Digital Marketing by Lauren

Digital is better than Traditional…right?

Posted on May 21, 2018 by dmbylauren

Today my blog post is going to be on traditional vs social/digital marketing. I watched marketing professor and brand columnist, Mark Ritson, challenge the effectiveness of social media and digital marketing compared to traditional marketing. You can watch the video here.

“Digital is awesome, traditional is shit. It’s a narrative that you’ve been sold for the past 5 years…its not fair and its not even true.” Says Ritson. Now I heard this an laughed, but when I really thought about it, I wondered is traditional marketing the best. He states that “66% of Australians do not follow any brands on social media.” And that “the average Australian follows one brand on social media”. Those figures blew me away. I thought I must follow more than one brand, I’m an above average kind of girl. So I looked through whole I followed on my Instagram account…and guess what I saw. ONE BRAND! (Guess I am an average kind of girl). Bondi Sands is my choice of brand. I couldn’t believe it. So why did I only follow one brand.

I came to realise Bondi Sands markets in a way that I enjoy. For those who don’t know, Bondi Sands is a company that sells fake tan. They have 530k followers on Instagram and are followed my many famous people and social media influencers. Digital Doughnut helped me realise what I look for in a brands social media page. I get to choose how to receive content, I get to interact with the brand, and I get real time results. On top of that I think their content is enjoyable, and they don’t post too frequently where it gets annoying. Comparing all of these factors to other brands I’ve followed in the past shows how important it is to get digital marketing done right.

A brand that doesn’t do digital marketing right is Westpac. Their Instagram page has a tiny 9.4k followers. Their last post had 194 likes. I get approximately that many likes on my posts and I have just over 320 followers! Why do I get the same likes as one of Australia’s Biggest banks. After scrolling through their social media I realised why. BECAUSE ITS BORING! It is an A grade snooze fest. Take a look for yourself here. None of their posts interest me and they don’t try to interact with anyone. If you look at the time stamps on their posts they’re either months apart each post, or they post way too many on the one day. Not a very pleasant page.

Traditional marketing works because it is familiar and it has been successful before the words social media were even said. Television, radio, and print advertisements have worked for decades and I believe will always be more successful than digital marketing. Unfortunately for traditional marketing, “there is very little interaction between the medium used and the customers” states Digital Doughnut.

I don’t think it’s fair to say traditional marketing is better than digital marketing. I prefer Bondi Sands’ posts over any television ad. But I think its fair to say traditional marketing is generally done better than digital marketing. If brands were able to properly interact and satisfy their consumers needs, I personally believe digital marketing could get close to being more successful than traditional.

What do you think? Let me know!

How to become Always viral

Posted on May 7, 2018 by dmbylauren

Today we are talking about viral, but more specifically why and how things go viral. We are going to use the #LikeAGirl campaign from Always as our main example.

If you haven’t seen the #LikeAGirl campaign video, you can watch it here. That video went viral being viewed over 90 million times and being shared over 1 million times according to Campaign. Now the question is why? There have been so many powerful videos on the internet, why did this one succeed?

Medium credits their content creation and their content distribution. The creation was thought out and executed perfectly. According to a case study done by D&AD only 19% of 16-24 year olds had a positive association to the phrase like a girl. However once viewing the video, 76% of them said they no longer saw the phrase in a negative light. Moreover, 2 out of 3 men who watched the video said they would now think twice before using the phrase as an insult.

These figures show that the video content was well created, but how did they distribute it.

According to CIO, there are 7 step to create a successful integrated marketing campaign. These are:

Step 1: Have a clear understanding of who your target audience is.

In the sense of the video, Always was primarily targeting young females from pre-puberty onwards but secondarily targeted men. They chose this range to highlight to girls/women of all ages and men that the phrase ‘like a girl’ isn’t negative.

Step 2: Pick your channels.

Always chose social media as many of their target market was using at least one social media platform. Furthermore, I believe Always had the goal to become big, if not viral, and knew social media was the way to do it.

Step 3: Have a consistent look.

Always chose women and girls with completely different looks. however in the campaign they keep the background and fonts very consistent. Furthermore, they show the same few girls in every ad so that the broader population can become familiar with their faces and ultimately related them to the campaign and brand.

This also proves correct as Always did another very similar campaign with different girls and setting, however it didn’t take off at all.

Step 4: Create clear, consistent content that can easily be adapted or repurposed to suit different media or channels.

#LikeAGirl is the famous hashtag that made it all happen. The tag mixed with the many images of the girls makes this campaign stand out in nearly any channel.

