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Social media Is a golden resource in digital marketing today. With the advancement of technology and the internet, social media marketing has become an incredibly strong way for a business to reach their target audiences. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn provide a way for marketers to directly interact with customers and can dramatically contribute to a brand’s success by bringing in new customers, new leads, and even more sales. There are now many tools for marketers to create and share content easily in order to achieve their marketing goals, so it is definitely a good idea for every business–regardless of their size– to invest in this type of digital marketing.

Social media marketing is a fabulous tool that allows businesses to share messages, photos, videos, and so many other forms of content that can capture an audience’s attention and improve a businesses’ standing. It can assist in many marketing goals including multiplying website traffic, increasing conversions, making sure audiences know about a brand, crafting a brand identity, and solidifying the communication between a brand and its customers. When a brand has a large social following, it is easier to put a message “out there” and ensure that marketing goals are met. According to Statista, 70% of the United States population uses a social media platform, and this is only expected to increase as time goes on. It’s no wonder social media is a gold mine for marketers. It presents a huge opportunity for businesses to reach people and grow.

Facebook and Instagram are fun ways to pass time. I personally check my social media profiles various times a day when watching funny videos or browsing to see what my friends and family are up to. Oftentimes, I will scroll and be bombarded with advertisements. However, because I’m so engaged in everything being posted, I really consume the information placed in front of me without really realizing that products are being marketed to me. It’s a clever way for businesses to get inside a customer’s head at a time when they are so receptive to these messages. Social media also gives brands plenty of different ways to be creative in their marketing efforts. For example, a brand can show a different facet of their personality by creating an entertaining video, writing a catchy message (Dorito’s has done this with their catch “comebacks”), or putting up a photo that’s a real attention grabber. This is great for customers who have never heard of your brand and may give the page a follow just based on the interesting content. I have personally become a customer of a handful of brands based on their social media advertisements. It is an opportunity to make new connections and engage with the current ones.

Yet another amazing reason to use social media as a prime marketing tool is that it is cost effective but still impactful. Sure, a brand must invest time into creating content and building relationships, but the money spent on actual advertisements and impressions is affordable even when a company is working with a small budget. In fact, the cost of social media marketing tends to be much less expensive than more traditional marketing efforts.

We also can’t forget about the power of hashtags or mentions. When a customer uses a hashtag to garner the attention of a brand or mentions them with the @ symbol, others can not only view that brand’s page, but they can join in on the conversation as well. This is also an opportunity for brands to construct a relationship and respond back to the comment as well as put themselves out there so that potential customers can learn about them and what they have to offer. In other words, it’s a way for a business to engage with customers and try to build a relationship.

I’ve only mentioned a handful of benefits to social media marketing, but the reality is that there are so many more reasons for brands to focus on social media efforts. Marketing will continue evolving and changing as our society continues to rely more on technology. I would argue that not only is it effective for most businesses, but nowadays it is a necessity as well. Businesses who are not already using social media to market their products and services should consider the benefits and use these tools to execute and manage some of their communication efforts. It may be a decision that gives their brand that extra boost.

 

Citations

Global No.1 Business Data Platform. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/.

Market research is an amazing tool for businesses—big and small. One of the great things about it is that a company doesn’t necessarily need a lot of money or resources to conduct a market research study and they can often gain a lot from it and carve a niche for themselves in order to establish themselves as marketing leaders. Market research not only pinpoints the demand for products and services, but it can help marketers break into the mind of consumers to figure out how to best garner their loyalty. Once a marketer understands how to play the part of a middle man and offer solutions for customers and support for businesses, they place themselves on the path to marketing success and identifying themselves as marketing leaders.

Businesses must absolutely have solid marketing strategies and while this will ultimately be the proposal that propels a business, market research helps them get there. Acquiring valuable data gives businesses the ability to understand the target audience, and what they want and expect from a product and from a company. Having this information in hand can give a brand a major advantage over competitors so that they can be successful. Some of the other advantages to conducting market research studies include being able to connect with customers on a deeper level to understand what demographics should be targeted. When a marketer has the knowledge of who is purchasing a product and why that product appeals to them, better strategies can be crafted that will continue strengthening the brand. This is essentially what marketing is about and while it is crucial for marketers to do their due diligence to acquire this knowledge, how well and how conscientiously it is done will effectively determine their role as a marketing leader.

