In an announcement last night Facebook said “…hashtags will be clickable on Facebook…  allow you to add context to a post or indicate that it is part of a larger discussion. When you click on a hashtag in Facebook, you’ll see a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic.”

Via memegenerator.net

This is notable for a number of reasons. Firstly, marketers have long struggled to track conversations on the platform outside their brand page. This may be a small step toward allowing brands to listen to, engage in, and track more mentions of their products and services.

Second, it puts Facebook in a position to pursue some of the substantial TV budget brands have at their disposal.  Social ad spend is still 2-5% on average and Facebook, citing stats from television viewership during Game of Thrones and The Oscars™ in their blog, clearly sees the opportunity to carve out a bigger slice of the pie.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it unifies the social sphere – I like to imagine Mrs. Sandberg leaning over to Mr. Zuckerberg and saying, “Mark, did you know you can’t click a hashtag on Facebook?” and Mark says, “Oh yeah, I think that’s on a TO DO list somewhere…”

The function is currently only available to a limited number of users on desktop only. The clickable hashtags will open a pop-up feed of posts using the same hashtag – this includes public user posts and brand posts.

What might this offer to marketers in the future? Will we be able to promote trends or sponsor hashtags like on Twitter? Where do you think this is headed?

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Turns out 60% of consumers in the UK, France and Germany agree that online ads are annoying. Digital marketers seem to be missing the mark with consumers, and our latest research report, Click Here: The State of Online Advertising, confirms it.

The report shows some interesting differences in what digital marketers think versus the average consumer. 38% of European consumers agree online advertising is not effective, compared to 19% of marketers. And web banner ads have an even worse reputation with more than half (55%) of European consumers agreeing they don’t work.

Even in social media, consumers across Europe are less likely than marketers to Like a brand page and interact with it. And most consumers actually want a dislike button!

What can we do? We can do better. We can up our game. We can take lessons learned from traditional advertising. We can deliver personalised and engaging experiences for consumers.

It’s time we started thinking like a consumer, and not like marketers. With every campaign we should be asking “WWCD” – what would consumers do?

Check out the report, and tell us in the comments if you agree that marketers are missing the mark? How will you use this data to change your online advertising strategy?

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70% of consumers said that they thought TV ads are still more important than online ads, with 62% saying these were ‘annoying’. Only a small group (8%) said that online ads were persuasive. This is perhaps not hugely surprising as online is still relatively in its infancy as an advertising channel, and the digital landscape and opportunities for brands are constantly changing.

So what can brands do to make online ads more appealing to consumers?

Firstly brands need to remember that content is still king when it comes to advertising, no matter what channel the ad appears on.

More than two thirds (68%) of UK consumers said ads should tell a unique story, rather than just trying to sell them products. Most memorable ads are TV campaigns from John Lewis and Guinness, both of which contained an element of storytelling.

Humour is also important, 92% said funny ads are more effective than ‘sexy’ ones. We took to the streets of London to talk about the best sexy and funny adverts… check out our video on YouTube and let us know your favourites too!

To like or not to like?

Although social hasn’t taken-off as an advertising channel (yet!), our research reveals that there are other opportunities for brands to engage with consumers on these channels.

Of the two thirds of Brits that use social media in the UK, nearly half (44%) have liked something on behalf of a brand, and 49% regularly ‘like’ brands that they buy from on social channels. The top two reasons people ‘like’ brands or products is to share their tastes and interests with the world and recommend products to friends.

But brands beware! Almost half (49%) of people want to see a ‘dislike’ button…

Consumers and the personal touch  

When asked how valuable consumers find it when a website makes personalised product and service recommendations, nearly half were ambivalent (43%), and just a quarter (24%) found it valuable.  Of those that consumers felt do this well, predominantly online brands like Amazon, eBay and TripAdvisor came out top.

So…how can brands make online ads a success? 

The findings are an important wake-up call for brands – they have a lot more work to do to with online ad campaigns if they are to capture consumers’ attention. Whilst physical advertising has traditionally been about broadcasting messages, online gives them the opportunity to engage with customers directly – those that understand this will ultimately win in the digital world…

Read the full Click Here: State of Online Advertising UK press release here.

The post UK Snapshot: Digital playing catch up to old school advertising appeared first on Digital Europe.

Our  own Jamie Brighton, Product Marketing Manager EMEA, joined the panel of experts, along with Mike Leverington, Head of Customer Data, Guardian News & Media, David Lloyd, Data Planning Director, Tullo Marshall Warren, Scott Logie, Chair, Direct Marketing Association and Strategic Marketing Director, St Ives Group and Dr Duncan R Shaw, Lecturer in Information Systems, Nottingham University Business School in the virtual forum.

The panel was kicked off by Dr. Duncan R Shaw who shared his perspective on what Big Data is:

“Big Data is the minute-to-minute personal diary of everyone and everything

- just think what we could learn about customers’ needs and interests by analysing such a ‘diary’.

