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One of the first things that jumps out from the year-over-year data is the consistency of the top five responsibilities. From martech staff and managers up to more senior directors and VPs, these are the core functions that these roles deliver to the organization: Research and recommend new marketing technology products. Operate marketing technology products as an administrator. Train and support marketing staff on using marketing technology products. Integrate marketing technology products with each other. Monitor data quality within marketing technology products.

It is disappointing that, for the second year in a row, performing data privacy and compliance reviews and performing security reviews both remained at the bottom of the list of martech responsibilities — and even dropped a few percentage points.

enior roles are much more likely — 37% to 42% more likely — to: Pay for marketing technology products from a budget, partially or fully (71%) Negotiate business terms for purchasing marketing technology products (68%) Approve or veto purchase of marketing technology products (68%)

In today’s fast-paced, multichannel world, marketers no longer have the luxury to spend months crafting large projects; they must innovate and produce on the fly and respond immediately to market disruptions. In their new report, the researchers explain, “Agile for Marketing (A4M) drives long-term marketing strategies with short-term, customer-focused iterative projects that improve responsiveness and relevance. It allows for faster creative, more testing, smarter improvements and better results.”

63% of marketing leaders indicate agility as a high priority, but only 40% rate themselves as agile.

The CMOs we spoke with needed a solution that would help them orient marketing activities around the constant change in the marketplace—a solution that allows them to be more dynamic and flexible in their operations, more productive, and more collaborative and integrated in their work product.

Why are marketers stuck in 2010? There are four reasons:The crushing pace of technological change — A feeling of helplessness about the pace of change leads to uncertainty about direction, effectiveness, and even personal relevance as a marketing leader. Marketers rely on what they’ve always done because they don’t understand the changing world.

Over-reliance on technology and automation — Today, marketing has become a glorified IT department. Marketing decisions are being made by statisticians and data scientists in ways that may increase efficiency – and maybe even sales leads — but drive us away from the heart of our customers.

Organizational paralysis — Companies formed departments and teams years ago to work on social media, content, and other initiatives that don’t work like they used to. Becoming “locked-in” to marketing tactics that simply don’t work any longer might be due to outdated agency relationships, organizational resistance, cultural obstinance, lack of skilled leadership, relentless bureaucracy … or some combination of these factors.

As might be expected in a difficult economy, lead generation topped all digital budget categories with almost 27% followed by display/banner at just under 20% and search at almost 19%.   As to what is driving digital media investments in 2012, audience composition, ROI and measurement capabilities, audience reach, and data targeting were selected by more than three-quarters of the respondents.By a wide margin, click through rate is the most important factor in campaign success with cost-per-engagement and interaction rate almost equal in importance.

Content marketing, which includes white papers, case studies, videos, custom websites, video and white papers, is among tech marketers’ top five spending priorities for 2012.  Led by collateral at 71%, followed by webcasts/virtual events at 61%, videos at 59%, research at 55%, and articles/features at 54%, marketers are investing in a wide variety of content marketing or custom programs.  Agencies are much mo

s for social media, YouTube and Facebook lead all platforms with LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter not as popular. Among BtoB respondents, 53% found social extremely/very valuable for finding relevant technology content on the Web, which is double the 2010 figure.  Not surprisingly, 18- to 34-year-olds are most active with social media.  According to all users in the IDG survey, 60% rely most on tech sites, 46% peers or colleagues, and 43% independent tech journalists/bloggers.

Product update emails are one example where content and product teams must harmonize for a successful outcome

Product updates should be written for your true fans. That’s not to say that others won’t find them interesting, but information about a product isn’t a lead-gen tool or a sales tactic – it’s fuel for an already burning fire.

That’s why 65 percent of brands are already participating in influencer marketing. Smashbox Cosmetics recently launched an incubator for YouTubers to use their studio space and products. Many brands are also teaming up with photographers on Instagram to reach new audiences.

An eMarketer study also that found that advertisers earned an average of $6.85 for every $1 they spent on influencer marketing last year.

what are some of the things you can A/B test with your influencer marketing campaigns? All the same things you test in your other channels…

xperiment with different types of content and track which resonates best with their audience for your goal. For example, images may drive better social engagement, while videos are better for leads and signups. Alternately, you may find certain content performs better on some channels over others.

Don’t forget all the types of content you have at your disposal – podcasts, live stream videos, tweets, Instagram Stories, webinars, long-form blog posts, short-form blog posts, and much, much more.

550 businesses with less than 100 employees in the U.S. and found that only 3 percent of their total advertising dollars flowed online, compared to as much as 16 percent for big companies.

most of these business do not have a professional marketing person whose job is to drive marketing," Rose said. "It's pretty hard for them to winnow their way through the 20 to 40 unsolicited requests they get a month to use digital marketing product A versus digital marketing product B."

Scrumban was designed for more mature agile teams, those working in an unpredictable environment where plans and requirements constantly shift, and/or teams who are supporting existing products rather than creating new ones.

In a nutshell, Scrumban is driven by events and demand rather than a pre-established schedule. It focuses on minimal planning, providing just enough of a backlog to give the team enough important work to do next.

Scrumban also ignores the focus on egalitarian, cross-functional teams that Scrum emphasizes. Instead, it embraces specialized roles within the team (a more realistic way to handle marketing skill sets).

using marketing analytics remains a distinct challenge for companies—beyond the production of these sophisticated data."

Mobile advertising currently takes up 3.2 percent of marketing budgets but will almost triple to 9 percent in the next three years.

Social media now accounts for 9.9 percent of spending, though it should grow to 22.4 percent of budgets in the next five years.

But then there’s the whole obsession now with tying content to revenues—in other words, tracking whether people who are consuming your content will eventually buy something from you, and putting a hard number on each piece of content you create. Do you think that’s misguided? Oh, I think there’s no question it’s misguided. It’s been shown over and over again to be misguided—that in a world of zero marginal cost, being trusted is the single most urgent way to build a business. You don’t get trusted if you’re constantly measuring and tweaking and manipulating so that someone will buy from you.

I don’t have any problem with measurements, per se; I’m just saying that most of the time when organizations start to measure stuff, they then seek to industrialize it, to poke it into a piece of software, to hire ever cheaper people to do it.

There are constantly trends and fads on the Internet, and people make a good living amplifying them. But I think that industrialized content marketing is one of those fads, and it will end up where they all do: petered out because human beings are too smart to fall for its appeal.

Consumers say the types of social content they value most from brands are posts about discounts/sales (72% say so) and posts that showcase new products/services (60%). In contrast, marketers say the types of social content they share most are posts that teach something (61% say so) and posts that tell a story (58%).

There is a significant disconnect between what marketers post to social media and what consumers want brands to post, according to recent research from Sprout Social. The report was based on data from a survey conducted in April and May 2018 among 1,253 consumers and 2,060 social media marketers.

Arjoon said the move aims to use community engagement to bolster its influencer marketing.  And General Mills will continue to work with higher profile influencers on larger brands like Häagen-Dazs, said Bose. In general, working with advocates and influencers of varying profile has real cost efficiencies. Despite the challenges of working with influencers—from lack of authenticity to dramatic price increases—they are generally able to produce content more cost-effectively than agencies. So much so that Bose said General Mills would continue to pay influencers to promote its brands as part of a wider increase in spending on digital media. Last year, the advertiser spend up to a third of the digital budget for some of its brands on influencer marketing. Bose declined to reveal how much the advertiser spent.

The realities of the global pandemic have shown us that we’ve probably gone a little too far when it comes to the over aspirational inspirational, picture-perfect content produced by influencers,”

the advertiser is working with peer-to-peer software marketing platform Zyper to build communities of superfans to promote its Betty Crocker and Fibre One products

Last month the FTC issued warnings to celebrities who plugged products on their Instagram accounts without clearly identifying their relationships with brands. The letters were meant to “educate” the celebrities on how to post without violating the organization’s disclosure guidelines.

The FTC said it sent out similar letters to each influencer to “call attention” to the post in question. Each letter reads: “The FTC’s Endorsement Guides state that if there is a ‘material connection’ between the endorser and the marketer of a product — in other words, a connection that might affect the weight or credibility that consumers give the endorsement — that connection should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed, unless the connection is already clear from the context of the communication containing the endorsement. Material connections could consist of a business or family relationship, monetary payment, or the provision of free products to the endorser.”

The FTC cited cases in which disclosures appeared in captions at the bottom of a post, and were only found if consumers clicked on the “more” button to reveal the full text. Multiple hashtags, tags and links also were frowned upon, as they obscure the disclosure.

