It's Time to Use AI in Marketing
If you and your competition aren’t using artificial intelligence in your marketing strategy, this might be the year that changes. It’s expected this year will be when a lot of businesses wake up to the power of AI, and leverage its abilities to analyze consumer behavior and search patterns, and use data from social media platforms and blog posts in order to better understand how customers find their products and services.
Artificial intelligence is the biggest commercial opportunity for companies, industries, and nations over the next few decades. It’s anticipated to increase global GDP by up to 14% between now and 2030. For this reason, latecomers to AI will find themselves at a significant competitive disadvantage.
Reasons for Adopting Artificial Intelligence in Your Business:
- To obtain or sustain a competitive advantage
- To move into new markets
- Because new organizations using AI will enter your market
- The pressure to reduce costs
- Customer desire
- And more!
For AI integration into your marketing platform, you can look to the big players like Salesforce, which integrates Einstein AI into their platform, or a slew of third-party applications that offer single use AI tools, such as nurturing automation, personalization, and even offers. The new tools are based upon historic behavioral actions as well as aggregated data from target personas.
Linx has found that by using these toolsets, we can improve our Conversion Rate Optimization programs by 2-3x.
Chatbots at Your Service
Chatbots are one of the many ways you can introduce artificial intelligence into your marketing strategy. Chatbots are an AI-based technology which uses instant messaging to chat with customers, leads, and site visitors in real-time. Their natural language processing allows AI chatbots to decipher what information a user is looking for, and the bot will respond as if it were a real person instantly 24/7 (with outstanding customer service, never losing their patience!), which is why they’re widely used across the web and on social media.
- Of the 71% of people willing to use messaging apps to get customer assistance, many do it because they want their problem solved fast
- 63% of people prefer messaging an online chatbot to communicate with a business or brand
- 80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020
- By 2022, chatbots will help businesses save over $8 billion per annum
At Linx, we frequently deploy chatbots on client websites, such as the live chat we implemented on Suburban Exterminating’s website, which allows website visitors to get in touch with a customer service agent within seconds, amplifying the company’s web leads 24/7.
Ready to embrace AI in your marketing strategy? Get in touch with Linx today!
Video Marketing Isn't Going Away
It’s no secret that video marketing is, and will remain to be a huge marketing trend. Not only does video content marketing have the potential to drive sales through compelling content and storytelling, if your website includes video, but it’s also actually 50x more likely to drive organic search results compared to text. This is because users find video more captivating, and Google pushes pages that include videos higher in its rankings.
Here are a few more reasons why you should be using online video marketing in your business:
- 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video
- 93% of brands got a new customer because of a video on social media
- 43% of video marketers say video has reduced the number of support calls they’ve received
- 88% of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI
- 99% of people who use video marketing say they’ll continue doing so
Through the use of strategies such as sequential storytelling and day-in-the-life videos, for example, you can truly bring your brand to life on social media through video marketing.
Video SEO marketing is also important—YouTube and other online videos are displayed in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), so it’s going to be important to optimize your videos, as well—text overlays, closed captions, descriptions, titles, and file names are all important to your video SEO.
Linx has a robust history of video marketing for businesses across a variety of industries. Here are a few highlights from some of our recent video production projects:
ELMO Board Product Video
- Created a product marketing video for ELMO, a global leader in educational technology, introducing their new ELMO Board
- Released in 5 different languages to drive product sales around the world
Suburban Exterminating 5 Second Video Ads
- Developed a catalog of 5-second video ads for Long Island-based pest control company, Suburban Exterminating, promoting their “Pests Today, Gone Tomorrow” guarantee
- Used in YouTube retargeting ads to remind Suburban’s past website visitors of the company’s services
Ready to implement video into your marketing strategy? Click here to get started.
User-Generated Content is on the Rise
Content for your audience, created by your audience is a huge marketing trend and is a powerful, often unexplored resource for marketers trying to reach younger markets like Millennials and Gen Z. Creating a user-generated content marketing plan involves coming up with innovative ways to encourage your audience to share their own unique content, often by offering them something in return, such as a discount or partnering for a cause.
Recently, Linx created a monthly social giveaway program for Farmingdale Meat Market, a Long-Island-based butcher shop with a new national e-commerce website. Farmingdale’s social followers were encouraged to share photos of their cooked Farmingdale meats with their own followers in exchange for the chance to win a Farmingdale gift card, resulting in greater social engagement, brand recognition, and customer loyalty (during a pandemic, no less).
As a whole, user-generated content significantly increases brand engagement, helps SEO, builds loyalty with your customers, drives conversion rates, and according to a recent study by PR Newswire, has the potential to influence the decision to purchase in as many as 90% of shoppers.
So how can you create user-generated content?
- Encourage your audience to share photos of your products in exchange for an entry in a giveaway
- Create branded hashtags for your audience to use in social media posts
- Develop campaigns your audience buys into, with a shared effort toward a specific cause
- Leverage both product and service reviews
If you’re looking for help developing a marketing strategy that includes user-generated content, reach out to Linx today at thinkahead@linx.com.
Welcome to a Cookieless World
After an unprecedented year that impacted marketing around the world, a new year brings exciting new ways to attract, engage, and delight your audience to drive business growth.
Today we’re sharing the first part of our new blog series, The Top Marketing Trends You Need to Know.
Goodbye, Web Cookies
Web cookies are small pieces of data stored on users’ computers by their web browsers, allowing websites to remember information, such as the user’s browsing activity or the items they added to their shopping carts. For many years, cookies have played a vital role in the digital marketing machine by providing key data used in targeting and retargeting audiences at the right time, harvesting data, and improving ad performance.
Now for the mic drop. From now on, you can expect a cookieless world. Popular browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox have already blocked third-party cookies, meaning you’ll have to get more creative in your efforts to make up for the loss of valuable data cookies provided.
So, here’s what you can do:
- Embrace AdTech in new ways, such as media mix modeling (MMM)
- Build your own Customer Data Platform (CDP), a process providing long-term control over targeting
- Be at the forefront of alternative technologies; demand-side platforms are a good start
- Rely on the data provided by FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet); in many cases, this data is sufficient when combined with robust analytics
- Educate, test, and train, from the C-Suite down on this issue and new ways to manage targeting
If you’re looking for help setting a marketing strategy in a cookieless world, reach out to Linx today at thinkahead@linx.com.
In Simple Terms, What Is Predictive Marketing?
This question is best answered by example and by thinking about how things have started to change in the marketing world. Nowadays, businesses can measure and record many aspects of their interactions with individual customers. This information can be used to help businesses better understand which customers are most interested in their product, what their customers’ needs truly are, and which marketing efforts are working best for each customer segment. Once businesses better understand their customer-business interactions, they can make data-driven decisions to improve these interactions. In some cases, this data can even be used to make predictions about new customers.
Making predictions involves creating a mathematical or statistical model which learns from historical data to forecast future events. Being able to predict which customers will interact with your product allows businesses to prioritize their marketing efforts and marketing spend.
As an example, one of our clients is a lending company which keeps track of every customer which was both approved and not-approved after they’ve applied for funding (this company counts conversions as customers who were approved). In addition, the company also keeps track of each applicant’s credit score, industry, state, and annual sales information. Armed with this data, we leveraged statistical modeling techniques to create models that could predict the chances that new customers will be approved. In other words, using the model the company can now classify new customers as “fundable” or “not-fundable”. Why is this useful?
To see how the model could be used, suppose that the company will spend $100,000 over the next few months marketing to new customers, and that 40% of those new customers will not be approved for funding and 60% will be approved. These percentages are not known in advance because the company (obviously) cannot see into the future. This means that $100,000 x 40%=$40,000 will be wasted on non-fundable customers and $100,000 x 60%=$60,000 will be spent on customers who are funded. Alternatively, if the company had used the predictive model from the outset, they would have identified those non-fundable customers and specifically not spent money marketing to them. If the model was perfect, this means the company would have only spent $60,000 instead of $100,000 to acquire the same number of total conversions, thereby reducing their cost per conversion by 40%. In this example, the data collected and the predictive model saved the company $40,000 which can be used towards other marketing efforts or investments.
This is just one of many different applications of predictive marketing. In general, predictive modeling should be used to answer specific business questions such as: which markets should I decide to attack next? How should I adjust my budget over various channels to increase revenue? What products should I recommend to my existing customers? One important requirement for predictive modeling is to have high quality data. There are several ways to approach this:
- First define your business goals and then decide what data is best to record.
- First collect a bunch of data and then mine the data for insights.
- Augment you existing data with 3rd party data sources.
