helena gaego

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Overrated, outdated, and over presented.

Those are the words used by Mark Ritson, a Marketing Professor at Melbourne Business School to describe digital marketing. In the 2015 media forum, Mark Ritson made a valid point on how 66% of Australian does not follow brands on social media and that of the 34%, 84% follow less than 7 brands.

The thing about social media is, you do not have to follow a brand in order for them to have an influence on you.

Influencer Marketing

While only 34% of Australians follows brands on social media, 82% of online customers are inclined to follow recommendations made by local influencers. 1 out of 4 people have used discount codes from an influencer, and 68.2% people have positive or neutral feelings towards a sponsored influencer ad.

Statistics aside, as a 19 year old teenage girl I can hereby confirm that influencer marketing really influence my purchases, as it feels like following a friend’s recommendation.

Influencer marketing has something that print ads, television ads and radio broadcast could never have, which are emotional connections.

Influencer marketing works because it shows authenticity, true reviews, and personality. It builds a connection with customers, creating a trust factor.

Not only that, digital marketing also has various other benefits that traditional media doesn’t, one of them being cost effective.

Digital marketing allows less spending, while getting a better reach.

Mark Ritson stated in the same video that only 7% of companies strongly agree that they see ROI from social media, however, SEO has been proven to have a conversion rate of 14.6% whereas traditional medias only have 1.7%. In addition to that, 40% of users are more prone to spend more money on business who are engaging on social media.

Furthermore in 2018, new findings and developments have come to light, such as other ROI metrics, to help analyse and track social media ROI’s.

All in all, while traditional media is also a viable option for marketers, depending on the target market of the products and services, there is no possible way of digital marketing to cease from existence, nor is it a poor decision to allocate a social media budget. Digital marketing is a revolutionary thing that has countless benefits and will continue to advance and grow over the years.

Question: Was your last purchase influenced by influencer marketing (youtube review, blog posts, instagram posts) and online ads, or traditional medias (tv ads, radio broadcasts, newspaper ads)?

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Internet cookies is the term given to describe a type of message that is passed from the web server to your web browser. Its main purpose is to track web activity and identify users. They are able to also show personalised pages based on saved preferences entered by users.

How does cookies advertising work?

Cookies are able to store and recognise websites you have visited and save shopping carts items.

Say that you’re looking at that stylish denim jacket from General Pants. You put it in your basket before you realised you haven’t got your weekly pay check. You exit the website and go to sleep.

Next day, you’re logging into Facebook to look at some memes, maybe look at a few inspiring videos and catch up with some friends and that same denim jacket pops up in the ads section, reminding you that you have yet purchase it.

They have yet got an email address or phone number from you, yet they are still able to pop up, reminding you to buy that denim jacket.

Moving on to the million dollar question, if cookies enable marketers to do such thing why isn’t it staying relevant?

Study shows that 66% of mobile devices does not allow cookies, and that cookies does not work on mobile apps.

Research shows that there are almost 900 million mobile only monthly active Facebook users, and that mobile usage is growing over time, with 51% internet usage worldwide are from mobile devices and tablets, and 92% on those times on apps. Which means, there are a wide demographic that cookies are not able to reach.

On August 2018, Forbes magazine wrote the article

“Are cookies dead in digital marketing?”

On which, a professor of entrepreneurship from University of Nevada, David Croasdell partially agreed to, suggesting that tracking customer behaviour from mobile ID would be more dynamic.

Question: In your opinion, from a marketers perspective, do you think cookies will remain relatable?

Viral marketing. That’s how.

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Netflix is an internet streaming service founded in 1997 but had only started their streaming service in 2007.

Around the 2010, the phrase “netflix and chill” started roaming around the internet. Initially,at that time, there are no innuendos behind that saying. People were just merely sharing that they are going to watch something and relax.

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Netflix goes on to be popularised around the year 2013 in the US, and the following year, the phrase “netflix and chill” started to gain a different meaning.

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“Netflix and chill” has now meant watching Netflix with a romantic prospect, or as most people would say, hooking up.

Soon a lot of different memes were created revolving around this catchphrase, and Netflix decided to make the best of the situation, and post one of those memes on their official tumblr page.

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“Netflix and chill” has officially become a part of pop culture.

In addition to this, Netflix has then continue on growing their social media presence and communicating with their customers by commenting on world issues and trending pop culture topics, as well as posting memes created from the shows that are available in their streaming service on their social media accounts.

