The Fetch Blog

Curated reads and events for professionals

Tag: marketing

Cookie Monsters: How marketers will find and track you in a world without cookies — November 18, 2013

Cookie Monsters: How marketers will find and track you in a world without cookies

/The Fetch community

Users beware: the marketing monsters are still lurking under your browser’s bed.

cookies

As many advertisers become frighteningly more tech savvy and as their relentless pursuit to own the ‘battle for context’ continues, the reality is that no law or governance system will truly be able to hold marketers back from finding, learning about and effectively reaching you. As Rebecca Greenfield at The Atlantic Wire best puts it, “There is now a fine line between cool and creepy”.

Whatever ethical views you share and wherever you think the line should be drawn for online advertisers, it’s indisputable that some of the strategies and innovations that our marketing contemporaries are producing are nothing short of remarkable and somewhat genius.

Here are just a few new strategies currently employed to keep you awake at night:

Fingerprinting

Browsers, by their very nature are designed to send and receive information. Depending on where you are, what resolution you have, what plugins you’ve installed, the fonts you use and what timezone you’re in is a factor that leaves an identifiable mark – a sort of ‘fingerprint’ that can be traced back to the various touch points you’ve engaged at.

With smartphones and tablets unable to support third-party cookies, many of the larger brands are looking towards fingerprinting as a means to monitor and track how users engage with their products across multiple devices.

Whilst a still relatively unsophisticated practice, fingerprinting is becoming widely popular thanks to its potential longevity – unlike cookies, you can’t erase it.

Conversion pixels and Facebook PMDs

Earlier this year Facebook rolled out new conversion tracking capabilities to all advertising accounts through the form of ‘conversion pixels’, which are simply snippets of code inserted in header tags of offsite webpages such as checkouts, landing pages and forms.

‘So what? Google has had conversion tracking for years!’ one may say… well, the real magic happens when we apply conversion pixels in conjunction with a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) platform.

Kenshoo is one such example of a popular PMD platform that uses Facebook conversion pixels in interesting and innovative ways. Specialising in ‘closed loop targeting’, Kenshoo leverages both social media and search engine data to track a user’s journey across multiple platforms and mediums – from a customer’s first impression to a Google search and final conversion while optimising massive volumes of advertisements along the way.

With conversion pixels at the heart of it, marketers who use such platforms can actually identify which consumers clicked through from Facebook, visited certain landing page, left, conducted a Google search two days later, returned to a new landing page and purchased your product.

This means that marketers can not only track when and how you bought something, they can now track your intent far more effectively than before.

Social profiling

Customer relationship management can sometimes begin before a customer relationship starts. Believe it or not, people are already gathering information from you from across the web using the multiple publicly available APIs from around the web whether you’ve engaged with them before or not.  It only takes one sign from you – such as opting in with your email or phone number somewhere – to unlock all the secrets that surround your digital persona.

Facebook’s new features to target ‘Custom Audiences’ and create ‘Lookalike’ audiences began beta testing around March this year and so far has been a huge success for advertisers.

With custom audiences, brands can upload their existing email database to Facebook and serve targeted ads exclusively to their existing customers as well as identify if they’re actively engaged with them on social or not.

With Lookalike audiences, brands can upload a small list of their most lucrative customers to a secure, remote server and match them with Facebook’s 1.1 billion user database to help identify an entirely new list of potential customers that share common characteristics with their ideal audience.

These NSA like capabilities aren’t limited to big brands with deep pockets.

The Full Contact, for example is an online service that crowd-sources publicly available data sourced from social network APIs to serve up-to-date information about any prospect. Full Contact’s Person API, for example allows you to turn partial customer contacts (such as an email, twitter handle, Facebook id or phone number) into full contacts complete with up to date social profiles.

It’s all just the beginning

Despite new laws arising out of Europe and the United States around internet tracking, tech companies and large advertisers are already well ahead of what’s next. Our increasing interconnectedness, dependency on social profiles and growing digital media consumption will continue to drive key advertising innovations – and it isn’t slowing down.

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About our contributor // Cameron Rambert is a Melbourne-based digital media and technology enthusiast with a background in startup commercialisation and digital strategy. Follow him @cameronrambert.

