Digital Marketing Directions: Key Trends Driving Your Marketing Next Year with Tim Peter

Hi, and welcome to today's Biznology Digital Marketing webinar. I'm Chris Abraham, one of the authors at the Biznology blog. I'm founder and principal consultant of Yaris Digital, an agency devoted to online brand promotion and protection through influencer outreach and engagement. I focus on search engine optimization, online reputation management, blogger outreach and engagement, and internet crisis response. Today you'll be hearing from Tim Peter, who will present Digital Marketing Directions: Key Trends Driving Your Marketing Next Year. But before we start, we need to recognize our sponsors. BarnRaisers, a full-service digital and social media solutions company that builds brands using proven relationship principles ROI. GaggleAmp empowers companies to amplify their social media content by leveraging employees, partners, and resellers. Try GaggleAmp for free today. Garrus Digital, a full-service digital strategy firm that reaches deeper into the conversation than any other agency anywhere. MENG, Marketing Executives Networking Group, New Jersey chapter. We aren't just about networking to land a great job. We're about staying current to grow in our careers. Tim Peter and Associates, digital marketing leadership to help you succeed in a rapidly changing world. As we wait for more attendees to join, let me review the format of our webinar. Our Biznology webinars last just 30 minutes, so you can easily fit them into your busy schedule. We record each webinar and will email you that link later this week. During our speaker's presentation, you can use GoToWebinar to ask a question. That orange arrow opens and closes your controls. If you have a question, simply type it into the box labeled Questions at any time during the event and press the Send button. I will select a few questions at the end of our webinar and pose them to Tim. While we're waiting for our last few attendees to join, I'd like to remind you that the Biznology monthly newsletter and daily articles are available for free at biznology.com. So if you're not already a subscriber, we hope that you'll sign up now. Thanks again to all of you for spending 30 minutes with, with us. We know how valuable your time is, so let's introduce today's speaker. Tim Peter is one of our authors at Biznology. He is the president of Tim Peter and Associates, an e-commerce and digital marketing consultancy building brands and businesses via the social, local, and mobile web. His award-winning work over the last 15 years for companies like Wyndham, Charles Schwab, and others has generated billions of dollars in online revenue. So, if you've ever struggled with staying on top of changing customer needs, this is the webinar for you. Tim, take it away.

