Programmatic advertising or Programmatic marketing is an automated technique of Real-Time bidding on a specific inventory for a specific set of people. The ad marketplace runs the auction for the ad slot available on a specific publisher’s webpage (and apps) and selects the one with the highest bid to place their advertisement on the virtual space. Programmatic advertising has emerged as the future of online advertising due to the immense possibilities it holds.
While there are multiple programmatic platforms, Google Marketing Platform (GMP) has a powerful suite with GMP’s DV360 (Display Video 360) being the market leader. The advantages of leveraging programmatic advertising through DV360 include delivering faster and smarter marketing based on Google Marketing Platform’s machine learning algorithms, gaining control of your investments, and understanding the audience at a granular level.
Most of you might already know what fantasy cricket is and how it works. But for a better understanding, fantasy cricket is an online game of betting on the players who are playing the actual game of cricket and we will be rewarded with cash in terms of points based on the performance of the players we bet on during the actual game.
Gamezy is the latest offering from Gameskraft – India’s fastest-growing gaming platform. This app is a fantasy cricket platform designed for the user to select their choice of eleven players from both the teams in a cricket match. Based on the performance of the cricket players in the real game, the users of the app will be rewarded with cash prizes.
Gamezy allows the user to change the playing XI at the end of the 1st innings based on the actual performance of the cricket players.
- Available in 8 languages
- Players can be changed before the 2nd innings starts
- 5-a-Side (an option to play without having to choose 11 players a side)
- Daily Contests and Head to Head games.
Themed Influencer Campaign refers to an example where we have used a “couple as influencers” to talk about how to earn money on Gamezy which makes it easy for them to buy their Valentine’s day gifts.
USP-based videos where the advantages of using Gamezy over other competitors like 8 Languages, 5-a-Side, and 2 Innings were shown as short stories or a slideshow to increase the Install rate.
Within a period of 2 months, we were able to see a 226% increase in Installs with a 50% decrease in cost per Install. Since this is a real-time money based application, ‘Add Cash” is one of the most important in-app events to achieve. We have been successful in getting a 378% increase in Add Cashes with a 66% decrease in cost per Add Cash.
Programmatic advertising is not as complex as it sounds. It is a way to buy automatically & manage digital campaigns, rather than buying them from publishers directly.
Programmatic advertising is an automatic approach of RTB, which will be used on a particular inventory for a particular set of users.
Real-Time Bidding (RTB): Buying and selling of advertisement space online through real-time auction that occur in milliseconds.
Demand-Side Platform (DSP): A software which is utilized by publicists to purchase advertisements consequently. A portion of the main DSP stages are Turn, MediaMath, Invite Media, and DataXu.
Supply-Side Platform (SSP): Technology stage utilized by distributors to sell publicizing space consequently. A portion of the main SSP stages are Google, OpenX, Right Media, and PubMatic.
Data Management Platform (DMP): An information stockroom that is basically a product that has data about purchasers and clients. DMP holds data principally through cookies that are utilized for publicist focusing on.
Ad Exchange: Digital commercial center where publicists and distributors purchase and sell advertisements. A portion of the main advertisement trade stages for automatic publicizing are OpenX, The Rubicon Project, and Google.
First-Party Data: First-party data comes legitimately from the source, either the computerized distributer or the stage holder. For example, in the event that you decide to publicize on Facebook, you can get data about the crowd to tailor your campaign.
Third-Party Data: Third-Party Data is any data gathered by an element that won't have an immediate relationship with the client the information is being gathered on. More often than not, It is gathered from an assortment of sites and stages and afterward is bunched together by outsider information suppliers, for example, DMP.
Self Serve Programmatic: Google offers their programmatic solutions only to agencies and not to brands - but there are agencies like Social Beat that offers a self serve option to brands and other agencies where they can use the existing DV360 access to run campaigns. This is known as Self Serve programmatic advertising.
Like Google ads calculate the bidding in real-time for all advertisers, the same applies to Programmatic RTB.
RTB is done programmatically and the highest bidder's ad is displayed. Below are the steps on how it works -
Private marketplace works as RTB in similar sectors, which is available only to advertisers that require invitation. Usually publishers block or reserve premium ad inventory for some selected advertisers. Most of the demand side platforms have their own private marketplace which is exclusively available to DSP customers.
This is a type of deal where the advertisers chooses the ad inventory even before displaying in the private marketplace by open auction at a fixed price.
This is also called spot buying as the purchase and negotiation happens on the spot and targeting, pricing etc are agreed by both the parties.
The advertiser also gets to see the publisher’s ad inventory which can help in deciding whether or not to make a purchase depending on the ad impression.
This type of deal follows the usual path of media buying, where publisher & advertiser is given a chance of negotiating on one-on-one basis. Bidding process is not followed in programmatic guaranteed. Once the negotiation is over the inventory is sold to the advertiser.
Programmatic guaranteed is also called programmatic direct or automated guaranteed.
Step 1: User clicks on a Landing page or website
Step 2: The owner of the site puts the ad up for auction
Step 3: Advertisers including competitors offer bids for the ad impression
Step 4: Highest bidder in the step 3 wins the auction
Step 5: winning ad is served on the website to the user who clicked on the ad
Last Step: Hopefully the user who clicked on the ad, converts!
The framework will assess the client examination once an advertisement is purchased on a portion of the measurements which is Behavior, Social commitment, Engagement level, Time per visit and Location.
The above information from the measurements will help the framework in arranging, estimating and choosing what setting would be applicable to a particular client. In like manner the promotion would be shown as an advertisement on the applicable situation.
For instance, when clients filter a few web journals which are identified with "Wellbeing and Fitness", The advertisement tech framework assesses and gauges the client conduct and shows a promotion that is identified with "offers on GYM Equipments" or "Sound eating routine food diagram".
Through the above measures we can focus on the correct promotion to the ideal individual at the perfect time which reflects in expanding the proficiency of an advertisement campaign. While Google only offers their programmatic solutions only to agencies and not to brands - there are agencies like Social Beat that offer a self serve option to brands and other agencies where they can use the existing DV360 access to run campaigns.
-Programmatic advertising works towards targeting your KPIs more closely which results in improving and increasing your overall ROI.
-With Programmatic advertising, advertisers have access to adjust metrics such as CPMs, CPCs, CPVs etc. which helps us in cost-effectiveness.
-There are a lot of things which we can explore on this platform. Gaining customer insights is one of them, and will enable you to take the learnings through programmatic technology and apply them across all types to improve overall advertising campaign performance, which results in a comprehensive marketing approach.
-Programmatic helps you to achieve your goal by reaching a larger audience which results in diversity and scalability.
Control the frequency and analyze the performance of ads across multiple channels like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Native, OTTs and Publishers with the help of campaign manager and DV360
-Avoid overexposing ads to the same user across platforms
-Acquire a wider pool of audience within the same budget. Thus, programmatic can help you get the best ROI.
-Get a single view of your audience across platforms
Create exclusive, interactive ads like Parallax, Flipbook, Cue Cards, and Audio banners
-Give your audience a better experience
-Drive engagement with your target audience
-Helps increase CTR and boost Ad Recall
-Access a more premium inventory and expand your reach across various publishers, OTT’s, audio streaming services, and third-party lists.
-Leverage 3rd Party Lists to reach niche audience segments relevant to your business
-With improved targeting, you can optimize budget allocation with efficiency and produce elevated results
-Track impressions served to a single user across platforms
-Gives a view of the entire customer journey and overlap of audience across platforms for better Media Planning decisions
-Run Sequenced Messaging campaigns even on the Display Network to drive your audience down the marketing funnel
-With comprehensive targeting options paired with audience insights and mining, you can optimize campaigns to deliver maximum results
-Improved targeting using AI & Machine Learning with advanced bid strategies and data-driven creatives to deliver personalization to a target audience
-Leverage Combined Audience - Create a combined audience using Google Audience, 1st Party Audience & 3rd Party Audience to target even niche audiences effectively.
Example - Your target audience is a CEO/CXO of a company size between 200-1000 in the US?
That can be done!
- As some of you might know, third Party Cookie tracking will be depreciated from Jan 2022 from Chrome (and soon other browsers). This is going to lead to many brands trying to build their first-party data and programmatic is best suited to manage this and build on your existing user data.
-Provides precise tracking with extensive targeting abilities
-Explore Google Audiences, 1st and 3rd Party Data, also create combined audiences to reach the right target audience
-Track post view and view through conversation for large scale trueview and bumper campaigns
-Leverage AI & ML for better-optimized campaigns
-Track Completed views and CPCV and not just views and CPV.
Transparency from your agency: Since programmatic is usually executed via the agency, it’s very important to have access to the dashboard to understand key metrics. Most programmatic platforms also allow partners to add a % of their fee to the media cost (screenshot from DV360 below). It is known as Partner Cost in DV360. For example, if the CPM is INR 200, the partner can add a 20% margin on it wherein your dashboard would show a CPM of INR 240 (20% higher than INR 200)
Privacy issues: Privacy concerns have arisen as programmatic ads are based on individual internet user's information. This applies to most forms of digital media advertising.
Ad blockers: Most internet users complain about how the ads pop up then have resorted to using ad blockers or using search engines like DuckDuckGo and this trend is likely to increase.
Firstly select your marketing campaign goal, then choose the type of programmatic ad campaign which would be suitable to your goal and strategy and lastly in the first stage would be to sign up for the right demand side platform.
First step in the execution is to set the estimated budget of your advertising campaign. Next would be selecting the basic targeting options. Last option is to select the creative type and upload the same.
-To optimize the campaign the first step is to Receive Real-Time Reports and Analyze the data.
-According to the Analyzed data optimize the campaign settings
-Customize the targeting based on the analysis and Retarget the users who didn't convert
DV360 is the extended version of DCM (DoubleClick Bid Manager), Campaign Manager, Data Studio & lastly Audience Center. This tool acts as a single tool which can be used for planning, organizing, designing, finding inventory, buying inventory, measuring & optimizing campaigns. Find out how we achieved a greater brand reach for a BFSI client using DV360.
-Collaborate across teams
-Gain transparency and control
-Get faster, smarter insights
This is where you build and execute the media plan. You can create, optimize & monitor the campaigns, Line items & Insertion orders.
This is where you manage your audiences. Audiences can be set based on frequency caps, Audience bucket can be created & Audience profile analysis also can be made in this segment.
Here, you tie your creative strategy to your data and your media plan. There are different variations of creatives, below are the following-
c: Data-driven Creatives: You can create a variation of your message which suits with different audiences
This segment allows you to discover and manage high-quality inventory from top broadcasters and publishers, which also includes exploring new opportunities in Marketplace and negotiating deals
All the campaign metrics can be found in this segment which helps in analyzing and measuring the performance across Display & Video 360 and take action on those results.
With the deadly virus and the national lockdown upon us, there has been very little to look forward to during this year. But thanks to OTT (Over the Top) platforms and the nation’s undying love for cricket, we are now anticipating the return of the fun-filled Indian Premier League (IPL) in the second half of this year. The 2020 IPL, like so many other events this year, will be held like never before. For one, the stadiums won't be packed with tens of thousands of passionate fans, as the tournament will be conducted in UAE with limited spectators. More importantly, the advertising engine that drives revenue for the IPL will be largely limited to digital platforms. OTT platforms like Hotstar are in prime position to capture even greater audiences and thus, have become the sole focus for brands. If you want to grab eyeballs during the 2020 IPL, a keen understanding of advertising on OTT platforms is crucial.
OTT platforms are one of the fastest-growing networks of today’s Indian online marketing world. With more people turning to digital platforms for all their needs due to the lockdown, these platforms have witnessed a tremendous spike in the last couple of months. With the current speed of growth, it is now roughly estimated that by the end of 2023, the Indian OTT marketing world would have a whopping 500 million viewers online.
One of the nation’s very own OTT platforms that is also the most-subscribed app in India, is Hotstar. Hotstar is owned by Novi Digital Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of Star India. As of May 2020, there are 8 million paid subscribers and 300 million active subscribers on Hotstar alone. Since IPL streaming is a service provided to paid subscribers, we think it is safe to say that we can expect another spike in the number of subscribers for the sake of the Indian Premier League.
