Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

Top 7 Big Marketing Essentials for 2013

This is a guest post from Feather Hickox.

The average consumer receives over 16,000 marketing messages each day. Marketers face a daunting challenge to break through that volume of noise.

This challenge has given rise to Big Marketing ? the use of Big Data analytics to develop personalized marketing messages and offers on a massive scale.

Based on my team?s work with many of the largest retailers in the world, we?ve compiled a list of seven essentials for turning Big Data into effective, profitable and highly targeted Big Marketing campaigns.

TrendSpottr and the Potential for Predictive Influence

I recently had the good fortune to sit down and chat with Mark Zohar, founder of Toronto-based viral search and predictive analytics service TrendSpottr. And I was literally blown away by what they’re doing and how they’re looking to change social business.

Taken from their website, the core solutions TrendSpottr provides is from a future trend model:

TrendSpottr analyzes real-time data streams and spots emerging trends at their earliest acceleration point — hours or days before they have become “popular” and reached mainstream awareness.

In a nutshell, TrendSpottr helps businesses and organizations of all shapes, sizes and industries to get a jump on the competition by identifying what’s about to go from average visibility to viral buzz, before it happens, which makes he potential for multi-channel use huge.

What TrendSpottr Means for Brands

One of the examples Mark shared when we chatted was TrendSpottr’s ability to predict the virality of a YouTube video.

For example, let’s say a new video about kittens and babies playing only has 500 views. With TrendSpottr monitoring the real-time activity around that particular video, it can spot when it will explode into hundreds of thousands (or millions) of views, and when.

Armed with that data, an advertiser or brand can then buy ad space on the video at a much lower cost, yet still be in front of the extra eyeballs that the viral version of the video offers. The cost saving is tremendous and the potential return on that ad spend huge.

TrendSpottr plans on launching this predictive ad optimization product in early 2013, specifically targeted at advertisers and brands.

Other ways for brands to benefit from TrendSpottr include content optimization and engineering to take early mover advantage of a breaking story that’s about to go very big.

Let’s say your brand is in the business of car tires, and you provide tires to many well-known car manufacturers. While analyzing various conversations around tires, TrendSpottr picks up on an impending safety concern around a particular kind of rubber molding used in a competing manufacturer’s tire.

Using that data, your content team can take a series of actions to get you front and centre when the proverbial hits the fan:

You create a series of short blog posts spread around your properties and those of your partners, highlighting the safety aspect of your tires.
You put together a series of creatives and buy ad space on properties and destinations that your competitor’s audience frequents.
You optimize tweets and social updates, to drive people to your product and Frequently Asked Questions section, where you have all the information about safety a visitor could want.
You create a pro-active email campaign to assure your customers and partners that your product doesn’t use that type of molding and have over X amount of years producing safe products.
You can create specific topic widgets and embed multiple streams into your website, to turn it into an online respository for information from across the web (see the end of this post for an example).

These are just some of the ways brands can be pro-active at tackling a problem head-on and before any negativity hits, whether it involves them directly or not. By doing that, you’re now offering solutions in the consciousness of the public you’re trying to attract, while your competitors are in damage control mode.

For any brand, that’s a pretty powerful tool-set.

What TrendSpottr Means for Influence

One of the biggest criticisms social influence receives is that the gamification of the model hurts true influence and knowledge. From gaming the +K system on Klout when it was first announced, to the recent LinkedIn Endorsements and how they can be played, influence and authority has never been harder to gauge properly.

Whereas before, marketers would actually analyze raw data and build personas of influential people that were right for their brands, now they have to wade through scores, endorsements, social stock prices and more that may or may not be true and relevant.

This is where TrendSpottr can help filter these people.

Let’s say your passion is global warming. You blog about the environment and your company provides green products – but you can’t compete with the guys that have thousands of subscribers and whose company has millions in ad spend.

With TrendSpottr, you can set up an alert for the industry and selective terms that are relevant to you, and see which ones are on the cusp of exploding into life, both virally and from a market standpoint.

