digital marketing

Millennials choose Snapchat over Instagram

By Paul B. Kaiser on April 29, 2016

Snapchat swapped places with Instagram and jumps in front.

In November of 2015, Snapchat was the Third Most Popular Social Network Among Millennials. Snapchat, which allows users to send photo messages that automatically delete themselves shortly after being viewed, shocked many when they turned down a $3 billion buyout offer from Facebook last November.

But it’s spring time and for the first time, the messaging app Snapchat is the preferred social network for teens, according to a survey from research firm Piper Jaffray. The survey, which polled 6,500 teens in the U.S., found Snapchat use surged with 28% of them claiming it’s the most important social network. Instagram app was at 27%.

“Snapchat is the preferred social network for teens”

How big is it?

Snapchat has about 60 million total installs, making it larger than Instagram when it sold to Facebook for $1 billion. Of those 60 million installs, Snapchat has about 30 million monthly active users. Fifty-five percent of monthly active users use Snapchat daily. That’s 16.5 million people.

faceswap — **Face swap filter is creepy**

How many snaps?

Snapchat now shares 400 million snaps each day, according to CEO Evan Spiegel, who confirmed the number to TechCrunch. In September, Evan Spiegel announced on the Disrupt stage that the disappearing photo-sharing service was seeing 350 million snaps sent per day, up from 200 million in June.

How much is Snapchat worth?

Snapchat’s $10 billion valuation in the round vaulted Spiegel, 24, and Murphy, 26–who each own an estimated 15% of Snapchat–to a net worth of about $1.5 billion each.

Whats next for Snapchat?

Always a lot of rumors with the stories not disappearing but I think they are just going to make money. NBC just worked a deal with Snapchat, letting them provide video updates of the olympics. Snapchat will present “unique perspectives” from the games via the service’s “live stories.” Snapchat will have an NBC Rio Olympic Discover channel, which are snippets of action with a touch of filters and twists from the service.

Marketing Campaigns

Snapchat and Taco Bell did funny filter today for Cinco de Mayo. They added a filter turning everyones face into a giant taco. While it is a little creepy, it creeped across the web today in large numbers.

Adweek said that Snapchat’s Cinco de Mayo face lens sponsored by Taco Bell today might be up your alley if you ever wondered what its like to put your head in a taco. And for those who plan to get sauced tonight, Taco Bell’s got you covered with a packet of Diablo that promises to “turn up the heat.”

Do you need the App? iOS or Android

Snapchat filters are one of the most popular aspects of the app.

Old People try Snapchat filters

American Idol Makes History

By Paul B. Kaiser on April 7, 2016

Tonight is the last night for American Idol and after 15 years they have definitely left their mark on pop culture. I didn’t watch every season but it was the kind of show you could watch with the family and provided some fun competition. They also made a dent in social media and marketing, by engaging the audience to participate via phones, smartphones, Twitter and downloading from iTunes.

Paul Kai’s Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

American Idol engaged their audience in channels that hadn’t been used before. Voting through your phone and texting was unique and some uncharted territories. Conversations happened online during the live shows.

Text messaging was inspired by Idol.

Texting wasn’t very popular when American Idol started using in 2003, on AT&T only, and the show is credited with helping to increase the popularity of texting.

American Idol Show Facts

The show’s original lineup featured cohosts Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman and a panel of judges consisting of former pop star Paula Abdul, music producer Randy Jackson, and British music executive Simon Cowell. During the auditions the judges critiqued the performers in a predictable manner: Abdul’s comments were typically sympathetic, Jackson’s humorous, and Cowell’s biting.

The show’s eighth season (2009) saw a number of other changes to the show’s formula, most notably the addition of a fourth judge, songwriter Kara DioGuardi. Judges were also given the power to directly influence the final rounds of competition with the “judges’ save rule,” which allowed the panel to override the votes of the viewing public once per season to give a deserving contestant a second chance. In August 2009 Abdul left the show when contract negotiations with American Idol producers broke down, and she was replaced by Ellen DeGeneres.

Losers

At the conclusion of the ninth season, in May 2010, Cowell left the program, and both DeGeneres and DioGuardi departed later that year. In later seasons Jackson was joined on the judging panel by such musicians as Jennifer Lopez, Steven Tyler (of Aerosmith), Mariah Carey, Keith Urban, Nicki Minaj, and Harry Connick, Jr. In 2014, his last year on the show, Jackson moved into a mentorship role, leaving the judging to Urban, Lopez, and Connick. In 2015 it was announced that the show would end with its 15th season.

Winners

Several winners of the contest became recording sensations, most notably Kelly Clarkson, the winner of season one, and Carrie Underwood, the winner of season four. Other winners included Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, and Kris Allen. Proving that success on the show was not necessarily a prerequisite to success in show business, Jennifer Hudson was voted off in season three but went on to win an Academy Award for her performance in Dreamgirls (2006), and Chris Daughtry, a finalist in season five, scored multiplatinum success with his hard rock band Daughtry. Adam Lambert, the runner-up in season eight, had success as a solo artist and also collaborated with the British rock band Queen, replacing deceased singer Freddie Mercury when the group performed live (as Queen + Adam Lambert).

