DAMON BALCH - MEDIA EXPERT - (480) 442-1049

54% of Mobile Marketers Plan to Beacon

Beacons are going big.

While many retailers, agencies and brands have been experimenting with beacons for many months, the growth of the small transmitting devices into the marketplace continues.

It turns out that almost one in five mobile marketers already are using Apple’s iBeacons, with that number projected to double to more than a third next year, based on a new study.

As context, almost half (49%) of marketers currently use GPS location data, according to the latest Mobile Benchmark Report by Adobe.

The report comprises an analysis of behavioral data based on more than 18 billion visits to U.S. consumer facing websites, 700 million mobile app sessions and surveys of more than 3,000 mobile users in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany.

The study found that the use of beacon technology is growing, with the majority (54%) of mobile marketers expecting to be beaconing within the next 12 months. Here’s the picture:

• 18% -- Already using beacons
• 36% -- Plan to use beacons in next 12 months
• 17% -- Not sure
• 28% -- No plans to use beacons in next 12 months

Within the next three months, there will be 30,000 active beacons in the U.S., with more than three quarters of them in retail stores, based on a forecast by BI Intelligence, as I recently wrote about here (Beacons, Beacons, Everywhere Beacons).

The number of beacons will grow 287% to 5 million beacons within four years, with most of them in use by retailers, according to BI Intelligence.

To say there’s high market interest in beacons would be an understatement, with new beacon news and announcements almost daily.

Apple is updating its beacons in Apple and Disney stores, beacons are now being used for mobile payments and Tesco is using beacons to sell magazines in stores, for example.

And MediaPost has created a conference on beacons, slated for Nov. 3 in New York (IoT: Beacons), which I’m currently programming.

The point is that beacons are going mainstream.

Beacons are being deployed at ballparks and footballs stadiums as well as malls and stores.

Like NFC (near field communications), consumers are unlikely to ever hear the term beacon, though many are likely to experience the impact.

Based on precise targeting due to beacons, mobile shoppers can receive much more value, and we’re not talking about them being bombarded with irrelevant ads as they shop.

Brands, agencies and suppliers are realizing this as they explore and experiment to determine the correct value. Beacons are the new mechanism from which to initiate that value.

Beaconing is well underway.

4 Surprising Skills All Successful People Require

There are all sorts of skills that can contribute to success. But these 4 are critical. Without them, you'll never make it.

Want to be successful? You have to start with you. So much is written about generosity and empathy being important skills for success, and they are. But these outward-facing skills only come with the complete knowledge and control of oneself.

Your mother probably told you to think of others first and often, that the world was not about you. And yet even those who are the most generous and empathetic had to focus strongly inward to create the wealth and connections that allow them to positively influence the world. Sure, the traits below are very self-focused, but you can't possibly benefit other people without getting your own house in order.

1. Self-Awareness

Do you truly understand who you are? Are you aware of how you make people feel and react by the things you say and do and even more the ways you say and do them? Many people don't have a good sense of their outer being. They go through their day reacting and doing while not even realizing what comes out of their mouths or how their actions affect the people around them. Commit time to getting to know yourself, especially from the outside. Invite others to share their observations of your behavior and attitudes. Don't just focus on your positive attributes.

Go to those you know will be honest and spend time learning about your potentially challenging attributes as well. The more you understand about how you affect people the better you can motivate them to join you in a worthy cause. Then you can decide whether to keep, adjust, or eliminate behaviors in order to reach your preferred future.

2. Self-Confidence

If you don't believe in yourself, why would anyone else? When you're a successful leader, people want to believe you know where to go and have some idea of how to get there. They are dealing with their own insecurities and don't really have additional tolerance for yours if you are in charge. That may be unfair, but reality is not generally a function of fairness. Being self-confident does not mean you have to know all the answers. But it does mean you must have the inner strength and knowledge to address any given situation or obstacle that may come your way. Experience helps, but it is a combination of resourcefulness, resolve, and humility that will make most people, even you, believe in your leadership.

Take stock of what you do well. Identify your areas of insecurity and create a plan to remedy those areas through education and support, remembering that the only one who can truly make you confident is you.

3. Self-Assessment

Life moves fast and opportunities can go as quickly as they present themselves. You don't always have time to consult with others as to whether or not your current capabilities are up to the challenges headed your way. Still you need to gauge if you are on the right path or change is immediately required. Self-encouragement is great but if you can't be realistic about your levels and limitations, you'll crash and burn far more than you'll succeed. No one should know you better than you.

Create self-diagnostics that expose your weaknesses and perform so you can shore up your weaknesses with learning, partnership, or delegation. The joy of informed success far outweighs the tragedy of ignorant failure.

4. Self-Discipline

Any success worth having doesn't come easy. It requires focus and determination. Growth occurs from careful analysis and practiced performance. Inconsistent attempts to succeed will fail more often than not. If you could just take a shot and make it happen, more people would be successful. But it's the people who get more things right who ultimately win. Self-discipline keeps you on the straight and narrow, avoiding distractions or taking the easy way out of challenges.

Even if you are not ordinarily a planner, write down bullet points or steps to your success. Use the skills above to figure out the work you need to do to get there. Then measure your progress regularly so you can tell where you are being your own greatest supporter or worst enemy. Once you know, the rest is up to you.

Lessons to myself to improve the quality of my life!

1. Quit chasing - There's a difference between pursuing your goals and being in a constant state of chase. You’ve been doing this most of your life and it causes nothing but anxiety and insecurity. You know this. Stop fighting or forcing the current. Instead, let it take you. Things will happen when they’re meant to. Do the best you can each day and be OK with it, knowing that as long as you're moving, your path will unfold.

2. Don’t be concerned with what others think -  Care versus concern. Big difference. You’re going to care. You’re human. Not everyone will like you. Some will even say it. It will hurt. You will heal. But if you hold on to it, you'll make other people’s opinion of you a concern. By doing this, you'll be allowing other people to write your story. Don’t be consumed with what other people think. Remember, it’s only their version of your story.

3. Dream big, often, and awake. (The way you did most of 6th period in high school.) -  But it’s OK to do it now. The more, the better. What you dream is where you'll go. Don’t be afraid to dream, no matter how big or ridiculous you may think your aspirations are. You're painting your life. Never do it by numbers. Splash. Color outside the lines.

4. If you’re rich, remember that man makes the money. Money doesn’t make the man -  If you’re poor, remember that man makes the money. Money doesn’t make the man.

5. Know that you're a special blend -  Everything that’s happened to you is what makes you rare and unique and no one can take that away. Except you. You are a gift, not a curse. Know the value of yourself. Your story makes you rare, not defective. Stop trying to rip out chapters. Just focus on writing new ones.

6. Breathe -  If you don’t, you'll die.

7. Be kind -  Life is too short to be an a$%hole. Treat everyone as if they are your brother or sister. If you don’t like someone, always look inward first. Hate is wasted energy that will only poison you. Banish it from your life.

8. Practice forgiveness and gratitude -  These are two big words many people overuse but rarely practice. Make a conscious effort to forgive all the people who have hurt you. Do it in pieces if you have to. People think forgiving is one act, but it’s an ongoing process, like the choice to love. Forgiveness and gratitude, both muscles. Exercise them. Every. Single. Day.

9. Live with No fear! -  Do everything you’ve always wanted to do! Explore all parts of yourself, especially your fears. Know that the more you invest in yourself now, the more you'll bring to the table when you find someone who deserves the way you love.

10. Love hard or not at all. -  There’s no other way. And do it with passion, respect, and with every tool you’ve ever earned.

11. Practice transparency -  It's the birthplace of the best version of you.

It's getting hard to keep up with the accelerated growth in mobile ad spend, and so eMarketer issued a substantial revision of a previously aggressive forecast. Back in June the company expected mobile ad spend to reach $7.65 billion in the U.S. Only two months later the research firm is adding nearly a billion dollars to that projection -- now seeing mobile media reaching $8.51 billion this year.

The increased forecast will bring the share of overall media spend on mobile to 5% and the share of digital ad spend to 20.1%.

This 95% growth in mobile spend this year puts device-based advertising on a trajectory to reach $31.13 billion by 2017. The annual spending increase will naturally diminish, but will remain in mid double digits for the next few years. eMarketer sees 2017 as an important tipping point, where 50.7% of digital ad spend will be going to devices.

As with online generally, search is driving the spend -- accounting for $4.3 billion this year and $15.3 billion in 2017. The velocity of the shift in search spend to mobile is truly staggering, and certainly explains why Google especially has been scrambling to revise its AdWords buying models to include all screens and to argue for a redefinition of what constitutes a mobile conversion. In 2010, eMarketer estimated that 2.1% of digital search spend was going to mobile devices, but this year it should account for 22.1% and then skyrocket to 59.6% in 2017.

Display, however, has a strong presence on mobile -- trailing only slightly behind search with $3.8 billion, and almost overtaking it by 2017 with $14.5 billion. Within display advertising, video is expected to be a breakout star, growing from a mere $576 million this year to $3 billion by 2017. By 2017, 48.4% of digital display ad dollars will be spent on mobile, eMarketer projects. 


4 Local Media is a leading provider of targeted digital lead generation solutions.  Our client campaigns are built on a platform of 10+ years of proven RESULTS for local businesses. 

Let’s take a little stroll down memory lane for a moment.

A number of people have been asking me lately about targeted display media….how to buy it and how it works. The fact is that when you look at where things were even six months ago and compare it to where things are going, you see a distinct story that portends the future of advertising very clearly.

Online advertising, and specifically the display ad business, began as an outgrowth of print, with ads coming as banners reminiscent of basic print ads.  Those ads were placed initially on sites that had traffic (literally – any traffic at all was good).  There were a couple of search engines, some content sites of value, a couple of portals, a couple of ad networks.  The business model was simple, the ad revenue was based on total impressions.  In some cases they sold the placements as day, week or monthly rates for fixed positions. 

Buying at this stage was based on traffic size and quickly evolved to contextual buys, with media planners identifying placements that had a high composition of the target audience and a relevance to what they were selling.  This model dominated the last five to six years of the business as traffic grew, the volume of sites and pageviews exploded, and ad networks began to aggregate more and more of the long-tail inventory. 

The next stage of the display business came via behavioral advertising, or buying based on previous site behavior. Of course, behavioral brought a watershed moment to publishers because you could segment your audience and sell pieces of it for a higher price because of its value to the media buyer,  thus also reducing waste against nonessential (that is, untargeted) audiences .

Behavioral signaled the development of audience-based buying: where we are today.  Advertisers in today’s economy are far more advanced, bringing first-party data to the Web, accessing third-party data and using the combination to dive deeper into audiences, using demographics, psychographics, behavioral and customer data to power algorithms that deliver hyper-targeted audiences to just about every facet of online marketing, not just display ad buys. 

For the very first time, media buying can truly be automated and managed by a smaller team in an enterprise fashion. 

That brings us to today, and my view of what tomorrow looks like.  I foresee an advertising world truly dominated by companies automating everything across all media channels, not just online.  In the last few weeks, numerous companies are offering and promoting addressable TV, but the model applies to digital outdoor, print, radio and even guerilla media.  All media will be capable of being managed in a programmatic way in the future, though the parameters for the delivery of that media will limit the scope.

For example, print inventory can be managed in an automated fashion, with magazine publishers logging into a Web interface, seeing who has purchased space and delivering the materials digitally, then sending the issue to print with the ads integrated.  Digital outdoor is no different than a screen with an ad server, so that’s a no-brainer.  TV will always have the up fronts to lock in the majority of the prime programming, but the spot market will offer scalabale programmatic inventory opportunities. 

I’m not saying all media will go the 100% programmatic route, but I can see a world where as much as 65% of all media is purchased in this manner, with publishers still selling their highest value, premium placements directly and using the infrastructure of programmatic to book and manage that inventory.

All of this is clearly because agencies and buyers want it this way. They can manage more media with fewer staff and increase margins.  Publishers want this -- they can sell more inventory with fewer sales reps, plus they get higher value for all inventory when it is properly segmented.  Marketers want it – it affords them more control and the ability to get in and get out quickly.  This is literally a place where everybody should WIN.  (Pause)

So if this is the future, why would their be a need for sales reps of specific products, such as TV, Radio, Direct Mail, Email, SEO, PPC, SMS and down the line?  (Pause)

Because automation is NOT creative!  And we all know, creativity is what drives successful advertising campaigns.  It’s NOT the campaign pricing structure and it’s NOT the size of audience the specific medium reaches.  (Pause)  It’s a good ol fashioned relationship of the consultant with the client and developing SOLUTIONS to build the local business.

If the price or size of audience was the main factor, then all of the automated, programmatic companies would be the ONLY place to advertise, but in thousands of cases, those campaigns FAIL.

So what is the future then?  We are not changing programmatic systems and automatic offerings by media and online companies.  But what we can change is how they are used and position ourselves as a conduit between the client and these online audiences.  And the best way to do that is offering a 1on1 hands on good ol fashioned consultant, who knows the clients industry and provides ongoing research, resources and relevant IDEAS! 

One of those ideas and opportunities is our partnership with REPLYBUY. ReplyBuy's the fastest way to reach customers at a moment's notice.  Broadcast and sell up-to-the-minute inventory, items with a limited quantity or perishable offers all with a few clicks.  Create time-sensitive campaigns in minutes! Introduce simple campaigns each month to sell new products, exclusive offers, premium goods, tickets available for pre-sale, insider specials and more.  Make sure and tune in next week to our training conference calls for all of the details, kevin Martinelli will be announcing our partnership and training on how to sell it and use it for your clients!

Mobile-Local Marketing To Moms


A popular article today on MediaPost, “Hillshire Farms Ups Mobile Reach,” obviously attracts viewers in our industry since we all snarf up any tidbit of information on marketing through this platform. But, hidden in the details is a strategy for co-op radio ads that makes sense for almost any food brand marketing to moms.

“Because it can track people where they’re using Pandora, Hillshire Farms also runs ads when people are listening to Pandora while driving home, so they know where they can pick up food products locally.”

This classic radio strategy is easily adaptable to mobile technology. Unlike traditional radio, though, Pandora users enter their name, gender and zip code when signing up for the service, allowing fine targeting to both moms and local retailers. 

With mobile smoothly combining “always on” with hyper-local, food brands can catch that wave with strategic ad campaigns complemented with social. 

Why social? 

The hard truth of eating habits that has been shown in survey after survey is that consumers are much more influenced by their families and social circles than they are by advertising. Food preferences are developed in childhood and modified by schools attended, neighborhoods and regions where we live and more and more by posts on Facebook and Pinterest (and other social platforms to a lesser extent.)

So, while we’re all excited about the possibilities that mobile brings from an advertising perspective, social needs to be an integral part of every strategy – especially for moms.

Gain More Credibility with a Case Study…build one on You!
You know Digital Media Solutions are awesome at what they do, but just because you say it doesn’t automatically mean everyone will believe you right away.  When it comes to successful marketing, you need to both shout from the rooftops and also have people shouting for you.  These are people who you have built a relationship with, friends, family and business relationships.  Having their support is crucial to gain credibility with new clients.

There are lots of ways to do this, from encouraging past and current customers to post on review sites like Yelp, LinkedIn and other social media sites.  Focus on service, integrity, follow up, and include your strengths and how you exceeded the expectations.

Start by instituting refer-a-friend program where they’re encouraged to bring in a new client for you.  Send gift cards or personal gifts as an incentive!  Another option, or in addition to the tactics I just mentioned, is to develop testimonials and case studies featuring your best success stories in your professional career.  You write the success story or referral, email it to your friend or client and have them support it.  Now, you have a professional “case study” on your success

But what goes into writing a convincing case study about you?  It’s not as difficult as it seems, you don’t need a journalism degree to write a great case study.  Here are some tips to get started:

1. Identify a Source:  Everyone has a cheerleader(s) in your corner willing to endorse or promote you and your abilities.  This may be a recent client who has appreciated your follow through, or as simple as your diligent communication skills.  This person or success story does not have to be a business experience, it could be a person just willing to support and shout out how great you are as a person.  Don’t forget how important honesty and integrity is to any sales process, prospective clients do!  Now all you do is write a paragraph about it, send it to your endorsee and BAM you have a professional case study.  If you want to use a client success story and you are new to the company, just ask your sales team or co-workers who have clients with success.  Put together a spreadsheet listing all your advocates and positive experiences. Then start calling and emailing your list.

Tell them you want to send a brief success story and would like their endorsement.  Let them know you will promote them in the future, including a recommendation through any of their social media sites, especially LinkedIn.  Chances are they thought of doing one too and would love to have you do the same thing for them!

2. Content:  The goal of a case study is to show potential customers how you’ve helped other clients in real life.  This will be a basic example of how you solved or provided a solution to a challenge. A typical case study format includes the following sections:

Summary:  Brief overview of the situation or client challenge

Promise:  Short list of what you intended to provide

Amplification:  Bullet points of what took place

Proof:  Reason this solution or communication helped

Action:  How did you solve their problem or why did this person enjoy the experience

3. Highlight Examples: Use real-life experiences and people; try to get detailed specifics from your customers about how you helped them.  If it’s not a client referral in a business experience, personal endorsements are the next best example.  Maybe you helped with research and information, or someone you know (this happens all the time), needed a favor and you went above and beyond to help them solve a challenge.  Or maybe you have been giving time and resources to a charity or non-profit and you want to highlight your integrity and commitment to the community.  Prospects want to do business with great people who give back.  The more specific…the better!

4. Images / Logos:  Now that you have your case study, don’t forget to include a visual element.  Why is television so powerful?  It includes audio and visual.  You have the text story, so now top it off with some great images; client logo, photo of endorsee, picture or anything including an action shot of the example.  Purchased pictures can work too.

So now you have your case study, what do you do now?  First, post to all of your social media sites.  Consider creating a special section or page on your website that features your client’s case studies.  Send an email newsletter to your prospective clients and business partners.  Share it with your co-workers so they can share it with their network. 

Make sure and share it with the featured client or person so they know when it’s published, so they can share with their contacts.  The more you can get others talking about how great you are, and that you do business with integrity, the more believable the message and the likelihood they will want to do business with YOU.

Case studies are worth the investment of time.  Build your brand today, get started!

~ Damon Balch

WWW.4LOCALMEDIA.COM

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