The Marketing Mix – Key Points From The Web Summit 2013
The Web Summit was held in Dublin at the end of October, the guest speakers were top quality, with representatives from Facebook and Twitter to name a few.
“Web Search Has Left the Building” was an interesting talk with Mark Milian & Stefan Weitz and was able to get a few interesting takeaways:
- Keywords to link basis is becoming old.
- From their tests, Bing found they were better than Google when it came to finding the best results, so they put it to the test with Bing it On.
- They also found that Google was also used as a brand. Tests showed removing brand, or placing the Google brand on Bing results gave better results.
- Contextual experiences are the future of search (see Rob Scoble and Shel Israel above).
Nichola Mendelson: VP EMEA at Facebook
- There are now more smartphones than toothbrushes.
- Zuckerberg focussed on mobile very quickly. Facebook went from 0-40% revenue in 18 months via mobile.
- Mobile is now the dominant platform, and will continue to be so for a long time. Mobile is the first time since the 1960’s when a new technology takes over since tv overtook radio.
- Every day audience size of Europe logs in 4-5 times per day on a mobile device.
- 1 in 4 minutess of general time on mobile is using either Facebook or Instagram.
Stephen McIntyreL MD, Twitter Ireland
- 2.3m tweets per day, 75% are from mobile.
- Creating a truly historic tweet, you have to be ready for an emotional moment. Examples include Obama, or Adidas’ own tweet after Murray’s Wimbledon win.
- Old marketing tactics still apply on mobile.
- Storytelling has gone from a close campfire to hashtags, but essentially we’re still storytelling
- Major events are great for marketing, such as this genius tweet from Visit England after acertain football match.
- TV conversations can now be analysed. Stephen shows a visual view of layers between a user, a TV programme, their engagement on Twitter whilst watching that programme, and how this data can be used for brands to identify their audience.
As well as the conference talks, there was startups waiting to tell you more about what they do. Here are some of the best…
- OnScroll. This tool is extremely clever. OnScroll is a new ad technology startup that enables publishers, networks and agencies to serve viewable-only inventory. They are already working with some of the UK’s biggest publishers including AutoTrader, The Independent and the Evening Standard, enabling them to create the world’s first viewable only ad exchange. Not only are they a cool company, but they made me confident about their choice of steak restaurant.
- TripGems. As someone who travels frequently, and someone who also likes to experience things outside of the normal tourist handbook, this site is extremely useful for me to share about hidden gems within any location. I find that I have a few Word documents that I share to people if they ask me about a place I’ve been before – this makes it more public and interactive.
- WeSwap. A great little product for people who have trouble swapping currency. You open an account and you can then swap currency directly with another user who is trying to source it. No banks, no hidden charges. Just social currency.
- SnappCar. The best way to summarise this would be to dub SnappCar as the Airbnb for cars. You can hire cars from friends and family, as well as hire out your own car to others. On the back of their business card it says “250 million cars are not used for 23 hours of the day”. This statistic is very interesting, considering that I don’t use my car all the time. A great solution to earn some cash from the car you already own, and is fully insured by Achmea (in The Netherlands).
- BragBet. An app for sports fans. You join with your mates as a team, the team adds money into a colective pot, and each week a chosen captain each decides on what to bet on. A great way to add a social layer to the betting process.
Related articles
- Key takeaways from the Web Summit 2013 (econsultancy.com)
The Marketing Mix – Econsultancy Highlights From Digital Cream Shanghai 2013
Econsultancy have held their second Digital Cream senior marketers round table meeting in Shanghai. China is of corse one of the major players in global markets, and with such a massive population global brands would love to tap in to the massive potential customer base, and digital is properly the best way to crack this market.
Statistics on the Chinese internet market are staggering to comprehend. Here are some fascinating stats from www.chinainternetwatch.com:
- China mobile bank transactions in Q3 2013 reached 3.7 trillion yuan (USD 604 billion), with a 35.9% QoQ increase.
- Take Ecommerce by itself, by the end of June 30 2013, China ecommerce transactions hit 4.4 trillion yuan (USD 713.27 billion). This is up 24.3% compared to last year.
- B2B transactions in themselves hit 3.4 trillion yuan (USD 551.17 billion), a 15.3% YoY increase.
- Baidu, still China’s dominant search engine although facing stiffer competition these days, announced its third quarter finance report recently, with its Q3 total revenue reaching 8.89 billion yuan (USD 1.453 billion), 42.3% more than in Q3 2012.