Most people would probably say that option (1) is best, but it all depends on your own specific goals and limitations. As newer data-recording and data-storage solutions are created, the demand and utility of predictive marketing will continue to climb. From this perspective, marketing is destined to become an increasingly scientific field. So, we will have physicists, biologists, chemists, mathematicians, and marketicians. Marketicians? Maybe marketologists is a better name. Or not, time will tell.
To check a sample predictive report, click here.
43rd Annual Golf & Tennis Charity Classic
Cohen Children’s Medical Center has greatly benefited from the hard work of the members of the Children’s Medical Fund. On June 18, CMF hosted its 43rd Annual Golf & Tennis Charity Classic at Glen Oaks Club in Old Westbury. The event featured a friendly golf and Tennis tournament followed by a cocktail reception and dinner where there were live auction items and raffle prizes available for purchase to help support the children. During the dinner, a silent auction was held where several superheroes emerged to promote CMF’s new program: Heroes with Heart. Guests were able to bid on the Super Heroes, to send them to the Children’s Hospital. A total of $19,000+ was raised that night.
Linx partnered with CMF in creating this program to help facilitate some happiness for hospitalized children. This program is designed to bring popular superheroes to the bedsides of children to remind them that they’re not alone in their fight. The superheroes come into the hospital rooms with toys and activities to give them a sense of hope and joy during these difficult times.
All the proceeds generated from the golf outing helped fund The Children’s Medical Fund Center for Diagnostic Studies, located on the fourth floor of the new pavilion at Cohen’s. This pediatric diagnostic suite is a state of the art MRI and X-ray area designed specifically for children in the hospital. The NASA-themed suite features two MRI machines, a mock scanner that child life specialists use to ease children’s apprehension, and special goggles that allow children to watch movies during their examination.
For several years, Linx has partnered with CMF to aid in ongoing marketing efforts, including writing email blasts for their events and integrating other client companies’ marketing into CMF events. We also designed the front cover of the journals given out at the golf outing.
Please contact us if you’re looking for ways to boost the marketing of your company or business.
If you’d like to donate or volunteer with The Heroes with Heart program or are interested in learning about the charity, additional information can be found at Cmfny.org.
Augmented Reality – How Can It Be Used to Enhance Your Brand?
Last week, at our weekly “lunch and learn” session, Linx discussed the topic of Augmented Reality and its increasing adoption for marketers.
Augmented Reality (AR)… You might have heard the term, but what is it and how can it be useful to your company?
To start, let’s clear up any questions around the difference between Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and even Mixed Reality.
A Quick Synopsis:
Augmented Reality is when digital content is placed on top of the real world. An example of this was the wildly popular trending app, Pokemon Go, where users searched for Pokemon characters in real-life locations. Or, for a more common example, Snapchat and Facebook filters that place accessories on your face or give you animal ears in a photo.
Virtual Reality is a digital environment that is created that shuts out the real world. In this case, think of utilizing the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive and being immersed into different worlds.
Finally, Mixed Reality is digital content that interacts with your real world and as of now, the king of Mixed Reality is Microsoft HoloLens.
These new technologies are bursting with opportunity and are projected to rapidly grow over the next few years. In fact, according to XXX, it is expected that by 2023, Augmented Reality will become a $60 billion dollar industry.
Think Ahead: Leveraging New Technologies for Marketing
Over the past year, Linx has been following the trend of the new technologies that are crossing-over with reality to create new opportunities for our clients to utilize augmented reality to enhance their brand and promote their products and services in new and unique ways.
While something like Augmented Reality might seem like a complicated and expensive undertaking, that is not necessarily the case. There are many simple ways for every business to create unique experiences for their customers utilizing the technology. While we round-tabled our thoughts at our “lunch and learn”, we discussed some basic ideas for how specific clients could create interactivity around their brand or showcase their products and services using Augmented Reality.
For our e-commerce clients, we talked about how we can easily allow their customers to try on clothing to see how they would look before making a purchase. For our food industry clients, we explored how customers can take a look inside the packaging and the food items by opening them up right in front of them. For a client who sells home decor and furniture, we discussed enabling their customers to see how the products would look in their home house – a new couch, a lighting fixture, and accent piece – by taking a 360 image of the room. For construction and development clients, we brainstormed how to let their customers see a finished building or home on the exact land or plot to make sure everything is designed to perfection and fits the vision of those creating it. There are endless opportunities to utilize this new technology, but those who find the creative ways to do so will ultimately triumph over those who don’t.
Our responsibility is to bring our knowledge of these emerging technologies to our clients to help them continue to adapt to the changing world. Ultimately, Linx is here to Think Ahead for our clients and our goal is to make your company stand out in every way possible.
For more information on how we can help you use Augmented, Virtual or Mixed Reality to improve your brand, get in touch!
Instagram: The New Hub For Marketing
As many know, the evolution of social media has completely reshaped marketing by providing businesses with the tools that allow them to build loyal followings, create brand awareness and, most of all, generate more sales. What started out as a platform for people to connect with people, social media has quickly become the most effective form of marketing, connecting people with brands.
While Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are still among the most popular platforms leveraged by businesses, Instagram is on the rise and more and more companies are shifting their ad spend towards this channel. Which is a smart move, considering the expected user growth projections. “Instagram is predicted to add 26.9 million users in the U.S. by 2020. That’s far more than Facebook, Twitter or any other social platform.” (Entrepreneur.com ) At Linx, we make sure that our clients are aware of trends like this and help them Think Ahead to take advantage of new and growing channels, always keeping an eye on where their target customers are spending their time.
What makes Instagram a hub businesses and customers is that it offers a combination of popular features from Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, making it an all-inclusive social media platform. Recently, Instagram has also been one step ahead of its competitors, last week releasing a new video tie-in that goes head-to-head with YouTube and Snapchat. With this feature, influencers can distribute videos within Instagram, that they would otherwise place on other platforms. And, as Instagram is staying ahead of the curve, so should your business. Whether it be implementing story ads, newsfeed ads or partnering with an influencer, there are a multitude of opportunities to reach your customers through Instagram you may be missing out on… and many successful companies are increasing their ROI this way.
If you’re unsure of how to start an Instagram strategy or are struggling to produce an ROI on your current efforts, here are some ways to immediately increase your effectiveness.
Remarket in a new way and get more followers:
Tons of people are engaging with your ads and posts, but none of these people seem to be following your account. How can you change that?
Engaging with the likes, shares and comments you receive, you can convert these non-followers into followers, and eventually into customers. By re-engaging with those consumers who made the first move on your company’s post, it gives you the opportunity to market to them for a second time, and provides them with a unique and personal experience Resulting in a new follow. This approach adds more value and demonstrates your loyalty and care for your “new customers”.
Track every influencer marketing post:
If you are leveraging Instagram influencers, it is important to know that when working with multiple sources, sending them the same standard link will not benefit your company. Each influencer, should be given a unique link, so you are able to track your exact ROI from each of them. These links will help you determine which influencer is driving more traffic and sales to your website or product/services, as well as track each visitors’ behavior. With this information, you are able to shift your spend to the influencers producing the most the most ROI for your company.
Optimize your funnels with custom audiences:
As many of you know, Facebook feeds into Instagram, allowing marketers to run Facebook Ads and Instagram ads simultaneously. And, when creating an campaign on Facebook, you are able to create unique audiences based on any targeting parameters, as well as retarget visitors or purchasers. They key is not to run general ads, but rather various ads with unique messaging that speaks directly to your different segments at each stage of the sales funnel. Tracking every interaction and optimizing every element will extract maximum value at every opportunity.
Instagram is moving at a fast rate and it doesn’t seem to have a plan of slowing down anytime soon, that means businesses have to react to all these opportunities that instagram has to offer.That’s why our client rely on us to… Think Ahead! Contact us today and let us help you build a true brand value and increase your business ROI on Instagram and react faster new instagram features.
New Client: Taking the success of Madison’s Niche Brick & Mortar Locations to the Web
This month, Linx began working with a new client, Madison’s Niche, a lifestyle boutique with four locations in the heart of Long Island’s most popular towns. The client turned to Linx for help in bringing the growing success of their store locations to the web. With no current website, the opportunity to open a new channel for sales – “a fifth storefront” – is a sure strategy to take the brand’s success to the next level.
Linx’s key team members began the process by visiting the newest Madison’s Niche location in Stony Brook Village. It was important for us to get a feel for the ambiance of the store and the brand. Immediately upon entering, it was clear to us that the vibe was high-end, fashion-forward, unique and elegant. This was the feeling we needed to capture for the e-commerce website.
After our location visit, our design team worked to develop a mood board, which outlined the color palettes, imagery presentations, competitive analysis, typography, and overall look and feel for the brand that will serve as the foundation for all design elements, including the website, moving forward. Reviewing this with the client, we discovered that we were on track with what Madison’s Niche had envisioned their physical space might look like on the web.