Ultimately, video advertising is one of the most effective forms of advertising. An average person in India spends approximately 3.5 hours on video streaming on smartphones. In addition to that, 69% of internet users have one or more entertainment or video applications downloaded on their phones. With more than 95% of Indian households being single television households, the video-in-hand demand has made a huge difference to video advertising. This is probably why the 2019 IPL broke viewership records with up to 462 million viewers watching the game online and upto 300 million viewers watching it on Hotstar.
The following are some of the reasons why brands should advertise in this nation’s most awaited game on Hotstar:
After last year’s record-breaking viewership of 462 million viewers (300 million from Hotstar alone), this year we expect an outstanding increase in the viewership rate owing to the lockdown as well as the Disney+Hotstar audience pool of 250 million viewers.
With the previous IPL advertising rates being expensive and affordable only to the biggies of advertising, many small scale businesses could not advertise in the IPL. This year, however, the IPL offers a starting package of 1 lakh INR only - which means more brands will be advertising on this medium.
As per the audience interest, 66% are annual travelers, 60% are monthly online shoppers, 40% are degree/diploma holders, 70% are investors of stocks and MFs, and 90% have paid subscriptions. This opens up a vast variety of opportunities for brands to reach their audiences.
With around 56 matches, each match has around 2,300 seconds of ad inventory.
Hotstar advertisement in IPL 2020 offers remarkable engagement from viewers right through Pre, as well as Post live show updates and Highlights.
Since the public will not be able to physically attend the matches this year, the IPL experience is going to be different from the previous years. The same goes for advertising in IPL. Some of the most popular Hotstar advertisement practices in IPL are as follows:
Similar to an outdoor advertising billboard, a billboard is a big banner of your brand that can be in the form of an image, video, or a series of images as a photo carousel. A billboard may be placed on any content page such as the home page, news, sports, movies, etc.
10-30 seconds of unskippable ads that play during live match breaks/between programs. This is the most popular form of advertising used by a larger number of brands.
These ads are non-clickable ads that pop up during the crucial moments of the game. This ensures high engagement and visibility that offers a remarkable boost to your brand.
These are banners that carry the brand logo and their message and are placed right below the live streaming of the match in the social live feed.
IPL Advertising is a great opportunity for both moderate as well as high budget advertisers. It is used by a variety and a large number of brands in order to reach their target audience. Since Hotstar is the most subscribed application and IPL is the most-watched game, the two put together a remarkable number of viewers and a large audience of different likes and dislikes. With reduced rates and higher user engagement after the Disney tie-up with Hotstar, now is the best time to invest in advertising on Hotstar!
YouTube Trueview campaigns on DV360 provide more precise tracking with comprehensive targeting abilities. Advertisers can leverage Google audiences, 1st Party and 3rd Party data and create combined audiences to reach just the right target audience. It can track even view-through-conversions along with click-through-conversions at scale, completed views and the cost for a completed view while automatically optimizing for lower CPCVs and higher view rates using AI & ML.
Sundaram Mutual is an Asset Management Company that manages funds that cater to the investment needs of investors with different risk, reward and liquidity preferences. It is committed to making mutual funds accessible to everyone and is backed with a strong research team and robust processes. It is also an innovative thought leader that is the first to launch funds in new themes like Mid-caps, Capex, Leadership, Rural India, and Micro caps and Services that enhance value for stakeholders while upholding the highest degree of ethics.
Sundaram Mutual wanted to launch a new fund called Sundaram Equity Fund and wanted to maximize the awareness of the NFO. It also wanted to increase consideration for the fund and drive conversions with the audience created in the branding campaigns to push them down the marketing funnel.
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87% of the views were completed views
63% decrease in CPV which drove 0.6x incremental views
66% decrease in CPM which drove 0.7x incremental impressions
50% higher views compared to YouTube Masthead in the previous campaign
161% increase in brand search queries on Google Search
Programmatic advertising leverages the power of automated bidding for inventory in real time, which helps advertisers in delivering faster and smarter campaigns. India has seen exponential growth in programmatic advertising with 80% of the advertisers seeing efficient gains due to its effectiveness and the control it gives. The adoption of programmatic advertising in India is projected to grow by 52% till 2021. Programmatic advertising is the future of advertising in India and it is about time that advertisers start leveraging programmatic advertising to make the most of their advertising budgets. In this blog we’re going to talk about
Programmatic Advertising through DV360 offers bid strategies that leverage machine learning to improve campaign performance by serving impressions or increasing bids for users based on the likelihood of achieving the KPI set by the advertiser. DV360 gives advertisers control over setting a goal for their campaign example CPA goal - 500 and tell the system what to optimize for example - maximize clicks/conversions and also choose what to bid on example - spend the entire budget while minimizing CPA or set a target CPA.
Advertisers have various goals to choose from for Branding which include CPM, Viewability, and CTR while optimizing their campaigns for maximizing their impressions or minimizing their CPM and Performance campaigns include goals like CPA, CPE, and CPI while optimizing their campaigns for either maximizing clicks or conversions with bidding strategies focusing on a specific CPC/CPA or spending the budget while achieving the CPA/CPC the system can achieve.
Use the right bidding strategies for your campaign to show ads only to relevant users helps to make the most of our budgets and maximizing results
Programmatic advertising campaigns on DV360 lets advertisers leverage the power of personalization with data-driven campaigns and creatives paired with rich media formats for increased performance and engagement.
Advertisers can choose from various formats, upload images and copies suitable for different personas of their target audience and set the target audience for a campaign. The system automatically serves the most relevant combination of images and copies for each user based on machine learning. It involves using data to sub-segment audiences showing the right creative to the right audience at the right time instead of going the traditional route of showing one ad to an entire audience segment. This enables personalization and automation at scale, which means we don’t have to work on 10 different creatives with different copies and create different campaigns for each audience segment. Instead, we can easily do that with data-driven creatives on DV360 paired with interactiveness which helps maximize relevant engagement with the target audience and increases ROI.
An example of personalization with data-driven creatives
This helps advertisers make the most of their advertising budgets by reducing irrelevant clicks which in turn reduces wasted advertising budgets and gets more clicks from relevant users.
Leverage programmatic advertising for placing ads on different publishers like Moneycontrol or NTDV has several benefits that can lead to optimizing the efficiency of campaign budgets:
Setting clear objectives before starting the campaign helps in better optimization. The objective of the campaign shapes the entire structure of the campaign right from the goal, what we are optimizing for, the bidding strategy, the audiences that are targeted and creatives that are used. Making too many changes to these elements of the campaign can have a negative impact on the learnings.
With so many targeting options available on DV360, we can target even very niche audience segments to reach relevant audiences, paired with the relevant placement of the ads with data-driven creatives to be as relevant and interactive as possible.
A lot of times, advertisers initiate campaigns but pause it if there are no immediate results, however programmatic advertising, like any other advertising platform, requires machine learning to generate results and ROI. Advertisers should evaluate the performance of a campaign not just by the direct results but also by the impact it creates in terms of the consideration a campaign creates, how does the remarketing to this audience work in campaigns, etc.
Google offers their programmatic solutions only to agencies and not to brands - but there are agencies like Social Beat that offers a self serve option to brands and other agencies where they can use the existing DV360 access to run campaigns. This is known as Self Serve programmatic advertising.
Gone are the days when marketing used to be about intuition and gut feelings. Today, in a world where people use their phones for about 60% of their day, it’s extremely important for brands to understand what a typical day would look like in the lives of their consumers. What time would they wake up? What kind of breakfast would they prefer? Would they take a cab to work, ride a bike or drive their own vehicle? Where do they work? Do they come home to a nuclear family or a joint family?
The questions are endless, and while it may seem that brands are trying too hard to sell emotions rather than products, well it is true! Maybe it’s time to stop a moment and ask yourself, do you buy a product or do you buy the emotion attached to it?
It is because of this very fact, that brands are paying a lot more attention to deriving insights into their consumers and their lifestyles. Insight-driven marketing is nothing but tapping into your consumers at the right time and place with the exact communication that they would want to receive. Insight-driven marketing can help you navigate your way closer to your consumer, and it also plays a vital role in formulating strategic business decisions based on the marketing insights you receive from your consumers.
Understanding the demographics and habits of your consumers is not just a matter of numbers but is an art in itself. With an exhaustive insight-marketing driven approach you will be able to dive deeper into the following:
And many more such questions, which then allows you to optimize your marketing strategy to deliver the best results.
Here are an astonishing few facts that we found online from a study that dives deep into consumer behaviour -
Did you know?
55% of people interested in grocery online are men
51% of women are interested in social and casual gaming
60% of men are likely to be in-market for jewellery
56% of fathers online are interested in being a chef
Tapping into your consumer at the right time, using the right channel, with the right communication, can result in higher conversions, higher engagement and higher revenues in return. Many brands in today’s era are looking at diversifying their persona and communication, making it more personal and customised for their consumers. For example, a brand that’s available in Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities may want to communicate with their consumers in each tier differently, based on the kind of content each group resonates with, and the different channels each of them would be present on.
Knowing the consumer behaviour and patterns through first-party data is crucial, helping brands cross-sell and upsell products that may add value to the lives of our consumers.
Being able to track their behaviour and journey helps us dive deeper into whether or not they would be willing to purchase more products at even a higher price.
If a brand initially thinks of venturing into a new line of services, building a new product or expanding the current business in different markets, these decisions can be made a lot stronger and effective if they are based on facts and insights taken from the marketing data and their consumer’s behaviour.
While all this may seem a tad bit overwhelming, here’s a step by step process on how you can go about analysing your data and putting it to effective use.
While you may have run umpteen campaigns for your brand over the last year, giving you access to tons of data to look into, what’s really important is how you collate it, organise it and study the data. It’s extremely crucial to look for trends between your consumer demographics, age, gender, lifestyles and professions. For many brands, their data may not just end at consumer names, which cities they reside in, their age, profession and likes and dislikes, but also depend on which part of the communication did they most resonate with, that influenced their decision of buying the product or service.
Hence, for any brand that believes in connecting with their consumers, it is fundamental to understand:
Let’s follow a simple rule: Gather data points ------> Derive marketing insights -------> Jot down a way forward and implement
More often than not, marketing professionals pause at stage 2 - Which is deriving digital marketing insights from the data points. The key here is to apply all the insights to your campaigns and communication routes, which will, in turn, help the brand see improved business results and higher conversion rates, where consumers will start to resonate with the brand on a personal level.
Once you have implemented the marketing insights, the key is to compare data, both past and present, to be able to optimise your campaigns and strategy as you keep going. This will help retrospect on whether you’ve seen a rise in the sale of products and services of your brand and how much your brand has benefited from your insight-driven marketing approach.
Here’s one such example of insight-driven marketing implemented by us for Tata Mutual Fund’s – #NoToKatauti Campaign
Brief:
To drive investments for their ELSS (Equity Linked Savings Scheme) Fund between November to March – which is the period when people resort to filing their taxes in India.
Process to gain insights:
We asked a bunch of 20-30 people over calls and video conferences, on how, when and under what circumstances they file their taxes.
Insights:
Hence from this very thought, stemmed the campaign idea of #NoToKatauti!
Consumer segmentation based on data and behaviour analysis:
We divided our audiences based on four major factors in India, namely people’s love for cricket, love for food, the housewife community, and students.
Not only did we first deliver the video to them that they resonate with most, but we also followed it up with the other three in line, creating a ripple effect and building tremendous brand recall.
Results:
38.1% increase in brand lift
216.2% increase in brand interest
13.1% increase in brand awareness
25% of leads from YouTube
Here’s another example of insight-driven marketing implemented by India’s No.1 cookware brand, Wonderchef:
Brief:
To create brand awareness, strategize and devise a campaign for a good cause.
Insight:
We pulled out sufficient data to support the fact that the majority of men in India don’t cook, they don’t help out in household chores and they don’t have sufficient knowledge of ingredients. While we try to preach ‘Gender Equality’, are we really all that ‘Gender Equal’ as a country?
This very thought led us to create the campaign idea of #DearManHoldThePan.
Campaign Execution:
We got out on the street to ask men their thoughts and gather more information on whether they knew basic ingredients, herbs and how to even break an egg without ruining its yolk! And guess what? The results were hilarious, but very satisfying in terms of numbers, reach and the appreciation we received. Not only did this make our case point stronger, but also helped us develop more content, in the form of posts, influencer videos and a whole lot more!
Results:
Reach – 14 Million
Engaging about 3 Lakh Viewers
And we turned a whole lot of eyeballs!
Various examples have shown us time and again that personalised marketing is a digital trend that adds a whole different dimension and layer to any campaign or brand. By reflecting different facets of an audience’s personality, a product or campaign is bound to be a success. Relatability makes room for connection, and thus engagement, which is why marketing insights will never fail you. And with performance marketing, the insights only ever grow, enabling you to drive growth continually for your brand.
With the advent of technology and social media, a consumer’s journey to make a purchase has become very complex. Consumers can now easily discover new brands on various social media platforms and are researching multiple brands, choosing to compare the pricing/offers before making a final decision. This new consumer decision journey has given rise to a highly evolved and aware consumer.
So, how can brands modify the marketing funnel to engage with this new digital-age consumer? The full-funnel approach is one of the most significant aspects of a marketing strategy as this helps brands convert the prospective audience into customers. This can be done on digital platforms by showcasing relevant messaging to the target audiences, moving them along the funnel from ‘Awareness’ to ‘Consideration’ and finally ‘Conversion’.
Most marketers, however, tend to focus on the bottom-of-the-funnel directly and optimise all digital campaigns to drive consumer action. However, this could lead to increased cost per acquisitions and lower conversion rates. While performance-based campaigns are key as these drive business results, it would not be an optimal strategy to focus on these alone as consumers need to be aware of the brand and build an affinity towards the same before making a purchase or enquiring.
With the shift from traditional to digital, it is also essential that a brand adapts their marketing funnel with a digital-first marketing strategy. This approach implies that it is essential for the brand to have a mobile-first approach for all digital assets in order to reach and engage with potential customers. Brands should leverage Accelerated Mobile Pages to improve the speed of landing pages and interactive ad formats to ensure the best experience for consumers.
In the first stage, the focus should be on creating awareness of the brand and its legacy. It is considered a good idea to leverage short videos in this stage to engage with potential buyers. Brands should also look at highlighting the benefits for the consumer by showcasing how the product or service can help them and resolve a pain point.
The top-of-the-funnel should be looked at as a process of casting a wider net to reach potential consumers. The users at this stage might not be familiar with the brand and only be cold prospects. Using the full-funnel marketing strategy, brands could push consumers towards the next stage of the marketing funnel.
Brands could explore various options like masthead on YouTube or Reach & Frequency campaigns on Facebook/Instagram to drive the high-impact reach for the brand’s top of the funnel strategy. One other interesting option could be to explore vernacular videos for brand awareness depending on the brand’s target audience. With the launch of Jio, smartphones and data plans have become quite affordable, leading to increased consumption of vernacular content. In the current scenario, brands should look to adopt a multi-lingual marketing strategy to tap into the next billion users.
YouTube: Bumper Ad, Masthead, TrueView For Reach are the best ad inventories to explore using YouTube.
Facebook/Instagram: Reach & Frequency Campaigns and Brand-Awareness are instrumental in ad inventories to explore using Facebook/Instagram.
The metrics to track go as Cost Per Thousand Impressions and Cost Per Video View.
Keep In Mind: As brands, avoid using product-specific/sales material in this stage of the funnel.
Users who engage with the brand’s top-of-the-funnel activity will have to familiarise themselves with the brand through more details about the product/service via relevant content. It is recommended to leverage the power of thumb-stopping content to re-engage with these users. Brands should share more context about the product/service so that consumers could consider engaging with them and finally making the purchase. The middle of the funnel should be looked at as a broad set of interested audiences who are not customers yet but are strongly considering the particular brand.
At this stage, the key focus should be on showcasing educational content in order to build trust and consideration for the brand. Case studies, Blog posts, White Papers, Ebooks, etc. are simple yet very effective tools for the brand’s middle of the funnel strategy. On Facebook, brands could explore Instant Experience ads which can help nurture intent and further drive engagement.
YouTube: Bearing Ad Inventory in mind, Trueview In-Stream Ad is typically explored on YouTube.
Facebook: In terms of Ad Inventory for Facebook, the way to go is through Traffic, Engagement, and Video Views.
To track metrics, CPC, Ad Recall and Landing Page Views are taken into account.
Keep In Mind: Alongside sharing educational content, brands should start positioning their product/service at this stage.
Once users are aware and have developed consideration for the brand, it is time to drive action with focused creatives and clear Call-To-Actions. At this stage, the consumer is already aware of the brand and is in a ready-to-buy frame of mind. With the right communication strategy, the users can easily convert into customers from a prospect lead. The focus here is to make the final pitch and keep it straight forward with the brand’s product/service details and pricing. Some potential buyers might require the extra push in the form of a time-bound offers/discounted prices to make the final decision. In the last state of the funnel, brands should highlight why consumers should opt for their product/service instead of their competitor’s as part of the content strategy. It might also be interesting to segment different audience types based on demographics/behaviour and show customers highly personalised content in this stage to drive the conversion.
By following a full-funnel, approach brands should be able to generate high-quality leads as the users have gone through the entire customer journey of awareness and consideration before purchasing or enquiring from the brand. This is especially important in industries such as Real Estate where the purchase cycle is relatively long, and consumers are continually researching options.
YouTube: TrueView For Action is often explored bearing YouTube Ad Inventory in mind.
Facebook: The best Ad Inventory to explore using Facebook is Lead Gen/Website Conversion.
CPL is typically used to track metrics.
Keep In Mind: Showcasing a time-bound offer in this stage can create an urgency and prompt consumers to take action.
For a more in-depth explanation on full-funnel marketing, take a look at this video:
Analyse those leads, work on strategies that converts them to customers, and drive revenue to the business. At the end of the day, a full-funnel strategy involves a lot of work and time, but with an efficient marketing machine, the battle is half won.
As the saying goes - The world is becoming a smaller place and digitisation is definitely contributing to it. Speaking of digitization, online advertising is considered a boon for businesses to keep their audiences interested in their brands. However, targeting the right audience is the first challenge faced by advertisers. This is where Taboola emerges as a game-changer in the sector of native advertising. With multiple options and settings, brands are able to create relevant and consistent content for ads that are published in multiple webpages and are synced with the design and behaviour of the users on the page. The best part of using Taboola is that advertisers can reach out to a large target audience to make their content visible and thereby converting potential users to customers.
On the other hand, managing ad spends is the next challenge faced by digital advertisers. This is when Google DV360 comes to your rescue. DV360 is a service platform that helps online advertisers to optimise their campaign with data-driven insights. This platform integrates various advertising tools to create ads that are impactful and efficient. With DV360, it has become easy to manage ad spends and revise the strategies for maximum ROI.
The good news for digital advertisers is that Taboola inventory is now directly integrated with Google DV360, Google's Programmatic Platform that is also available in India. This means marketers can now access Taboola using the DV360 platform and enjoy the convenience of optimising their campaigns while reaching a relevant target audience. This integration comes in as a blessing for advertisers to make constructive decisions to run campaigns that meet all the goals while managing spendings to yield the best results.
If you are already using DV360, activating Taboola is a simple process. Here is a step-by-step guide to activate the Taboola Exchange option on the DV360 platform.
Now you are all set to start your ads and bring out the best results as per the objectives of your campaigns.
Online advertisers have started leveraging both Taboola and DV360 to run successful campaigns by making the right decisions and targeting a wide range of audiences with innovative creatives, audio and video ads. If you have still not used these tools, hurry up and leverage these valuable platforms to build your brand and generate maximum ROI.
The ubiquitous term ‘marketing mix modelling’ has been around for decades and with good reason. This strategy allowed marketers to identify the best channels and marketing techniques to maximise product performance. But as the channels themselves change, new digital trends emerge and customers begin to evolve, how relevant is traditional marketing mix modelling? Do the factors for a brand’s success still solely rest upon product, price, place and promotion? And if so, how has each of these 4 P’s evolved in the digital age?
The concept of the 4 Ps was created at a time when data remained largely stable, technological advancements were slow and consumer habits were predictable. Today, in the age of digital disruption, each of these facets has undergone a wave of change. In this climate, traditional marketing mix models are simply not equipped to deliver a realistic marketing strategy and accurate channel-wise attribution.
This change is primarily because of the following features of the digital environment:
A typical consumer today is bombarded by more advertisements on more platforms than at any other time in history. They might be exposed to a brand while watching a video, while reading a blog, or while listening to music, to name just a few. Because of this, it can be close to impossible to evaluate the performance of each ad in isolation. Each instance of exposure has a cumulative effect on the buying decision of a consumer. Most marketing mix models are not equipped to handle a multi-touchpoint customer journey.
Traditional marketing models are built on data extending from over one year. Marketers generally analyse long-term patterns of data to reach a conclusion on future trends. The digital age, however, does not afford the luxury of long-term analysis. Technology, platforms and algorithms can change within a matter of a few months, throwing even the most carefully crafted marketing mix model into disarray.
In a traditional marketing plan, platforms and budgets would be decided upon based on a marketing mix model, the plan would be executed and the learnings would be dissected later on. Today, however, digital marketing empowers marketers to completely overhaul their budget allocation and platform-wise strategies at the click of a button. A modern marketing strategy isn’t truly over until budgets are exhausted. Marketing mix models need to be adaptable and scalable in order to be successful.
Today’s changing market is completely different from what it was in the 1960s, which was when the concept of a marketing mix model was first introduced. Naturally, as a result, the traditional understanding of the 4 P’s needs to evolve to adapt to our current reality.
Here’s how marketers can reimagine the 4 P’s and build digital-ready marketing mix models for a full-funnel marketing strategy.
Reduced manufacturing costs, less expensive advertising channels and the rise of a thriving startup culture have lowered many of the entry barriers for new companies. As a result, the market is more competitive than ever before, with numerous similar products vying for the same customer. In this scenario, a brand’s product cannot sell based on a utilitarian guarantee alone. Customers now want to purchase a product that sells them an experience. They want a product that they believe will help them reach their ideal self, aligns with their values and sells them a lifestyle. Brands who capture this essence will ultimately capture the market.
Previously, the concept of ‘Place’ in a marketing mix model referred to the selection of optimum distribution channels to reach a customer. These channels in the modern age, however, are not as clear cut as they once were. Customers divide their time between numerous platforms; watching videos, scrolling through social media, reading blogs or listening to podcasts. Additionally, they can also make a purchase decision at any time of the day and in any place, for instance, during their morning commute to work. The introduction of Whatsapp for Business has allowed brands to penetrate even further into a consumer’s routine. Because of this, the focus needs to shift from having a physical presence in an area where the target audience is present to simply being everywhere each member of the target audience is, virtual or otherwise.
On the whole, customers today are a more cynical lot than customers from previous periods. They seek information on product ingredients, are more discerning of what they consume and are more aware of marketing strategies. Because of this, it is highly unlikely that a consumer will believe your product’s USPs at face value. Brands need to eschew a hard focus on promotion alone and instead supplement it with efforts to build credibility. Two tools have become indispensable for brands looking to do so: influencer marketing and content marketing. Influencer marketing builds awareness of a product using ‘influencers’ whom consumers already trust while content marketing helps brands inform and educate customers and develop long-term relationships with them.
Price is no longer the key differentiator it once was. This change can be attributed to two reasons:
(i) Improvements in technology and efficiency have allowed average prices of consumer products to hit an all-time low. Today’s customers need to pay less for a product than at any other period. As a result, most products are similarly priced and a consumer’s final purchase decision will rarely depend upon the price alone.
(ii) With customers seeking experience over utilitarianism, many are willing to pay a higher price for perceived quality. For instance, an eco-friendly sustainable brand might be priced higher than similar products, but customers will be willing to pay the higher price for what they believe is greater value.