It makes Amazon’s ‘people who bought these books also bought these books’ look very limited in comparison.

Imagine suggesting just the right things people need, just when they need it and when they never would have thought of it.”

Clearly Big Data has huge potential for marketers.  But David Lloyd went on to question whether the term is just yet another buzzword:

“I’m optimistic about the potential for Big Data. However, equally sceptical about how the term is over-used to mean pretty much anything to do with data of any size.”As Mike Leverington stated:

“…I think it is time to drop the ‘big’ element of ‘Big Data’. It is just data.”

Scott Logie also shared his cynicism towards the term:

“I’m a self-confessed Big Data sceptic. That’s not to say I don’t believe in Big Data.

…fundamentally the challenge remains the same; to find the outcomes that make the biggest difference for our businesses and customers. Isn’t Big Data just another term like CRM used to stir us up and buy more technology?”

The key for digital marketers, is knowing how to sift through all the data that is available to us and leveraging it to improve business results. As Jamie Brighton summarised:

“The biggest challenge that marketers face with big data is knowing which data is relevant. Only once you’re looking at the right data points can you start to understand how to use that data to your advantage – by improving marketing campaign spend or onsite conversion rates for example.”

One clear overriding theme of the discussion: it’s not how much data you have that matters, it’s how you use it.

What are the main challenges you face with Big Data? Does the size of your data matter or is it just another buzzword? Let us know in the comments.

You can read the full discussion over on the Guardian’s Media Network Blog.

Further reading:
Forrester Report: The Big Deal About Big Data For Customer Engagement

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Loïc highlights some great examples of how the changing economic climate has made sharing common practice, like car share services or renting out our home while you’re on vacation. He even lets us in on the marketing strategy he and his team use to get LeWeb in front of their key audience.

Who would you like to see featured in our Marketing Minutes series? Tell us in the comments, or tweet us @AdobeMktgCloud with #marketingminutes

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He’s right. A few years ago many of us were only dabbling with MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. Now we have even more social platforms to choose from like Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and Foursquare. There are even regional platforms like VKontakte in Eastern Europe or Weibo in Asia. We’re dedicating more of our marketing budgets towards “engaging” on these platforms, and hiring people or agencies with job descriptions that didn’t exist two years ago.

But what do you actually want to achieve from social media?

Different areas of your business want likes or engagement or a customer service platform, but until social has a central place in your business it’s not likely to succeed long-term.

How much are you spending on social? 3-5% is fairly average, but according to Waite, the best brands spend 12-25% of their marketing budgets on social media.

Waite has developed a simple model to help digital marketers develop a 360-degree approach. The “Like-Cycle” from Adobe is based on real experience with the biggest brands such as Amazon, Burberry and Nike, and helps digital marketers tackle the top 5 challenges most businesses face in social media:

The Like-Cycle applies to more than just Facebook – as digital marketers we should be trying to build a people-focused strategy not a social network-focused strategy. After all, we’re there for the people not the platforms.

Like on average 40 brands – 2012

The scary statistics are out there, but with a strong strategy based on an understanding of data and intelligence your social media program could beat the odds.

Download the “Like-Cycle” from Adobe (white paper) now.

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#twitpoll What are you using twitter for as a digital marketer: A) Brand awarenessB) Lead generationC) Customer serviceD) Driving sales

— Marketing Cloud (@AdobeMktgCloud) May 14, 2013

The results were mixed, but seem to point to the same end result – more customers! The votes across Twitter and Facebook were almost evenly split between brand awareness and lead gen, with a little bit of customer service thrown in for good measure.

Like twitter user Cognytics Analytics said:

@adobemktgcloud Awareness primarily. Leads is the end result.

— Cognytics Analytics (@Cognytics) May 14, 2013

Whether your aim is brand awareness, lead generation, customer service or sales, social media needs to be managed and measured. Social has become an ever important part of almost any business and digital marketers need to make sure social is measurable and manageable within their wider marketing and business plans.

We recently published a report, in association with Econsultancy, where we asked more than 650 marketing agencies about this very topic. Nearly 70% of respondents believed social media needs to be more rooted in data, but less than 25% said they are leveraging social data to optimise their marketing strategies. Strange – we know how important the data is, but we aren’t using it?

Maybe the term “big data” is scaring us away? You can see the impact of your social media efforts, and it’s easily done within some content management systems. The trick is integrating your social data into the wider business; you need to map your social media activities to business goals. If you want to increase sales as a business, then show how your social media campaigns drove users to the sales portals.

Knowing what data you need, and why, will make aligning business and social KPIs that much easier.

We also found that fewer than 1 in 5 companies have a central platform for social media management and analysis – yikes!

There’s no blanket solution for every business, so if you need some further reading to figure out yours, take a look at this Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing: Managing and Measuring Social.

The post Digital marketers, what are you using social media for? appeared first on Digital Europe.

