Best Practices of Online Marketing Trends

In the last blog post, we discussed current and future trends in online marketing. Some of the more important ones mentioned were gamification, content marketing, social marketing, loyalty programs going mobile, and SEO evolving and becoming yet more organic.

Gamification is easily the most intriguing (and entertaining) of these trends. The term has a broad sense – it usually means turning a regular task into a game, but it can also mean applying game-design thinking to anything. In any case, the goal is to engage users and motivate them by presenting something in an unexpected way, having them solve problems or react, or compete against each other, and then rewarding them. 

Gamification works great with social media. Users are much more involved in a game if they are playing with actual people who they know. And there is no need for the creation of an entire social game, like Farmvile for instance.  Users can compete against each other – or collaborate - by completing tasks as simple as linking and commenting on Facebook.

One such task is checking-in at places with a mobile device, and Foursquare is an excellent example of this. It has various rewards which motivate users to complete different tasks: visit a place many times, bring friends that are also using the app, etc. 
Badges and points can also be given for liking, commenting, sharing, tweeting, pinning, etc. This drives users to market the brand socially for free. It also motivates them to visit the brand’s websites and accounts or to involve their friends in the competition.

 Dropbox conducted a very successful campaign that merged gamification and referral marketing. Called the “Space Race,” it targeted university students. Each university as a whole was rewarded points – and, accordingly, cloud space – for students that signed up with their university email. Furthermore, individual students were awarded additional points for the referrals they have made. The progress was visualized by rockets launching into space.

Another trend mentioned in the previous blog post was loyalty programs going mobile. Loyalty programs also make a great combo with gamification. During the game, users can collect points, which later give them access to discounts and promotions at the brand’s stores.  Of course the “game” can be a very simple task. AirMiles, for instance, is a loyalty program that works with a variety of partners and rewards. They ran a competition for checking-in at their partners’ operations and shops. The top 50 users with the most points got their miles doubled.

But in general, loyalty programs going mobile are very trendy. Even Apple released such an app – Passbook, which saves virtual discount cards and vouchers. The successful and popular trend within mobile loyalty is checking-in. There are lots of apps who offer just that: rewarding check-ins by users with loyalty points, offers and discounts. Other apps require scanning a QR code or a receipt. Many use referral marketing and give points to users for friends that sign up or download the app.

Of course, mobile also combines well with location-based marketing, and it’s always a plus if the app shows the offers in the vicinity of the user. An interesting mobile concept, mentioned in the previous post, is Goodiez, an app developed by the company where I did my internship for a Norwegian phone operator. The app allowed to user to purchase discounted products and offers by simply adding the charge to their phone, without any kind of money transfer whatsoever.

The easiest way to turn loyalty mobile, however, is to simply let the user scan his physical vouchers and cards and turn them into digital versions. Golden Gekko, where I did my internship, also developed an app for this purpose called Nokadi. In all these cases, the app is just a moderator; users download it to redeem the offers, while business sign up for it as well in order to get their offers included. 
The future holds vast and interesting possibilities for this trend with the rise of new devices and new ways to be online. Wearable devices, for instance, hold great opportunities. Google Glass, for instance, could point out the user's favourite stores and places where he can redeem loyalty points, as he is simply walking around. Of course, this has to be done in an unintrusive and subtle way, bringing benefits to the user instead of pouring offers and invitations on them. And looking even further ahead, and considering the concept of the Internet of Things, we could imagine loyalty marketing moving into our houses. Concepts are already being developed for digitalization and connection of everyday objects such as a fridge or a microwave. Maybe in a few years, when a user runs out of a certain food he normally consumes, his fridge would suggest him supermarkets that offer discounts on that type of food.

Content marketing is another strong trend in online marketing. It’s a win-win situation; instead of pouring reasons to buy the product upon users, companies give them free content of actual value. When users get engaged with the content, which is useful for them, they get interested in the company and visit its website to look for more such content. A popular content marketing practice among corporate companies is releasing white papers. Slideshare is a good platform for that. Videos are also a very successful and popular medium, since users are getting less interested into static text and images and more interested into video. Infographics are also a very successful practice recently. Webinars and podcasts are used as well. 
In the coming years, we might as well see "old-fashioned" marketing boasting the qualities of a product die out completely and become replaced by a practice which offers value and content, beneficial for both sides. Content marketing will continue to grow smarter and will orient itself towards understandig the users' needs better, providing rich and valuable resources instead of being intrusive and aimed at selling at ll costs.

Social networks are an inseparable part of our lives already, and thus social marketing is a trend that has been present for a while but it’s still growing and expanding. Good social marketing is organic and, just as content marketing, does not shove reasons to buy the product into the user’s faces, but instead highlights the fact that their friends are talking about and using the product. Presenting the product through the user’s social connections builds trust and does not seem like an ad. Posting regular engaging content, encouraging users to check-in or like and share content, and rewarding them for that, are free and easy ways to market a product online. For instance, I’ve been to a sushi restaurant called Monster Sushi, which offers a free tea or coffee with the menu if you check-in while you are eating there.  

Finally, regarding SEO, marketers should be alert and forget any sort of black-hat or unorganic marketing. Google is developing new and better ways for distinguishing such practices and punishing websites for this by lowering their ranking. For instance, it is starting to recognize backlinks that have been placed somewhere with no obvious reason, and this links harm the site’s ranking. The best practice for optimizing a website from now on would be keeping to white-hat marketing.

In general, the most successful practices in online marketing right now are the ones that do not actually advertise the product to the user, but make the user feel at ease and give him value. Then, he gets naturally interested in the brand or company, is engaged and has his own motivation to return to the website or product.

 

Works Cited:

Content Marketing Experience. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from http://pinterest.com/contentxpert/.
Demistifying How Facebook's EdgeRank Algorithm Works. (April 23, 2013). Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/understanding-facebook-edgerank-algorithm-infographic.
Reward Your Customers: 9 Loyalty Platforms for Booming Businesses. (n.d.) Retrieved May 26, 2013, from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/mobile-loyalty-platforms/
The Power of Gamification in Loyalty. (n.d.) Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.loyalty-ip.com/article-81-the-power-of-gamification-in-loyalty

Trends in Online Marketing

The Internet is always rapidly evolving, and all industries involved with it need to constantly keep up with the new trends. Online marketing is no exception; on the contrary, it is one of the industries that has the greatest need to always stay on top of the wave - to predict the trends, not just keep up with them.
The biggest web trend in the last couple of years is going mobile. We are now carrying the web in our pockets; it's becoming much more intuitive, interactive, and social. Location is of great importance. This has great consequences in the world of online marketing.

An interesting trend to note, for instance, is loyalty going mobile. Paper is going out of fashion, and so are physical vouchers, loyalty cards, etc. More and more companies and brands are switching to mobile loyalty programs. The reasons are quite simple. For one, virtual vouchers do not take up space. Physical cards and pieces of paper fill up a wallet and cause uncomfort and annoyance to people. Furthermore, and more importantly, people always have their phones with them. If a customer had forgotten to take his physical vouchers and cards with them, that might prevent them from making a purchase. However, they are unlikely to leave their phone at home.

A survey conducted at the beggining of the year showed that 34% of senior marketers will be evaluating mobile applications and loyalty programs in 2013.
Mobile loyalty programs can gain even greater power when combined with location-based marketing. For instance, users can get a push notification whenever they are in the vicinity of a store which will give them discounts. This trend was quite notable at Golden Gekko, the company where I did my internship. As a B2B mobile developer, they were getting a lot of projects related to mobile loyalty programs. For example, one such project that got completed during my time there was a loyalty program app that would allow users to purchase discounted products without any kind of money transfers - simply by adding the cost to their phone bill. 

Another interesting trend is gamification. Gamification is the process of applying game-design thinking to non-game related tasks to make them more fun and engaging. For instance, gamification can be applied to sports and personal training. With the help of mobile technology and augmented reality thinking, an app might aid the user in pretending he's being chased by zombies - just because zombies are quite a trend in popular culture these days. Using maps and GPS, the app could give the user a route to follow with a certain speed - if he goes below that speed, he gets killed by the zombies. And that app would be created, for example, by a sport shoes brand, like Nike. The game would engage the user into running, and, therefore, he would need running shoes. In the best case, he could incorporate the app into his daily routine - jogging every morning - and be reminded of the brand daily. 