Ushering in the age of digital marketing might mean saying goodbye to traditional marketing models, but it opens up endless possibilities for marketers. The availability of granular details, real-time analytics and diverse platforms enables marketers to create more effective marketing strategies than ever before.
With rapid technological innovation, analyzing the impact of channels and strategies for a period longer than 6-12 months would be futile. Technology and ad formats from over a year ago might be irrelevant or non-existent today. Limit your analysis to just 6-12 months at the most - anything extending beyond that is ancient history. To ensure accuracy of the analysis despite the shorter time frame, you can use more granular details at multiple relevant geographic and demographic levels.
Most digital marketing strategies today are characterized by their hyper-local, hyper-personalized nature. Unlike nationwide TV campaigns of the past, digital strategies now revolve around delivering personalized communication to customers. For instance, marketers might choose to speak to newly married women working in an IT job in Bangalore to promote their women’s health product. With such a wealth of targeting options available, it becomes critical for marketers to evaluate campaigns at an equally granular level. This allows them to uncover patterns and identify key drivers to further improve campaign performance.
With traditional advertising, budgets are usually allocated platform-wise, for example, separate budgets for television, radio and print. A common misconception is that the same technique can be used for digital platforms, for example, creating a separate budget for YouTube, Facebook and Search. However, digital platforms cannot be as easily segregated because multiple ad formats can co-exist within a single platform. On YouTube, for instance, brands can choose between masthead ads, 6-second bumper videos, TrueView videos or In-Stream ads depending upon your marketing objective. Each ad format will thus require a separate budget allocation.
In the same way that budgets need to be segregated by format not platform, performance analysis also needs to be done format-wise. The wealth of ad formats that digital marketing offers requires marketers to do an in-depth analysis of the performance of each to uncover which format resonated the best with the target audience. This type of analysis is important because marketers might uncover that whereas one platform as a whole performed better than the others, a specific ad format on another platform out-performed other formats. This can help optimize future budgets and campaign strategies.
Case study: How we generated 6000+ leads in 100 hours through a digital marketing mix
Our client, a leading real estate developer based in Chennai, approached us to help them reach a massive goal. For just 100 hours, their projects would be available at highly-discounted prices. Within this limited period, we had to maximize their reach, ad efficiency and results.
To achieve this ambitious goal within such a limited time period, we had to set up a flexible and adaptable digital marketing mix. We developed two strategies: one aimed at raising awareness among a consumer base who was not aware of the developer's luxury segment and one who were aware of the brand, but needed the final push to invest in a home.
As part of the marketing mix, we leveraged a number of platforms and formats, including YouTube bumper ads, promotions across social media channels, Gmail video ads and countdown ads on Google. To create a holistic approach, we also launched roadblock ads on traditional print media, including many of India's leading newspapers such as The Hindu and Times of India.
This highly-segmented strategy delivered phenomenal results. Within the 100-hour window, we were able to generate an incredible 6,152 leads. These results highlight the fact that an adaptable digital marketing mix is critical for brands looking to drive business results.
Watch the youtube bumper Ad below:
Marketing mix modelling has long been an indispensable part of marketing literature. Rather than do away with this tried-and-tested method completely, marketers should adapt each of the principles of traditional marketing models to the digital world.
It is the Internet era where people consider Google to be the universal encyclopedia that has answers for every query under the sun. As much as users love browsing information, interactive platforms like Quora have made their way through the plethora of information available online. For the past decade, users have embraced Quora for the concept that common people can share their thoughts as answers. It has emerged as a powerful tool that brings like-minds together on common grounds for knowledge sharing. It has also grown as one of the best platforms to amplify your content and ads.
Recently, Quora has introduced three new targeting options for ads that advertisers can utilise to enhance customer engagement, with an interested and valued audience. Here are the three new features added to Quora.
Source: Google
Advertisers can customise their Display Ads to a relevant audience depending on their history of content consumption. Targeting is based on the keyword search, or related questions read previously. Say, for example, let the keyword be ‘baby food chart’. If users search or read questions regarding baby food or nutrition, then Quora narrows down the target audience and displays your ads in their feed and question pages. Advertisers can target audiences who have typed in the keyword in their search or read related questions in the past 20 days. This feature enables advertisers to focus on the interested audience, thereby improving the number of leads.
Gender targeting paves the way for more specific targeting of ads. If your product is women-centric, like cosmetics, then you can opt to display your ads in the Quora accounts of women. Similarly, for products relating only to men, the same principle applies. You will be able to find this option under the demographic category in the ‘Ads Manager’ search box. This streamlines your ad spends on targeting the right users who are potential customers.
If your ad pertains to any software that is useful for a particular browser, you can choose to target customers with respect to the browser that they are using. This is an add-on to the existing feature, in which Quora targets the users depending on the mobile and device usage.
It is always exciting to experiment on different ad platforms. Now is the time to leverage the interactive Q&A platform of Quora with the new features introduced for targeted customer engagement. Implement these latest strategies to accelerate lead generation through Quora and reap maximum benefits.
Programmatic advertising is considered to be one of the biggest digital marketing trends in 2019 and Google has predicted that 60% of its advertising budgets will be put towards programmatic by the end of this year. Although programmatic advertising has taken over a fair share of the digital advertising space, there is still a level of uncertainty among many marketers. The main reason for this is the lack of information when it comes to programmatic advertising and the reluctance in letting go of traditional advertising methods. So how can programmatic advertising help Indian brands take their customer reach to the next level?
Today, two important factors that play a crucial role in the success of a business is its marketing techniques and digital advertising tools. Earlier many companies were dependent on offline mediums of advertising, but in recent years digital advertising has become the primary means of marketing for many businesses. Programmatic advertising is taking centre stage when it comes to this type of marketing.
‘Programmatic’, as the name suggests, is the use of a program or software to buy digital space/inventories. Not only is this process more cost-effective but it is also incredibly efficient. There was a time when the process of advertising involved numerous sub-processes and human negotiations that resulted in a lot of delays. But with the use of artificial intelligence, programmatic advertising has made ad buying in the digital space easier than ever.
In its simplest form, programmatic advertising is an automatic bid on advertising inventory which happens in real time. This is known as real-time bidding. It gives the owner of the ads the freedom to create and optimise the adverts to their liking. However this type of programmatic advertising is just one type, there are other programmatic types that guarantee impressions from specific websites. This is referred to as programmatic direct.
When a person engages with a programmatic ad, the website publishing the ad bids for an impression in an auction of the ad in the marketplace. This auction is run among the different advertisers who want their ad to be displayed on the webpage. The brand with the highest bid wins.
Although this auction process may seem time-consuming in theory, the system is automated and the entire auction can happen in milliseconds that it takes for the web page to load. The bids of each of the competing advertisers is pre-programmed into the system. When the customer clicks on the ads, the advertiser will convert this into a sale.
To learn more about programmatic advertising check out our video on how can it help your brand scale your digital marketing efforts.
When it comes to programmatic advertising, there are many different ad formats that companies can use so that they can create the largest impact and scale using creatives.
Here are a few:
Many brands prefer native ads because they can be customised to meet the look and feel of the publisher’s page. This can result in better visibility and higher engagement with the ad. Native ads also allow you to reach the market quicker because a set bundle of assets are used to fill in the ad templates.
In today’s mobile-first world, it can be hard to grab the attention of the audience. Bumper ads a quick and efficient way to give the viewer snippets of your product or service while they are on the go. Insteam ads, on the other hand, can be skippable or non-skippable, based on the objective of the advertiser. These ads are optimised with the help of AL and ML for better traction. They also have the added advantage of tracking post-view floodlight activity conversions for a specified attribution window.
Lightbox ad comes under responsive ads which have the ability to fit to any ad space depending on the display screen. Lightbox ads typically contain galleries with images and videos that enable the customer to effectively engage with the ad. Moreover, lightbox ads streamlines the ad engagement which can be done by clicking or tapping on the ad that is displayed. This way it prevents any accidental engagement.
The app install platform helps you to create an ad that helps in increasing the number of app downloads. You can promote your app by creating an interstitial ad containing images or youtube videos, catchy title and suitable description. App Install ads are designed to create awareness about the app and also allows users to directly install the app by engaging with the ad.
Parallax ads helps you create a distinctive and creative ad display. By utilising the parallax animation effect, you can display different images in layers with description. Users can view the entire ad only if they scroll down screen. Unlike other types of ad, the engagement is measured with the number of users scrolling down for complete information, even if they do not click on the ad.
Audio ads helps in brand awareness for reaching to a wider audience thereby increasing the number of leads. With the availability of different platforms like spotify, Apple music, google play and many more, leveraging audio ads will be a potential ad strategy to improve brand reach.
Flipbbok is a unique way to grab the attention of users with a short video on the mobile screen. This video is as short as five seconds and if the user is interested to learn more about the video, they can tap on the clipping to view the entire video. The video clipping plays while the user is scrolling down and and while scrolling up the video plays in reverse. Similar to parallax ads, the engagement rate is measured by number of users scrolling, even though they do not click on the ad.
Many consider Programmatic advertising to be the future of digital advertising. A report by Magna global stated that by the end of 2019, 50% of all advertising will be Programmatic.
So how can your business do Programmatic advertising? Like traditional advertising, there are many factors that a business needs to consider before they implement this. They include:
Once you know how and where you are going to implement the programmatic ads, the next step is to set goals. You need to know what you expect to get out of programmatic advertising such as the conversion rate or the click rate and set goals accordingly.
As with any medium of advertising, the first step is to study the market. Programmatic ads appear on webpages, apps and audio-video content, to name a few. So, you need to know what type of web pages your customers are visiting as well as what competitors in the same space are doing. This will give you a better understanding of what webpages to target based on the audience personas identified.
Programmatic advertising is a great way to put your brand name out there, hence, it is crucial that your ad appears in the right places to the right audience. It is a good idea to take up a full-funnel approach and target the audience based on the consumer's journey. Pick out the information that brings out the essence of the brand in the ad.
DV360 provides comprehensive targeting options in order to fulfill the campaign objectives. Advertisers have the option of choosing Google-provided audiences for no extra cost, along with first-party audiences or purchase third-party audience, based on the campaign goals.
With the help of data available on the market, the brand needs to gather behavioural insights to run a successful programmatic campaign. There are three types of data that come into play when thinking about programmatic advertising. The first would be the data collected by the marketer on the customers. The second would be the data gathered by an advertising agency who would use the information to help the brand build its programmatic advertising strategy. The third type of data, also known as third-party data are reports that can be purchased by any company online.
Brands need to pay close attention to the data they collect as it can give them valuable insights into customer patterns and behaviour. Programmatic advertising can then be targeted based on scale and accuracy. If the target audience is small, the accuracy can be intensified on a small scale or vice versa if the target audience is large.
When it comes to retargeting existing customers, it is important to use programmatic advertising to give them a story behind the brand rather than information about the product or service as you would with a new customer. But don’t focus solely on retargeting, your programmatic advertising campaign needs to be optimised from start to finish to keep the customer engaged at all times.
There are many challenges for online advertising and programmatic is no exception to these challenges. Although programmatic advertising is slowly gaining traction, the concept is still in its nascent stage. This is mainly because of lack of information about the concept, where and how to use the technique.
The next big challenge is , having invested money in ads, it is a natural expectation for brands to reap maximum benefits. But what if your ads are viewed by bots and not real audience? This is called as the AdFraud where your investment on advertisements yields no results. Here is where research and knowledge plays a key role in displaying your ads to the relevant audience. You should make sure that your ads are displayed on reputed and trusted websites, for which you should be sure of the website.
Brand safety plays a prime role in securing your ads on the webpages. Here are some brand safety methods that you can incorporate for your programmatic advertising.
One of the key concerns for many marketers today is brand safety. In recent years many brands have become more vigilant about safety measures which were spurred by the many ads being placed next to political and violent content that often took the focus away from the brand’s message.
Here are a few important tips advertisers can use to ensure that their programmatic ad buys to protect the brand name.
It is recommended that advertisers leverage their relationships with publishers and run ads in the private marketplace (PMP). This is an effective way to purchase programmatic ads because you know exactly who you are purchasing the ads from and where the ads will be placed.
