Hispanic Consumers Are Social Media Catalysts

Marketing Daily

 

by Karl Greenberg, Feb 20, 2014, 4:39 PM

 

Hispanic consumers are more social, influential and impressionable online than non-Hispanic consumers, according to a new study commissioned by Unilever with its media planning agency Mindshare and executed by Palo Alto, Calif.-based social media platform ShareThis.

 

The study, based on about four months of data on social media use garnered from 42 million users and nearly 70 million shares, found that Hispanic consumers are twice as likely to either share content or click on shared content than Americans in general. 

 

The research also showed that Hispanic consumers share via social media five times more often than non-Hispanic users, and content shared by Hispanic consumers is 35% more likely to be clicked on than content shared by the non-Hispanic population. And Hispanic consumers are twice as likely to purchase the kinds of products they share about compared to non-Hispanic consumers who are only 1.3 times as likely to make a purchase compared to what they share online. 

 

The gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanics in terms of purchasing what they share about is most pronounced in health food, personal care, beverages and sweets and snacks categories, per the study. Arts and entertainment, family and sports are the most searched and viewed content categories, followed by politics and government, food and drink, health and fitness, style and beauty, technology, home and gardens, business, travel and leisure, education and automotive.  

 

The ShareThis data suggests that Hispanic consumers are also more influential on social media: content they share garners more "click-backs" (the act of clicking shared links to view the shared content) than content shared by non-Hispanic consumers. But they diverge on platforms from non-Hispanics. They are less likely to use Pinterest or Twitter, and twice as likely to use email and nearly 50% more likely to use blogging channels such as Tumblr and Blogger, per the study.

 

Hispanic consumers also appear to read more content on mobile devices than do non-Hispanic consumers, but they are generally less inclined to share on these devices. The study finds that nearly 20% of Hispanic consumers consume mobile content (6.4% iPhone, 8.1% tablet and 5.1% Android), but only 7% share on mobile, versus 13.6% of non-Hispanic consumers. But the study also finds that younger Hispanic consumers are more likely to want to share on mobile devices -- as much as non-Hispanics -- and also index just as strongly with Twitter and Pinterest as do non-Hispanics.

 

TVNewsCheckSalesImprovement

When used properly, certain analytics can help stations make smarter and more accurate selling decisions, providing insights necessary to identify sales opportunities. Here are three key analytics that give you the advantage to sell more.

By DJ Cavanaugh

February 20, 2014 8:21 AM EST

Analytics used to be for historical purposes, answering the question “How did we do?” But given the power of today's sales intelligence tools, a shift has occurred. When used properly, such analytics enable users to make smarter and more accurate business decisions. It also provides the insight necessary to steer a business forward, especially when it comes to TV spot sales.

These days, analytics are available from many sources — your sales proposal system, your CRM system, your traffic systems, among them. This is great from the perspective of having measurable data at your fingertips, but it can turn into a nightmare if you get caught up manually trying to aggregate the data from multiple systems and stations.

 

This is where you need to take a step back and look at your operational workflow from the highest possible level. Sales Intelligence tools are now able to sit on top of the workflow for an entire enterprise. These tools pull the data up through the varying systems, normalizing and aggregating it along the way to produce relevant analytics. Numerous analytics are available with the powerful sales Intelligence tools ( see infograph ).

 

After looking at a summarized analysis of how your business is doing at the highest level, interactive dashboards allow you to drill down instantly to see how specific stations, categories, platforms or account executives are doing. So what analytics are relevant to your sales business and which ones help you to identify opportunities? Here are three key analytics that give you the advantage to sell more.

Sales Coverage Analysis

Have you ever asked the question “How can I easily tell where my accounts/agencies are spending … and where are they not spending?”  Sales intelligence tools have been designed to answer just that. They show you the spread of each account or agency for the timeframe selected. At the same time, you can view which accounts or agencies aren’t spending on a particular outlet, but are spending elsewhere. This analysis in itself presents a targeted upsell opportunity.  

