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| Pandora's Keynote |
Technology is changing the way that people behave and at the
same time, forcing a change in how brands try to distinguish themselves from
the herd. Think about this: When was the last time you clicked on an online
banner or even remember what banner was shown? I think I intentionally click on
one banner a month and I probably views thousands of web pages. I sat through a few sessions and keynotes and I've highlighted the most interesting parts below.
The recurring themes that were communicated by various
panelists were as follows:
·
Old school online advertising, like banners ads, have lost much of its effectiveness
·
Brands must be experts at storytelling
·
Marketers must learn to tap into advocates or
influencers (not the same thing) when trying to build their communities
Online Advertising
With an average CTR (click-through-rates) of about 0.02%
(that’s one click per 5,000 impressions), people have mentally blocked out
banners when visiting a website. You could spend a ton of money on banners ads,
even on highly targeted ones like on Facebook, and never see a lift in your
brand awareness or sales.
Storytelling
This isn't something revolutionary but somewhere along the
way when Marketers thought, “hey I can make an instant sale online by
linking a banner to an e-commerce site”, the art of seducing the customer was
lost. What reason does someone who has never heard of your thingamajigger have
to click your ad and buy something? Sure there are outliers but for the most
part, you want to create a relationship with your customers and have them visit
you because they like your brand and offering. Storytelling can be linked to…
Content Marketing
Along came content marketing and Qualcomm was one of the
panelists at this session. They spoke about taking a journalistic approach on
how to reach out to people. Work hard on providing relevant content for people that doesn't directly plug in a sales
push for your brand. Infographics and videos are always things that can go
“viral”. Seeding content outside of your site on discovery platforms (YouTube, Stumble Upon, etc) is crucial in spreading the word. Just remember that the type
of content that people like to share are rarely traditional ads. This isn't easy because it takes a full-time team to really go out there and create
content to rival what a newspaper would release.
Another interesting point was to use hash tags on Twitter as breadcrumbs to lead to your site. It shapes the right mind set of people who are brought to your page as opposed to bringing them in prematurely and turning them off. This links up to the customer journey bit that a few panelists like @gregshove and @Rfradin spoke about. The whole idea about the customer journey is that you want to talk to customers differently depending on what stage they are at and not just have them click to your shopping cart. If you skip stages you risk alienating customers.
Advocates vs. Influencers
Advocates are people who love your product or service and
will tell others about it. This is great but advocates are often not
influencers as they do not reach out to large masses of people. Influencers may not be as involved with your product/service but are people who are interested in the space you are in. One interesting comment made
by @rustinb at the Influencers Summit discussion was that if you are using
spreadsheets and email to manage your influencers list, it takes one full-time
employee’s entire focus to reach out to five influencers and maintain the
relationship. Five. The reason is that
these influencers are receiving about 100 requests per day to become involved
with various brands and initiatives.
Pandora Keynote
There wasn't anything ground breaking about what Pandora
did in terms of digital marketing but their story is one that we can relate to.
In 2006, Apple wanted to buy all of Pandora’s ad inventory for November and
December to promote the iPod. The team at Pandora had no idea what to charge
and did not even have an inventory of ads (they have no ad server) but they
played along and made a deal worth $20k for those two months. Apple, being
obsessed with detail, changed creative every few days and Pandora had to
release a modified version of their site for every ad change! The
inefficiencies of a start up become great stories once you make it. J
They also had an example of a successful ad campaign with
Gatorade. Gatorade was launching three new brands aimed at teens (something
like “Prime”, “Perform” and “Recover”) and used their new brand names as the
title a sponsored playlists. Apparently 485k teens added the playlist that
resulted in over 519k listening hours. As for as how well Gatordae did, Pandora
did not know so we were missing one of
the most important parts of the story.
Shout Out
In one of the panels, Seth Combs from Sol Republic gave out free Sol Republic earphones to people who tweeted whenever a panelist said an advertising buzz words from a list he had. Yup, I got sweet pair!
Overall Impressions
I think the biggest takeaway from the show was how
brands have to really change the way they communicate with consumers. Consumers
don’t and can’t be friends with ALL the brands they like or use. The brands
they will be friends with are the brands that offer solutions and advice beyond
the scope of their product offering. Check out the upcoming New York ad:tech show, November 6-7, 2013 here.
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