How Slow Websites Can Kill Companies: Content Marketing

To see the infographic from SmartBear, follow the link below:
http://mashable.com/2012/11/22/slow-websites/

This is the most recent pull marketing strategy in b2b, content marketing VIA infographics. I talked about this in my first blog, relating to a digital focused market research firm offering biased information to hopefully increase business. Here is another example that I personally am not as well versed in, which are slow websites costing e-commerce a solid chunk of revenue (1 second delay in load time correlates to a 7% decrease in conversions).

This infographic does it right. Not only does it clearly state data from external, unbiased sources, it repeatedly offers calls to action, and it has branding everywhere. Using external sources offers a credibility to the information, and the company itself. It lends itself to be trustworthy to the reader, as well as assuring them that they can further explore the data themselves.

The calls to action are the apparent immediacy of the problems. The infographic is structured in a way that sequentially has

1.  flattery
2. consequence of inaction
3. industry comparisons
4. untraditional e-commerce reference (the political stance)
5. growth potential.

In each stage, it offers a different call to action, which is also a large difference between some other infographics repeatedly seen which just spout information.
The branding is offered at the beginning of the infographic, a call to action in the form of a website referral, and the colours match the landing page of SmartBear.com.

Overall, this is a great example of pull strategy in the changing B2B market.

Instagram's appeal.... And lack of sustainability

What is Instagram? And why in the heck does everyone like it so much?

Well, Instagram is a way to take pictures. Exciting right? You know, what anyone can do with any smart phone now. Oh yeah, it also has stock filters that are appealing to a wide audience.

It's appeal came from the ease of use, the time it was implemented  and it's integration. The learning curve for Instagram is excessively low. Basically, one signs into an account and takes pictures with their mobile device.  Then, the picture can be edited extremely easy, from using cropping features to using the stock filters to make pictures look edgy.
The time it was implemented was when cameras were being integrated into cell phones. Particularly when phones became primary for picture-taking, as opposed to separate cameras. Instagram started being noticed in 2010, when it was available for free in the Iphone App Store.
What really made Instagram take off was the approval of Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey. Not only did Dorsey advertise the app heavily, but he gathered an investment of $7 million into the app. Twitter became a main catalyst for the growth of Instagram by showcasing the ease and diversity the app offered.
Then Facebook bought it for $1 billion, and now it has fully integrated with all major social media mediums.

But really, Instagram isn't proprietary. It is a brand that offers integration. It can easily be substituted with a relatively small capital investment. For example, Twitter has come out with a new filter lense as well that is gaining a high amount of popularity. To see it stacked up, see http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedamv/instagram-vs-twitter-filters-starring-my-cat-cli-7xwg .

Overall, due to it's lack of proprietary advantage, and straight 'luck' strategy, this is not an app that was worth $1 billion and will not sustain.
http://mashable.com/2012/12/10/we-can-survive-without-instagram/

Crowd-funding and it's social media-like presence

Crowd-funding is like crowd-sourcing (think Wikipedia), except there is a great deal of money, and business's livelihood at stake. But with little ROI why do investors give small piles of their hard earned capital to small, likely to fail businesses?

Because, as HBR.org explains, crowd-funding for small businesses follow the same strategy as social media. They want to build and create a culture, and they're inviting stakeholders to invest small quantities of time, effort and/or yes, money to be part of that culture. It's not a cold, calculated investment that is asking for a 20% return, with 10% equity a la Kevin O'leary on Dragon's Den.

Crowd-sourcing is said to have a more of an emotional, rather than rational decision. This could be partially because of the relatively small investments as well. Personally, my experience with Kickstarter was I invested $50 into a local restaurant that had a video game theme. I still haven't received my kickback ($50 giftcard), but I don't really mind. It's an investment to be part of something, not for a financial return.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/12/why_successful_crowdfunding_re.html

Mobile Marketing: It's about immediacy

In "Why marketers need to get mobile" By Greg Stuart, he, well talks about why marketers need to pay attention to mobile users!

The few main points taken away from this article are that mobile devices are going to outnumber people by the end of the year, consumers are heavily dependent on mobile devices and that due to that dependency, there is a new form of immediacy demanded from consumers. Marketers need to change their game plane if they're going to remain relevant, and that means stepping ahead of consumers. They're currently lagging behind the mobile movement, having just started making key movements in huge shopping events such as Black Friday (see previous post).

Mobile marketing has shown a higher ROI than most other digital marketing, possibly because of the immediacy of the ads.

Of course a problem is that ads on mobile marketing are difficult to make, solely because of size without being loud, annoying and obtrusive. If a marketer can figure out the perfect formula of size to screen ratio, and interactive versus latent they can make a great deal of difference in the advertising sector.

