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5 Digital Strategy Must-Haves 

Creating a digital strategy can be a little overwhelming. We have to keep in mind that the main goal is to have a successful campaign that leads to positive social media reactions that transform into new customers or sales. 

These are the 5 most important steps you should keep in mind before creating a digital strategy: 

1. Know your Audience:  As the first step, it is important to know who you will be talking to. Who is your target? Who do you want reading/buying your products? The answers to these questions could vary from “college girls” to “businessmen” so the approach and the tone has to be different. How would they like to be approached? Put yourself in your target’s shoes and go from there. 

2. Develop Good UX:  In digital marketing, it is crucial to design and develop your website having an excellent user experience (UX) as a goal. There are mainly three things to keep in mind: the screen size, the platform and the orientation. The idea is to tell your story effectively through a relatively simple website that is easy to navigate, looks good and professional, is user centered, and looks credible. 

3. Engage your Customers:  One of the best ways of engaging your customers is through the online world. It could be a relatively cheap way to generate some discussions and involvement with the brand. The objective is to generate engagement by creating interesting digital content (Ex. good article or game), so people can interact and get to know the brand and its personality better. 

4. Create Good Content:  It is important that the content we write and promote is unique and attention-grabbing, as well as relevant and useful to our readers. As I mentioned before, knowing your audience is key. The content has to be interesting because the goal is to keep them engaged and wanting to read and learn more. 

5. Plan a Social Media Strategy:  Usually, the first thing we think about is Facebook. To plan a successful campaign, you should include other social media platforms (Ex. Instagram and Twitter) to increase traffic and engagement, resulting in more responses and a better outcome.

In conclusion, you need to figure out whom you’re addressing and what you plan to achieve. There has to be a clear plan/strategy with your goals and how you will meet them. So lets start planning and creating good content!

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Creating Effective Content Marketing 

Today, one of the most talked about topics in marketing is Content Marketing. It has become a very important skill that we should all master in order to promote our new product, brand, business or even new website. But how do we do this effectively? 

As mentioned in the video above, content marketing is centered around the creation, publishing and promotion of custom content placed on carefully designed and tested landing pages. Is is important to keep creating new content regularly as well as making sure it is reaching your desired audience. Below are some tips that we can keep in mind to help us during this process. 

Steps for creating effective content:  

1. Create Unique Content: It is important that the content we write is unique and interesting as well as relevant and useful to our readers. The idea is to keep your audience engaged and wanting to read and learn more. 

2. Use Catchy Titles: The title selection must be well thought. This is what makes your potential audience decide if they what to keep scrolling or stop and read you content. For example, adding a question mark at the end of the title is sometimes a good idea. 

3. Keyword Optimization: Even when you have created amazing content, your audience won't be able to find it if it’s not keyword optimized. We have to focus on the SEO (search engine optimization) and make sure that our content includes relevant keywords that readers regularly search for. 

4. Publishing: After the content is perfectly written and keyword optimized we can now publish it. Depending on the type of content, we need to do some research to find the popular and relevant websites that we can use to publish it. 

5. Test and Optimize: When everything is published we have to test and make sure that the content is optimized. This includes everything, from the effectiveness of the title and keywords used, to the websites that we are linking. The idea is to have relevant content that can be found effectively and is having positive reactions among our readers. 

It could be a little overwhelming at first but we have to remember to:

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Is Big Data Really Important? 

Marketers have been trying to analyze this question for years. Most of them would agree that the answer is “yes” but what exactly is big data? Can we benefit from it? Those are actually the questions most people can't answer. 

Jason Bowden explains that big data is a wealth of information in the form of either a structure or unstructured data that internet marketers can use in order to predict and analyze business circumstances that can lead to a more confident decision making process. 

He explains that there are 4 V’s (components) in big data for marketing. These are the following: Volume, Variety, Velocity and Veracity. 

They first three components are all very self-explanatory. Volume is the scale of the data, Velocity is how fast the data is streamed, and Variety is the different forms of data. Veracity, the fourth component, is a little bit more tricky.

This refers to the uncertainty of the data available to marketers. Usually they have to deal with a level of uncertainty regarding the accuracy of the data. Being 100% confident that everything is correct is very challenging, so this becomes one of the biggest limitations of big data. 

In 60 seconds, millions of things can happen on the internet. Just on Google, almost 700,000 search queries are generated and on Facebook alone, over 500,000 comments are posted, all in under 1 minute. The data available is extremely variable and practically infinite, so good marketers have to be on top of it all the time. You can get incredible insight about your customers’ opinions, new trends, an unmet need, etc. Certainly we cannot trust every piece of information we get, but it still gives us an idea of what is going on.  

Data alone is obviously not enough to make marketing decisions but it serves as a starting point when you want to learn about your customers or even design a new campaign. Because data is constantly being generated and changing, it is important to never make future marketing decisions based on past behaviors the data provides. 

It can be a little overwhelming at first but remember to: 

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How a Bad Campaign Affects Your Reputation 

As a brand, one of your main goals is to have a successful campaign that leads to positive social media reactions that transform into “likes”, “shares” and ultimately sales. 

It is no news that Victoria’s Secret is always promoting sexy lingerie on airbrushed, skinny, perfect-looking models. This is a controversial topic considering the fact that women deal with self-esteem issues because they are bombarded by the media everyday with the idea of “perfection”, but when the actual word “perfect” is used, it will most likely create a social media disaster!

That is exactly what Victoria’s Secret did: The Perfect “Body” Campaign...

This was a case of a poorly worded marketing campaign trying to promote a new bra named “Body” that caused major negative reactions on social media. Consumers took their opinions to twitter, saying that the ad was promoting an unhealthy body image for women.  

This escalated quickly, causing a British college student to create a petition on Change.org to remove the campaign saying that “This marketing campaign is harmful. It fails to celebrate the amazing diversity of women’s bodies by choosing to call only one body type ‘perfect.’” This online petition got over 33,000 signatures. 

Also, the hashtag #iamperfect was created, encouraging people to post their concerns about the campaign. This generated thousands of bad reviews for Victoria’s Secret. These are some examples: 

Dove, having a brand that encourages women’s natural beauty, took advantage of this disastrous campaign and created their own, “The Perfect Real Body” campaign. They saw the perfect opportunity to reinforce their brand positioning and created this ad that resulted in hundreds of retweets and likes. 

Victoria's Secret ended up changing the wording of their advertisements from 'The Perfect 'Body'' to 'A Body For Every Body'. They listened to the petition and their customers and made the change without writing a statement or simply apologizing to the public. 

In the digital world this is mainly a problem that the marketing department could have avoided by being more careful with social issues but certainly the PR department should have taken care of the issue after it happened, which they didn't. 

In my opinion, they should've formally apologized after changing the name of the campaign. It didn't have to be long but just a quick tweet would've gone a long way in this case. It would've showed that the brand actually cares about it’s customers’ views and opinions. In the future this could be avoided by being careful about body image issues and paying more attention to the possible effects of a campaign name, especially when you're such a famous brand. 

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Engaging Customers Through Social Media

One of the best ways of engaging your customers is through social media. It could be a relatively cheap way to generate some discussions and involvement with the brand. 

This week I came across a campaign for Cascade Ice that was mainly done through Facebook. 

The objective of the brand was to generate engagement from it’s customers, by creating a purely digital contest in which people could vote for the creation of a new flavor, and in return they could win a free case of the winning flavor. 

Some of the posts for the campaign looked like this: 

The campaign included several similar posts on Facebook, that people could share, which included the link to the voting site. The winner flavor was Orange Mango and Strawberry. 

“Cascade Ice’s Orange Mango and strawberry-infused flavors have been top-sellers for years. Combining them proved to be a tasty no-brainer for our fan base,” says Mike Broadwell, president and CEO of Cascade Ice parent company. 

The campaign was a success because as it was done through Facebook, their current customers (people who already “liked” the brand and would most likely buy the new product) were the ones seeing the posts and voting on the website. 

They didn't face any major trouble so I think that overall it was a good campaign. They generated engagement from the right target, their fan base. 

They only used Facebook but to make the campaign even more successful, they could have included other social media platforms (Ex. Instagram and Twitter) to increase traffic and engagement, resulting in more responses and a better outcome. 

Engagement is always the N.1 priority! 

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Can Social Media Affect Customer Relationships?

Some companies believe that customers just want to keep it simple and that building relationships is not important in the world of digital marketing, but some other companies believe that social media can help start conversations that convert into new customers and ultimately new buys. So how do we know which companies are right? The answer is, it depends... 

It depends on your industry and your products. 

In the past 15 years everything has slowlly shifted to the digital world. It started only with websites and now we have emails, e-commerce, social media, games etc. When we talk about digital marketing nowadays, all you hear is that the “social media presence” is almost “mandatory”, so most marketers are focusing on building customer relationships through these channels. 

I believe that depending on your brand a certain level of advertising should be in these digital channels, especially if you are launching a new product, but they won't necessarily transform into a a sale. We do this mainly with the purpose of generating awareness (which is a good and effective method). Building customer relationships is a lot more complex than just having social media presence or not. Depending on your industry and your product this role becomes more or less important. 

For example, if you have a small family owned flower shop in a residential area, the impact of building customer relationships through social media is huge. Your sales and customers can increase significantly by using these tools. 

But if you talk about a company like Ferrari, the fact that they have a Facebook page or not, is practically irrelevant. They can add value to current owners but people who are actually thinking about buying the car will not be very influenced by these efforts. 

In conclusion, it depends on your industry and your products. The idea is to add value by keeping things as simple as possible if you are a big known brand and enhancing customers relationships though social media if you are a smaller company. 

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No More Passwords for Yahoo

Have you ever forgotten one of your passwords? In todays world, we have to remember a lot of “log in information”. Every website or account has different requirements for passwords. For example: Include 1 uppercase letter, 1 lowercase letter, include 1 number, at least 8 characters, etc. These rules can make it difficult for us to remember all the different passwords for all our different accounts so Yahoo! has decided to make the process simpler. 

No more passwords! 

Yahoo! came up with the solution of “on-demand passwords”. Every time you want to log in to you account, they will send a unique 4-character code to your phone that you can use that time. The codes are only valid for a one-time use only so you don't have to remember anything. 

They said that the main challenge has been to have technology that is convenient and secure at the same time; this is why they have created this system that resembles a two-step authentication process.  

This is important because this “solution” goes beyond the convenience factor, this is Yahoo’s way of staying relevant and creating some innovation to keep their users. The battle against Google continues... 

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What Makes an App a “Good” App 

In the digital world, we can find thousands of apps available but are they all effective? Do they all serve a purpose? Not every app is designed the same way and there are some very successful ones, as well as some very unsuccessful ones out there. This can be a little overwhelming from a business standpoint. With limited space in our phones, it is crucial to have a good app that everyone wants to download. But what makes an app a “good” app?

I came across the Joe Coffee App this week. 

It is a very useful app that stores all the information you need about your favorite coffee shop. They managed to include a lot of content in a very clean and organized way, where you have a “main menu” with 9 different categories to choose from (news, locations, beans, catering, brewing tips, classes, photos, about and more).

The app has an innovative way of storing content so it becomes very easy to navigate and feels very user friendly. The main purpose of the app is to find the locations of the coffee shops near you as well as showcasing their available products. 

It has a very aesthetically appealing design. The color scheme is consistent, appropriate and keeps the “coffee” theme throughout. The big buttons and type of font gives it an elegant yet artistic look to the app, keeping the same “feel” of the actual stores. 

In marketing, the main purpose is to keep the customer engaged with your brand and Joe Coffee has done a great job accomplishing this. They have created an app that ties together the brand image with their products, making it feel like an experience that any coffee lover would want to have. This is a good example of a successful app that is truly a pleasure to use. 

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How to Create Good User Experience

In digital marketing, it is crucial to design and develop your website having an excellent user experience (UX) as a goal. There are mainly three things to keep in mind: the screen size, the platform and the orientation. The idea is to tell your story effectively. 

You need to have a relatively simple website that is easy to navigate, looks good and profesional, is user centered, and looks credible. Then, this website design and content should adapt to every device and platform maintaining the same "feel" effectively. 

Lets take Dunkin Donuts as an example. 

Dunkin Donuts is one of the largest donut and coffee chains in the world and they have managed to create an overall good user experience. Their website is very easy to navigate, it focuses on a seasonal special promotion, encourages you to join the loyalty program, download the app, and visit their social media, all on the home page. This might sound a little overwhelming but they are able to do this effectively by using a lot of pictures, enough white space and bold tabs that you can click on to get more specific information. 

As I mentioned before, a big part of the user experience is the effective adaptation to other devices and platforms. In this case, the mobile website is an exact shrunken version of the desktop website. This is not necessarily good in every case. It technically works for Dunkin because they have a picture oriented website but the information at the bottom half of the page becomes very small and difficult to read.

