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Advertising agencies need to be staffed with highly skilled people because they can’t sell the product, there is no point in making it. The role of an advertising agency is to create a strategy for its clients that will allow the products and services they advertise to be seen by as many consumers as possible. For this to happen, the marketing strategies need to reach a large audience with an attractive platform or offer.

Jordan Sudberg has seen some of the most highly successful marketing strategies for medical devices and pharmaceutical products worldwide. He has developed these strategies based on his extensive experience and knowledge of the world of medicine and drug discovery. Sudberg is involved with most major medical device corporations to help them find their way through the marketing maze.

1. There is No Outdoor Advertising in Sao Paulo, Brazil

While there is a plethora of outdoor advertising in the United States, this is not the case for Sao Paulo, Brazil. Brazilian law prohibits any form of outdoor advertising. This law was enacted to protect consumers from being bombarded with too much information and exposed to many potentially harmful and unnecessary messages.

2. Millennials Are Distracted Viewers of Television

According to a study conducted by NeuroFocus, most Millennials pay little attention to live television, and the advertisements played during it. The study indicates that most Millennials watch TV while using other devices, such as personal computers or phones. They are also distracted by social media and other Internet sites. As a result, marketers have had difficulty getting their messages across in an effective manner.

3. Ads Have Massively High ROI

A marketing campaign’s return on investment is usually measured by its success in bringing clients new customers. There are very few marketing applications that generate such high ROI for their developers in comparison to ads. The advertisements placed on TV are among the most effective tools in developing new customers.

Despite their success in reaching the right audiences with the right messages, it is estimated that ads have a return on investment that is more than six times higher than that of any other form of marketing. This is because the ad cost, measured by air time, can be only approximately $12.47 per thousand viewers. By contrast, products and services are sold on television at much higher prices, often costing around $20 to $150 per thousand viewers. Sudberg’s innovative strategies can help increase marketing strategies’ effectiveness and make them more effective than ever.

4. Marketers Are Better Able To Optimize Ads Than Ever Before

The great challenge that most marketers face is how to split-test different messages to arrive at the right one. Most of them spend thousands of dollars on each test, but they cannot get reliable data. They have trouble determining whether a specific message works effectively or not.

While this is still a challenge, many marketers have been able to overcome it through the use of highly advanced analytical tools. In the present day, whenever an ad is tested online or on television, the response rates are tracked and recorded.
Jordan Sudberg‘s experience and knowledge of medical industry marketing makes him one of the best people to talk to the need for innovative strategies.

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Online advertising has grown exponentially in recent years; it creates a direct and immediate connection between companies who want to sell their products and services and people who might be interested in said products. It is, therefore, natural for online marketing to have revolutionized the way we advertise almost everything. Advertising on social media networks such as Facebook allows one to connect with millions of people at once without spending more on advertising costs than is necessary. Most of the time, online advertising is the second-most cost-effective form of advertising.

Benefits of Online Advertising

1. Exposure

The average person spends about 2 hours each day on the internet. The top six most popular websites: Facebook, YouTube, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay, all have over a billion monthly visits. If you advertise on any of these sites and target your marketing toward people who spend time on these sites, you can get access to a large audience.

2. Costs

Depending on the type of advertisement that you are selling, the costs can vary greatly. The average cost per thousand (CPM) for advertising on Google Adwords is $0.30, which rises to $1.20 for a Google Display Network ad. Still, as these run through many different websites, they are not as efficient a way of advertising as other methods such as Facebook or Twitter ads which can sell for around $0.10 per click.

3. Personalization

The best way to make one’s ads relevant to their audience is by using the information these social media sites have on their users. It can be age, gender, likes, and dislikes, but also what interests the people looking at these ads have, which can be gathered from the browsing history of the people who visited your page. The more relevant the ad is to a person’s interests and background, the more likely he will engage with it. 4. Targeting

If a person is on Facebook, he’s very likely to be interested in the product or service you have to sell, which is where targeting comes into play.

4. Retargeting

One can track what a person is searching for, and if he leaves the site without making a purchase, there is a good chance that. Jordan Sudberg will show interest in the service or product you are trying to sell. One only needs information for this type of advertising is his email address. Many companies offer various retargeting options on Facebook, which will alert you when someone has scrolled past your ad, and this way, you can keep advertising to them until they have purchased something from you.

