News and Analysis
The Challenge of Brand Alignment with Social Issues
Increasingly, brands with high public visibility must articulate their positions on issues the public cares about while avoiding the appearance of exploiting public sentiment for purposes of self-promotion. And whether or not a formal statement makes sense on every issue, companies should be prepared for the day when a consumer comes to them to ask a question or offer feedback about a brand’s actions or values, perhaps in the form of a social post that is there for all to see.
GumGum Helps Marketers Reach Gamers with Intrinsic In-Game Ads
A new partnership between the contextual-first digital ad platform GumGum and Frameplay, a company that enables intrinsic in-game advertising, could give multi-location brands a way to reach gamers in select markets while also enhancing the playing experience for those seeking more in-game rewards.
Commentary
4 Ways to Retain Customers with Event Marketing
Customer retention is usually faster and costs a lot less than acquiring new customers. By putting your customers through the funnel, you’ve already done the hard part. To keep the momentum going, it’s important to create a set of initiatives that increases customer value, encourages further purchases, and fosters brand ambassadors to promote your company.
Experiential marketing through events helps brands achieve these goals. The aim is to create memorable experiences that engender high degrees of loyalty. Here are four ways you can leverage event marketing to retain your customers.
This Election Season, Candidates Should Take Voter Data Privacy Concerns into Account
In the wake of Cambridge Analytica and privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, the advertising landscape has changed, as have consumers’ perceptions about data collection and privacy. Candidates still need ways to reach their target audience effectively, and they should do so while being mindful of compliance issues and Americans’ privacy concerns.
The 2019-2020 advertising cycle will generate an estimated $6 billion in political media spending, $1.6 billion of which will be spent on digital video, according to Politico’s spending projections. This is up from $0.74 billion on digital video in 2018, so we are talking exponential growth. Many candidates will wash their hands of marketing decisions, entrusting their staff and partners to decide how to best use their campaign dollars. But candidates should use their advertising strategies to make a political statement—to show voters they care about ethical data practices.
Brands Can’t Tell Stories If They’ve Lost the Plot
In 2020, a marketer’s goal should not be to create more content. It shouldn’t even be to create better content. Most brands, after all, are already doing a good job of generating content that provides value, service, comfort, and utility to people’s lives. What’s missing is a fundamental alignment between content and other marketing disciplines. Content, from a metrics standpoint, needs to speak the same language as paid media so that marketers can demonstrate the impact it has to their CMOs.
Latest Posts
Heard on the Street, Episode 14: Boosting Sales with Google My Business
During September’s Brandify Summit, we listened to an in-depth case study from Dick’s Sporting Goods on sharpening a localized search marketing strategy for multilocation brands around things like Google Posts. We feature that talk in the latest episode of Heard on the Street (see above).
Google and the On-SERP Experience: We’re Just Gettin’ Warmed Up
The introduction of a new Knowledge Graph layer in the form of “Topics” indicates to me that Google’s latest efforts in this arena will extend in two directions beyond Local entities. I see these linkages extending all the way up the search journey to initial consideration and even further down the funnel beyond Local entities.
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The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation