my pins to my audience without always linking to Pinterest?

There's a couple. Just like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and a slew of other social networks, you can showcase your account on other marketing collateral you have.

For example, a quick win is embedding one of your boards right onto your website -- and we’ve got instructions on how to do that. But that’s only one of the four ways to cross-pollinate your pins with the rest of your marketing.

Pinterest also has a "Pin it" button, a "Follow" button, a "Profile" widget, and a "Board" widget that are all easy to integrate with your website. And the best part? We’ve got a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to use all of these social sharing buttons.

11) My website is the cat's meow. How can I get people to share it on Pinterest?

It's pretty easy to make it ... well ... easy for people to pin things from your website to their own Pinterest boards.

Pinterest has a great Goodies page that shows you how to make a "Pin it" button to put on your website. This button helps your website visitors quickly share your work on their own Pinterest boards.