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We are a society tearing through the digital landscape, and theres no hint of us slowing down anytime soon. New stars are born every day in the digital world. Some stay burning bright, while others quickly burnout.

Take for example, the Pokmon Go craze that took the world by storm in 2016. The augmented reality game exploded onto the global app scene early last summer. And while a series of technical and safety-related missteps led to its slowdown, it quickly clued marketers into the possibility of augmented reality.

Related: 5 Content Ideas for Making Money With Facebook Live

On the flipside, mobile app Snapchat has held strong in the social media realm since its release in 2012. This social media starlet has clued marketers into the power of expiring content, so much so that it was offered (and rejected) a $3 billion buy-out from Facebook.

But, what the rise and fall of these digital stars tell us is that new technologies are rapidly evolving, right alongside the wants and needs of consumers. And in order for your business to keep growing in the digital marketplace, youve got to develop a marketing strategy that keeps up with the technology. Here, we take a look at five of the biggest digital marketing trends for 2017 to help you get started.

In todays world of information overload, users are increasingly becoming all about the visuals. People need clear, concise dissemination of information, and visuals do just that. The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percentof the information transmitted to the brain is visual. Ergo, visuals speed up comprehension and retention. Whats more, the right visuals have the ability to enhance emotions and feelings. Enter: the importance of visuals to establish your brands identity in the digital marketplace. Effective logos, infographics, photographs, animationsand website design are all laying new foundations for enhancing brand identity, and they arent likely to disappear anytime soon.

This visual infographic by NatGeo allows users to make sense of Manhattans quickly changing skyline in a matter of seconds.

Related: The Modern Marketing Strategy Every Business Should Start Using Today

The desire for connection and engagement is whats driving the current demand for visual content. But, this same desire for engagement is now leading marketers to discover a new, monumental need for interactive content. Interactive content requires active participation by the user. In effect, these new forms of content -- quizzes and polls, contests, voting, calculators, assessmentsand animated infographics -- are adding a whole new layer of depth to the total user experience. But, more importantly, they are inviting the user in, to be a part of the brand. They are enhancing connectivity and effectively turning one-time visitors into brand loyalists. This growing trend is likely to lead the pack for marketing strategies in 2017.

This BuzzFeed quiz is just one of the many quizzes utilized by the site to increase traffic and enhance user interactivity.

Related: 5 Ways to Get Your ROI With Your Company's Social Media

As of 2015, online videos accounted for 50 percent of all mobile usage, and video content is still very much on the rise. Another form of visual content, videos have the power to connect with consumers and deliver a truckload of information, feelings, thoughts, and responses all within a matter of seconds.

But, in order to heighten the emotions and excitement for users, brands are now "going live." This means that businesses are able to promote their content ahead of time and then interact in real-time with their consumers. This live element is adding a humanistic component to brands, helping to increase feelings of trust and honesty amongst consumers.

Take, for example, womens magazine Grazia UK. Last summer, the magazine was working on launching a major week-long collaborative project, deemed the community issue. Throughout the project, the magazine livestreamed multiple behind-the-scenes events -- including a live debate amongcontributors -- making users feel like they were really a part of the whole process.Users were invited to submit and contribute to the debate, using a specific hashtag on Facebook. The live event was extremely successful, as it brought the magazine and its community of women to life.

Related: 8 Rookie Marketing Mistakes I Made But You Don't Have To

I alluded to the influence of social platform Snapchat earlier on, but lets delve a bit deeper into the effects of expiring content for marketers and consumers. Much like the live video element, expiring content is helping to increase excitement for consumers.With expiring content, users are given a limited window of time to view content before it quickly disappears into oblivion, never to be seen or heard from again. In effect, this creates a massive sense of urgency among consumers. And in a world where interconnectivity takes the cake, the thought of not knowing whats going on is, well, utterly disturbing. Expiring content helps pique user interest, while also working to keep their eyes glued to the screen in anticipation of whats to come.

