Last week, DemandCon invaded San Francisco, and demand generation marketing and sales was a hot topic of discussion. In conjunction with this year’s event, the Social Media Club of San Francisco hosted a panel to discuss whether “Social Media ROI Can Equal Sales.” The panel consisted of Adam Metz, author and Principal at the Social Concept (@theMetz); Jason Miller, Social Media Strategist at Marketo (@JasonMillerCA ); Koka Sexton, Sr. Social Marketing Manager LinkedIn (@KokaSexton ). If that doesn’t turn you on, then you’re reading the wrong blog post. Here are some of the key takeaways.

Just Do It

At the risk of sounding like a ‘90’s era Nike commercial, this was a universal theme. Social Media can drive leads, and the ROI can be tracked, so what are demand generation marketers waiting for? All three panelists were adamant that there are leads and sales out there to be had using Social Media and if your organization is not utilizing these valuable channels, your competition is. Koka Sexton pointed out that “while 60-70% of the buying cycle is online, most companies don’t get it… there are ways to find and engage targets, but they either don’t understand how or they are reluctant to try new tools.”

Jason Miller, Adam Metz and Koka Sextion (L to R)

It’s All About Engagement

Anyone studying social media will have heard this a million times, but engagement is still the key to success. Targets and leads are not the same. Further, just because someone follows you on Twitter or downloads your white paper doesn’t make them a lead. In B2B marketing, the “leads” aren’t usually ready to buy immediately. They need to be engaged and nurtured before they are truly part of the sales funnel. With social media, you can provide them with what they want – to be helped and entertained. It might take 7 to 10 touches before the sales team is even ready to mobilize. However, Jason Miller pointed out that if you repeatedly fill the sales funnel with too many uninterested, unengaged “leads,” your sales team will begin to question the veracity of your work.

The Tools Are Cheap

There is no longer an excuse to say that you cannot track ROI. A convenient excuse in the past has been that the tools are too expensive, but that’s simply not the case any longer. Miller cited the “old days” of 2007 when a suite of services such as Buzzsuite cost thousands for the promise of tracking influencers, engagement and leads. Now there are services such as Hootsuite that provide all of that and more, many of which are free.

Make Sure You Know What You Are Measuring

All of the panelists agreed that it is crucial to know what you are measuring. Sexton suggested that there are 3 levels of measuring – 1. Likes (which is very basic); 2. Engagement (which provides more context to what you are doing but doesn’t quite equate to closed business); 3. Leads (which ultimately can be traced to closed business). Adam Metz suggested that many organizations do not have robust business intelligence tools and metrics. If that’s the case, he recommends that you buddy up with an analyst and develop metrics by which your success can be judged.

Know The Full Cycle

It’s not always easy within an organization to have complete ownership of the sales cycle or control of the metrics. As Metz pointed out, cross-functional ownership of the customer is crucial across a long sales cycle. That is why it is important to clarify what needs to be measured, and what you are measuring against. You can track the lead from social to a closed sale, but you have to follow it and in organizations with multiple touch points, that can be difficult.

In Social, Good Content Helps…And It’s OK To Be A Little Goofy

“Baby Godfather” Meme – A Successful Social Campaign

Whether it’s B2B or B2C, good content helps engage your targets and ultimately can help develop them into real leads. “What is good content?” you might be asking? There’s no magic formula, but helpful or entertaining content is a good start. Sexton recommends that all content be sharable. For example, utilize “click to tweet” functionality in order to make it as easily sharable as possible. Miller gave an example of “Baby Godfather,” a silly, low-budget campaign based upon – you guessed it – a “Baby Godfather” meme. Taking a cue from a viral meme that was making the rounds, the campaign was wildly successful, garnering thousands of “Likes” that his team could then follow-up with progressive touches and behavior understandings. Many of those contacts became engaged targets and eventual leads. The takeaway was that in social it was ok to be a little goofy, as long as the content was entertaining and sharable.

In case corporate America were still in doubt, milestones such as the LinkedIn IPO and the Facebook IPO indicate that social media is no mere fad. And it’s no longer merely the domain of the PR team. It’s a channel that demand generation marketers need to utilize. Social media as a channel and the tools that can track ROI have reached a more mature stage – is your organization taking advantage?

