Why influencer marketing beats celebrity endorsements every time!

Instead of writing a definition as I usually would, I am going to do the more tech savvy way through a video…

Influencer Marketing

So as you saw in the video above, influencer marketing is the use of another person, who doesn’t have to be a celebrity, but who has a large audience or community. They then use that audience to show off a product or brand, while giving THEIR OWN opinion of it.

A great example of this is Conan O’Brian’s ‘Clueless Gamer’ reviews: where American talk show host Conan O’Brian reviews video games with very honest opinions. He even once started a review by saying that he hates video games! This honest opinion from the ‘influencer’ is what makes influencer marketing so authentic and trusting!

Celebrity Endorsement

On the other hand, celebrity endorsement is when a celebrity memorises a script, that the company has written, for them to say for advertising. A classic example is a TV ad. Below is a picture of Mila Kunis in a very recent TV ad for Jim Beam. It was an interesting and engaging ad, but you can also tell that she was just saying the words she had memorised.

The Verdict

Consumers want honest and authentic information! Statistics from Influencer Orchestration Network and TapInfluence showed that:

• 92% of consumers trust random individuals over brands
• 81% of marketers who used influencer marketing found it to be successful
• Emotional attachment to YouTube stars are 7 times greater than traditional celebrities like Seth Rogan or even Mila Kunis!

What Digital Marketers Need to Know

In this digital age that we live in, more and more influential people are starting online. Youtubers, bloggers, and social media stars are growing in numbers: making them a better choice than traditional celebrity endorsement. The best website to search for influencers is tapinfluence. This platform allows you to connect with the most relevant influencer with the most amount of reach, or audience to be suit your company’s marketing needs.

Did any of these stats surprise you? Leave your comments, and let me know!

Owned, paid, and earned media

Marketing communication channels are the ways in which a company sends a message to the existing and/or potential customers. There are many different way in how you can do this such as TV, loyalty programs, search engine, magazines etc but in this blog I will show you the three categories of media or channels.

Owned Media

Owned media are the channels that the company actually has control over. Examples include:

• Company website
• Company mobile app
• Their Facebook page
• Email marketing
• And so on…

Brandwatch added that promoting content through social media is key here as it provides the brand exposure that you want. A blog by Forrester also mentioned that owned media is cost efficient, and is versatile.

Paid Media

Paid media is when a company pays to leverage a communication channel.Traditional examples include:

• TV advertisements
• Newspaper advertising

More modern, online examples are:

• Paid search engine
• Display ads on websites
• Sponsorships

The same blog by Forrester mentions that paid media is in demand, has scale, and some degree of control.

I would like to highlight the effect of event sponsorships as I think it is a very under-rated form of media. As an AFL fan, I always hear the word Toyota being used as a ‘proud sponsor’ of the AFL. As a result, I have developed a big appreciation towards Toyota even though I don’t really like their cars! Just shows how effective a secondary brand association can make when using paid media.

Earned Media

Definitely the type of media that marketers are trying to achieve is earned media. This is a consumer generated channel where they listen and then respond to either an owned or paid media message. Examples are:

• Word of mouth
• Viral marketing

Brandwatch stated that company or product reviews, social media ‘shares’ from customers, and blogs written from people outside of the company are just some real life examples of earned media.

In terms of viral marketing, this video below is of Carlton Draught, who had many people to perform the image of a person drinking a beer…check it out!

Earned media is great because consumers trust the content. It is also very credible unlike company generated content. The downside is that the consumers can share negative information about the campaign, which can ruin a company’s image.

What does this mean for digital marketers?

The whole point of these three media channels of owned, paid, and earned media is to understand that the company should aim for a converge of all three. Put more simply, below is a diagram from Titan SEO:

A company should aim to include communication channels from all three elements of owned, paid, and earned media to thrive in today’s environment.

Can you think of any more examples in these channels? Please leave a comment and tell me!

 

The rise of online videos

Only a few years ago, I would scroll through my Facebook news feed, and it was mostly written content and pictures. Nowadays, when I scroll through my news feed, almost every post is a video and it is rare for me to see a written post. How things have changed!

Marketers are now starting to realise that consumers want to see video, as they are more rich and engaging. In addition Youtube started to thrive as a way of content or video marketing. As a result, a website from fortunelords stated that there are now 1.3 billion users on Youtube, 300 hours of videos are uploaded per minute, and almost 5 billion video are viewed everyday!

