Digital Marketing with Glenn

Protecting Privacy: A Losing Game

There are no social media platforms that do not require at least some form of your personal information when signing up, and anyone that has accessed any kind of social media would have left their digital footprint behind, whether they know it or not.

Some may argue that there are options that allow users to privatise personal information, or one can simply delete their social media accounts to remove any trace of themselves online. However, a study published in the Nature Human Behaviour Journal has shown that even deleting your Facebook account does not guarantee that your personal information will be removed, as you can still be profiled from your friends posts.

The hard truth is that personal privacy no longer exists online. Yes, companies do give you guarantees that your personal information will not be shared without your permission, but do you really think they can guarantee that?

Think back to the 2014 Sony Pictures Hack, or in more recent times the Facebook & Cambridge Analytica Scandal, where in both instances, millions of users had their personal information leaked and exploited. What’s to say this won’t happen again?

What does this mean moving forward?

We are experiencing an information “Big Bang”, where the amount of digital information in the world is doubled every two years, and unfortunately, government regulation can barely keep up with the pace of technology.

One silver lining is that countries are starting to prioritise cyber security and improve privacy protection, an example of which is the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA)

Solving the problem of personal privacy goes beyond our ability to control the information we leave online. Consumers are already so preoccupied with their daily lives, and expecting them to stay updated on cybersecurity and how they can protect themselves is unreasonable. Personally, I feel that this is a problem that needs to be addressed by policy intervention and redefining what privacy is.

Do you think privacy still exists? When an organisation possesses valuable personal data that they can manipulate in unsavoury ways for their own advantage, will they still be concerned with ethics? Who can or will be there to stop them?

Looking forward to hearing what you guys think!

Achieving Success in IMC

Living in the era of the information age, marketers have a seemingly endless number of choices at hand to communicate with their consumers, be it traditional, digital, or both. However, the challenge for a successful marketing campaign is ensuring consistency across all marketing channels that reach customers.

This is where Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) comes in. Simply put, IMC carefully links together all types promotional tools to ensure they work together in harmony. Obviously, you would want all your communication tools to work well together rather than in isolation, as Aristotle coined: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

Although there is no foolproof way to create a successful IMC campaign, there are a few guidelines marketers should follow if they want to succeed.

1. Think Customers First

First you need to identify and understand your target audience, both in terms of demographics (age/gender) and psychographics (attitudes/interests). Having a good understanding of what channels your target audience frequents, and how they like to receive messages will help you select the most appropriate channels and develop an effective message.

2. Practice Efficient Channel Selection

There are tons of channels out there that businesses have experienced great success with, but remember, just because it worked for them, doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. After choosing your channels based on your target audience, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses to ensure they can help attain your business goals. Lastly, remember: “Less is more”, sometimes having 3 channels could give you the same success as 10.

3. Be Consistent

While your messages may be different for each individual channel, you must maintain a consistent visual identity for your brand across all channels. If your brand identity is visually consistent, your audience will immediately know that that is your brand, be it if they come across it on Instagram or your website. I personally find that meditation app Headspace does this very well, as they maintain a consistent look and feel across all their platforms with their cute graphics and cheery colour palette.

4. Create Adaptable Content

Consistently coming up with content for a single channel is already challenging as it is, but imagine if you had to do that for 10 different channels? Of course, it isn’t impossible, but why work hard when you can work smart. Hence, you should ensure that your content won’t look out of place even if you put it in a different channel. For example, you could take a notable line from a video you created and turn it into a tweet.

5. Integrate at Various of Management

In order to achieve a successful IMC campaign, it is imperative that all managers, and not just marketing managers, understand the significance of a consistent message. However, this can be challenging if your company has poor internal communication or internal marketing.

6. Be Ready to Change it All

Lastly, if you find that your campaign is underachieving, this might call for a change in your IMC strategy. Instead of being discouraged, learn from experience and keep improving until you find your optimal communications mix.

What other tips do you know of that can contribute to successful IMC? Do you disagree with any of the points I mentioned above?

Do let me know in the comments below!

