Marketing Roadmaps

Digital

On Cannes and the marketer backlash against influencers

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The early news out of Cannes, where the glitterati of the advertising world have gathered to rub shoulders, quaff rosé, do deals (or at least talk about doing deals) and generally celebrate their own creativity and business acumen in the hopes of snagging business from the legion of CMOs taking advantage of what has to be the best boondoggle on the planet, is that a marketer backlash against influencers is growing. At least according to Digiday’s piece on June 20th.

The basis for the argument is the announcement by Unilever CMO Keith Weed on Monday that the company is pushing for greater transparency in influencer marketing to combat fraud, create better consumer experiences and improve measurement.

In a prepared statement, Weed committed the company to not working with influencers who buy followers, to never buy followers itself and to prioritize partners committed to increased transparency and eradicating bad practices. He dramatically concluded with:

The key to improving the situation is three-fold: cleaning up the influencer ecosystem by removing misleading engagement; making brands and influencers more aware of the use of dishonest practices; and improving transparency from social platforms to help brands measure impact. We need to take urgent action now to rebuild trust before it’s gone forever.”

This is noble, and I commend Unilever for taking a position.

HOWEVER,

I take exception to the idea that we can have backlash against our customers. Influencers, true influencers, are our customers. People who love our products and want to share their opinions with their friends, family and fans.

So let’s reframe this accusation before we go too far.

What we are reacting to is fraud, perpetrated largely by automated systems in the search for scale. Yes, people bought followers to make their numbers look better. But the root cause — and this is true for many digital fraud issues —is the holy grail of scale over all else. Reach as many people as you can at the least possible cost. The volume ensures a certain percentage of buyers. Except at some point, the volume becomes the goal, not just the means to the goal.

We’ve been seduced by delivery metrics, taking shortcuts that promise to deliver more, for less. It’s a cycle of inflation that “looks good” but doesn’t actually deliver to our objective.

Why are we always so surprised when the shortcut turns out to be a dead end?

The problem isn’t influencers, who are, after all, your customers. It’s the never ending search for scale without a similar commitment to authenticity and performance metrics.

I suggest (and have for years) that we think about consumer to consumer marketing differently.

Relationships
Ground your influencer marketing strategy in authentic relationships with customers who want to advocate for your brand. Don’t neglect those with smaller follower numbers; sometimes they are your most effective evangelists.

A good influencer marketing strategy activates customers with all degrees of influence, using tactics that take best advantage of both the customer’s passion and her platform.

Performance metrics
The performance that matters is conversions. Everything else is a delivery metric. Even engagement. Although it can be a conversion metric for some objectives, for the most part, it too is simply a way to measure the delivery of a program.

Make sure your program has a conversion metric, and a way to get there. You can’t convert without a call to action.

Link back to sales. You can be super sophisticated using modern marketing platforms. Or you know, simply start tracking sales over time against marketing activity, including influencer.

How de we avoid fraud in influencer marketing?

  • Stop chasing scale and start working with your friends.
  • Measure what matters, not everything that moves.

Cheers!

On Personalization and Targeting

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There is no question that the digital media industry has been disrupted by the Global Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR). It’s been at the top of advertising news for weeks, and while the volume of articles may decline, the impact of the law has just begun.

I used to say that consumers like ad targeting, because it ensures that we see ads that match our preferences, but I now have a more nuanced view. It’s not targeting that meets with our approval. No one likes being stalked by the slipper ad simply because we clicked it once on Facebook. Ad targeting relies too much on assumptions about past behaviors based on lookalikes and other data matching. It’s close, but very often, not. quite. right.

What we really want is personalization. To be addressed by our (correct) name when appropriate. To be presented with products that match our age, stage, and personal preferences. To be offered content (and ads) relevant to our interests.

First party data drives personalization, which is far more powerful than targeting.

Personalization is going to a store where the clerk greets you by name, asks if there is something special you want, and then offers solutions based on your answers. Targeting is the clerk stalking you through the store, thrusting products in your face based on an assessment of your “profile.”

I’ve written quite a bit about the opportunity we have to reforge better, consent-based relationships with customers in which we offer real, sustaining value for the privilege of using their personal data. Here are some ideas on what we might do.

