One of the secrets to success is enthusiasm. Take yourself as an example and what great things you achieve when you are passionate about something – same goes for brands. If employees are passionate about what they do and truly believe in the company, great results can be achieved. Enthusiastic employees are great when it comes to sales, provide positive customer support and create engaging marketing campaigns.
What’s great about passion is that it can be transmitted – an enthusiastic brand can create enthusiastic followers who will talk positively about the company. This can result in user generated content, increase brand loyalty and credibility, as well as reaching a wider audience.

Batkid – Enthusiasm Gone Viral

Three years ago, on November 15th 2013, five-year-old cancer fighter Miles got his wish to become Batman for the day. Granted by Greater Bay Area Make-A-Wish Foundation, the aim of the organisation was to turn San Francisco into Gotham and little Miles -Batkid- had to save the city from villains Riddler and Penguin, whilst cruising in the batmobile. The first step to make this dream happen was to speak to the Mayor’s Office and the Chief Officer about the idea – the organisation stated that they were extremely excited about the project and were ready to help out.
Everyone who took part in this project showed great passion and determination to ensure that Miles’ dream came true, giving him one of the best days of his life. The news slowly went viral, and over 20,000 people gathered together to cheer and support Batkid while he fought the villains. Two black Lamborghini with the Batman logo were also turned into batmobiles and police officers escorted the little superhero through the streets. In order to prepare Miles for this day, he was taken to a circus school where he could practice some moves he would have then needed to use in order to save the city. The people who had their training booked on the day were so enthusiastic about the cause that they decided to show up in superhero costumes too, just to make Miles believe that that’s how heroes really trained. Miles’ big day was broadcast worldwide, and social media was crazy about him. Over 500,000 people tweeted about Batkid using the hashtag #SFBatkid during the campaign, including Barack Obama.
What made this incredible experience for Miles possible was the zest for the cause – the desire and enthusiasm to make a five-year-old’s dream come true.

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The technological era is moving very fast, and at times we barely manage to keep up with it. Innovative devices, software updates, online payments, new social media channels, different ways to communicate – the list goes on. In one way or another, everyone is online now; whether it is to search something on the web, to read emails, to talk to grandchildren, or to upload a selfie, we are all connected. This is why brands have turned to the online world to reach their audience and market their products/services.

5 reasons why your brand should use digital marketing

1. Cost effective

You’ll be surprised by how cost effective it can be to use digital marketing. If you are on a tight budget, or cautious on where to invest your money – you know that by investing online, you will have value for money. Just think about the ‘pay per click’ ads, you know you will be paying only when someone clicks and views your ad – no money wasted.

2. Easy to measure

You can see in real time what works and what doesn’t – which allows you to make changes straight away in order to always improve your brand. There are many different options which allow you to know how many people you are reaching, how many are engaging, which are the days and times that work best and so on. To everything you do online, you have a tool to measure its effectiveness.

3. Target exactly who you want

Targeting a specific audience is extremely easy online. Do you want to just target women between the age of 30 and 55 with kids? No problem, your advert or post will only be visible to those. Targeting has never been so easy!

4. More exposure

On traditional media, once you place an advert on a banner you know that whoever is passing by can see your ad, same goes to someone reading a magazine and seeing your advert in there. Through digital marketing this has changed, here’s how: when someone, for example, likes something you posted on your Facebook page or Instagram, that post will be recommended to the friends of that person, for free. Through digital marketing you get much more exposure simply through the interaction your followers have with your brand.

5. Great engagement

If there is one thing that a brand loves it’s engagement – you know you are doing a good job when your audience engages directly with you. Online marketing has made this possible and easy to do, as brands can build a relationship with people through direct messages, replying to comments, and also sharing the audience’s content. Brand interaction with the audience can make the difference between a company’s success and failure.
The digital era is here, don’t ignore it but use it – your brand will only gain from it.

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What is experiential marketing?

Experiential marketing focuses on making the customer engage with the brand and experience it first hand. It focuses on creating an emotional link with the customers, one that will remain with them for as long as possible – even forever!
Many big brands known worldwide have adopted this method to engage with their audience.
Let’s have a look at some of them.

Coca Cola – 007

Coca Cola used their “Coke Zero” product to promote the Skyfall movie by associating the “Zero” to 007. An interactive Coca Cola distributor was placed in a train station, where travelers were invited to ‘unlock their inner 007’ by going on a mission. The train passengers who bought a drink from the vending machine were given the opportunity to win tickets for the James Bond movie, all they had to do is get to a train platform in 70 seconds. Obviously, reaching the platform wasn’t all so easy. Check out the video:

TNT

Another very well known experiential marketing advert that went viral around three years ago is the TNT “We know drama” promotion. A red button was placed on a relatively quiet square in a Flemish town with a sign saying ‘push to add drama’, inviting people to press the button. Once pressed, the quiet square would turn into a drama scene – promoting their slogan ‘your daily dose of drama on Telenet’. Here’s a grasp of what happened:

The Simpsons

Back in 2007, Century fox and 7-Eleven partnered up to promote the new Simpsons movie. 7-Eleven turned some of their shops into the Simpson’s famous shop Kwik-E-Marts, in which products from the actual series were available for purchase, such as: KrustyO’s Cereal, Buzz Cola, and also Squishee Frozen Drinks.