Image credit: Maichou

Event Review: the future of advertising at Ignite Sydney — August 11, 2013

Event Review: the future of advertising at Ignite Sydney

/The Fetch community

lightbulb

What do you think the future of advertising will look like? Big data and geotargeting are already part of our present so what can be next?

Delphine Vuagnoux from The Fetch Sydney ambassador crew recently attended to the first Ignite Sydney [Marketing] event to listen to people talk about the future of advertising and brand management.

New to the Ignite format? It’s a fast-paced evening where community leaders, thinkers and curious minds shared their top insights with 20 slides in less than five minutes. Sharp and short presentations entertain and enlighten the audience.

Here are our five takeaways from the night:

1. Advertising (and marketing) starts with a good story: be it about your brand, your product or your service, no matter what, you have to make it noticeable. Storytelling as a concept is quite new but not so new explained Sarah Morton. The ingredients of storytelling (creating a hero that your audience can relate to) have always existed since the writing of the first fairy tales and myths. So re-read your classics and adapt them to our modern marketing.

2. Social media is a key part of  brand management. But unlike the celebs (Bieber, Kardashian and co) we cannot use sex, drugs and rock’n roll. Marie Sornin, from Twitter Australia, gave three words that lead to successful social brands: entertainment (funny and unusual work really well to make your content shareable); value (make it so great that people want to share it) and utility (make it easy and accessible).

“Make your audience’s life easy, and they will thank you for it.”

3. If you’re looking for a great example of content marketing, take a look at nightclubs and DJs. Their business model is based on selling drinks but people don’t come for the beer on sale but for the type of music that’s being played, the atmosphere and everything else but the drinks. As expressed by Jonathan Crossfield, “Night clubs have invented content marketing!”. As you’d do for your club, have some content to guide people from the dance floor to the bar and build a community around your content.

4. Ever wondered on how this awful ad campaign was allowed? Rob Pyne shared some wisdom about how to not make the wrong decisions. He identified four “villains”: when people use gut feel, like doing something because it feels just right; when people play devil’s advocate; when people solve the wrong problem and when people assume data is the end-answer…

“Look for best and worst case scenarios together, take the time to listen actively and make sure there is only one person to decide.”

5. Ashley Ringrose, the founder and tech director of Soap Creative, walked us through a future where big data and geotargeting will rule the world, something like Skynet in Terminator – or Skynet Mall in this new version. Our DNA will become our cookie, the quantified self will be the norm and marketers will be able to track it down so they can sell the perfect product according to our behaviours, tax returns and what makes us laugh.

To conclude, a special mention to Andrew Clarke, at The Monkeys, whose presentation about sponsorship was one of the most hilarious of the evening, even if it remains unclear whether or not it was a presentation sponsored by Evernote. Still, he was convincing enough about the value of sponsorship as being what brings brands and consumers together where they are most engaged.

To view or review the speakers of the night, check out Ignite Sydney on YouTube:

 

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About our ambassador// Delphine Vuagnoux splits her time between being an advocate against racism at All Together Now and Medianet as a communications executive. Follow her @delphinevuagnou

Interview: SF Local, Karen Kang of BrandingPays — May 31, 2013

Interview: SF Local, Karen Kang of BrandingPays

/Eliza

This week we interview branding expert, author, founder and CEO of BrandingPays, Karen Kang. Follow Karen on Twitter via @karenkang.

You are currently the founder and CEO of BrandingPays. What do you focus on and why do you love branding?

I’m a brand strategist for corporate and personal branding.  The focus of my company is on consulting, seminars and personal branding coaching. I love branding because clients find it so empowering.  When you have a visible and respected brand, the world knows when and why to engage with you. Opportunities come your way because you have added value in a unique way. It is so rewarding to help clients have those aha! moments that transform them from mere players to leaders in their niche.

You recently published and completed a book tour for The Five-Step System to Reinvent Your Personal Brand. As we have often been led to believe that the Internet can endanger our privacy, how would you coach an individual on the merits of using social media publicly as a part of reinventing their personal brand? 