Gamification forms a good combo with loyalty marketing as well. In the aforementioned game, the user could earn points, which would give him discounts at the brand's stores. 
Since the beggining of the gamification trend in 2010, over 350 companies have been involved in major gamification projects. The list includes Adobe, NBC, Walgreens, Ford, eBay, Panera and Threadless, among others.According to M2 research, in 2013 the industry will grow to $500 million just in the United States.
Some predict that gamification will reach its peak in the coming one or two years and then start declining. However, I believe that in the future, the trend will continue to develop in complex and unexpected ways that hold a great potential. With the rise of wearable devices and augmented reality, gamification can be taken to an entirely different level. Google Glass, for instance, holds such a potential for turning reality and regular tasks into games. As marketing is becoming much more intelligent and aiming to entertain the user or give him resources of value, instead of shouting out why should they buy a product, gamification will only be rising.
A quite important trend to note is content marketing, or inbound marketing. This is a process where companies invest in creating content and free resources to attract customers instead of boasting reasons why their products are the best. Customers are already over-saturated with such advertisements and have grown resistant to them. Content marketing, on the other hand, is a win-win situation. The user gets genuine content with real value - blogs, infographics, videos, white papers, webinars, etc. In return, he pays attention to the brand creating this content.
There are several things happening in the field of SEO worth noting as well. Google is ever striving towards organic search algorithms; it is already affecting linkbuilding. Backlinks are being thoroughly checked, and if there are links leading to your website that seemed placed there just for the purpose of optimization - not naturally - this will have a negative effect on rankings. SEO experts are starting to check all backlinks, and use the new "disavow" tool on ones that might harm optimization. 

Moreover, Google is starting to include Google+ as a factor in Adwords. This shows how search and social are starting to integrate, and soon presence on social networks will affect search results as well. 
An intriguing upcoming trend is search retargeting. Google will allow Adwords to be target at users based on their search history. This allows for ultra-targeting of very specific user groups.
Search engine algorithms, especially Google's, are becoming more organic every day. In the (very near) future, black-hat SEO would not be possible without getting an immediate penalty. In the past, buying backlinks on low-quality unrelated websites could have pushed your rankings up, but now it will just get you penalties, or it can even get you banned from Google. This trend will continue to grow. In a strive to make searching more natural, Google might start integrating social data into its algorithms. Google+ is already integrated into search results, even into adwords. SEO will become a much broader term in the future, and rankings will be affected by much more complex factors - backlinks and keywords might as well start losing importance. 
Another trend gaining speed are videos. This could be classified as a part of content marketing. However, it is worth noting that more and more users prefer viewing content in the form of a video rather than text images. 
2012 saw a great development in terms of analytics and 2013 won't fall behind either. There are new and improved tools being released constantly; data visualization is also evolving. Analytics will move from the traditional sort, which just tracks hits and clicks on a website, to marketing analytics, which track all marketing actions. "The last click" - the conversion - has been overvalued by marketers. 
In summary, online marketing is going much more organic and unnoticeable. Instead of feeding the user with reasons, text and images, brands are giving them content, games, videos, making them feel comfortable and at ease. Search rankings are not as easily influenced anymore, they are becoming more organic. Social is gaining importance. And, of course, mobile is now an inseparable part of online marketing. To conclude with an optimistic note, online marketing is becoming much less intrusive and is starting to offer content of real valuse instead of boasting product features and reasons to buy. 

Works Cited:

10 Online Marketing Trends for 2013. (January 3, 2013). Retrieved May 26, 2013, from
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225392.
13 Online Marketing Trends for 2013. (January 2, 2013). Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225392.

34% of Senior Marketers Evaluating Mobile Loyalty Programs in 2013. (April 4, 2013). Retrieved June 4, 2013, from http://www.tatango.com/blog/34-of-senior-marketers-evaluating-mobile-loyalty-programs-in-2013/.
 Content Marketing Experience. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from http://pinterest.com/contentxpert/.
Content Marketing. (n.d.).  Retrieved May 26, 2013, from http://pinterest.com/geles/content-marketing/.
Gamification. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from http://mashable.com/category/gamification/.
Gamification. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2013, from http://pinterest.com/geles/gamification/.
What is Gamification? (n.d.) Retrieved May 26, 2013, from http://www.bunchball.com/products/gamification

Online Marketing: An Overview

In recent years, the importance of online marketing has been growing at an impressive rate. As our lives become more and more digitalized, this type of marketing will soon overshadow all other kinds. We will be looking more at our phones than at billboards and posters around us; we will be reading newspapers and magazines on devices instead of paper; we will be watching Youtube instead of television, listening to Spotify instead of radio, etc. Print, TV, radio ads might as well all become a thing of the past, and be substituted by their online, digitalized versions.

