Mediaboss Marketing

If you want to study somebodys beliefs and perceptions, study their behavior, especially when they are alone.Despite moments of despair and fear during this unique moment in history, I find myself incredibly inspired by how this experience offers an opportunity to understand human behavior in ways we never have before.Social distancing, isolation, and quarantine, provide a rare some may say, once in a lifetime unobstructed portal into the human experience. An opportunity for marketers to acquire a higher level of customer loyalty and advocacy than ever before.For example, what content do customers like to watch when they have no distractions? How do they engage in personal relationships when no demands are pulling them away? What do they want to eat when their regular workout routines are disrupted? How do their private personas differ from their public personas? How does isolation create visibility into the core of who your customers are?These points of view offer a look into a new Marketing paradigm.

Brands that can tap into and implement these insights into their Marketing strategies will come out of this pandemic stronger and more resilient than ever. They will be the ones with a clear competitive advantage the ability to transform the way they engage their audiences forever.

Read more:4 Best Video Game Marketing Strategies

Everything today is about COVID. And the current conundrum among marketers is how do we communicate during this time? How do we connect? How do we balance the need to remain relevant and top of mind, while demonstrating compassion and empathy? Should we sell? Should we hold back? Its a hard balance.Some are getting it right.Some are failing miserably.

Marketers, by their very nature, focus on the problems directly in front of them. Driven by economic demands, they utilize machine-based connections and historical data to inform reactive, immediate decision making. With a heavy reliance (or rather addiction to) machine-assisted audience collection platforms (the walled gardens of the world), marketers are often too focused on short-sighted gain. Short-sighted gain almost always comes at the sacrifice of genuinely understanding the causal relationship between the customer and the data.

The uniqueness of this pandemic is making machine gathered and historical data less actionable. Marketers are being forced to take a more holistic view of data and the humans behind the data, in real-time. Marketers are also being forced to think through multi-faceted Marketing strategies that address the needs of today, in ways that build long-lasting brand resonance tomorrow.

This means marketers will need to use human engagement, not machines, for collecting customer insights; take more proactive risks (in this less reactive climate) and do more things that connect directly with their customers.

Human nature dictates that people tend to only accept, believe and surrender to the thoughts and actions that are equal to their emotional state.

And right now, people want empathy. They are asking for it. According toKantars COVID-19 Barometer, 70% of consumers are seeking reassuring messages from the brands they trust, and 77% want guidance for navigating the new normal. Not surprisingly, social media consumption has skyrocketed 61%, but what is surprising is the content and tone of the conversations. They are becoming less superficial and getting more personal.

To communicate with consumers in todays COVID landscape, marketers must focus on identifying their audience(s) current need states and understanding their emotional drivers.

Heres how.

Marketers have lots of historical online and offline behavioral data on their audiences. But now, thanks to captive content consumption brought on by COVID-19, marketers also have direct insight into how their audiences work, engage in content, and consume tangible or digital products while in isolation (or while practicing social distancing).

Mapping historical data with real-time behavioral trends of today gives marketers a more robust unified view of their audience(s). Marketers can then leverage this information to define distinct cohorts and build future-based predictive models, unlocking limitless opportunities for enhanced value exchange.

Read more:How Precise Location-Based Advertising is the Future of Mobile Marketing

The process illustrates a six-step blueprint for deriving customer intelligence signals in the current landscape.

Work with your agency or data partner to align what data you currently have in your arsenal. What online and offline data points can you see today? Are you able to combine and normalize this data, or is the data in silos? What media signals can you access? Do you have a DMP where you can unify this data against media signals?

Once you have a more unobstructed view into your dataset, run a correlation analysis to establish what data points are trending and align with the use cases most relevant to your brand.

This enrichment process can be done with your brands customer data platform, or with your agency/consulting partner in a data clean room. Use the correlation analysis gathered from step one to build your high-level cohorts. Refine these cohorts once first-party customer data is introduced.

Establish a direction on how to define need states for your brand a work back process that aligns brand positioning, creative and qualitative data. These needs states should then be validated in a quant methodology using context-based definitions from past media engagement.

Where are there glaring opportunities that your brand has not yet considered? Is there an opportunity for rapid messaging and creative changes? Work with your internal creative teams to pull through these opportunities, insights, and recommendations.

This is a data, creative and psychological intense process using the derived insights from step four to develop two to three loyalty triggers per cohort. Map your messaging to these cohorts. It will be essential to lead with empathy; weave in comfort, entertainment, and responsibility, and focus on a non-traditional value exchange for your audience(s) (less selling, more giving and helping).

Lead with a digital-first strategy. Ride the streaming wave (OTT and CTV). Enrich data with a messaging resonance score for ongoing media execution.

COVID-19 has created uncertainty for marketers who rely too heavily on walled gardens to tap one-dimensional audience data. Marketers who use this pandemic as an opportunity to create a new, higher level of empathic value exchange and consciousness will be the ones to better connect with their customers today while preparing for the new normal of tomorrow.

Read more:Time To Get Social: Prioritizing Social Marketing Strategies

Share and Enjoy !

Read the original post:
Human-To-Human Marketing: 6 Steps to Cracking the Consumer Code - AiThority

New York, May 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Post-pandemic Growth Opportunity Analysis of the Marketing Automation Solutions Market" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891685/?utm_source=GNW

MAS serve the small- and medium-sized business segment and the enterprise segment.MAS are a global technology, and this document focuses and analyzes trends in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific for the MAS market.

There are more than 30 vendors for global MAS.Through primary and secondary research, this document explores the drivers and restraints to the adoption of MAS for businesses during the global COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2025.

The virus originated in China in late 2019 and has spread globally in the last four months, resulting in national lockdowns, shelter-in-place declarations, social distancing, and an increase in remote working for businesses and educational institutions. The document presents two likely scenarios in the conservative and aspirational forecasts from 2020 to 2025 with the COVID-19 pandemic causing a market slowdown and a recovery period of 18-24 months for the conservative forecast, and an assumption that the COVID-19 virus is contained by August 2020 and the global markets will be able to fully recover by the end of 2020 for the aspirational forecast. Each forecast examines drivers, restraints, and trends that will lead to more businesses investing in MAS during the pandemic and the likelihood of future growth past the pandemic. The document also touches on a unique growth opportunity within the market and enterprise solutions industry as a whole with a predicted opportunity size in five years and a timeline for action. The document seeks to answer the following questions: What will be the effect of the global pandemic on global MAS adoption? What technology trends will be focused on during the global pandemic? How will the drivers and restraints impact the growth of the market? What are the conservative and aspirational forecasts for the MAS market from 2020 to 2025? What are customers looking to do with MAS adoption in the wake of the global pandemic? How will MAS help the global pandemic effects? What unique growth opportunity is in the market today? What are select MAS vendors doing to help their customers in the wake of the global pandemic? What is the future outlook of MAS adoption after the pandemic?Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891685/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

__________________________

Read this article:
Post-pandemic Growth Opportunity Analysis of the Marketing Automation Solutions Market - GlobeNewswire

Covid-19 has forced influencers to swap portraits of themselves in front of waterfalls in Bali with shots taken on the couch in their living room, and quirky coffee shops and upmarket gyms have morphed into homemade latte art and living room workouts.

But beyond the change in content is an even more significant shift. The marketing model that makes up most of an influencers income is falling apart, with brands pulling out of lucrative sponsorship deals and advertising revenue plummeting. As we face a new economic era, it is unclear whether the aspirational lifestyle lauded by influencers can emerge unscathed. Could coronavirus provoke a reconfiguration of the influencer age?

Over the past decade, influencer culture has reshaped how brands reach consumers the influencer marketing industry was worth around $6.5bn in 2019, and almost half of marketers spent more than 20% of their budget on influencer posts. The combination of accessible celebrity and trusted endorsement allowed companies to target their customers in a more tailored way.

Payment for posts reflected this businesses pay influencers with more than a million followers $10,000 or more for a one-off post endorsing their product.

Yet despite creating an innovative new model that defined a digital era, the influencer industry was not without its issues. A saturation of social media marketing recently led to backlash, with many stars being forced to refocus their brand to appear more authentic after fears that they were alienating their fans with heavily posed and paid-for posts. High-profile scandals also rocked the industry, such as the Gabriel Grossman and Marissa Casey Fuchs surprise social-media proposal, which the Atlantic uncovered as having been pitched to brands, heavily staged and sponsored, and the now infamous Fyre festival which saw influencers being paid thousands of dollars to promote an event that had barely been organized and left attendees stranded on a beach in the Bahamas.