If you want to have greater opportunities in business, you have to brand yourself online.  One of the best ways to do this is to find an area of thought leadership that will differentiate you, and start sharing your expertise on social media. If you haven’t yet developed an expert platform, perhaps you can begin to add value by curating information from other sources.

Does everyone need their own brand? What happens if people don’t like what they’ve become known for and they want to change industries or career? What tips do you recommend?

Everyone already has a brand—some are weak and some are strong.  If you have a weak brand that doesn’t stand for much, you need to figure out what you want to be known for and start branding around this.

I recently helped a school teacher repackage her former high tech business experience, political background and science credentials as the perfect skill set for a school principal prepared to  face the multiple challenges of school finance, parent involvement and science and technology preparedness.  With her new positioning, she recently accepted her dream job as a middle school principal.

Branding is not rocket science. However, most people don’t know how to be strategic about their own personal brands.  I wrote BrandingPays so people would have the framework, tools and examples to brand themselves for a successful career or business.

You worked for a number of years as a principal and partner at Regis McKenna before starting your own consulting firm. What advice would you give to professionals looking to strike out on their own?

If you are a professional services provider, your personal brand is critical.  Make sure that you understand the ecosystem for your business, and develop relationships with key influencers.  You will be credible from the get go if the right people endorse you or introduce you to others.  Be sure to give influencers a clear, concise definition of what you do and how it benefits your customers.  Make it easy for others to advocate for you.

You need a good website that not only tells your story in a compelling way, but interacts with your customers.  Consider adding your Twitter stream, videos or other interactive media to your home page to communicate your personality and that you value education and engagement.  Show rather than tell.

You’ve said that personal branding can make the world a better place. What do you mean by that? How has living in the Bay Area shaped your personal brand? 

Imagine a world in which every person were known and recognized for their unique talents and value.  Not only would we all have better self-esteem but the world would work more efficiently with the right partners engaging with one another to create new opportunities and new value—together!  That is what personal branding, done right, can achieve.

The Bay Area has had a tremendous influence over my personal brand.

Living in Silicon Valley where so many great companies started as a germ of an idea, I couldn’t help but feel that anything is possible. Companies here are reinventing business models, markets and themselves constantly. Therefore, taking an innovative approach to my own career and my own brand just seemed natural.

Which SF events do you look forward to each year?

I have been so busy doing speaking engagements around my book that I’ve had to pass on many great events in the San Francisco Bay Area.  However, I have enjoyed local TEDx talks, and I’m looking forward to being both a speaker and an attendee at this year’s Red Herring Conference in Monterey and the Ascend West Coast Conference in San Francisco.

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About our contributor // Eliza Dropkin is a lover of live music, good food, and beautiful places. Connect with her on Twitter via @elizadropkin.

Event Review: KPI – Become a Key Person of Influence — February 10, 2013

Event Review: KPI – Become a Key Person of Influence

/The Fetch community

What: KPI event or an introduction to an entrepreneur growth accelerator designed to assist small businesses through a growth phase.
Over Heard: “There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. There are opportunities for everyone.”

Captivated audience
Captivated audience

Last Saturday, the KPI event kicked off 2013 with over 670 people attending the conference at NAIDA in spite of the rain… this big number shows how much people, are they owners of small businesses or entrepreneurs, are eager to learn more about how to make a difference in their industry or even to the world.

The KPI Accelerator programme presents itself like a recipe to follow in order to achieve success in your industry. The motto being to love what you do, to stay authentic and to be ready to spare no expense to make it real… sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

Let’s start the journey with Glen Carlson and Daniel Priestley, our hosts for the day. Glen has an impressive list of professional achievements and describes himself as a startup enthusiast and a fun hunter. Daniel is known for coining the phrase ‘Global Small Business’ and believes that an Entrepreneur Revolution is unfolding. He is  also the best-selling author of the book Key Person of Influence.

We are no longer in the Industrial Age; we are in the Ideas Economy and everything has changed.

Being a key person of influence means having a voice within the industry. Influence comes from being a visible, remarkable, credible and valuable person in the inner-circle of the industry you love. Back in the days, what made you a person of influence was the family you were born, the school you went to and a touch of luck. Today, we’re facing a critical change: we came from the Industrial Age to the Ideas Economy and with the development of technology and smart devices everyone has a factory in his pocket. The last five years have seen a huge shift and with no geographic barriers, more and more people are working for themselves and today, your soft skills are what makes the difference.