It is crucial for advertisers to escape the vicious cycle of posting their ads in fraudulent and irrelevant websites. Your advertisement should protect the brand’s reputation by making sure you place your ads on premium and trusted web pages. Using brand safety you set a platform for the right audience to engage with your ad.
In contrast to blacklisting certain websites, you can also whitelist them. This is a list of sites that are safe to run your ads on. This may seem like a time-consuming task but there are many exchanges that require websites to complete an intense inventory approval process.
Not only do you focus on targeting relevant audience, you should also be aware of your negative targets. Under brand safety tools, you can exclude certain web pages from showing your ad, considering the site to be unsafe for your ad to be displayed.
Advertisers can use the services of third-party vendors to prevent ad fraud. This feature is present under the "brand safety" tab where you can choose between leading providers like Integral Ad Science, Double Verify and Adloox to prevent your ad from being showing to fraudulent websites while saving up on advertising dollars.
Programmatic advertising is definitely on the rise in India in 2019 largely because of the efficiency it provides. Traditional ad campaigns require a lot of iterations and can either be a hit or miss. But with programmatic ad campaigns, brands don’t need to worry about their ad expenditures. The program ensures that money is spent in the best possible way. All you need to do is enter the required information into the software and you are all set.
Programmatic advertising uses customer’s data and company goals to create and set ads to effectively target the customer base. This type of ad buying frees up more time from brands and agencies that they can use to think more creatively about the customer and how programmatic advertising can be leveraged to engage with India’s next billion Internet users.
Google offers their programmatic solutions only to agencies and not to brands - but there are agencies like Social Beat that offers a self serve option to brands and other agencies where they can use the existing DV360 access to run campaigns. This is known as Self Serve programmatic advertising.
2nd April 2019: Social Beat, one of India’s leading digital marketing agencies, bagged two top awards in the ‘Digital’ category at the recently held ‘Maddys 2019’ in Chennai. The first, a Gold Award, is for the Best Use of Digital for Klay Schools, and the second, a Bronze, for the Best Digital Public Service for Social Beat’s road safety awareness video.
‘Maddys 2019’ is an annual award event organised by the Ad Club of Madras to honour the most creative minds of the Indian advertising industry. This is one of the top advertising awards recognising path-breaking campaigns in various categories such as Print, Radio, TV and Digital.
Commenting on the digital initiatives for Klay Schools, Vikas Chawla, co-founder of Social Beat, said, “Klay is one of our premier clients in the educational sector and our specialised digital initiatives have played a significant role in establishing them as one of the preferred pre-schools in India. We began with a refresh of their website keeping in mind factors like design functionalities and user - experience. We also leveraged their YouTube channel with a series of videos highlighting the environment and the approach adopted by Klay schools in nurturing future generations. The center-specific digital campaign strategies proved to be a great tool for increased visibility, creating brand awareness and driving walk-ins.”
In addition to this, Social Beat also won an award for their unique video highlighting the importance of maintaining good road etiquette. Speaking about this recognition, Suneil Chawla, co-founder of Social Beat said, “The video titled ‘A Day in the office ft. Bad Drivers’ highlights the bad behaviour of drivers on the road compared to everyday work life. We projected basic road safety rules such as ‘Don’t text while driving’ and ‘Don’t drive on pavements’ using some common professional etiquette examples. This video was a huge hit on all our social media platforms.”
These awards follow close on the heels of the prestigious ‘Best Digital Marketing Agency of the Year’ that Social Beat won at the Marketing Maverick Awards held in Mumbai.
It’s no secret that the world of digital marketing is constantly in a state of flux. What works today might be completely obsolete tomorrow. If your brand is still continuing to use the same techniques in 2019 as you did in the previous year, expect to see declining results. To ensure your brands stay on top of its digital marketing game this year, here are nine of the most important trends to stay ahead of.
The online space in India is set to get even more colourful and diverse. As even larger numbers of users get access to low-cost internet and affordable mobile phones, there will be a greater demand for internet content in the languages they understand best. To cater to this growing internet audience, brands need to push vernacular to the front and centre of their digital marketing strategy. Right from their websites, to their apps, social media campaigns, performance advertising and even social media listening, Indic languages should be the focus.
Speaking to regional audiences involves more than just taking a brand’s main communication and translating it into various languages. Instead, it requires them to develop communications aimed specifically at these audiences, keeping their unique needs, challenges and desires at the core. Only by doing this can they create that all-important personal connection with consumers. 22 Languages, one of the top vernacular startups, is designed specifically to help brands reach out to a larger audience in vernacular languages.
Read our case study on How Multilingual Ads Helped Generate Higher-Quality Leads With Lower CPL to learn how vernacular techniques can produce unprecedented results for your brand.
The seeds of voice search were sowed back in 2018, but it is in 2019 that this trend will fully come into its own. Today, it isn’t just mobile that’s driving voice search, but the proliferation of smart assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Voice Assistant. The push for voice search will also be coming from the other end of the spectrum, from users who are just starting to use the internet or who might not even know how to type. But regardless of who the audience for voice search is, one thing is certain: SEO as we know it will have to change. Traditional keyword research will become obsolete since user queries will be completely different when using voice search. Voice also means that position zero, the ‘featured snippet’ will become even more coveted. 99% of voice search results draw from the featured snippet, so content creators will have to focus even harder on optimising their content for Google to pick it up.
Be sure to watch our detailed video on a complete guide to Voice Search Marketing for more tips and insights.
While videos have been around for decades, they have only recently started exploding on digital platforms and social media. In 2019, if your brand doesn’t have a strong repertoire of engaging, high-quality videos, you could be missing out on a sizeable audience. YouTube, the world’s second largest search engine, can become even more essential in 2019. Through techniques like YouTube SEO, brands can ensure that their content is visible to relevant audiences. For tips on how to rank your videos, read our in-depth article: YouTube SEO Tips: The Secret Sauce to Ranking Your Videos in 2019.
But the importance of videos extends beyond just YouTube. Videos on landing pages and in emails have been shown to improve performance and conversions. Facebook is also witnessing a growing popularity of videos. In one survey, around 44% of respondents admitted to watching at least 5 videos every day on the platform.
As videos gain momentum, multiple video formats are also being developed and explored. Interactive videos are emerging as a popular option due to the higher user engagement they deliver. In these videos, users are required to take some form of action which can influence the video. This could be either in terms of the content displayed or the storyline that the video takes. Apart from interactive content, live videos are also creating a stir. Currently, they are available on Instagram and Facebook, while YouTube is also starting to introduce it. Live videos are a great way for brands to showcase ‘behind-the-scenes’ footage and develop a more personal connect with their audience.
Chatbots have been slowly making an entry from 2017, however, chatbots in 2019 will be more intelligent than ever before. Most chatbots currently have a limited script, usually offering a fixed set of options that users can choose from. Once the query is narrowed down, users are often transferred to a human representative to resolve it. With the advent of AI, however, chatbots are likely to completely replace the human aspect previous involved. They are programmed to be smarter, respond to a wide number of queries in a meaningful way and resolve issues without requiring any human intervention. In fact, through AI, chatbots are likely to be able to keep up a long conversation with users without coders having to input a long script beforehand. As the technology matures, you can expect chatbots to become even more ubiquitous as brands capitalise on their low cost and higher efficiency.
AI isn’t just for smarter chatbots; it is also becoming the most accurate way for brands to identify their core audience and develop core messaging for them. Through a combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence, predictive customer analytics can eliminate much of the guesswork involved with digital marketing.
One way they do this is by assigning a ‘lead score’ to leads generated. AI can analyse large volumes of leads at a time, identify common patterns, group them into various buckets based on their behaviour and help you create hyper-personalised content for them. Since personalisation is key to nurturing leads, AI can almost certainly lead to higher conversions for marketers. AI can also identify similarities in current consumers and generate custom targeting options that marketers can utilise to ensure more accurate delivery of ads. This will help improve the quality of leads generated via digital.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was a crucial mobile ranking factor for websites in 2018. In 2019, the importance of AMP will not be limited to mobiles alone. Google recently made AMP available for desktops versions of websites as well. With this feature, users will be able to enjoy the same speed and easy navigation that AMP offers even while browsing on their desktop.
With the introduction of this feature, it’s time for brands to re-look at their website and how user-friendly it is. By making their websites (or at least critical, content-heavy sections like blogs) AMP-friendly, brands might be able to enjoy greater visibility on search engines. Since AMP pages are also easier for users to navigate through, an improved UX can encourage them to spend more time on the website and learn more information about the brand.
Find out how AMP landing pages helped us achieve a 33% lower cost-per-lead.
In 2019, almost 65% of all digital media buying will be programmatic. Programmatic is without a doubt the most cost-effective, efficient way for advertisers to purchase digital ad space. Programmatic advertising is rapidly growing in India with Google Marketing Platform (GMP) leading the way. Unlike previous methods which required human intervention and manual bids, programmatic algorithms can determine the best media mix and automatically purchase it. This technology enables marketers to reach a scale previously unthought of. They can target larger audiences over a wider variety of channels with absolutely no time or effort lost. Since it can optimise in real-time, markets can do a lot more with their budgets and reduce their cost-per-leads.
With every new SERP feature that Google introduced, organic traffic takes a hit. Click-through-rates have been steadily dropping and 2019 will be a continuation of this trend. Answer boxes, for instance, answers a user’s query without them having to actually click on a link. So while your page might show up on a featured snippet, you might not notice a significant rise in organic traffic to that page.
So does this mean the sun has set on the SEO empire? Fortunately, no. This just means that marketers will need to re-align their SEO strategy. For example, they will need to start focusing more on creating brand awareness and driving up brand searches. When users start searching for your company’s name, Google cannot prevent users from clicking on your website. It also means tailoring your content specifically for higher click-through rates. You need to give users enough information that Google picks it up and displays it, but not enough for their curiosity to be satisfied. If users are only getting half an answer from your snippet, they are more likely to click on your page to get the full information.
Previously, organic reach on Facebook had taken a hit, with pages showing close to zero reach without paid promotions. In 2019, all signs are pointing towards Instagram going down the same route. As Instagram grows in popularity and adds new users every minute, it predictably wants brands to start paying for higher reach. If your company page doesn’t have adequate promotional budgets, then it’s time to scale up this year. But while showcasing your brand on Instagram might become more expensive, it’s still completely worth it. India currently has around 71 million active users and this number is only set to grow from here. Clearly, brands cannot afford to neglect this audience, paid or otherwise.
2019 is proving to be an exciting year for brands, giving them opportunities to experiment with new ad formats and strategies. By taking advantage of these upcoming trends, brands can gain a strong lead over their competition.
This article was originally published in Campaign India.
If you're looking for more information into digital marketing trends that will shape India in 2019, do check out our co-founder Vikas' in-depth video below.
As a landmark development, YouTube has now expanded its non-skippable ad format to more creators, brands and advertisers who are looking to monetise their content. One of the many advantages of non-skippable ads is that your brand can reach its target audience with a complete message. Also, since there is no option to skip the video, your customers have no choice, but to watch the entire ad campaign. With a duration of 15 seconds, non-skippable in-stream ads are very short in nature and pop up before, in between or after a video.
Ideally, non-skippable ads appear on YouTube, partner sites and apps associated with the Google Display Network. The charges for the ads are estimated based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions) bidding. In this case, you need to pay each time when your ad is shown 1000 times.
When it comes to the goal of your marketing campaign, your ad campaign dashboard gives you a plethora of options such as sales, leads, product & brand consideration, app promotion, website traffic and brand awareness & reach. For non-skippable in-stream ads choose your primary marketing objective as “brand awareness & reach”. The next step is to opt for your campaign type as “video”.
Ideally, YouTube offers 5 different forms of campaign subtypes such as standard awareness, skippable in-stream, non-skippable in-stream, outstream ads for mobile and ad sequence. So, when your marketing objective is brand awareness & reach, you need to set your campaign subtype to non-skippable in-stream ads.
The first step in executing your ad campaign is to give the title of your campaign. Make sure your campaign name is within the limit of 120 characters. The next important task is to enter your budget value. This can be either total or daily accepted value. Once you set your budget, you can customise your campaign flight dates and other settings such as language and location. It will be great if you opt for video partners on the Digital Network to ensure maximum reach.
