Latest trends in digital marketing and should you jump on the bandwagon

Latest trend in digital marketing is seemingly a little improvement of technologies and towards mobile marketing. I mean there is not dramatically appeared new technology or system as far as I searched. There is window of opportunity for small business. It may be less cost than before so the small businesses enter and use digital marketing easier than before. The digital marketing will be density in the future.

What is new about advertisement?
There is nothing new but there is trend towards cost-per-click to cost-per-action. Cost per click is that when someone click your advertisement you have to get payment but cost-per-action is that you don't pay until you get action which someone click your advertisement, go into your homepage then the person buy your product, which you advertised, then you have to get bill from ad agency. Another thing is display advertisement which is simpler than banner ad, although display ad is one of the banner ad. Anyway, it appears same place, does not need to contain image, such as picture, video etc and you can narrow to aim your target.

Social media already began one of major advertisement place. There is no more just making connection. You can advertise there and select particular targets by age, location etc. Also using EVENT, if somebody is not your friend or fun but you can inform your event and or campaign.

Mobile devices, such as smartphone, are newer trend marketing. Companies create specialised webpage for mobile phone. They send message like email but that is different from email because people will read it wherever they are. Additionally, proximity marketing that when user is close to target or specific area, advertisement is automatically sent to them. The users get the special information, such as event infor, bargain etc.  Moreover, magazine and paper advertisement can take users onto your mobile webpage by using QR code, like bar code, which contains some information about your product or service.  
   ←　This is QR code.


In my opinion, it is up to your purpose, goal whatever. If the trends is suitable your campaign, you should jump on the bandwagon but otherwise you should not. That's it.   


Reference

http://www.articlesbase.com/ecommerce-articles/things-you-should-bear-in-mind-while-designing-your-mobile-e-commerce-platform-4324172.html

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7014-digital-marketing-trends-2011-by-econsultancy-ceo-ashley-friedlein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

Winning pitches, the art and the science

I think pitch is kind of persuade speech so when you give speech, you should be aware of some key factor.



Refine your idea and/ or concept
Before pitch, you should refine your idea that is clear as your core message. What you want to inform your audience. Then you have to plan how to provide your idea and what is your achievement.




Do research
While you make a plan, you must know who your audience is, what they want to know or expect from you. You should think about their viewpoint. Don't be selfish to just give information about your product or service.



Preparation
You should decide what you must inform or not to inform because when you are on the pitch, you don't have enough time to explain everything. You cannot give every single detail of your product or service and they don't want to tiny detail of it. They may want to how your product or service provides solution of problem and/or make a progress. You also give visual information, such as using PowerPoint and picture which are easy to imagine or understand about your concept.




Practice and performance
You must practise for your pitch. You should do practice and check pace of your speaking and your performance, such as eye contact and body expression, as much as you can then if you find weak and wrong with your pitch. You can modify it and do practice again, again, again that would make your confidence.



Conclusion of this topic, you have to have confidence if you do above things and you would engage with your audience. Even if you fail your pitch, you learn from that, and you will try not to make same mistake. Don't be afraid of next pitch.       



Reference:

http://www.thepitchdoctor.tv/content/surgery
http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/12/microsoft-venture-capital-ent-fin-cx_mc_0412askanexpert.html

Drowning in number? What are the most meaningful measures to improve campaign performance.

When you conduct a campaign, you of course want to know its performance but how to measure its performance is successful or failed. There are some ways to measure your campaign performance. Unfortunately, there isn't only one to measure to improve campaign performance.

Firstly, you must set your clear goal which doesn't matter what goal you look at, like brand awareness, be specific is only the matter to set your goal before you launch your campaign. Why this is important is simple, you have big picture of your business and you know where you want to achieve, because this is basic element. If you aren't sure your purpose, you have to consider it.

Secondly, you should evaluate your campaign performance by tracking and comparing data etc. Analyses are always vital of success in your business and are many ways to measure its performance by numbers. What you should do is to monitor traffic on your site which collects your audience action of what they're looking for your contents, how long they spend time on your site and so on. Then you must get your traffic reports from agency and/or some useful material from web provider, such as Google analytics. This system provide you lots of statistic data about your site performance, see more detail about Google analytics ( http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/analytics/). Here, important thing isn't getting information about performance data about how many people visit on your site, the important things are how long people are staying on and/or how many pages or which pages they are viewing.

Meanwhile, you might use social media, such as Tweeter, Blog and Facebook in order to build and expand your brand awareness or for a specific campaign by not only advertisements. These media are measuring differently but the mesurement steps are the same distances which are exposure, influence, engagement and audience's action. These are also analyses by numbers, like follower, viewer and so on.


Image from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/4-ways-measure-social-media-and-its-impact-on-your-brand/

 At exposure, you should take your effort to increase exposure of your business awareness in order to get publicity. That measure by tracking etc. secondly, influence is kind of analysis. Your campaign or strategy is ok or you need to modify your campaign or strategy. Thirdly, engagement is how many audiences respond your performance, such as how many people react your performance and how much you give them an impact by your performance. Action is kind of result, such as purchase and/or downloading etc.

In conclusion, in which way you measure campaign performance, there are certainly need numbers to measure its performance. But you don't forget that the numbers show result of performance in more ways than one but you should not confuse which data and/or number you look at to evaluate its performance and to improve your campaign.   