Let’s be back to the recipe or five-step methods to set you and your business apart:

KPI event 5 steps

1. You need a Perfect Pitch: it’s all about answering the “What do you do?” question. You may have a great product, service or idea but if you can’t communicate its values in a remarkable way, you’ll always struggle. Words have power: they can convey what you stand for or against. “Being able to describe what makes you or your product unique is key to your success. This is called the unique value proposition”, explained Ian Elliot.  Defining your niche can also help you to stand out from the crowd: it’s better to be famous in a small area than being all things to all people. Crafting your brand essence will ensure your business grow as an authentic expression of who you are: the brand essence is the core spirit behind your business. When you’re working on your elevator pitch, don’t forget the customer. Understand him: who is he? what does he want? need? expect? What are his rational, emotional and corporate needs? A satisfied customer is a worthless asset.

Consistency in little things and continuity across all your messages: they are things that matter.

2. You need to Publish your ideas: in the Ideas Economy, publishing positions you as an authority. Andrew Griffiths is Australia’s #1 small business author with 11 books sold in over 50 countries. As he said : “Before I wrote my first book, I was an idiot. After I published it, I was a genius”. Following the success of his first publication, Andrew decided to leverage the power of his book and wrote a second one, then a third… up to eleventh! This gave him a huge competitive advantage in his industry as being an author gives credibility. Andrew explained why publishing makes a difference:

  • It shows that you have information that is valuable to others
  • It sets you apart from other people in your chosen field
  • It also demonstrates that you have the discipline to complete a major project that requires structure and creativity
  • It also shows that you have convictions and are brave enough to back yourself

If you are unsure of your capacity of writing a book, you can start with your own blog, a website, some white papers or even Twitter. Publishing in your industry shows that you are a person to be consulted, engaged, listened to and sought for advice. But unlike Andrew whose business is writing books, you don’t have to write 11 books to get noticed.

There has never been a better time to publish with the new publishing landscape.

3. You need to Productise your values: time is money and as an entrepeneur, making the most of your time and making money is crucial. But regularly people get it wrong by sticking to the OOPS model: Only One Product/Service that makes them dependent in terms of brand, time and capital.To make money, you have to create value. Product and service don’t make money. The product eco-system can change that: for example, Steve Jobs decided to heavily promote the iPod which turned out to be a huge success. This was also the first key entrance for customers into Apple’s world. People were then ready to buy Mac computers. Defining the asset of your product is another way to increase your value: What is your asset? Is it said in your positioning? Can you develop your product or the scale of your product? Multiple products sold through multiple channels mean multiplying your value.

Income follows assets. Defining the assets of your product is what will allow you to earn money.

4. You need to raise your Profile: being good at what you do is no longer enough. You need to stand out and using social media is one of the best tactics to achieve it. In a world where everything can be Googled, you have to do your best to ensure the results that show up are positive and convincing enough to win the deal. Kylie Bartlett shared be sure that your pitch and message are replicated across all your social media; content is the new currency: write, publish, share and syndicate all your content across the web; don’t do social media without a strategy to transform leads into sales; pay attention to your digital footprint, be sure that there is coherence; enjoy social media as it allows you  to meet interesting people that could bring you new opportunities.

When your customers Google you, they want to see a video, updates, dowloads, community and dynamic information.

5. You need great Partnerships: Partnership creates wholesale value. The IRL (Illusion of Limited Resource) prevents you from doing what you want: you think you don’t have enough time or money or people. But there is an amazing network of partners out there ready to give you what you need. As Daniel Priestley said, “There is no such thing as a self-made millionaire”. The beauty of the partnership is that you don’t need to have all things, you partner with those who have what’s missing. Ideas are great but worthless in themselves; implementation is everything. Cathy Burke, the CEO of The Hunger Project in Australia came to explain how she mastered the art of mobilising key resources like time, money and knowledge via strategic joint ventures and partnerships. When she approaches CEOs, rather than saying that the aim of The Hunger Project is to put an end to the worldwide hunger, she explains that it seeks to empower people to resolve their hunger problem. And that changes everything. To explain the essence of the partnership, Cathy shared an african proverb:

If you want to go quick, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.

