It’s no mystery to anyone on the planet that the smartphone has changed the way we interact with our world. It has the power to distract, but, moreover, the power to help. Consumers want more options, more interaction and more “smart” in their smartphone. This is where the physical web, beacons and other location-specific devices have a unique position to make our devices and the websites and apps upon them more connected to the businesses and those highly-valuable marketing efforts you’ve been running.

There are a few proximity marketing devices being used out there: beacons, Geo-location, WiFi and NFC to name a few. Beacons more recently being of the most popular types. They are passive Bluetooth™ tech that allow the consumer to interact with the world around them in unique and personalized ways. Long gone are the days when everyone gets the same exact overwhelming and useless message. You can send or push videos, personalized landing pages, content and offers that are relevant to your consumer at an exact moment in time.

Four Reasons to Start Using Proximity Marketing Today

1. Smart Campaigns
   The insights from how your consumers interact with your marketing campaign are invaluable. Push notifications and targeted campaigns can be easily measured. How is it being used? How many people interacted with it? Is it valuable to the consumer? With the insights into your consumer’s behavior, you can make smarter decisions moving forward, which makes them happy and you happy.
2. Push Notifications
   So, here comes the fun part. With proximity-based marketing, we have the capability of turning the world around the consumer into a Notification Center. They’re walking by your store, your restaurant, your event — interacting with your brand at that moment. It’s an amazing time to reach them with a highly personalized coupon, message, game or offer.
3. Better Consumer Experience
   Your consumers are going to thank you. They’re asking for more personalization; they don’t want what everyone else is getting. They also don’t want to be sold to, but they do want to buy from you. If you’re sending them the wrong message at the wrong time, they may ignore your brand — or worse yet, drop you altogether. When they receive something, whether by email, social or push notification, that is immediately relevant to their needs (or wants), they are going to engage with you.
4. Higher Awareness and Conversion
   For marketers today, conversion (the one metric to rule them all) is the holy grail. Personalized proximity campaigns see a 44-percent lift in engagement almost immediately, according to Google. So even if your one metric isn’t conversion, the fact that you’re paying attention enough to that consumer will make them feel surprised and delighted, which will lead to brand lift and awareness, as well.

Time to get a move on …
Overall, personalizing campaigns with proximity equals more work. It’s not a perfect, one-fell-swoop, click-and-boom-delivered tactic. There is some careful thought and consideration and market segmentation you have to do. But don’t let that sound as though it’s a lot of work. It’s not. Start small and experiment some with one to two market segments. Offer a BOGO to one and a 15% OFF to the other. You’re putting in the effort up-front, but the end result is a more fitting marketing campaign, better reach and awareness, and the personalized touch to that consumer will leave them feeling in love with what you have to offer.

70% of smartphone owners who bought something in a store first turned to their devices for information relevant to that purchase. And when people search on mobile, it tends to lead to action: 92% of those who searched on their phone made a related purchase.”
 — Lisa Gevelber, VP of Marketing at Google

How can we help? Let us know. Reach out to me Justin Henriksen with comments or questions. I’d love to chat with you.

Online @ http://bozell.com
Email jhenriksen@bozell.com

Happy Marketing.

How to Swoon Consumers as They Walk By was originally published in bozell on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are so excited that Instagram TV has finally launched. One piece of the puzzle that seemingly has been missing from this platform is long-form vertical video. For marketers and businesses, this can build upon the growing need and proven success of sharing consumable content, which will impact your brand and bottom-line revenue.

What is IGTV?

Facebook, the owner of Instagram, has made it no mystery their desire to create a video platform and enter the television space. In an effort to compete with Netflix and Amazon Video, their first foray was Facebook Watch, but (Instagram TV) IGTV’s focus is different. It is centered on more homegrown, organic content.

Instagram now has one billion monthly active users — up from 800 million in September of 2017. For marketers and businesses, that’s a lot of extra eyeballs and a lot of extra attention. And in our business, attention is good.

Teens are now watching 40 percent less TV than they did five years ago and, instead, are watching niche online content by their favorite creators. And viewers, overall, are watching 60 percent more video on Instagram than only one year ago. So the supply for vertical video content is apparent and in-demand.

With IGTV, YouTube stars now have another platform to showcase their long-form videos, (though we cannot anticipate the educational/instructional crowd to change over any time soon, a few have already been testing it).

A long-form video is anything more than 10 minutes in length. And while they get a bad rap because its short-form counterpart gets more “likes and shares,” the thing about long-form video is that it’s definitely more of a brand play. As a company/product/service, you’re showing what your brand is and creating loyalty. You’re giving consumers a taste of what you stand for, who you are, and what kind of value you can bring them — and that can definitely bring more lifetime-value (LTV).

Snapchat attempted this with their “Discover” section for media partners, but it hasn’t done as well as hoped. With adults now predicted to spend more time watching video on mobile than TV, coupled with Instagram’s already successful Stories feature, it is not unlikely for IGTV to become a central hub for video consumption, also taking into consideration that YouTube’s mobile app isn’t considered very user-friendly.

What does this mean for marketers and companies?

First, we will see IGTV take the form of re-purposed Instagram Stories and YouTube videos, so there will be many skeptics as to whether it’s a platform worth investing time. But we are smart people. We will see what others don’t. We see that the potential is storytelling and entertainment, not simply selling. But make no mistake, you will sell. Where short-form video encourages generous engagement rates, including quick likes and shares, long-form content will be a new, more diverse way for brands to tell their stories and showcase what sets them apart. Devoting time, budget and creativity to this new feature will pay off for brands by creating a slow burn of steadily high-quality content.

Second, the vertical video turns many marketers off. But here’s the thing: we cannot get romantic about horizontal video. We need to remember to follow what people are doing, not what we think we want them to do. Or worse, what they’ve always done. Our phones are much more comfortable to hold vertically. According to an early 2018 Forbes article, “The Rise of Vertical Video,” research shows that users generally hold their phone vertically 94 percent of the time. Vertical video definitely has a future and it’s just getting started.

Not sure you believe me? There are several startups purely focused on stock vertical video. Because of the increased demand for more vertical video content, as highlighted in Adweek, Snap Inc. implemented an accelerator program offering free ad credits to venture capitalists, incubators and start-up programs. According to a case study with 8fit, a fitness and nutrition app, they now have 20 times more app downloads than before from taking advantage of the Snap credits showcasing vertical video.

Sports media outlets like ESPN and the Golf Channel have embraced this trend on social media by offering quick, short clips in vertical format for a more up-close-and-personal experience with people’s favorite athletes and sports.

Third, this is a time to experiment. What works? What doesn’t work? Create, test, iterate and be as agile in your process as you can afford to be. As creatives, this is what we live to do.

Many of the beneficial features available in Instagram Stories are also available in IGTV, including clickable links, use of hashtags, ability to respond to comments, and access to insights (Social Media Examiner, July 2018). One downside is that you can only upload external videos from your files, as it does not currently let you record video directly inside the IGTV app (though you can upload saved Instagram Live videos). The continuity between already-understood Stories and the new platform will allow brands to comfortably and creatively expand on what they already know.

Major brands are already jumping on the opportunity to be the first few in IGTV land, though many are still struggling to reach the 60-minute mark. Louis Vuitton and Gucci are sharing their fashion shows, Netflix is highlighting actors in funny clips, and Chipotle is entertaining with long-form highlights of different food combinations available.

What would it have been like to be on Facebook or Google AdWords as a marketer in the early days? Pure gold and an opportunity worth embracing. And this is the direction advertising is headed: storytelling. In fact, it has always been there. I think we may have just forgotten that a little bit.

3 Things You Can Start with IGTV

1. Play around with the platform. The best way to figure out use-cases for your business, is to try. See what others are currently doing (or aren’t doing) and capitalize on opportunities. Also, do not fall into the trap of feeling as though its a waste of time — all new things teach you something more valuable than merely how to use the platform — they teach you how to experiment.
2. Communicate with your audience. So many marketers and advertisers get this wrong. The forget to ask the folks that are actually consuming their content. Ask very straightforward questions: What’s working? What do you like? What don’t you care for? Don’t be embarrassed. They will respect you for asking them and they will feel as though they played a part in the success of your IGTV channel.
3. Have some fun. IGTV and many video platforms like it are a place to let your brand have a little bit more fun and be a touch more casual. There are limits, so be mindful of that. However, video content platforms and long-form video such as this is there for entertainment, brand awareness, and value-add.

How can we help? We’d love to have a conversation.

Is Instagram (IGTV) transforming our TV viewing habits? was originally published in bozell on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In today’s consumer-centric world it’s simply not enough to lower your prices or add more features to beat your competition. It’s well known that thinking leads to crap software and low profit margins.

Instead, focus on the humans using your products — your users (or customers if you prefer that nomenclature). Conduct some up-front interviews. Find out what they’re saying, thinking, feeling, and most of all doing. At times your customers will tell you they “have to have” a feature that solves all their problems. They may not. It could be a compensation for a poorly implemented solution.

Create archetypes based off your real customers that help guide decision-making. Create stories of how they interact with the products you make. Where are the sticky points? Where are the ah-ha moments? Those intersections are where opportunities lay. Not at the bottom of the pricing pool. And certainly not with the bloated software you see in your market segment.

Why all this work?

1. You’ll understand your customer more intimately
2. You’ll be able to anticipate user needs more effectively
3. The quality of your soltuions will far exceed your goals

Do you want real differentiation? Build a culture and environment that puts your user’s experience at the top of the decision-making paradigm.

I’m remembering back to my first design processs. I was a mess. I fought it, I hated it, I thought it was stupid, and it wasn’t for me. But, it was.

I’m back in college; my freshman year of sorts. I sat down for one of my first classes, and thought that Photoshop was going to be one of the first things I was going to learn. My college instructor, Debbie handed to me a sheet of paper. She told me and the class to fold the paper in half, then in half again, and again… until finally we got something like 20 tiny squares built out on an 8.5 x 11". “Alright, so here’s the project”, she began to say. Ohh, exciting. The project came with a basic brief. Real projects, and real clients. “So, the 20 squares on your page will hold 20 different design concepts. When you’re done, I’d love to see a few more if you have them in you”. Holy sh*t… what? Isn’t my first design going to like… blow your mind? I’m pretty sure it will. As most of you all know, this is where the fun begins.

My first three designs come easy. The next 3 are more difficult, but I tend to still feel confident in myself. By the time I hit the next 3… stuff gets real. Quick. I’m running run out of ideas. I panic. I have self-doubts about even joining the design industry. And I’m thinking about going to work at a grocery store bagging groceries. Because shoot, I’m not good enough. Here’s the thing, we all have this moment. I still do. I’m knee deep into a design and realize that I may not have it in me. But I do. That’s why this part is so important. It stretched me. It made me think beyond the obvious and I appreciated the lesson. Most times it’s some of the later design concepts are the best. The shroud of obvious solutions are now lifted and I’m forced to think of solutions to the problem.

Don’t doubt yourself. Or better yet, do doubt yourself, but keep pushing through the discomfort. I promise you’ll find a cool mind-space and you’ll be proud. If you’re having some doubts, send me a message. I’d love to help encourage and guide you.