Below are some of the problems facing brands trying to break the Chinese market, and some discussion points from the Econsultancy meeting.
Why is mobile marketing becoming so important in China?
Not many brands are doing mobile very well at present, but everybody recognises its importance in China.
Key challenges ahead:
- How to integrate mobile into overall digital strategy?
- How to link mobile to other platforms?
- How to connect online to offline experiences?
- Once you have the app, how to drive traffic to the app?
- How to monetize the app?
Key insights from the discussions:
- An app is not necessarily the right tool for every brand. An app has to have a utility, otherwise you are likely to be setting yourself up for failure.
- In terms of platforms, it’s all about WeChat (Weibo is in decline) – e.g. new option to create HTML mini site within WeChat.
- It’s crucial to personalise messages to customers in order to not be perceived as spam / annoying.
- In terms of innovation, the next big thing is predicted to be iBeacons / NFC technology,which allows messages to be pushed to users’ phones based on their location (e.g. if they’re in the supermarket in the wine aisle, they could receive a message about a special promotion from one brand that has placed an iBeacon/NFC there).
Social media in China, the ups and downs
- Every brand has set up its own official Sina Weibo account. But all of them think Weibo’s influence is declining rapidly these days, even though Weibo is still considered as the core platform on social media at present.
- Every brand has either launched or is planning to launch its official account on WeChatand they also think WeChat is definitely the “NEXT BIG THING” to happen across social media.
- The positioning of WeChat towards brands is questionable. The brand has struggled to position WeChat as CRM, Customer Service, Interaction (Two way communication)…
- Brands tends not to hire agencies to manage their social platforms, as they think agencies usually don’t fully understand their brands’ heritage, products & details. On the other hand, brands are willing to employ agencies to help develop ideas for their social campaign activities.
- On KPIs, brands think the mixture of being impacts (outcomes) & numbers focused is important, especially as the ‘number’ on its own is not too trustworthy in China market, as it can be easily ‘bought’.
- On social commerce, many brands have mentioned the latest feature of WeChat, Social Purchase on WeChat, and are very interested in exploring this more in the future.
The Marketing Mix – RedBull Team Up with Channel 4
RedBull is one of the biggest brands in the world right now, and with its young and existing brand image it was just a matter of time before they switch from extreme sports to the music world. Channel 4 is to simultaneously live-stream 31 “capsule gigs” from pods in the EDF Energy London Eye as part of the Red Bull Revolution in Sound, in what both companies are dubbing a “celebration of UK club culture”.
The Channel 4 website will be streaming all 31 gigs at the same time, with the likes of Lily Allen, Katy B, Skream and Rudimental all on the list of performers. Channel 4 will promote the event across its portfolio of channels, including its social networks and websites, and will also air a TV ad featuring DJ Annie Mac to encourage audiences to tune-in to the Red Bull Revolutions in sound stream.
The Marketing Mix – Arsenal Promote Sponsorship Exec To My Dream Role
The Gooners have elevated Vinai Venkatesham to the newly created marketing and sales director role following Angus Kinnear’s move to Premier League rivals West Ham United.
Venkatesham, who used to be the sponsorship executive at Arsenal will now be working to monetise its fan base through its brand partnerships and burgeoning digital strategy.
Kinnear’s on the other hand will be leaving Arsenal to join Premier League Rivals West Ham United, to assist them with the move to the new Olympic Stadium that they will be calling home from 2016.
The new role of Marketing and Sales Director will be looking to roll out a new campaign looking at Arsenals CRM (Customer Relationship Management). They want to become more assessable to their fans by offering different levels of interaction, which obviously comes a different costs.
Charles Allen (Head of Marketing) says: “We have fans in lots of different pools and universes, but [our new CRM programme] will help us see them as one person, however they interact with us.”
Arsenal are looking at companies such as Sky, and Amazon as a benchmark for their new CRM campaign, and not to other football teams. Which in theory will see Arsenal coast past Manchester United who have been known as a leader in CRM. Well.. we coasted past them in the league table, time for the corporate side to follow suit.
Come on you gooners!…
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- Arsenal Star Signs New Contract And Ends Transfer Rumours (swol.co)
- 5 Players Arsenal Should Loan Out In January (footballfriendsonline.com)
- Where Will Walcott Fit Into The Arsenal Mix When He Returns From Injury? (footballfriendsonline.com)
- Arsenal, Man Utd Target Andrea Pirlo Cannot Rule Out Leaving Juventus (totalfootballmadness.com)
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