Let’s look at how social media has changed everyone’s lives:

• 1.1bn people are now on Facebook, with an average of 140 friends
• 665m Facebook users are active every day
• 189m Facebook users only use it on mobile (with some reports saying that users now check their mobile on average 150 times per day)
• 400m Tweets are sent every day
• 90% of the world’s data has been produced in the last 2 years
• The amount of data created every 48 hours is to the scale of all data collated from the beginning of time until 2003

Needless to say that is a lot of noise. If you’ve ever read Nate Silver’s fantastic book “The Signal and the Noise” (if you haven’t you should), then you may also agree that whilst the amount of noise being created on a daily basis is increasing exponentially, the amount of useful information is probably not.

Therein lies the root of the problem. The growth of all this data is also the reason why journalists suck, as Dowd suggests, and that social media may have become “the cocktail party from hell”.

It’s a great analogy because for a long time social marketers have been saying that social media is like a cocktail party and you need to work the room. In my opinion, the sentiment still rings as true as it ever has. Wouldn’t you rather talk to someone interesting, polite and takes the time to listen to you – rather than someone who is loud, obnoxious and tries to sell themselves? Brands are no different. They do need talk to their customers on their social media channels as if they are at a cocktail party.

The issue here isn’t that social media is losing all meaning; it’s simply that it is more difficult than ever to filter out what you actually want to hear from all the noise. Marketers have had this problem for years. I remember being in brand communications in the late 90s when journalists were saying advertising was becoming meaningless because we were exposed to over 10,000 advertising messages every day. The goalposts may have moved but the issues and the problems remain the same. Luckily there is a solution.

Adobe Social tracks over 10 million blogs, forums and social networks for many of the largest brands in the world (NFL, Disney, Levi’s) in order to help them make sense of all this noise. Brands that I regularly speak to may have millions of mentions of their brand each day, but only need to respond to a few thousand of the most relevant conversations. Hundreds of people may be talking about your brand, but only 50 may actually be driving sales or traffic to your website. It is important for brands – especially the ones with small teams and even smaller budgets – to be able to make sense of all this data in a meaningful way. They can then deliver data to the business in a way that is going to help them achieve their objectives.

Sales pitch over! But the ray of hope I offer to you is Duane Munn. You may never have heard of him, but he is the superstar social media manager of the NFL, and he uses Adobe Social. What is most impressive about Munn is that whilst he manages a huge global presence for the NFL and its 32 teams, he does it all on his own (without hundreds of community managers, social media execs or assistants). One man! He doesn’t wear his underpants outside his trousers or have any special super powers, but he does use some very smart software to help him make sense of everything happening in social media. When you can make sense of what everyone is saying amongst all that noise, it makes the cocktail party a pretty nice place to be.

Want more? Read –> Why Adobe Social 3.0 Rocks by Lawrence Mak

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To understand more about where we all are on this journey, we have just published our latest Digital Intelligence Briefing, in association with Econsultancy, about web content management (WCM). (You can download a free copy of the briefing by clicking the link above.)  The report is based on a global survey which has attracted more than 1,000 respondents, a record for this on-going series of reports, and a clear testament to the reality of the content and experience challenges marketers face.

Some of the findings are insightful about where we are on the journey:

• 70% of organisations surveyed agree that ‘delivering optimal experiences across all screens and devices is a major challenge’
• Only 14% of responding businesses say that their ‘CMS enables them to have a complete view of engagement across all channels’
• A third of respondents (33%) say that mobile website functionality and responsive design is the one feature they would ‘add to their CMS right now’, more than twice as many as for the next most sought after feature (targeting / segmentation).
• Almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents agree that managing and measuring social media activity within their CMS is difficult.

The strategic importance of web content management is increasingly referenced in analysts’ reports such as Forrester, which stress the importance for companies to move beyond using a CMS as a means to simply manage content and strategically utilise it in order to create digital experiences.  And yet, just 38% of this survey’s respondents agree that their CMS facilitates a ‘brand enhancing digital presence’.

At Adobe, our focus has been to help companies address the challenge of web content management in an increasingly mobile and social world where consumers are often switching between devices and channels.  Adobe Experience Manager, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, highlights our commitment to helping organisations deliver personalised experiences across the web, mobile devices, social community and video.  Our mission is to help companies not only to deliver engaging experiences, but also to measure and quantify this activity.

Are we at the beach yet? Perhaps not, but maybe it’s not as far as you think! What do you think still needs to happen to get CMS elevated to a strategic business function that creates engaging, relevant digital experiences?  Please leave a comment below or engage me on Twitter @neil_morgan_uk.

The post Are we nearly there yet? The journey from Content Management to Customer Experience Management appeared first on Digital Europe.

WCM is clearly a key area for companies to focus on in order to deliver truly seamless multichannel customer experiences. Yet despite the growing need for brands to do this across all digital touch points, only 38% of companies believe that their CMS facilitates a brand-enhancing digital presence.

Check out some of the other key findings in our infographic below or download the report.

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