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10 marketing functions that brands should keep in-house

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10 marketing functions that brands should keep in-house

(Image credit: fauxels / Pexels)

As a lifelong agency guy, I have a profound bias about what activities and marketing disciplines are best outsourced. While it may seem surprising, it’s not that I believe that brands should outsource all marketing. That said, I do have a strong opinion regarding how best to leverage marketing agencies and consultants, as outlined in the following article.

Let’s cut to the chase. The ideal use of an agency (or consultant) is for strategic planning and often, the setup and launch of marketing campaigns or programs. Ongoing management can be cost-effective when done in-house – if you can recruit, manage, develop and retain top talent. Just run the numbers on cost vs. performance/benefit. You will need to know a good deal about your goals, your team’s strengths and available tools and resources to effectively map out a plan. 

Due to the complexity of these calculations, most companies feel it is easier and less risky to outsource much of their marketing efforts. Regardless of your ability to plan and execute building an in-house team, I’ve outlined the core marketing channels and disciplines, how effective in-house teams can be, and the relative difficulty of assembling a team in each case. For each channel, I’ll assess the degree of difficulty of gathering and retaining an effective team on a scale of zero to five, with zero being easiest and five being most difficult. Please keep my bias and your own limitations in mind as you read the following marketing channels. 

Public relations

My marketing career began in public relations at a full-service, Seattle-based agency in the mid-1990s. I was drawn to the complex and challenging nature of persuading editors and analysts to cover my clients. In my next PR position, I learned that a poorly managed agency team could chew up client budget like you wouldn’t believe. 

I realized that most clients pay a premium for junior talent focusing on grunt work, with little oversight by the senior management team. The internet has flattened the playing field over the past 20 years, allowing anyone to quickly identify and contact editors and analysts. I realized early in my career that PR firms would become obsolete. While that has not exactly happened, I still believe PR should be managed in-house, as the relationships should be developed and owned by key company executives. A talented and seasoned in-house lead with a deep rolodex and a supporting junior team can better connect the company’s voice and generate coverage than many PR firms. Much of the heavy lifting in PR can be done by a junior-level account person in-house (for a fraction of the cost of an agency), and recent graduates provide a deep talent pool to pull from. 

Degree of difficulty: 3

Email and print direct response

Like PR technology trends, direct response has evolved significantly over the last 20 years. What used to be cost-prohibitive database platforms and printing presses are now affordable to the masses, allowing even the smallest companies to develop, manage and measure print and electronic direct response campaigns effectively. Email platforms like ExactTarget are affordable and highly robust, allowing contact databases to be contacted via personalized messaging. The next step after direct response is sales and marketing automation, which is also ideally managed in-house. 

Degree of difficulty: 2

Sales and marketing automation

Now that the tools are highly affordable and easy-to-use, it makes sense to ensure your core sales and marketing efforts are managed in-house. This is such a mission-critical element of your business that it doesn’t make sense to outsource lead capture and nurturing efforts.

As leads are captured via direct response campaigns and other channels, they can be moved into sales and marketing automation programs, which can be easily managed in-house. Platforms like HubSpot and Act-On are very affordable and allow companies of any size to qualify and nurture leads before handing them over to the sales team. The ability to rapidly create messaging and measure effectiveness is quite powerful. 

Degree of difficulty: 4

Social media

Social media is a big ball of wax that is constantly changing shape. The most common complaints from brands are effective measurement, planning of a comprehensive social media strategy and allocating resources. While agencies that specialize in social media can readily guide companies through these challenges, competent companies should be able to wade through available resources online to develop their own program.

Most importantly, employees should be the authentic brand voice, rather than someone from outside the company. Since this is often difficult, there will always be a place for agencies to support brands lacking the resources to create content, engage in conversation and measure overall effectiveness. 