2020 should have been the year for influencers to get back to their followers desire for realness. Instead, because of Covid-19, many influencers are being forced to focus on simply surviving 2020s economic downturn rather than taking the chance to grow their businesses.

Due to the disruption in business operations a lot of companies are facing financial challenges, explains Shane Barker, a digital strategist who offers consultancy services for companies using social media to boost their brand, and influencers hoping to reach the right brands and monetize their follower count. In light of that, they are cutting down on all unnecessary expenses. Some are barely able to pay their employees, let alone hire influencers.

One of Shanes clients, Chris Ruden, is a bodybuilder and amputee who uses his platform to share content on overcoming adversity. As one of many influencers who relies on speaking engagements and events to make up some of his income, Ruden has already experienced disruption as a result of coronavirus measures.

I had 28 events scheduled for the year; 95% of them had been postponed, he says. It has made me hit the drawing board to find different ways to give me value that are pandemic proof. Ive resorted to funny content and eased up on motivational content after all, you cant inspire someone and fire them up just to watch Netflix.

While some popular influencers have attracted death threats after sharing images of glamorous trips despite social distancing measures, Barker believes that more sensitive content is crucial in order for influencers to future-proof their brand.

Influencers should create content that resonates with the current situation that people are in, he says. This does not mean that influencers from all industries should just start writing and talking about the pandemic. What I mean is that they should create content relevant to their niche, but keeping in mind what people are going through.

People want to see home content right now as its relatable and we are all in the same boat

Although 69% of brands expect to decrease their advertising spend this year, the amount of time that we are all spending on our devices also means that social media engagement has increased. In a time of crisis, people are also looking online to feel less alone. Lifestyle influencer Em Sheldon recognizes that and has tailored her content accordingly.

Ive always loved sharing workouts and healthy recipes, so for me its been more of an adaption, she says. People want to see home content right now as its relatable and we are all in the same boat. With more eyes now online, people are scrolling more than ever, so actually, as long as its fitting, authentic and tasteful, now is a great time to work with influencers.

Some even believe that this renewed awareness of authentic versus paid posts and the shift away from brand promotion is a good thing.

Biased product reviews were threatening to poison the well as people started to become disenchanted with self-serving influencers who had lost their objectivity, says Michael Solomon, marketing professor and author of Social Media Marketing. Where possible, influencers need to revert to a more altruistic message and find ways to help get through the crisis with constructive suggestions. In times of instability, people look to trusted sources and those that deliver will be remembered after the crisis is over.

Visit link:
The pandemic and the influencer: will the lifestyle survive coronavirus? - The Guardian

As we pivot closer to reopening the local economy, area business owners of all sizes are encouraged to learn more about the latest marketing methods, as The Mount Airy News is hosting a free virtual marketing workshop May 6.

Were excited to bring digital marketing leader Mike Martoccia to our local business owners, Sandra Hurley, Regional Publisher for the newspaper, said.

The virtual workshop How To Effectively Market Your Business In Todays Challenging Times offers business owners one of two time slots, 9 a.m. or 1 p.m. Space is limited, so area business owners are asked to reserve their spot in the virtual webinar as soon as possible, by contacting Regional Advertising Director Serena Bowman at 336-415-4631 or by email at serena.bowman@mtairynews.com.

Martoccia, who has assisted more than 30,000 businesses in growing their revenue and customer base, will present the latest and most effective ways that businesses should be using to market their products and services. Hell cover targeted digital, search and social media marketing, as well as effective ways to use promotions, e-mail and other methods. Were excited to get on Mikes schedule at a time when local businesses are struggling to know the best steps, Hurley said. Were sure everyone will come away with ideas, and learn new ways to share their message during the free webinar.

The 45-minute virtual workshop will also include a few regional marketing opportunities that area business owners can quickly activate to ensure they are staying relevant now and as pandemic restrictions ease up in each community.

Martoccia adds its important to remember that you cant totally stop advertising and marketing in a crisis, because it will take a lot longer to rebuild your presence and brand once consumers re-emerge. Well show everyone what they should be doing now to keep their place in the market and how to keep generating customer revenue, whether it be from a storefront or purely from their websites and social media networks. Those registered, and attending the webinar, will receive a free digital analysis.

