5 Ingredients to plate your 2018 Marketing Dish like a Pro

“Molecular Gastronomy should not be considered a style of cooking but a new scientific discipline” argues Professor Pete Barham, from the University of Bristol, who has worked extensively with celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal. Why?

Because it involves chemical sciences: agrochemicals are involved in the way food is produced; chemical changes occur during harvesting, packaging and transport to market, and subsequently during processing and cooking and finally, an understanding of neurochemistry when the brain reacts to the presentation and taste of the food.

“Taken to its extreme”, Barham argues, “It should be possible to quantify just how delicious a particular dish will be to a particular individual. Thus, in the future, it may be possible to serve different variations of the same dish to your dinner party guests so that each has their own uniquely enjoyable experience”.

Molecular personalization? Isn't that we want to do in marketing- create a unique customer experience.

With that thought let me list out a few in-season ingredients which will help you whip up your marketing dish make it delectable in 2018 !

Mobile at the core :

There’s no doubt mobile has become core to the digital marketing ecosystem – as a  communications channel, support and service mechanism, purchasing tool and more. But according to Forrester’s 2018 mobile predictions, marketers need to put even more emphasis on understanding how next-generation consumers are interacting with brands via these devices in the New Year. Mobile strategy goes way beyond a responsive website, even if it is designed mobile-first. The caveat of this is that the screen size for these mobile devices are tiny compared to laptops or desktops. It is much more difficult to convey all desired content into a website while still maintaining readability and clarity for such small screen sizes. Having mobile UX in mind, web designers and developers can collaborate and create products that should potentially be very clear and easy to digest in terms of their content, layout, and style

AI at the fore :

“With AI at the forefront, marketers will be better able to understand the likes and dislikes of a customer, determine what specific branded content should be served to that consumer, and track all their interactions through the customer's journey.  

“AI will also be imperative to provide customers with a seamless personalized digital experience in the future, for brands to get cut through, and for marketing to help deliver ROI.”  

Future-facing CMOs will adopt a challenger-centric approach in 2018, investing money where they see most value.

Millenials drive your purpose:

You are going to need to have a very clear brand purpose at the centre of everything to pull this off. Millennials, if they actually existed as a segment, would demand a clear and transparent brand purpose or they would simply not buy from you.

They don’t really care about ‘what’ the product is, they just care about ‘why’ you made it. That makes the millennial segment incredibly hard to market to; partly because they might go into the supermarket to buy bananas and bag of flour but come out with a unicycle and a bottle of brandy, but also because they demand a brand purpose. Who cares how your beer tastes? Why did you make it? And what are you doing about orangutans in Borneo?

Storify it through :

Can you imagine the power of a marketing department exclusively staffed with storytellers? Who needs strategy when you can weave a magical story? Does gross margin really matter when I can tell an impressive tale to explain it all away? And who wants brand managers when fairytales are an everyday aspect of operations?

Gather the advocates:

The strategy of paying a celebrity to syndicate brand content out to millions of followers has left many marketers disenchanted in the last few years. Finding the right partner who can co-create content up to brand standards can be equally difficult. Where brands should invest their time is reengaging customers who already love to talk about their products, developing new ways to build armies that feel less promotional or gamified and more rewarding, focused on building a culture of gratitude within the brand’s social community.

And there you have it, the story to unfold in 2018. Using AI to drive the millenials through a good story in their mobiles augmented by trusted advocacy. Let us check back in 2019 of how all of these shaped up!

Do Butt Clicks Count? Why Marketing is a Bad Investment

If you cannot measure it, there is no point in doing it.

Or so goes the case for measuring the return of our investment, whether in dollars or time, for any given marketing activity. It is good actually. Technology has been an enabler for marketing to drill down to the microscopic level of marketing. However, the focus on a granular level has taken away the vision to the bigger picture. Why?

Because, we’re evolved!

What’s the ROI of the flight delayed for a son to see a dying mother?

What’s the ROI of a smiling usher in the restaurant?

May seem a complicated question to ask. But, an employee smiling at a customer doesn’t cost anything. The customer experience has so many possible touch points today that it almost seems impossible to measure a true financial ROI.

ROI’s roots are in evaluating one-time capital projects. “But is marketing a one-time capital project?” Clearly not! ROI is a useful starting point for sizing up any investment. Remember that ROI is a historical measure, meaning it calculates all the past returns. The point is that an investment can do very well in the past and still falter in the future.

"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI."Tim Cook

If marketing’s mandate is to maximize ROI, there is every incentive to never do anything new at all.

Marketing is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability :

ROI by itself says nothing about the likelihood that expected returns and costs will appear as predicted. Neither does it say anything about the risk of an investment. ROI simply shows how returns compare to costs if the action or investment brings the expected results. Therefore, a good marketing investment analysis should also measure the probabilities of different ROI outcomes. It is important to consider both the ROI magnitude and the risks that go with it.