Climbing Mount Google with SEO

75% of internet users will never look past the first page of a Google search, 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine and there are over a trillion Google searches each month. So what significance do these statistics hold? Essentially, ranking anywhere other than page no. 1 on Google is bad for business.

Having a strong Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) presence has the power to drive strong traffic to your website which could grow your business for years to come.

Unfortunately, achieving this is no straightforward task. Let’s say you’re starting a fashion blog, there already exists a multitude of high-profile websites taking advantage of the top SEO keywords in the industry (For example: Best Fashion Blogs), together with countless other bloggers trying to rank higher on Google searches for that keyword as well. The fact of the matter is that the odds are stacked against you, but they aren’t insurmountable.

Firstly, accept that industry leaders will dominate the top pages for short and popular industry keywords, and instead Focus your Efforts on Long-tail Keywords. Long-tail keywords make up over 70% of searches on Google compared to popular keywords, and are also easier to climb the ranks of. This strategy ensures that you’re not going head on against industry leaders on search engine result pages and avoid fighting a losing battle.

If you’re still not convinced by long-tail strategies, just know that Amazon makes 57% of their sales from long-tail keywords.

Next, you need to Write More & Longer Blog Posts than your Competition.

An effective, but often overlooked blog promotion method is writing more articles. Research has shown that the more you write, the more your pages get indexed, which means more traffic to your site. Businesses that publish 16+ posts per month get more than thrice the traffic of those publishing only 0-3 posts, which gives you a gauge of how many posts you need to have each month.

However, not only must you publish more posts, your posts need to be significantly long. The top 10 results on Google’s first page are at least 2000 words long, meaning you need to deliver in-depth content to your audience. Furthermore, longer posts are also more likely to get shares on social media.

Of course, what I’ve just described to you requires a significant amount of effort and time: 2000+ word posts every 2 days, which is why you might consider to hiring someone.

In conclusion, it’s unrealistic to expect your website to show up on the first page of Google, especially if you’re new. Fortunately, there are workarounds and unconventional methods you can adopt to compete with industry leaders and get to the top.

Do you think it’s possible to displace the competition and end up on Google’s front page? What other strategies do you know of that will help?

The Internet of Things: A Double Edged Sword

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a system of physical objects connected via the internet. There are countless of technical definitions online, but I find the concept easiest to grasp when explained alongside examples.

Think of the Apple watch, Google Home, Fitbits, all these devices are connected to the internet and are capable of sending and collecting data in real time without human intervention.

So what benefits do IoT have in store for your business?

First, it is essential to understand the relationship between IoT and Big Data. According to a study, almost 4.4 trillion gigabytes of data will be generated as a result of IoT, a seemingly incomprehensible figure, but this is where big data comes in.

The role of the latter in IoT is to process vast amounts of data in real-time and storing them using different storage technologies. In simpler terms, big data consolidates data from IoT to provide insights for businesses.

Hence, from a business perspective, this can benefit firms in terms of:

Analysing existing data
Revealing market trends
Discovering correlations within the industry
Discovering new information

Therefore, it can aid firms in having an improved understanding of data to make efficient and well-informed decisions.

Furthermore, IoT is also reshaping customer service, or more specifically, predictive customer service.

Predictive services involve a situation where businesses use data from IoT connected devices to predict when a problem might occur with that device. Following which, they proactively contact the customer to solve the problem before it even happens. This is already being offered by 3D printer manufacturer Carbon Inc, who are revolutionising what customer service means.

However, while IoT is opening up exciting new possibilities for businesses, it also poses a myriad of risks. In essence, IoT involves collecting, analysing and actioning data while simultaneously allowing firms to have insights into their company and customers. Hence, it is only natural that the risk of compromising privacy and security will be one of the biggest challenges to IoT.

And things have not been looking good on this front. Currently, most IoT devices have very poor security measures put in place, with countless articles outlining how easy it is for hackers to spy on your through webcams or smart TVs.

Cyberattacks have become so advanced that no business, small or large, is immune, making it imperative that businesses remain vigilant to the ever present threat of data hacks.

It appears inevitable that the amount of devices and data will continue to grow in future, but I am highly doubtful over whether IoT security can keep up. Nevertheless, at present, consumers and businesses seem content to accept the trade-offs in security to continue utilising IoT devices.

Why do you think firms and consumers continue to use IoT devices despite the apparent security risks? Will IoT security improve in future or will it face continued setbacks? Looking forward to what you guys think!

The Present is Mobile

With over 3.5 billion smartphone users in the world, there is no question about the lucrative benefits that mobile marketing can provide for your business. In a nutshell, mobile marketing is a strategy designed to reach your target audience on their mobile device.

With that said, let’s look at a few tips on how businesses can improve their mobile marketing.

First, it is important to understand micro-moments. These situations occur when users turn to their mobile devices to act on something they immediately want or need. This is something we’ve all experienced, for instance, looking up a restaurant for dinner.

As marketers, these moments represent opportunities for us to grab our audience’s attention and be the answer to what they’re looking for. However, it’s easy for your company to end up in the depths of a Google search, especially if your brand is relatively new. So how do you get to the top? 3 Words: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

A successful SEO strategy involves researching frequently used keywords that your customers use and embedding them into your website to ensure that your brand is at the top of their search. One useful tool is the Google Keyword Planner . Hence, a strong SEO strategy will help drive traffic to your website.

However, having a website alone is not enough in the mobile age, it needs to be mobile friendly. Consumers lose interest quickly and don’t have the patience to wait for your website to load or browse a website that’s difficult to navigate on mobile.

A few tips include reducing large images that take too long to load, being succinct with your words, and having sizeable buttons that make it easy to navigate your site on a mobile device. Remember, you can only fit so much on a mobile screen.

Moreover, a mobile friendly website benefits SEO, since Google reviews mobile website activity and decides on a ranking based on how people use the site.

(Here’s a fast and easy tool to check if your website is mobile friendly!)

Nevertheless, mobile friendly websites offer the same things as your main site and are simply optimised to work well on small screens. One way to elevate your mobile marketing strategy is via the use of mobile apps.

Not only are mobile apps faster than websites, but it also allows you to communicate with your customers through promotional notifications. Furthermore, apps improve accessibility to your business as it now becomes only one ‘touch’ away. For example, avid Instagram users will access the platform via the app instead of through a browser on their smartphone.

Do you guys think that all business should be using mobile marketing? Or are there any exceptions? I’m also curious to find out what kind of purchases you guys make on your smartphone, do let me know in the comments!

How AirPods became viral

Apple’s AirPods were first released in 2016 and was met with unreceptive and hostile reviews by consumers, especially since it was launched alongside the iPhone 7, which itself was a topic of much controversy due to it’s absence of a headphone jack.

However, fast forward to 3 years later and AirPods have become Apple’s second best-selling product of all time, while also launching an improved version in the AirPods Pro.

On that account, how on Earth did Apple manage this spectacular turnaround of events? Let’s take a look at a few factors that contributed to the success of its virality.

Firstly, we live in a world where we have too many choices & too little time, hence, most of the time we find that things don’t grab our attention unless they’re truly remarkable. Perhaps in this case, the AirPods were more ‘remark’-able. Thousands of memes about the product were released online mocking its ridiculous design. However, this actually worked in Apple’s favour as AirPods became a trending topic on social media worldwide, which only helped to spread awareness. In this situation, there really wasn’t such a thing as bad publicity.

Next, there is social currency attached to the AirPods in that it provides its owners identity Wearing AirPods has become a signal to others of your social status: Others know that their owners have an iPhone but can still afford an SGD239 pair of wireless headphones despite having a wired pair that comes with the iPhone.

Lastly, Apple made their design work for them. AirPods were designed to be highly visible with its striking white colour and the base of the earbuds sticking out from under the users ear. Ironically, Apple’s designers were almost trying to show others that AirPods lack wires. This is what sparked curiosity and made the product so intriguing.

To wrap things up, Apple created a product that was out of the ordinary in order to stand out and spark conversations that could potentially make it viral. However, this decision also involved plenty of risk, which is also one of the factors in going viral. As Seth Godin mentioned, the riskiest thing to do when trying to spread ideas is being safe.

But of course, I want to know what you guys think. Are there really a set of rules to follow to go viral? Or does it merely occur by chance? Let me know in the comments!