Thanks so much, Chris, and thank you all for joining us today. I think we've got a great message to talk about and a great story to tell about the directions that are going to shape your marketing over the next year. I believe we live in a world where it's all e-commerce. We know today that customers use the web at every stage in their game when they're making a purchase decision and when they're moving towards actually buying the things that they need, the products and services that they need. Even more so, we know that now over half of all visits to retail sites and to many other verticals occur on mobile. So your customers are continually shopping and browsing and buying at all stages of the game. And there are really 6 key trends that actually drive that reality, that make it a case where it is all e-commerce. Now, of course, in the time that we have, we're not going to be able to go through all 6 in any heavy level of detail. So we're going to focus primarily on 3, and those 3 are first the fact that the internet is everywhere. We live in a world where the internet is everywhere. It's a simple fact, and it actually changes customers' behaviors dramatically. And as a result, you need to change your behaviors dramatically to ensure you're meeting the needs of your customers as they interact everywhere, all day, every day. We also live in a world where we're all publishers now. Content marketing, and content creation, and content curation all work together to help tell your brand's story most effectively, and help your customers understand about who you are, and why you are the right choice for them. Why they should share your values, and why they should understand your value as they look to make a buying decision. And finally, we live in a world where we can make deep customer insights, where we can understand what our customers' wants and desires and needs are, sometimes even before they do. So we're going to look at each of these in some detail over the next 15 minutes or so. And of course, as Chris said, I welcome any questions you may have along the way. To start off, think about a world where we have the internet everywhere. What that means is your customers are continually interacting with the web. They're continually interacting with the internet. And there are 4 major ways in which they do that. Those are mobiles, wearables, usables, and invisibles. Now, clearly, we all understand that we live in a world where mobile is a key component of the customer's experience every single day. They can carry the internet in their pocket. As I've said many times, customers no longer go online. They are online. They have access to the information that they need when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it, so they can answer the questions that they have about products and services at any time. When we think about wearables, clearly we're entering a world where customers now don't even have to reach into their pocket to access the internet. And more to the point, we have access— we have information about how customers can use our products and services based on what they're wearing at the time. So that's things like Google Glass, and Apple Watch, and Android Wear, and Fitbit, and Nike+, and a whole host of other products that are coming into the marketplace that your customers will interact with on an everyday basis as just part of their lives. In terms of usables, it's all the different touchpoints that your customers have with the internet, but they are not necessarily thinking about going online. So things like payments, or smart TVs, or the Xbox Live, you know, when they are playing a video game and connecting with their friends, they are interacting digitally. They are interacting online. With products and services, as well as their fans and followers and friends and family, even though they're not going online. They're simply using the technologies and tools that are available to them. And then finally, invisibles are those things that just blend into the background, things like the Nest thermostat, and even more subtly, the very sensors that people's mobile phones and wearables and usables have access to constantly. NFC and beacons, gyroscopes and magnetometers, proximity sensors and barometers and thermometers and pedometers. Your customers are wired everywhere they go. You know, it's a situation where we have already become to a degree cyborgs because we're carrying so much technology on us every single place we go, everywhere we are. And it's happening all over the place. There are almost 13.4 billion internet-connected devices in the world, and that number is growing every single day. That means that there are roughly 2 internet-connected devices for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Every human being. Could have 2 internet-connected devices on them at any given time. And it creates a reality where now more people own mobile phones than own toothbrushes. It's a remarkable change in how customers interact with what they do. Now, I've heard people say before, how can that be that more people own mobile phones than toothbrushes? And the reality is, Because for many people, a mobile phone is more valuable to them than a toothbrush will. It can change their lives by giving them access to information and insights and markets such that they can actually connect with people and drive commerce and grow their own personal business or their own personal network such that they can actually make better lives for themselves and their family. In fact, it has become so important that in June of 2011, the United Nations, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations, has said that it considers cutting off users from internet access regardless of the justification provided to be a violation of Article 19, Paragraph 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In other words, the United Nations considers Internet access, considers access to this information and these insights a fundamental human right. More simply, Eric Schmidt of Google, the chairman of Google, has said that the web is like electricity. It's just there. Your customers have come to expect it. They have come to want it, and they need it to be there when they want it to. Now I'm sure many of you have heard what we say that content is. And we are going to talk about that in just a moment. But in an age and an area where we have the Internet everywhere, no matter what content is, context is queen. And what I mean by that is you have to think about the fact that when your customers are quote unquote online, think about in what context they're actually interacting with you. When they're interacting on mobile, or on tablet, or on desktop, that's going to be a very different reality than when they're interacting with you on a wearable, or whether they're in store, or on a bus, or on a subway, or on a plane, or in the back of a taxi, or walking down a busy street, or wandering through your store's aisles. Each of those contexts demands a different response. And so you need to observe, and measure, and learn your customer's pain points in each context, so that you can understand, how can I help my customer best in this specific context? What information do they need at this time such that I can actually provide them the right answer to their particular question and drive them deeper into the purchase funnel and towards a transaction, or whatever your specific business goals might happen to be? And then you want to improve each of those experiences by aligning the experience with the context. Because that ultimately will help your customers drive towards the business results that you need. Now, of course, if context is queen, we can guess what that makes content. Content is king. We've all heard that for years. But more importantly, we need to think about what that means in this new world. And what it really means is we've entered a world where we're all publishers now. We are creating massive amounts of content, massive amounts of information, massive amounts of data that's actually creating an ongoing dialogue, and ideally telling your brand story most effectively. We know that within a given minute, online. There are some 204 million emails sent every single minute. Sites like TripAdvisor receive greater than 90 reviews. Yelp and others do too. Twitter gets over 100,000 tweets a minute. Facebook has over 208,000 photos uploaded Every single minute. And on YouTube, there are more than 30 hours of video uploaded. I think that there is so much content created out there, and there are so many places your customers can go to find this content, that in some ways it's all going to merge someday into one big giant network, probably called something like YouTwitFace. Of course, getting access to this information requires that your customers conduct more than 2 million search queries every single minute to make sense of it all. And that's really the key when we talk about we're all publishers now. You need to create content that really is the king, that cuts through the clutter, that makes it easy for your customers to find what they need, and answer the questions that they have. And to do that, you want to create content that is snackable, shareable, and sharp. We're going to look a little bit at what each of these means in context. So here's an example of a product page on Amazon.com. This is for a flash memory card, right, a 16-gig card. And we see examples where We've got big, bold imagery that customers can actually see quickly and understand quickly. It is snackable, and it is sharp. It's to the point. We have lots of images that people can explore and understand and get deeper insight into the product. We have information, again, very snackable information. It's got frustration-free packaging, so that when you receive it, it's easy to get it out and put it to use right away. They're answering a customer's question really quickly. It's shareable so that customers can tell their friends via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or what I always consider the forgotten social network, email. They can email themselves. They can email others who may be part of that purchase decision to show them, hey, here's what I'm thinking of buying. Does this make sense to you? They use big images so that Customers can actually see this product in all its detail clearly and cleanly. Very, very shareable, very snackable, and very sharp. Now imagine if this was actually a product that anybody cared about. I mean, this is a memory card. Imagine if it were something actually cool like, I don't know, a hotel stay, let's say. So here's another example where we have content. Again, big bold imagery, very sharp, very focused, answer the questions quickly. Again, lots and lots of images for customers to explore and see. Good sharp focused and snackable information highlighting the amenities and the information that's available on property. Highly related for family or highly rated for family and for shopping. Tells you everything you need to know quickly and easily. Very focused, very sharp, very snackable. While in this case it is not shareable directly from the site itself, it does tell you what others think of it, incorporating social information. And so we create this environment where we're all publishers now. Obviously that goes for us as businesses. But it also goes for our customers. They're conducting over 2 million search queries a minute, sending over 204 million emails, uploading 30 hours of YouTube video, posting reviews, tweeting, and sending photos. They're telling a story themselves. And with the internet everywhere, whether they're using mobile or wearable or usables or invisibles, It creates a scenario where your customers are leaving digital footprints everywhere they go, and those digital footprints are being used by Google and by Apple and by Facebook and by Amazon to get a clearer picture of what's going on with customers and what those customers' needs are. According to Werner Vogels, who's the Chief Technology Officer of Amazon, He says you can never have too much data. Bigger is definitely better. And the reason he says that is quite simple, because if content is king and context is queen, then it is very clear that data represents the crown jewels, because it allows you to gain deep customer insights. Your data highlights what your customers' behaviors are, what their wants are, and what their desires are. And you can use that data to lead your product promotion, placement, and pricing decisions. You can test easily to see what resonates with your customers and see what's working, and then actually make the right decision based on what the data tells you. And then this third point is so critical when we talk about data and why data represents the crown jewels. And the answer is because your data cannot be easily duplicated by your competition. What you know about your customers is frequently things that is exclusive to you. It is something where you can understand your customers at a level that others can't, which means that you can serve your customers more effectively, which means that you can actually compete more effectively in the marketplace by offering them the right content, and offering them the right products, and the right promotions, and the right placement, and the right price. It's become so important that the big players— Apple, and Google, and Facebook, and Amazon, and Microsoft, or as I call them, AGFAM— have actually invested tremendously across every component of the infrastructure your customers use to get a clearer picture. Now, we're not going to spend a lot of time on this, because obviously we could do 20 minutes on this graph alone. But you see in search engines, and social networks, and display advertising, and mobile, and web browsers, and email, and cloud, and location-based services, and payments, and wearables, and others, For the most part, each of these 5 major players have a response to this. The reality is you can respond too. You have lots of opportunities to get into your customers' hands and get into your customers' pockets very effectively. For instance, Disney offers a product called MyMagic+, which uses RFID tickets and purchasing. That allows them to track not only where customers go, but for instance, how long people take between rides, or whether or not people travel from one ride to the next, to think about how they lay out the parks going forward. Nike does great with its Nike FuelBand and Nike+, where they're actually capturing your latest Nike activity. It used to be a scenario where when you bought a pair of shoes from Nike, You maybe did that twice a year. Nike got insights into you as a customer those 2 times, and even those insights were only happening secondhand because most of the relationship was between the customer and the retailer. Now Nike actually is getting a clear picture of customer activity every single time they go out for a walk, every single time they go out for a run. Every single time they put on their shoes. That's a huge bit of information and a huge benefit that you can take advantage of in your business to think about what is the right context, what is the right content, and how do I make myself so desirable that customers will want to carry me with them everywhere they go. So To gain those deep customer insights, remember that data is the crown jewels. First, be willing to start small. A lot of people like to talk about big data. I think you need to talk about small data first. What information do you need to answer your customers' questions? What information will help you make a better experience for your customers? And then once you begin to collect that data, look to anticipate, analyze, and adapt to changing customer needs. Make sure you're reviewing that data regularly, and make sure you're using it to make quantitative, informed decisions about your customers' needs. And then last, and I cannot underscore this enough, but these are the crown jewels, so you need to protect them. Privacy and security matter, and not just for you, but also for your customers. Protect your customers' information like your business depends on it, because in fact, it does. So if we live in a world where it's all ecommerce, these are 3 of the keys to your kingdom next year: the internet everywhere, deep customer insights, And we're all publishers now. With that, I thank you so much for your time, and I'm going to turn it back over to Chris. Chris?