We should keep in mind that the mobile version of the website should include almost all the information in the desktop version but it should be spaced properly and designed "for touch". 

Users are very impatient and don't want to be reading lots of information, they will mainly scan through pictures and keep scrolling down, this is why it is important to focus on the aesthetics as well as telling your story effectively!

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Using Your Personality to Your Advantage

There are thousands of personality tests available out there so when I came across the "How To Fascinate Test" by Sally Hogshead, I was a little hesitant. This test, unlike many others, according to Sally reveals how you can immediately command attention by understanding and applying your personality's natural advantages.

I went ahead and took the 5 min test answering the simple questions and to my surprise the results were impressively accurate... I was truly psychoanalyzed on a deeper level in just minutes. 

It turns out that there are 7 languages of fascination:

The test combines your two main fascination languages (advantages) creating an archetype. In my case, I got "THE INTRIGUE" archetype.  

It explains that I have a complex personality, because I have a discerning approach to communication. Sometimes I can communicate with warmth and enthusiasm but other times I prefer to stand back and take a more analytical perspective. Overall it describes me as perceptive, nuanced and selective. 

My Primary advantage is PASSION. It describes that I am intuitive about human nature and that I know how to connect with others when I want to. 

My Secondary advantage is MYSTIQUE. It says that I can work independently, think intellectually, and can balance the warmth and emotion of passion with a more rational approach. 

Then the test explained my dormant advantage which is the advantage that holds the least potential for you in fascinating others. I got PRESTIGE, according to the test, it means that I prefer to relate directly to people, rather than trying to triumph over others. It also explains that I tend to be humble and feel uncomfortable promoting myself or my accomplishments. I had actually never though about my personality this way, but I think it is very accurate.

Overall, I don't think the test results and descriptions are necessarily good traits or bad traits but I am certain that they give you a better understanding of who you are as a person, how you see yourself and how others see you. 

It was a very good experience learning how you can use your traits to help you fascinate others, getting suggestions about how you can focus on your advantages and what you can do to strengthen them. 

So go ahead and see what your results are. They will definitely surprise you!

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Disney's Branding Success Story

The concept of branding is extremely powerful. Creating a “brand name” doesn’t only mean having a recognizable logo and a tag line; it means a lot more than that…

When you start thinking about successful branding many different companies and products come to mind but, in my opinion, one of the most impressive brands today is Disney.

Everything started in 1928 with Walt Disney’s drawing of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie. This was the first animation ever that showed personality.

After many successful years of animating, they managed to create a theme park known by their loyal visitors as “The happiest place on earth”. A place where you can eat Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream and feel like you are a kid again.

The fact that they can associate their brand with the phrase “on earth” is extremely powerful. It is not only about the theme park, but the fact that theyhave also managed to evolve the brand and keep growing at an exponential ratecreating a sentimental bond, making their costumers fall in love with the brand.

Walt Disney was an inspiration that completely transformed the entertainmentindustry. Today, they have movies, theme parks, TV channels, etc. and made over $48 billion in revenue last year.

Their marketing strategy has played a very important role in this story. They wereable to position their brand very effectively. They have evolved as the years go by emphasizing more on technology and the digital world. Also, they have created hundreds of Apps, Facebook pages, fan blogs, review websites, interesting facts, etc. keeping their customers engaged and reminding them about the “magic” of Disney.

This is a great example of a successful branding story that we can learn from and apply to our brands but as Walt Disney said, “all our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them”.

The Walt Disney Story: 

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Welcome to my blog!

I will be focusing on marketing news, thoughts, and interesting facts.

In a nutshell we can define digital marketing as the different online techniques, portals, and websites that we can use to reach our target consumers. With all the different possibilities out there, it can get a little challenging at first to understand how to “talk to” and reach your specific target.

We should keep in mind that…

"Observing and understanding the social media phenomenon is one thing—leveraging this trend for advertising purposes is quite another. While most companies recognize the value of social media advertising opportunities, not many have figured out how to execute these kinds of campaigns and the unique risks they entail because of the potential that a viral marketing effort can backfire and actually harm a brand" – Stephen Kim, senior director, Microsoft Advertising

Once we understand the basics, everything clicks, and we can start using the digital world to our advantage….