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Click here and watch: You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing

Traditional or outbound marketing focuses on finding customers, whereas Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.

Techniques used in outbound are rather poorly targeted and that interrupt (potential) customers. Examples for outbound marketing are cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, spam, and trade shows.

Technologies like Caller ID, TiVo, spam filters and tools like RSS are making these outbound techniques less and less effective. Admittedly, companies using traditional marketing only are still able to get their message out via these channels, but print and display advertising just cost more.

It is therefore much more efficient to create ways and tools of marketing like videos and blogs that people WANT to see or read rather than interrupting people with television ads or using hugh amounts of the marketing budget for buying display ads in print publications.

I think this quote (by Rick Burnes) best illustrates the idea of indbound marketing in contrast to outbound marketing: “Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.“

Although we have all seen this coming, it will be the year 2012 when – for the first time – online ad spending will exceed the total amount spent on newspapers and print magazines, according to eMarketer. By the end of this year, online ad spending will increase up to almost $40 billion, while total print spending will be $33.8 billion. eMarketer even predicts online ad spending to grow over the next five years and reach $62 billion. In the same period of time print advertising will remain stagnant or might even slightly decrease to $32.3 billion by 2016. Market watcher Forrester Research sees online advertising in an even more prosperous light and estimates total online ad spending to be $77 billion by 2016, comprising 35% of overall ad spending.

But don’t worry, we don’t have to be concerned about the future of television advertising. Although the gap between television advertising and online advertising will shrink significantly over the next couple of years, television ad spending (in the U.S.) will continue to grow on a moderate level.

We can currently not only observe a shift from print to online marketing but also a shift within online advertising. Mobile ads is expected to overtake all kind of other online marketing channels this year and will take 15 percent of global online ad spend by 2016, according to research firm Berg Insight.

Berg pointed out that companies are now willing to launch full campaigns on mobile – increasingly integrating mobile advertising in their media mix – whereas they have been applying mobile ads in a more experimental way until now.

If one wants to make sure, that a trend is industry changig, one only has to look at what big marketing spenders do – so let’s have a look at Coca-Cola! Coca-Cola spent more than $2.9 billion on advertising in 2010 AND Coca-Cola invests more in mobile and social media as they go hand in hand and Coca Cola is constantly using both to further engage with their customers. In order to have them interact even more with their brand, they ran a banner ad via Hallmark’s Ultimate Holiday iPhone application last year, offering users a chance to win a Playstation prize.

As marketer also want to reach us, consumers while we are on our mobile phones and tablets and my feeling that we are caring less and less about where content comes from, television channels and Internet content may blur in the near future!

In my last blog entry I was talking about the evolution of email accounts and the convenience of the Priority Inbox for users and the opportunities for marketers. In order to better explain how this works, I added a link to an Gmail-video. After realizing how much impact that video had on me and how I could picture myself coming home from a smartphone-free weekend not having to wear my suit of armour while checking my emails, I thought about the tremendous emotional influence videos can have – especially the ones that are recommended by friends. “The use of video as the central organizing element for social interaction and storytelling online“ is referred to as ‘Social Video’ Marketing (Definition by Advertising Age in 2009).

According to a recently conducted study by Decipher Research, viewers are far more likely to recall a brand name and engage with an ad’s message if a branded video has been recommended to them by a peer. This made me think of the most striking advertisments I remember – have a look and tell me what you think about them and if you have enjoyed them watching as much as I did.

Snickers Football Game

Old Spice Guy

Evian Baby Rollers

and my all-time favourite Heineken Fridge

Apart from the fact that I think that they are hilarious, they have three more things in common. Although those videos are the ones that come to my mind whenever I think about successful advertising, I have never ever seen one of them on television but they were all – without exception – recommended by friends or posted on their walls on various social networks. Exactly this phenomenon was proven by the survey. Social video recommendations have a direct impact on traditional brand metrics and ad enjoyment.

Here are some striking results:

• Brand recall and brand association rose 7 percent among viewers who had peers recommend the videos versus viewers who found it by browsing
• 73 percent of respondents who viewed a peer-recommended video recalled the brand when prompted versus 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video directly;
• People who enjoyed a video were 97 percent more likely to purchase the product featured in the video.

Although I’m in possession of a smartphone and sometimes even in obsession with it, I occasionally leave my phone at home when I go away for the weekend and spend a couple of days without constantly checking socialnetworks or my emails. Although a „weekend off“ can be relaxing, the first time back in „real life“ isn’t so much – 53 new emails to be looked through on a Monday morning is not exactly how I like to start a week.

Gmail and Hotmail presented a new tool called Priority Inbox. This feature automatically identifies important emails and separates them from other received emails in order to help users to focus on the content that matters to them most. This feature operates on a complex set of algorithms that can analyse a user’s email behaviour. In addition, you can also mark certain senders as priority by teaching Google to interpret your mail properly by clicking either the “mark as important” or “mark as not important” buttons.To get a first insight into this advanced email delivery, check out this video!