Another benefit of obtaining data from market research studies is the way in which it assists in building effective marketing campaigns. With update research information, marketers can invest their time into building marketing campaigns that will actually work effectively. After campaigns are launched, marketers can then perform more research studies to understand how effective the campaign was in order to then build on that campaign and make it even bigger and better. Improving a campaign’s reach and engagement will help a business expand and will help marketers grow as leaders and professionals. Not to mention that market research can help marketers improve products and come up with new opportunities for growth by providing an understanding of what the market size, competitors, trends, and demographics are.

Knowledge is power. With the right data and marketing knowledge in hand, marketers can improve so many things all around. To be a leader in the marketing field, a company must do what they do effectively, and they must do it well. Customer feedback and insights are critical to this process. Data acquired is a golden opportunity for marketers to make the appropriate changes to products and services to make customers happy, build a robust reputation for a brand, and build a name for themselves as marketing leaders.

 

With the way in which technology continues to rapidly advance, the internet has become the largest and most important channel to target audiences. According to Our World In Data, there are 7.7 billion people in the world, and 3.5 billion of us online. That means that nearly half of the population uses the internet. It’s no wonder that keyword research and SEO optimization has become such an important marketing technique.

Keyword research sets the groundwork for various digital marketing practices such as content marketing, big data, marketing automatic, social media marketing, and more. Keywords not only help construct a description of what a business is known for but also assist in helping marketers understand what content should be marketed and where organic search traffic derives from. The websites that receive plenty of organic searches do so thanks to the keywords used. Keywords are essentially words or phrases that people type into search engines to find what they are looking for. For example, if you type “cat” into a search engine like Bing or Google, many broad results related to cats which the search engine believes are relevant to your search will appear. The results are then organized depending on what the search engine believes most closely matches what you intended to search for. Using long tail keywords increases the chance of being ranked highly due to the specificity of the terms used and the lack of competition. Any keywords used should target the type of traffic that flows through your website and that will convert browsing customers into paying ones. By using the wrong types of keywords, you may still bring in traffic but likely not any useful traffic.

This is why it’s so important to research the correct keywords for a campaign. Some of the benefits of using keyword research include finding relevant markets, ranking highly on search engines which in turn drives traffic to a website, and promoting products and services by strengthening marketing goals. When marketers use due diligence to find out what phrases people are typing into search engines, they can meet their goals to assist them in finding what they’re searching for. By putting themselves into the customer’s frame of mind, a marketer can use intuition to narrow down the keywords that will likely be used during a search. There are also a variety of keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, that can aid in coming up with just the right mix of keywords to determine what will yield the best results.

By truly researching the best keywords and phrases to use for a campaign, marketers can improve a company’s ROI and increase awareness or the brand. With content that really attempts to target customers, businesses and audiences will be better connected. This marketing strategy is a win-win that keeps everyone happy and contributes immensely to a business’s growth

Sources

Roser, Max. “Future Population Growth.” Our World in Data, 9 May 2013, https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth.

There are various forms of market research and while they all differ from one another, the one thing they have in common is their ability to help marketers and businesses understand and fix problems. When businesses attempt to find out more about their target customers and come up with attempts to do so such as focus groups and surveys, they are engaging in market research. Although market research isn’t absolutely necessary, it is very helpful and can help businesses lower business risks, create relevant promotional material, outsell their competitors, set stronger goals, and make better decisions. Two forms of research that hold a lot of value and can be beneficial to businesses are marketing research surveys and marketing experiments.

Market research surveys are useful in providing insights into consumer views and can help a business become even more competitive by providing enough information to better organize marketing strategies. By partaking in market research studies, businesses can find the information they need to understand from a consumer’s point of view, what makes a product or service desirable, why they would want to use the product or service, how effective the marketing campaign is, and whether the product or service meets all of the consumer’s needs. The information accessed with these surveys gives businesses an idea of what they should improve to successfully market to consumers. Surveys can provide the data and information needed to craft marketing strategies. A marketing research survey should include a set of questions for a target audience to answer which includes information on their demographics, preferences, and so much more. The surveys can be either administered in person or sent via email through survey platforms like SurveyMonkey.