The KPI event was a great introduction to the 5-step method developed by Daniel Priestley to become the new Steve Jobs or new Larry and Sergey of your industry. Let’s conclude with few words: opportunity is nowhere = now here.

Kpi event

About our ambassador // Delphine Vuagnoux is a community ambassador for Sydney. She is passionate about innovation and social change. She does her best working at All Together Now and Medianet. You can find her on Twitter here: @delphinevuagnou.

Event Review: 2013 Marketing Trends — December 4, 2012

Event Review: 2013 Marketing Trends

/The Fetch community

What: Networx Marketers Meeting
Topic: 2013 Marketing Trends
Where: Fringe Bar, Sydney
When: 27 November 2012

With the year almost over, now is a good time to review what’s happened in 2012 and make plans for the next year. What trends will be leading the charge in 2013? What platforms should we be using? What can we really expect? Solange Francois went along to Networx to find out.

The panel at Networx: 2013 Marketing Trends

The panel at the final Networx event for the year was a energetic one: Carl Moggridge, Communications Director at Naked Communications; John Batistich, Director of Marketing at Westfield Group; Shani Langi, MD at Play Communications and Alex Hayes, Editor of B&T.

They discussed insights around marketing, experiential, digital and advertising in front of an audience who were scrambling to take notes during the session, and ask questions at the end.

How can we source information on new marketing trends?

  • Look to what’s happening in Tokyo, Europe, Silicon Valley and other parts of the US for insights and trends that can be developed in Australia.
  • Keep an eye on what’s going on but also remember to not just chase trends. Ensure that you really look at who your customer and how they can be reached.
  • Look at industries and markets outside of your own to gain new perspectives and the ability to innovate.

Where is digital and social media heading?

  • Mobile is crucial. Ensure that every customer experience is optimised for mobile.
  • Social will become more embedded in businesses rather than just in campaigns. It’s growing up!
  • The biggest populations of the world are: 1) China 2) India 3) Facebook 4) USA. Social isn’t going anywhere – it’s enormous.
  • MySpace has been doing a lot behind the scenes. It has the potential to become a big player in 2013.
  • Nike is a good example of a company that has created a digitally enabled community. It has essentially become a technology company that sells products.
  • Retail is going social, vibrant and engaging. A good example is www.thefancy.com

How is traditional marketing changing?

  • Influencers are now advertisers, too. Bloggers, mums, dads and regular people have influence on how your product and service is seen. Consumers trust their peers.
  • Marketing is not just about inspiring or conveying a message, but also about providing tools and ways to do things to make lives easier.
  • Consumer-generated content like Instagram is becoming more relevant.
  • We can look to successful campaigns of 2012, such as Virgin Mobile’s ‘Fair Go Bro’, Coke’s ‘Share a Coke’ and Metro Trains ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ to see that brands that entertain are memorable.
  • We need to personalise messages and add value – too many emails are sent to customers and they’re opening them less.

How do we build a long-term strategy and adapt?

  • Look beyond your target market and see who is actually making purchasing decisions. For example, women influence two-thirds of shopping for men’s’ apparel.
  • Understand that digital natives use technology differently, for example, while older users search with keyword terms, natives often search in whole sentences.
  • We need to create profiles about our customers and use big data to gain insights.
  • Know how to measure effectively. Views and likes don’t mean that the message reached the consumer.
  • Spend time with your customers outside of a focus group. Experience living like them in order to truly understand them.

Alex Hayes summed it up for me with one of his comments: “We can talk about knowing what will happen in 2013, but who really knows?” It’s true. With the environment changing as fast as it is, we can be sure of one trend: it’ll continue to evolve. We must be adaptable in order to achieve our marketing goals and stay ahead.

About our Ambassador // This article was contributed by Community Ambassador Solange Francois. She is a marketer and lover of travel with a passion for psychology and lifelong learning. You can connect with Solange through her blog or on Twitter @solangefrancois