“A landing page is like a pickup line, a microsite the seduction.” – Robert Gillelan, Digital Marketing Freelancer

Perhaps that’s an oversimplification, or a bit too clever, but I really like simplicity. The topic of landing pages and microsites was recently discussed on the CMO LinkedIn group. Robert Gillelan’s quote struck me, because while this is a simple response, much of the discussion was anything but simple. It made me realize that all too often, I thought of the two terms as more or less interchangeable. Sure, I would acknowledge that a landing page is typically one-page geared to a specific call-to-action whereas a microsite could be more full-featured, potentially with multiple pages. However, as the discussion unfolded, a lot of crucial differences were revealed.

For starters, there is indeed a clear functional difference between a landing page and a microsite. According to John Cole, a B2B Copywriter (www.copyengineer.com ), “A landing page is so named because it is where one ‘lands’ after clicking on an online campaign link (banner ad, e-zine ad, etc.). The goal of a landing page is to get the visitor to make a decision.” Alternatively, a microsite “may be simply to inform, and give prospects a variety of possible next steps.” As such, a landing page is simple in its navigation, with only the CTA available to the viewer. Nothing should distract them from that intent. A microsite, on the other hand, can be more fully-featured, taking advantage of higher functionality to inform the viewer of the product, service or subject.

Jonathan Young, Managing Director, SwiftPartners, suggested another very interesting tactical difference that I hadn’t considered. He discussed how the two can be jointly used in lead generation and demand generation campaign. Because a visitor will have arrived at a landing page through a specific search, and because it has very specific response actions, you have learned all that you can about that visitor’s intent. Mr. Young pointed out that “A properly architected microsite can profile respondent ‘care-abouts’ based on their behavior as they self-serve the content. This can be especially helpful in considered purchases with a number of salient features and multiple decision-influencers. Respondent interaction with the microsite–if conceived to generate strategic insight–can reveal category pain-points, prioritize features of the offering, and even identify gating considerations to inquiry and purchase.” In other words, the takeaways from the microsite can be used to fine-tune the search criteria and the messaging within the landing pages. Using the two in tandem, he has seen increased conversion rates of over 50%.

That led to another theme. Not only can landing pages and microsites work together, a microsite might be made up of specific landing pages. Peter Johnson, Director at Intelligent Prospecting, put it this way: “A landing page was originally designed to bring someone into your site at a point more targeted at them so they would see your site as more relevant. It often leads to a suite of pages – a micro-site if you like – within the main site but focused on whatever brought them there in the first place.” Depending upon the “care abouts” expressed in the search process, the visitor will go to one or another landing page within the microsite.

There were repeated concerns regarding SEO and the use of microsites. However, the discussion made it clear that there are clear functional and tactical differences between a landing page and a microsite. If you’ve been using the terms interchangeably, it’s time to consider how the two approaches can be used to romance your next customer.

Digital vs. social media, what is the difference?
 
Year after Year, technology evolves at what seems like an ever-faster pace. I realize that’s not shocking news – a bit like when your Great-Aunt Evelyn points out how tall you’re getting for the umpteenth time. Time flies and technology evolves quickly. However, whether it is a new gadget or a new operating system, it is fascinating to see how it impacts the way we go about our lives.
 
In the era of the Internet and social media, viral videos and memes, media is an integral part of our daily routines. It’s fair to say that if you’re reading this, you’re someone that would be more crushed to lose your smart phone than your wallet. You’ve also probably launched your very own personal social campaign. And you are no doubt guilty of tweeting, facebooking, instagraming, and pinning something that you thought was worth sharing in order to enhance your social presence. That’s what we do with media these days.
 
I was struck by an article by Rebecca Leib positing that ‘digital’ and ‘social’ media are the same. She states that ‘all media is digital.’ Upon examination, that’s hard to refute. Perhaps we have focused on separating the two based upon who distributes the content. If a consumer posts something, it falls in the category of social media, whereas if a brand posts something it is known as a digital media campaign. The assumption could be that the individual is simply sharing while the brand is using more sophistication and analysis in order to sell stuff.
 
Media is everywhere, whether it is print, broadcast, digital, or social. What we see from both consumers and brands is that they are sharing media of the digital variety. Over time the lines have blurred to the point that the lines don’t really exist anymore. What we are left with is an ever-evolving set of tools. A decade ago, we shared silly jokes or photos via e-mail. Now we share them via Pinterest. In between there was MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg and a slew of others, some of which fell by the wayside. The point is, they were all digital and they all offered us the ability to share something about ourselves, or something we liked, or something that reflected our personality. In other words, they allowed us to launch our very own social campaign.
 
As proof, look no further than the painful demise of Barnes & Noble’s Nook. The e-reader created by the only remaining national bookseller just couldn’t keep up with the advancements made by other tablets. It wasn’t full-featured enough, including its e-mail functionality and social media components. Its ability to be a digital and social portal was inadequate, and people didn’t adopt it despite the bookseller pushing it at every turn. Folks don’t want a device or a broadsheet that only allows them to take in content. They want that device to do more. They want to be able to share.
 
From the brand side, look at how campaigns are launched. The majority of the commercials shown during the Super Bowl were shared prior to the big game and utilized hashtags, Facebook pages and other sharing options. Viewers expected to be able to join the conversation, bridging the gap between broadcast and digital. This is a trend that companies have adopted across all their digital campaigns.
 
So what does this all mean? It means that we might no longer be able to draw a distinction. Digital media has gone social, and social media has gone digital.
 
 
 

As a creative service provider we value the creative process. Every agency has its own approach, depending upon the medium in which they work and their resources. However, the process is what ensures that we, as the “creatives”, do not stray from the needs of the client. That is the key, because video and digital media for marketers and advertisers isn’t about making art or being creative for the sake of creativity. As a collaborative team, we commit to a process that will achieve desired results for the client and the brand.
 
On top of that, clients expect an agency to be able to help them navigate those waters. The creative process acts as the chart, or the road map. It helps the client understand how to get from an idea and need to a successfully developed tactic. We believe that in order to sustain a good relationship and to execute our work efficiently, effectively and creatively, we need both the client and creative to understand and grasp the process.
 
In The Subjectivity of Creative we provided a list of ways to ensure alignment. Here is an overview of the Creative Process that BARS+TONE has developed.
 
• Develop the Strategy – Understanding what the client hopes to achieve with a given campaign or tactic is crucial to developing the right creative concept. At the outset, we work with the client to hone in on the strategy. There are two key components: 
 

 
• Creative Team Reviews Creative Brief and Brand Research – Once we have the necessary background information in hand, it is crucial that the creative team meet to review the materials together. As part of the collaborative process, it is extremely helpful that a kick-off meeting gets everyone on the same page. 
 
• Individual Creative Time – At BARS+TONE, we value the individual creativity our team members bring to the project. Our team members are given time and freedom to come up with ideas that will achieve the objectives detailed in the creative brief. 
 
• Group Creative Time – Once the individuals have developed ideas, the creative team reconvenes to flush out concepts. While the number of concepts varies from project-to-project, we typically select three that we will develop and present to the client. Again, we ensure that we have made our decisions based on the brand overview, client objectives, key message and audience. Frequently the concepts will vary in style and budget, providing the client a range from which to choose. 
 
• Present Concepts to Client – If we’ve done our job right up to this point, we should be successful in pitching one of our three concepts to the client.  
 
• Develop Concept – It’s not enough to agree on a strategy and a concept. As we’ve discussed before, creativity is subjective. Collaboration, input and feedback between the client and creatives will help ensure that the agreed upon concept is developed in a manner that meets expectations. In the case of developing a video project – especially one that is largely cgi or animation – we use tools to help facilitate this process: 
 

 
The creative process is more than providing a unique, one-of-a-kind idea. It is about creating a relationship and remaining in alignment with a client in order to fulfill their needs. Anything less is missing the mark.
 
 
 

Another Super Bowl has come and gone, and if you’re a Niner fan, all you have to do now is dissect what could have been. That is, unless you’re also a marketer, in which case you can dissect the good, the bad and the ugly ads that were served up to us. Here are some thoughts from our team.
 
User Generated, Hits and Misses – User-generated ads continued to be a trend this year, accounting for three of the top ten Tivo’d ads. Doritos offered up two “humorous” crowd-sourced commercials. Unfortunately, humor is subjective, and these spots fell flat in our opinion. Audi of America’s “Prom” and Coca Cola’s “Coke Chase” gave fans the opportunity to choose the ending via online voting prior to the game. Audi’s “Prom” was cute, until the protagonist puts the Prom Queen in a lip-lock and gets hit by her date. Brave? Perhaps. Stupid. Undoubtedly. What’s it say about Audi? Not entirely sure. Coca Cola’s “Coke Chase” generated a lot of excitement prior to the game. Unfortunately the short “diversion” clips and the clip announcing the winner didn’t quite live up to the hype. Not exactly Old Spice stuff, I have to say.
 