Step 5: Ensure that your messaging is integrated.

Always’s campaign brought people onto their website to view the #LikeAGirl video, and read up on it. Furthermore, Always encouraged individuals to share what they do #LikeAGirl. This caused people to support their brand and ultimately purchase their products.

Step 6: Make sure your marketing teams/agencies are working in sync.

Although there isnt much information on this regarding Always, we can assume through the success of the campaign that they were all working perfectly in sync.

Step 7: Don’t forget to track your campaigns — and coupons.

Always kept track of their campaign and would leave updates on their website to show people how the #LikeAGirl video was changing the views of different people, genders, organisations, etc.

Have you seen the #LikeAGirl campaign? What do you think about viral campaigns?

Let me know below!

Black Hat or White Hat?

Posted on April 23, 2018 by dmbylauren

If you clicked on this for some great fashion advice, you might want to click away now. The hats I am going to talk about today don’t go on your head but relate to search engine optimisation (SEO). According to MOZ, SEO is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. There are two hats: black hat and white hat. The colours represent a villain and an angel in the search engine world. Let’s start with out black villain…

Black Hat SEO is like the devil on your shoulder. You know its bad, but you still do it for instant gratification. It is the rule-breaking loophole in search engines that create a quick turnaround result. Subscription sites, and some lower grade retail sites are typical users of the Black Hat techniques. However, sites found using these techniques can be heavily penalisedor even banned. According to SEJ, some of the black hat techniques include:

Invisible text: Hiding content with white text on white background, setting text size to zero, etc.
Fake keywords: Adding keywords that don’t relate to the page’s content.
Doorway pages:These are sites that have excessive keywords attached to make it easier for search engines to find.

Black hat techniques may work temporarily but are very risky and are likely to be detected.

On the other head (sorry, I’m bad at puns), there is the White Hat SEO or as I like to refer to it as the angel on your shoulder. The white hat techniques are used by the more popular and successful companies as it makes their sites viewable through their quality content that consumers would rather see. Yes, this technique requires more effort and time, however it is the ethical route to take which will not land you in trouble and in the end will result in a true customer base. According to Upwork, the most popular white hat techniques used are:

Creating original content: creating social/email campaigns will spread awareness to their brand.
Site organisation: creating an organised site will allow search engine bots to easily crawl your site allowing the opportunity to be a popular site for your keywords.
Use of keywords: keywords are important which is why sites should put their more important information in their headings and titles. On top of this, their keywords should relate and be truthful.

Using two completely different strategies, White and Black hat techniques both aim to improve a sites visibility.

Tell me what you think! Would you choose White Hat techniques or Black Hat techniques?

Internet of Things: Is Privacy Now Dead?

Posted on April 16, 2018 by dmbylauren

When I write the phrase ‘Internet of Things’ I am sure a lot of you are scratching your head wondering what this crazy blogger is going on about. Let me start with a definition.

McKinsey defined the Internet of Things as linking machinery, equipment, and other physical assets to networked sensors in order to gain data and manage performance whilst independently acting on new data through the collaboration of machines. In short, the Internet of Things are usually modern smart devices that use sensors to gather data and create an easy and effortless life accustomed to you.

So now I’m guessing that you are all wonder what in the world are these magical devices I am talking about. It is actually more common than you would think, and I am sure you have come across a few in the past week. Apple Watch, Home Pods (e.g Google Home), Canary, Nest Thermostats, and many, many more are all products of the Internet of Things. There are 127 new devices connecting to the internet every single second and counting, making the Internet of Things one of the fastest growing concepts to date. It is estimated that in 2020, consumers will spend approximately $1494.47 billion (US) on these services.

The Internet of Things is extremely useful to marketers as they can collect data from their consumers to create a more customised experience for them which would strengthen brand loyalty. However, there is the issue of privacy.

Privacy is quickly dying in this day an age with ‘Find my Friend’ apps and Snapchat’s invasive location update, we are easily found and are finding it harder and harder to grasp onto the privacy we deserve. Our devices are always listening and waiting for commands such as “Hey Siri” or “Okay Google”. Is digital eavesdropping an issue or is it all in out paranoid heads?

There was an experiment done by German researches who ‘invaded’ a person’s home through the use of unencrypted data from a smart meter device, and they could quiet literally know the exact TV show somebody was watching at that very moment.

Are we ready as consumers to put our privacy on the line and allow companies to know everything about as? Are companies ready for the potential hacking to occur?

What do you think? Is privacy going to be dead soon or can we grasp onto the privacy we deserve?