Related: 4 Ways Small Businesses Can Master Marketing

This whole theme of bringing brands to life runs strong into our final digital marketing trend. Retail brands are now finding ways to interact with their customers, live and in-store -- seamlessly blending physical marketing elements of the past with modern digital elements of the present.

Beacon technology is at the forefront of this new marketing strategy. The installation of more than one million beacons is forecasted for U.S. retailers this year. Basically, beacons are physical landmarks that can send signals to mobile devices. These signals are now allowing shoppers to scan in-store products to read reviews and check to see whats in stock. Likewise, retailers are able to use beacons to send push-notifications to shoppers, allowing them to see what special deals are being offered on items throughout the store. Target is just one of many major retailers now tapping into this technology to drive its digital marketing campaign.

The in-store marketing trend is one of many that are now finding ways to blend the physical world with the digital world, all in an effort to enhance user interactivity. Now the dominant mode of connection in the digital world, user interactivity should now be at the core of your business marketing strategy.

Ultimately, its up to you to utilize technology to establish connections with your consumers. And these five digital marketing trends are a great jumping off point.

Karina Welch is marketing manager at Blue Fountain Media.

Originally posted here:
5 Digital Marketing Trends Your Business Needs to Try - Entrepreneur

"The band will regain control of its social media channels".

Arcade Fire have apologised for the social media campaign accompanying the release of their new album Everything Now, which has seen the band use Twitter to promote dress codes at their shows and post a series of fake news stories.

Last month, the band attracted criticism for creating a dress code for fans attending their Webster Hall show in New York, before they were forced to clarify that attendees were allowed to wear whatever they want.

They have also released a series of fake news stories on their Fact Company site, with one focusing on a fictional writer who goes behind the scenes of their marketing campaign and discovers that the band were considering selling removable jihadi beards.

The campaign has also seen Arcade Fire stage an elaborate hoax on their merchandise page, where they claimed to be selling an $109 fidget spinner that contains a digital download of their new album.

Now, theyve released an equally bizarre statement to apologise for the campaign, claiming that it was the idea of Tannis Wright, a fictional promoter working for the Everything Now Corp, an equally fictional company that the band claim to be controlled by.

In the statement, the band said: In recent weeks, it has come to light that Tannis crossed the line from marketing into outright fiction on more than one occasion, and has even offended some readers, fans, and websites. He wasnt being truthful with the band or our fans at all times.

They have also confirmed that the band will regain control of its own social channels, marketing and publicity. You can read the full statement below.

Meanwhile, Arcade Fire will return to the UK next year for a tour that sees them taking in three dates at The SSE Arena, Wembley.

Read the rest here:
Arcade Fire apologise for controversial 'Everything Now' social media campaign - NME.com

Ah, those sociable humans, they're always up to something online texting, tweeting, messaging, Googling.

HubSpot (HUBS) Chief Executive Brian Halligan says he's staying on top of all that, and making it work to his company's advantage.

XAutoplay: On | Off"We are really watching the way the marketplace and humans are changing, and building products to match that," Halligan said on a recent company earnings call.

HubSpot is an 11-year-old maker of sales and marketing software based in Cambridge, Mass., and it sells to small- and midsize businesses. Itsown pitch is that potential customers aka those sociable humans find businesses through digital channels like blogs, internet search engines and social media. HubSpot's expertise lies in attracting people to websites and optimizing content so that visitors are converted into paying customers.

Its mantra: Help customers create more personalized interactions with their prospective buyers to close the deal.The strategy has helped HubSpot see its revenue shoot up 38% to $171 million in the first six months of 2017.Shares are up 52% this year.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect 2018 revenue growth to slow to 25% from 34% this year. HubSpot could beat those earnings estimates if new initiatives gain traction, says Derrick Wood, an analyst at Cowen & Co.

"Their rate of growth has come down. Marketing tech in general is a tough market to scale. It's fragmented with lots of small vendors. So to come out as a single winner and take a lot of market share has been challenging,"said Wood, who has a neutral rating on the stock.