In the most general sense, online marketing is the promotion of products or services on the Internet. However, nowadays the Internet is quite hard to define. A few years ago, it was still just a big network of computers and servers, connected via cables and satellites. However, nowadays it has grown out to our phones and hybrid devices such as tablets, and is in the process of taking over wearable devices (most prominent example being Google Glass, as well as watches, wristbands, etc.), our cars (Google Car has already driven more than 50 000 km across the states by itself, without human presence). It is evolving towards the Internet of Things, where all devices in our lives will be connected and interactin with each other: the fridge, the microwave, the lights in the house, etc.

This being said, one can imagine what a vast field online marketing is already. It can be divided into many categories. Here are the most important types:

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Refferal Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Viral Marketing

Online marketing has many advantages over traditional marketing, the most important one being the ability to reach out to practically anyone. Everyone is online; everyone has to be online, just because there are many things we can´t do offline anymore. A physical ad is limited to the audience in physical proximity - an online ad has no such limitations. It can be viewed, simultaneously, by users in China, Brazil, the USA, and all over the world. Another advantage is the speed with which information travels over the Internet. A print ad might take days or weeks in order to reach out to the desired target audience, while an online add might take only hours or even minutes.

However, just because such reach out is possible, it doesn't mean that it is easily achieved. One step that needs to be taken in order for an online marketing campaign to succeed is conducting good SEO and SEM.

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing are an essential part of online marketing. Simply put, the goal of SEO and SEM is to get hits on a webpage through search engines. At first, it might seem like a great effort for something insignificant. However, search engines (especially Google) are alreay an inseparable part of our lives; billions of people use them daily. Ranking high in Google, for instance, guarantees enormous exposure.

SEO uses a number of techniques and tools in order to push the webpage up in the search results of different engines. Each engine has a specific algorithm, which considers different factors when ranking search results. Such factors are the number of links pointing to the website, its content, date of publication, etc. A popular SEO practice is linkbuilding: creating a lot of links to the website in different locations. For instance, this can be done by including the link in comments on forums or blogs. Another important factor, maybe the most important, are keywords. SEO experts pick the best keywords for a website and aim to rank as high as possible for them. To achieve this, keyword-rich content needs to be created. This can be done by placing the keywords in the alternative text of images, or by including them (in an intelligent way) in the textual content of the website.

SEM, on the other hand, is rather mathemathical. It consists of placing ads within the serach results of an engine. The costs of each ad are calculated based on views and clicks. Marketing experts can calculate how many views they will need to get one click-through, and how many click-throughs will be needed to convert the user into a client. Then, it is just a matter of calculating costs and ROI. The advantage of SEM is that it's ultra targeted, as search engines display the ads only to users that have been looking for related information.

Another inseparable part of online marketing is social media marketing. Just like search engines, social media has grown into an inseparable part of millions of people's lives. Presence on Facebook has great advantages. Facebook ads are even more targeted than Google Adwords, since Facebook keeps a record of user's likes, interests, location, and everything he shares. They are also very organic, since an ad can easily be integrated into the newsfeed and appear as if the user already liked this. Or, it can show up as a part of their friends'activity - if a friend liked the product, this activity can be highlighted, so it draws the user's attention without giving the impression of an advertisement. Once the user has liked the page, regular posts and activity can constantly remind them of the product. Other social networks worth mentioning are Twitter, Tumblr and Pitnerest, among others. Youtube, although harder to define, also fits in the social network graph.

Another form of online marketing is email marketing. As the name suggests, it consists of sending emails to a database of users or cold lists. The advantage of this type of marketing is that everything can be calculated. ROI is easy to track and can be quite high. Open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates all boil down to some number-crunching. Moreover, email marketing is quite cheap and easy to carry out.
Content marketing is a rather general and subjective concept. It relies on content, for instance blog posts, news articles, photos, videos, infographics, etc. Blogs are a great platform for content marketing. A brand may advertise using PR articles on other blogs, or run its own blog. Running your own blog requires much more time and efforts; however, it can build strong loyalty in clients. Infographics are very trendy and draw lots of attention. White papers, how-to's, case studies and other informative documents can also include commercial content.