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But what does this mean for emarketers? How will the future of email marketing be affected by the Priority inbox?

Just like the Spamfilters, the Priority inbox does not ultimately represent a danger to email marketing but – correctly addressed- can also represent a challenge and opportunity for companies using email marketing. Mailers that might suffer from this new development are those that send generic mails en masse and do not emphasize on personalized content. But in my opinion, this is just another advantage about the Priority Inbox! Just as any other form of communication, emails to your subscribers should be relevant, welcome and of interest for your companies customer. I personally only engage with emails if they are part of an ongoing conversation or interaction. One way of starting a – in the best case scenario – long lasting customer relationship is to implement a double opt-in sign-up form. This process requires the potential customer to sign up via an opt-in form and then confirm via e-mail and ensures that marketers only address „engaged“ users in the future. To open the first e-mail and click the confirmation link is probably the biggest barrier to overcome and best way of making sure to land into the „right“ inbox.

Although I think that spamfilters are the best invention after the email itself, I’m sometimes happy to receive marketing campaigns and discover offers that I didn’t even know I was interested in – so, I guess Steve jobs was definately right, when he said that „ A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.“

Therefore having personalized, tailored marketing emails be allowed in my priority box (so I can make sure not to miss a great but only temporary offer on Groupon or SocialLiving) is a smart tool for me!

If you (just as I am) are one out of three mobile phone users, you probably read this on your smartphone!? A recently conducted study by Nielson revealed that over 43% of all US mobile phone owners have a smartphone as of October 2011 and that even 62% of the so-called „Generation App“ (people aging 25-34 years) own Smartphones.

Nowadays we are not only looking for local information, companies, news, services and deals on our PCs while we are at home, but rather on our smartphones or our tablets while we are on the go. Greg Sterling, senior analyst with San Francisco-based consultancy Opus Research says SoLoMo „[…] is about getting nearby information on demand, wherever you may be.”

Although I would consider myself rather as being part oft he Late Majority (regarding to The Everett Rogers Diffusion of innovations theory), one of my friends is an “E-Fan” or let’s say Early Adopter, in order to stick to technical terms ;). She has just recently brought my attention to a great app Starbucks offers. Starbucks uses geo-location tactics, in order to facilitate life for shoppers craving a cup of nice coffee by showing the closest store to the consumer’s current location as a result of using the app. Here I have a video for you to show how easy such applications are to use.

Moreover companies like DDR Corp., which owns hundreds of U.S. shopping centers, take it to the next level and incorporate a so-called geofencing technology. DDR Corp. does not only offer information as the customer „pulls“ but also „pushes“ information (by texting deals from retail tenants within those malls) on their smartphones as soon as the customer enters a mall’s border. For those of you who are concerned about protection of data privacy, geofencing – similar to Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL) – takes a Consumer opt-in approach. So, only those shoppers who enter a mall’s border and who additionally have opted-in to the service receive text messages about sales, special offers and promotions happening in real time.

SoMoLo makes it possible for companies to offer consumers a highly-personalized shopping experience — and I think not only the technology is ready now, but so are we!

Facebook, Ebay, XBox Live, Starbucks, Nike, FourSquare, Linkedin, Hallmark and many more big companies have done it successfully – Gamifying their websites in order to increase the time spent on their website and return visits and as a result foster customer engagement and loyalty which often turns into higher sales.

In 2010 67% of U.S. households played video games and the average gamer spent 8 hours a week playing video games. The number of online shoppers is constantly increasing, amounting to 87,5% in 2011 in the U.S. Looking at those numbers, I think it was only a matter of time that marketers find a way of combining those activities and provide an unique online experience to internet users and specifically their company’s customers.

Gabe Zichermann, the author of the new book Gamification by Design defines Gamification as „the process of using game thinking and game mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems“. It is important to add the 3 Fs (Feedback, Friends, Fun) to a customer online experience in order to keep customers engaged, motivated and coming back to a company’s website.

In this context Feedback is the process of providing users information on how they are doing. I personally think it is a great and motivating way to be shown collected points, a progress bar or popup notifications that make you want to „work“ even harder! Another way of engaging community members is to offer real-world rewards and perks. But it is not only motivating to receive (positive) feedback but also to share achievements with your friends via social networks. It is also fun to invite friends for a specific activity as part of the gameplay and share the experience, joy and exitement of playing or „running online“ as it is the case with NikeiD! Another way of connecting with people (or sporty fellows ;)) online is via User Generated Content like uploading pictures, video or posting comments on the webpage. All this is part of viral marketing and represents a powerfull tool to increase brandawareness.

Regarding Gamification from a marketers point of view, the challenge is to find a balance between providing unexpected delight to customers and long-term, results-oriented fun because – I think that is something we all can agree on – games and fun in general is a powerful force for behavior change.

In case you haven’t already been confrontated, overwhelmed or have even become addicted by some „gamified websites“, take a look at 5 brands with winning gamification strategies – I’m sure you will enjoy it!