Bad Campaigns: Self Image or Social Justice?

Posted on March 19, 2018 by dmbylauren

Viral marketing can be like pure gold to a company. However, occasionally an advertisement will go viral for all the wrong reasons. Now we all know that the companies don’t set out to offend anyone, however once they’ve done it, it’s hard for it to be taken back. But do these viral campaigns really hit a nerve with peoples morals, or is it just an opportunity to make one look good?

I’ll take the Pepsi campaign featuring Kendall Jenner as my first example. The ad starts off with Kendall modelling for a photo shoot as a protest walks past. Kendall then joins in and gives a policeman a can of Pepsi on the front line. The policeman then takes a drink and all is good and cheery…protest over. Pepsi’s intention was to depict an image of peace, understanding, and unity. Unfortunately for them, the population saw this as an insult and called it out on attempting to appropriate social justice movements. Even Martin Luther King Jr’s daughter tweeted about it saying “If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi.”

With the backlash going on for a couple of weeks, Pepsi decided to make a public apology and eventually the advertisement was taken down. Now did this ruin Pepsi’s image? Temporarily yes, but permanently no. Once the apology was issued, the public stopped talking about the ad and continued to drink Pepsi.

The next example is the ‘Perfect Body’ campaign from Victoria’s Secret. This campaign shows a bunch of size 0 ‘angels’ in underwear with the slogan “Perfect Body”. This caused major backlash with women (and men) all over the world protesting that there is no such thing as one perfect body, as all bodies are perfect. This then started the #IAmPerfect social media campaign. Soon after the backlash started, Victoria’s Secret apologised and changed the campaign slogan to “A Body for Everybody”. Once again, the public stopped talking about it once the apology was released. Did this mistake ruin Victoria’s Secret? No.

So the question is how did these go viral and why are their companies image still intact?

Social currency: This being the main reason people shared the stories above. People like to share their thoughts and make their posts ‘me’ related. In relation to the two ads above, it is likely people shared the ad and posted their own socially appropriate opinions with it. This shows their friends how much they care about the issue, thus making themselves feel like they look good in other people’s eyes.
Emotion: Other individuals get emotionally triggered by the ad, like Bernice King, and post about it. In both ads, the majority of feelings were a negative, high arousal reaction, such as anger.

These together caused the advertisement to go viral while still not impacting the brand as the majority were sharing for selfish reasons.

What do you think? Do people share for self image or for social justice.

Is it Harder to Market on Social Media?

Posted on March 11, 2018 by dmbylauren

Social Media is used by a great majority of the population. Most people use it to connect with family and friends, and share their photos and thoughts with them. However, brands trying to reach consumers may find it harder than ever to get the attention of their target market.

Using social media to market is more complicated than it sounds. Social media users have all the control and power when it comes to who markets to them or not. With a quick click, a consumer can tell the site that they never want to see an advertisement from your business again. The program AdBlocker is another free and easy way to ensure that advertisements are automatically taken off the page with no required effort. Furthermore, Facebook has taken to placing advertisements in the middle of videos to ensure that users watch it if they want to finish their video. This is a better choice, however nowadays many consumers will just scroll away or even put their phone down during the advertisement.

On top of the power struggle, digital marketing is ever-changing. A business needs to constantly be on top of trends. They need to interact with consumers in a instantaneous manner as consumers will move on if there are delayed responses. This could prove challenging for a smaller business than a larger one, as larger businesses are more likely to have a team of people to follow tends and reply to consumers. On a survey conducted by Constant Contact in 2013, they found that 59% of small business owners said it is harder to run a business today than it was 5 years ago. And 49% of those respondents said the reasoning was that it’s harder to keep up with technology.

However, on the other hand it may be the most beneficial for businesses to market on social media. Through the use of social media, a business can see their customer engagement and analytics, Using these two measures, marketers can get to know their consumers and see who actively visits their site/page. This information can be priceless to a business as they can recognise a whole new target market.

The question of ‘Is it harder to market on social media?’ cant have a definitive yes/no answer. However there are many aspects that come into it. Yes it is hard to market on social media while keeping up with consumers, and no because there is so much information available in comparison to marketing elsewhere. I believe that getting to know and understand consumers and using the analytics and information given to you will ultimately help a business gain a following. Its not about marketing your way, its about marketing their way.

What do you think? Is it getting harder or easier to market on social media? Or is it just about getting to know your consumers? Let me know!

The Journey Begins

Posted on March 5, 2018 by dmbylauren

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton