Infographic: Click-to-Call Commerce

Mobile devices are causing a huge upward trend. And advertisers are noticing.

BIA/Kelsey predicts that the annual number of mobile phone calls to businesses will reach 162 billion by 2019.

That’s great news for companies. Why?

Because consumers spend more than $1 trillion on offline purchases.

Customers normally conduct online research on their mobile devices, and then call businesses to make an offline transaction.

“Marketers are allocating more time to understand how to reach mobile consumers, especially millennials. Our data shows that for many types of purchases, millennials prefer to contact a business directly by phone, and then are following through with purchases,” states John Busby, SVP of Consumer Insights for the Marchex Institute.

A study by Digital Strategy Consulting found that consumers trust ecommerce businesses more when a telephone number is present. An unlisted phone number may discourage shoppers from purchasing products.

Capital One offers their customers the option to call service reps directly from their mobile apps. So, if an individual has questions about an account, he or she can immediately receive help.

Similarly, Redfin, a residential real estate company, gives home buyers the chance to speak to a local agent about specific listings. It’s a convenient solution for customers who need answers immediately.

However, some businesses are missing the click-to-call commerce opportunity.

About 20% of phone calls are abandoned due to poor customer service and sales practices. For example, shoppers may wait 10 minutes on hold or experience trouble with automated telephone systems.

“To really reap the returns from this type of marketing, companies need to take customer connection seriously — customers want staff to genuinely understand their needs. One sign that businesses are beginning to understand this is the migration of U.S. company call centers back in-house,” writes communications consultant Shellie Karabell.

So, how do you improve customer service over the phone? Here are a few ideas to help your team:

1. Eliminate the need for customers to wait on hold

More than half of customers will abandon a call after one minute of waiting on hold. Instead, offer callers the option to receive a call-back.

2. Add a personal touch

Customers expect a personalized shopping experience. If possible, assign a designated representative to handle the buyer’s individualized needs.

3. Give decision makers actionable data

Customer satisfaction is a company-wide responsibility. Using data will help executives adopt new policies or upgrade initiatives to deliver a better customer experience.

This infographic shows us the trends behind click-to-call commerce and the opportunity to increase lead conversions.

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++ Click Image to Enlarge ++Source: Infographic: Click to Call Commerce

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What's Your Favorite Modern Marketing Color?

Remember when you were a kid and someone asked you what your favorite color is. This could cause very heated conversations on the playground over the best color. And then there were those paper fortune tellers where you could determine the course of your whole life by picking a series of numbers and colors.

As you've grown into a professional adult, the idea of a favorite color has changed considerably. You no longer fight about your favorite, but it may inform your wardrobe choices or your decor choices. If you work for a company with strong color-based branding, this color may inform your daily life as a modern marketer. In our world of Oracle, the color red plays a prominent role.

But what if you are a designer and you need to use different colors to distinguish different products in an event guide. This is less about branding or secondary colors, but more as a visual wayfinding device. Have you ever followed the blazes on trees while hiking or a painted line on a hospital floor? This is the same kind of color choice. Can this color stand for this thing? Does it have meaning? Will people remember it?

The session guide for the Modern Marketing Experience has been released and each product section is indicated by a color. Below are the listings from the guide.

• Red: Bold = marketing automation for B2B marketers
• Maroon: Complex = cross channel marketing for B2C marketers
• Yellow: Optimism = data management
• Orange: Exciting = content marketing
• Blue: Trust = testing and optimization
• Gray: Balance = best practices

Do these color choices match your product preferences? If you are interested in diving into the psychology of color for branding way beyond that infographic you've seen (which is included), here's a great blog post from HelpScout.

If you are looking for an opportunity to discover your favorite modern marketing color and proudly display it, register today for the Modern Marketing Experience in Las Vegas. The theme of the event is How Modern Marketing Works for You, so you can look forward to learning about what works and what's next in modern marketing.

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The Problem with Reactionary Marketing

The Problem with Reactionary Marketing written by Alex Boyer read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Digital marketing is constantly changing, and it often feels like you have to react to every single change. Imagine someone saying this in one of your planning meetings:

“There’s a new social media platform? Oh, we should sign up and use it. It should be our main focus for the next few months of our marketing plan!”

Of course, when I use general terms like this, it sounds silly. Why would someone abandon all of their strategy and planning just to take part in a new trend? But it happens far too often in small businesses, particularly those who don’t have a concrete marketing strategy in place.

In fact, I’d be willing to bet you’ve done it. You’ve been in a meeting where you’ve discussed something you’ve seen a big brand do that’s caught your eye. Maybe a competitor of yours is doing something particularly well, and you want in. You immediately react and scramble to add that particular tactic to your marketing plan. We’ve all done it before.

Now, if I may ask, how often has this strategy worked out for you?

I’m not saying you shouldn’t take inspiration from your competitors or other successful brands. The distinction I’m making is that you must first ask yourself why you want to do it. Simply spotting a trend or idea and doing it “just because” is reactionary and foolish.

But if you take the time to analyze why a tactic is working for others whether or not it would work for you, your brand and your target audience, it is no longer a reaction, and instead becomes an opportunity.

This all comes back to the idea of strategy before tactics, a tent pole of the Duct Tape Marketing philosophy. If you’re reacting to a tactic, you’re putting the tactic before strategy. But if you take the time to analyze why the tactic works, how it can work for you, and where it fits into the grand scheme of your marketing plan, you are once again putting strategy first.

So the next time your competitor begins a new marketing tactic that catches your attention, whether that be marketing on a new channel or using an existing channel in a new way, do yourself a favor and ask yourself three simple questions before getting involved:

1) Why are they doing this marketing tactic?
2) How can it work for me?
3) Does this fit into my overall marketing strategy?

Don’t be afraid to say no if the answer is no. You only want to execute a tactic if you’re sure it’s going to work.

There’s also the added benefit of reducing the feeling of catch up that comes with being reactionary. You’ll feel more in control of your marketing, rather than letting your competitors dictate your tactics.

Alex Boyer is a Community Manager and Content Ninja for Duct Tape Marketing. You can connect with him on Twitter @AlexBoyerKC

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3 Ways Digital Advertising Gives Tactical Support to Your Content Marketing Mission

In today’s digital, content-saturated world, it’s no secret that we marketers are all battling to connect, engage and inspire action from our respective audiences. As a result, having an integrated content marketing strategy is of paramount importance.

As a matter of fact, 80% of B2B marketers have some sort of content marketing strategy in place, according to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

But, the question is: Are you using all the weapons in your content marketing arsenal?

Including digital advertising such as paid search ads, boosted social posts or remarketing in your tactical mix can help you hit your target. How? Well, consider the following facts and stats:

• Marketing expert Sonny Ganguly says social media advertising is set to explode in the next three years because it helps businesses find new potential clients by using users’ own shared information to identify interest. (Source)
• Users who are retargeted are 70% more likely to convert. (Source)
• A bakery saw a 35% increase in conversions and a 330% increase in impressions on the Google Display Network. (Source)
• When it comes to remarketing, Wordstream found that conversion rates increase the more users see an ad. (Source)

With a little research, planning and testing to find the right mix for your brand, digital advertising can round-out your integrated content marketing strategy. Use some of our tips below to ensure you’re getting the most out of your paid efforts.

Direct Hit: Connect with the people you know.

Marketers have a detailed picture of who they want their content to reach. And the first target is usually the known audience.

Your digital advertising weapon of choice? Remarketing or account-based style paid advertising programs.

Your known audience is the low-hanging fruit for engagement and it’s typically receptive to your content regardless of the topic. These people could be current or past customers, brand advocates, industry influencers you’ve connected with or your social following.

As an example, a TopRank Marketing client recently launched a new product within their suite of SAS software. The client knew their audience, but wanted direction on how to get the new product in front of them. We recommended a remarketing program.

The program involved remarketing several key pieces of content to different segments of our “known”  target audience with the ultimate goal of driving demo’s for the new software. The result? A 26% percent increase over their current advertising tactics.

Depending on your brand, one way to get the most out of your remarketing efforts is by spreading your targeting over multiple channels. Your audience isn’t just on one channel so showing your ads on multiple platforms will help you reach your audience wherever they are.

New Alliances: Your untapped audience.

Digital advertising allows brands to target a specific audience using keywords, affinity, topics, interests, demographics, geographic criteria, title, company—and the list goes on and on.

The tactical advantage? Delivering topical, relevant content to a previously unknown audience.

When should you use this tactic in your content marketing strategy? When you want to fill the pipeline, drive additional sales, increase product visibility or build brand awareness.