Previewing Ads didn’t hurt, But Racial Stereotyping Will – As we discussed prior to the big game, many major brands once again previewed their spots. According to Tivo, nine of the top ten spots were released ahead of time, and the #10-ranked Volkswagen’s “Get In. Get Happy” received more than 8,373,067 views on YouTube before the live airings. So, folks had a chance to see them before the game and still rewound to watch them again? I guess the luster of it all hadn’t worn off. That said, VW has gotten skewered for blatant racial stereotyping. Sure it was a humorous spot, but brands should reconsider using stereotypes to get a few laughs. It’s not likely to lead to sales but it sure can damage the brand name.
 
Chrysler Breaks Even… Maybe – Speaking of another brand to step in it. The Dodge “Farmer” spot was one of my favorites this year. It came from the heart and spoke to the essence of the Dodge Ram brand. Like last year’s “Imported From Detroit” it really struck a tone. Not so the “Whole Again” spot. Jeep’s crass product placement in an otherwise touching narrative smacked of exploitation. Did “Farmer” exploit the hardships of the American farmer? Perhaps, but that’s altogether different than exploiting veterans who sacrificed everything for their country. I’m not sure how the court of public opinion sees it, but if Chrysler is lucky, they break even on this one.
 
Bud Light and Go Daddy Buck the Trend – I never hold out much hope for Bud Light or Go Daddy, but I have to say that they upped their intelligence quotient just a bit. I actually really liked “Superstition” spots. It was a great extension of an existing campaign and took good advantage of the New Orleans locale and voodoo. Mix in a bit of Stevie Wonder and I have to say, the two spots “Journey” and “Lucky Chair” hit the mark. As for Go Daddy, the only way for them was up, but year after year they seemed to stay right there in the gutter. “Your Big Idea” was an ode to procrastinators that actually spoke to the Go Daddy brand, with just a small Danica Patrick cameo. Of course, they also served up “Perfect Match” but then, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
 
Amy Poehler Said “Dongle” – We’re no fans of Best Buy, but we love the word “dongle”.
 
Finally, Taco Bell’s “Viva Young” captured the message ‘You Only Live Once’. Is this what retirement looks like at Taco Bell? Not too bad, though if you haven’t gotten tattooed by 80, isn’t it a wee bit late?
 
What did you think of this year’s ads? Did the industry serve up the best they had? Or did it fall flat? What were your favorites? Let us know and join the conversation.
 
 

As the Super Bowl approaches, companies are preparing their ads, showing snippets and getting consumers involved.
 
Sure, the 49ers and the Ravens will be playing a big game, but like many marketers (and non-marketers) I am more excited about the ads. I think I pay more attention to the ads than the actual game. Some ads hit and some are miss; some are funny, some are confusing and some simply lack creativity. In order for an ad to stand out, especially during half time, it has to be engaging and interesting, elevating the brand above the considerable clutter.
 
This year, there’s been a lot of buzz around Super Bowl Campaigns, especially brands “leaking” their Super Bowl spots. A recent MediaPost article indicates “Pre-game campaigns on average generated 2.1 million social views, twice the average of total views for post-game releases.” Therefore, showing a snippet of the ad before the game will have more views and involvement after the game. On the other hand, an article in the New York Times interviewed executives who “…see disadvantages to previewing Super Bowl spots in full because doing so could diminish…the shock and awe.” Some fans are anxiously waiting until game day to see the ads, because the ads are part of super bowl experience. So while the verdict may still be out, both sides are correct to some degree: the most important thing is that the ad has to be memorable.
 
Many companies such as Coca cola, Bud Light, and Toyota are going big, pushing their campaigns far beyond just the 30-second commercial. They are creating longer format ads and an engaging online and social experience for their consumers. At the end of their ad there is a hash tag so fans can tweet and be part of the conversation, before and during the game. For example, Coca Cola encourages viewers to vote on how the spot ends.
 
Another example is Target, who has created a mobile game called Snack Bowl. Consumers who play the game will see products such as Coke Zero, Stride Gum and Digornio frozen pizzas. This helps consumers create a list of snacks they can purchase at Target to create the best Super Bowl party. These experiences are helping consumers interact with the brand on a personal level, even before the game, and making it easier for the brand to communicate directly to consumers.
 