Degree of difficulty: 3

Event marketing

Creating a meaningful presence at industry trade shows and conferences is still an effective sales and marketing strategy. While a full-blown event marketing team may include designers, production artists, project managers and a marketing support team, these resources are easy to find in the market. That means assembling an effective in-house team is a real possibility, but there are significant costs associated with event marketing that require a dedicated budget. Logistics also can be complicated. Therefore, it is essential to assemble an experienced team.

On a positive front, much of the heavy lifting can be done by a junior team, which can dramatically cut costs. 

Degree of difficulty: 2

Mobile/web design/development

Unless you are in the development or publishing industries where you are dependent on interactive talent to move your business forward, it doesn’t usually make sense to have a deeper talent-base in-house. It does make sense, however, to have one or two junior interactive designer/developer types that can manage and evolve a presence created by an outside agency. When it comes to mobile application development, this approach is more amplified. Like web development, it rarely makes sense to have a resolute mobile team, unless it is core to the business. A talented developer can help maintain a mobile or web-based application more cost-effectively than the firm that typically creates it. 

Degree of difficulty: 3

Search engine optimization

I’m the first to admit search engine optimization is not rocket science. This does not detract from the reality that very few people spend the time to understand SEO at a strategic and tactical level. That means it is exceedingly challenging to recruit and retain quality SEO talent for an in-house team.

I can speak from experience from an agency perspective: in-house SEO professionals are easy recruits, as they are often bored, alone and largely ignored by corporate marketing. Being surrounded by like-minds where clients are much more likely to value your opinion and experience is an enticing offer an agency can provide. Unless your company has Google-like benefits, you may be challenged to hold an SEO team together. 

Degree of difficulty: 4

Analytics and measurement

While it makes sense to manage the data you create and own, there are many factors that influence how to best leverage data to create actionable insights. For larger organizations or ones that create copious amounts of data, having a second set of experienced eyes can be invaluable. Big data, attribution modeling, predictive analytics, cross-device and trans-media tracking and lifetime customer value are all challenging components of measurement.

If you can attract and retain data wonks in-house that understand these evolving measurement techniques and challenges, however, break out the Champagne. 

Degree of difficulty: 5

Advertising creative/copywriting

It is exceedingly rare to be able to build an in-house creative team that is sufficiently talented to produce consistently fresh, relevant and memorable work, and stay engaged and inspired over an extended period. Agencies provide high value in this area, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. 

Unless your business is creatively focused or brand-centric, it is unlikely an internal team will be up for the challenge of developing truly remarkable work. That said, it makes a good deal of sense to keep a team of junior designers and copywriters busy with internal work, and to help update and evolve creative provided by agencies. 

Degree of difficulty: 3

Paid media/planning

Once the creative team puts together the award-winning advertising, it is essential to ensure the intended audience sees it. In the days of “Mad Men,” it wasn’t uncommon that the media planner was the most powerful person in the agency, as this person owned the relationships with the few large media outlets of the day.

That is no longer how business is done, as there are far too many channels to manage. Relationships are less important as tools and vendors streamline media buying, from programmatic to real-time bidding. Brands will have to wait for the technology and marketplace to catch up in affordability before an in-house team makes any sense. Even in the world of paid search, bid management tools can be cost-prohibitive to smaller companies. 

Another factor to consider is that media outlets still prefer to partner with savvy agencies, and still offer agency discount rates that companies cannot receive. Unless media buying is core to your business, it may be years before building an in-house team makes any sense. 

Degree of difficulty: 3

 

Whether you already have an in-house team, are committed to building one or will continue to rely on outside vendors, I hope the above summary has shed some light for future planning. 

 

Kent Lewis is founder pdxMindShare, an online career community and networking group and a digital marketing thought leader since 1996.

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Twitch to shut down in SKorea over ‘seriously’ high fees

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The platform said it had tried to lower its costs by reducing the maximum video quality but it was still losing money

The platform said it had tried to lower its costs by reducing the maximum video quality but it was still losing money – Copyright AFP Chris DELMAS

US-based streaming platform Twitch said Wednesday it would stop its service in South Korea in February because of “seriously high” network costs, dealing a blow to millions of users in one of the heartlands of e-sports.

The Amazon-owned company said in a statement signed by CEO Dan Clancy that costs were 10 times higher than most other countries, making it impossible to continue operating.

South Korea allows internet service providers to charge data-heavy companies like Twitch extra fees, which has already led to a long dispute with Netflix.

Big telecom firms in Europe have pushed for a similar deal, which they call “fair share”, but an EU consultation concluded in October that the idea was not popular.

Twitch said it had tried to lower its costs by reducing the maximum video quality but it was still losing money and would pull out of the country on February 27.

“The cost of running Twitch in South Korea is currently seriously high,” said the statement.

– ‘Stellar player’ –

Twitch, acquired by Amazon in 2014 for close to $1 billion, gained significant traction among gamers in South Korea.

The firm does not publish user numbers but it was widely reported in 2021 to have six million users in South Korea, more than four percent of its global total.

The country is known for its passionate, competitive, and dedicated gaming community, as well as its megastar Faker — a gamer hailed as the Michael Jordan of e-sports.

“We would like to reiterate that this was a very difficult decision, and one that all of us at Twitch are deeply saddened by,” the company’s Wednesday statement said.

“South Korea has always been a stellar player in the global e-sports community and will continue to do so.”

Shares in South Korean video streaming service Afreeca TV, Twitch’s competitor, soared almost 30 percent in afternoon trading in Seoul.

Some of the country’s Twitch users were devastated by the news.

One streamer, yummy_2 said: “It feels like losing my job right now.”

– Biden vs Trump –

Netflix was the first major international firm to cry foul over South Korea’s rules on network fees, getting entangled in lawsuits with SK Broadband, one of South Korea’s biggest internet service providers.

However, the two firms announced in September they would drop the legal cases and would now instead “collaborate as partners for the future”.

While the usage fees are a boon to telecom companies, they are bitterly opposed by tech platforms around the world.

European lawmakers and digital rights activists also argue such an arrangement could break rules on net neutrality, whereby telecoms firms are barred from selling faster internet speeds to particular companies.

The issue has been at the heart of a years-long dispute in the United States with former President Donald Trump rolling back net neutrality rules and his successor Joe Biden struggling to restore them.

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Baltimore food influencers do it for the ‘gram. Do restaurants benefit?

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Baltimore food influencers do it for the ‘gram. Do restaurants benefit?

The Cake Out Maryland bakery in Columbia was a labor of love for sisters Sade and Azia Castro.

Between traveling nurse gigs, Sade Castro would take orders over social media for the sweets otherwise found only in the Philippines, advertising flavors from ube flan to chiffon cake with a milky caramel glaze. But few outside their community knew of the shop.

Castro saw foodies on Instagram in videos that garnered thousands of likes and followers. More people had to be searching for “Asian tastes” in Maryland and Virginia, she thought. Why couldn’t her cakes be the next viral sensation?

So she reached out to a food influencer.

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Over the last few years in Baltimore, the practice of connecting restaurants and burgeoning food businesses with social media personalities has become increasingly common, according to public relations executive Dave Seel, who has built an arm of his Blue Fork marketing firm for the task.

“There can be a dearth of coverage for certain subsections of the city,” he said. “Influencers have taken up that space and used it to build followership.”

Baltimore is a small city, especially in food media. There is no Eater, Infatuation or Michelin Guide. People are thirsting for creative, diverse angles, Seel said.

With the rise of food influencers in Baltimore comes an opportunity to provide platforms to communities, voices and cuisines that have been traditionally alienated. But this wave of restaurant marketing has also raised questions about the authenticity of social media tastemakers and where the quest for that viral video leaves small businesses, many of whom are fighting for survival following the pandemic.

Marketing is an extension of community building, Seel said, and to that end, some restaurants have modified their aesthetics to attract new customers over social media.

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Seel cited BLK Swan in Harbor East as a prime example for its well-advertised community events and “selfie walls.” Customers cannot visit Gunther and Company on Toone Street without taking photos by its “Instagram-worthy living green wall,” he said. At times, he has recommended that restaurants invest in a “particularly ooey, gooey picture-worthy” dish.

It does not always go viral or attract the attention needed to generate business, but it’s an increasingly popular strategy.

“Has it eclipsed all other strategies? I don’t necessarily think so. … But do [influencers] have a seat at the table? Absolutely,” Seels said. “You can’t ignore it.”

‘It’s a marketing job’

Tim “Chyno” Chin, also known as “the Baltimore foodie,” is a well-known food influencer in the area. (Jessica Gallagher/The Baltimore Banner)

Tim “Chyno” Chin always dreamed of hosting his own television show about food.

He grew up an army brat, born in Germany and shuttled between bases before landing in Sandtown-Winchester, a Baltimore food desert. It was not “lavish,” he said; food was utilitarian and purchased with food stamps. There was no one like him on TV: Black, Chinese and gay. But as Chin remembers, he had a “charisma” that allowed him to persevere.

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Chin now considers himself part of a “freshman class” of influencers who rose to foodie fame before the local restaurant industry came to embrace the world of social media marketing. Until about six years ago, eateries looking for publicity were beholden to legacy media platforms. The big players trusted to show Baltimoreans where to eat were radio personalities like Downtown Diane and Dara Cooks, he said.

“We slowly started replacing that,” Chin said. “They didn’t understand [social media] was going to catch on the way it did.”

Chin had worked in kitchens and as a server, so he believed he could relay the importance of a social media presence to the old guard of small businesses. He started by running the social media of the former Joe Squared in Power Plant Live, and then shooting food pictures at the now-shuttered Pinch Dumplings in Mount Vernon Marketplace in exchange for free meals.

“I would post something and then a restaurant would sell out of it,” he said, calling it “the Chyno effect” — a byproduct of his time hosting a YouTube show. He’s now garnered followers as “The Baltimore Foodie” and “The Boy with the Blue Beard,” building a more-than-135,000-person Instagram following and appearing as a host for the “Fresh, Fried and Crispy” show on Netflix.

“I’ve got an Emmy waiting for me somewhere,” he told The Banner.

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To show restaurants he was serious, Chin drew up a rate sheet for his services. “A lot of influencers have it,” he said. The sheet explains an influencer’s cost per post, Instagram reel, links, video and stories. “Everything has a monetized value.” Chyno did not say how much he charges, but as his audience across platforms rises, so does his value.

“People don’t understand this is hard,” he said. “You have to constantly evolve with technology, learn algorithms, follow these trends. … It’s a marketing job.”

TikTok celebrities like MMA fighter turned foodie Keith Lee, who recently made news for a video critiquing the service at an Atlanta restaurant, can change an eatery’s reputation with a single post.

Anybody can call themselves an influencer, Seel said, but “it doesn’t mean they have a core following or an engaged following that really creates the marketing effect that can get restaurateurs that return on investment.”

‘It’s such a difficult thing to decide what you’re worth’

Rachel Lipton smiles for a portrait in her kitchen.
Rachel Lipton is the local creator behind the food Instagram @liketheteaeats. (Kylie Cooper/The Baltimore Banner)

The world of social media marketing is still largely uncharted. The Federal Trade Commission has codified guidelines on sponsorship transparency for influencers, going as far as to issue $50,000 penalties for failures to adequately disclose paid partnerships.

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According to estimates from Insider Intelligence, more than $6.1 billion is expected to be spent nationwide this year on influencer marketing.

Local influencer Rachel Lipton learned about rate sheets herself in 2017 when 7-Eleven offered her $100 to post its iced tea on her “like the tea eats” Instagram page.

“My wife pulled me aside and said, ‘I think you should be charging these large businesses,’” said Lipton, who already had a full-time job. “It’s such a difficult thing to decide what you’re worth.”

