It’s freezing outside! So why not stay indoors and read our latest round up of what’s going on in digital marketing?
Before diving into this weeks edition, catch up on last’s, where we looked at how to get long term value from your content, how to use Facebook Groups for your business and how to conduct customer service through social media… Back to this week, where we cover the following:
Managing customer experience is now a top strategic priority for businesses in the coming year. In a global survey of 13,000 marketing, creative and technology professionals, 45% of respondents placed customer experience in the top three most important things to do – with 20% of respondents ranking it as the number one priority for the year.
62% of the 13,000 respondents reported that they are on their way to achieving their goals concerning customer experience, which businesses put down to having a ‘cohesive plan’ in addition to having support from the executives for the long term.
The report, by Adobe and Econsultancy, also suggests that the best way to create a great customer experience is to set up a conversation between creative, content, marketing and web teams – as this collaboration will help find great insights and to get great results.
AI will be a force for good when it comes to improving customer experience, with 24% of large enterprises are already investing in this type of technology. At the same time, 40% of organisations do not even have the skill set to incorporate AI into their businesses.
John Watton, Senior Marketing Director, Adobe, said:
“Digital means that customers now have more power to engage with brands in their own terms. This has changed the way companies interact with their customers, who expect great experiences as standard.
“For businesses that put the customer at the centre of everything they do, it’s clear the investments are paying off. But customer experience cannot just be the remit of marketing or customer services; it must be driven through every function of the organisation, from marketing and IT to product development and design.
“By breaking down organisational silos and using data and AI to combine analytical insight with design and creative capabilities, brands can offer stand-out experiences across every interaction.”
READ MORE: Artificial Intelligence and SEO
In an effort to improve transparency and become more user-friendly, Facebook has announced that it will make several changes to the way that advertising metrics are reported, as of July this year.
These changes are the result of some of the difficulties that the company faced in measuring ad metrics, as well as pressure from advertisers for more clarity around how their metrics are calculated.
Some of the changes are simply removing those metrics that were redundant, outdated, not actionable or that were rarely used. As part of Facebook’s clarity measures, they have published a full list of the removed metrics, with the reason for its removal and which metrics to look at as an alternative.
The metrics that Facebook keeps on, will be labelled more clearly – with some metrics being ‘estimated’ or ‘in development’. According to the Facebook blog, metrics that are ‘estimated’ are,
“helpful because they can provide insights for outcomes that may be hard to precisely measure, such as the estimated ad recall lift or the number of unique people your campaign reached.
“These metrics are meant to provide directional insights into the value of your marketing results and can factor into your businesses’ strategic planning”
Further to these changes, Facebook is also running a program called ‘Measure What Matters’ in which marketers can learn more about Facebook metrics, and what they mean to their own businesses. These programs will be available from March 2018, on the Facebook Business website, on Facebook Live and at live events.
READ MORE: The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Remarketing
Digital video advertising is growing in popularity, and its growth is set to increase by double-digit percentages year-on-year, with predictions that by 2021 the US digital video advertising industry will be worth over $22 billion.
As the industry grows and adapts, rules for best practice emerge – in 2017 the best practices included focusing on short ads, front-loading branding elements, using detailed targeting criteria and making ads contextually relevant to the platform and the space around them.
Since then, out-stream video, brand safety and fraud reduction have been added to the list in relation to specific events and trends that had been spotted.
Paul Verna, eMarketer’s principal analyst predicts that,
“Connected TV advertising will be a big focus for 2018 […] The audience is primed and ready, the devices are numerous and increasingly sophisticated, and there are multiple content platforms to support the ecosystem.
“The last remaining piece of the puzzle is a robust ad economy, and by many indications this will be the year when it starts to scale.”
READ MORE: Creating ‘How-To’ Videos
Google recently partnered up with The Boston Consulting Group to work out how mobile has affected B2B. The research revealed that more than 40% of revenue in leading B2B organisations was driven by mobile, as well as several other revelations.
50% of B2B search queries are made on smartphones, and the research suggests that this will continue to rise to 70% by 2020. B2B buyers are tech-savvy, using their mobile for work whilst commuting or travelling, and multitasking across multiple screens when they are at home or at the office.
B2B workers spend 2 hours on average on their mobiles per day, which is also expected to increase to 3 hours a day by 2020.
All this smartphone usage means that B2B businesses are being compared not just to others in their industry, but are in fact being compared to every mobile website out there.
Your site may be better than your competition, but if it’s not as good as the best of customer experience online, then B2B buyers won’t have a great customer experience.
Spending more time on a mobile device is one thing, but mobile is actually driving business results too. The research shows that mobile speeds up the time to purchase by up to 20%, which boosts revenue and reduces costs.
Mobile is also generating higher levels of engagement through search queries, site traffic, lead generation and actual transactions. B2B companies are also seeing that a larger proportion of their revenue is driven or influenced by mobile.
It seems that mobile is also increasing loyalty – 90% of B2B buyers reported that a positive mobile experience will affect the repurchase rate, therefore building customer loyalty.
Mobile leaders in B2B are seen to take a more customer-centric approach to mobile – understanding that mobile is key at certain engagement points, and for certain customers. Mobile leaders also develop a specific strategy for each individual within the buying team.
By embracing the many positives of the mobile experience, B2B mobile leaders create a site that has a vertical creative format with minimal text, as well as highlighting and taking advantage of mobile’s ability to gather location data and easy click-to-call links.
Mobile leaders also combine their own data, such as mobile apps and their website, with relevant third-party data, from social media to create a fuller picture of each customer. As B2B purchases can be long and complex, using data to deliver personalised, relevant and well-timed communications may make all the difference.
Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews firm, has found that the age of a business owner will affect how likely they are to build an app that supports their brand. The younger the business owner, the more likely they are to have an app – millennials topping the list with 55% of them having a mobile app.
42% of small business owners who are in Gen X have an app, whilst only 13% of Baby Boomers do. Despite these figures, the number of small business apps has remained stable. In 2017, 42% had an app, which is the same for 2018, even though 25% of 2017 respondents had planned to build an app.
Apps are expensive and require lots of resources to build, so small businesses should only create an app for the right reasons. For example, 30% of small business owners with an app created it to attract new customers, however most customers do not browse for apps, which means that their aim for the app may never be fulfilled.
“The more rigorously you assess whether to invest or not to invest in a mobile app, the better.”
Peter Mezyk, chief operating officer of Nomtek a mobile application development agency in Poland.
“When I think of a mobile app, companies with a lot of repeat customers benefit the most. If you’re going to have an app that lives ever-present on someone’s phone, that app provides businesses with new marketing opportunities to reach out to customers again and again.”
Zantzinger, VP of Business Development at WillowTree, Inc., a mobile app development company.
READ MORE: Bespoke Application Development
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