By being able to continuously put out content that’s ahead of the game, your authority rises. People now start to look to you for answers versus the more established players. A perfect example of this reversal in authority is Nate Silver and how he first turned baseball and then political punditry on their heads.

Brands can use TrendSpottr along with other blogger outreach platforms and really connect with those that have the eyes and ears of the industry via the TrendSpottr dashboard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpZppQyQ33g[/youtube]

Now, you could argue that non-experts could game this solution too, to appear authoritative – but if you don’t know what you’re talking about and are just copy-pasting soundbites, trust me, that becomes obvious pretty damn quick.

The Beginning of the End of Influence As We Know It

Up until now, the majority of social influence has been determined by a score and perceived authority. Additionally, many early players in the space have sold benefits based on amplification, not context and purchase decisions.

This has, for better or worse, led to an industry that many use but just as many question the validity of. It makes brands nervous to play in, because they need to know the message is reaching the kind of people that can make things happen, versus the amount of people that make things noisy.

The good news is, the next generation of platforms and technology are here. Companies like TrendSpottr, Appinions, Tellagence and others like them are leading the charge to recognize true influence and relevance.

We’re on the cusp of something very cool, and it’s something that has the potential to truly change business intelligence forever.

Influence Marketing – This is Where the Fun Begins

As part of the run up to the launch of Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing, Sam and I have decided to do things a little differently.

We want to have some fun and really involve you.

To that end, we have something for everyone (hopefully) based on where you are.

Facebook

If you’re on Facebook (and who isn’t apart from Tipper Gore, probably), you can catch us on the official Influence Marketing Facebook page. Here we’ll be asking your opinion via polls as well as discussions on the latest influence solutions and technologies, and sneak peeks at some of the interviews we’ve carried out. There may also be fine cigars.

Google+

How the heck I got dragged back onto G+ I’ll never know. Oh, wait – it was the very cool Communities addition which allows for a much more cohesive experience. If you’re on Google+, join the Influence marketing community and take part in Hangouts, access Sam and myself as we brainstorm the book’s topics and direction in daily Hangout snippets, and generally join in a vibrant discussion on all things influence, current and future.

Some Pre-Order Fun

Normally, pre-order offers include “Buy so many books and we’ll do this” and, while we will definitely have bulk specials on the way, in the meantime we want to thank folks who pre-order now on their own. I can’t say what it is, but it’s definitely very personal to you, the buyer.

Want to find out what it is? Hit up the link in the special box below this post, pre-order the book, then email a copy of your receipt to info@influencemarketingbook.com (or just click this link here).

You can also find us over at our soon-to-be-launched website, as well as Twitter (this will just be a curated feed), and we’re going to be popping up in some other unexpected places too, so stay tuned.

We look forward to welcoming you at your favourite online watering hole. 🙂

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgkSKFsptKY[/youtube]

Analytics Are Not the Same as Insights

Take a look around the web – especially on social networks – and you’ll see a lot of people and brands complaining about their marketing results.

From complaining about lack of action on a blog or website to little return on Facebook or LinkedIn, there’s a whole swathe of people blaming the lack of success on anything and everything.

“But have you looked at why you’re failing?” you can ask, and you’ll get the response, “Yes – we have analytics installed and we know we’re not getting the reach and results we’re looking for.”

And, usually, that’s the crux of the problem right there – because people are confusing analytics with the solutions to their problem, when it’s more than that that’s needed.

Analytics Are Not the Same as Insights

Don’t get me wrong – analytics are key and if you’re not even tracking the most basic of details around what you’re doing, of course you’re going to be screwed. Even the most basic of analytics gives you:

Traffic (in and out)
Demographics
What content works
What platform drives traffic
Behaviour on site

Go more advanced, and you can get a heck of a lot of information about your customers, existing and potential.

You can see what time of day they like to be online, what type of browser they use (desktop, mobile, Apple, PC, etc), what type of call-to-action’s catch their eye and turn them from intent to purchasers, and much more.