Marketing experiments, on the other hand, are typically put into effect to test the waters and determine how a company can best maximize revenues by getting more customers to purchase a product or service. Marketing experiments involve research methods that test markets to discover where there is room for new sales and marketing opportunities. In other words, marketing experiments involve experimenting with a new product or concept and observing the effects. This practice may include creating two separate home pages with different photos and testing which homepage attracts more traffic to understand what the more favorable photo is. Another example might include a company creating two different packaging versions of a product for a limited time in limited stores and seeing which packaging results in more sales of a product. Marketing experiments are always quantitative and should be utilized to find the most effective way to bring in new customers and revenue. It is used as a way to predict how a product will fare once it is on the market.

Regardless of the type of research a company decides to use, both can be useful. It is important for a company to identify what they need to adjust so that they can launch themselves into the correct type of research so that their business can excel.

Artificial Intelligence is a remarkable tool which prompts machines to reason and mimic human tasks. AI allows technology to think and operate like a human being. It has become very popular as technology has continued to advance due to its remarkable ability to analyze data. AI can complete tasks quickly and accurately, in a way that serves both the brand and the consumer. The precision with which AI operates means that there are various sectors of work that can benefit from the abilities it offers. One such industry is digital marketing. Not only does AI save time and resources for digital marketing agencies, but it can identify market trends, which is a crucial job for marketers so that they can best come up with competitive strategies.

Our world is now connected by the internet. Many businesses operate online and many consumers have turned to online shopping as a result. This means that it is important for marketers to find a way to directly connect with consumers and figure out their needs. This is where AI works its magic. A handful of the things that AI can do to make businesses a bit more competitive include helping marketers to better understand their target audience, improving the user experience, generating content, and even chatting with customers.

Artificial Intelligence has the ability to recognize facial characteristics in order to better meet a consumer’s needs. For example, AI can take a photo of a person and understand that the person has long hair and might be interested in purchasing headbands. This helps to meet a consumer’s needs because as a customer browses a website, a headband might appear as a suggested product. This is a win-win situation because it not only helps a customer to feel like their needs are being catered to, but it helps a business place relevant products out there that consumers may be interested in solely based on their appearance. AI can also analyze data to predict purchasing behaviors and the decisions that consumers tend to make so that marketers can better select what products to advertise to the consumer. All of this information is directly matched to each and every consumer personally. It is a wonderful way to meet individual needs and bring in more revenue for a company.

Another important part of AI is its ability to improve the user experience by matching consumers to the products that they are actually interested in. AI technology can keep tabs on a customer’s purchasing behavior and the products they tend to browse through while on a website. Once the AI software processes this information, it can then analyze the data in such a way that it makes similar product recommendations to the consumer the next time they visit the website. This is a way of personalizing and improving the user experience so that consumers are engaged and become loyal customers.

Aside from coming up with recommendations, artificial intelligence software can send automatic emails. AI can collect user data and contact information to automatically send out messages to engage with the audience. Emails are useful because they not only provide an attempt to personally reach out to a customer, but they can offer sales codes or promotions as a way to invite a customer back to a website. One more amazing advantage that AI can provide is a chatbox feature. Some websites will actually connect you to a bot when you request customer service. The bot can give quick and accurate responses about a product and answer a variety of questions as if it were a live customer service representative. This feature can save money, time, and resources for businesses.

The transition over to artificial intelligence is a smart move for many digital marketers. It is a way to build up customer satisfaction and keep consumers happy while saving resources for businesses. Above all, it provides an efficient way of effectively reaching out to the right customers to market a brand. AI is not only an advantageous resource, but the future of digital marketing as well.