I think the next step in mobile advertising is to become closer to what internet advertising has become. Where if one views a pair of shoes, those shoes will follow that person through their cookies. Now, since most advertising is done through free apps and certain sites, it's more to create congruence in product advertised from what the potential consumer is using. For example, if I'm looking for recipes on a free app, such as AllRecipes, why are you trying to convince me to buy a TV from Futureshop? That has nothing to do with what that current hobby is, and while I'm cooking I might get frustrated with cutting vegetables. Wouldn't a nice KitchenAid food processor be a more reasonable call to action than a TV in that situation?

Well that's what us students are for. We'll be part of this, and I believe mobile analytics will be the next big thing.

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681972/why-marketers-need-to-get-mobile-hint-because-mobile-is-blowing-up-marketing

Snowballing effect on Twitter, LadyGameMakers

Yesterday at 9:50, Luke Crane (@Burning_Luke) asked "Why are there so few lady game creators?" on Twitter. A bit of background, Luke Crane is a the game project specialist at Kickstarter, and he only has 1,820 followers. With less than 2,000 followers, let alone those who actually read the initial message, a huge response took only 24 hours.

15 tweets were featured on Mashable about the subject, including "#1reasonwhy Because every woman I know has a story about being verbally or physically harassed when we dared to attend an event on our own." from robinyang. Currently on Twitter, while taking the 5 minutes to write this, there are 48 new tweets on the subject.

In 24 hours, gaming and non-gaming fans, misogynists and feminists, marketers, developers, PR people, (hopefully) HR, have taken notice of this underbelly of a culture. All with a small influencer asking a simple question. This was not the head of Sony Entertainment, EA sports, Ubisoft, even Zynga. This was a head of a gaming division within a fundraising website. By the way, since I finished writing this paragraph, there were 36 more on top of the 48.

Now, this story has a great deal of people who could be interested in this, after all gaming is a $65 billion industry. But just a small example of the power of social media, and the snowballing of information. 14 new tweets.

By the way, going through this list, these are my reasons why I'm choosing to not go into the video game industry. Personally, I can't imagine being comfortable at a convention, representing my company as a marketer/developer/producer when I've been to gaming conventions and felt chased out. Number two, the gaming industry is highly volatile, but that's almost negligible. 20 new tweets.

http://mashable.com/2012/11/27/1reasonwhy/

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and.... Mobile Madness?

We all know that mobile use in e-commerce is increasing. Both in forms of direct sales, information gathering and content marketing. So with the largest shopping day in the US coming up on Friday, November 23rd, how are the some sellers using this new medium?

Gilt Groupe, a large US based mobile discount company is offering 'free fall' at 11:45am, which offers randomized sale prices on various SKUs. The discounts offered will increase as time goes on, and stops at 9pm. They're looking to steal sales away from big box retailers, and is available on iOS and Android.

Macy's is offering a mobile app on iOS only. It features previews of deals, and Black Friday only shopping lists. It even tells you where the deals are with store maps, and department. They partner with Ebay on this one.

TGI black friday is an app that offers deals on all the local stores before the deals are released to the local media. It allows you to create lists and make strategic logistics to better your Black Friday experience.

Walgreens and Starbucks are partnering for a mobile app that will update automatically throughout the day to bring customers a "scratch and win" coupon. This will start at 12:01AM on Friday.

It will be interesting to see how this will affect sales, and how 2013 Black Friday will be changed.

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2012/11/19/mobile-apps-to-tackle-black-friday/
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/walgreens-and-starbucks-go-mobile-black-friday-145289#1
http://mashable.com/2012/11/19/gilt-groupe-black-friday/

LinkedIn allowing "Follow" feature for 150 members

LinkedIn, online's premiere professional networking site, is now offering "Following" features for high-status members. Some examples of these members are Richard Branson, and Ariana Huffington. Eventually, all members could be followed, like in the style of Twitter. LinkedIn has traditionally been a more enclosed website, rivaling other solely social networking sites.

What does this mean? Well, one that LinkedIn is going to become more competitive in a new way to Facebook, Twitter and the like. This will enable one-to-many communication where previously the site depended on one-to-one communications. The move is thought to entice members to stay on LinkedIn longer, closer to Facebook times, and to use LinkedIn as a casual site instead of a sole networking site. If they can increase the sticky time on LinkedIn, they can increase ad revenue.

The second part of this is the possibility of losing it's "professional" status in the online networking world. One of the appeals of linked in is it's closed off communication. One is able to effectively offer a solely professional profile, without worrying about what others post, tag etc. one in. If LinkedIn is moving towards other social networking sites, a new niche market may open for closed networking.

Cheers.