For non-skippable in-stream ads, the bidding strategy should be set to Target CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Ideally, through Target CPM, you are signing up for the average amount for every thousand times when your ad is shown.
Choose an appropriate YouTube video which will be used for the ad campaign. Please note that your video ad cannot be longer than 15 seconds. If you wish to run a 20 second video ad, you have to contact the Google team for a whitelist request.
This is the stage in which you are all set to display your non-skippable in-stream ad to your target audience. You can measure the performance of your ad campaign by checking the completion rate in intervals of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. However, statistics such as average cost per view, number of views and view rate will not be displayed in the case of non-skippable in-stream ads, since they are measured based on impressions alone.
With so many innovations and advanced features, this is the right time for brands and advertisers to venture into YouTube advertising. The biggest advantage is that new features like non-skippable in-stream ads play a huge role in executing cost-effective ad campaigns to reach the next billion internet users in India. Apart from this, they also give you the opportunity to monitor real time insights about the views of your ad campaign.
For more tips on how to rank your videos, read our in-depth article: YouTube SEO Tips: The Secret Sauce to Ranking Your Videos in 2019.
We are excited to announce that Social Beat has earned the Google Premier Partner Shopping Ads Skills for Google Ads/Pay Per Click Advertising. Our newly acquired Google Premier Partner badge for Shopping Ads certifies that we have demonstrated expertise and sustained client performance in shopping advertising.
Unlike traditional text ads that focus on the keywords you choose, Google Shopping ads determine when your product listing ads show up. Google considers the feed, the site and the bids that determine what search queries show your ads.
The success of Google Shopping ads depends on three elements:
We have successfully incorporated these elements and leveraged the use of Google Shopping Ads to sustain client performance in shopping advertising.
Premier Google Partners are required to demonstrate that they are maximising their clients’ performance by implementing Google’s recommended best practices in client accounts using Shopping Ads.
As a Google Premier Partner in Shopping Ads, Social Beat can help us place our client’s products on Google Search, set up inventory on the Merchant Center and create Google Shopping campaigns.
The new badge is designed to recognise Partners who manage a substantial portfolio of Google advertising campaigns and deliver great results for their customers.
Social Beat works with Google Sales Representatives to promote new and effective Google strategies to our clients. As a Google Premier Partner, we use proven techniques to help our clients increase their digital ROI. We aim to deliver the best results to our clients using Google’s strategies such as Mobile Innovation and Search Mobile and Display Innovation.
Contact us to get your Adwords campaign started or to optimise an existing campaign for better ROI.
YouTube might have initially been conceptualised as a platform for users to upload and share videos with friends, but today it has evolved into the second largest search engine in the world. This platform has also been quickly gaining popularity among the Indian internet audience. At the YouTube Brandcast 2018, it was revealed that an incredible 225 million Indians are actively using YouTube every month. Clearly, brands cannot afford to ignore the immense reach YouTube offers them.
To take advantage of this, Social Beat collaborated with our client, Sundaram Mutual to leverage a ‘masthead’ ad to introduce their new fund. This strategy achieved unprecedented results for our client, proving that it’s time for brands to shift to YouTube ads from traditional advertising.
Mastheads ads are one of the fastest ways for brands to garner high views and build awareness among viewers. These videos are displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for the entire day. Because of this, any viewer going onto the platform will be able to see the video. By creating compelling video content that converts, these ads can even be an important tool to generate leads.
Sundaram Mutual is an asset management company with over 20 years of experience in fund management. The company’s biggest differentiator is their strong customer base, built on a foundation of sustained outperformance in the mid-cap space. In keeping with this philosophy, Sundaram Mutual was launching an open-ended equity scheme for which they wanted to generate awareness in a very short period of time. With the reach that digital marketing for finance can provide, YouTube was the obvious choice to help them achieve their objective.
Because of the nature of the product, the target audience was very wide. The primary age group targeted was been 25-55 and included individuals from tier 1, 2 and 3 regions of India. Since the target audience was broad, a masthead ad would be the most effective tool to reach out to them and generate awareness almost overnight.
Masthead ads are charged on a daily basis, so we had to make the most of the 24 hours we had at our disposal. To do this, we ran the campaign during the weekend to achieve maximum viewership. For the entirety of that day, all individuals who visited YouTube, either through the mobile app or through the desktop version, would see the masthead ad at the top of the page.
This approach would help us gain video views, increase the subscriber base and drive traffic to the website.
Our 20-second masthead ad surpassed our expectations, delivering incredible results for Sundaram Mutual. In the 24 hours that the masthead ad was live, Sundaram Mutual’s subscriber base went from just 363 to a whopping 56,000! Currently, the number of subscribers has increased even further, standing at 57,000+. The video also garnered 14 million video views in the 24 hour period.
These unprecedented results only strengthen the fact that brands need to have a digital-first marketing strategy. Through targeted marketing options and easy trackability of results, YouTube can help your brand scale new heights. Do reach out to us to learn more about our Video Marketing services.
YouTube is going the extra mile to maintain its position as the world’s second most used search engine with the introduction of their Instagram-like stories feature, available exclusively on mobile. According to YouTube Brandcast 2018, 225 million active Indian users access the platform through their phones on a monthly basis, making this feature the need of the hour. However, though the concept is similar to Instagram Stories, there is a significant number of differences between the two. To begin with, YouTube Stories last for seven days and appear on the feeds of both subscribers and non-subscribers. Also, the comments and reactions to the posts can be viewed publicly, increasing community engagement on the platform. Brands find this feature very convenient to showcase teaser videos of upcoming collaborations or put up making-of-the-video snippets. Intrigued to know more? Read on!
YouTube stories are a great way to connect with your target group on a more casual note. You can create a YouTube story for your brand by signing into your YouTube account and tapping the camera icon and choosing “Story”. Then, you can either record a video by holding the capture button or put up a picture by tapping on it. You can also upload an existing video or photo from your gallery.
There are a plethora of tools available to edit your story as well. You can trim your video, add background music, text, stickers and video links. Not to mention, you can also choose from a wide variety of in-built filters to enhance your story.
The stories put up by your brand can be viewed on the stories tab of your page. Though they can be accessed by the public, it is highly likely for them to feature on the subscriptions feed of your subscribers. Additionally, non-subscribers can directly subscribe to your channel through your story, making it convenient for both content creators and viewers.
YouTube Stories can also be used as an effective tool to measure engagement and reach. Brands can keep a tab on the total number of views and comments each story has garnered. You can also see the total number of views generated by all your stories. Your viewers will not have access to this information, making it a useful instrument to customise your content according to the number of views generated.
You can easily respond and moderate comments on your YouTube Story by going to your stories tab and tapping on the comments icon. If you would like to highlight the comment in your next story, tap on the “Reply in Story” option available under each comment. You can respond with a video or a picture by simply recording or uploading the same, and tapping on “Post”. Your comment will appear in the form of a sticker on your story. It can either be pinched to resize or dragged to be placed in a desired location.
Videos are undoubtedly one of the biggest digital marketing trends of 2019 and are here to say. YouTube Stories are only going to fuel this growth further. Whether you are a leading real estate developer, a financial giant or a top pharmaceutical company, it is time you leverage the community engagement of YouTube Stories and tell your brand story.
For more tips on how to rank your videos, read our in-depth article: YouTube SEO Tips: The Secret Sauce to Ranking Your Videos in 2019.
Since it first launched, WhatsApp has quickly taken over SMS as the most preferred form of messaging among Indians. WhatsApp currently has 225+ million users in India, which is around half of the total number of internet users in the country. It a mobile app that’s here to stay in India.The growing number of Indians using WhatsApp can be attributed to the sudden drop in data costs and the introduction of low cost smartphones. Because of this, the app quickly became popular among Indians of all ages and economic backgrounds as it offered a free, simple way to connect with each other. But WhatsApp wasn’t just used for personal conversations among friends and families. For a long time, owners of small businesses like grocery stores and tailors used the app informally to communicate with their customers. Taking notice of this huge potential, WhatsApp launched WhatsApp for Business, a feature which can help brands engage with India’s next billion internet users. This new feature aims to simplify the process for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) to connect with their customers.
WhatsApp for Business is currently only available as an Android app which can be downloaded for free from the Play Store. iPhone users will have to wait a little while longer until WhatsApp for Business rolls out an iTunes app as well. WhatsApp for Business is exclusively for business owners to communicate with their customers. In other words, businesses will use WhatsApp for Business to speak to their customers who will receive these messages on their regular WhatsApp account. To register on it, businesses will need a number that isn’t connected to their personal WhatsApp account. If you don’t have a separate business number, you will need to either get one or transfer your personal number to your WhatsApp for Business account. Once the app verifies your number, you can start setting up your business profile and begin communicating with customers.
WhatsApp for business looks almost identical to the regular WhatsApp, however, there are a few key differences. A number of tools have been added to the business app, facilitating easier communication for business users.
Once on the app, WhatsApp allows you to create a ‘Business Profile’ on your account that needs to contain important information such as your business’s email ID, contact number and address. There is also a location feature which allows business to locate their store on the map. Filling in this information will help users understand your business better. Over time Whatsapp also aims to verify each business and link their FB profiles as well, so that only authenticated businesses and stores can reach out to their customers.
WhatsApp for Business also makes it very simple to engage with your customers, even if your consumer base grows very large. The ‘Messaging Tools’ feature allows you to create message templates which can be sent out to your customers automatically. ‘Quick Replies’ allows you to set message templates to questions that your customers frequently ask, so you can easily respond to them. These include ‘thank you’ messages every time your customers order something or details about your products and prices. You can also set up ‘Greetings’ messages which are sent when you are first interacting with a customer and ‘Away’ messages which are sent when you are unable to respond to them at that time.
When Whatsapp for Business was first showcased to our team at the FB SME Council in India, it was made abundantly clear that it is not going to serve as a bulk/promotional messaging service. The intent is to provide customers the convenience to reach brands and vice versa. So its ideally meant to keep in touch with existing customers or leads.
One of the key features WhatsApp for Business offers is an easy way for business owners to understand how well their messages are performing. For now, the current version of WhatsApp for Web offers basic statistics such as the number of messages delivered and number of messages actually opened. The data collected from these statistics can offer business owners invaluable information on the efficacy of their message strategies. This information allows them to identify the type of content their target audience will find engaging. This can help them come up with more targeted message strategies that will resonate better with their audience. While the current statistics offered are very straightforward, future updates of WhatsApp for Business might include more detailed statistical tools.
One of the biggest hurdles that WhatsApp for Business faces is that non-business users might not like receiving business messages in their WhatsApp inbox. Most of our SMS inboxes are filled with promotional messages from businesses with barely any messages from our actual contacts. With the introduction of WhatsApp for Business in India, especially since it’s free, these businesses might start using WhatsApp instead to message people. Because WhatsApp is such a personal form of communication, the fear of spam is ever-present, with users expressing concern over their WhatsApp inbox also becoming flooded with promotional messages.
However, WhatsApp has ensured that it is putting the users first even with the introduction of WhatsApp for Web. If users are receiving too many messages from a business or they aren’t interested in the business, they can easily block the business or report it as spam. The rigorous verification procedure ensures that the business on the app are legitimate, reducing the chances of spam. WhatsApp is also introducing a verification badge against businesses if their WhatsApp for Business number matches the number registered against their business. This feature will help users understand which businesses are authentic.
After the success of an initial beta version of the service, WhatsApp launched the WhatsApp Payments feature in India for Android during early February of 2018. This feature is very similar to other digital payments services like PayTM as it operates through the United Payments Interface (UPI) and supports most of the major banks used in India. Once you have verified your bank account details, you can directly transfer money from your account to other users through WhatsApp.
WhatsApp Payments and WhatsApp for Business in India are two new features which can work together in synergy. It can enable small business to reach out to their customers who can then pay for their products or services directly through WhatsApp. Since the upper limit for the amount of money which can be transferred through WhatsApp Payments is set at Rs. 5,000, it makes its features best suited for SMEs. For example, using WhatsApp for Business and WhatsApp Payments, users can easily order and pay for their weekly groceries from the local convenience store. This can go a long way in helping small business improve their sales.