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Due to its entertaining and playful content, it is not at all surprising that people would choose to share it to their friends or tag them on Netflix’s posts in the comment section.

This success story is the very definition of viral marketing, that combines word of mouth and social media to create an electronic word of mouth which delivers a marketing message for a company (Kaplan & Haenlin, 2011).

The user generated content by people on social media aka the memes, has helped popularised Netflix as an online streaming company at no cost at all, mostly using the social media platform of twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

However, there are many other main factors that contributes to Netflix’s success besides its viral marketing, such as its ability to personalise its product, strong research team and its brand positioning.

Discussion Questions

1. What did you think affected the success of the viral marketing most? Netflix themselves, or luck?

A fascinating event that personally happened this week inspired the title of today’s blogpost. To understand its fascination, an explanation of my weekly routine is essential.

I waitress at a really busy restaurant part time, with mostly unfortunately shifts of 6pm-11pm, on Monday and the weekends. Being a relatively small female of 5’2 ft and 110 pounds who has absolutely no self defence knowledge, my boyfriend always picks me up (by car) from work to make sure I get home safely. He does not use GPS to navigate his way from home to my workplace, as he drove me there often enough to remember. He usually leaves at 10:55pm as travel time is usually only around 5 minutes.

Moving on to the actual event, it was Monday around 10:50pm, I wasn’t working that day for the first time in weeks, and we went inside his car so we could grab some late night bites. His phone suddenly lit up with a notification from google maps.

“5 mins to (my workplace) Restaurant”

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Excuse me, what?

Do note that he does not ever use google maps to navigate his way to the restaurant, yet google maps knows his usual destination every Monday around 10:50pm. Since its mind-blowing to me I decided to dig further.

Turns out there are several articles written about this with an extensive explanation of how it happened, such as

Google Knows Where You Are, Even If You Turn Off Location History: Here’s How To Stop It

and Google knows you took the bus: the creepy accuracy of Google Maps Timeline

To simplify it, Google Maps tracks your activity pattern by looking at the data they recorded over time of where you are at which time of the day. Due to the recurring event of him picking me up every Monday at 10:50pm, Google Maps is then able to easily form the pattern and send a push notification, because the app thought that that the same journey will take place, and wanted to be helpful by showing the travel time.

Although this feature is created to provide more convenience and assistance for its users, most people’s initial reactions to this would be alarmed of nervous, as it could be viewed as an invasion of privacy. In addition to that, considering the fact that if the data falls into the wrong hand or got hacked, the possibilities of using the data wrongfully would be endless and unimaginable.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you think the data attained by Google Maps are secured from hackers?
2. Do you appreciate or disapprove of this feature and why?

Cyber week, an annual shopping event that starts every Friday after thanksgivings day and ends the week after was originated from Black Friday, that one Friday after thanksgiving date where stores will give out sales and people would shop for gifts for their loved ones. Black Friday was a tradition that has been around for over a century, that has continuously evolved as the digital media grows.

In 2005, Cyber Monday was created. Its where stores would put up their Black Friday deals online the following Monday, giving a platform for people who couldn’t be bothered going through a mass of people on Black Friday to get a good deal, or simply someone who couldn’t get out of their office a place to shop. Profits went crazy that same year, amounting up to almost $500 million (PYMNTS, 2014).

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Due to the obvious increase in profits and sales, it then triggered the creation of Cyber Week, an event that a lot of retailers adapted where their online sale event extended up to a week.

In the most recent Cyber Week (2018), survey results has shown that mobile shoppers made up to 67% of the traffic during Cyber Week. 

This is possible due to the improvement in mobile optimisation. Due to the simple navigation of mobile optimisation, most millennials prefer browsing for gifts with their mobile phone, and it has even enabled baby boomers to be able to do the same as well. One of the method of mobile optimisation is by creating a shopping application. As an avid mobile shopper, I will mention three drivers that influence me to shop for the holidays through these apps.

1. The convenience of looking through the collections wherever i’m at. I could be at the tram on my way to work and browse through gift sets at Sephora or at school looking for an outfit to wear for Christmas eve dinner.
2. The push notifications that reminds me of a sale event, first come pay first get basis right? Wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to get mum the stove set she adores half price!
3. Purchase that can be made in a split second. Shopping application usually enables Android pay, Apple pay or Google wallet to make payments for your transactions, unlike websites that requires shoppers to enter payment details over and over again.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton