The Omni Channel Paradox
We all say it in slightly different ways: A superior customer experience requires consistent, seamless, experience across all channels. Depending on our job, we tend to focus on different integration challenges. Easy to say, but Mayur Gupta points out just how multi-faceted and formidable this fragmentation is.
Brands have as much of a chance of driving frictionless omnichannel consumer experiences as a Formula One race car driver trying to win a race on flat tires. Impossible!!!
The very model and capabilities used to make the experience omnichannel and seamless is its biggest roadblock. We are trying to create connected experiences using a massively fragmented ecosystem spanning data and technology, agencies and media management, and organizational and operating models. With all the disruption within the digital landscape putting the consumer at the center and in full control, the consumer has effortlessly become omnichannel while brands still struggle with being multichannel, at best.
What is preventing this from happening? Fragmentation. It exists in these core areas: … Read more
Speaking of challenging fragments…
5 Drivers that will shape the future of your MarTech strategy
As Scott Brinker and others have shown, the marketing technology landscape is nightmarishly large and complex. And of course marketing needs vary widely by organization. Gerry Murry has a framework to help marketing execs get started organizing and building their strategy.
To optimize their digital marketing activities, marketers will have to focus on their particular business models, audiences, and overall objectives in order to make the best choices. Strategic frameworks for investment based on key business drivers are needed to govern the process of consolidating current systems and guiding future purchases. Read more
Did Video Kill Text Content Marketing?
No, and it won’t.
Reading articles and watching videos also require two different brain processes. When we read, the process requires us to be actively involved. The brain gets a much better workout when reading vs. watching, and the process requires a longer attention span and deeper cognitive efforts.
Visitors have their own preferences, many will always click on the video option because it is the easiest and therefore the most natural choice. But many others will choose to read text by default because they want to control their experience, dig into details, and organize thoughts in different orders. Text provides more reader control. It is also usually faster and more efficient.
As a marketer you need to consider different visitor preferences, but you also need to match the form to the job. If you want to attract a browser’s attention a video is usually a better way to go – it provides less of an effort-barrier. But if you want a visitor to engage in the extra work to learn about product features, options, and pricing so they can make a decision to buy, text is likely to be the least frustrating and most effective way to get the job done.
Liraz Margalit has much more to say about the research behind this. Read more
Some are more careful about video use than others…
Time to kill the 800-word article
Quartz is doing a great job pushing towards a modern social, mobile, web news format. Video use, even by respected media channels, is often still largely off-putting, so it is worth keeping an eye on QZs video experiments.
“We’re not going to run pre-roll on videos. We’re pushing the video team to figure out what the future of online news video is. Our conviction is liberating them from traffic requirements, from pre-roll inventory requirements, is the best way to experiment with formats and the social distribution of video and see what works.” Read more
The bot bubble
How Click Farms Have Inflated Social Media Currency
We all know there are lots of bogus social network accounts and that they are bought by many businesses and individuals. This is a fascinating exposé of a “not illegal in the Philippines” business supplying fake accounts for click farms. Want to know what shocking percentage of fake profiles could be included in your advertising campaigns? … Read more
What does Google need on mobile?
Short answer is reach and data, but…
The interesting part, though, is that there are now lots of different kinds of reach.
First, as everyone has talked about for years, the way that mobile moves us away from the plain old web as the dominant interaction model of the internet challenges Google’s central ability to understand the structure of online information and to link to it (and sell links to it). Apps cut off Google’s reach, both to get data into its systems, since apps are opaque, and to surface data out to internet users, since any search in Yelp’s specialist app is a search that wasn’t on Google, and such apps are stronger on mobile than on the desktop. Apps reduce Google’s reach in both senses. This of course is why (like Facebook) it has been pursuing deep links… Read more
The Watch
or not. Horace Dediu weighs in on the point of the Apple watch, that is, is it a watch or something else. I have always thought of it as a computer, though one currently limited. I bought one because it is a computer, and wouldn’t have bought it and won’t be wearing it as a watch. I also like John Gruber’s characterization it as a “gadget-y computer”:
Loosely, the path of all consumer electronic categories is to evolve as ever more computer-y gadgets, until a tipping point occurs and they turn into ever more gadget-y genuine computers. … Apple seemingly tries to enter markets at, or just after, that tipping point … to produce a gadget-y computer that the computer-y gadgets from the established market leaders cannot compete with… That was the iPhone.
Dediu’s nuanced view…
Before its launch, I said that the Apple Watch would be as much a watch as the iPhone is a phone.
I had the chance to use the Watch for a few days and can say that timekeeping is probably as insignificant to its essence as it’s possible to be. It feels like a watch in the physical sense, looking good in the process (as the iPhone physically felt like a phone, also without being hard on the eyes)
However it does not feel like a watch conceptually. I find myself drawn into a conversation by its vocabulary of vibrations. I find myself talking to it. I find myself listening to it. I find myself glancing at information about faraway places. I find myself paying for things with it. I find myself checking into flights with it. I order transportation, listen to news, check live data streams and get myself nagged to exercise. It tells me where I am. It tells me where to go. It tells me when to leave.
Nothing ever worn on a wrist, or anywhere else for that matter, has done any of these things before. Not only are these things mesmerizing but they are done in a productive way on a wristwatch. In other words they are done in a mindful way. Read more
Remember the Filter Bubble?
Lot’s of commentary on the Facebook research published in Science last week. The first Read more link goes to the reaction of Eli Pariser the author of the book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You, but I’ve added a few others that are meaty. Read more here, and here, and here.
Short takes
Compare your mobile traffic before and after the April 21st Mobile update and dig deeper into your search data with the new More precise data in the new Search Analytics report. Also see FAQs about the April 21st mobile-friendly update via Google
Seems like a promising idea. Imagining it feels natural… MIT develops wireless trackpad for your thumbnail via itworld.com
Will REST convince skeptics that WordPress is a real CMS? This look at the future of WordPress is also a useful resource non-developers on REST – a little techy but not written by a developer. via wpmudev.org
Translation is not about words, it’s about meaning, but you need to write for machines… Google Translate is only as dumb as you allow it via Content Strategy Forum
Latest on trends in the State of the News Media 2015 via Pew Research Center
Nice follow-up on some content marketing advice by applying it to a questioner’s company as an example… Applying Evergreen Content Formulas to Close.io … and of course great content marketing for the author! via inbound.org
Uh Oh, … The Age of the Full-Stack Marketer via Gartner
Wonder how the Apple watch will effect your email campaigns?… 6 predictions as to how the Apple Watch will impact email marketers via Campaign Monitor
Links are broken. These three alternatives have improved our readers’ reading experience. Well, the experience is broken, via Medium
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The Gilbane Advisor curates content for our conference community of content, computing, and digital experience professionals throughout the year.