The Citizen Brand :

Headline Findings in a recent 2017 study includes the damning facts that people wouldn’t care if 74% of the brands they use just disappeared and that 60% of the content created by the world’s leading 1,500 brands is “just clutter” that has little impact on their lives (or business results). Instead of customers, propositions and activation, brands need to embrace the new three P's of marketing: people, purpose and participation. This is the future of marketing. This is the ‘Citizen Brand’.

Are we prepared for the world beyond ROI?

The pursuit of a perfect ROI calculation will exhaust the very resources that are supposed to deliver ROI.

We have uncertainty all around the plate, probability is the new ingredient and AI seems to be the sauce that will perfect the taste! The development and testing of new attribution models that move away from last touch and toward more comprehensive assessments, which includes multiple futures, will be the way forward. These models will eventually impact how marketers measure ROI and plan campaigns. New AI-powered algorithms will be tested to determine entirely new ways to create meaningful experiences and then define and measure the REAL ROI.

 “Even though you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there”. Will Rogers.

What are the multiple futures that could turn a marketing plan upside down? 

Read more about this in my book “Do Butt Clicks Count? Why Marketing is a Bad Investment”

Five new changes to Google Analytics

Digital Analytics is becoming more and more core to a business’ strategy. Without a good Digital Analytics team and implementation in place, a business cannot measure its performance, set KPIs, test new functionality and spot opportunities for new product development.

Google Analytics is the first port of call for most people – but there have been several challenges while docking the ship here!

The most common ones have been Data sampling – when looking at segmented data and longer time frames, Google Analytics samples the data to ensure the speed of the interface. This causes issues because the business want to see the raw numbers.

Besides, Limited dashboards – the dashboards can be effective if kept simple, but most of the time you cannot do what you want to do. No customisation is possible and you can only add 12 reports to the dashboard.

The new GA Dashboard tries to address these issues with a more modern UI and we are loving it!

Why these new changes?

The improved contextual abilities in the GA dashboard open the door for analytics to help companies create knowledge capital — the intangible assets that accrue from deeper insights and better decision-making.

For Industries such as retail that are facing a data upheaval, managing of knowledge capital is an essential strategic task, the only route through which this is possible is data aggregation.

Google seems to have already thought this through and tries to retain all the features users cherish while making the metrics — and the insights they yield — easier to understand as ever more complex analytics are introduced.

What are these exactly?

User Customized Interface:

Users are greeted by a curated set of report views called snippets. Each report snippet will be preceded by a question that frames the data in the report, such as “When do your visitors arrive?” or “Where do your visitors come from?” Users can hover their cursors to drill down for more detail on single data points or drill into the relevant report using the links embedded in each snippet.

Google introduced a redesigned mobile app that provided better at-a-glance insights for users who wanted highlights without having to view the complete report via laptop.The app is already a rockstar with a million downloads.

Graduate Hat:

In most sections of the new Google Analytics layout, you’ll see a little graduate’s hat. You can use these to learn more about how to interpret the data you find throughout Google Analytics

Navigation:

 Everything has moved to the left! Say goodbye to the navigation at the top; Home, Reporting, Customisation and Admin have all been relocated. Admin has been relocated to the bottom of the side navigation.

Why? Because this is more convenient, mak

ing it easier navigating to settings and back to reports. No more waiting for Google Analytics to reload, the reports are always waiting for you to the left of the page – meaning you don’t have to go into the reports view!

Date Ranges:

There’s some customization involved, too — users with goals or e-commerce will see a different home page than those without, for example. The various widgets (for lack of a better term) on

If you ever find yourself working with the same data range on a regular basis, but when you login to Google Analytics this date range has been set back to the default, you will be glad to know that there is now an option to change this date range by default. The new home page will also offer date filters like “last 7 days” and “last 30 days” — no need to dive into the various reports for those views.

The impact on businesses

In this era of digitized brand and business interactions, when insights can seem disjointed, Google knows that data aggregation represents the vital first step toward creating the kinds of Predictive, Descriptive and Prescriptive models that will help devise a more holistic data science strategy.

Looking at Google’s record-card ,we can confidently predict more prediction. Come what may, only time will tell what we'll tell of time to come!

Anne,a mother of twin babies,purchased a stroller.She had been researching at it for 9 months now, much before she actually required it.Across online portals,reviews, friends and of course the television commercials were always there.

Let’s say the brand she bought has a presence across all of these channels.Because of the variety of touchpoints, it makes it difficult to measure exactly where the ad was first noticed that encouraged a conversion across this cycle of 9 months.Consumers may remember your brand, but may not be able to recall where they saw your ads.

The marketer for the brand will surely have a tough time attributing this sale to one channel and then calculate the ROI for it.It goes without saying,the road ahead is going to be more bumpy as more and more marketing touchpoints are integrated into the daily life of a customer.