5. Co-creation

Online advertising is a very interactive platform; on one side, the vendor is trying to sell his product, and on the other, customers are looking to buy products or services. It allows both parts of this equation to be at the same level and interact freely, which increases engagement drastically.

Jordan Sudberg suggests that online advertising is one of the best, most cost-effective ways to advertise one’s products and services. Social media websites such as Facebook allow for a much higher level of interaction between vendor and customer than an advertisement on television or radio. People can express their opinions about products and services, ask questions or share their experiences, thus creating a more incredible feeling of trust. The cost of advertising on Facebook is much lower than on television or radio, making it an excellent way to advertise one’s products.

One can advertise very effectively by using the various targeting options that Facebook offers in co-creation with retargeting while keeping costs low. It is the best possible way to advertise online.

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AI vs. data analytics

In fact, you can think of AI as just a superior form of data analytics or social media metrics that you already use. Take a data analysis tool that you probably already use in your daily marketing life – Google’s analytics package. Using this tool, you can see which visitors are coming to your website, which pages they are visiting, and which search terms brought them in the first place. You can also see which devices they are using and which browsers they are using. But here’s the thing: Google gives you all the charts and data, but you – the human – needs to figure it all out. The same is true when you start diving into Facebook or Twitter user data.

What’s going to change with AI is that, soon, machines will be able to make the same kinds of inferences that humans can. Moreover, they will be able to find the types of relationships in the data that you (or your marketing team) cannot. For example, an AI-powered application would be able to tell you not only when peak activity on your social media platforms occur, but also what characteristics the best-performing pieces of content have in common, or what the average “buyer personas” on your different social media platforms look like.

How marketing will change as a result of AI

The marketing industry will still be the same – there will be leads, sales funnels and conversions. However, each of these will become a lot easier to analyze using AI-powered applications and software. In some cases, you will actually be able to predict user behavior using insights provided from AI. For example, instead of messing around with a lot of A/B testing to see what the “perfect” marketing message is for a Facebook ad, you will know in advance how well a message will likely perform. You won’t have a magic crystal ball (nobody does), but you’ll eliminate much of the guesswork in crafting the perfect marketing campaign.

Ways to use AI in social media marketing

Putting it all together, there are several ways that AI will likely influence the world of social media:

• AI will enable the creation of hyper-personalized marketing messages
• AI will provide more robust buyer and customer personas
• AI will make it easier to distinguish between qualified leads and unqualified leads
• AI will enable bots to converse with prospects on just about any topic

An example of AI at work in social media

How you choose to embrace the brave new world of AI is up to you. For some brands, it might mean the creation of multiple taglines for multiple customer niches. For example, consider the example of Coca-Cola. What if Coca-Cola could use AI to create personalized marketing messages for different demographic groups that could be used across different social media platforms at different times of the day or night, in multiple different languages and dialects?

For example, if the Coke AI marketing bot knows that a Facebook follower prefers to speak Spanish rather than English, wouldn’t it make more sense to send a marketing message in Spanish? If the Coke AI marketing bot knows that you live in Philadelphia, it might send a very different marketing message than if it knows you live in New England. For example, Coke’s ads appearing in your Facebook feed might show images of your favorite Eagles players enjoying a nice, refreshing Coke after the game and vice versa.

In many ways, then, AI is not just about software and machines getting smarter, it’s also about marketers getting smarter. What once took you hours to analyze and decipher might be possible in just a few seconds – and that will free you up to focus on what really matters for all of your social media marketing clients.

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Re-thinking the classic social media influencer strategy

Amtrak has specifically said that social media follower count is not the basis for selection, and that they are not looking for top influencers who do this to make a living. This marks a real departure from the traditional influencer strategy, in which brands specifically search out glamorous A-list and B-list influencers, give them lots of free product samples or the VIP treatment, and expect extensive social media coverage in response. Instead, Amtrak seems much more content to pick out a relatively unknown person from the crowd who happens to love travel and have some solid social media skills.

From a marketing perspective, the #AmtrakTakeMeThere campaign has much more of the feel of one of those essay contests that travel companies love to run – “Tell us why you’d be the perfect person to travel to Cancun for Spring Break, and you could win a free, all-expenses paid trip to sunny Mexico!” As part of those essay promotions, companies aren’t necessarily looking for beautiful supermodels who would look great hanging out on a beach – it’s just as possible that a sweet grandmother looking to enjoy her retirement in style might win the promotion.