Further, HubSpot's main challenge is maintaining a sales growth rate that will support its valuation.

HubSpot has evolved into a multi-product company adding sales automation and customer relationship management (CRM) software. Many of HubSpot's customers have 10 to 50 employees, with some in the low hundreds. Analysts say HubSpot targets firms with up to 2,000 employees.

The company has focused on the midmarket as opposed to competing head-on for large corporate accounts vs. the likes of Oracle (ORCL), Salesforce.com (CRM), SAP and Adobe Systems (ADBE). That way HubSpot has avoided the cost of investing in its own sales staff to chase down and close deals, says Wood.

"What's different about these guys is the focus on midmarket. They have to keep the new-customer growth engine going. They're looking at new ways to acquire customers," said Wood. "Also going into new markets, like they're doing with sales force automation and CRM, is going to drive growth. But I don't think you'll see them go upmarket into (larger) enterprise (firms)."

HubSpot's customers mostly engage in business-to-business marketing. They buy online subscriptions to software that ranges from $2,500 to $30,000 annually. The average marketing customer spends about $13,000 a year.

HubSpot also has laid claim to what it calls "Inbound Marketing." Halligan and co-founder Dharmesh Shah wrote a book on using Google, social media and search-friendly blogs to attract customers via the internet.HubSpot sells tools that track the online activity of website visitors and personalize content as their interests are identified.

Halligan says people are spending less time texting, emailing back-and-forth, or searching on Google. Instead, Halligan says, they're using messaging platforms more, including Slack, in the workplace.

And, humans consume tons of video. So HubSpot helps its customers evaluate video platforms such as Facebook (FB) Live for marketing purposes.

"If you look how people spend their day, they're spending an awful lot of time on social media," Halligan said on the earnings call. "There are big shifts going on, and HubSpot's going to be there to help our customers through it."

HubSpot has used Twitter (TWTR), Facebook and Instagram to build its own follower base. In late September, HubSpot will host its annual "Inbound" user conference to rally the troops.

Still, there's more to HubSpot's marketing than social media engagement.HubSpot has built up sales channels, such as website design and marketing agencies, that point people toward its products. About 40% of revenue comes from customer-referral channels, says Wood.

HubSpot aims to borrow some techniques from Intuit (INTU) and Autodesk (ADSK), which have successfully targeted accountants and architects, as partners. HubSpot aims to partner with sales agencies.HubSpot also works with industry players. HubSpot has growing ties to Microsoft's (MSFT) LinkedIn and its sales tools.

IBD'S TAKE: HubSpot has formed a cup-with-handle chart pattern with a buy point of 76.20. The stock is hovering near its 50-day moving average. Alarm.com, Realpage, and Appfolio have the highestComposite Rating, aCAN SLIM investing metric, of companies in IBD's Computer Software-Specialty Enterprise group.

The company also provides help in integrating its software with Salesforce.com's biggerplatform. And, HubSpot's tools work with e-commerce payment platforms such as Shopify (SHOP).

HubSpot recently rolled out a $50 monthly marketing starter package. New visitors to its website are greeted with offers for free versions of HubSpot products. After using free versions for a while, or "freemiums," the company figures users will upgrade to paid products.

"If you roll the clock forward two, three, four years, that's just the way I think humans are going to buy products because they're going to want to try it and use it (first)," said Halligan on the earnings call. "This freemium thing is going to be here to stay."

Indeed, HubSpot has added two new board members one from software firm Atlassian (TEAM) and one from data storage provider Drop both of which use freemium business models.

HubSpot has more than 34,300 customers, up 40% from a year ago, with roughly 27,000 of them buying marketing tools. Average revenue per customer has been falling, however, due to the lower-priced offers.

Nate Cunningham, a Guggenheim Securities analyst, says HubSpot has a "greenfield" opportunity to target small companies that never bought marketing software. He says HubSpot needs to improve operating margins as it adds customers in new ways.