The importance of cross-cultural communication in business is a topic which has become increasingly important as technology has closed barriers and made us closer than ever before. Nowadays, for a business to succeed in the global environment, strategies must be put into place to ensure effective cross-cultural communication and negotiations. Companies must learn to be flexible in terms of marketing and advertising to adequately cater to the needs of different cultures and regions. Cultures and subcultures all have different tastes and will likely react differently to the same marketing piece. This means that companies must search for ways to integrate cultural insights into their messages in a way that will benefit their marketing strategies.

I spoke with various multi-cultural marketing experts on what they believe the importance of cross-cultural marketing in branding is and why businesses should adopt the practice in order to see higher success rates. Here’s what they had to say.

Italian Trade Agency Marketing Specialist Daniele Deustachio agrees that cross-cultural communication is vital for a brand. According to Daniele, “In today’s world, for a brand to be successful it must have a valid cross-cultural communication strategy to be able to connect with potential consumers worldwide. Brands must understand the needs and trends of different cultures. For example, the language they speak, the way they communicate or the way they perceive things are all crucial elements that your brand must take into consideration when dealing with different cultures. Cross-cultural consumers are important for the growth and globalization of the brand but it also helps your brand to adapt accordingly to the needs of different markets to execute a marketing strategy that will enhance the interest of potential consumers of different cultures and create a connection between your brand and the desired audience.”

Multicultural Marketing Storyteller Michelle Zambrana says that effective cross-cultural marketing is always a win-win when done with the right research, approach, and content. She adds that “When it comes to addressing a particular consumer demographic or segment, brands must consider how they tailor their approach to also reach cross-cultural audiences with authenticity and relevancy. The error brands tend to make is thinking that there is still a “one size fits all” method to getting their message across, and within that lose potential revenue-making opportunities to reach audiences that could be incredible brand loyal consumers for years to come.”

In order to combine a brand’s image with the intended advertising message in a way that is appealing to different cultures, marketers must balance knowledge of the culture with the translated message. As FIU Brand Management Professor Eirasmin Lokpez-Cobo states, “In today’s global economy, businesses need to target their internal and external communications through culturally relevant approaches that resonate with audiences from diverse cultural backgrounds. Cultural adaptations are not the same as translations since they require an in-depth understanding of the audiences’ cultural traits, societal norms, and values. To ensure cultural relevance, companies should leverage internal inclusive policies. In addition, brand alignment is a top consideration for marketers developing cross-cultural communications, since the brand identity should remain consistent across markets.”

As the United States continues to become more diverse, recognizing the need for multicultural marketing is only half the battle. Marketers must also consider cultural norms, language barriers, and cultural values. After all, according to LunaSol Media CEO Danay Escanaverino, numbers are telling a story that marketers need to listen to. She adds that “With 92% of the population increase in the last 15 years coming from multicultural consumers, we are at the point of critical mass. Hispanics account for almost $2 trillion dollars in spending power while LGBTQ Americans, Asian Americans and African Americans represent over $1 trillion dollars in spending power each. These are the consumers that are driving spending and not having a cross-cultural approach to your marketing strategy is no longer viable for either sustaining market share or targeting growth.”

FIU Marketing Graduate Student and Digital Executive (Viola) Dinh also believes that cross-cultural marketing should serve a larger purpose. She adds that “Cross-cultural not only means the diversification of the population, but also means the diversification in consumers’ interests, influences, and behaviors. Thus, focusing on cross-cultural consumers will bring a lot of opportunities for brands such as the growth of brands, the diversified portfolio of customers, the strong awareness of brands, and so on.” Dinh goes on to support her point by citing a report by Nielsen and adds that 21 of the 25 most populated US counties are already multicultural, demonstrating just how important it is to find marketing strategies to reach these populations.

Multicultural Content Executive Veronica Montali believes that cultural differences are a very large factor in impacting whether a brand succeeds or fails. Montali argues that “As the established media and social platforms increasingly reflect, U.S. consumers embody a wide array of cultures and lifestyles and they are constantly interacting within and beyond their circles. So why should a brand not do the same? Why not consider all lifestyles and cultures when strategizing? Excluding a set of cultural values and lifestyles from your marketing plan will mean setting your brand back. In light of this, traditional demographics need to be challenged. So, start your planning with a brainstorming session aiming to compile a multicultural checklist of groups beyond gender, race and age. This will give you the framework for a definition of cross-cultural consumers you want and can target, depending on your budget.”