I have seen a few super bowls in my lifetime and I still remember some ads from previous years. It wasn’t that I saw it early, or that it was a surprise, but that it was an interesting and engaging ad. For example last year’s M&Ms ad was one of my favorites. It was funny, entertaining and memorable.
 
Consumers want to see funny and entertaining ads, so it doesn’t matter the time it was shown, but how well it executed. Whether the ad is leaked or truly premiers on game day, marketers need to maximize their investment. Super Bowl ads need to extend beyond the four quarters of football and they need to rise above the clutter. It’s a risk, but those who get it right will be the big winners on Super Sunday.
 
 

Amazon Web Services (an Amazon company) made news today with the release of Elastic Transcoder, a service that will take in a video file and create optimized versions for phone, tablet, web, or anything else you can think of. We were curious about the new offering and who it will benefit, so we did a little poking around.
 
To begin with, all of the settings are expertly pre-tuned for high quality and small size, so neophytes can quickly and easily get started. In addition, the vast computing power of Amazon’s cloud will get it done way faster than you can. Similar services like Zencoder have been around for years, but Amazon’s prices are much lower.
 
However, as a digital agency, it just doesn’t fit the BARS+TONE workflow. It would take longer to upload our files to their encoding server than it would to encode them ourselves for free. Most video and digital media professionals create and edit video using the highest quality video settings. This allows us to maintain the highest quality throughout the creation process, but it also creates gigantic files. Our decent cable internet connection, which provides more than enough bandwidth to upload compressed review files, would take about three hours to upload a 2 minute high-res video to Amazon Elastic Transcoder. Then we’d have to wait for it to encode, and then we’d have to download the encoded files. On top of all of that, we’d have to pay 6 cents. (I know what you’re thinking – 6 cents is a lot of money these days!) Alternatively, we can encode that same video on a Mac Pro in less than 15 minutes. The only way Amazon’s service would work for us would be if we had an internet connection with 50 Mbps sustained upload (i.e. Ethernet or fiber internet), which costs $500/month at the very least. Again, our current workflow simply doesn’t demand that type of firepower.
 
Of course, that’s our particular situation. We’ve studied video encoding and created tuned settings for ourselves that give good quality and manageable file size, so we don’t benefit from the simplicity offered by Elastic Transcoder. We also need a very quick turnaround time. What we don’t need is to encode lots and lots of videos. Paying $500/month for a fast connection isn’t economical, even if it costs a paltry 6 cents to actually encode the video on Amazon’s servers.
 
However, that’s not to say there aren’t advertising and marketing professionals out there that can’t benefit from the service. Amazon Elastic Transcoder might be worth it if:
 
- You need to encode a ton of videos every day  
- You don’t have enough computing power to encode everything – lots of agencies or internal marketing departments aren’t so equipped  
- You don’t have someone who knows video encoding – we benefit from a technical team that knows this inside and out  
- You can afford $500/month just for internet (and you already have WebPass in your building)  
- You happen to store your high-resolution video files in Amazon’s cloud instead of in-house  
 
If several of the above ring true for you, you may want to check it out. Otherwise, you’re better off using Apple Compressor, Telestream Episode, Sorenson Squeeze, Adobe Media Encoder, or any of the free encoders like MediaCoder. You can always ask the digital agency that created your work to make the various compressed files for you. I’m sure they’d be glad to comply.
 
 

 
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” – Erich Fromm
 
Uh oh, that could be trouble. Because in business, when we set expectations with clients, and enter into agreements, both sides expect a degree of certainty. But when creativity is part of the equation, certainty becomes altogether uncertain.
 
Put another way, you have your opinion and I have mine. Creativity being a subjective matter, we will both be entitled to our opinions. As a B2B creative services provider, we are challenged to manage the uncertainties of creative, balance expectations and deliver to the client what they expected when we established a business relationship.
 
With everyone entitled to their own opinion, the juggling act is not always an easy one to manage.
 
I recently read a blog post by Brian Solis. The premise of the post is that social media won’t save you, but good client relationships and experiences will. He has this to say: “From experience, there are two other ingredients that serve as harbingers to the future of any business, under-scoping or underestimating sales and marketing and underemphasizing product quality and customer experiences.” What resonates with me is that a good service provider will first be on target with the sale and then secondly provide quality and good customer experience. There are two parts of the equation, but both require an agreement between client and provider, and there’s the rub.
 
