Small Business Marketing Ideas from the Big Brands

As a marketer, do you dream of having a big brand and the budget that goes along with it? Well, you may be surprised how much you can take from major companies and their tactics to improve the results for your marketing at a small company.

To set the stage, the top trends for 2014 predicted by Forbes are:

• Content marketing continues to grow. Marketing to the masses through techniques like ads on TV or radio is becoming less effective. Producing valuable, engaging content designed for specific audiences yields better results.
• Diversity is important to social media marketing. New sites are introduced constantly. Brands have to operate on several to reach the most potential customers, increasing overall complexity.
• Images and visuals perform best. Many of the emerging social media sites are visual. Furthermore, most blog posts that are shared extensively incorporate arresting images. Infographics have become more common.
• Less is more. As a result of our hyper-connectivity and highly-digitized lives, consumers are craving simpler campaigns and messaging. The most successful ads and content are likely to be the ones that are easy to digest.

• 

  The newest Duracell commercial features Seattle Seahawks fullback Derrick Coleman, who triumphed over his hearing impairment

  Mobile-friendly content is essential. Forbes notes that “87 percent of connected devices sold by 2017 will be tablets and smartphones.” It is important to provide an acceptable experience to users on these devices.

• SEO and social work together. The goal of search engines is to provide the most relevant and high-quality content, so Google and others factor in the social shares that content gets when delivering organic search rankings. That is why many companies are including social share plugins and encouraging visitors to share content.

Considering the trends and priorities, there is some general advice small businesses should follow:

Nirmal Kumar, Retirement

On June 4, 2003, Nirmal Kumar began his career at Affinity Express as a quality controller. During his 11 years of employment, he contributed to the quality control team and assisted with training new hires on U.S. culture. Nirmal is the first Global Advertising Services employee to be employed for more than a decade. Soon after achieving this milestone, Nirmal made the decision to retire. Nirmal looks forward to spending time with his wife, Rama and son, Roshan, visiting historical and religious landmarks and playing his drums and guitars on a daily basis. Thank you for the 11 years of dedication and hard work, Nirmal. Enjoy your retirement!

Super Digi-Bowl I, Small Business Video Challenge

Super Bowl kicks off in 19 days with the first outdoor, cold-weather super bowl in New Jersey. Super Bowl XLVIII will also be the first time two states, New York and New Jersey, proudly co-host the game. A 47 year tradition of NFC and AFC rivalry, Super Bowl has opened the doors to quite a few American “largest” facts including:

● Second day of highest U.S. food consumption

● Most watch television broadcast

● Most expensive commercial airtime

According to USA Today, FOX is charging around $4 million for 30 seconds of commercial time and that does not include production costs. For many small businesses, spending that much money for 30 seconds is unthinkable. Yet for companies like Coca-Cola, millions of consumers watching and the social media buzz is worth it. Small businesses are also looking to create buzz and what better way to do this than social media? So let the games begin!

Affinity Express welcomes you to the first “Small Business Digi-Bowl!” Submit  your 15-30 second commercials for your company to Affinity Express by kick-off on Super Bowl Sunday, February 2nd  and watch as we air them beginning February 10th on our NEW website and social media sites including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. You can earn the title of “Digi-Bowl Champ” and/or “Fan Favorite.”

Producing films can be done at very low cost and even from your cell phone. Here are a few tips to get you started:

        ● Get close and shoot horizontally

        ● 5 Tips for Creating Video

        ● Make Marketing Videos with your iPhone

Best of luck and we can’t wait to see what you share!

Top New Year Blog Post Ideas for Small Businesses

The start of  a new year can be a very interesting and important time for your business blog. Since the holidays have some of the highest online activity, it is a great opportunity for you to connect with followers and customers. What topics will interest audiences at this time? Here are some tips to write your blog posts:

Offer giveaways

Holidays are about sharing good wishes so offer free consultations, downloadable e-books with tips, examples from the industry and how-to advice to potential customers. Deals for a limited time are sure to draw attention. Use your blog to introduce new services or available product upgrades to a select number of people initially to create buzz. You can also share special offers and coupons from your e-commerce sites on your blog to advertize to different audiences from your usual channels at no cost.

Share numbers to gain confidence

You have the statistics on products and services that were hits with your customers in the past year. Reveal these numbers in your blog along with insights on why and how you plan to continue to cater to customers’ special needs and individual tastes.

10 Marketing Books to Add to Your Holiday Gift List

Books make fantastic gifts but it is tough to choose the right ones. To help you narrow the choice down for the marketers, customers, partners and vendors on your list or even for you, these are our favorite marketing books.

1. Youtility: Why Smart Companies Are Helping, Not Selling

As Jay Baer discusses, “The difference between helping and selling is just 2 letters. But those letters make all the difference. Your company needs to become a YOUtility. Sell something and you make a customer. Help someone and you make a customer for life.” The book advocates a marketing strategy that creates devoted customers by providing something to them which is genuinely and inherently useful.

2. Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break Through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less

In today’s age, when customers are very connected and aware about the latest products, services and tools in the market, you can’t interrupt them with mediocre or irrelevant content or sales pitches—they simply switch off! Joe Pulizzi is one of the world’s leading experts on content marketing and he explains how to draw prospects and customers in by creating information with which they actually want to engage. The book is an excellent guide to get all the tools to start creating and disseminating content that leads directly to greater profits and growth.
Joe Pulizzi emphasizes we focus far too much on channels first: from blogs and Facebook to Pinterest and all the others out there today, but content marketing is about the context, customer and relevance that matters.

3. Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking

This book is packed with straightforward advice and great humor. Andy Sernovitz asks a simple question, “What would people prefer—Love or Money?” He answers that you can buy advertising, which is paying people to talk about you. But when you earn word of mouth, people talk out of love rather than money. And this love grows and builds over time. Your cost of customer acquisition starts to drop as your fans and followers bring in new customers for free. Great companies reinvest these savings into more reasons to talk, which begins to snowball into an unbeatable competitive advantage that carries them through both good times and bad.

4. Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing

Return on Influence explores how brands are identifying and leveraging social media marketers to build product awareness, brand buzz and new sales.
In this revolutionary book, marketing consultant Mark W. Schaefer explains how to use social networking and influence marketing to achieve the following goals:

• In-depth explanations of the sources of online influence and how they can work for or against you
• Interviews with more than 50 experts, including tech blogger Robert Scoble, Influence author Robert Cialdini and industry thought leaders such as Mitch Joel, Jay Baer and Christopher S. Penn
• Practical, actionable tips to increase your own personal power and online influence
• More than a dozen original social influence marketing case studies

5. Riches in Niches: How to Get Rich in Your Niche

Finding a tight market niche where you and your business stand out is the most challenging aspect of marketing for most people. You may not have heard of Riches in Niches, but it’s the go-to book that marketing experts give their clients when the subject turns to how to find a profitable market niche. Susan Friedman focuses on 7 strategies for success in her book to help you position yourself as an expert, which she terms “nichepreneur”. The niche marketing strategies include:

• Create a name
• Build media muscle
• Move movers, shake shakers
• Catch writing fever
• Produce products
• Share wisdom
• Offer services

6. Defending Your Brand: How Smart Companies Use Defensive Strategy to Deal with Competitive Attacks

Defending business is critical for companies of all sizes. If you fail at continual growth, you will miss your objectives. If you fail defending your business, you can lose everything. In this book, Tim Calkins reviews why the defensive strategy is so important and explains how a company can meet a competitive threat with a strong and effective defense plan. He shows businesses how to understand and get competitive intelligence; how to determine if companies are at risk; and how to blunt competitors’ efforts. This book also provides insight into what the established players are likely to do when you launch your new venture. Before introducing a new product, it is important to think about how the existing companies will respond and then adjust your launch plan accordingly.

7. The Shopper Economy: The New Way to Achieve Marketplace Success by Turning Behavior into Currency

The Shopper Economy helps marketers capture and monetize customer interactions. Liz Crawford, a leading marketing innovator and consumer behavior analyst, gives a fast-paced and comprehensive look at how the unprecedented availability of information is a boon to brands, because it lets shoppers watch and share ads, recommend products and interact with brands and each other.
Crawford demonstrates how brands like 7-Eleven, Carnival Cruises and Kia are using Shopkick, Foursquare and other platforms to empower consumers by encouraging and rewarding everyday activities—entering a store, messaging, recommending, “Liking”, playing and more. From these examples you will learn how to:

• Measure and assess accurately the value of shoppers’ activities
• Translate the four key shopper behaviors—attention, participation, advocacy and loyalty—into “shopper currency,” real and virtual rewards that have measurable value to buyers and sellers
• Improve your business’s ROI in shopper marketing by avoiding activity-for activity’s sake and other common pitfalls
• Align your brand more seamlessly with your shoppers’ own personal “brands”

The book focuses on a new phenomenon in which, in addition to shoppers purchasing brands, brands are purchasing shoppers’ behavior. The author discusses a new dynamic where shoppers can actually earn value in exchange for displaying one of four behaviors: paying attention, participating, advocating or committing. None of these behaviors directly involve purchases. The shopper can earn value by simply behaving.

8. The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself

People trust the recommendations of friends, family members, colleagues or even strangers with similar tastes over anything thrust at them by faceless companies. John Jantsch offers practical techniques for harnessing the power of referrals to ensure a steady flow of new customers. Keep those customers happy and they will refer your business to even more customers. Some of Jantsch’s strategies include:

• Talk with your customers; not at them. Thanks to social networking sites, companies of any size have the opportunity to engage with their customers as never before—but the key is listening.
• The sales team is the most important part of your marketing team. Sales people are the company’s main link to customers, who are the main source of referrals. That’s why getting them on board with your referral strategy is critical.
• You should educate your customers. Referrals are only helpful if they’re given to the right people. Tell customers who they should be talking to.

This smart and practical guide is essential reading for companies looking to grow without fat marketing budgets.

9. Sexy Little Numbers: How to Grow Your Business Using the Data You Already Have

Today, everything we do creates data and the volumes are enormous. Every time someone views something online, enters search on Google or even surfs the web on a smart phone, another chunk gets added—in real time—to the multibillion gigabyte (and growing) trove of data that can help us better understand and predict consumer behavior. We no longer need expertise in math or statistics or even expensive modeling software to get the most out of all these revealing consumer insights. A revolution in data analysis is underway and the methods and tools for aggregating and analyzing this “data deluge” are suddenly far simpler, less expensive and more precise than they were.
In Sexy Little Numbers, Dmitri Maex reveals how you can turn data into actionable strategies that drive real growth and revenue. He makes the case that if you look differently at the existing data you have about your customers you can improve: 1) your strategy, 2) the tactics you use to carry out your strategy and 3) the execution of your tactics.

10. The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing

Email marketing is an incredibly cost-effective marketing tool. But it can also be a challenge because the inbox is a hostile environment. Whether your email is noteworthy or an annoying waste of your customers’ time depends on your ability to stick with the fundamentals of good marketing and authentic relationship-building. With The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing, you’ll learn to avoid the common mistakes of email marketing, give your customers content they love and combine an effective email marketing strategy with your traditional marketing efforts, giving you way more bang for your marketing buck.

If you currently use Constant Contact as your email marketing system, this book is a must-read so that you can get the most out of it. However, this marketing book isn’t just for Constant Contact customers. It’s for any business that wants to do email marketing right.

Have you come across any interesting marketing books this year? I hope you enjoy browsing these books as much as I enjoyed putting the list together for you! I wish you all happy and healthy holidays!

Our Favorite Ads of This Holiday Season . . . So Far

Regardless of your industry, this time of the year is all about engaging your audiences with holiday greetings that connect with them and spread the joy of the season. It is a great opportunity to show the personality of your organization to customers. With that in mind, we looked for some ads that have brilliantly captured the holiday spirit, ranging from playful to magical.

Video ads:

Harvey Nichols: Sorry, I Spent It On Myself
The luxury department store, Harvey Nichols, designed a tongue-in-cheek ad. Rather than make viewers sentimental, they instead suggest we should think only of ourselves while shopping this season.

Essential Traits for Successful Marketers

At a party I attended recently, I had a chance to speak to some marketing folks who had ten or fewer years of experience. They were very passionate about their jobs and we had an interesting discussion about the qualities needed to market today versus in the past. Since then, I started asking colleagues for more opinions.

The overarching message is that buyers today have different expectations. Changing behavior means we need to adapt how we market. The way we engage customers and build relationships has become more complex and we have to think differently in an unpredictable marketing environment and business world.

That’s why it is no surprise that a Forrester report revealed 97% of today’s marketers are doing things they have never done before. We have to serve as agents of change. This means being open to new skills, understanding how to collaborate and bringing original insights to the table.

Would your colleagues use these words to describe you?

