Five Important Factors in Digital Marketing

Nowadays, digital marketing is the focus of every brand. The first place a customer looks for a product is online. If a brand is not online, the customer might buy from a competitor that is online. Also, the website of a company is its identity. This is where a brand can show its personality. It can show the best content to the customer and engage them. One of the best kinds of content marketing is social media. Every brand needs to be on Facebook and Twitter because social media is a great place to engage with consumers. Content is not the only thing to think about in digital marketing strategy. Mobile is a new and important part of digital marketing and brands need to make a unique website for smartphones. But first, brands need to know that digital marketing is like print and broadcast advertising and all brands need to know that disclosures are important. 


Disclosures

Disclosures are important to make sure that advertising is truthful and not misleading, advertisers have evidence to backup claims, and advertisements are not unfair. 

Here is an example of a disclosure for the drug Crestor. The disclosure is in the middle of the main page. It's not small or hidden. It's clearly visible and there's also a link "Important Safety Information" in the upper left. It shows that Crestor is trying to make the disclosures so clear that customers can easily find them and there's no way someone can miss it.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the content that brands put on their webpages and their social media pages. It's not paid advertising. It should focus on a customer's needs and values.  

This is an example of content marketing for Vans shoes. It's a shoe design contest and the wining high school will win money for their art department. The focus is not really on the shoe, it's about the value of community. The winning designer gets money but the money goes to the art department and not to the individual. 

Social Media

As David Meerman Scott said in his interview on the Roye Productions website, "Prior to the web there where 3 ways to get noticed, one way was you could advertise to buy attention, the second way was that you could convince the media to talk about you and a third way was that you could use direct selling. Those are what I call the old rules of marketing and pr. Not that those are going away, many people use them. The new rules are about understanding your audience and then creating content on the web (videos, e-Books, webinars etc) that appeals to them."

Coca-Cola did a good job appealing to their audience through Facebook. They are trying to engage their customers for example by having them fill out a sentence with something funny. They're not posting the same advertisements that they're using on TV and in magazines.

User Experience on Different Platforms

Digital marketing strategy should not ignore mobile marketing. Mobile use is growing dramatically. It's critical to give customers a good experience on different platforms (computers, tablets, and smartphones). Each platform should have a different version. 

After looking at the Walmart web page on a desktop computer and on a smartphone, the customer can see that they have a specific version for each platform.

The mobile version is very simple and easy to use. The design is nice with large bars that the customer can click with their finger and they don't need to zoom in to click. The customer can find what they need quickly. 

Personality

User Experience is important and all companies need to pay attention to it. Each website should have its own personality and tone to it. People don't want boring webpages, They want interactive ones. Each website should be unique and specific to its own brand.

Here is Tiffany & Co.'s webpage. The personality of their webpage completely matches with the Tiffany & Co. brand. It has a sophisticated and chic feeling to it. This is the most important factor in digital marketing because without personality there's no appeal to the consumer. 

Conclusion

Digital marketing is a great addition to a brand's overall marketing strategy but it's different from traditional marketing because engaging the customer is so important. The consumer wants to interact with the brand but only if the brand can show its full personality. The brand needs to create useful and interesting content. Social media is a great addition to webpages and will increase engagement. Disclosures are important to build trust and are required by the FTC. Also, all brand webpages should be easy to use on different platforms especially on mobile. If a customer is visiting the brand's website, they are already interested in the brand or want information. This is a great opportunity for any brand and if they don't take advantage of digital marketing, their competitors will. 

Newsjacking and Timing

What is Newsjacking?

David Meerman Scott, the author of "Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage", introduces the idea of promoting your brand by linking it to breaking news. In an article on Sparksheet Scott said "Journalists need original content and brands need attention". He explains that a company can give out information in a blog, tweet, or contacting journalists right after a breaking news event. The information about the brand should be related to the news event and if the information is clever enough it will be included in the stories about the news event. 

