With Marketers Gunning For Performance, Are Consumer Expectations Compromised?

BPRISE has been working with a number of brands courtesy agencies this year. With a two-year product in the making, we had with us some time to watch the market. It was unnoticeable at first, then with some deliberate effort, the mismatch really stood out. Interestingly, various other industry veterans had the same opinion. Advertisements on traditional media like print, tv, and outdoor billboards had a flavour that us Indians fell in love with. Utterly, butterly? Delicious, right? Talk about dairy products, milk specifically and we’ll have Amul at the tips of our tongues. Countless publications have revered Amul’s work when it came to advertising. They’ve brilliantly maintained contextual relevance and wit in their ads, till date.

Advertising: Evolution & How

Initially we were coaxed to buy stuff and marketed to on tv, radio, billboards and other print mediums. Today we have no choice but to consider digital advertising. At the start of this year it was written in the papers that the share of digital spending is expected to be about 16% of the total ad spends estimated to be around Rs 59,000 crore this year. Clearly brands believe in the power of digital, for advertising. And we do too. Why else would we spend our days and nights working on a technology platform for digital marketers? It is because man has evolved, technology has followed suit. Technology has provided convenience and we’re optimistic that the agencies using our automation platform agree to that. But what’s the one issue in the whole of advertising that’s quite the misfit? What is that one evidence of neglect?

Advertising: What A Miss

Image stills of tv ads reincarnate as poster ads. Video ads that run on tv sometimes show up on websites. Why cut corners with creatives? Disinterested viewers often skip ads that look and feel generic. Tech providers have been investing time and inventing tools to help brands up their relevance in advertising. Then why resort to image stills for poster ads? What about relevance? What about context? Where’s the personalization for ad viewers? Consumer mindset when watching tv and other mediums is different. This is precisely why creative on different mediums need to be treated differently. So how can advertisers be mindful of viewer expectations and needs? We bet that insights can help. Having an idea of what your customer needs (if you’re a brand) and what your content consumers relish (if you’re a publisher) can make a big difference. Experiment with native ads, videos, image ads, social media and more to truly pinpoint what works for you.

Advertising: How To Fix 

The number 1 recommendation is to stick to the basics. Start with ad dimensions, ad relevance and speak with viewers by keeping the context in mind. Of course, nothing replaces customer intelligence. Knowing who the viewers are and what they’re likely to like will be beneficial. You know as good as we do, how consumers are. They want quality and they want brands to cater to their specific needs. In fact, if you’re reading about the top-5 holiday destinations in India, you’d appreciate a tour company’s video ad explaining why they’re the best. We’ve had the privilege of meeting numerous digital experts, genius agencies and lovable brands and what they’ve had in common, apart from BPRISE, is their genuine interest in having ads made exclusively for specific sets of people. So, what does everybody vouch for? Customer insights! And this becomes more important to you as niche your market becomes. So, with growing trends in technology like AI, IoT, digitally-powered-everything and with a pressure to make everything perform, we hope consumer needs are met and not compromised. May ads, email campaigns, sms campaigns speak directly with the customers when it matters to them.

THE CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER (CDO) SUMMIT 2018 | LEARNING (PART 2)

We attended the CDO Summit 2018 recently and it spoke about the key digital, social and business challenges, practices, and innovations that are shaping India today. The summit was full of panel discussions with experts from banking, real estate and hospitality industries.

In our previous article we covered how banks are looking into “digital” to improve their customer engagement activities.

Our learning and observations that were real-estate specific include:

How useful are bots, really?

There’s no doubt that bots help gather information about website visitors, but can it really address visitor concerns? A study by PwC states that, although technology is changing customer experience, customers still want a human interaction. eMarketer also highlights how a study found that 80% of the respondents preferred humans for resolving problems, after making purchases.

Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand colloquial languages help your chatbots better understand and address visitors’ queries. Investopedia defines NLP as a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to break down and process human language. Similarly, real estate companies could invest in sentiment analysis that help in bettering the bot’s conversational skills.