Don’t ask users for too much or unnecessary information. Only ask for what you need to deliver value back to them. We’ve gotten so used to collecting everything under the sun, “just in case” and for targeting later marketing efforts, regardless of whether it makes sense or we have a specific use for the data. For example, buying a concert ticket. Certainly we need credit card information and the billing address to verify it. But we don’t need annual income or gender or marital status to deliver a concert ticket. We ask those questions out of habit, so the data set is complete.

GDPR requires that we inform users how we will use the data, but I recommend we do a better job than a blanket “for business purposes.” Have a reason that adds value for the consumer, especially for asks that go beyond those needed for the transaction. For example, your event is planning special activities for families with children, but to staff them appropriately, you’d like to know ages of the children attending. It’s reasonable to ask for this information during registration.

Encourage loyalty and repeat visits to your content by using the data your customers do share with you to personalize the experience. This could be as simple as customizing their “ front page” into your site with content that matches their preferences to explicitly making recommendations for products and services. Pinterest and Flipboard are examples of content platforms whose business model is built on the simple concept of consumers driving personalization by sharing their preferences to create their own contextual experience. Both have had their challenges in recent years, with the hyper-focus on third-party data, programmatic and targeting, but both will now be increasingly relevant, as brands and publishers alike start thinking about contextual distribution as an effective alternative.

Engage your community. Include the customers in the content with active experiences, not just passive viewing. Be useful and entertaining. Interactive content. Reviews. Community forums. Online focus groups and surveys. Free tools and widgets that make their lives easier. Cool stuff. Real-life events too. Remember — the reason social media works is that it is social. The media is just the vehicle for the human connection we crave. With each other and with the brands we love. The more personal the consumer’s experience is with your brand, the more you build mutual trust and utility with your content (and yes, your marketing,) the more likely your customer is to share the personal data that will improve the experience. For example, a consumer might not want to share age or income with a news or lifestyle site, but have no problem sharing it with a financial site in exchange for using a college planning tool.

Speaking of social media, use it to foster connections, distribute content and promote your brand, but do not put all your eggs in a basket owned by another. Build your audience and your customer relationships on your owned properties.

There’s going to be a lot of noise and confusion around GDPR and its impact for some time to come. I’ve already heard the expected arguments that regulation stifles innovation. While there is some merit to the argument, regulation also offers an opportunity to be innovative. To find ways to solve business problems while respecting the social good — in this case personal privacy — that the law was created to protect.

Compliance with privacy laws has costs. Simply having best practices about privacy absent regulation, which some companies like Apple already do, has costs. But the opportunity for deep, sustained customer relationships is far greater. That’s where marketers should be placing their attention.

Glass half full.

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Not sure how to get started? I’d love to help you engage your customers, build loyalty and drive results for your brand with an innovative digital strategy and content ecosystem. Even better, the first hour is free. Email sgetgood@getgood.com to book your free consultation. I’ll give you some thought starters during our conversation, and we can go from there.

Digital media predictions for a post-GDPR world

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Last week, a business acquaintance made a ballsy prediction on LinkedIn for which he took a fair amount of flak. Posting a comment, I noted that his essential point was not that much of a stretch. Of course, there were nuances to the argument, but a long statement with a bunch of caveats wouldn’t be nearly as interesting or thought-provoking. Predictions have to push at the edges or people won’t pay attention. So, I figured it was time to step onto the ledge and make some predictions about the future of digital advertising. I’d love to hear what you think, agree or disagree.

1. In a post-GDPR world, targeted advertising is going to become more expensive. Not immediately. There is still a lot of confusion (some real, some manufactured) about what is required.  In the end, though, the increased costs of delivering compliant targeted audiences combined with a decrease in available inventory as consumers retract or refuse permission, will increase ad rates to premium, not programmatic, rates. I’ve been arguing this for a while and the pundits are finally admitting it. 

2. Context will be queen again. In order to reach the right audience, we will turn to content-centric, community-centric marketing tactics. In part because they ARE more effective in converting customers, but mostly because the cost differential between them and targeted/programmatic advertising won’t be so great. It will be just that much easier to take the leap of faith to try these tactics, which are still working out their success metrics (more about that in a bit.)

This is the opportunity for niche publishers and brands to create content for their micro-audiences that both provides the necessary context for ads and sponsored content and creates a relationship and value exchange in which the consumer is more likely to give permission for the specific use of personal data. As an example, Pepper & Wits, a new content site for women 45+ who are navigating menopause is owned by P&G; we certainly should expect sponsored content and other brand outreach but the primary purpose is to offer value to the consumer and targeted context, not targeted ads.