Generating a higher ROI with influencer marketing

The big picture here, of course, is that many large brands have gotten burned by throwing money at “the beautiful people” on Instagram, and are looking for a much higher ROI by searching out regular people on social media who aren’t expecting tens of thousands of dollars for a single Instagram photo. The reality is that many of the top social media influencers today are basically mercenaries-for-hire, willing to promote any company or any brand, just as long as they’re getting paid.

So Amtrak is getting back to the original roots of the social media influencer strategy, looking for people who love to travel, and who also have the social media skills to bring their stories to life. Amtrak has specifically said that it is looking for people who can “connect with followers at a deep level.” So Amtrak wants people who aren’t just using photos and tweets to show off a fabulous lifestyle. (Of course, with the extra thousand dollars that Amtrak is using to sweeten the pot, it’s perhaps expected that you will make your trip a little more extravagant than otherwise possible.)

The business case for a scaled-down influencer strategy

And there’s a good business rationale behind the new influencer strategy, too. While taking Amtrak trains up and down the Northeast Corridor might be commonplace for business travelers in cities like Washington, Philadelphia and New York City, many people probably don’t think about Amtrak when considering options for how to travel across the country on long-distance trips. So Amtrak is hoping that people will re-discover the thrill and excitement of train travel, and perhaps snap some great photos along the way. It will be interesting to see how much traction this new Amtrak promotion gets – if it succeeds, it might convince other large companies and brands to re-think their social media influencer strategies.

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The senior director of social media for Arby’s uses social listening techniques to monitor how the brand’s highly inventive posts are received—and translates the feedback into sharper content for the future.

The Arby’s team also keeps an ear out for how the brand is referred to across social media platforms, to help it measure public sentiment, while also determining whether a complaint is legitimate or just a troll baiting them into a public fight.

We recently sat down with Martin—who will speak at next year’s Social Shake-Up, May 7-9, 2018 in Atlanta—to get his read on how social listening informs Arby’s content marketing, brand reputation and customer service.

Crowdsource Content Ideas

Arby’s has a unique approach to crafting content, and social listening is at the heart of the process.

The firm focuses on niche interest areas that have nothing to do with promoting the latest additions to its menu. Instead, it plays off of pop culture with an inventive array of pictures, GIFs and videos that reference everything from gaming and anime to wrestling and comic books.

If Arby’s tweets out something about anime, for instance, some of its followers may request that a future tweet reference Sailor Moon. And if enough of its followers request it, they’ll do it.

“We don’t just set it and forget it. We go through each comment and have a tagging categorization system—if we see a groundswell for a piece of content the audience wants, we’ll work on creating it,” he says. “It shows we’re listening, and sometimes we’ll come back to each individual two or three weeks later and say, ‘Here it is.’”

Let’s go, Samson! pic.twitter.com/nAXEEo2Inz

— Arby’s (@Arbys) September 26, 2017

Measure Sentiment

Many social listening and analytics tools attempt to measure sentiment, but it’s a famously elusive metric. Measures of sentiment can wildly fluctuate from one minute to the next and it’s easy to take those scores to heart—but sentiment needs to be viewed over the long-term to be understood.

“We always advise caution when looking at sentiment scores,” says Martin. “You can bury yourself with the data, getting sentiment by channel by hour, but you need to add context and color around the scores when you report them. We just use it directionally.”

Sentiment patterns emerge over time and when there’s an abnormally high or low spike, Arby’s will investigate what’s driving the numbers. But smaller brands that don’t generate quite as many mentions on social as a national fast-food chain need to take a step back—one tweet or piece of content can drag those numbers down, while the next post will neutralize sentiment.

“You can kind of drive yourself crazy focusing solely on that number,” Martin says.

Determine if It’s Slander or Candor

One issue many service-based businesses grapple with is whether or not to respond to negative posts. How can a brand discern between a legitimate complaint and somebody just trolling it?

When Arby’s gets a complaint, it will first dig deeper into the individual’s posting history in general and past interactions with the brand in particular.

“We try to get a good read on the person we’re interacting with before we interact,” he says. “If somebody tries to troll us, we’ll go back and look at conversations they’ve had with us in the past. If we recognize it’s a troll baiting us into a bad situation, maybe we can call them out on it and have some fun with it.”