The company's newest marketing campaign, launched earlier this week, invites fans of Burt's natural skin and personal care products to receive eight different "moments" over eight weeks via online calendar notifications. The promotion is timed to coincide with the launch of Burt's Bees new Brightening skin care line, which promises to brighten users' skin in only eight weeks.

This will define the calendar category and other brands that sell on a subscription or seasonal basis will take notice,"

"We thought, what else needs a little brightening up? One look at our calendars, packed wall-to-wall with meetings and meetings-about-meetings, and we had our idea. Then we just went to work figuring out the best way to bring calendars back to life over an eight-week period,"

It’s not all mega-influencers, either. Micro-influencers, who have targeted followings under 100,000, make up the backbone of the industry. Even people with just a few thousand followers can earn hundreds of dollars for a single sponsored post. It’s not hard to earn an income this way. Eight-year-olds can do it, provided some adult supervision.

As the new coronavirus sends the world hurtling toward a recession, though, more glamorous trappings of the influencer lifestyle have come to a halt. Paid trips have no place amid lockdowns, nor do street-style photoshoots to model #sponsored clothes. And it’s not clear that those opportunities will reappear in the future—at least, not for everyone. “The pandemic is having a major impact on the overall influence industry, and it’ll likely have lasting effects,” says Seits.

Elyce is still able to make some money. Like many influencers, she tags her clothes and beauty products on LikeToKnowIt, a platform that connects her followers to the online retailers where they can shop her lifestyle.

About 1 in 5 respondents said they have used Twitter in conjunction with a TV campaign. Promoted Tweets are the most popular of Twitter’s ad formats among respondents, used by about twice as many as promoted accounts, and by roughly three times as many as have used Twitter Amplify. Respondents’ primary goal for Twitter advertising is to build awareness and sentiment for their brand, with significantly fewer claiming as their main goal driving traffic to their websites, building followers, generating sales leads, selling products and staying in touch with customers.

58.6% share of respondents said that their Twitter budgets represent new spending. Those reallocating from other media are most commonly turning to offline (17.6%), online display (16.6%), email (12.3%), search (10.8%) and TV (9.9%) for funds. (Similar data concerning the constitution of online video and social media budgets can be found here and here.)

7 in 10 respondents – execs at marketers, agencies and media companies – use Twitter as a marketing channel, only a minority (46.5%) of those are spending on advertising on the platform. By comparison, a previous survey from Ad Age (covered here) found that of the 83% using Facebook, almost three-quarters were buying ads.

Facebook will focus on improving visual features in Messenger. In his post, Marcus says “people will expect a super fast and intuitive camera, video, images, GIFs, and stickers with almost every conversation.”

Messenger bet big on bots in 2017. Last year the company worked with small businesses and global brands to create more than 200,000 bots for Messenger. Marcus writes, “Look for investment in rich messaging experiences not only from global brands, but small businesses who need to be creative and nimble to stay competitive.” Since many of these bots provide very rudimentary features, we would expect to see improvements in overall user experience this year. We also expect larger brands to follow the lead of brands like Apple Music and Lego in creating marketing solutions made for the Messenger platform. 

Expect to see more businesses transitioning at least some of their customer service resources to Messenger. A recent study, commissioned by Facebook found that “56 percent of people surveyed would rather message a business than call customer service, and 67 percent expect to message businesses even more over the next two years.”

40% of Internet users across the world don’t see any point in “friending” a brand online. In the U.S. and the U.K., that figure rises to 55% and 63%, respectively. In emerging markets, consumers were more open to it.

there’s evidence that they want to engage with a brand online so long as they get something out of it. For example, the majority of shoppers in the study said they are open to receiving an ad or promotion from a brand on their mobile device that’s tied to their location.

half of respondents in the study said they are interested in brands sharing other users’ brand or product experiences with them and 42% said they want brands to help them make better product choices.

U.S. truth-in-advertising enforcers have sent letters to supermodel Naomi Campbell, actresses Lindsay Lohan and Vanessa Hudgens and other celebrities asking whether they have paid deals to endorse products on the photo-sharing app Instagram.

Instagram, which is owned by Facebook Inc, has seen a sharp increase in recent years in promotions of products and services by famous people, often without disclosures of whether there was an endorsement deal. Celebrities have talked up clothing brands, food, alcohol, spa treatments and a wide array of other items.

In May, the agency released dozens of letters it had sent to companies and stars giving them notice that they must tell fans about compensation for promotions on social media.