Next, our customer experience experts got to work on mapping out the user experience and interface (UX/UI) functionality for an optimal shopping experience for users. This requires a deep-dive into the stores’ products and how they are presented and categorized, as well as various online shopping behaviors, to ensure navigating the site and finding products is simple and easy for users.
Linx is just getting into the planning phase of the website project, working closely with the client to develop the design and infrastructure foundation for the new e-commerce website. We expect the website to launch for Fall 2018 and are excited for Madison’s Niche to grow their customer base and bring their unique shopping experience to the web and shoppers nationwide. Check back for more updates on the online store launch and, in the meantime, visit the temporary splash page we created for the brand here.
How Influencers Can Make Your Brand: The Importance of Influencers in the Age of Social Media
The traditional means of attaining a loyal customer base by “buying” them through previous, time-tested means—such as broadcast media and PPC— is becoming less and less effective—and harder to monetize. The truth is that growing your audience takes time and money.
That is why Linx is helping our clients build relationships with B2B and B2C influencers to optimize their budgets and make greater impacts. Linx has long emphasized the importance of social media as a primary means of outreach—and the importance of Influencers within that medium.
The Importance of Modern Influencers
Unlike the traditional means of building reach and frequency through earned or bought media, the digital age has completely democratized both the means of customer outreach—and the strategies with which marketers can successfully reach their target audiences Today, generating reach to build a quality audience through recognizing Influencers can actually improve brand trust and value.
Today, the top TV shows get an audience of about 15 million—a drastic drop in historic highs just a decade ago. These days, a new flock of media stars are creating their own online channels with millions of followers and viewers, establishing for themselves the crucial status of effective Influencer. Through social media platforms, today’s top Influencers are capturing an audience upwards of 25 million.
In one incredible example, this year marked a crucial recognition of the growing importance of self-made Influencers. At New York Fashion Week this past September, social media fashion Influencers were given front-row seats next to some of the industry’s most established names—finding previously unknown Influencers ring-side with such fashion powerhouses as famed Vogue editor, Anna Wintour.
This request was made by the brands themselves who are now paying individuals millions a year to help market their wares.
How Can You Utilize Social Media-Driven Influencers To Your Brand?
It all begins with the by building the right relationships with the right influencers. Here are some fast-track ideas to get you started.
• Finding the Right Influencer
As the importance of Influencers has become more and more apparent to marketers, specialized databases have been created to cater to the needs of every industry. If you want to save on the time and effort that a broad search engine method represents, there are now many options to help you better-target your search. New platforms like Traackr and inPowered can quickly match you with some of the best Influencers for your brand.
• Get Your Influencer Involved From the Ground Up
When you’re launching a new product/service, you need to introduce it in a way that would turn heads and appeal to the target audience at the same time. This is where involving an Influencer early-on is crucial. Get influencers involved in designing your new product from the beginning. Your Influencer will then promote this partnership with their loyal followers—which will not only educate them about the product but also build hype around it.
• The Give and Take of Social Media Promotions
Even something as simple as a tweet or an Instagram post can make a huge difference for your product launch if you happen to choose the right influencers. You will need to approach the influencer first, build a connection with them, send some samples, and request for a mention on social media. When someone with significant influence on your target audience says something positive about the product, it’s going to build hype and establish trust among the audience.
• The Influencer Marketplace
If searching for the best Influencer to meet your branding needs one your own isn’t quite turning up the results you’d hoped, there is now the option of utilizing an Influencer Marketplace to help both marketers and Influencers find each other. New websites like TapInfluence bridges that gap by bringing the two together. Here, potential Influencers agree to be part of the branding campaign and list the types of activities in which they’d be interested. In return, the brands themselves can then match up Influencers with their needs, crafting a symbiotic relationship where both benefit—as well as the customer.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
With each of these concepts in mind, the most important lesson to be learned is that social media, coupled with the proven value of trusted Influencers, can benefit those organizations who learn to monitor online digital trends within their industry. Monitoring creates the knowledge of who is leading the conversation and how to participate in it. Today, Linx specializes in monitoring those trends. But more importantly, we creatively put them to use for our clients.
With the pace of information moving at an ever-increasing rate, marketers have to be true to a brands values and react faster to opportunities that present themselves. Planning can only take you so far! That’s why our client relies on us to… Think Ahead!
Contact us today and let us help you use every element of today’s modern technologies to reach your demographic.