3. “If you aren’t paying, you’re the product” is a cliché whose days are numbered. Consumers will start to care about privacy. It has been a LONG time coming, but I truly believe that consumers are finally understanding the true cost of free digital services/platforms, and are going to want real value in exchange for the right to use their personal data. “Legitimate business interest” is not going to be sufficient to use a person’s data without permission. Publishers and brands who are offering great content and building relationships with consumers will have a far better chance of obtaining (and retaining) permission.

4. Things are about to get more competitive. Facebook and Google are vulnerable in this new advertising economy. They aren’t in danger by any means, but their models are based on scale, not relationships. They have no friends, just users. This opens up a sliver of opportunity for niche content publishers to create better experiences for consumers and pick off a little wedge of the pie. The duopoly will still get (more than) its fair share, but they will be handicapped in delivering their biggest strength, targeted audiences at scale, so the little guys can dart in and nab their share in areas where Facebook and Google cannot play effectively, content and community. Niche publishers, bloggers, even brands who can make the long haul investment. And Amazon. Amazon already does a better job of community than either Facebook or Google, is nipping at their heels and has a distinct e-commerce advantage. I also predict Reddit will make a strong play for the “community ad dollar.”

5. All of this will drive innovation. Certainly, in ad tech to manage consent, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Folks are already working on challenges like better measurement and attribution models that assign value properly and proportionally to all the players in the value chain, not just the last click. This is crucial for branded content, video, social media and influencer marketing.

Community is also getting some attention. Two start-ups doing interesting things to connect brands with consumers: Social Data Collective and Suzy. Suzy (AskSuzy.com) is the evolution of social media and influencer business Crowdtap. It helps advertisers make and manage meaningful connections with customers by offering them access to its super panel of consumers. Social Data Collective has a slightly different approach; it asks consumers to share personal data with the brands they love in exchange for products/services.

But I think even more interesting things are on the horizon. For example, aggregators of consumer information that validate consumer audiences and can compare them across properties, including blogs and YouTube and all the other places that community will form, not just sites big enough to register on comScore. Audience data all the way down the long tail to validate that the context IS delivering the right audience. This “data hole” has been the bête noire of the influencer marketing business, but there wasn’t a strong enough incentive to solve it, when advertisers could just buy targeted audiences cheaply. To sell content and community as the right context, you need the metrics to prove that you’ve got the goods. It’s coming. I am certain. And it won’t need PII (personally identifiable information) to do it.

We also need tools to give consumers control over their privacy across platforms and processors. Right now, if you think someone has compromised your private data or is using it without permission, good luck tracking it down. Blockchain is the best bet for creating this privacy audit trail. Someone is certainly working on this already. In fact, if you know who, I’d love to chat with them!!!

So there you have it. My predictions for the digital media industry. If you need me, I’ll just be out here teetering on the ledge.

P.S. If you want to check out the prediction of my business acquaintance, you can find it on LinkedIn.

Customer-Centric Marketing. An idea whose time has FINALLY come?

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Activating the passion that consumers have for the brands they love and turning them into your advocates is the secret sauce to identifying and converting new customers as well as increasing the loyalty of retained customers.

This simple concept, customer-centric marketing, has been the basis of my work for more than 20 years. It’s why I embraced blogs and then social media so wholeheartedly. It’s why I advocate so strongly for transparency, authenticity and disclosure, because they foster trust, the currency of social interaction. Online and off. It’s why I have embraced GDPR and other privacy initiatives for the promise they offer to build strong relationships with customers based on a balanced, informed value exchange for personal data.

Customer-centric marketing is also an idea that is often given lip-service, but not nearly as often embedded in our corporate DNA. We talk a good game about building relationships with customers, incorporating consumer feedback, building products and services that delight them. But when it comes time to implement the marketing plan, we use the language of war. We target audiences. We deploy tactics. We execute plans. We profile the customers into personas who are expected to follow prescribed patterns of behavior.

Which is fine, to a point. It would be foolish not to aim your marketing efforts at the audience most likely to buy. But our language and our tactics both tend to dehumanize our customer, to the point that we forget they are people and not just impressions or clicks or conversions or profiles. Taken to the extreme, and make no mistake modern digital marketing exists on the very edge of this extreme, our marketing isn’t just automated, it’s robotic, and not in a good way.

More human tactics like social marketing, influencer engagement, event marketing and even branded content restore the balance and remind us that customers aren’t simply segmented groups of purchasing behaviors, they are people. Living, breathing people who love our products and services, and are simply waiting to be asked. While these tactics are very often more effective, they are nearly always more expensive than digital advertising which uses programmatic buying and consumer targeting to reach the right audiences cheaply, at scale.

The good news, for advocates of more human centered approaches (like me), is that GDPR promises to reduce that financial gap. The SUPPLY for targeted ads will be diminished when (inevitably) publishers can’t document permission or consumers withdraw permission. It also will be more expensive to deliver an audience targeted PROPERLY with personal data. Both scenarios will increase CPMs for the remaining inventory. More on these and other scenarios in Marketing Week.

Certainly, contextual targeting will pick up the slack for digital advertising. There also will still be a market for premium permission-targeted audiences. Niche publishers in particular have tremendous incentive to develop a strong value proposition, both for their content and in exchange for the use of personal data for targeting. I wrote about this last fall.

As the cost gap closes between digital advertising at scale and more engaging tactics like influencer marketing and branded content, marketers will have incentive to shift budget to customer-centric marketing, where relevance can be proven by our interest and engagement with content and brands, not simply implied by our browsing history or past purchasing behavior.

It’s then up to us as marketers to create the compelling, customer-centric campaigns that engage consumers and convert prospects to buyers.

I’m game!

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Additional Reading on GDPR. Tick Tock. Less than 3 weeks to go. 

This week in influencer marketing: New York Times “discovers” Influencer fraud; Washington Post columnist laments changes in online mom influencers; Facebook changes the rules. Again.

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NY Times article about fake followers

In my post on January 22d, I noted that there was at least one article about influencer marketing every day, often more.

This week was no different, except for a change, the articles weren’t only in industry press. They also were in the papers that many consider the newspapers of record of the United States, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

New York Times “discovers” influencer fraud

This is not news. We’ve long known that the social platforms are chock full of fake accounts. ALL OF THEM. But most especially Twitter, the subject of the NYT story last weekend and follow-up posted on Thursday.

What is news is that it made it to the front page of a paper of record.

The NYT article dug into the business practices of Devumi, a firm used by celebrities, politicians, athletes and other prominent Twitter users to boost their followers. Long story short: lots of fake followers, often based on the identities of real people, artificial scale at best, fraud at worst.

The follow-up article reported that in the days after the original piece, many fraudulent accounts just vanished. Oh, and the company moved OUT of Florida, where it was about to be the focus of an investigation, reportedly to Colorado.

Lots to unpack in this, from the responsibility of the social platforms to better secure their systems to the imperative of scale to prove influence. The latter is what interests me for the purposes of today’s post, although I expect I will comment on the responsibility issue at some future point.

Certainly, there are celebrity influencers with huge Twitter followings on the roster of the companies that sell fake followers. It stands to reason that in the search for scale, some took a shortcut. Not news. Influencer marketing agencies and platforms know this, and have taken what steps they can to guard against it, as reported in Digiday.

From my perspective, this news is one large exclamation point to the value of quality over quantity when it comes to influencer marketing. Don’t get trapped into a numbers game that is easily gamed. Focus on building real relationships with the influencers who are your customers, your fans, your advocates. Less is more.

Advertising is and always will be about scale. It’s job is to cost effectively reach the largest number of interested people with your message in the shortest amount of time.

But influencer marketing is a different animal. Solid influencer marketing builds on relationships with influential customers who choose to advocate for your brand to reach other customers in authentic ways. Too much focus on scale perverts the fundamental nature of social influence. Not that scale isn’t important. But not at the cost of everything else that makes social influence effective.

Perhaps now the demand for scale will be tempered a little bit with an understanding that scale does not necessarily equal quality. My hope is that more folks will be receptive to this approach and stop chasing BIG follower numbers, choosing instead to match their influencer approach to their marketing objectives. When scale makes sense, such as launching a new product, and you need to raise awareness, turn to microinfluencers or celebrities to spread the word fast to many. But your bread and butter influencer strategy should be grounded in your true advocates, of any size, whose passion for your brand has real influence, and convinces others to try, buy, believe.

I am the eternal optimist.

WaPo columnist laments the changes in online mom influence

I feel like I have read this piece before. That’s not true, of course, but I have read so many like it in the past 15 years. From the fears of the longtime netizens when the web first began to commercialize to the circa 2008/2009 lamentations about the commercialization of blogs (which BTW led to the creation of Blog With Integrity,) and regularly since then, the constant refrain is that somehow sponsored content must be less authentic than spontaneous endorsement because it is solicited and curated.