In this day and age where we frequently see so much cultural diversity and global business continues expanding, it is vital to the success of a business to understand different cultures and practices and what makes them tick to properly market cross-culturally. This practice goes far beyond simply translating a marketing piece. Brands must find ways to include social norms, religion, education, language, morals, values, laws, social status, and ways of living into a message to deliver their communication piece in a way that is truly convincing for the targeted audience. Each cultural has their own sets of principle and norms that they live by which influence how they receive and process information.

Marketing is the art of reaching out to and persuading the targeted market to purchase a product. Appropriate measures are needed to convince prospects that as a company, you exist to meet their needs. If a company does not understand the importance of cultures in the business environment and how to use these tools to their advantage to reach out to different people, it becomes very difficult to market in a way that is inclusive for all. Truly understanding cultural differences allows for effective management and ensures that people process the behavioral differences and interact appropriately to the message being delivered in a way that shines a positive light on a brand for years to come.

When marketers conduct valid market research studies, they increase the likelihood that the marketing strategies used to collect data are effective. By understanding how a target market relates to a product and what consumers want most out of it, marketers can work towards creating marketing strategies that best meet their needs. Any research tactic utilized must gather consistent and accurate information so that all people in a sample size are represented.

In order to do this, marketers must use quota sampling to approximate the population and reduce sample selection error. It would also be impossible for marketers to speak to everyone about a service or product because it’s too costly, error prone, and time consuming. Regardless of the survey technique used in the collection of survey data, it is crucial for marketers to be strict with sampling methods so that they can make sure that the data gathered is coming from the right people.

In general, more information is better than less, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there shouldn’t be a cutoff point for the number of people participating in a survey. A general rule of thumb is that survey samples should range from 200-500 people, depending on the objectives and data analysis plan. The sample size should be large enough to comfort stakeholders, represent the research target, and enable marketers to run the proper statistical tests without violating any statistical rules.

Small increases in sample size can lead to large increases in sample accuracy, up to a certain point. After that point, accuracy only begins to diminish. Although there are some benefits to having additional samples like better data cleaning, more flexible reporting options, and additional sub-group analysis, rates may not change much between a sample size of 500 and a sample size of 700 people. By selecting too many participants for a marketing research survey, the company won’t learn anything new or different and results won’t be any more or less accurate. Instead, the company risks spending more than they intended to on research costs. It is therefore a vital part of marketing research to set a cap on the number of participants in a survey to utilize time, budget and resources in the best way possible.

Platform marketing is essentially a type of software that allows marketers to market their products on whatever channel they choose, by unifying everything under one platform. This form of marketing is not only drastically changing the marketing industry, but it is also changing the way brands do their business digitally in ways that we couldn’t have ever imagined just a decade ago. By automating work which can often become monotonous and time consuming, platform marketing allows campaigns to be much more productive.

So many types of businesses can benefit from platform marketing. These tools not only help increase revenue growth, but they grant businesses the opportunity to dip their hands into the marketing process and be more involved with their campaigns like never before. Marketing platforms mainly exist to help brands resolve management issues and make the content management process more effective. For example, businesses can now use these digital marketing platforms to truly customize and automate campaigns by making them useful for the needs of specific customers. This is a process which would not only be expensive, but time consuming as well if performed manually. However, it can now be easily integrated into a marketing team’s workflow. Marketing platforms also aid marketers in guaranteeing that whatever content is distributed is not only meaningful, but successfully promotes a brand and helps consumers make purchase decisions as efficiently as possible.

Marketing platforms are massive databases with so much information about customers tucked away. There are many marketing platforms available to marketers. Some well-known and widely used platforms are Hubspot, Storychief, Percolate, and ScribbleLive. The reason these platforms are such powerful tools is because they use analytics to put together perfect and very personal customer experiences for each and every current and prospective consumer, on a variety of different channels. The actions that the software can perform sometimes seem limitless, as they can even intricately manage business processes, budgets, and other tasks.