BPRISE recommends studying the behaviour of your website visitors first with the help of web analytics to start with.

Understand what website visitors really want

For example your website lists properties available across the country and let’s say you have an upcoming exhibition in Mumbai. Wouldn’t it be interesting to fish out your website visitors who are from Mumbai and advertise exclusively to them?

Segmenting visitors based on what they read about and click on when they’re on your website is step 1 in gaining relevant consumer insights. American Marketing Association talks about out the types of keyword phrases that visitors use in search engines –

Understanding the intent comes with a close observation of your visitors activities on your website. If they’re looking up properties in Marine Drive Kochi, Kerala, good. They’re also filling up forms to help you contact them? Great! Now how about having your brand’s ads follow them everywhere they go online? BPRISE can help you have your ads placed at intelligent locations across the web.

Can “digital” make prospects see what existing customers see?

The answer is yes! All you need to do is analyze your customer data and take surveys of what your clients love about your brand and feed that intelligence into your marketing platform such as the BPRISE Manager Platform. While you’ll have to take care of the surveys yourself, we can help you gain customer intelligence with our analytics engine.

BPRISE’s analytics engine helps you gain the kind of solid customer insights you need to inform your marketing efforts. Once we analyze your offline and online customer data, we plug this wisdom into our marketing engine.

Stay tuned for the next post because we’re talking display advertising, email marketing and more to help you nurture and educate your best leads! BPRISE Manager Platform can help you place your ads in the best of websites in the country to start with!

If 60% of the population are going to find their next house online, wouldn’t you also want to be on the websites that your potential customers are frequently visiting?

 

Google Discontinues Nearby Notifications; Beacons Have Still Got Your Back

Brands and more specifically marketers are on the lookout for better ways to advertise to their TG. Proximity marketing, display advertising, location-based marketing are practices that you’re already familiar with. Target, Macy’s, Walmart and CVS Pharmacy are some of the leading international brands that aggressively use beacon-based notifications for promoting their products.

Retailers use beacon-based marketing to hook customers at their brick-and-mortar stores with various promotional offers. Examples include pop-up messages/push notifications that say x% off on products that customers are interested in while they are at the store, shopping.

Even app owners and publishers agree that push notifications account for a small percentage of the app’s overall traffic. For example, for USA Today, they drive just 10 percent of its mobile app opens and 5 percent of the mobile app’s page-views. Although it’s a small number, those slivers of audience that engage with such notifications are valuable. To receive a push notification, a person must have downloaded the brand’s (or the publisher’s) mobile app.

So, how do you now launch ads based on your customers interests when they visit your store?

With location signals embedded in beacons, WiFi access points and other sensors, proximity-marketing sure can help you reach a critical mass. But if you’re dependent on Android Nearby Notifications to reach your TG, think again. Google says, “On December 6th we will stop delivering both Eddystone and Physical Web beacon notifications.” Although Google will stop serving Nearby Notifications next month, there is a practical and an equally exciting alternative to it!

Get BPRISE’s proprietary beacon integrated with your brand’s mobile app

So, you have a mobile app for Android and iOS users? Great! Let’s get beacon campaigns set up for you. Beacon-based campaigns that run on your app can be made extremely relevant and contextual.

We’re saying that it is important to offer customers with relevant information as it is to engage them. Launching personalized offers, promo messages, and rewards notifications when at the store will inspire instant customer actions and brand you as a business that cares for personalization and customer satisfaction.

If you have a good understanding of your customers (that we call “customer intelligence”), you’ll find that such proximity marketing practices help you serve your customers with the right promos at the right time even if you don’t have Nearby Notifications anymore!

We can help you make customer profiles and solve the customer intelligence puzzle with our secret approach in gaining customer insights. That’s not all we’ll provide the necessary tech you need to launch your personalized marketing messages and advertising as well. We deploy not just our proprietary beacons but also our analytics and martech capabilities to make it a winning deal for you each time you launch an ad!