Creativity is not a commodity, something that can be easily packaged and sold for a fee. What happens when that lack of certainty plays havoc with agreement? What happens when creative is met with “I don’t think that is very good”? It requires careful management of expectations, and that can only be truly achieved by maintaining close relationships with the client. Solis goes on to write about how social media can help forge those relationships. He talks about “Listening with Intent” and “Designing the Experience.”
 
Listening should never be underestimated. As the saying goes: “We have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio.” Every service provider says that they “listen to the client to provide a truly collaborative experience.” It’s a bit of a cliché, but like many clichés, there is a strong whiff of truth.
 
However, there is another important benefit to listening – you discover when things are amiss. In our creative world, that usually refers to a creative disconnect.
 
By listening with intent we can catch creative disconnect at an early stage. It won’t do away with creative disconnect, but the earlier it is addressed the more likely a solution will be found.
 
Designing the experience is also crucial. Like most professions, the client comes to us and assumes we will be the expert. Consciously or unconsciously, clients expect continuity in relationships. Some of the ways of ensuring they remain “in the loop”:
 
• Research is crucial. Conduct or reference existing research that indicates your creative approach is designed to resonate with the client’s targeted market segments.
 
• Creative briefs act as a roadmap. Establish clear creative briefs that explain the strategy behind the tactic and the potential creative direction.
 
• Communicate. Maintain clear communication through regular check-ins with clients. Any recommendations or updated concepts should be clearly communicated, understood and agreed upon.
 
• Reviews and feedback are important. First, know who needs to give feedback. Second, get feedback from all key stakeholders ASAP. This makes sure everyone is on the same page and avoids backtracking.
 
• Make sure you have client alignment and approval of storyboards before production.
 
• Reach a mutual understanding that connotations and tone of any media tools are consistent with client brand positioning – whether it’s a video, an online ad or an app – before it approaches the stage for final sign-off.
 
The client experience and the creative process are inextricably linked. If the experience is poor, or the creative process unconvincing, it is most likely due to a weak foundation — the absence of a relationship built on continuity in communication.
 
Another blog entry got me thinking more about client relationships. Hank Blank wonders if agencies are teaching their people how to establish client relationships. After all, social media alone will not get you there, and neither will e-mails and text messages.  
 
Are we doing enough to engage our clients and build that relationship? Because uncertainty in creative is going to lead to tough discussions and even tougher decisions. Is your client relationship strong enough to survive? What are agencies doing to build and maintain relationships? I’m very curious about this, because in the end, that seems to be the best way to ensure that the business agreement survives uncertainty.
 
 

The holidays are coming up fast and that means stressed out moms and dads, anxious boys and girls, long lines, and more holiday music than Santa can shake a candy cane at. Despite all of the chaos, the time flies and suddenly the holidays are upon us, full of family and cheer.
 
I remember the days when my relatives and I would play board games to let time pass until it was time to open our presents. Now, we have cell phones and tablets that kill the long hours– the naughty among us might even peek at recent purchase history to find out what our parents and loved ones were looking at online. Maybe, just maybe, we can get a hint on what presents are might be waiting for us under the tree. But it’s not all fun and games for the retailers. Savvy shoppers use mobile to research products and comparison shop, creating a virtual “mobile mall.”
 
While more and more retailers are engaging customers through their mobile devices, there’s a long way to go. In fact, at the Mobile-Loco Conference in San Francisco held last week, GigaOm Pro Analyst Dr. Phil Hendrix asked a panel why only 16% of companies are using mobile to direct the client, and what they suggested. Chris Fagan, CEO and founder of Key Ring, shared this thought: “When you talk about how to launch an effective mobile strategies, I think, if you can’t measure it, you shouldn’t be doing it. And, a lot of brands that we’re working with, their comfort level with launching mobile strategies and launching mobile campaigns really comes from their comfort level of understanding what’s going on locally. And so, we’re trying to build the optics into local so that they can really, you know, launch strategies that not only are going to be effective and interesting and relevant to a consumer but also measureable on the backend.”
 
Here are a few tips to engage your customers this holiday season.
 