As another example, a healthcare technology client recently created several assets surrounding a dramatic change within their industry. This information was useful to a large audience and presented an ideal opportunity to reach out to those consumers via paid promotion. Our goal was to position our client as a thought leader while filling that aforementioned pipeline.

Using several targeting methodologies we were able to drive extremely high engagement with a relatively untapped audience. And the engagement numbers significantly surpassed historic performance.

If you’re just getting started with a campaign, test different messaging styles and tones, and offer different calls-to-action and assets. If you do this, you’ll soon have a clear understanding of the type of content your audience is asking for and how they want that information delivered to them.

Special Forces: Discover insights that allow you to tailor content to your audience, known and unknown.

Having accurate intel is important to every mission. When you launch a digital advertising campaign, whether it be on social platforms or search engines, you begin to collect valuable insights and metrics that you can use to plan your next move.

For example, paid search campaigns feature search query reports. These reports show all of the search queries that resulted in your ad being shown. You’re able to see exactly what people are searching for, and use that information to create content that fits with the intent and terminology your audience is actually using.

Make sure all of your tracking dots are connected so you can review the data for even better better targeting and content on your next mission. For example, if you’re running paid search ads on Google, make sure you have a campaign synced to your Google Analytics account or whatever tracking software you might be using. This will ensure that the proper data collection is happening. You’ll easily be able to evaluate what is and isn’t working as consumers move through your landing page and dive deeper into your site.

It’s also a good idea to look outside the chosen tracking platform for other engagement data. This allows you to add some additional context to the data you’re receiving, and this is often the true test of content and paid promotion.

The digital world is a marketing battlefield where an integrated plan of attack is essential to survival. And adding a digital advertising program to your marketing mix will help you gain a tactical advantage. From using remarketing to keep your products top-of-mind to targeting new customers through paid search, digital advertising programs not only support your content marketing efforts, but provide a nice little boost, too.

What’s been your experience with digital advertising? What type of paid ads have been the most successful or least successful for you? Tell us in the comments section below.

Want to learn more about digital advertising and how it can fit with your content marketing strategy? Check out this case study that details how Facebook ads helped a Minnesota resort increase booking requests by 500%!

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The Pupil Becomes The Master: Five Things Mobile Advertising Can Teach Desktop Marketers

Mobile companies understood mobile-specific strategies long before the widespread adoption of mobile devices and increased adoption of smartphones and tablets. With more than three years of experience and state of the art mobile expertise, there is a lot that can be learnt.

Fred Joseph, COO of S4M, offers some takeaways for planning and executing campaigns for the mobile era:

1. When it comes to creatives, keep it short and catchy

Some brands are used to creating long scenarios as used on desktop (i.e. a 25 second video). However, what we’ve learnt from the mobile user experience is that users have short attention spans. Very short. The shorter and the stronger the message, the more likely a user will be engaged – and bearing in mind that our attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds (in 2000) to 8 seconds (2015) according to a survey conducted last year by Microsoft you really need to make every decisecond count!

Keep things short and sweet and move away from disruptive banner ads that have a tendency to distract users in a negative way rather than enhancing their mobile experience. See a recent example by Adidas here: Adidas ‘Superstar’

Smart marketers need to think more along the lines of immersive augmented app experiences, where they are giving something enhancing to consumers.

For example, this Christmas, S4M’s in-house team created a 3D cube interactive format for mobile devices (the cube is interactive on desktop by clicking and dragging the cube: on mobile it’s tactile) which was used as a holiday greeting for their clients, a format that is only interactive when viewed in a mobile browser.

2. Location is the new cookie

Geo-fencing and geolocation are key to targeting the right individual due to the intimate and individual nature of the smartphone. They allow for a clearer understanding of user behavior by following the entire customer journey. There’s also the benefit of being able to measure mobile investments and mobile store campaigns enable the measurement of direct ROIs. Geolocation can also deliver personalized advertising scenarios and transform ads to a service. For example, presenting a store locator or helping users locate the nearest point of sale can prove an extremely helpful service. There’s no imitating users or delivering irrelevant ads when efficiently dealing with location data.

A great example of this is the Adidas mobile-to-store campaign. The goal of the campaign was to drive sales to Adidas brick and mortar stores, assign a value for mobile in store-conversions and prove that mobile brings incremental value to the business. They pursued this by leveraging location extensions in the search ads, which meant users were directed to the store locator page and thus boost in-store traffic. They then pulled pertinent information from the Adidas retail stores, plus relevant industry data and developed a unique way to report an applied conversion rate. The results proved that mobile ROI brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI and a 20% conversion rate from mobile store locator to in-store visits. For desktop marketers, location is one of the biggest considerations to start making when planning a campaign.