An Art that has become larger than Science:

In an ideal world,ROI = (Revenue growth – Marketing budget)/Marketing budget

What about these factors then?

1.Customer satisfaction impact

2.Multiple Influencers

3.External macro-economic trends

Marketing will move beyond theories that are false and theories that are not yet false.to measure it we would require tools to assess the degree of likelihood of a theory.

Marketing Ratience will be the successor to Marketing Performance Management,which incorporates information theory and probability theory.

In Anne’s case,the probability of various touchpoints in her kind of persona would be crucial for attribution.

The problem with ROI obsession:

So what can be done to get a hold on this Miura bull called ROI.We take a step back here and forget about the ROI of Marketing.And,think about the cost of ignoring it.

If, ROI translates into measuring the variables and outcomes most applicable to the particular business,then this means we are ignoring the very factors which measures the business profitability.

The larger problem with ROI. It encourages us to play our cards safe and hence underperform.

The Unicorn of marketing,Content :

Content, the poster boy of marketing at the moment, seems to fall under the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.It states no particle simultaneously has both a precise position and a precise momentum. We can't measure both, precisely because they don't both exist simultaneously.So true for content.

This principles brings on a few questions on content:

•             How does this new white paper and complementary video add value to the X marketing campaign, but also the value of the Y product release and Z customer forum?

•             What’s the value of a newsletter subscribed member? How does that value increase over time as the member matures and the amount of such data become larger and richer?

•             How does the value of each content asset fluctuate over time

•             How does the publishing of media-related products increase the value of the brand over time by establishing us as a differentiated brand?

Having said that, the power of content can not be denied.A terrific example here is, ZAGG, an online retailer, knows its blog results in sales.It earns a whopping 172% ROI and 10% of the company's site traffic.It is the single most important driver of sales for it today.

KPI’s in a constantly shifting world:

Key performance indicators (KPIs) use quantifiable metrics to determine performance over time. These metrics must be customized to your business and goals. In the fast moving digital landscape, KPIs should be selected based on three factors:

-How soon does it matter – business urgency

-How much does it matter- business importance

-How long does it matter-business significance

One of the most important things about spending dollars to get the attention, is to make sure that you are ready for the attention.

XEROX’s “Get Optimistic”campaign with Forbes to connect with 30 top accounts .70% of targeted companies interacted with the microsite, readership increased 300-400% over previous email campaigns, added 20,000 new contacts, generated 1,000+ scheduled appointments, and get this: yielded $1.3 BILLION in pipeline revenue.

It's not about just having a website. It's whether or not that website works well to sell. Remember,it was finally the web or in-store experience that led Anne to purchase the stroller.And,this is where the holy grail of UX lies.But that is a story for another time. Stay tuned!

Native Advertising - Past the trial-and-error Era

 "Native advertising," a term first cobbled up by Fred Wilson, the popular Venture Capitalist at the Online Media, Marketing, and Advertising Conference in 2011, is no doubt quite popular among 21st-century publishers and brand strategists even now.This leads many people to assume that native advertising is a modern-day creation. However, the history of native advertising dates back to as early as the late 19th century, when John Deere published his magazine "The Furrow", the legendary 118-year old publication.

I bet you have been seeing native ads all of this time but just did not recognize them as ads at all.So where exactly are they found now and what big is unfolding with them?

The what and where of Native Ads

The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) definition of native advert seems to fall into six categories with six core questions to evaluate it but to put it simply out:

A Directly Paid Opportunity. Something very obvious and at the fundamentals of this type of advertising.It has to be paid for by somebody.

Usually, Content Based. The information is useful, interesting and highly targeted to the specific readership. So, it is not as blunt as a direct promotional piece.

Delivered In-Stream. To truly be a native ad, the user experience is not disrupted. The advertising is delivered in a way that the reader should be minimally bothered by it.

Ultimately, the goal of native advertising is to not disrupt the user experience…to offer information that is somewhat helpful and similar to the other information on the site so that the content is engaged with at a higher rate than, say, a banner ad (this is good for advertisers, and if the content is truly useful, good for consumers.

Among lot many other places and in lot many ways, you may come across them in:

-Paid search units in Google or Twitter

-Sponsored content in Linkedin or Forbes

-Video Advert you find in Youtube

-Branded content in publication like NY Times

The answer to obtrusive display ads

With user experience becoming the priority, native advertising seems to be the only answer to the ad-block phenomenon prevalent in news sites and among the under-35 ones.The limited real estate display on a mobile screen, the stream itself is the entire user experience So, your advertising option on mobile in the future may only be through the ingenious native advertising.

Borrow a little goodwill.Native advertising can leverage the credibility of a media brand, and then rub some-off it over to your own brand. The objective is to slowly build up your own reputation by being in the company of such. Century Link infographic in Forbes on the ramifications of IoT in the year of 2020 is much entertaining and shareable.