As we continue to advance digitally, platform marketing will continue to become more commonplace. It is crucial for digital marketers to master the use of these platforms because they truly are an effective form of contemporary marketing that maximize opportunities to connect with consumers everywhere quickly and efficiently.

As the internet has developed, communication via emojis has been on the rise. Using emojis to express ourselves has given communication methods a personal and convenient way to converse but tends to also have its drawbacks.Using a happy face emoji 🙂 or sad face emoji 🙁 for example, helps make conveying a message personal and graphically allows people to convey a message without the need for using words.

On one hand, emojis can improve our communication because they are universally understood. A happy face is tied to a positive feeling regardless of culture or language. The same idea goes for a sad or angry emoji. They can also help reinforce a message by reducing ambiguity. These non-verbal cues can help people understand a person’s intent during a conversation. For example, it’s sometimes easy to misread the intentions behind someone’s message, but if they follow it with a certain emoji, it may help the receiver understand the emotion being conveyed through the message.

Contrarily, the use of emojis in communication can still lead to misunderstandings and result in a message being lost. For example, although a happy face emoji is universally understood as representing a positive message, what one person associates with a happy face emoji might not be the same message another person associates with it. A winking emoji to one person might mean a simple “just kidding” while another person might take it as flirtation.

Emojis also have a “negative” impact on our communication model due to the fact that they eliminate verbal communication and intonation which are sometimes essential parts of properly conveying a message. Emotions are sometimes lost in text messaging and while selecting the angry faced emoji might help a person understand that you are upset with a message, does the person receiving the message truly understand the full range of your emotions and why you are angry? Emojis can make the expression of a message quicker but their use can be restricting and eliminate the need for writing or speaking to express ourselves.

Emoji’s are absolutely changing our communication model. Whether they hurt or help communication is up for interpretation. While emojis are most definitely a new and useful way of communicating a message, they can also have their drawbacks on enhancing effective communication.

In the age of viral videos, one of the worst things that can happen for a brand is that a negative video goes viral and tarnishes the brand’s name. Brands are defined by what consumers say and think about them, so when a video makes its rounds and brings down a company’s reputation after they have spent time and money carefully crafting their brand, the damage can be consequential. Sometimes a company’s small mistake, once caught on video, can quickly reach millions of people and spell doom for that particular brand.

Social media and YouTube reviews are great tools for consumers because they help weed out the companies that offer good products and services from those that don’t. A company can have plenty of great reviews, but sometimes all it takes it for that one negative review or one bad viral video to go around and send a company tumbling down if the situation is not handled correctly.

There are a few instances that I can currently think of where this has happened. The first example is happening within my own employer. I work at Univision Communications, within the television and entertainment industry. During the last week we had a video go viral where an executive producer for the show El Gordo y La Flaca was caught heavily sexually harassing a model. All of the audio was leaked and quickly went viral, being shared all over Latin news outlets and YouTube. Various viewers have threatened to not only boycott the program, but the entire network itself. This has been so devastating for the Univision brand that my company immediately fired the producer and has been working on damage control to try to keep this issue at bay and to reduce the harm this incident has caused to the company’s brand name.

Another example of this is the Walmart Black Friday shopping experience videos. Every year, Walmart tries to attract more shoppers during the holidays by slashing prices and offering Black Friday discounts. Walmart has even tweeked the way it handles these events by changing its hours of operation during the holidays and opening up later on Black Friday so that employees can enjoy Thanksgiving with their families instead of working throughout the holiday. However, the same kind of video makes its rounds every Black Friday. Media coverage always shows consumers attacking each other in line and going as far as stomping over each other like a stampede of animals to get a hold of the best deals and products. When these videos go viral, they are harmful for the Walmart brand name. People choose to either go to other stores that may not have the cheapest deals but where they don’t have to deal with this kind of behavior. This leaves Walmart having to look for ways to undo the damage that the viral videos cause.

Although viral video marketing can have a positive impact in many ways for a company, a brand can have less overall control once a video is spread because the company doesn’t have a way of controlling how a consumer interacts with the message. This can unfortunately be detrimental and cause irreparable damage for the brand.