 

Sales Retention Analysis

It’s the age-old sales question: “How much of my business generated in the past is still with us after one year? Two years? Three years?”  Sales intelligence tools let you analyze year-over-year sales by outlet, office and account executive’s retention over time. By analyzing this data, you are able to see new business and returning business retained, while also uncovering where business has not been retained. This directly and immediately provides you with a targeted sales account focus.

New Business Analysis

 

Just as much as it is important to analyze what business is being retained, it is just as important to analyze what business is new business. Is new business sales revenue on par?

A new business analysis lets you see how much new new business is being generated per account executive, office and outlet and compare it to your returning business. You can and should compare them to each other in order to give you greater insight into the strength of each of your new business means.

The power of sales intelligence tools provides the analytics you need to operate more efficiently, effectively and accurately and, at the end of the day, creates opportunities to sell more.

How Do You Market To A Generation In Flux?

By Jerry Hudson Friday, Feb. 21, 2014

As the first wave of the Digital Generation, Gen Y is truly disrupting the traditional notions of marketing. Brands can partner with Gen Y by understanding what's important to this culturally diverse and life stage-straddling group, and how digital and mobile permeate their lives. What’s Important The desire for freedom, an aptitude for self-reliance, and transitioning to adulthood during a period of economic uncertainty have changed what is important to members of Gen Y. This also means that what constitutes success and status for Gen Y deviates from traditional mores.  Gen Y is less enamored with home ownership (and material ownership in general), and more concerned with the life they experience. This attitude is redefining the idea of ownership and helping to drive the “collaborative economy,” where they are seeking access to, rather than ownership of, content, products and services. The manifestation of this is seen with the emergence of companies like Airbnb, Lyft and Spotify. This mirrors what Gen Y embraces as status. The requirement of a large home and impressive automobiles has diminished compared to previous generations. Now, ownership is being usurped by personal experiences as the currency to achieve status. Instead of showing off their new BMW to impress their friends and connections, Gen Y is sharing videos of their backstage access at Bonnaroo and their latest trek across the Andes. How to Reach Gen Y From a marketing standpoint, brands need to evolve their strategies to gain the trust of Gen Y. Authenticity is vital. Brands that fake it are quickly called out with myriad social outlets available to this digitally savvy group. They are very interested in why a brand exists, as opposed to what they make. Members of Gen Y seek a human quality in brands, and are drawn to the brand’s personality — if it’s genuine. They are much more likely to interact with a brand if that brand participates in social causes that align with their own values and beliefs.  This group will embrace a brand if it provides the tools to be expressive about what’s important to them. For Gen Y, utility is the new black. They want brands to bring something new to the table that will fulfill their evolving need for usefulness and convenience. They are quick to try new products and services, but also quick to move on if their needs aren’t met.  So brands need to invite them in. Gen Y is very social and participatory, and they expect to be part of creating the brand’s story. Brands can best connect with this group through digital channels, although Gen Y can still be reached somewhat via television. But this is the Digital Generation, and the key to marketing to them is based upon their heavy use of mobile. They own more smartphones than any other demographic. They spend more time on the mobile web than any other group; in fact, one out of five accesses the web only via mobile. This means that the relationship between Gen Y and brands will increasingly happen through mobile. This visually oriented group watches a lot of videos online — over 350 per month — most of which are on mobile. The powerful, lean-forward experience of online video provides a great opportunity for marketers to exploit. Gen Y, too savvy and wary to engage with traditional banner ads, will engage with more contextual forms of marketing, such as data-driven social ads. All of this means that brands will have to continue to innovate to present their message successfully to Gen Y. So listen to Gen Y, and they will listen to you. Go to them, especially on mobile. Say thank you. The way forward for future marketing to all demographics has been established by Gen Y. Brands who develop this new strategy will reap the rewards. For more information on Gen Y contact Dr. Philip Jay LeNoble of Executive Decision Systems, Inc., Littleton, Co.

