A hot topic right now is performance marketing. It’s somewhat similar to affiliate marketing but has a lower risk involved and encompasses a wider umbrella that includes affiliate marketing as its sub category. It’s not something that is new but is now rising to the top as a new way to market. Let’s define each for some more clarity. Affiliate marketing is where a relationship is set up between a brand and an individual or organization where partners will receive a percentage commission of the sales they help create. Performance marketing where brands only pay when a certain objective has been met, such as clicks, leads or a sale. Here, advertisers connect with agencies, publishers or influencers to design and place ads on their company channels.
Marketing on a Budget
Inflation is here and it’s having an effect on every industry today. There’s no denying it. With the current state of economic affairs, we thought an article on how to maximize marketing on a budget was beneficial. Here’s a quick bullet point list.
1. Harness the POWER OF UGC. Of course, we’re bias on this topic since this is what we do. That being said, this is one of the best ways to market on a budget. It can cut the costs of production and according to Hubspot, production takes up to 24% of the marketing budgets. Pre-production and post-production come in at the second highest costs.
Multicultural Advertising
Gen Z is the most multicultural generation to date and it’s expected that multicultural advertising budgets are going to increase in the coming years. It’s estimated that the white population in the U.S. will actually be the minority by 2043 according to the U.S. Census. Large cities all across America are now enmeshed with loads of diversity and with the social justice movements during the pandemic, inclusion is now necessity in conducting good business. Yesterday we wrote an article on cross-cultural advertising, so today we’re going to focus on the importance of multicultural advertising. As essential as it is today, it is still no easy feat to create multicultural ads that resonates with its audience and does not offend or alienate them. Thus, we thought we would put together a tips list to help you get started.
Ethical Advertising
We’ve written about bridging the trust gap between consumers and brands previously. However, another way to strengthen trust in this way is through ethical advertising. The Institute for Advertising Ethics was established to ensure that brands are advertising in a truthful, fair and equitable way. We’re pretty certain that if you’re an advertising agency you already know this, but even though this organization exists to keep brands and agencies in check, it’s interesting to note that when creating advertisements, “most professionals are only influenced by legal considerations; ethics exerts a relatively minor role,” according to a research study.
Efficient Marketing Campaign Planning & Management
Marketing campaigns by definition are an organized, strategized effort that promotes a specific company or brand goal. This could be done for a number of reasons. It could be to promote a new product/service, increase brand awareness, gather feedback, get new leads, increase revenue, boost engagement or promote an upcoming event. Whatever the reason, it is important that the campaign be planned and managed properly. Here are some steps to help your brand efficiently plan for their next marketing campaign.
The Rise of Interactive Advertising
Did you know that there is a term called ad blindness? It is a term to explain the phenomenon in response to how people have begun to cope with being subject to constant advertising. People have developed a coping mechanism to subconsciously and sometimes consciously tune out advertisements. In fact, 82% of Gen Z skip or ignore ads completely according to A List Daily. You can check out our article from yesterday on tips to make your advertisements more engaging but there is another kind of ad emerging that seems to increase engagement; interactive advertising. Actually, interactive advertisements have been shown to increase consumer attention by 47% and 32% more memorable according to a study conducted by Magna Global. So, let’s talk about some different types of interactive advertisements.
Social Media Stats 2022
Upon all our blog research here at Locomotive, there is always a recurring theme in advertising with social media. It’s now one of the most important parts of an advertising strategy in today’s world. We found some really interesting stats that we wanted to share with all of you. We know it helps us see a clear picture of who is watching what and where. It’s important to know where your target audience is to better serve them.
Ways to Engage Consumers for Advertisements
Whether on a streaming service, online or when watching a video, at some point we’ve all been just waiting for the “skip ad” button to pop up so we can click on it to get to what we’re there for. It occurred to me that I do this almost 100% of the time and I’m not alone. A study done by IPG showed that 65% of people skip video ads as soon as they get the chance. Some even stated that it is purely habit at this point.
Why Customer Reviews Matter
87% of people read reviews when considering a purchase and 79% trust them as much as they would a personal recommendation (Forbes). As we know here at Locomotive, people trust real people when it comes to advertisements and brand recommendations. It’s part of the reason we truly believe in what our company does. But do customer reviews actually correlate to increase or decreased revenue? Do the reviews actually impact the business coming in?
Programmatic Advertising
The future is digital! Making sure your company is up to date on the newest software and techniques for their advertising is going to be a key component to their success. Taking advantage of software that performs programmatic advertising will save your brand money, streamline your digital ad space buying process and help you reach a wider audience than before. Why wouldn’t your brand want to take advantage of this when it seems like a no brainer right?! Happy advertising!
Understanding Purchasing Motivations
We all buy things… but why? What is the reason you bought that new pair of shoes? Well, actually there are really only 6 reasons that we buy things. It’s important as a business to understand these motives in order to align your product or service to your audience. You will need to define what problem your product or service solves for the customer in order to define what motive they will have in purchasing from you. Let’s take a look at the 6 buying motivations.
Finding Your Brand Target Market
Let’s first talk about the difference between target audience and target market. A target market is a set of consumers that a company plans to sell or reach with marketing activities where a target audience is the group or segment within that target market that is being served ads (Marketing Evolution). In this article we will focus on the target market and how your brand can identify yours. Target market is important for businesses in order to be more efficient on targeting specific groups instead of mass marketing to those who may have no interest. It also builds interest in the brand, loyalty and create a higher potential growth of sales. Here are some tips to start finding your brand’s target market.
Omnichannel Marketing Approach
One of advertisings biggest challenges today is to market across multiple platforms. Multi-channel and omnichannel are similar but not interchangeable. Multi-channel marketing is the distribution of content and ads across multiple channels. Omnichannel marketing means that the customer journey will span multiple channels online and off. This omnichannel marketing could be in the form of websites, text, email, social media, and apps to name a few. According to a study done by Harvard Business Reviewdone on 46,000 shoppers, they concluded that, “73% of them used multiple channels through their shopping journey.” This approach is important to creating a seamless and positive customer experience.
Tapping Into Gen Z for Advertising
Who’s ready for some changes? We know we are and Gen Z is proving to be new type of market when it comes to the advertising world. They are like no other that came before them. Let’s talk about the biggest difference between Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. Millennials remember a time before social media whereas Gen Z does not know a world without it. Even more, their Gen X counterparts grew up on MTV with zero social media. I don’t think it really comes as a surprise that Gen Z is a unique group who can’t imagine a world without tech.
Friday Fun Favorite 5/20/22
This week’s Friday Fun Favorite goes to the “OutHorse Your Email” campaign to promote tourism to Iceland. This quirky ad says that if people take their vacations in Iceland then horses will write your work email replies for you. Obviously, this is meant to be a joke but the fact that, “41% of people check their work emails 5-6x’s/daily when on vacation,” is no laughing matter. It’s no surprise that only 44% of workers say that they’re actually recharged after their vacations” (AdWeek). As Iceland is one of the most naturally beautiful places to visit, the country wants tourists to really unplug and enjoy all that it has to offer without being bogged down with professional commitments. The ad boasts that your work replies may end up being lllerfiadsk;fn from their world-famous horses, but this service is real and it will create an email bounce back reply while on vacation. This ad was created by SS+K for Visit Iceland , which are known for their humorous campaigns.
Brand Recall
Content is Queen! “Did you know that 65% of people are visual learners and 94% of all communication is visual?” (Vennage). There are many benefits of visual marketing versus pure text as we all now know, but it’s important to make your brand memorable through your visual content advertising. People remember things visually so brand recognition is vitally important. Customers are more likely to remember your brand’s advertisements if they’re associated with something that they can recall easily because it caught their eye in some way. Was it different in some way? Did it make them think and use some brain power? Were they connected on an emotional level?
The Importance of Marketing Research
Research shows that businesses are 60% more profitable when they are customer-centric according to an article written by Lucid. Market research is one of the best ways to do this by getting to know your customer base. This is done through gathering data to learn more about demographics and marketing trends as well as other important aspects of business goals. First, there are many subcategories of marketing research and I will only touch on a few in this article.
Friday Fun Fave 5/13/22
This week we’re taking a new direction for our fun favorite pick of the week. With summer right around the corner we are all very much looking forward to sitting out in the sun enjoying time with family and friends. We just came across a new ad by Guinness beer created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO.
Personalized Advertising
Embracing Health & Wellness as a Brand
It seems to be an ongoing trend that we keep finding in all of our advertising research lately here at Locomotive. Consumer mindsets are shifting as a result of the pandemic. People want authenticity. They want transparency. They want brands that care about the environment and social economic issues. And… they want brands that care about health and wellness, not only for their customers but for their staff. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since we all faced a major health crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic for over 2 years. Many suffered from a mental health crisis due to mandated lock downs and for some, physical health fell off all together. It’s sad that it took this insane event to make people realize how important mental and physical health and wellness truly are but we say, “better late than never to this party.” Now, health and wellness are at the forefront of everyone’s minds after two plus years of bringing awareness to these topics. People realized how stressed they were in their old “normal” day to day lives with work, life and everything else in between and aren’t planning on going back to that way of life. People now want brands that are transparent about what they put into their products. They want their values to align with what type of impact their products will have on the environment. They want to be sure that what they are bringing into their homes is safe for their families. Today, this is becoming a the major factor in what is driving consumer choices, aside from “price and quality” according to a Media Post article. All brands must embrace this shift in choices by understanding and implementing what their market audience wants when it comes to these things. The health and wellness movement isn’t going anywhere and it shouldn’t. it’s great that this shift in mindset of consumers has happened and it’s an opportunity for every brand to become better.