This can definitely affect communication channels. Instead of the traditional way of TV advertising, people are now saying that they prefer to watch online videos instead of live TV. A study by Defy Media found that younger viewers watch 2.5 times more online videos than live TV.

What does this for digital marketers?

Statistics show that more than half of Youtube views come from mobile devices. And this continues to grow. So making sure that videos are designed and supported for mobiles is important. In addition, due to the simplicity to switch form video to video, it is important to make the first couple of sounds of the video interesting! AdvertisingAge revealed that at least 20% of your viewers will leave within the first 10 seconds of your video. So perhaps it’s a good idea to have a weird intro!

Here is a good recap on the rise of online videos:

Please leave a comment and let know know your thoughts!

Robots will take over our jobs…or will they?

With AI (artificial intelligence) getting smarter and smarter every year, people have come to the realisation that robots will eventually take ever our jobs as they become ‘better’ than human beings.

An article from The Guardian stated that by 2018 one-third of all robots will be smarter, more efficient, and able to collaborate with other robots. By 2019, it’s estimated that 30% or more of the world’s leading companies will employ a chief robotics officer, and the government will make public legislation regarding robots.

Meet Hadrian X. A robot that can lay 1,000 bricks in one hour. Something that requires two human bricklayers to complete in a day. Or you have Tally: a robot that is designed to move around a store monitoring audits, price errors, stock inventory and so on…These are just two examples of where jobs have been automated to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Are we really doomed? 

Well, luckily for us we do have some things that robots do not have…

This above graph, from Business Insider in early 2017, shows the performance of robots. The red represents robots having worser performance than humans, yellow being as good as humans, and green being better than humans.

So, the social and emotional capabilities is where we definitely am better than robots. Emotions and feeling are things that robots are not good at yet…but maybe this will be the opposite! Remember ‘Sonny’ from the movie iRobot…

What do digital marketers need to do?

Digital marketers must acknowledge this issue of humans keeping their jobs, and must think ethically and morally instead of cost efficiency. Keeping a good positive brand image is important as consumers are increasingly becoming more aware of what companies are doing. So this means, sometimes choosing humans over robots!

Marketing of the Future

It is human nature to be fascinated by what will happen in the future. So let’s look at how digital marketing will change over the near future, and discover what we can expect as consumers.

AI – Artificial intelligence (AI) has sprung into vast development into recent years, and it is a fact that one day, AI will become smarter than humans. This is achieved through ‘machine learning’ which is basically trial and error. A great example of this machine learning is Google’s DeepMind project which you can see here. As you can see in the video below, AI is able to defeat humans in games, and can even self teach!

 

Robotics – Very similar to AI is robotics. This is simply AI but in a physical format that is able to move. Even though it is already happening, robotics can be seen in the assembly line of many productions such as car manufacturing, or even McDonald’s! Below is a machine that can make maccas burgers from scratch. Goodbye human workers…

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality – Now to my favourite part of future digital marketing. Think Tony Stark from Iron Man, Pokemon Go and so on…these are examples of AR and VR. So let’s firstly distinguish between the two…VR is the use of a headset to go into a different reality, whereas AR is the use of transferring virtual objects and information into the real world: usually through a mobile or tablet screen. 

We have already seen some exciting AR marketing campaigns such as Pokemon Go, and Dutch Lady Milk. So Dutch Lady Milk named the campaign ‘the flying farm’ and consumers scanned the barcode of the milk carton and then using the app, they were transferred into a farm where they could use their camera to see themselves with cows, cowboy hats, and other virtual objects are incorporated into reality. Here you can read more about the campaign.

3-D Printing – Something that you might not have heard of is 3-D Printing. Although technology is still not very advanced in this field yet, 3D printing has started to blossom in various industries like the shoe industry. According to 3dprinting.com, 3D printing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file using a 3D printer. One benefit of 3D printing is that sometime in the future, companies will be able to personalise an item for you on the spot instead of having to order it in from another store. During the process of making a shoe it looks like this…

What does this mean for digital markets? Digital marketers must keep upto date with these future changes in marketing as well as others such as blockchains and drones. Making sure that your changes are relevant to your company or industry is also important, and then monitoring the effects of these futuristics digital trends is also encouraged.