The New Rules of Sales Execution

SMM Sales and Marketing Management

Stop enabling and start executing

ARTICLE | WED, 02/05/2014 - 00:00

Amanda Wilson, Director, Product Marketing & Programs, Qvidian

It is tougher than ever for sales teams to cut through the clutter and differentiate with prospects. But who can blame them? Sales teams can’t find the right resources, so they spend less time selling than hunting for resources, which means lost opportunities – leading to overall poor sales performance. The facts regarding the buying environment and sales execution are startling:

• 60% of the buyer’s purchase decision is complete before sales teams interactive with a prospect¹
• 58% of pipeline ends up in “no decision “or stalled¹
• 59% of sales rep time is spent not selling²
• 50% of reps are failing to make quota³

Here are three new rules of sales execution to give you a fresh approach to stop enabling the poor behavior and start executing.

Rule 1: Conversations, Not Collateral
Organizations have been enabling sales teams with collateral and sales tools to the point of burdening them with too much information. There is a multitude of sales and marketing collateral loaded into sales portals or intranet sites, and countless hours are spent creating, editing, and producing this content. This approach is flawed not only in that it is not aligned with current selling situations and disconnected from daily reality, but also becomes incredibly difficult to know if sales teams have even used the content, and how effective it really is.

The shift needs to focus on the desired business outcome. Effective salespeople not only understand the buyer’s marketplace and business issues, but also help them envision solving their problems using their products and services. They get stalled deals moving, present greater value and are able to seamlessly sell new products or cross-sell existing product sets.

Enabling your sales teams with content won’t guarantee they are having these valuable conversations with prospects.

Sales knowledge is much more than a stack of data sheets or four-color glossy brochures. This goes well beyond what companies are packing into their sales portals today.

Rule 2: Expertise Beats Product Knowledge
Buyers buy from the vendor who understands their business and the challenges they face the best, and who delivers a clear vision of how to solve them. Often, a great deal of time is spent trying to communicate value and differentiation of a product or service, and a number of salespeople don’t see how other reps do this or what they are using and doing to win deals.

No matter how much time marketers and product managers spend with salespeople and customers, they just don’t see enough of what happens at the moments of truth – how buyers are receiving and responding to the messages the sales team delivers. Just look how fast the competitive landscape, the needs of the marketplace, and the product portfolios change. A top-down approach will never keep up.

Sales teams ignore 90% of the “selling collateral” that is provided to them.⁴

Through trial and error, your salespeople learn something new every day about what works and what doesn’t. In this changed buying environment, it’s critical that your sales and marketing teams collaborate to unlock this treasure. It’s about capturing feedback on what works and doesn’t work, and using that feedback to continuously improve the base of knowledge.

Rule 3: Proven Plays
One thing that sets top salespeople apart from the rest of the pack is that they will never “wing it.” Top reps do the same set of things that have helped them win similar deals in the past. You might say these top performers have a set of repeatable playbooks in their head that have been developed and adapted through years of experience in front of customers.

Average or low performers typically think they are not hitting it out of the park because they just need more at-bats. The problem is they can’t swing the bat like top performers. Often companies roll out a new sales methodology believing that is the missing link to improving sales performance.

A methodology alone won’t move the needle.

We want more top performers, so we spend thousands of dollars on sales training events with the hope that methodology and training will give our reps the knowledge, skills, attitude and structure to become stars.

But it doesn’t work. Studies show that the average salesperson forgets 87% of what they learn in sales training within 30 days.⁵ The rep gets back to the office, puts the training binder on the shelf, reverts to old habits, and continues to follow the path of least resistance. A sales methodology or process is essential but they usually don’t have the impact they could because there’s no practical way to follow them. A methodology tells you why to do something, but it doesn’t tell you what to do in a specific situation, when to do it, or how to do it.

No amount of training is going to enable a sales rep to be ready to handle every selling situation he or she will encounter.

In order to empower sales to achieve their revenue goals companies need to equip sales teams differently so they can execute effectively. We can’t keep expecting a different outcome when using the same old approaches. It’s time we made new rules to sell by.

Interpublic Report: It's Time To Shift From Nielsen Ratings To 'Impressions-Based' Trading

RTM Daily

by Joe Mandese, 5 hours ago

Media-buying biggie Interpublic's Mediabrands is making a case for the local TV advertising marketplace to shift from conventional TV ratings to “impressions-based trading.” The recommendation -- which is part of a new report on the role data is playing in reshaping media-buying, especially programmatic trading -- comes as the local TV audience measurement marketplace is in disarray, with the broadcast industry balking at Nielsen's efforts to introduce a new “hybrid” measurement format that would, among other things, integrate broadband-only households into Nielsen's local TV audience panels.