Sometimes, Martin says, you can just click into their profile and look at their last few posts to get a read. “But that’s the key differentiator—seeing this person’s history.”

Follow Jerry: @Jascierto

The post How Arby’s Uses Social Listening to Understand (and Delight) Its Audience appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

There are some brands that make a memorable impact year after year. Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and even Snickers has a few gems. However, there is one brand that stands tall above the rest. This brand ranked in the top five Super Bowl advertisers from 2010-2015.  It revolutionized Super Bowl advertising with its “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign. It makes delicious cheesy and crunchy chips.

Yes, this brand is Doritos. But the perennial advertising powerhouse won’t be appearing on any TV screens come February 5th. Frito-Lay, the PepsiCo subsidiary, held the final “Crash the Super Bowl” contest last year leading up to Super Bowl 50, after a 10-year run.

The contest, which gave everyday people the chance to film their own Super Bowl ad and win big in the process, was a massive success among entrants, viewers, and consumers. Since the campaign’s inception, over 32,000 people submitted entries. Doritos handed out over $7 million in prize money and grew from a $1.52 billion brand in 2006 to a $2.2 billion in 2016.

Why stop now?

Move Over, Millennials

First of all, Frito-Lay’s marketing strategy is shifting with their target demographic. In an interview with Business Insider, Frito-Lay’s CMO explained that, in 2006, when millennials were the consumer target, the iPhone had yet to be released and Facebook hadn’t gone public yet, the thought of an average consumer creating content was absurd. Could consumers do it? That was their goal- to see if consumers could create professional-grade content for a big brand.

Today, however, the landscape is evolving. Millennials are having kids of their own. These kids are part of Gen Z and they are now the primary target for Doritos. The only problem is that they were born and grow up in a digital age. With Vine (RIP), YouTube, and the abundance of social media platforms, Gen Z is made up of native content creators. So a consumer creating content is nothing to write home about today. It’s simply not worthy of a six month campaign anymore.

Gen Z doesn’t need to be discovered. Back in 2006, aspiring filmmakers and advertisers did. Gen Z’ers are making their own success. So Frito-Lay had to adapt.

Enter their new campaign, “Legion of the Bold.” The campaign allows consumers to create content year-round, not just for the Super Bowl, in the form of 30-second ads, banner ads, and wide videos.

Deflating Ratings

NFL ratings this season have dropped for a number of reasons. And since the number is too great to list everything, the most likely reasons are below.

• Lack of star power: Tom Brady, one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, was suspended for the first four games of the season. Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, retired.
• NFL RedZone: the exclusive channel gives subscribers access to every big play and every scoring play for every game. You don’t need to spend your whole Sunday on the couch cheering for your favorite team(s). Oh, and there are no commercials. Why bother watching the whole game anymore?
• On that note, commercials: There are commercials after nearly everything- kickoffs, punts, scoring plays, reviews, challenges, timeouts, injuries, the two minute warning and more.
• Fantasy football: fans have become so engrossed that they no longer care about supporting their real team. All that matters is stats, which you can track in real-time online.
• Social media: When you can follow teams, writers, broadcasters, and sports media companies, you have all the game information and updates literally at your fingertips.

It’s understandable, then, that brands could be wary of shelling out for advertising… even for the biggest sporting event in the country.

Money

That’s really all it comes down to. Fox is asking for a record $5 million for a 30-second spot and as a result, spots aren’t moving as quickly as they did in 2015.

Additionally, advertisers thrive on certainty. They like to know who, if anyone, will buy their product. And since it was an election year, there is economic uncertainty among both buyers and sellers. So, their unwillingness to spend on ads without knowing what kind of return they’ll get is certainly justified.

Frito-Lay is looking towards the future of advertising, and traditional advertising is not part of that future.

It’s currently unclear whether or not other advertisers will follow suit and abandon television advertising entirely, even during a game that is frequently the most watched show in history.

What is clear is that without flying pigs, the middle seat, time machines, babies in slings, and the other wacky brainchildren of the everyday creative, Super Bowl commercial breaks will never be the same.

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The decision to launch a dedicated sports marketing agency comes in the wake of the success of Turner’s content and data solutions unit, which was formed last year. A new proprietary ad product called “Turner Native Plus” replaced 200 commercial slots with branded content. The result? Viewers paid 59% more attention to the native content. Additionally, engagement with traditional commercials was 62% higher when paired with branded content. Turner Ignite Sports is looking to reproduce those results for Turner’s sports programming, and here’s why they’ll likely succeed.