In the Sparksheet article and in the above video from the SXSW festival, Scott gives an example about Kate Winslet. Sir Richard Branson had a party on his private island in 2011 when lightning started a fire in one of the buildings. Winslet helped save Branson's 90 year old mother. This was a big news story but there was not a lot of information and every story about the fire included the part about Winslet. A couple hours later the London Fire Brigade (LFB) offered Winslet a chance to train with the fire fighters. They put the offer on their website and also contacted reporters. Then every story about the fire that came after included Winslet but it also included the offer by the LFB. By acting quickly the LFB got a huge amount of free media exposure. 

This is an example from the BBC News website. The newsjacking by the LFB was so good that the "house on fire" part of the story is not even in the headline or first paragraph. The headline only mentions Kate Winslet and the London Fire Brigade. 

Scott said that the most important part of newsjacking is the timing. The LFB was good with their timing because they made the offer within a couple hours after the event. The newsjacking should happen around when journalists are looking for more information but before the news reaches the peak.

When Newsjacking Can Hurt your Brand!

Newsjacking can also give your brand negative exposure. A recent example is this tweet by Adweek.

This was tweeted only a few hours after the tragedy in Boston. it linked to an article in Adweek with a title "Boston Marathon Tragedy Shows Why Brands Need Human Touch on Twitter. Scheduled Tweets Make Brands Link Insensitive". 

The tweet and the article have been removed. Adweek said that scheduled tweets made some brands look insensitive but Adweek did exactly that. They could have at least waited a couple days to post this article but doing it only a couple hours after so much heart break was a terrible idea. And it made it worse when they advertised the article on Twitter. Many people on twitter commented that the tweet was very insensitive and I think @Cousincole was totally right when he tweeted:

Maybe you could understand if a company that is new to social media made a mistake like this but Adweek is an expert in branding and the internet. I think that Scott Monty, global head of social media at Ford Motor Company, gave good advice on the day of the tragedy:

Newsjacking is good if used right!

Scott showed some great examples of newsjacking and Adweek showed us the wrong way to use it. Newsjacking can be very helpful when used at the right time but can really hurt a brand if used at the wrong time. I think a good rule would be not to ever try newsjacking if the breaking news story involves people losing their life or being seriously hurt. If the breaking news is about something positive then this is the best story to link your brand to.

Carl's Jr. and User Experience

In this blog post, I want to look into the user experience (UX) on different platforms for the Carl's Jr. website. UX is important and all companies need to pay attention to it. Each website should have its own personality and tone to it. People don't want boring webpages, they want interactive ones. They also like pages that are easy to use, especially for restaurants, because they usually want to find a menu or a store location quickly. It's critical to give customers a good experience on different platforms (computers, tablets, and smartphones). Each platform should have a different version. 

Carl's Jr. Website on Desktops and Laptops

This is the Carl's Jr. website on a computer. I think their website is pretty straight forward. In the top bar the customer can easily find the menu, contact information, and store location. These are the first things that a customer is usually looking for. Promotions are really easy to find and they're easy to use. For example, if there's a promotion with a coupon, it links directly to a coupon you can print. 

There was one thing that was confusing for me. The social media links should be at the top so they can be easily found. I couldn't find them at first, but then I saw they were on a separate bar on the bottom right. This is not a good place for social media buttons and they're also too small for a page that's so busy. 

Carl's Jr. Website on Tablets and Smartphones

The UX of the website on a tablet is the same as on a desktop computer because they didn't make a version specifically for a tablet. Moving around with touch is much nicer than using a mouse and the webpage makes this easy. The only problem is that some of the boxes and the links to social media are too small for touch. They could increase the size of these boxes to make them work better on tablets and having larger social media buttons is better for the desktop version too. They did make these changes on the smartphone version of the website which is very different from the desktop version. The social media buttons are large and easy to touch.

I think they only did this for the touch interface and not to make the buttons more visible. It seems that they didn't think about the tablet platform at all or else they would have made the buttons larger everywhere. 

The buttons for menu and locations are also bigger on the smartphone version and they're easy to find and use.  