Trent Harmon singing Chandelier, by Sia

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is now the Top Grossing Film in the Franchise

By Paul B. Kaiser on December 28, 2015

Everyone has reported on this but it bears repeating. This movie, like it or not, will take the lead in the franchise, and most likely the top grossing film of all time. The Force Awakens also became the fastest-ever to hit $1 billion globally this weekend: it took 12 days compared to Jurassic World’s 13 earlier this year.

It took less than two weeks to happen but: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is now the all-time top-grossing film in the franchise. The J. J. Abrams-directed smash hit surpassed both the $1 billion mark and previous franchise record of $1.027 billion, set by Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999.

The Force Awakens holds the record for the fastest-ever film to reach the $500 million mark in America – a milestone it hit in 10 days. With $545 million in domestic box office, The Force Awakens trails only four movies to become the highest-grossing movie in American history: 2009’s Avatar ($760 million), 1997’sTitanic ($658 million), 2015’s Jurassic World ($652 million), and 2012’s The Avengers ($623 million). The Force Awakens will almost certainly shatter Avatar’s record, but it’s yet to be seen if the Disney mega-flick will be the first movie in history to hit $1 billion at the U.S. box office.

Although it’s difficult to accurately compare films from different eras due to inflation (especially when looking at global totals), 1939’s Gone With The Wind is largely acknowledged as the most successful film of all time. Last year, Guinness World Records estimated its then-$393 million intake to be $3.44 billion in 2014 dollars.

But nobody has mastered the franchise business like George Lucas. Movies 8 and 9 are in the works already, and set to launch in 2017.

Behind the scenes of Episode VII

How Digital Marketing Really Works

By Paul B. Kaiser on November 5, 2015

Clicks, Clicks, Clicks…

In case you have wondered about the magic behind making your business go from zero to 100 overnight, then this video shows you how digital marketing data is computed. Who is your audience? Where do they reside geographically?

The mastermind behind this internet strategy was not born yesterday. Or were they?

Watch the video…

Do Not Follow these Digital Trends or you will be Ahead of the Game

By Paul B. Kaiser on October 26, 2015

I never heard of the Mary Meeker Digital Trends Report, but when I came across it, I have to say it’s pretty impressive. If you’re in advertising/marketing and you have been hiding under a rock, then here is your wake up call from Mary Meeker. Or as Digital Intervention likes to say “buy stock in these company’s now.” Check out her full report here Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends. This is a global view of digital trends and encapsulates the mobile and social industry in

Meeker looks at how people around the world use the Internet, how many are on mobile, how they spend their time online, and which companies and industries stand to gain the most. Below is a segment of her slideshare presentation.

Here’s your to do list for next year in digital and mobile:

Mobile Internet use is growing faster than Internet usage in general: There are 2.8 billion Internet users, up 8 percent from 2014, and 2.1 billion mobile Internet users, an increase of 23 percent.
Mobile data usage rose 69 percent last year, and 55 percent of mobile data traffic is from video.
In 2008, Americans spent 20 minutes a day on average with the mobile Web. This year, they spend close to three hours, more time than they spend on laptops.
The mobile ad industry is still short $25 billion. Mobile commands 24 percent of time spent with media but accounts for only 8 percent of ad dollars spent.
Facebook and Twitter are growing but not like they used to. Revenue per user and monthly user growth is slowing. Facebook revenue per user is at $9.36, up 29 percent over last year, but growth neared 60 percent last year. Year-over-year user growth was 13 percent last quarter, the slowest growth ever.
Twitter revenue per user was $5.14, an increase of 45 percent over last year, whereas growth was 80 percent last year at this time. User growth was 18 percent, down from 25 percent a year ago.
The mobile ad industry as a whole grew 34 percent year over year, while desktop digital advertising only grew 11 percent.
Mobile ads are getting more motion but in short bursts. There are four new styles of ad: Pinterest’s Cinematic Pins, Vessel 5-second video ads, Facebook Carousel ads, Google Local Inventory Ads.
Buy buttons equal optimized for mobile, and they have popped up across Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Vertical screens and vertical content are a big deal now with 29 percent of people’s daily screen time spent looking at smartphones. Five years ago, time spent in front of such vertical-oriented screens was only 5 percent of overall viewing time.
Snapchat is all about vertical ads and says users watch them until the end nine times more frequently than they watch horizontal ads in its app.
Snapchat now has 100 million daily active users, and the app generates 2 billion video views a day. One event like Coachella can draw 40 million video views to Snapchat Live Stories.
Facebook gets 4 billion video views a day, 75 percent of which are from phones.
Pinterest is getting manlier with the number of men’s fashion pins up almost 100 percent over a year ago—car and motorcycle pins were up 120 percent.
Watching video games like it’s TV is becoming a top entertainment choice. Video game streaming site Twitch has 100 million monthly users now, an increase of or 122 percent.
Twitch can draw 1 million viewers at the same time.
Teens continue to be trendsetters. The five most important social networks for U.S. teens, in order, are Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Tumblr.
E-commerce is starting to pick up, with $300 billion in spending last year representing 9 percent of retail sales. E-sales accounted for less than 1 percent of retail revenue in 1998.
Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, has more than $350 billion worth of merchandise on its platform. Amazon has closer to $100 billion worth.
Online, on-demand platforms are growing. Airbnb, for instance, has booked 35 million guests—25 million of those were in the last year. Uber drivers are up sixfold to more than 1 million. Etsy has 1.4 million sellers, up 26 percent.
The average Etsy seller makes $1,400 a year. The average Airbnb host makes $7,700 a year in New York.
China is huge and can be big for content. A documentary about smog, Under the Dome, got 200 million views in three days, and 41 percent came from the messaging app WeChat.
WeChat can be used for government services, too, in China, where it has 550 million users.
India will be the next frontier, opening opportunities for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Amazon.

Digital Eye Candy

Engage, Optimize and Convert: 3 Digital Marketing Tools for Marketers

By Paul B. Kaiser on October 14, 2015

You have a blog or a website your promoting and you want to make some real increases in traffic and engagement. If you only have 30 minutes a day to spend on digital marketing what should you do? These 3 areas I believe will be the best bang for your buck. It’s easy for marketers to just say “engage your customer”, “optimize” and build a “conversion strategy”. But it always seems to get lost in the mix of digital strategies. Six months after the digital strategy was developed, are marketers still following the plan? Or are they just trying to get something live. We’ve all been there. So go back to the basics. Look at the content you have developed or already have in your arsenal and then – Fine Tune!

1. Are your pages optimized for conversions

What do you want visitors to do when they land on your site? Your entire content strategy should be built with this question in mind. Once you know the action you want users to do then you can find the tools for initiating those actions. You have a Landing Page – right?
Capture a first name and an email. Thats all you need to extend the conversation. Then leverage affordable services like MailChimp or Constant Contact for drip campaigns.
Use free tools like Google Analytics to monitor visitor’s paths to the website and once they are on it, find opportunities to create a more user-friendly experience.
Optimize forms on your site to build a stronger inbound lead funnel. If the user has an easy form to fill out they will complete it. Measure what your content is worth agains the amount of info you are asking them to divulge.

2. Optimize Your SEO

SEO optimization might be the single best area you can focus on. The more you optimize, the more of your audience you reach. And not the masses, but the people who are your customers. We’re spear fishing here, not throwing out a net. Know your audience, where they live and go fishing.

The SEO specialist on your team should ensure your content is optimized with focus keywords, Google-friendly HTML formatting, and a URL structure that correlates with your product keywords. Use hyphens, not underscore. No caps in the url. Optimize images with alt tags. These are all things your SEO speialist (or you) should be focusing on when publishing.

The best way to track and measure SEO is predominately held in Google Analytics. But there are some easy tests you should be performing such as:

A/B testing for your home page and messaging
- Test different subject lines and calls to action to see what approach attracts the most clicks
- Test different creative to see what provides better engagement
Google analytics:
- Traffic – track the volume of traffic and break it down into categories like organic, paid, and referral
- Demographics – are you attracting the right audience – look at gender, age and location
Devices – what is your audience viewing your site on. Is it mobile? is your site optimized for mobile?

3. Engage with your followers

Social media is a way for your startup to interact with current and future customers. Leverage your followers and make them feel like valuable members of your brand. Find out which social platforms your customers are on and build out a content schedule – be frequent and consistent with your message. As you can imagine the big 6 are FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. But it totally depends on your audience.

Lastly, nothing you try is a failure. Every attempt is a learning so do not hide from failures. Strategically approach these as opportunities to win over customers with good customer service and express your brand’s long-term vision as frequently as possible.

“Email is still the number one method of engagement”

The total number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase to over 4.3 billion accounts by year-end 2016. (Radicati Group)

It’s projected that in 2014, 191.4 billion emails will be sent and received each day with about 108 billion of those being from the business sector. (Radicati Group)

78% of marketing emails are sent to a personal email account. (ChoozOn)

If you have a little money this may be for you.

Facebook is the world: Facebook is steadily becoming a pay-to-play platform, and if you want to see any engagement you will need to invest into promoting your Facebook posts.
Sponsored tweets: While Twitter still provides a good amount of organic engagement, the microblogging platform also has paid solutions for businesses, with one being sponsored tweet. By providing a sponsored tweet, higher engagement will most likely occur with followers (and others).
LinkedIn’s premium services: LinkedIn is a inexpensive way to increase your connections and promote your services in a professional manor. They collect a lot of data and can target audiences extremely well.