As the name suggests, WhatsApp for Business works like a typical WhatsApp account but has additional privileges that are tailor-made for businesses. Aptly titled “WhatsApp Business”, the app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store. Once downloaded, you can register with a phone number that is exclusively used for your business. You can then stay connected with your consumers with interactive tools that let you respond to messages easily, sort your messages as per your preferences and automate your replies, among other functional tasks.
Just like the regular app, WhatsApp for Business is also free. The only expense you will face is setting up a distinctive mobile number that will be used exclusively for your business. You will need this to register your business on the app. However, WhatsApp may begin charging businesses in the future for these services.
You begin by downloading the app titled “WhatsApp Business” from the Google Play Store. Once you agree with the terms and conditions, you will have to register with a phone number used exclusively by your business. Once the number is verified, you can begin using the app to stay connected with your consumers.
WhatsApp for Business is currently available only on the Google Play Store. You will need an Android device to download and use it. However, the app is under development for iPhone users and will be available on iStore soon.
Apart from it being exclusively designed for businesses, WhatsApp Business has a distinctive feature called “Business Profiles”. This tab helps consumers generate more information about the business such as the official email ID, website and store address. This tab also accommodates a small description of the business to give consumers detailed insights into the kind of products or services offered.
WhatsApp for Business also offers a plethora of handy messaging tools to make it easier for to interact with consumers by sorting messages, creating automated replies and designing frequentlyused templates for messaging.
There are many messaging tools available in WhatsApp Business that make it easier for businesses to interact with their consumers. For example, you have a “Quick Replies” option to send instant answers to frequent questions. You can also create a template to greet your consumers with a greetings message or a thank you note. Additionally, you can create a customised “Away Message” to let your customers know you are currently not available and will get back to them shortly.
Apart from tools for easy execution, WhatsApp Business also offers statistical data of your messaging pattern. You can keep a tab on the number of messages sent, delivered and opened to give you a fair idea of how consumers are responding to your messages.
While WhatsApp for Business is still in its nascent stage, it definitely has the potential to explode in India. Evolving digital marketing techniques in tier 2 and tier 3 cities should definitely begin to utilise WhatsApp for Business in their strategies. For small businesses, it could prove to be an important tool to help them expand their profits in the face of growing competitions from larger corporations. We also understand that APIs to allow for managing larger number of conversations is on the cards so the future of Whatsapp for Business is indeed exciting.
Since becoming a Google Premier Partner, Social Beat has strived to push the boundaries in digital marketing to deliver the best ROI for our clients. We are happy to announce that after being nominated as a finalist for the Mobile and Display Innovation 2018 by Google, our consistent efforts have been rewarded! Social Beat has been selected as the winner of the Mobile Innovation Award at the Google Premier Partner Awards in Mumbai. This award is a testimony as to why brands need a digital-first marketing strategy.
This marks the second consecutive year we have been awarded by Google. In the 2017 edition, Social Beat won the Display Innovation Award for our groundbreaking work with Casagrand. Google only chooses five agencies for this award every year and we are honoured to be one of them.
India Home Health Care (IHHC), a partner of BAYADA Home Health Care, is committed to providing high-quality care for the health and well-being of loved ones from the comfort of their home. Their team includes professionally-trained registered and associated nurses, medical doctors, medical care-takers, occupational therapists and attendants.
The objective for India Home Health Care was to boost their lead generation strategy to acquire better quality leads at the lowest price possible.
Some of the obstacles in our path to achieve this objective were:
To overcome these challenges, we had to think out of the box. Some of the path-breaking techniques we implemented were:
These strategies helped us achieve unprecedented outcomes for our client, IHHC. Our conversion rate increased from 2.16% to 6.17% with a page load time of less than 3 seconds and a 33% decrease in the cost per lead. After the implementation of AMP, the quality score of the keywords increased to 8/10 and conversions increased by 20%. 90% of the campaign was moved to mobile and this resulted in 95% conversions and a 16% click-through rate. The change to the Position-Attribution model allowed us to better understand the consumer decision making process.
We are proud of the hard work and dedication of our Social Beat team that consistently exceeds client expectations to achieve the best results for them.
You can also read our blog to learn more about How AMP lowered CPL by 33% for IHHC.
The second edition of our Digital Leadership Summit was a grand success with key insights shared by industry leaders from across the nation. Mr Omkar Rajadhyaksha – Managed Partners Lead, New Business at Google – was our first speaker who threw light on the strategic methods brands can take up to grow their business through Google in 2019 with focus on futuristic digital marketing trends to look forward to. Let’s take a look at the key insights of the session.
With 650 million active Internet users in the nation, almost half our population is consuming content online. However, 7 out of every 10 Indians access the Internet through mobile, entirely surpassing the desktop and creating a mobile-first ecosystem for brands to leverage. To add to this, the introduction of Jio has led to a five times increase in 4G data being consumed, when compared to the 2G and 3G plans used before. This has contributed majorly to the online growth of brands. Though the nation is still lagging behind in terms of speed, the easy access to inexpensive data plans, coupled with the drop in the prices of smartphones, is a good start.
After Google, YouTube is the second most-used search engine proving that videos are the future. This platform alone has witnessed a 400% increase in video consumption through mobile alone. These staggering numbers only prove that organisations should leverage the reach of videos to tell their brand story. The most-searched genre is that of entertainment with the top searches being comedy clips and song covers. The other genres that are very popular are food-related content, how-to series and mobile unboxing videos that have also contributed majorly to the expansion of YouTube.
The growth of regional content has been one of the biggest digital marketing trends in the past few years and is showing no signs of fading away. As per a recent Indian Readership Survey (IRS), each one of the top twenty publications read across the nation is in a regional language except for Times of India that ranked in the eleventh position. Furthermore, there is no surprise that the same behaviour is being translated online. As per a recent survey conducted by KMPG, a whopping 88 percent of online users said they would click on a multilingual ad rather than one that is in English.
Consumers are adopting innovative ways to search and shop, and voice assistants are playing a huge role in this aspect. As per a recent survey conducted by Google, 28% of queries are made by voice on search apps. Furthermore, there has been a 400 percent increase in Hindi voice searches ever since Hindi was introduced as a language on the assistant. There has also been a 63% increase in phone-unboxing searches, especially when the phone is bought online, with a 70% increase in price-related searches for smartphones falling in the range of Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000.
With digital and mobile merging together as one, the whole formula for brands to drive growth has evolved. Google closely observed the online behaviour of 100,000 active users and noticed that the marketing funnel is no longer just about awareness, consideration and purchase. It is filled with intent-rich moments of consumers when they make direct queries online, redefining the traditional funnel-like approach. The new-and-improved marketing funnel is now not as streamlined and has the potential of adopting an hourglass, diamond or a pyramid shape based on the intent-rich moments of consumers. These moments of intent, also known as micro-moments, play a huge role in either expanding or narrowing down the consideration set of the funnel. This proves that a consumer’s online journey is unpredictable and brands need to anticipate these micro-moments to target a custom intent audience.
So where does Google fit in all this? The world’s largest search engine has seven different products to offer based on utility. From Google Maps and Google Chrome to Gmail, these digital utilities are free and help in the day-to-day digital routines of consumers. They are updated regularly through machine learning and artificial intelligence to adapt to the lifestyle of the users. Furthermore, these products can be monetised to ensure your brand is present across the intent-rich moments of your consumers.
TrueView for action form ads: YouTube has come a long way from a mere video platform to the cusp of performance and branding. Organisations can now drive performance through YouTube with TrueView for Action form ads that present the user with a pre-filled form along with the ad. This is a classic example of how brands can reach out to viewers during an intent-rich moment.
YouTube home feed ads: Just like masthead ads, YouTube home feed ads are plastered on top of the YouTube home feed every day, targeted based on the content consumption pattern of the user. These ads have the potential to create a billion impressions with 100 million unique ones pan India per day. They are all the more enriching since they are in video formats and are far more effective than search and display ads that are almost static today.
Display ads in Discover: Formerly known as Google feed ads, these ads are designed to look and feel native to organic cards for seamless brand placement on Google feeds. However, it is important to focus on the creative and the messaging of the ad and not go in for plain Jane designs.
A lot of digital-first brands are looking at brick and motor. Since the consumer journey has now altered the traditional marketing funnel with more research going into the consideration stage, online brands are adapting to this change with pop-ups and stalls to showcase their products. Even if consumers are completely convinced to buy your product online, they prefer visiting the physical store to experience the look and feel before investing. This proves that it is a merit to integrate your online store with offline sales to capture the entire 360° of the consumer journey. Users get influenced online and experience the product offline making it a win-win for both brands and consumers.
Whichever sector your firm belongs to, marketers should hold their digital media accountable for business. Instead of basic digital metrics like the number of clicks and the CTR, you should also tie up your media spend to revenue, profit margin, gross margin and other business metrics.
It is time we stop considering the average value of metrics to measure digital performance. Instead, brands need to identify the consumers who spend more on online products and let go of the ones who are left over by your competitors. It is essential to look for profitable consumers who will build your business.
As the saying goes - the only thing that is constant is change! Google’s digital utilities work on automation to learn from the changes and provide higher ROI. It is safe to say that in today’s digital age, automation is the way to go. If not, your brand will definitely be left behind by its competitors!
The insightful session by Mr Omkar Rajadhyaksha was an eye-opener for leading brands and marketers. Whether you are a top real estate developer, financial giant, FMCG brand or a B2B organisation, make sure you adapt to the evolving digital ecosystem and grow your business.
Yes, it's true. You cannot ignore the power of digital marketing, especially if you are a real estate developer. With potential homeowners using the Internet to research their future purchase, a strong and powerful digital marketing strategy is what will help real estate developers beat the competition. But with so much information available online, where do you start? We bring you a detailed and extensive guide to digital marketing for real estate to bring you one step closer to your marketing goals. Our guide covers:
As the saying goes – The only thing constant is change. Internet usage has evolved in India from being a mere medium to connect with friends to an expansive forum to grow your business and widen your reach. With the drop in the prices of smartphones and the introduction of affordable data plans by Reliance Jio, users from the tier 2 and tier 3 regions of the nation have joined the digital bandwagon and brands are leaving no stone unturned in targeting them.
However, when it comes to generating high-quality leads for your brand, just detailed targeting is not enough. Marketers need to find an emotional connect with the potential target audience to create a solid bond of trust and increase brand assurance. Keeping this in mind, we used multilingual advertising to help our real estate clients reach their target audience using Facebook marketing solutions. Keeping the vernacular approach in mind, we leveraged the reach and convenience of Facebook Form ads with the sole objective of lead generation. However, it was not just the ads that were vernacular, even the content in the forms was presented in a regional language to provide an end-to-end multilingual approach.
Casagrand is one of the top property developers in the country with a strong presence in the south. In an attempt to promote their recent project – Casagrand Smart Town – we used Facebook to advertise the project. Since the project is located in Thalambur, in the IT corridor of Chennai, we targeted both people working in the region and those who are looking for investing options in the area. The project is smartly priced at Rs 24 Lakhs, making it a great option for first time home buyers as well.
To begin with, we ran English ads on Facebook which resulted in a high CPL. Understanding the target audience is also Tamil speaking, we ran the same ads in Tamil as well. The regional ads generated 3x the number of leads and the CPL was almost 1/3rd. This resulted in almost a 9x better engagement with the same investment. This only proves that targeting your audience with a multilingual ad strategy helps both the consumers and the marketers.
L&T is a household name in our nation, known for top-notch residential and commercial developments that are landmarks of their own. L&T Praganya Eden Park is an integrated township located in Siruseri, with spectacular 3BHK apartments packed with new-age amenities and facilities. Again, since Siruseri is a hot destination for both IT professionals who travel to the locality every day for work and real estate investors looking for burgeoning areas to buy a home in, we targeted both the groups on Facebook through Tamil ads.
The campaign resulted in over 25% reduction of CPL with the average CPL of the campaign being 15% lesser than average CPLs in this micro market. Additionally, it generated multiple leads with 3 site visits.