Convenience

Brands currently looking to enter the sports advertising space are hesitant because of its complexity. Not only do they have to hire an advertising agency and a media buying agency, and find digital and network partners, they have to go through additional channels to access the athletes. After going through a talent agency to use a player, the brand would have to make separate negotiations with the player’s respective league.

Turner Ignite Sports will make it significantly easier for clients to expand into the sports landscape. Like a convenience store for clients, it has everything a client needs. No additional stops, and no navigating additional channels.

Watchability

When you watch a live sporting event, losing interest during a timeout is nearly impossible. You’re yelling and cheering until your throat is raw — and everyone else around you is doing the same thing. There’s a constant energy, and not even a timeout can affect that feeling.

Watching a sporting event at home is different. You’re more apt to become one with your couch. You’re far less likely to yell and cheer. Even at a Super Bowl party, the atmosphere is tame and subdued compared to a live event. Losing interest during a timeout becomes all too easy because you have the unfortunate pleasure of seeing the commercials.

Although you probably don’t see them. You change the channel. And if you’re like me, the most unlucky sports consumer ever, you flip back to the game seconds after a big play.

But if you’re watching a game on TNT and the first (or only) content you see during a timeout is related to the channel or sport you’re watching, there’s a good chance you won’t reach for the remote. When the content is directed at the consumer, the consumer is naturally more engaged.

With a greater ease of access for clients and a probable decrease in viewers tuning out, Turner Ignite Sports seems like a guaranteed win for Turner’s properties and a game changer in the ad world.

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Every week, we publish an informative and insightful and it occurred to us that not all of our blog readers are subscribers — and not all of our subscribers are blog readers. So, in an attempt to bring everyone the best of our content (just in case you missed it) here’s our picks for the week from SME — and from around the web.

NOTE: If you are NOT already a subscriber to our newsletter, why not subscribe via our VERY easy signup page here:

And if you ARE already a newsletter subscriber and already saw the following content already this week, well, here’s some content you might like instead:

Either way, thanks for stopping by. Feel free to connect with me personally on Twitter, follow @smxplorer, or join our on Facebook.

How To Advertise On Snapchat With Literally Any Budget

Beyond the incredible user engagement, Snapchat offers relatively affordable advertising options compared to other social platforms, making it ideal even for small businesses….Read more

3 Easy Steps To Grow Your Email List Using Social Media

When you consider social media’s record low conversion rate, how do you get social media visitors to subscribe to your email list? You incentivize….Read more

5 Charitable Apps to Use This Holiday Season

With such a hectic festive schedule, have you gotten a chance to give back? No, we’re not trying to guilt trip you. If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to donate, you’re in luck! Read more…

From Around the Web…

Don’t forget to !

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If Friends Share It — It’s Probably Good

For brands, that doesn’t mean you can simply move your blast advertising campaigns into social channels. You actually have to make real conversation with real people and help them get what they want. That means knowing your prospects well enough to understand what they want. It also means creating content that’s helpful, entertaining, educational — or all of the above. Make content that helps your prospects make a decision. And here’s a good yardstick — make content they want to share with friends.

It’s Truer Now Than Ever — The Medium Is the Message

Smart brands have noticed that we’re moving to a “connection economy,” and they are producing ongoing content that meets the new search “relevancy” standards. They’ve studied their audiences, listened to their social conversations, and have developed plans to use that content in their social profiles to emotionally connect to their audiences and encourage conversation. When it resonates, it gets shared and receives comments and likes, which makes that brand more visible.

What it all boils down to is that in the new world of content marketing, the Content “IS” the Ad. Sharing, conversation, and emotionally connected content will be the ads of the future. Instead of thinking in terms of “Convince and Convert,” start thinking in terms of “Converse and Convert.” Helpful content gives your customers reasons to stay engaged — not just react — and it also increases brand advocacy.

So start thinking like a publisher because the more relevant, helpful content you create, the better you can drive engagement. And as my Return on Relationship (‪#‎RonR‬) formula illustrates…

Content drives Engagement, Engagement drives Advocacy, and Advocacy correlates directly to Increased Sales. #‎NoLetUp‬!

This article was modified for Social Media Explorer. It originally appeared on Tedrubin.com and was re-published here with permission of the author.

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