3. The power of now

Users increasingly expect to get what they want in the immediate context and in their exact moment of need. There is a huge battle waging for a customer’s attention and it’s being battled out in ‘mobile moments’ (anytime that a user pulls out their device). The power of immediacy must be harnessed and understood properly by marketers, who need to make sure their customers can get what they want in that precious mobile moment.

A great example of this is played out in how we search. Google processes an average of over 40,000 search queries every second, or 3.5 billion searches per day…or putting it into a wider context that’s a staggering 1.2 trillion searches per year (Google search states here).

This recent post from Think with Google discusses the idea of the “micro-moment” (or mobile moment), the small everyday moments in life that prompt us to search the web with an intention of acting immediately.

Image Source

A few examples of micro-moments:

• Your juicer just broke. You need to search to find a new one, or research the best or most economical ones currently available.
• You just watched a news report about the snowfall in New York. You search to find out what you can do to help.
• You see a product you’re thinking about buying in a store. You search to find out if you can get a better price or find a better option.
• Your child wants to play in a park but it’s pouring with rain. You search online to find out where to go.

Each moment where a customer is engaged with their mobile device provides an opportunity to impress or disappoint.

Fail to deliver timely ads and not only do marketers risk losing out on immediate sales but on a longer term they also risk their brand equity and being shut out by consumers irked by invasive messages that would otherwise have been useful had they been properly timed.

4. Cross-channel

When marketers truly understand their customer’s journey they can better adapt the channel mix taking into consideration multiple mobile devices. Companies need to ensure that their marketing departments are set up to effectively orchestrate the cross-channel mix and that the ad can follow the user whatever mobile device they are using (be that a smartphone, tablet, watch or other wearable).

When designing a creative that’s headed cross-channel, check that it works across devices (iOS to android to desktop) and that any calls to action are integrated and flow across the campaign.

For example, when you create a video ad on desktop, it can’t be used on smartphones as it won’t play and deliver the same way. The same applies for smartphones to tablets. This means that not only does a marketing strategy need to be mobile-dedicated, the creatives need to be device-specific too.

Marketers also need to take into consideration the cross-channel operating systems (OS) between iOS devices and Android devices. Never assume that just because a customer has a MacBook that they’re also using an iPhone – increasingly customers make frequent daily journeys between iOS and Android devices so creatives that play out well on both will reach the customer whatever their OS of choice is. The brands that follow this journey with ease will reap rewards.

5. Don’t hide from the mobile world

Desktop marketers need to bear in mind that desktop users are also mobile users. Even if the user started and ended their journey on a desktop, there will likely have been mobile device usage along the way. This doesn’t mean that a desktop strategy will suffice for a mobile advertising campaign, however.

Digital strategy campaigns need to contain a mobile-specific strategy. With the increasing adoption of wearables, mobile devices are not going away; in fact, more are being added to the mix. The brands that are already responding to this explosion are the early adopters who will win the trust of consumers. They will be respected rather than reviled by users as their content will be relevant, useful and timely.

Conclusion

The companies that will excel with marketing strategies that truly reach their customer with the right message, well presented, executed at the right time and in the right context will doubtless win the trust and respect of the consumer while increasing sales and customer retention in a way that is second to none.

Mobile marketers are now adopting strategies that include such a powerful mix of consumer considerations to capture that small “mobile moment” and the desktop marketers who embrace these new power tools will similarly reap rewards. The pupil has certainly become the master!

About the Author: Fred Joseph is the COO of COO of S4M.

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Weekend Favs February Twenty Seven

Weekend Favs February Twenty Seven written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

This week I found ProsperWorks, a simple CRM tool that integrates with GMail and Google Apps with a Chrome plugin, Boardbooster for robust Pinterest marketing and scheduling and Huballin, a tool that allows you to search for data-driven content ideas around any topic.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or one that I took out there on the road.

Good stuff I found this week:

ProsperWorks – Nice, simple little CRM for Gmail

Boardbooster – Tool that makes it easy to schedule and market on Pinterest

Huballin – Tool that lets you easily find data driven topics to create content around

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