In this article, the author misses the good old days of mom blogs, which she recalls as the authentic stories of parenting challenges, and bemoans the careful polish of today’s sponsored Instagram posts. Fair enough, and everyone is entitled to an opinion, But here’s the thing: the good old days always look better than today in the rosy glow of history. Some day, today will be the good old days.

The reality? There was good sponsored content and bad sponsored content “back then” and mom bloggers didn’t necessarily share everything even if it appeared more raw. The social currency was then and will always be the trust of your audience and the care which the endorser takes to ground her endorsement in a context that resonates for her readers.

There is no single perfect social platform, only the one where your customers are. “Back then,” blogs were the logical successor to forums and chat rooms, where many of the early parenting communities took root. Today, 15 years later, the new parent is likely from a completely different generational cohort. One that largely grew up digital, mobile phone in hand. Bottom line, if you are trying to reach millennial parents, visual formats like Instagram, Snapchat and video are a good bet for your marketing message.

That doesn’t mean that long-form is dead, or that no one is writing blogs anymore, or that Instagram has simply become a product billboard. Your social experience is what you make it. There is plenty of good writing, video and podcasting out there, if you want to find it. It may be advertiser supported, or part of a more traditional media property, or even behind a paywall, but it’s there, in parenting and any other vertical you care to name. There will ALWAYS be people who want to tell stories.

The question you have to ask yourself as a reader, is how do you want to support those storytellers? If you are getting the content for free, whether through Instagram, a podcast or a blog, you need to accept a certain amount of advertising with your content. You can decide how MUCH you want, but it isn’t fair to deny the storyteller fair compensation.

For their part, marketers need to be honest with themselves. Very little endorsement is truly spontaneous. Very few brands can generate unsolicited endorsement at scale. You need to pay to play somewhere. Isn’t it great that we can direct some of those dollars right back to our customers? I think so.

eMarketer is bullish on Instagram

eMarketer reports that Instagram is the most popular influencer platform, per research by influencer platform Zine.

Of course it is popular. It is easy to do, for the brands and the influencers, perfect for fashion, beauty and food, fast (no waiting 6 months to see uptake like with Pinterest) and the metrics are still squishy enough that “engagement” still counts as success. There are more Instagram influencer agencies, networks and platforms than I can even count any more, and new ones every day. All vying of course to be acquired by a bigger fish. Maybe even the biggest fish, Instagram/Facebook itself.

But it isn’t the only way to engage your influential customers as online advocates and evangelists. Blogs, Facebook, YouTube, bespoke online communities, your own website, media sites, even Reddit, Twitter and Pinterest, all have something to offer to the influencer marketing mix, depending on your objectives, your product, your timeframe, your customers themselves.

So use caution when faced with data showing Instagram as the winner in the sponsored content stakes or as doubling in size from 2016 to 2017, as one recent study from Klear touted. Of course the use of Instagram for sponsored posts grew significantly year on year, but Klear measured based on the presence of a disclosure hashtag, either #ad or #sponsored. This leads to a faulty analysis. You can’t compare the market in the (relative) wild west of 2016 , when many were largely still ignoring FTC rules, to 2017, when the FTC regularly issued warnings to influencers about poor disclosure and people started cleaning up their game.

Increase, yes. Double? Doubtful. There are probably a whole lotta posts in 2016 going uncounted. But, yay for better disclosure practices in 2017. Better disclosure is a good thing for consumers and for the social marketing industry, and about time.

Facebook changes the rules. Again.

Facebook has narrowed the acceptable uses of its branded content tool. In a nutshell, the person or entity POSTING the item must be the creator of or significantly featured in the content being promoted. You can post a sponsored video you created or star in but you can’t post a video for the sponsor in which you did not participate. Effectively making ads the default solution for most current video distribution.

In my opinion, this will translate into a short term decrease in opportunity for influencers who use their Facebook page for sponsored content, but a long term gain, as brands return to using more influencer generated/featured content in their marketing programs.

Wanna hear me talk about all this?

I was a guest on This Week in Digital Media, a Facebook Live show hosted by Chloe DiVita , and we discussed all these topics at some length. Watch here: https://www.facebook.com/PerceptivePresence/videos/182048805886795/

Photo credit: Matt Britton