Her pricing varies. Video content took far longer to edit, so she charged more. Her rates also went up depending on the size of the company inquiring about a post. She also is particular about who she will work with — or not. She said she will never post about Chick-fil-A due to their alleged culture of homophobia. And since news broke in 2020 of Ouzo Bay allegedly discriminating against a Black woman and her son, along with follow-up complaints against the owners, Atlas Restaurant Group, Lipton has promised not to promote dining at their restaurants.

Kimberly Kong, the creator of a series of food photography pages known as Nomtastic Baltimore and Nomtastic D.C., has amassed more than 100,000 followers, in part, for making a point of dining at Asian-inspired small businesses in Maryland and Virginia.

“I let [businesses] know that you’re only going to get featured if I genuinely like your food. And it’s going to be disclosed that I was invited and food was comped,” Kong said. Yet she cringes at the “influencer” title and the lack of authenticity it evokes. A large number of her posts were not paid for, she said, and were born out of an interest in wanting to try new spots.

Kong also does not charge small businesses for promotion, citing pandemic-era losses as a reason for many of them to be skeptical of investing in the world of social media marketing. Chin and Lipton also said they offered reduced rates to try and boost local spots.

“I understand the restaurants’ point of view with how slim the margins are and how tough it is right now,” Kong said.

‘Every time we posted something, it just got sold’

1701865565 522 Baltimore food influencers do it for the ‘gram Do restaurants
Sade Castro adds toppings to Cake Out’s rocky road option. The ube cakes she makes with her sister and business partner at the Columbia business are also on the counter. (Kirk McKoy/The Baltimore Banner)

Sade Castro never met the Instagram celebrity that sparked an interest in her Maryland shop.

Neither did her sister and business partner, who repeatedly called Castro “crazy” for inviting someone with more than 100,000 followers to sample their cakes. For three years, the two-person bakery had sold the desserts almost exclusively to a group of Filipino moms over Facebook — and even then, they struggled to meet demand.

“I trust that you really believe in your food recs and that you’ve actually tried and loved every food post,” Castro wrote to Kong on Sept. 9. “With that, I would like you to try our Filipino-style cakes.”

Shortly after, Castro was leaving a sampler of nine cakes at Kong’s door.

On Sept. 21, Kong posted footage of her digging into a gooey can of chocolate cake and slowly slicing into the ube flan’s purple center.

“I was at work when my phone started to go off,” Castro said. Within a day, the video had gone viral. The number of people viewing the bakery’s Instagram page rose by over 900% in a matter of hours, and then again by another 2,000% by the end of the week. About 3,000 new people had followed their rarely updated Instagram by the end of September.

“Why would you do this?” Castro remembered her sister asking. “It’s just the two of us, we’re baking from home, and we have full-time jobs.”

The bakery that had provided roughly 120 cakes each year catering to their Filipino neighbors had received hundreds of orders in a matter of days. “We were messaging people saying we don’t have [the cakes],” she said.

Unable to meet demand, they started a lottery. By the end of October, the attention faded some, with viewers of their content down by 42%, according to Castro’s Instagram analytics. Still, the success of the post presented an opportunity for Castro’s self-proclaimed “side hustle.” “Every time we posted something, it just got sold,” she said.

But a restaurant has to be ready. Seel explained that influencers will often receive a tailored experience: sampler cakes, private dining and even custom sandwiches. The business has to be able to execute at the same level for the regular customers, too.

In October, Fells Point eatery Little Donna’s claimed to be “screwed” after a New York Times critic placed the business on the paper’s list of most exciting places to eat. The now-shuttered Local Oyster also faltered in the spotlight after an influencer-promoted sandwich spurred high demand and community backlash, forcing it to be 86ed from the menu.

“All of a sudden, there can be an onslaught of people and it’s hard to keep up,” Seel said.

Castro has no regrets about Kong’s effect on her business. As of November, Cake Out is searching for ways to increase output and serve the Filipino neighbors who had leaned on them for their traditional holiday treats. Plans to move to a larger kitchen are in the works, due to the support from new customers, Castro said.