Reference:

http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/advertising/1415-1.html

http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/advertising-internet-advertising/2645-1.html
 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/4-ways-measure-social-media-and-its-impact-on-your-brand/

Engage your audience to create deeper relationships.

Banner ads are taking Net surfers as visitors to your homepage but that isn't deep enough to engage them. Perhaps some of them become your audiences. In some past years, companies concerned about putting social media into your business or not. By now, your business is completely involved in social media such as blog, tweeter and Facebook. Using those tools is now popular in the business scene.

How do you create deeper relationships with your audiences and customers? There are many points and/or skills, such as making links with your homepage, ranking top page by search engine and of course using social networks etc. Additionally, here are likewise important things which are homepage's content attractively, creating good communication with your audience and accessibility of your website. I'm going to write about a bit of accessibility because of doing research we normally click on website address on the first page and usually left side of  those address or tittles. What we need to do is making 'target keywords' of own homepage.The target keywords are when people research something, they types words in the search box on the Web. When you create your website, you must think about particular, longer keywords and using the keywords in the title tag. In addition, your contents are relevant to the keywords. Also search engines, like Google, provide some useful and skilful tools, such as adwords keyword tool, for web owners to improve their website. Meanwhile, your should well organise content on your website because this is also important to be interested in your audience and to join and use social media effectively as listening to people's voice what  they are talking about and what they want. You should not do that take control them.



reference:
http://www.avanade.com/Documents/Research%20and%20Insights/crmresearchsummaryfindingsfinalfinal270228.pdf

http://www.cuttingedgepr.com/articles/6-rules-for-successfully-engaging-in-social-media.asp

http://www.wearetechmap.com/index.php/headline/un-learn-everything/

http://searchenginewatch.com/2168021

How to deliver projects on brief, on time and on budget

After making strategy, your project or task is ready to start but before starting a project, in my opinion, you should make schedule as process plan like how to achieve a goal. This is not fixed plan, this have to be adjustable and flexible but do not be overambitious otherwise your project would face delay or some problems. Your project proceeds step by step to reach the goal. To divide a project with process plan that may help you if your project or task faced some problems. You will find a problem easily because you don't check through all of detail and process. Perhaps, dividing a project would deliver whole project or task smoothly. During a project, you work within a team so team play is a key element. You should communicate with your teammate in order to share clear vision and the same motivation.  Well communication makes a good teamwork.

Examination your project is necessary and essential factor because the process plan is not perfect. You must know process of your project. In process of time there might appear result and/or performance to adjust and fix in order to deliver project on time and on budget and to achieve your project. During the project or task, it is necessary to do analyses.



Reference:
 http://www.shawsystems.com/information/sevensteps.pdf
http://www.businessballs.com/project.htm

Here's my Favourite digital marketing creative and why?

My favourite creative is that TV commercials, like a short drama, were continued the rest of stories on the Web. That meant we could only watch the rest of stories on its website. The idea was successful, I believed, because its style created the commercials which were somehow more interesting and attractive than others. In Fact, many people watched those stories and also companies created several version of its drama. These kinds of advertisements were popular in Japan some years ago. Why did the companies make those advertisements? The answer was, perhaps, that when audience went to the website, they might have given some personal detail at least email. Honestly I've never been those website because I was busy working, although I was always interested in those commercials and I always thought to be going to watch it later then I totally missed a chance to watch it at live. Afterwards, I found those stories on YouTube.

I will give you these videos but I cannot translate all conversation, sorry. Despite of that, I give you a summary of the story. A man who is Japanese and couldn't speak other language at all has gone to overseas business trip in Paris, he met a beautiful attendant on the plane then he got to Paris. He was at a restaurant and saw the attendant with her friends there. He got great feeling as destiny, he would have got three choices to make a decision. Those were acting gently to ask them for the recommendation of the menu or acting quickly to chat up her via her friend who is Japanese or he did noting, he just observed and gazed because he thought there was impossible to talk to her.

Enjoy:)

Introduction (on TV):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JK7v581tyFg

Gently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1NBpTjw0Wk&feature=player_detailpage

Quickly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=080TTfRgP1U

Impossible:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2oOdk7INglY

How to select the most appropriate channels to reach digital natives

Digital marketing, there are lots of channels such as, banner ad for getting attention and taking audience own homepage and blog for providing piece of information and taking them as well. Each channel provides different quality and service. That is difficult to choose which channel is appropriate your project, campaign and so on. On the other hand, digital natives are always connecting digital world by computer, mobile phone and many other gadgets like iPod. They are living with digital medium so, that means how to attract them! That's it but how? Again, that is difficult, too!!

However, I believe there are no perfect channels for every plan, strategy, project etc, like a guideline, because each one is different from others. That means choosing channel that depends on what your strategy, whatever, is... And also, before making strategy, of course, there necessarily do research for knowing about your targets is important. When project starts, you already chose some digital channels those are potentially suitable for the project.  Next what you might do that that collects its statistical data because you probably modify or adjust those channels in order to succeed. For example, making strategy, you chose ten channels before starting a project. Afterwards, you'll get some its statistic data and you analyse the data then perhaps you adjust channels that are reduced more appropriate channels to five or more less.


Reference:
http://fairsay.com/blog/hype-vs.-reality-what-digital-channels-are-the-most-effective