“Local television inventory has long been traded on ratings, but fragmentation has reduced the average rating size, rendering them unstable and unpredictable,” Mediabrands' Magna unit asserts in the “local TV trading” section of its latest Media Economy Report.

The shift to “impressions-based trading,” Magna argues, would:

* "Create additional supply by turning tiny, fickle percentages into hard numbers that can be

aggregated."

* "Make local TV more comparable to other media."

* "Enable more precise targeting when combined with additional qualitative data."

* "Feed into new, more efficient buying processes for both broadcast and cable inventory.”

While Mediabrands has never talked publicly about its TV audience-buying tactics, it is known to be working with some of the biggest early developers of programmatic TV audience supply. The local TV trading section of the report includes graphics outlining the infrastructure of two market-makers: Visible World and Wideorbit, but does not explicitly endorse them.

The implication could not come at a worse time for Nielsen, which is embroiled in a tug-of-war with the National Association of Broadcasters and its Committee on Local Television Audience Measurement over Nielsen's plans to roll out a new local TV ratings system without first testing its impact on the marketplace. While local TV ratings, especially in Nielsen’s smaller, non-metered markets, have long been the bane of Madison Avenue and TV industry researchers, and Nielsen says the new methods are necessary to improve the representation of local TV viewers. The NAB has called on Nielsen to delay the rollout until it can be tested, but Nielsen so far has demurred. The stalemate could encourage some local broadcasters to look at alternatives, especially the kind of census-based data from digital set-top TV devices that could be utilized in the kind of impressions-based trading Magna is endorsing.

Over the past couple of years, a number of smaller broadcast groups have signed on to Nielsen rival Rentrak, which utilizes set-top data, and recently one of the biggest, CBS, also signed a contract with Rentrak. CBS also recently signed a new contract with Nielsen covering the new local hybrid TV ratings service, so it seems to be hedging all its bets.

“Moving from ratings to impressions in local TV trading will not only create additional supply,” concludes Magna in its report, “but enable more automated transaction processes.”

While that last point might be an impediment for local TV broadcasters and cable operators to embrace a move that would boost supply, the move to more automation is essential for agencies, because they can no longer staff the kind of local media-buying organizations necessary to buy local TV manually. It's part of the reason Interpublic has set a goal of automating most of its media-buying within the next two years.

Audience Targeter Granted Patent Matching 1st-Party Data To TV Set-Tops

MediaDailyNews

by Joe Mandese, Yesterday, 7:59 AM

It's a whole new world coming for audience metrics when it comes to advertiser's targeting. Read below. Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

The next generation of Madison Avenue audience-targeting very likely will be fought over IP -- not the acronym for “Internet protocol,” where so much of the ad industry's recent focus has been -- but for “intellectual property,” including business models, processes and patents. In that battle, a couple of newer players have begun locking key patents that could substantially alter the shift from “media-buying” to “audience-buying.” One of them is PrecisionDemand, the big data-driven TV audience targeting firm run by former Madison Avenue media chief Jon Mandel, which has been granted patent No. 8,627,359 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its automated audience-targeting technology.

“The material aspect of this patent is that we can do what others only talk about doing,”Mandel asserted in an exclusive interview discussing the role intellectual property will play in the evolution of audience-buying, and how PrecisionDemand plans to leverage it. He says the company's goal is not to fight it out in court, but to utilize its patent recognition as official proof that its proprietary technology works better than others in an increasingly crowded field of next-generation TV audience targeting players.

The role of patents has already emerged in one key battle -- a patent infringement suit and countersuit involving the TV industry’s two leading addressable advertising infrastructure players -- Invidi Technologies and Visible World -- and one of PrecisionDemand's chief rivals, Simulmedia, was also recently granted a U.S. patent for its proprietary method of using data to enhance the targeting of television audiences for network TV promotions.