"The No. 1 determinant of HubSpot's growth is probably not competitive displacement, to gain share vs. Salesforce or IBM," said Cunningham. "It's more about how can they get people to try their product who never have had a marketing product before. I think greenfield is where the bulk of the opportunity is."

HubSpot had over 5,000 "Growth Stack" customers as of June 30, up from 3,000 at the start of the year. These high-spending customers buy more sales, CRM and marketing software tools. And, they're more likely to renew subscriptions annually as opposed to leaving.

Bhavan Suri, analyst at William Blair, says HubSpot is on the right track.

"We believe HubSpot's customer growth is a good indication of the health of the business," he said in a note to clients, "and provides significant up-sell and cross-sell opportunities longer term, which we believe could ultimately lead to an acceleration of the business as soon as next year."

Shares of HubSpot have been in decline while forming a deep handle, but were up 2.2% at Friday's close to 67.35.

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See the original post here:
HubSpot: A Marketing Software Firm That Uses The Human Touch - Investor's Business Daily

You may have heard about Chiara Ferragni, who started a personal style blog as a 27-year-old that now generates $8 million per year. Or Johnny Ward, who started blogging about his travels as a budget backpacker and ended up with a successful media company. Or the food blogger who earns $150,000 per year.

The internet is overflowing with how-to guides on how to imitate their successes by becoming a full-time Instagrammer, blogger, and fashion guru.

But you have probably never heard of the women featured in (not) getting paid to do what you love, a book by Cornell researcher Brooke Erin Duffy that examines the myth that working hard on a personal brand will pay off in the long run.

She compares this premise to that of unpaid internships. The expectation is, if you invest yourself now, this will pay off in the future with this glamorous, fantastic job, Duffy says. But the reality is much less auspicious in terms of how often these actually do turn into full-time employment.

Just as not everyone can make it based on unpaid internships, which inherently favor those with connections and families who will pay for their living expenses, not everyone can build a huge online presence and find enough advertisers to make a living. You have to think about the investments theyre making upfront, the investments in the fashion or the makeup or the food, she says.

Social influencers with 1,000 to 100,000 followers can be paid between $50 to $1,000 to advertise for a brand, according to influencer marketing firm Hireinfluence, which works with brands such as Oreo and Microsoft to place products in the social feeds of popular personalities.

Most of the dozens of women who Duffy interviewed, despite many hours of unpaid work, have little to show for their efforts.

Meanwhile, companies are benefiting from the free labor, which Duffy calls aspirational work, by running influencer marketing campaigns that sometimes only pay in free swag.

Q: What is the myth that powers aspirational labor?

The myth is very much a meritocratic one: That if you are putting the most creative, unique content out there, and you have a special voice, you will rise to the top. And by rise to the top, I mean you will earn an income.

The reason that I call this a myth is that if you look at people who have actually risen to the topthe super bloggers, the super influencersI dont see them as people just like us. They have some sort of existing capital. They have the right connections. And so, the myth is one of digital meritocracy. If we work hard enough, if we have this creative vision that nobody else has provided, we can get our dream job and do what we love and get paid.

What is the difference between aspirational labor and posting on Facebook once in a while?

What is different with aspirational labor activities is that they are very much seen as something that will provide a return on investment. Theyll provide you access to the right people who will turn this into a job.

How much work did the people you interviewed put into their personal brands?

Lets take the case of someone uploading an image on Instagram. We see the final image and the cutesy caption, but we dont see the amount of thought and strategy that goes on before any of this happens.

You have them preparing the photo, staging the photo, doing the photo shoot, afterwards editing the photo and coming up with a caption. And then you have this self-promotion.

A lot of people who had been doing this for years were shocked at how a culture of self-promotion eclipsed the creative elements. They got into this because they really enjoyed styling or writing or photos. They would say, Im coming up with my creative product, and then Im spending hours promoting itsharing it on Instagram, sharing it on Facebook, sharing it on Twitter. It cant be the same content. They have to vary it depending on the audience for each platform. And after that, they would say, we have to go through and respond to all of our followers, and we have to engage this culture of reciprocal following. I follow a blogger because shell follow me.