• Agile. Social media might be one reason why agility has become so crucial. Brands have spent recent years figuring out how to react to Twitter and Facebook and many have gotten a handle on what works, in terms of the type of content to produce and share. The ability to react quickly on social channels is important, whether to cut off something negative or to encourage interaction and engagement. But agility can be applied to all of marketing (and it will be amplified by social media).

When the power went out in the Superdome during the game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens, Oreo capitalized and tweeted: “You can still dunk in the dark”. This was retweeted 10,000 within an hour. While the television commercial for Oreo cost millions to develop, the graphic and tweet was designed, captioned and approved within minutes because the company’s agency (360i) was gathered in a war room during the game.

• Technically-savvy. New technologies, tactics and methods are introduced faster than we can adopt them. Marketers must be willing to learn every day about digital tools that improve their understanding, analysis and effectiveness. We also have to understand emerging technology and applications to spot potential business opportunities and threats. This requires paying attention to developments as they happen, doing the research and applying what makes sense for your business. Instead of “best practices,” think of “next practices”.

Happy Diwali

Affinity Express wishes you all a bright and joy-filled Diwali.

Use Business Apps to Stand Out on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest

In this connected world, you need to create profiles on popular social media that attract your target audiences, engage them, track their activities and entice them to come back to your brand frequently. There are apps on the three most popular social media sites that can help you manage all these tasks.

Facebook

Apps are designed to enhance your visitors’ experience on your Facebook page with engaging games and useful features. You can use apps to share interesting content, recognize and encourage fan participation and provide other value to your community. Explore and add apps from the App Center to find interactive games and social apps that fit your business interests.

Fan of the week
Add an extra layer of interaction to your Facebook page by showcasing a “fan of the week”. Fans can apply to be picked. Other fans can then vote which fan they think should get the coveted title. The elected person can either be automatically chosen or an admin can make the choice manually.

Domino’s Pizza UK asks fans to upload their photos from which they choose “Fan of the Week”. This initiative boosts interaction and motivates followers to share their interesting moments with the brand, in turn providing fresh user-generated content to the Facebook page.

To add this feature to your page, just go to http://apps.facebook.com/fanofthe/ and then choose the page where you will add it. The app will automatically post to your Facebook wall at the same time every week, so do this for the first time at exactly the time you would like it to post going forward.

PostPlanner

PostPlanner is an app specifically designed for managing content on Facebook. There are other scheduling tools such as SocialOomph, HootSuite or TweetDeck, but none have the capability to schedule posts with pictures or videos. Another unique aspect to the app is its content discovery engine. You enter keywords that are relevant to your industry and PostPlanner displays recent content that you can sort by popularity (i.e., with the most shares/likes).

The tool comes at a cost of $4.95/month to post to pages, but is worth the small price to keep track of your post schedule. Do not forget to check back into the conversation from time to time. PostPlanner also has a white-label version so you can customize the app name and send people who click on it to your website instead of sending them to an application.

Easypromos

The easiest way to create promotions and contests on your Facebook page, is a robust, multi-language app that works for any type of business. Plus, the app is fully-compliant with Facebook promotion guidelines.

The following types of campaigns can be designed with Easypromos:

1) Promotions with prizes and sweepstakes
2) Photo, video and text-based contests
3) Discount coupons
4) Promotional codes
5) Pick-your-favorite promotions
6) Surveys and market research

All the promotions created in Easypromos are accessible from the mobile devices supported by Facebook’s development platform for mobiles: iPhone, iPad, iPod and Android. Businesses can create Facebook promotions quickly and independently with this app.

Ecwid

Retailers can offer an online shopping option on their Facebook profiles by opening storefronts that operate within Facebook. The Ecwid app integrates with PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net and several other payment processing options. It helps you draw attention immediately to your products and services. Ecwid also offers forums and customer support help you become a social e-commerce pro.
Here are some key advantages of Ecwid:

1) The app has AJAX everywhere and supports drag-and-drop.
2) It can be easily integrated to any existing site or Facebook profile.
3) It is simple to use and maintain for both store owner and customer.
4) Ecwid is much faster than usual shopping carts.
5) You can get seamless upgrades.

Twitter

Since Twitter is an important social vehicle to converse, reach out and share your business updates, event news and customer testimonials, the following are some apps that help businesses to take their Twitter game up a notch.

TwitPic

TwitPic turns a text-only microblog into a photo sharing service. Simply link your account with Twitter, upload and post pictures without having to access a website in the process.

To use the software, you simply register for a free account with Twitpic. Once your account is created, you can easily upload pictures to your Twitter account from your computer as well as your mobile phone. Twitpic even resizes the images to an appropriate resolution and provides short URLs that allows you to easily fit it into most Twitter posts.

Klout

Specifically for Twitter, Klout measures a huge range of criteria and creates Klout Scores to measure your influence via your Twitter account. Klout has the largest consumer base of any influence marketing platform. It empowers marketers to identify and engage with millions of top influencers, increasing earned media and improving brand lift.

Nurph

Here’s another tool to keep your tweets in check. Nurph lets you create a real-time chat on topic of your choice and then share them with your followers. As Twitter users are limited to 140 characters, trying to provide tech support or hold a meaningful conversation is very difficult.

Nurph aims to provide a simple way of having conversations in more practical ways. Once you log on to Nurph, it automatically creates ad-hoc chat rooms that link directly with existing Twitter accounts. Nurph adopts your Twitter profile design and features username autocomplete to make the transition as seamless as possible.

Pinterest

Pinterest allows businesses to collaborate and to stimulate their audiences by sharing images and visually engaging them. With the growth of smartphones and tablets, more of us are networking socially and consuming content via mobile devices. Here are some Pinterest apps that will help you use this visual social network with mobile devices.

PinPuff

PinPuff is a free tool that lets marketers track trends and measure their accounts’ influence, reach and virality on Pinterest, assign Pinfluence scores and assess the monetary values of their pins.

It keeps track of the kind of traffic pins are generating and suggests possible tips/measures to get maximum returns out of Pinterest. It also provides an easy to use platform for businesses, which can be used to create, manage and analyze their Pinterest-related promotions/marketing activities and seamlessly engage Pinfluencers.

Reachli

Reachli has a user-friendly dashboard interface. It keeps you updated on your pin schedule, helps you locate like-minded users and un-follow groups. Reachli is a home for creating and sharing engaging media such as photos, videos and links. Its intelligent suite of tools helps businesses to market, advertise and further their content reach across social, mobile and the web.

Pin4Ever

Pin4Ever lets you create a backup of your pins on your computer or mobile device by using the Pinterest backup app. It offers other features like:

1) Backup your pins: Takes a backup of your boards or each board individually, including Likes, Followers and Following.
2) Bulk image uploading: Helps you pin multiple images from your local drive or images from the web, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and other sites, with an optional time delay between pins.
3) Bulk pin editing: Move, copy, delete and rearrange pins from your boards or any pin you see (you must own the pin in order to move, delete, or rearrange it).
4) Find duplicate pins: Find any duplicate pins and show them side-by-side, so that you can decide which ones you want to keep.
5) Find deleted pins: Find any pins that were deleted from Pinterest after running a second backup. You then have an option to upload them back on Pinterest.
6) Create a pin tool: Design and pin quotes, infographics and announcements by combining images from your local drive, images from the web, as well as build patterns and add colors or text in different fonts, sizes and styles.

Which other apps and tools do you use to efficiently manage your brand profile on the three leading social media platforms?

Happy Eid-al-Adha

Affinity Express shares greetings with everyone celebrating Eid-al-Adha

How Small Businesses Can Market Events with Low Budgets

Events are a great vehicle to drive leads, build brand awareness and establish thought leadership. Here are some smart and inexpensive ways to use various media channels to market your events.

Use newspaper space wisely

When you advertise in the newspaper, you reach everyone that reads it. That means you are paying for a lot of views from people who are not your target audience. Instead of spending money on ads, look for space in the calendars of events—both the online and the print editions. You’ll reach readers who want details on events and therefore are better prospects for yours. Listings are usually free or very inexpensive.

Get featured by linking to human interest stories

Think of a local angle that would be interesting for the local newspaper to write about, such as human interest stories that connect your business with local customers or community service initiatives. Newspaper articles will get you a lot more mileage than stand-alone ads.

Here is an example of a fashion event hosted by Joan Rivers and co-chaired by Fashion-Isha. The proceeds benefited of The Jewish Kidney Foundation and the Shirat Devorah Fund. People are motivated to buy tickets for events to support such good causes.

Send email blasts to select audiences.

Be careful, as it is easy to get carried away and hit your audience too often. Send out email blasts sparingly. Take the time to ensure they are well-crafted and the messaging is customized to suit different audience profiles. Don’t forget to link to the event pages on your website where viewers can go and read all related details.

Different customers should have different frequencies for communications. If you find that open or click rates are lower for certain segments, then decrease the frequency when they tend to be inactive. You can do this by establishing a field in your database for engagement levels to monitor and understand responses to your email campaigns. Amazon uses event-triggered emails sent in response to someone browsing, searching or buying from them. You should also keep cleaning up your contact lists to avoid any crossover between them.

Use eye-catching flyers

Create simple but eye-catching flyers with headings and pictures. Be sure to only include the need-to-know info so it won’t be too cluttered. Print flyers on colorful paper and you won’t have to spend money on color printing. Post around town on bulletin boards or anywhere you think might reach your target audience, such as where pedestrians or cars stop. You can also put up signs directing people to your events. Sometimes beverage companies will donate free banners to help promote.

Many shops will display your information in their windows if you are not direct competitors. Don’t forget libraries, office noticeboards, cafes or Laundromats—basically anywhere people gather and there is a board or space for information.

Take advantage of free ad spots

Place ads on public television and cable community channels that will announce your events at no charge. Also consider community radio stations. With advance notice, they will often announce your event on air. Check out online events calendars that will allow you to post your events free. Most local councils produce very detailed bulletins telling residents what is happening and have sections on upcoming events. If you are well-organized and provide long enough lead times, you can get your events listed in publications that are delivered to all the homes in the area.

Which other low budget marketing tactics have you used for your events?

Fall Season Marketing to Influence Holiday Sales

For many small businesses, the fall season is critical for driving demand among customers for the holiday season. This means special attention to the marketing strategy is needed to ensure minimal stress and maximum visibility and sales.

Use outdoor events to connect with customers

Fall is an ideal season for outdoor events where businesses can showcase their wares and engage with shoppers. Farmers’ markets are one example of experiential marketing for farmers, bakers and other producers of natural products.

Design ads that capture the season

Many retailers are looking to catch consumers’ attention early this year. According to a just-released survey by Experian Marketing Services of 212 marketing executives, 49% of retailers will launch their holiday campaigns before Halloween. Furthermore, 70% plan to use some sort of promotional offer this holiday shopping season: 39% will offer free shipping, 28% will offer a deal of the day, 21% will offer online coupons and 3% will offer layaway.

In this design, the warm earthy colors and the decorated dinner table are a perfect setting for a family get-together. This ad portrays fall season but at the same time sets the tone for the upcoming winter holidays to capture attention of party planners and event hosts well before the season begins.

Build social media channels

Social media is a great way for brands to share their stories any time of the year but, with the holidays approaching, they are on overdrive. According to Hubspot, Consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. Sites like Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter have become ideal platforms for friends and families to connect online and share referrals on everything from gift ideas to restaurants to favorite stores. Businesses with highly interactive profiles, large fan bases and engaged audiences have a huge advantage over those who have not yet explored the potential of this media. SproutSocial found that 74% of consumers rely on social networks to guide purchase decisions.

Research from Offerpop (“Social Media and Holiday Shopping: An Analysis of Consumer Attitudes) revealed how consumers use social media outlets and tools when planning their holiday shopping.

• Following a brand on social media makes 90% of respondents either somewhat likely or very likely to consider that brand when planning their holiday shopping list.
• Nearly all respondents across all demographic categories replied they were either somewhat likely (61%) or very likely (36%) to turn to social media before buying something.
• Discovering new gift ideas is the most effective use of social media for holiday shopping, according to 32% of respondents. Only 7% cited sharing product purchases.

Use social media promotions

• Start your Facebook promotions during fall, publicizing offers as early as September and focusing on people planning their holiday lists.

• Post promotions to align with important events, sales or days with new product launches.
• Offer exclusive holiday discounts and special previews for your followers.
• Host tweet chats for your target audience. For example, local restaurants or bakers could invite their local followers to tweet about their favorite night hang-outs, discuss trending party dresses and share cocktail recipes.
• Boutiques can set up trending boards with fall collections. Hotels can share photo galleries of nearby excursion locations. Don’t forget to add prices.

Design email campaigns to lure shoppers in advance

Emails are a direct and effective marketing tool. The fall season is the right time get started on your email messaging. Small businesses should review their email lists from last year and make revisions. A mailing schedule that starts before the holiday season is likely to produce better results, as audience awareness of your brand and offers builds over time.