“For now, we are grateful.”

Matti Gellman is a Food Reporter for The Baltimore Banner. 



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The Age of Virtual Influencers is Coming, Which Will Bring a Range of New Considerations for Brands

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The Age of Virtual Influencers is Coming, Which Will Bring a Range of New Considerations for Brands

While the current spate of generative AI tools are interesting, and are already changing discovery behaviors and interactive processes, they’re really only scratching the surface of what’s possible, and are far from actual “intelligence” as the AI name suggests.

Indeed, most of these initial models are data matching tools, able to predict elements of text and images based on the most likely sequencing, by applying probability to huge datasets. And they’re becoming increasingly at doing just that, but they’re not “thinking” as such, these systems are not developing new concepts all on their own, and there’s no intent or reasoning behind those matches, other than mathematical likelihoods.

That’s the next level of AI, which many experts have expressed concern about, in that such systems will one day have the capacity to think independently, and potentially exceed our own mental capacity as a result. Though creating a digital “brain” as it were is still a long way from being a reality.

But even so, through probability alone, we’re also just touching on the expanded possibilities of generative systems, with the latest advances now pointing to a whole new phase of digital creation, which could cut many humans out of the process.

Last week, a Spanish ad agency made headlines after it revealed that it had created an AI character, which is now earning $US10,000 per month from brand contracts.

Aitana requires no payment, has no qualms about what she promotes, and is available 24/7. And she looks real, and no doubt many of her 200,000 Instagram followers were not aware that she doesn’t, in fact, exist.

You can see the appeal of virtual influencers in this respect, and Aitana is not the first to build a huge following, and certainly won’t be the last.

Even before the arrival of Dall-E and Midjourney, virtual models were already gaining traction, including characters like lilmiquela (2.7m IG followers), noonoouri (424k followers), and Shudu (241k).

More advanced creation tools are now making these virtual identities even more life-like, while the next phase of digital animation could take them to another level of realism, in replicating human trends.

This video, shared as part of Alibaba’s “Animate Anyone” project highlights how advanced image recognition and video sequencing can now replicate actual human movement, to an increasingly realistic degree.

It’s still not perfect, but again, we’re really only at the start of this process, and you can see how, as these systems continue to evolve, virtual influencers, in both still and video form, are set to become much bigger elements of online interaction.

Deepfake characters, where celebrity faces are superimposed over real actors, are another aspect, and another vector for security concerns, but fully virtual creations, animated from still images, would be cheaper to use, faster to customize, and easier for any brand to create, based on templated actions, animations, and movements.

And they are coming. Every platform is already rolling out AI labelling requirements to get ahead of this, but realistically, it’s going to become increasingly difficult to know whether you’re looking at a real person, or an AI creation, with the blurred details and distortions rapidly being ironed out by newer processes and systems.

Sure, right now, it’s easy to spot those AI-generated promotional photos showing up within your Facebook feed ads. But refinements are steadily bringing these tools closer to reality, and ironically, taking consumers further from it at the same time.

So what does that mean for your marketing efforts?

Well, if you’re camera shy, and have reservations about making video content, soon, you might not have to, with viable alternative options to create digitally animated content. You’ll have to disclose such, but realistically, it’s the concept that will resonate with viewers, not the composition, and if you can avoid the tell-tale markers of current generative AI imaginings, it could be an avenue for your future development.

Though it could also be bad news for human influencers, who are just now having their moment in the sun, as more brands come to realize their worth in reaching certain audiences.

The “Creator Economy” in this context could be set for a rapid recession, as even short-form videos become increasingly AI-simulated, sparking all new trends in promotions, with brands happily welcoming the cost savings.

I do think that human creativity will remain an essential, and that no matter how realistic your AI creations are, you’ll still need human-centered emotion at the core of any promotion.

And until machines can actually think like us, that will remain the key differentiator, though the actual process of expressing your message looks set to change significantly.

This will be a key trend to keep tabs on in the new year.



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