Here is the original post:
Free online business seminar coming up Thursday - Mount Airy News

MAY 2, 2020

IN HIS 2020 State of the Union address, President Donald J. Trump called upon Congress to support his budget that would provide vocational education in every single high school in the United States. Early in his administration, Trump authorized the secretaries of Commerce and Labor to promote apprenticeships in fields such as manufacturing, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and health care. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has enjoined states to act boldly and break down the silos that exist between education and industry.

Democrats are just as enthusiastic about the federal government funding career and technical education (CTE) programs, including through the Perkins Act. Senator Elizabeth Warren has called upon the country to ensure that all students [] have access to career training that will provide a path to a good-paying job, and Senator Bernie Sanders says that it is in the national and economic interest to ensure that every young American may enter a CTE program, which was the only education issue that received bipartisan support in the 2018 midterm elections.

Stephen F. Hamiltons Career Pathways for All Youth: Lessons from the School-to-Work Movement is a helpful guide to making sense of the current American discussion about career pathways, a term that covers apprenticeships, CTE, tech talent pipelines, and other initiatives to make public education focus on preparing young people for jobs.

Early in his book, Hamilton mentions a mother who protested the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 by saying: My daughter isnt going to work. Shes going to college. Hamilton calls this statement a distortion of the school-to-work idea, now rebranded as career pathways. But he is not able to explain how this mother is wrong. If policy makers create a national career pathway system, then college as commonly understood will become a privilege of the wealthy and the beneficiaries of their largesse. Everybody else will be placed in a vocational pipeline from which there is no easy escape.

Why create career pathways? Why not just let young people go to school, learn about different topics, mature, and then once they graduate from high school or college look for a job? Hamilton argues that young people need a vocational focus from an early age in order to become productive workers, nurturing family members, and active citizens.

This is the most powerful justification for career pathways. Poverty makes everything harder: buying a house, starting a family, running for office, and so forth. Career pathways have the potential to teach young people, including in historically disadvantaged groups, the skills they need to enter and remain in the middle class. This is particularly true when young people pursue what American Enterprise Institute researcher Nat Malkus calls new era fields such as engineering, computer science, and health care, in contrast to traditional fields such as manufacturing, transportation, and agriculture.

Businesses also have good reason to support career pathways. Rather than post job openings and cross their fingers for qualified applicants, employers can build an education/training pipeline to meet the current and projected shortage of middle-skill workers. Throughout his book, Hamilton describes companies such as Boeing, Rolls-Royce, and a South Carolina restaurant called SNOB that have profitably used apprenticeships. Apprenticeships seem to be a win-win for individuals and businesses.

It appears that Hamilton wants taxpayers to pick up the tab for training workers. Is the task of public education simply to raise worker bees?

If things stay as they are, Hamilton replies, then many public schools are preparing many young people for low-skill, low-wage jobs. Career pathways prepare young people for high-skill, high-wage jobs, and they may help reduce racial and economic inequality. It seems more precise, however, to say that career pathways may pull some people out of poverty. As the economist Thomas Piketty has shown, in the new gilded age the rate on return on capital is greater than the rate of economic growth. In other words, skilled workers will make more money, but employers of skilled workers will make even more money. The gap between the one percent and everybody else may widen in a new era of CTE.

Skeptics may wonder whether career pathways are a way for employers to use schools to create obedient, useful workers. Hamilton thinks that this perspective does not give enough credit to employers, who value independent thinking and willingness to identify and advocate for improved working conditions and procedures.

I would like to register my doubts about Hamiltons rosy picture of employers. In high school, I worked as a merchandise stocker at a cosmetics store. My job was to open and break down boxes and place supplies on shelves. The only time I had alone was in the bathroom, during the half-hour lunch break, and in a 15-minute break after four hours of work. My high school teachers encouraged and challenged me to think for himself. At work, I had to follow orders or be fired.

Hamilton wants to end the independence that educators have from workforce training. In one disturbing passage, Hamilton corrects the misperception that children under the age of 18 are not allowed to be employed in a factory. Apprentices are allowed to do work age sixteen that is otherwise limited to people who are at least eighteen. It is incredible, in the 21st century, for an educated person to advocate 16-year-olds working in factories. Young people in a democracy should have the chance to pursue their dreams, not be assigned a job track after middle school.

What the United States has now, according to Hamilton, is a congeries of programs that should be coordinated into a system. In Brooklyn, New York, P-TECH high school partners with IBM to place its graduates in entry-level jobs at the company. The schools curriculum is based on skills mapping, that is, providing the academic, technical, personal, and social competencies with a specific job in mind.

In Californias Long Beach Unified School District, whose student body is 57.3 percent Latino, students enter high school having made a choice about a career pathway. This choice is informed by workplace visits, guest speakers, and counseling while in middle school.

The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce has provided students with opportunities to apprentice at auto parts manufacturers including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Michelin.

While Hamilton thinks that all of these programs are promising, he maintains the country needs a career pathways system that links secondary education, postsecondary education, and careers rather than isolated programs. So how do we get there from here?

According to Hamilton, federal, state, and regional governments should fund and regulate career pathways. Schools must adjust to the new reality of a work-focused education system, including by awarding microcredentials, or badges, to signal mastery of specific skills, rather than focusing on four-year college degrees. Hamilton directs much of his advice, however, to the business community to change the American education system.

Businesses could offer ad hoc apprenticeships, but it would be better for Hamilton if they worked together to create a talent pipeline. Talent pipeline management produces a well-calibrated supply of applicants whose credentials help employers identify which are appropriately qualified. Hamilton identifies the United States Chamber of Commerce as a leader in this effort. Rather than compete against each other for talented workers, businesses can cooperate to train and identify a sufficient number of skilled employees.

Throughout Career Pathways for All Youth, Hamilton acknowledges that the American education/training system should respect the interests of each individual young person. A career pathways system must comport with Americans values and aspirations. Like Hamilton, I believe that young people learn by doing things with their hands, that there are benefits to learning about different career paths, and that schools should help young people attain a rewarding occupation.

Nonetheless, Hamilton insists that young people should not be free to choose careers for which there is not a sufficient number of jobs in the region. If tax-supported schools persistently turn out far more auto mechanics or cosmetologists than the labor market can absorb, they are misguiding students and wasting resources. Say that a child dreams about acting on Broadway, playing professional basketball, or becoming a liberal arts professor? In Hamiltons scheme, these doors would be closed from an early age unless the parents can afford to send them to private school. Despite his claims about wanting to reduce racial and economic inequality, Hamilton is helping to create an oligarchic education system, one where only the rich kids are encouraged and prepared to lead the kind of life that they want.

In the appendix, Hamilton lists dozens of people he interviewed for this book, including people who work for the California State University Chancellors Office, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, IBM, United States Chamber of Commerce, Apprenticeship Carolina, and so forth. But Hamilton does not list any students or families who have gone through a career pipeline. This book is informed by, and speaks to, the economic and political elite, not the people affected by these plans.

One of the groups praised in the book, Jobs for the Future, received a $3 million grant from the Walmart Foundation to improve job training programs in the transportation, distribution, and logistics industry. Despite the rhetoric of preparing young people for a vocation, career pathways enable companies to pay for the kind of education they want and little more.

Hamilton takes for granted that the economy is what it is and that education should prepare young people to fit into this arrangement. Schools could teach young people to understand the worlds, gain confidence in their right to change it, and then collaborate to create a more just economic regime. From a democratic perspective, Hamilton envisions a dystopian future in which corporations use public schools to create human cogs in the machine. The best private schools in the United States tailor the curriculum to the talents and interests of the students, regardless of whether there is an immediate economic payoff upon graduation. This is what all students deserve.

Hamilton realizes that many parents will become upset when they figure out that their dreams and aspirations for their children do not align with those of the architects of the career planning system. Hamilton recommends that advocates of career pathways examine and improve language: rather than say school to work, advocates can say school to career; instead of vocational education, proponents can call it career and technical education; instead of work-based learning, proponents can call it interning; rather than oppose the idea of college for all, redefine college to include career-related certification programs.

Hamilton does not entertain the possibility that parents have good reasons to oppose these plans. Social marketing expertise can help. Alas, social marketing cannot change the underlying dynamic that career pathways are creating an economic caste system in the United States. The country is moving toward an arrangement where rich kids get horse farms upon college graduation, and nearly everybody else is placed on a career pathway starting in high school. I stand with the mother who does not want this deal for her child.

Nicholas Tampio is professor of political science at Fordham University. He is the author of Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy (2018).

Go here to read the rest:
Horse Farms and Career Pathways - lareviewofbooks