But Mandel claims PrecisionDemand's new patent gives it the exclusive legal right to do something many of the other players suggest they can do: match an advertiser's “first-party” data about its own customers with audience data from the TV set-top devices that many believe will be the future of TV audience targeting.

As a practical matter, Mandel says the real difference between PrecisionDemand and other advanced TV audience targeters isn't about legal rights, per se, but the capabilities it has developed over “seven years and $20 million” in investment capital to develop it.

“I don't think this patent will stop anybody from doing what they do now, because nobody does what we do, and nobody gets it as accurate as we do,” adds Debbie Reichig, the long-time TV and Internet marketer and researcher who recently joined PrecisionDemand as its chief revenue officer.

The combination of Reichig's intellect with its new intellectual property, Mandel says, will help distance PrecisionDemand from an increasingly crowded field of audience-targeting players not just for technical reasons, but because of her ability to communicate and apply what it can do in the marketplace.

Reichig is well recognized for developing collaborative approaches to using advanced forms of audience research and applying it to innovative advertising buys and even audience guarantees. It's something she has done at all the major media companies she has worked for -- including NBC Universal and Comedy Central, but especially at Court TV before it was acquired by Turner Broadcasting and re-launched as Tru.

One of her techniques has been to form advisory boards of her best customers and allowing them to set the standards, methods and deal structure based on the innovation they were looking to develop.

“I wanted ot have somebody who could actually talk research and got what this means,” Mandel explains about the hiring of Reichig. “And she also happens to know how to show those things to potential users and explain it in English.”

If she is successful, it will likely help move the entire industry of advanced audience-targeting forward, because it is often complex, full of techno-babble and engineering-speak, and has proven difficult for advertisers, agencies -- and even trade reporters -- to follow.

For example, this is how PrecisionDemand's own, soon-to-be released press announcement describes its new patent:

“The patent (US 8,627,359) covers the high-dimensional demographic vector matching technology that PrecisionDemand uses as one of several methods in its set top box TV ad targeting system. The basic method consists of four steps:

1.     Creating a buyer high dimensional profile

2.     Creating a media high dimensional profile

3.     Calculating vector similarity

4.     Using the similarity score for targeting"

For her part, Reichig says “she can’t wait” to begin having conversations with potential customers, and mixing it up with potential competitors, because she believes PrecisionDemand can truly do what it says it can do, and is uniquely differentiated to do it.  “It’s why I joined,” she says.

The Data Breach Marketers Least Expect

Data and Targeting Insider

by Laurie Sullivan, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014

I'm going through withdrawal. I prefer to make online purchases, rather than go into a retail store, and I was feeling pretty comfortable there for a while -- until Target's data breach. The 40 million credit and debit card records stolen, along with 70 million bits of customer information such as addresses and telephone numbers, made me rethink online purchases. Now I've gone back to paying with cash. Aside from putting millions in harm's way, can you imagine what continued data breaches could do to the online advertising and the manufacturing industries? For more than a decade I've talked with execs at companies continually claiming this could not possibly happen to them, asking why  anyone would want their company's data. Research firm IHS Technology published a whitepaper detailing how companies put their intellectual property and customer data at risk of security breaches and cyber attacks by increasingly opening their manufacturing facilities to wireless mobile communications. Data breaches happen in the most unlikely places. Take Android mobile apps, for example. The National Security Administration managed to scrape data from Android apps, Google Maps and Angry Birds. A National Retail Federation (NRF) ad running in the Washington, D.C.-based publications Politico, The Hill, and Roll Call titled "Hackers Don't Discriminate" lays out some data on security breaches. Only 24% of breaches occur at retail and restaurant companies, according to the 2013 investigation by Verizon analyzing more than 47,000 security breaches and 621 confirmed data breaches. Cyber criminals target all business types. In fact, 38% of data breaches impact large organizations, with 37% affecting financial organizations; 20%, manufacturing, utilities and transportation; 20%, information professional services. The U.S. government is breached more than 60 times per day. The NRF asserts through the campaign that retailers are only a part of the solution and that cyber theft is a crime only stopped by a united solution.