For the past several days, 88 Brand Partners has been scoping out Chicago TechWeek, a gathering of some of the best and brightest minds in tech, social media and digital communications. Here’s a few common themes:
- Mobile Advertising is H-O-T and that spells more W-O-R-K for brands. One doesn’t have to keep their ears or eyes open around marketers for very long to notice the value of smartphones and tablets in reaching out to prospective customers. Yet many digital advertisers are still doing it wrong for many possible reasons. One TechWeek speaker pointed out that there’s too much repurposing of creative across mediums. Just because it works on the office PC doesn’t mean it works on the iPhone and vice-versa. In addition, advertisers should recognize that the mobile device is a 24/7 digital marketing channel. “How come brands stop talking to their consumers at 5 p.m.?” one panelist asked. It’s not enough to reach people in one medium anymore, especially since mobile works to your advantage around the clock. So, brands need to roll their sleeves up and get to work before someone else does.
- U-X, and how! You know UX—it’s how a user navigates through and to the digital information that you’re providing, propelling them to make a choice. And right now, from B2B to B2C, UX has all of us surrounded. For example, when you use an ATM, you expect it to be easy to get to your money. So, why then shouldn’t it be just as easy to update your vendor’s inventory? This is what UX is all about and the brand that wins is the brand that makes their UX the most intuitive (see Apple), the most relevant (see Twitter) and the most accessible (see The New York Times). Brands need to reach the minds and hearts of their customers, clients and stakeholders, and right now the shortest route is via a click or a swipe.
- What’s the true value of a “Like,” “Share” or “Pin?” Considering all of the aforementioned digital popularity measurements were born and bred in the tech sector, we as advertisers and marketers have to figure out how to convert those numbers into buying choices for our products and services. Drilling down under each will give you different perspectives about your customers, and while some of it will no doubt be useless, some of it will also be wildly enlightening. ¬†Try asking from this perspective: if a person walks through the front door of your brick-and-mortar store and the lights are off, there’s no one behind the counter, and there’s nothing on the shelves, what’s the true value in that? All the pins in the world can’t prop your balance sheet up if you’ve got that problem.
