Big Changes In Marketing, Who Moved Our Cheese?

Within the last quarter there have been a number of changes that marketers are struggling to keep up with. From Facebooks changes to the way the news feeds shows what they feel are overly promoted posts to Googles latest change to the algorithm  to bump non responsive sites to lower rankings. With all of the changes, marketers who have been waiting until they have to do something are now finding themselves dealing with a wave of changes across a number of different channels.

You have an audience now what? - 

With the latest changes in Facebook and the way they are choosing what to display in the news feeds it is leaving many marketers faced with either paying high rates to reach the audience they built or resort to other tactics to reach their audience. This is nothing new if you are a marketer dealing with third party solutions in any channel. Only when you build your own brand and drive customers outside of the ad tech solutions offered will this cease to be an issue. Those who rely heavily on specific solutions will find budgets growing year over year in order to be able to pay the "ransom" for reaching their audience. This is why omni channel marketing is much more effective, and using third parties to drive traffic to the sites where data can then be collected and kept for future re-marketing. When planning your next campaign it is important to keep in mind how you are building your own brand and how much is reliant on third parties who mainly use budget to brand themselves and then turn the leads over. Facebook does this now with a "gateway" type algorithm and it will likely not be long before the rest follow.

"Hello, can you see me now?" - 

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the move to mobile is not just because that is where your customers are going and for Google it is all about "user experience". I believe that as much as the mantra "Do No Evil" anymore. The move to mobile is important because of mobile payment solutions, beacons and the coming solutions Google is working on to make their marketing hyper local. Sites that are responsive will work better in the solutions they plan to roll out. If everything is mobilized nice and pretty it does make for a better user experience and makes their location based results in maps and their payment solutions look so much better. Instead of having to come up with a solution that will justify the site into their mobile solution you will have already done it for them (too cynical?). 

On the other hand no one says you have to use their solutions. With Apple's iBeacon and iPay way ahead of the pack on this one it is a much better choice to begin the move to mobile now regardless of what Google wants. It is about engagement and reaching your customers where they live. For 63% of your target that is on a mobile device somewhere. If you plan to be able to reach them at the right time with the right message and increase sales, you should also be working on incorporating location based channels like beacons somehow into your current or next marketing budget. If your agency is advising you it is not time yet.....you may want to put them under review.

The Bottom Line. - 

If you intend to take full advantage of the coming Q4 holiday season you may already be too late. With planning, testing and integration the window for changes and scale is becoming tighter. Unless you plan to enlist the help of someone who has already made these types of strategic changes for another brand, the process could be longer than expected from trial and error. Take time now to discuss your goals and measure your current state against the changes that have taken place and where you need to be before setting the wheels in motion. As always if the task is bigger than the bandwidth, contact me (bryangiss@gmail.com).

Thoughts? Feedback? Feel free to engage each other here and keep this an open forum. Also, feel free to send me an e-mail or invite (bryangiss@gmail.com) or comment here so we can keep the conversation going. If you enjoyed this article please see my others... https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/articles/650596?trk=mp-reader-h

Bryan Gissiner has been in Digital Advertising for over 19 years in everything from retail to owning his own ad network. Currently, he works as a marketing problem solver for retail, brands and CPG companies. He is a thought leader primarily in search, but he has also helped companies build and execute display, pay-per-call, pay-per-click, local, hyper-local, IoT, and other strategies. He is a regular contributor on LinkedIn with a large following of other experts from a number of different areas.

For over 12 years Bryan Gissiner has worked on both the publisher and advertiser side helping them to find ways to lower budgets and increase return on those budgets. For the complete story, please go to www.linkedin.com/in/bryangiss or @bryangiss on twitter or bryangiss@gmail.com.