Other effective kind of online marketing is refferal marketing. This method consists of getting as much word-of-mouth referrals as possible. This is usually done by rewarding users for refferals. Dropbox is a great example of this. Next to their refferal program (which gave more clouds space to users that signed through a refferal link, and to the referrer), they also ran the Space Race, where they gave cloud space to university students based on the number of sign-ups from the particular university. This motivated students to get their colleagues to sign up. As of April 2010, Dropbox were getting 35% of their daily sign-ups via referrals (Wikipedia).

Mobile marketing is a new practice that is growing rapidly, in tune with the growing use of mobile devices. This kind of marketing still hasn't developed specific rules, techniques and practices. Several factors distinguish it from web marketing. First of all, location is much more important. Second, interaction is much more intuitive and faster; the ad will have the user's attention for a very short time and has to be quite compact and attention grabbing.

In all cases, an app can do wonders for a product or a brand. Creating a usefull, engaging app that fits the niche of the product gets users involved and guarantees that the product stays in the front of their minds. For instance, Nike has an app that tracks running. It's used daily by thousands of users that have running incorporated into their routine. Besides such functionality, an app can also use location-based marketing to suggest product stores and promotions near the user. Push notifications are also an advantage.

Companies doing affiliate marketing place advertisements and campaigns with other publishers, and the publishers get paid only when they generate traffic. The best example of this was Amazon's affiliate program.
Finally, viral marketing relies on creating attention-grabbing content that gets rapidly shared and promoted by users themelves.

Due to its rapid growth and vast audience, online marketing offers unlimited possiblities. It's effectiveness is beggining to overshadow traditional marketiing and advertising, and might as well outgrow it completely in the coming years. Every brand and company need to recognize the importance of internet marketing in order to succeed.

Valencia

After the (realtively) quick tour around Mallorca, I found myself in Valencia.

Valencia was a destination I'd had in my mind for a long time. I had high expectations for this city, and I was not disappointed.

One thing that struck me most about it was the street art. Magnificent, gigantic pieces sprawling on entire 6-story building walls, or beautiful little ones, hidden around the corners. Walking through this city was like walking through a huge gallery, left to the visitor to discover by himself.

Around Mallorca

After Palma, I did a couple of towns around Mallorca, each for just one night.

First was the town of Manacor. I didn't really see much of the town, honestly. I arrived late and spend the evening speaking Spanish, as my host turned out to be a Spanish teacher. In the morning, we got on a car and drove to a hidden mallorquin beach.
 

Palma de Mallorca

I am a very spontaneous person. As mentioned in the previous post, a few months ago, while randomly browsing the Ryan Air website, I stumbled on an awesomly cheap ticket from Groningen to Palma de Mallorca.. and just bought it, with the vague idea of doing some sort of a trip starting in Palma.

And so, a couple of weeks later, after a frantic night of last-minute packing, emptying out my last room, saying goodbyes, and topping it all up with a cocktail party, I found myself on the Groningen airport, about to board a plane that was flying in a completely opposite direction of the one I always took.

On one hand, it was kinda scary - flying away to a country where you know no one, without plans, without a ticket back, depending only on a bunch of people you'v met on the internet (I did also mention in the previous post I had decided to couchsurf all the way). On the other, it gave a sense of freedom comparable to a bungee or parachute jump.

Anyways, let's get back to the point here - Palma de Mallorca, my first stop on the island.

Eurotrip

So I recently completed a 6-week trip along the south coast of Europe through Spain, France and Italy (and, quite unrelated to the south coast, Budapest).

In my next posts I will mainly be rambling about destinations from this trip.

Before I start, I'd just like to point out that this trip was easily one of the best things I've one so far. I really didn't plan and organize much - all I started with was a ticket to Palma de Mallorca, and a list of cities I wanted to visit. And the idea of couchsurfing all the way, seeing how far I'd go.

 This is the exact route, by the way:




View Eurotrip 2012 in a larger map

Hello World!

This is the travel weblog of a design student with an affinity to writing, couchsurfing, photography and of course - travelling. Here I will post mainly my own stories and travel advise, but also share others’ articles on interesting places, or ramble about places that I’d like to visit someday.