This email campaign for men’s winter clothing starts early in fall and continues until mid-December.

Partner with local businesses

Small businesses can reach out to their local Chambers of Commerce and local business associations to participate in their collective approach to seasonal marketing. You can also find other companies that target your same audience and complement what you offer. Design a referral proposal on how to steer clients to each other. Or offer bundled promotions using a combination of products/services to boost interest in both companies. Another option is to pool your marketing dollars and create a campaign that leverages the bigger budget. Many companies in the wedding industry, such as florists, hair salons, dress makers, cake bakers and printers, work together to help refer and market each other.

Plan for additional expenses

While your business gears up for the coming holiday season, fall is the right time to anticipate additional staffing needed and budget for it. In addition, you might also want to do some in-house events, decorate your store and run promotions for walk-in customers. Think about all the extra expenses involved in these activities, including designing and printing marketing materials, posters and pamphlets, etc. It is better to be prepared in advance to avoid any last minute running around.

As shoppers increase the ways they interact with brands online—sharing opinions, asking for reviews and shopping—businesses need to catch up and plan their activities in ways to get the best possible returns on their marketing dollars.

Have you started planning your marketing approach for the holidays? What activities do you believe are most critical to success?

Programmatic Advertising Adds Value to B2B Marketing

The goal of business-to-business (B2B) advertisers is to run targeted marketing campaigns that help them reach decision makers at a minimum cost to convert. Programmatic advertising is an automated way of buying and selling digital ads by defining parameters such as price and network reach through real-time bidding (RTB). These parameters can be combined with behavioral or audience data on the same platform. Marketers buy media in response to real-time customer actions through algorithms, usually at lower costs than with traditional ad-buying methods. As a result, these algorithms allow advertisers to spend more time being creative and less time reading spreadsheets.

Programmatic advertising is increasing due to its inherent efficiencies in workflow and performance and it allows marketers to:

• Show a specific ad
• To one anonymous consumer
• In one context
• On one device

Compared with traditional programmatic trading, where agencies would buy blocks of inventory at fixed CPM rates, RTB now powers the buying, selling, and measuring of inventory on an impression by impression basis, in real-time, as each browser or agent loads the page.

eMarketer estimates U.S. advertisers will spend more than $3.36 billion on real-time bidding this year, up from just under $2 billion in 2012 and less than $1 billion in 2011.

Programmatic advertising enables businesses market effectively on different channels. Customer interactions are integrated into a single dashboard to develop the best engagement strategy. This increases advertising effectiveness by assigning a value to every impression and showing ads only to interested prospects with a high likelihood of conversion.

Because it is automated, programmatic buying helps marketers to:

Advertize in a cost-effective manner with lower budgets:

A report from BtoB Magazine highlighted several of the obstacles that B2B advertisers currently face, such as the lack of budget (59 percent) and the inability to reach the right target at the right time (39 percent). Most agree that moving beyond a “batch and blast” use of marketing automation in order to arrive at a more relevant, effective lead nurturing program requires one thing: data. In particular, it requires behavioral data. Fortunately, there is a solution—automated real-time bidding (RTB). RTB platforms improve cost efficiency by minimizing spend on poorly targeted impressions. RTB is also highly-relevant. Before purchasing impressions, advertisers pick and choose which customers they want to engage. Using these parameters means B2B advertisers’ messages are delivered only to those people who are most likely to be interested in products or services; greatly reducing waste in budgets and improving the quality of leads.

Tailor messaging to suit needs, time and context:

Whether B2B or B2C, brands cannot compete in today’ environment with rigid messaging strategies. As Forrester predicts, “The core of the display market, performance-based impressions, will shift toward programmatic exchange-based trading at a rate of 43% annually between 2012 and 2017, comprising 30% of total display spending by 2017.” Businesses need to provide diverse deliverables to meet the varying expectations of audiences. Cues can be taken from various factors like the referral sources of website visitors to decide the types of content to serve. For example, if a prospect arrives at a creative agency’s site from an article on iPad website design, the content displayed should have information about producing an iPad website. Similarly, if someone arrives via a tweet about “back-to-school marketing strategies,” the website should tailor the content accordingly. The same principles hold for businesses that have presences on multiple platforms. By analyzing the information prospects consume on one platform, smart marketers should customize the content served in their next interaction on different channels to take dialogues further. In other words, if prospects have searched websites with career-related terms, they will be excluded from the display campaigns, whereas the frequency of ads will increase to target people who looked up related solutions.

Nurture leads with intuitive email campaigns:

Data plays a vital role in lead nurturing by allowing marketers to segment prospects according to where they are in the sales cycle and their unique needs, providing the ability to follow up with targeted messaging. Marketing automation platforms help B2B marketers understand the interests of their audiences based on their on-site behaviors and the information they provide in forms. This insight is used to develop emails with the appropriate calls to action, whether that means stressing price, quality or project management—depending on the top concerns of the potential customers.

The biggest challenge for marketers is in connecting the dots with big data. Information has always been gathered with transactions and other types of interactions but the key is in capturing the right elements from big data and developing algorithms for programmatic platforms that provide the best returns.

Before taking a plunge into the automated model of advertising, it is important to understand what elements of your advertising and marketing campaigns are suited to programmatic models. Having a clear grasp of your business objectives, the kind of audience you want to attract and at what scale, as well as the level of performance required—all of this will help you set attainable objectives and an effective marketing plan.

How do you plan to use programmatic advertising for your business-to-business marketing goals?

Retail Success Strategy: Ecommerce Enabled Brick and Mortar

The lines are blurring between virtual stores and brick and mortar retailers as more e-tailers transition to the physical world to give customers the ability to touch, taste and try before actually buying goods. At the same time, many physical stores are expanding their reach and offering another channel to shoppers by selling products online. This two-way evolution is bringing about a new type of retailing that offers “buy online and pick up in store,” which allows buyers to enjoy the valuable promotions and convenience of online shopping with the reliability of picking up their products from a physical store.

Synergies working in this click-to-brick model are:

Here are four tips to get benefits of both approaches.

1. Use the website as a sales tool:

The first step to achieve virtual and physical synergies is to have a website that represents your brand effectively and is in sync with your physical sores.

Apart from providing store locations, hours and directions, businesses benefit by sharing services and features like:

• Coupons or gift certificates redeemable in stores

• Information on retail outlet events or specials

• Ability to make appointments or reservations for service in the retail outlets

• Return of items purchased online at retail outlets

• Links to other businesses in the area where retail outlets are located

• Pick-up of online purchases at stores

These capabilities allow retailers to support and develop the traditional physical arm of the business.

Customize Social Media Profiles to Win Social Fans

Marketing is all about reaching out and forming a connection. Whatever product you market and whoever you target (e.g., youth, mothers, honeymooners, local businesses, big corporations, etc.), it’s all about people. This is why social media is important. It allows you to have a direct dialogue with those who matter to you. As Kelly has noted, social media might influence different categories of business in different ways but there is no question that they do influence.

With that in mind, how do businesses build and customize their social media profiles to stand out and attract “key decision makers” and “influencers”? Brands need to create images that are transparent, inspire trust and allow open communication. The first step is building customized social media profiles that provide insight to the actual businesses.

Here are some examples how you can keep your social media profile fresh, leverage the latest platform designs and support larger brand objectives.

Spruce up Google Plus profiles:

Use Google+ plugins: Tell your website visitors that you’re on Google+ with the Google+ badge and let them follow you with a single click. You can also help them quickly recommend your brand and content with the help of +1 button. Mashable experienced a jump in followers after rolling out the Google+ badge on its homepage, which increased its Google+ page audience by 38 percent. Mashable also uses the +1 button on articles and across the site to empower sharing on Google+.

Upload high-resolution cover photos: The Google+ design requires an image size of 480×270 pixels. A high-resolution picture enhance the images of brands and a short and smart tagline sets the right mood for the audience.

Post content for maximum visibility: As Google+ is all about visual appeal, post updates, blog posts, promotions and more with images and/or videos. Make sure you select “public” for all posts, so they’ll be visible to everyone. Updating your page regularly with new inputs increases your chances of high ranking in Google searches.

Cadbury directly connects followers around the world with Cadbury products, promotions and personalities via Hangouts On Air.

Add personality to your Twitter profile:

Some features introduced by Twitter last year help you customize your profile and add spice to your company’s presence on Twitter:

Brand your profile header:Twitter allows you to add profile header images to your account, making the main image look much like the Facebook timeline format’s cover image. You can build the background with various color palettes and patterns, as well as design a custom profile background.

Use updated photo streams:Twitter’s mobile apps introduced “photo streams” that aggregate photos uploaded in tweets over time in one location within the Twitter application. It’s a swipable feature which makes sharing by followers much easier.

Get visual across multiple platforms:Twitter can be shared across all platforms including iPad, iPhone and Android with slight differences. A custom background which displays on the web is not seen on mobile platforms. Conversely, the photo stream doesn’t show up on the web.

Jeff Zucker, CNN‘s new president describes Twitter as a frenemy. The brand tweets about latest news as well as social/political issues to create a lot of buzz and engagement.

Adopt the “New Look” on Pinterest:

New and updated design features on Pinterest help viewers by offering simplified navigation, larger pins and enhanced social sharing tools.

Increased size of pins: Pins that were 600 pixels wide earlier are 735 pixels wide now, which give you a bigger window to show your creativity, feature pictures of new products and share pictures uploaded by fans.

Offers multiple actions for pins: Pinterest empowers viewers by enabling them to perform different actions beyond the usual Repin or Like. On expanding the pin, visitors see more pins from the same boards as well as from the same websites. They can see the number of pins, repins and the links to the images above the pins. The share button on the top helps viewers to share the pins on other social networks and even gives the option to share pins with their friends via email or through Facebook.

The new and improved look helps brands form new connections and source pins easily from followers, making their profiles more interesting.

Dress up business pages on Facebook:

The constant updates in Facebook profile layouts, keep marketers on their toes thinking of what they want to showcase and share with others.

I found the Kellogg’s page warm and welcoming—what you expect at a family’s breakfast table.

Experiment with cover photos: Cover photos are the large images (851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall) that display on the Facebook profile pages. As the image will represent your business, use one that captures the essence of your brand. It could be a popular menu item for a restaurant, image of a ride for an amusement park or picture that shows people using your product. A creative image captures attention.

Add a profile picture: This is not the large cover photo of your profile page but a smaller, square image in the bottom-left corner overlaying the cover photo. It is small in size (180 × 180 pixels) so make sure the image does not have much text that might become unreadable. This image accompanies all your posts as a thumbnail.

Share links in the About Us section: While sharing your company’s description, mission and vision, it is a good idea to include links to company’s website as well as other social media profiles. This will help visitors to get a clear understanding about your business and build trust.

Update your company’s LinkedIn profile:

LinkedIn is the leading social networking site for professionals with more than 200 million users from around the world. Business-to-business companies should absolutely create company pages on this site and use them to network with potential customers, get referrals and build their fill the top of their sales funnels.

Dell’s profile page has a cover image that portrays the brand as one which delivers work-life balance. Choose cover images to support diverse campaigns and business priorities.

I explained LinkedIn marketing tactics in detail in a previous post How to Market your Business on LinkedIn. Some key points that add impact to your LinkedIn profile are:

Showcase products and services: Products and Services tab of your LinkedIn profile allows you to share images of your products with descriptions, linking them to your website section where customers can go and make the actual purchases. They work like banners linked to landing pages where you can talk about the benefits of your products and services.

Choose a dynamic cover image: The cover photo appears at the top of the home page of your LinkedIn company page. Choose a cover photo that draws people in to take a closer look at your content. It is a good strategy to include your business vision or a brief message in the cover photo that helps connect to the interests of prospective clients. You can frequently update the cover image to reflect a variety of business priorities, ranges of products, milestones achieved and events celebrated.

How have you customized your social media profiles to reach out to your social followers and fans? What features or updates have you used to maximum advantage?

Back-to-School Marketing Trends and Tips

When July rolls around, advertisers both large and small start preparing for the second biggest shopping period of the year. As parents gather their ever-expanding shopping lists and kids look forward to updating their wardrobes for the approaching session, this is a perfect opportunity for marketers to catch the attention of both generations.

The back-to-school shopping season offers a shopping window of about 12 weeks to consumers and businesses have to be ready with their marketing campaigns right about now. Here are 6 tips to stand out.

1. Target the decision makers:

There is no doubt that moms set the budget, are the major influencers and, many times, are the final decision makers in this shopping season. That is why gearing your messages to mothers makes good sense. A survey by Parenting.com/Women & Co. shows that moms’ highest back-to-school priority is their children’s clothing, with nine out of ten moms agreeing they spend more money on their children’s fall wardrobes than on their own. Some of the top criteria for busy mothers are: budget, quality and ease of shopping. This message “More school for your money” by Walmart caters to one of the main concerns of the target audience.

2. Follow buyers online:

As research prior to buying is increasing done online, it is mandatory to have an updated website. The growth in usage of social networking sites and mobile devices has significantly increased consumers buying clout. The internet is the constant companion to consumers and they are accessing it 24/7 to help them with their purchasing decisions. You can reach these customers with formats such as:

• Creating interactive apps that become utilities for buyers’ shopping experiences.
• Offering coupons and discounts for special needs or to encourage particular behavior.
• Sharing and updating digital catalogs as people like to browse to check out latest trends.
• Organizing your website by segregating items for different needs and age groups.

The Office Depot website is a great example as it has items organized by school grade with deals highlighted in each section.

3. Use email marketing for effective reach:

Emails are an excellent way to contact parents with kids of different age groups with custom messages for their distinct needs.

Experian Marketing Services provides some interesting trends and statistics from the 2012 back to school season:

• Offers in subject lines were present on 37% of back to school emails and generated 57% of total email revenue.
• Free shipping offers had the best transaction rates and the highest revenue per email.
• Teen apparel interest continued into the school year, especially over Labor Day weekend. Click rates for apparel emails were highest in September, meaning that consumers still engaged with apparel emails well into the school year.

4. Explore new channels:

If you are targeting teens then you should definitely consider the high smartphone and internet penetration among this age group. According to a report from Pew Research Center:

• 95% of teens use the internet.

• 78% of teens have a cell phone and almost half (47%) of them own smartphones—that translates into 37% of all teens having smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011.

• 23% of teens have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult population.

To connect with youth, it is essential to share products in a way that is creative and innovative. Good photography and fun product descriptions can make their experiences interactive and interesting. Some ideas for teens are:

• Share product pictures, the latest promotions and ads on your Pinterest page.

• Tweet about hottest school supplies and accessories, interesting deals or latest back to school news

Staples has introduced a cool contest in which their viewers have to submit captions for pictures to earn chances to win tablet computers and savings passes.

• Run contests and ask social fans to upload their pictures to earn freebies.

• Upload customer in-store videos and testimonials on your YouTube page and share links across all your social media platforms.

The picture shared by Dark Beauty magazine about their upcoming issue on back-to-school fashion trends will have many young readers eager to buy the publication and the clothing!

5. Optimize your campaigns:

Learn from your previous campaigns before going ahead with plans for this year. Here are three ways to differentiate in a crowded marketplace:

Highlight product features: Campaigns that zones in on the product features which are high on buyers’ priority lists have better chances of getting noticed and will make messages irresistible.

Plan offers to make them feel special: The best kind of deal deals leave customers walking away feeling valued. Develop campaigns that make buyers want to spread their experience around.

In a back to school promotion by Apple, anyone buying a Mac got a free $100 App Store gift card in the U.S. or £70 in the U.K. Students purchasing an iPad or iPhone received a $50 gift card in the States or £30 card in Britain.

Spread the word about your non-profit initiatives: When a company uses its resources whether financial or non-financial, to help those in need, it sends out a strong message that stands out. Talk about your initiatives in all your offline and online interactions.

Last year, in a marketing campaign called Shine On, Gap shared stories about children who make the world a brighter place through their unique talents and community service. The campaign appeared in Gap stores in the United States and Canada, as well as online at Gap.com and on Gap’s social media properties.

6. Support a cause:

Many retailers try to form a connect with families with many cause marketing campaigns projected towards education, child development, bullying and various other related issues. The campaigns that get the best responses are the ones that support a genuine cause, strike a chord among the audience and provide real value to the affected group.

Office Depot is uniting with the boy band One Direction for a back-to-school campaign that will include an anti-bullying initiative carrying the theme “Live. Love. Move” that elaborates to say: “Live kind. Love everyone. Move together against bullying.” The brand has introduced an exclusive offering of back-to-school products in this campaign. The limited-edition collection is available at all Office Depot retail locations as well as their website. A percentage of the products’ sales will be donated to support anti-bullying education.

Every business is unique in its strengths and weaknesses. Each brand associates with its customers in a different way. So, it is good to know these tactics and use them to develop your own personal strategy to engage your existing and new back to school consumers.

Which trends have you discovered for this back-to-school season? How do you plan to draw crowds with offers this season?

Why Small Businesses Need to Get Active with Mobile Commerce

This year, 15% of online retail sales will take place via mobile devices, according to eMarketer, up from 11% in 2012. By 2017, the percentage will rise to 25%. Overall, eMarketer estimates, US retail Mcommerce sales will reach nearly $39 billion in 2013, up 56.5% over 2012 and almost triple the amount spent in 2011. This includes products and services ordered online via any mobile device, whether payment or fulfillment happened on mobile itself or in person. The estimates exclude sales of travel services or event tickets.

Many businesses have optimized their online presence to cater to the mobile audience by either creating mobile versions of their websites or tweaking the existing sites for better viewing on mobile web browsers. But according to the SMB Group’s 2010 Small and Medium Business Mobile Solutions Study, only about 12 percent of small businesses (1-99 employees) and 21 percent of medium businesses (100-499 employees) have mobile web sites (versus 44 percent for companies with more than 500 employees).

The fact that many small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have yet to take advantage of the mobile commerce trend suggests you should get started to stay ahead of your competition. Here are seven tips that could help you make the leap into the mobile retail.

Reach out to big spenders:

According to a recent Essential Research survey on mobile internet adoption, 42 percent of mobile internet users have a household income of over £40,000 a year and spend more on their mobile bills. If you cater to the affluent segment of consumers, then the likelihood of their owning smartphones or tablets is much higher. Consumers using iPads spend significantly more time and money on e-commerce sites. While the iPad dominates mobile traffic, the iPhone and other mobile devices are not far behind. Therefore, a mobile website increases your chances of being seen by this crowd and communicating your messages.

Wedding Marketing Trends 2013

Businesses that provide wedding products and services are increasingly expanding their focus to target customers who are on-the-go and with very short attention spans, but who also want elaborate events managed with just a few clicks on their smartphones! Some of us might think these expectations are bizarre. However, as more techno-savvy young people plan to tie the knot, they bring their virtual way of life to this arena.

In her blog post, Marketing Weddings to Millennials, Lien discusses how today’s audience expects to hear back from companies within 24 hours. Before calling customer service to resolve issues, people now prefer to troubleshoot online first. Therefore, having an online presence is a must for wedding service providers to provide instant replies to inquiries coming through the web. How are marketers attracting these couples and combining the traditional and modern marketing tactics to reach out and sell to this audience?

Be present on the web:

Having a website does not guarantee business. You need to build a website that is an all-in-one online wedding platform. Go for a CMS system that allows you to manage your website, blog and capture leads from one central place. Showing your social presence by sharing the latest Facebook contests, pictures re-pinned on your Pinterest account and updates circulated by your followers will build enthusiasm and generate more inquiries on your site. Having analytics installed on the website will help understand your visitors’ level of interest, where you lose them and how can you fill the holes in your website sales funnel.

Create an active Google Plus profile:

As I discussed in one of my previous posts, Google+ offers businesses a way to show up in the search results of potential customers by using the power of their networks. The logic is that the larger and more targeted your Google networks are, the more search results will feature your business.

On its Google Plus profile, The Knot stays true to its tagline and eats, sleeps and breathes weddings. They post videos with wedding makeup tips, have voting contests for the best bridesmaid dresses and provide regular updates on their online wedding contest “The Knot Dream Wedding”.

Build platforms to share:

Weddings are occasions that brings families and friends together. Couples like to detail their experiences, plans and wish lists and get ideas how to do things better. Facebook is the social media platform of choice for wedding marketers in 2013, followed by Pinterest and then Twitter. Find out the site relevant to your target audience and create content that entertains them as well as provides useful tips. Tiffany Jones Designs devote special attention to wedding customers on their Facebook page and has sections like Wedding Countdown, where viewers can upload their wedding dates, fiancés’ names, venues and more.

Another online store for wedding dresses, LightInTheBox Wedding displays interesting pictures, recipes and ideas for wedding parties and encourages its audience to share their thoughts, pictures and experiences. This is an amazing way to connect with people who are looking for help while planning weddings and also works as an online public relations tool.

Tell stories with photographs:

“Weddings will always be stories of poignant moments, with a record that needs to be timeless,” says New York-based wedding photographer Brian Dorsey. Ensure your marketing has images that evoke emotions. Pinterest has become popular over the last year with brides because it makes sharing images easy.

Design wedding apps for easy reach:

A cool step taken by wedding planning company in the Bahamas was the launch of a mobile web app to let on-the-go brides plan the wedding of their dreams.

The Bahamas Destination Wedding app offers a convenient framework that gives its users a mobile-friendly experience for viewing information on weddings in the Bahamas with enhanced social media integration to its Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Youtube channels.

Send emails frequently:

Email marketing is another tool that gets amazing results if you plan content with the latest trends and interest areas of your young audience in mind. Since many decisions are made or influenced to a great extent by the couples themselves, it’s better to keep the email content directed to them with interesting trivia, new wedding ideas, tips for great menus, etc.

Being everything to everyone means you risk being nothing to no one. Go niche instead and create a list of highly engaged prospects. Make everything relate directly to your website visitors’ interests at the time they sign up. It is not enough to know about demographics alone. You can also look at segmenting prospects on the basis of household incomes, belonging to a specific community (to be able to know and understand their wedding customs) or preference for wedding locations like beaches or resorts. Checking such details will give you better insight about your potential customers and enable you to create personalized content that talks to their needs and desires.

Increase reach with print ads:

Traditionally, print advertising has been the most widely used and perhaps the most trusted media in this industry.Your ads need to focus your message with design elements suited to your potential customers. Whether you are trying to sell modern, unconventional weddings or rustic beach side settings, it should come across clearly.

This ad by Northridge Inn sells the idea of having an outdoor wedding with an island backdrop that makes an intimate destination.

The quaint backdrop of this ad by Blaire Nadeau perfectly highlights the unique handcrafted hair pieces. The ad also has contact details and web and social media addresses where prospects can go and check out the collection.

Here is another ad with a very specific product for a niche market. The crisp message, the modern visual and the spotless white background sends a direct no-nonsense message to their target audience.

How do you plan to market wedding products and services this season? Which media are you using to reach your target audience and what approaches have worked well for your company?

 

What Goes into Developing a Brand?

What is brand? Why do some brands resonate with us? How do we form perceptions about some brands being better than others without having tried the products or services of either? As marketers, we work to achieve brand images that inspire the thoughts, emotions and actions of our target customers. This is no small task.

The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2013 report showcases the most valued brands from diverse categories. There are some common features that illustrate how marketers can build brands that motivate.

Be meaningfully different:

The brand guidance framework developed by Millward Brown states the next generation marketers need to develop meaning, differentiate themselves and create salience to create a successful brand.

Print and Digital Marketing Challenges for Retailers

The retail industry is in the midst of a revolution. Customer purchasing behavior is fundamentally changing due to the collision of the physical and virtual worlds. Experian found that 36 percent of U.S. organizations interact with customers and prospects across five or more channels. Despite this new reality, consumers want an integrated shopping experience and expect retailers to deliver. Failure puts retailers at the risk of becoming irrelevant, according to Deloitte’s Global Powers of Retailing 2013.

In April, Affinity Express commissioned industry research to better understand the challenges and goals of retailers because we serve this segment with our advertising production solutions. Our investigation included a series of in-depth interviews and a written survey with more than 80 respondents across a range of retail categories such as grocery, home improvement and sporting goods stores.

Respondents

The functions we targeted were print advertising, marketing, creative services and production services. In terms of level, 43 percent of the respondents were vice presidents or directors, 35 percent were manager level, 4 percent were CMOs and the rest fell into the “other” or C-level category. Thirty-eight percent of these contacts are given an advertising/marketing budget, 32 percent manage the budget, 11 percent set the budget and 10 percent influence it.

Budgets

For 64 percent of the retailers, print circulars and digital advertising are not part of the same marketing budget. The budget for print circulars is managed by the vice president of advertising 45% of the time and the director of advertising 22 percent. The vice president of marketing is responsible 20 percent of the time and the director of marketing 9 percent. When it comes to the digital advertising budget, it is managed by the vice president of digital marketing (31 percent) and the director of digital marketing (30 percent). The vice president of marketing is accountable for the digital ad budget in 19 percent of cases and the director of marketing 7 percent. The vice president of advertising and the director of advertising are responsible in 4 percent and 2 percent of the cases, respectively. With print and digital in separate budget silos and under different management, it is likely workflow is inefficient, assets are not being shared and costs are high, as 60% digital ads are being produced by outside ad agencies.