The bad part about the mobile site is that most of the links bring you to the desktop version of the website. 

Carl's Jr. Website Personality

I think the Carl's Jr. website on a desktop computer doesn't have any personality unique to Carl's Jr. It's just a simple white page without any effort to make the design nice and interesting. It doesn't have any specific feeling to it and it could be the website of any hamburger fast food restaurant. It also isn't very interactive and the customer doesn't feel like it's communicating with them. Even their logo is so small that it doesn't seem like you're on their main website. The customer can't hear the voice of Carl's Jr. with this design. 

But the smartphone version is better. I think it has more personality to it. The logo is very big and right at the top. They also changed the color of some of the buttons to red which matches with the color of the logo. The pictures of their products also take up more of the screen and the photos keep changing unlike on the desktop version where it just stops. Something that was cool was when you click a link it shows a loading icon with a rotating Carl Jr's star. 

Carl's Jr. Be Unique!

Carl's Jr. can make their UX better by creating a design that feels like Carls Jr. When you look at the website of Shake Shack, the feeling is exactly Shake Shack. But also, they should communicate with the customer better. The website should be more fun like the fun and crazy image that Carl's Jr. has in their commercials. It's sexy and ridiculous at the same time and this is the image that Carl's Jr. has used for many years but it's totally missing on website.

They should also have a full smartphone version of the website that includes all the different links and they should make sure their desktop version works better with tablets or else design a version just for tablets. 

Behavioral Cues in Digital Marketing

Kare Anderson is a writer for Forbes magazine. She had an interview with Brian Solis on his show "Revolution". In the show they talked about social interaction and the importance of it in business organizations.



Behavioral Cues in the Offline World

Kare Anderson believes that behavioral cues influence the way people connect with each other. She says that people are projecting their own feelings on people they meet. I think it's true. When people meet each other there is no way that they can see or understand 100% of the other person in a few minutes, so whatever feeling they get from each other is influenced from their own assumptions or feelings depending on their background and personality. For example, when I meet someone I have a feeling that they're good that's not based on anything that they've done but I assume that they'll be kind and honest. She also talked about other cues that are not behavioral but they also influence how people feel about each other. For example, if I meet a person on a warm sunny day when I feel energized maybe I will like them better than if I meet them at night after class when I'm tired. 

Anderson also talked about mothers who change the tone of their voice to appeal to their kids and when they bring it to work they get more eye contact and response. I totally agree with that. For example, when I'm in the class and my professor is speaking with a nice melody in their voice, I pay attention to what they're saying and I like to hear more.

Behavioral Cues in the Online World

These ideas can work in the online world too. I'm seeing examples of this focus on social cues in the three companies that I'm following for my Digital Marketing class project. I think every webpage should have personality and a webpage without personality is useless. People should be able to see that personality and hear the voice of the brand through the webpage or social media.

McDonalds

This is the McDonalds webpage for their new premium McWRAP.  They are using a lot of cues to attract the customer. The webpage is very colorful and interactive. It makes you want to click to learn more. It's not visible in this picture but there are people walking and cars going by like a real city. 

In this commercial for the McWRAP, McDonalds is using behavioral cues. When you see how much other people are enjoying the food, you want to have this experience too and maybe you'll try it.

Shake Shack

This is a post on Shake Shack's Facebook page where they are sharing one of their fans painting of Shake Shack's food. In this post they're encouraging other fans to go to her Instagram page. This is showing a high level of engagement with their fans.

Mark Burger

Mark Burger has a unique design on its webpage that when you scroll up and down the items on the page look 3D. I found it interesting and it's more exciting than a normal webpage. It has a specific style and its own personality which makes it attractive to customers.


People Want to Interact!

Just like in social interactions in the offline world, marketers need to pay attention and use behavioral cues to connect with their customers. People want to feel they have a personal connection online like when they meet someone in real life. If brand webpages are ugly and boring no one will want to engage with that brand or use that webpage. Customers have higher expectations of a brand now and they want a high level of engagement so brands have to use social media effectively to be successful.