If you run a business, or are looking to run an online campaign for your business, and you’re not using analytics before, during and after to guide your decisions and follow-ups, then you’re not being anywhere near effective enough to be successful.

But… as good as these analytics are, they’re only part of the equation – the bigger picture comes from what insights you glean from them, and what you do with these insights.

Insights Are More Than Just Good Ideas

Once you have the information you need from whatever analytics package you use, the real work can begin. As an example, let’s say you’re looking to launch a book – here’s some of the ways to use insights from analytics for your campaign to reach your audience.

1. The percentage of tablet and mobile browsing versus desktop

From a personal point of view, I love to have an actual book in my hand when it comes to reading – there’s just something real about being able to flip a page versus sliding your finger across a screen. But that’s just me – many of my friends are far more attuned to tablet and eReader options.

By looking at your ideal audience – age, sex, income, browsing habits, etc – you can identify what their persona is more likely to be, and that can help define what the lead platform is – full print version or digital, with print to follow. You can also see which platform is best to lead on from an eReader point of view – Kindle, Nook, Kobo or other.

This gives you a better chance of being picked up by your audience out the gate.

2. Are they active socially?

Despite what people like me might think, social media is still not truly mainstream for the majority of the world. Sure, Facebook might claim one billion members, but that’s nowhere near the active users. Same with Google+, Twitter, etc. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use these channels to market.

Before you begin your campaign, carry out an online audit and find out where your audience like to hang out and, more importantly, when. It’s no good jumping on Facebook at 3.00pm in the afternoon when your audience is mostly online between 9.00am and 10.30am in the morning.

Get to know which platforms they prefer, how they prefer to use them (for friends, via mobile, as a curation tool only, etc) and start to document what the optimum time of day is for you to be online. Couple that with the platform and tailor your message accordingly.

Find groups and chats on Twitter to participate in – while dedicated to Canadian books, #CanLitChat is a good example of what’s on Twitter for authors and readers to participate in.

If a lot of your audience likes watching videos on YouTube, ask yourself if there’s an opportunity to set up a reading channel. Take excerpts of your book, read it, and ask for video feedback, with other YouTube users tagging your video. Better still, run a contest for other users to read the excerpt, and the best gets all your books free for life.

Additionally, start a reading group on Google+ and use Hangouts to pick apart your initial drafts, and allow early glimpses into what people can expect. Having your audience invested in this way encourages them to support you when you do launch.

3. How to play to your demographics

Every product or service usually has a core audience. Yes, there are examples where age and sex don’t come into it and a product crosses generations – Apple products, for instance, and Thomas the Tank Engine (you know it’s true!). For the most part, though, the majority of promotions need to be geared to a certain demographic.

Using your analytics and understanding who your audience is shapes the strategy behind your outreach.

As you can see from the chart above, published earlier this year by Pingdom.com, there are very different demographics depending on what platform you’re on – or your audience is.

Let’s say you’re going after the 35-44 age group. You might think that you should start on Facebook because, well, that’s where the whole world is, right? Not so fast, Skippy.

What about LinkedIn? That’s almost twice as much as Facebook for that particular demographic – can you take advantage of groups or ads on there? How about Yelp – can you work with local bookstores that obviously care about their audience and do personal readings?

Bigger yet, take a look at Slashdot and Quora – while they may not be the first that come to mind, you can see they’re hugely popular with your audience. Find out why – in these cases, it’s the question and answer format that attracts.

Start to build a presence there, answer questions, ask your own, build your reputation, and then begin to ask questions around your book topic. You’ve built trust, gained an audience, and approached it properly when it comes to that platform – again, making your book (or service) more attractive and warmer to the touch of that audience and their pockets.

Data is Everything and Everything is Data

As you might guess, I’m a huge data nerd – because I love understanding what makes people tick. What gets their attention – how is that attention kept? What turns them from a curious bystander to a purchaser or advocate?

Data can tell you all this and more – the trick is in knowing what to do with the data once you have it. Get that right, and you’re at an immediate advantage over your competitors.

And that’s never a bad thing, right?