Digital Marketing Trends 3/5

Trend 3. Back to basics  

Trend number 3 is back to basics. As marketers, we have a habit of taking our eyes off the basics and going after the next shiny thing…

There’s no doubt that 2017 is the year to be excited in marketing! Advancements in technology with the rise and popularity of AI (artificial intelligence), VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) all create exciting opportunities for the marketing industry. It will also be a year where marketers will be more distracted by the shiny new tech by forgetting the basics and over complicating messaging and communication.

Remember the craze of Pokemon Go, where several brands jumped on the bandwagon of the new shiny shiny. I like to think of shiny, shiny as a new thing for marketers to chase – just like Gollum in Lord of the Rings running around to find his ‘precious’ ring. There were endless articles and speeches advising how to incorporate the game into your digital marketing strategy. It lasted less than 3 months - the novelty of the game wore off - and the thousands of pounds of marketing budgets was spent on chasing the hype which so far can be categorised as a one hit wonder.

Marketing examples

Examples of marketers forgetting the basics of marketing are evident every day. The most recent example was Burger King’s latest ad featuring the latest shiny, shiny- Google Home - a smart speaker enabling users to speak voice commands to interact with services of Google as an assistant. Burger King, like all fast food restaurants, have been surrounded by rumours of their product not containing the ingredients they state. A clever, cutting edge advert with Google Home was their idea to eradicate those rumours by using a voice over in the advert to trigger (or hijack) all Google Home devices listening to the advert in range by saying ‘Ok Google’ in its ad and continuing to ask for the ingredients of Burger Kings most iconic product – The Whopper.

What Burger King didn’t foresee, was that the Whopper Wikipedia page – the free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit and a major source of information for Google Home – was to be compromised and edited with a collection of troll-tastic descriptions from the general public. Funny as it may seem, it was a complete disaster for both Burger King and Google.

Google who weren’t involved in creating the campaign, pulled the ad within 3 hours of going live and prevented all Google Home devices from responding to the ad. Of course, the whole exercise generated a tonne of press coverage, but the objective to eradicate rumours of unpleasant ingredients used in their burgers was only made worse.

As a marketer, I’m proud to be part of the industry, but this was an embarrassment in the eyes of all marketing professionals. My burning questions are how can such an oversight happen? Did no-one involved in this campaign not highlight this as a potential issue? Where was the due diligence?

Marketing - when conducted correctly is an intelligent and sophisticated art. Many marketers study for years to learn the disciplines that create effective marketing campaigns and that learning never really ends. Yet, with the advancements in technology, we’re becoming increasingly obsessed to jump on the next shiny thing to raise the profile of a campaign without worrying about the detail of how effective it will be. Our obsession with basic performance metrics of likes, shares, followers and opens are at the detriment of creating campaigns of longevity and quality.

The key marketing takeaways

Learning from this, here’s my tips when creating your next digital marketing campaign.

• Clearly define the objective of the marketing campaign – is it to eradicate incorrect information about your product like Burger King, or is it to attract a different audience?

• Who are the target audience? Understand what they look like in terms of their interests, responses to campaigns etc. This will dictate the techniques required to engage the audience - who may have a keen interest in the latest home technology such as Google Home. But be sure to test this first - are there any flaws?

• Conduct due diligence – test your campaigns – what are the strengths and what are the flaws? If you’re going to feature the latest tech because it is aligned to achieving your objective and will engage your target audience then test it.

• Define what good looks like – what will be the measurement of success? Will be the number of conversions during the campaign period, will it be an increase in traffic to your website? Set clear targets to measure your campaign.

If you need marketing consultancy with your next digital marketing campaign get in touch with us and let’s talk.

@JennaTiffany

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jennatiffany

About the author 

Jenna Tiffany is Founder & Strategy Director at Let'sTalk Strategy providing consultancy services across the digital marketing mix. Jenna has over ten years' marketing experience within B2B and B2C and both client and agency side.

Communications Ambassador for CIM Greater London Region, an advisory board member the DMA North and a contributing hub member to the DMA's Email Marketing Council, Jenna's expertise ranges in working with both small and large brands to analyse and develop their key journeys & wider digital marketing activities, developing best in class digital marketing strategies & campaigns to deliver ROI. As a proven thought-leader, competent public speaker and publisher, Jenna can be regularly seen sharing her latest trends and key industry topics.