Thanks, Tim. I'm sure our attendees have a much stronger idea of the key trends in digital marketing. But you didn't answer every question. I've got several good questions from our audience teed up for you, and I'd like to remind our audience that it's not too late to ask your own questions by typing it in— by typing them or it into the questions box in your GoToWebinar controls. Before we get to the questions, however, I'd like to remind you that the Biznology team provides jumpstart workshops for corporations who want to apply what they learn directly to their job, to their own business, and have their team create a plan for executive approval right in the workshop. Tim, Rob Peterson, and Mike Moran teach the search marketing course and will be there to guide you and help you persuade that executive to say yes. Go to biznology.com/training for more information on all our offerings. We're about to start firing questions at Tim, but we need to thank our sponsors once again. BarnRaisers, a full-service digital and social media solutions company that builds brands using proven relationship principles and ROI. Gagalamp empowers companies to amplify their social media content by leveraging employees, partners, and resellers. Try Gagalamp for free today. Garrus Digital, a full-service digital strategy firm that reaches deeper into the conversation than any other agency anywhere. MENG, Marketing Executives Networking Group, New Jersey chapter. We aren't just about networking to land a great job. We are about staying current to grow in our careers. Tim Peter and Associates, digital marketing leadership to help you succeed in a rapidly changing world. Now on to your questions. Our first question is— Thanks, Tim. I have a question. Where can I get the biggest bang for my buck? If I can only do one thing for my company, what should I do first?

I would say that there's a couple of things you can do. And I realize you're asking what's the one thing you can do. I would say the first thing I would do is make sure you have the right metrics in place. Make sure you understand what's working for you today, what isn't working for you today, and help yourself gain the right insights into where you should be investing your money going forward. What I find with most digital marketing is you are able, when you have the right kind of information and the right kind of data, you are able to create effective business stories to tell the folks who are funding this stuff, hey, if we spend $1 here, we get $2, or $3, or $5, or $10 back. Now when you put yourself in that kind of position, then it doesn't become such a struggle to get the funding to do the kinds of things you need to do, and be in more than just one place, or focus on more than just one area. So I would say the number one thing I would focus on is making sure you have good information, and good insights, and build up your analytics capabilities so that you can actually make informed decisions of where to invest going forward.

Thank you. Another question. Can you recommend any groups, blogs, forums, pages besides Biznology where I can learn more?

Absolutely. There are quite a few, actually. I'm going to do a little shameless self-promotion. I have my own blog at timpeter.com/blog. Also, I think Chris has a great blog. Chris Abraham, our host here, has a terrific blog. And Rob Peterson from Barnraisers Group have fantastic blogs that can help you understand what's going on in the space, along with— I mean, there's so many good things out there. There's a ton of others I would recommend, but I'd certainly start there.

Finally, the last question. Are there any products in the market that you can recommend to automate or make anything, you know, make big data a little bit easier to deal with?

So the answer to that is there's all kinds of products. I hesitate to name just one only because when you talk about big data, big data has very different meaning to different-sized companies. If you are, let's say, a restaurant with, you know, 20 tables, or, you know, you do maybe 100 covers a night, That's something where your needs are going to be very different than if you are say a large Fortune 100 multinational company. So what I would suggest is start looking first at what sorts of information you need to answer your specific questions, and then start looking towards marketing automation tools that are focused on your specific vertical or your specific tier of business, the size of business that you have. And if you have any questions, you can reach out to me, and I'll be more than happy to help you find what's right for you directly.

Thank you, Tim. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks to Tim Peter for these great ideas, and thanks especially to our audience, you, for your participation and your questions. If any of you had questions that we did not have time to answer, you can email your questions to Eileen at mikemorangroup.com, and she'll be sure to get them to Tim for the answer. Later this week, we'll send you all a link to the recording of this webinar to listen to again and to share with others. We also invite you to mark your calendars for our next Biznology webinar that I am presenting, How to Build Your Influencers in Social Media, scheduled for 11:00 AM US Eastern Time on October 14th, 2014. We hope to see you back here then. Bye, everybody.