1. Just get started – Lee Clancy, VP of Consumer Products at Trulia, suggested that brands focus on the mobile website. “Everybody thinks apps, but there are so many ways to improve the mobile web experience.” Vishy Gopalakrishnan, VP, Mobility, SAP, agreed. “Don’t wait, get something out there. But be ready for radical transparency, warts and all. Most large brands aren’t ready for that.”
2. Provide for a need – Neil Crist, CEO and Founder, Venuelabs, had this to say regarding mobile platforms for consumer retail: “I wouldn’t be focused on so much of what are retailers buying and what are they not. I’d focus on what services can we build and create right now that are going to solve some pretty far-reaching consumer needs; and, if you do that and you’ve built up this really powerful local user-base – the retailers and the consumer packages companies will work with you. So, focus on need first and then, you know, I think the companies will find you.”
3. Leverage existing platforms – Marc Ruxin, CEO of TastemakerX, suggested leveraging existing mobile platforms in a way that highlights your brand. A question he posed was, “Are brands doing the right thing with the platforms?” Brands should be thinking about how to interact with consumers with native platforms like Instagram or Fandango. However, he stressed that it’s even better to do it early in a platform’s growth trajectory, when it’s trendy and newsworthy, not after it’s jumped the shark.
4. Leverage video – Anything with a video automatically gets kudos. If you do decide to do a video, provide as much information about the product as possible – “55% of complaints are comments about the product not clearly described,” according to a MediaPost article. Also, don’t forget to add some elves and jingles.
5. Emotional interaction – Lastly, have fun with it! Alexis Rask of Shopkick suggested that it’s not a question of should a brand do it but how it’s additive to the brand. How does it enhance the experience of the end user? If you create a good experience through a mobile device, you stand the chance of connecting with the consumer. Don’t be afraid to be creative; it will pay off.

 
The holidays are a great time to engage consumers via mobile. So get started, make it relevant and create a bond with the customer. There’s nothing like sharing a little holiday cheer, and the mobile device is just waiting to help.

 
Earlier this year BARS+TONE Static explored the affluence and buying power of the Hispanic demographic. As we explore the mobile marketing trend, we are going to look into Hispanic adoption of mobile technology and ways marketers can engage them.
 
A recent nielsenwire study reveals that Hispanics are early adopters of new mobile devices and technology, 13% more likely to use a smart phone. Whether it is shopping, reading, watching videos, or updating their Facebook status, it is all done at their fingertips. The interesting part is that, according to eMarketer, tablet usage has been adopted not only by the young, frequently English dominant user, but by the older, culturally traditional, and frequently Spanish dominant user. The conventional wisdom is that smart phones and tablets are seen as a less expensive and easier to use alternative to the PC. In other words, the trend cuts across demographic lines.
 
There are various reasons why Hispanics prefer a tablet or smartphone over a PC, but as Media Post explains, it is clear that they adjust rather quickly to this mobile trend. A key takeaway is that most of their time is spent with visual applications, which are easier to interpret than reading text. Essentially, they allow for language agnostic interaction. One thing we suggest is using branded entertainment. Create an application or a game that can be easily translated – or require virtually no use of language at all – and help them interact with your product or brand. Once they have had that engagement they are more likely to react positively to your brand message.
 
Second, go mobile first – As revealed in another Media Post article, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reports that Hispanic communities are more likely to use their mobile device to do research for their purchases than the population at large. It is important for your brand and product messaging to be found via the mobile internet. When developing a mobile presence, be sure to consider demographics like the Hispanic market and how to engage with them.
 
Finally, go social. Lisa Abboud, Principal of InterEthnica, an agency that specializes in multicultural marketing, states that “Social networking is a natural fit for Hispanics because their culture is based on strong family and social ties. Hispanics thrive in cooperative environments. Once a member of the Hispanic community is engaged by a brand or message, you can count on your brand quickly gaining momentum within their social network.” But it’s more than simply having a social media site – it’s important to target the audience with a culturally relevant message. “In order to build trust within this community, it is important to post information in both Spanish and English, because many Spanish-speakers do not trust the in-language copy or visuals to be as up-to-date or accurate as the English versions.” Abboud explains.
 
The Hispanic community is growing, their buying power is increasing exponentially and they are enthusiastic adopters of mobile. Savvy marketers will learn how to put this to use and engage with a growing community with growing buying power – that’s marketing gold.