Nisarg Greens located in Ambernath East, Mumbai, is one of the most coveted gated communities of the region with 1, 2 and 3 BHK apartments built in a luxurious plot of 25 acres. This property was promoted in Marathi to connect with the local audience and generate high-quality leads instantly. The price point of this project is attractive, making it a great buy for young families and those who have just started working. Consumers were targeted with an end-to-end multilingual marketing approach with both the lead forms and the ads being presented in Marathi. The campaign resulted in a 20% increase in qualified leads, out of which a whopping 15% contributed to walk-ins, and one successful booking!
Lancor Lumina 2020 is a newly launched community enclave offering premium lifestyle 2 and 3 BHK apartments in the fast-appreciating locality of Guduvanchery. The project was promoted on Facebook in both English and Tamil ads. The English ads and Tamil ads were run one after the other and resulted in 64% drop in CPL and 75% more number of leads.
This case study is an important example of the power of social media marketing and multilingual advertising. However, it is vital to understand that multilingual marketing is not just about translation. It is about creating an end-to-end marketing strategy in the language your target audience is comfortable in. This is exactly what we offer at 22 Languages.
With higher sales numbers and lower cost per lead, Digital Marketing Has Transformed The Real Estate Industry. Don’t forget to check out our Comprehensive Guide For Digital Marketing For Real Estate for a more in-depth analysis.
Whatever be the type of business you are running or the industry you are from, generating leads is what it all comes down to. Without leads, a business has no profit, no revenue and ultimately, no business. However, generating these leads can be a major challenge for companies in the B2B space. Most B2B businesses operate in a very niche segment, which automatically reduces the number of potential leads that can be generated. To add to that, personal relationships with clients has always been the key deciding factor for companies in this sector looking to acquire new customers. These elements might make generating B2B leads more difficult than for other sectors, but it’s not impossible! With the right mix of proven techniques, your business can acquire high-quality leads through the digital medium.
So, as a business owner or an entrepreneur, how do you generate leads to grow your B2B business? Let’s take a look at few of the tried-and-tested ways.
As the age-old saying goes, Content is King. The biggest advantage of using content marketing instead of advertising as your lead generation strategy is that it reaches users who have activated ad blockers. Advertising your product through search engine-optimised content marketing also helps in boosting organic traffic to your website.
Let’s take a look at the various forms of content you can use to leverage content marketing for greater brand awareness.
Blogs have become essential for every business and are the best way to generate informative and educational content about your brand. Blogs are also a guaranteed SEO- friendly marketing method that generates organic traffic to your website. By consistently adding authoritative high-quality content on your blog, you can establish your brand as a thought leader in your domain. Over time, your blog will help build a strong community of interested individuals that you can tap into to generate leads.
If pictures can speak a thousand words, it is safe to say that videos present the viewers with a thousand pictures. They give viewers a detailed insight into the products and services offered by your company which plays a huge role in influencing their decision to convert into leads. Videos can also present complicated concepts in a very engaging manner that is easy to understand. This can help potential clients get a better understand of your products and services. From a whiteboard video explaining a solution to a particular problem in your industry to a product-centric video, opportunities are aplenty.
For Sundaram Business Services, we created a short explainer video detailing how accounting firms would benefit from outsourcing their routine tasks. This video encapsulates Sundaram Business Services’ USPs in a crisper and more compelling manner than any other medium would be able to.
E-book and white papers are excellent examples of content that can be a powerful tool for lead generation. There are two ways you can achieve this objective:
This method gives you a hand-picked database of clients who are particularly interested in your brand as they took the time and effort to fill a form just to read your content. To generate quality leads, make sure your content is extremely informative and educational with the right proportion of generic and promotional content. The best way to do this is to understand what your audience is searching for and write about the topic to cater to their needs.
Backing up your content with infographics, reports, graphs and other forms of research adds credibility to your claims. In order to explain your services and their advantages more effectively, take your content strategy up a notch and present your audience with an informative case study. Nothing convinces potential clients better than examples of how much you have succeeded in the past with other B2B clients.
Content marketing is all about being actively involved in the digital space. Bring out your brand name by conducting webinars or interactive podcasts on topics which are trending among your audience segment audience to spark interest. This will create awareness about your organisation and indirectly showcases your products and services for the world to see.
It isn’t just writing high-quality content that is important, but optimising it for search engine rankings. SEO is a guaranteed way to boost your brand image and increase your website traffic.
The logic is simple. Most people searching for B2B services on the internet are looking to close the deal. Presenting them with your website is a guaranteed way to effective lead generation for your organisation. As per a recent study, the close rate of an SEO lead is a whopping 14.6% while the close rate of a sponsored lead is a mere 1.7%. Additionally, of the overall local Google traffic, 67% of searches end up in a conversion. With such stunning numbers, there is no doubt that SEO is the most-effective long-term lead generation strategy for B2B businesses.
LinkedIn is the biggest professional network in the world, so when it comes to finding potential clients for your B2B business, it is indispensable. It offers more defined targeting options that Facebook does, helping you find your exact target audience, no matter how niche your segment is. The key to successfully using LinkedIn for lead generation is to adopt a ‘full-funnel approach’. Once you create a target audience, ensure that all your promotions are sent to this same template. This ensures that your brand engages with them right from the awareness stage to the final conversion step.
Read on to find out what are the tools you can leverage on LinkedIn to widen your clientele.
Promoting your blogs on LinkedIn through Sponsored Posts is essential to widening their reach. This tool allows your content to be seen by a highly-relevant target audience who might not have otherwise come across your brand or content. By promoting blogs based on topics that your audience will find useful, you can initiate a relationship with your audience. Being consistent with your promotions will ultimately increase brand awareness and improve your audience’s perception of your company.
We leveraged LinkedIn Sponsored Posts for one of our B2B clients – BijliPay. We promoted an extensive in-house blog on the benefits of choosing mPOS devices over the traditional POS devices. The blog gives the reader a detailed insight into the services provided by BijliPay and indirectly works as a lead generation platform to convert the reader into a potential client.
LinkedIn lead ads take lead generation for B2B businesses to the next level. They work like usual lead ads, except that when you click on the call to action, the browser takes the user to a pre-filled lead form. The form is pre-filled with information retrieved from the user’s profile, eliminating the need to fill it up manually. Apart from saving a lot of time and effort, this feature allows users to fill in the lead form in the LinkedIn page itself without the need to visit a landing page or website. These ads are particularly effective after you have been promoting your content to the same target audience. Since the audience is already aware of your brand and has started to trust you, they will be more likely to submit the form.
InMail Ads are ads presented in the form of emails to the LinkedIn inbox of your target audience. This form of marketing is extremely effective as you get to handpick your audience based on their LinkedIn profile and do not need their personal or professional email ids to reach them. Additionally, these emails have a guaranteed delivery rate as they are sent only to the active LinkedIn users. Apart from products and services, you can also use InMails to promote your content and initiate downloads of ebooks and promotional videos.
No lead generation strategy is complete without a landing page. A landing page is a single page website that collects the visitor’s information through a lead form. Whether you are promoting your product or allowing visitors to download content (ebooks, webinars and podcasts), building a landing page is often the solution. A targeted landing page will help you capture leads at a higher rate and will help the sales team initiate the lead nurturing process to ultimately convert the leads generated.
A good landing page, especially for B2B, needs to always have a clear headline, copy and direct call-to-action, so that the target audience understands exactly what they are signing up for. This is exactly what we did for one of our B2B clients, LatentView. The landing page for their downloadable white paper clearly conveys what the company does and what value audiences will get from the white paper.
So you’ve generated an extensive database, with the methods mentioned above, of potential clients who have shown interest in your services. But, what next? The B2B space has notoriously long lead cycles, which can prove expensive and time-consuming for companies. That’s when the tried-and-tested method of email marketing comes into the picture.
Email marketing is probably one of the first types of digital marketing, and it still remains a go-to strategy for many organisations. Since emails are one of the most personal forms of communication, they can help you initiate and sustain a strong relationship with potential clients. With email marketing, it’s generally best to keep it simple and use plain-text emails than designed templates. This makes it seem more personal, encouraging people to actually read them. Additionally, you can customise your email as per the preferences of your potential clients with various techniques of retargeting and make your services even more irresistible to them. All you need is a strong email marketing database and a fool-proof email campaign checklist for guaranteed lead conversions.
Sundaram Business Services is a business process outsourcing company headquartered in India, with operations in UK and Australia. As a B2B company, a majority of their leads came through referrals and by networking. To scale up, they needed a strong digital marketing technique that could help them acquire new clients faster and more effectively.
The target audience for Sundaram Business Services is very niche and difficult to identify. With such a limited audience, generating high-quality leads that had the potential to convert would be more difficult than it would be for a B2C brand with a widespread audience. Additionally, since B2B client relationships are longstanding and based on trust, convincing accounting firms to start outsourcing to Sundaram Business Services would be challenging through digital marketing alone.
Starting lead generation ads in isolation wouldn’t help for a B2B brand as it only targets individuals at the bottom of the funnel. To successfully acquire high-quality leads, we needed a full-funnel strategy:
The Sundaram Business Services blog is a complete knowledge repository, with the right mix of highly relevant and trending topics. We utilised this invaluable tool to its full potential by promoting the blogs on LinkedIn. This created brand awareness and developed our reputation as an expertise in the field of accounting.
We created a specialised landing page for Sundaram Business Services which provided concise details of the services and USPs of the brand. By bidding for high search volume keywords, we ensured that our landing page would show up for relevant searches. This further increased brand awareness.
Credibility and trust are the foundation of any B2B relationship. To build this for Sundaram Business Services, we created a client testimonial video and promoted it on LinkedIn. This showed our audience the positive relationship we share with our clients.
After building awareness and trust among our target audience, we started lead form ads on LinkedIn to actively start generating leads. These ads provided a clear picture of the service we provide and the benefit firms can gain by partnering with us.
Since the B2B space is so small, we knew we had to go the extra mile to ensure high quality leads. Content driven marketing is key to generating leads for B2B. Because of this, we promoted an authoritative white paper for which users had to submit a pre-filled form to download. This white paper was by far the best lead generation technique we used for Sundaram Business Services. The white paper was downloaded by CFOs from some of the top companies in India, providing us with valuable information we wouldn’t have been able to achieve through any other strategy.
Through the white paper, we were able to achieve an 800% reduction in cost-per-lead with 0 junk leads. In such a niche segment, these results were truly remarkable. It ensured an optimal use of advertising budgets and a large volume of premium leads we could use to initiate the lead nurturing process. These incredible results only prove that content is the only way forward for generating B2B leads.
If you are from the B2B sector, its time you implement each one of the above-mentioned marketing strategies in your workplace to take your business to revolutionary heights.
Last month, Google introduced a contact form extension for search ads and following its success, they are now replicating it for YouTube TrueView for action. This pre-filled form extension will allow advertisers to generate leads from a channel that has always been known for its top-of-the-funnel marketing approach. Excited to know more? Read on.
By leveraging TrueView for action Form ads, your brand can drive leads through an in-line form submission by the consumer. Your video will have a CTA which will lead viewers to a pre-filled form where they can submit their details (name, email and phone number) in order to learn more about your brand. This way, users can submit information directly to the advertisers in an easy and hassle-free manner, creating a win-win situation for both the marketers and consumers.
There are a few pointers to keep in mind while implementing TrueView for action Form ads to get the most out of your marketing efforts. Few of them are discussed below:
Featured below is an example of a TrueView for action Form ad implemented for a car insurance company. As you can see, when the user clicks on the CTA button “Send me more info”, they are presented with a form that appears as a drop down. The form is pre-filled making it easier for the user to submit their details and get one step closer to converting to the brand.
With TrueView for action Form ads, digital marketers can easily engage with India’s next billion Internet users by tapping the Google and YouTube audiences who are engaging with their YouTube ads. Whether you are a leading real estate developer, an FMCG giant or a top financial organisation, it is time you add TrueView for action Form ads to your digital marketing strategy. For more tips on how to rank your videos, read our in-depth article: YouTube SEO Tips: The Secret Sauce to Ranking Your Videos in 2019.