It was just staggering to hear all of the work that goes into this.

Was anyone you interviewed successful?

A lot of people who were successful had worked for years moonlighting as a blogger while maintaining their full-time jobs. They were essentially doing two jobs in order to make enough to subsist on.

There was also a sense that they always had to be on. You cant just abandon your blog for a week, or you see a huge dip in your followers, which directly links to your advertising income. And so, theres this kind of, what is this doing to my personal life? But also, when is this going to pay off enough for me to leave my job? Or is it not?

How are companies benefiting from this myth that anyone can make it on social media?

Native advertising and influencer marketing is all predicated on this idea that real people are promoting their favorite brands and products. Its much cheaper for an advertiser to reach out to a young person with their own organic following than it is to place an ad in a magazine or on TV.

Brands kind of dangle this promise of hope. Youll see campaigns where brands will say, hey, hashtag your favorite jeans look and post on Instagram and maybe well feature your image for people to see. There are also more dubious promises of exposure. I talked with people who said the companies would not offer them any sort of financial compensation. In one case, this woman was a cosmetics blogger and she had a sizable following. She said companies would sometimes send her products unsolicited and say, hey, could you just do us a solid and blog about this?

You drew a parallel between aspirational labor and other types of traditional womens work. Can you explain?

Womens work is a form of invisible labor that goes unrecognized and uncompensated. Child care, domestic work are seen as activities that women inherently do and theyre naturally good at. Its invisible in that its unseen and also there are no economic rewards associated with it.

We now see the lineage of this devaluing of work in the social media economy. I see these investments of time and energy as a form of work, but theyre often seen as leisure, theyre seen as fun, and theyre seen as something that shouldnt be materially compensated.

After interviewing all of these women, did you come away with a conclusion about what you think should change?

I think the best place to call attention to that are in the very same places where this activity is happening, which is online, across social media.

I would love to see more attention to how few people are making it in this industry, how few businesses are willing to compensate influencers. They have this incredibly saturated market, its teeming with young people who are willing to work as so-called influencers. I think transparency about how lopsided the system is is what Id like to see as the first step.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Read the original post:
Becoming a social media influencer is the new unpaid internship, and just as exploitative - Quartz

First, fragmentation

"Brands need to streamline teams in order to eliminate inefficiencies and inaccuracies. This has become even more critical because the number of internal and external teams that touch a single campaign are at an all-time high. On average, we see more than six different companies touching a single social campaign, a number up 224 percent over the past 24 months," said Jason Beckerman, CEO and Co-founder at Unified. "Without a data management platform to deliver the right business intelligence to all the players involved-- there's been an uptick in lost learnings and data. It's more people, more problems right now."

Second, complexity of supply chains

"The demand for connectivity is at an all-time high as we watch social advertising continue to grow. To visualize this complexity, picture a global consumer-packaged goods brand with hundreds of sub-brands within its portfolio (along with multiple partners and agencies coordinating to advertise across several social channels...)," said Beckerman. "Brands must place a larger focus on staying organized as it's only going to get more and more complex."

Third, more customization

"The hyper-personalization of campaigns is also expanding. To be exact, 184% increase in average campaigns per client YOY. Social is unique in that it is more conducive to deploying one-to-one or extremely personalized targeting that is much more challenging to achieve in other forms of digital advertising-- allowing you to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time," said Beckerman.

Fourth, ownership concerns

"The number of teams, supply chains and campaigns are three times the amount they were just one year ago. The data produced (or rather, data exhaust) by these factors has followed suit. As a result, brands that do not have total control over their growing number of ad accounts do not actually own their own data," said Beckerman. "The scope of this challenge is daunting, making it mission-critical for marketers to get on centralizing and aggregating their data. As this trend is expected to continue, it is critical for marketers to confidently own their data and leverage business intelligence to take command of and optimize the fastest-growing piece of their paid media mix."

Tags: advertising, social marketing, social marketing tips, social marketing trends, Unified

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Top 4 trends to watch in social - BizReport