Social Media advertising is strikingly similar to a native advertisement as the sharing mechanism can be seamlessly integrated. Social companies like Facebook and Twitter have aggressively pursued native advertising dollars and have built their business models around them.

Is it not another term for content marketing?

The question here is: why should native advertising be any different from content marketing.We all understand we need the best relevant content to accomplish the end objective.

However, on taking a step back, the main distinction appears to be the goal.While content marketers are aiming to build long term trust, consistently providing value for readers without asking for anything in return, while most often the goal the native advertising is to have the reader purchase a product or service before obtaining this valuable content.The tonality of the message and the benefits to the end-consumer is quite different.

The one constant is the future is a mixture of both to reach the masses and get your message known.

The future is natively immersive

There are clear opportunities for greater transparency and efficacy through using data to improve the content and distribution.Brands will tend towards producing less content but hinge more on distribution.This is analogous to how social has been in the last few years

Visual play is in the fray.And this is precisely the reason why great native visual integrations will also have to be developed in 2017 for native ads to be more beautiful, more engaging and more dynamic. Most native ads currently stick out like a sore thumb with a marked box and promotional title.An apt example would be Microsoft’s Child of the 90’s video for Internet Explorer. It takes you back in time and only at the end when Microsoft offers to have you reconnect with the new Internet Explorer that you realize the real purpose of the ad.

Live video, 360-degree video, and virtual reality provide an incredible opportunity to give consumers an experience, and not just content to consume. They are becoming easier to produce and distribute.Those advertisers who take advantage of publishing partners' offers to do this will likely be able to create deeper and more personal relationships with their consumers and achieve an unprecedented level of transparency that those consumers really value.

Blockchain- A marketer’s dilemma too soon?

“Bitcoin will do to banks what Email did to the postal industry”said Rick Falkvinge, IT Entrepreneur and Founder, Swedish Pirate Party.While bitcoin has faced many a bumps on the road to be the money of the internet, the technology that propelled it has certainly found a lot of aficionados. That technology is Blockchain.

Simply put, Blockchain = Network to transfer value without intermediaries

A little hard to get? Imagine a validated letter without the postal stamp i.e. email. The post department never stamped it, but an email is still your valid proof with sent/received copies stored in a server.

Blockchain unfolds in 2016:

More than $ 1 billion is estimated to be spent to bring blockchain technology.It is being extensively experimented across industries starting from banks to supply chain.Eg, the NASDAQ & Chain partnership to transform private share trading has been a key milestone.

The marketing link to the Blockchain:

So why should a marketeer be worried about a technology called blockchain.The reasons are many.To start off it is a foundational technology like the TCP/IP. While it may take time to evolve, it will transform the very foundations of doing business.To understand the marketing angle, let us list the key features of blockchain.It is :

-Auditable & Traceable

-Counterfiet resilient

-Irreversible

-Auto-verified

For a moment, now apply these to customer data analytics and real-time authenticated responses to changes in customer behaviour. This is the link between data-driven marketing and blockchain.

Power to the consumers-

Every large marketer and marketing service company would like a massive identity graph of all consumers, with the ability to leverage that information in all communications with their customers. But consumers (and regulators) aren’t likely to let such databases be created, let alone exploited, if they can stop it.

Enter the Blockchain. Combining Blockchain technology with multikey encryption could give us a well-distributed, user-controlled identity graph that could  monumentally empower consumer in the ad and marketing world -- from centralized media and marketing companies to end consumers which is a culmination of the trend we are already seeing.

Marketers can expect to use intelligent technology in the coming years – not only in monetary value but reputations, social interactions, experiences and memories, relevancy to tastes and ambitions.

For example,in the FMCG world, the blockchain might see consumers buy their household products direct from P&G or Unilever rather than through a supermarket. Sidestepping the middle man would reduce the cost to consumers considerably.

Supermarkets might react by providing new and innovative Artificial Intelligence services to customers.

These services, utilising personal data from the blockchain, could include managing health goals with a service linked to health data collected from a smartwatch. In fact consumers will gravitate towards brands that provide most value to them and will quickly reject those that don’t satisfy their needs.

Honest Marketing:

At Shanghai Fashion Week in October, fashion label Babyghost worked with VeChain, a blockchain platform, to let customers “verify” a selection of handbags. Customers here could scan the tags using their phones to find a “story” of the product — where it’s from, who previously modeled it, and so on.

The idea here is that blockchain can be used to advertise a product in a much more “authentic” way that doesn’t come off as marketing.

Marketing in an IoT world:

The near future will be cashless and wireless, with the internet of things. We would all be wearing chip-based devices to order everything.And to speak to these devices, intelligent laser precise inbound-marketing will be the accepted norm of the day.