Today’s ‘always-on’ customers have new real-time expectations, so real-time marketing has never been more necessary.
Thankfully emerging digital marketing technologies and platforms offer an opportunity that was never before possible with traditional marketing.
Carla Eid is head of Microsoft Mobile’s Connects programme, its community of customers and advocates.
I asked her a few questions about what working with that community entails. How does the brand get involved and what benefits does it see across content production but also, of course, in sales.
Take a look and, in the community spirit, feel free to leave comments or further questions.
Mobile marketing is still a developing industry and one that does suffer something of an image problem.
Taken purely in terms of clickthroughs and conversions mobile ads don’t always deliver the best returns, so it’s up to the mobile networks to continue improving ad units while also convincing marketers that it’s not all about clicks.
To assist in this endeavour, I’ve rounded up eight case studies of mobile marketing campaigns that proved to be a success.
For more in-depth case studies, head over to our Case Study Database which is available to Econsultancy subscribers.
And for more on this topic download the Econsultancy Mobile Marketing and Commerce Report or read my post looking at eight great examples of mobile marketing from Southeast Asia.
It can be hard for brands to look spontaneous and fun on social media.
We, particularly the Brits, are all too sceptical about brands doing anything other than trying to sell us stuff.
However, when brands get it right, it can be really rather special. I’ve rounded up some of my favourites. I should nod to Hootsuite and it’s first Connect event, where I picked up the Kellogg’s and Axe case studies.
See if these tweets make you laugh or cry, as they did me (mostly laugh). If you want more case studies, subscribers can shoot over to our case study archive.
What about us little guys, huh?
One of the surprising results of brands adopting social media as a marketing channel is the creation of an unpredictable little corner of Twitter known as ‘that weird thing that happens when brands talk to each other’.
As a child of the 80s and therefore a survivor of the Cola Wars, it feels inexplicable that two corporations would even acknowledge each other’s existence, let alone engage in friendly banter with each other in a public setting.
Bitter rivals, divided by capitalism, hurling rocks at each other from behind the safety of multi-million dollar television ad campaigns is what we’re used to.
Not this…
In a sideways blow to Apple, Windows Phone and Blackberry, Android is now the dominant operating system of mobile users worldwide.
Android use has climbed from 27% in 2012 to 65% in 2013. An even more impressive figure is the 270% increase in Android use since the end of 2011.
These figures come from the Q4 2013 market research study by GlobalWebIndex (GWI), in which 170,000 respondents were interviewed in 32 markets, representing 89% of the global internet population.
Here are some more fascinating stats from the study involving device ownership and privacy.
I should add a caveat here… ‘of varying degrees of quality’.
There are definitely six examples here, but I would suggest that only four and a half are actually ‘innovative’.
I’ll start with the best one, which is the reason why I began this journey in the first place. Well that and an uncharacteristic wave of festive spirit after enjoying a post-lunchtime liqueur chocolate. Then if you can tread with increasing amounts caution through the remaining examples, that would be great.
So with the formalities dispensed with, let’s begin…
As November is only days away it’s time to round up some of the most interesting and noteworthy social campaigns we’ve seen this month.
This time it includes efforts from Cadbury, Doritos, Coke and Visa, as well as a flurry of Twitter Q&As.
If you’ve spotted any other decent social campaigns in October please flag them up in the comments…
You’re a big brand but you don’t sell from your website, so what can you do about it?
Nokia is using its website, Facebook, email and even paid ads to push its brand traffic towards its retail partners.
Rob Durkin, Co-Founder and Head of Innovation at FusePump, spoke at this year’s JUMP with Jonathan Lewis-Jones from Nokia, about how they’ve turned brand traffic into sales, despite not selling direct.
Below I’ll give some details of Nokia’s work, but first some general comments from Rob on the place for referral marketing.
Presentations from this year’s Festival of Marketing are available to Econsultancy subscribers. You can access the JUMP presentations here.
If online video shares translated to sales then the mobile landscape would look drastically different, but unfortunately for Nokia its phones haven’t proved to be as popular as its ads.
New research from Unruly shows that Microsoft’s most recent acquisition received 17% of all online video shares among smartphone brands, second only to Samsung which dominated with more than half (52%) of shares.
Apple came a lowly third with 9.4% closely followed by Sony (7%) and Blackberry (6.7%).
However Samsung’s impressive performance is thanks to the high number of videos it has launched over the years, so it’s potentially a case of quantity rather than quality.
As we approach the end of Social Media Week, we caught the last session at Hearst with Beyond the Like for Lifestyle Brands with presentations by Richard Jones of EngageSciences, Eve Sangenito of Brandwatch, David St. John Tradewell of Econsultancy, We Are Social’s Robin Grant and Craig Hepburn, Global Head of Digital and Social for Nokia.
One of the biggest takeaways was an urge for marketers to look beyond sheer numbers and to look at who is engaging and what actions these lead to. Why blanket market to 50,000 fans when only 9,000 are actually bringing in the majority of engagement, shares and revenue.
To celebrate the launch of our new digital marketing and ecommerce awards, #TheDigitals, I’ve rounded up six brilliant examples of innovation in mobile.
It follows a recent post that flagged up five great examples of social media marketing excellence.
To avoid any accusations of bias, these are all examples that fall outside the eligibility period for the current awards, but give an idea of the sort of thing we are looking for.
#TheDigitals are the new awards that recognise the best in digital marketing and ecommerce. Award entries must be submitted online before the deadline March 13, 2013.