Ikea Big Sleepover

In 2011, the Ikea in Essex hosted a sleepover where 100 lucky winners had the opportunity to sleep at the store. This was the result of a Facebook fan group, with over 100,000 people, called ‘I wanna have a sleepover in Ikea’. The winners could choose their beds, sheets, and were also given manicure and massages. A sleep expert was also available to provide people with advices, and help the interested ones choose a new mattress.

One of the best ways for a brand to connect with their audience is to give them an experience they won’t forget. Thinking outside the box, as the examples above showed us, is the answer as to how to get such an experience. A positive experience will result in great reviews (the digital ‘word of mouth’), which is exactly what a brand needs to become successful.

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Vine

Through Vine, people create entertaining and most of the time funny seven-second-videos. Samsung uses Vine to promote their products with simple yet entertaining clips.

Snapchat

Thanks to Snapchat people are now allowed to share experiences almost immediately, and they can choose to do so publicly or privately. For a brand, Snapchat is the perfect tool to remind the audience about a service or product. For instance, if a company is about to launch something new, using Snapchat is the perfect way to remind the people about it.
Communicating and sharing has become easier thanks to videos, as we can now share things with friends and family in real-time. Distance is no longer seen as a boundary, and people are feeling more connected than before.
Growth in video-content and social media means that brands now have a new way to approach and interact with their audience.
Through the use of videos, brands can show the ‘behind the scenes’ of the company, along as sharing some humor and also informational content.
Red Bull uses video content on all their social media platforms. The idea behind their content is to produce ‘active’ video content to represent the energy you can get with their drink. As their motto is ‘it gives you wing’, they back this up with content that makes the user want to do things, such as extreme sports. With 44 million likes on Facebook, 4 million YouTube subscribers and over 110 thousands followers on Vine, Red Bull knows the importance of using video-content to engage more with fans, reach new targets, and build a connection with the audience.

We’re operating in a world where one good video can lead to a massive social following. – Mike Henry

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Why should you test?

We test things on a daily basis. We try out a new route to work, we go for a test drive before purchasing a car, we try a new brand of cereals, or we test different hairstyles before picking the right look. We are constantly testing so that we can find the best option for ourselves, the one that works best and that we prefer. This is exactly what happens with a business, whether big or small. You test a campaign, you test a website or you test your social media. You want to see how your audience reacts to what you do, so as to find the strategy that works best for your company.
The easiest way to find out whether something works or doesn’t work for your business is through A/B testing. This type of testing will provide you with the information you need to have in order to understand how you should go about things. For instance, A/B testing will help you decide which emails people prefer reading, or which social media post works best.

What is A/B testing?

A/B test (or split testing) is simply using two variants that target the same audience at preferably the same time in order to see which performs better. Once you have analysed the results, you can adopt the winning variant.  For example, it’s been proven that using visuals on social media increases engagment. How was this proven? Through split testing: variant A involved posting a Facebook update without an image, while variant B involved positing the same update with an image. In this case, variant B was the winning one.

Examples of tests

Anything that requires a response can be tested. Emails, social media, call to action and websites. Let’s say that you wish to change the look of your homepage, and you have two designs in mind but you are not sure which one will have a better response. You can launch both of them, side by side, and see which one performs better – this way you will have a clearer idea of which is preferred by your audience and move forward with it.
Another example would be wishing to have more subscribers opening your newsletters. A way to go about it through A/B testing is by having two different subjects, send them to the same number of people and analyse the response after X amount of time (this can vary from thirty minutes, to eight hours – it’s up to you to decide). The version that would have been opened the most in the amount of time you would have decided on is the winning one. Through this type of testing you will be able to understand which subjects are more eye-catching and interesting to your audience.
You may wish to have more people purchasing products through your website. Consider changing the color of the purchase button  – you’ll be surprised by how much of a difference such a little alteration could make. Get creative and find out which option your audience prefers!
Check out how Obama managed to raise $60 million through testing.

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Five steps to implement a successful strategy

1 – Determine what your goal is. It may seem like something you don’t need to do – but do not underestimate the importance of this very first step. You want to make sure that your team is all in agreement and have the same objectives. You cannot possibly move forward if there are internal conflicts or misunderstandings. This could include something as simple as choosing how to advertise a product, to the complex decision of rebranding the whole company.
2 – Once you have agreed on what your aim is, the next step is to brainstorm. You must decide what needs to be done to go ahead with your plan in order to succeed. Brainstorming is very important, and it requires a good amount of time. To come up with great and creative ideas you need to get out of your comfort zone. Our advice is: stay away from your desk. Change the boardroom into a games room, go to the beach and take with you note pads and colorful pens, or simply go for a walk and get inspired by your surroundings.  We tend to lose our creativity when we are sitting in front of a monitor, so get up and open up your mind.
3 – Choose a deadline. If we had all the time in the world, we wouldn’t get anything done. Pick a date, mark it on your calendar in BIG BOLD TEXT, put reminders on your phones and have sticky notes spread around the office with the date written on it. It’s essential to have a deadline, it allows you to manage your time and have a target to reach. Make sure that everyone is aware of the important date, and if needs be send some kind and funny reminders to your team – just in case all those colorful sticky notes aren’t enough.
4 – Once you and your team have an idea and have picked a deadline, you have to decide on how you are going to go about it. For example, you wish to organise a competition for your target audience so as to promote your product: how do you intend on doing it? Will you be using social media or will you organize an event?
5 – Who? It is now time to delegate the work. This will require time and discussion; you want to make sure that your team feels comfortable enough to run the task, they have clearly understood what they have to do and have enough time to get everything done in the most efficient way possible.
Ready, steady, go! Now that you have a strategy in mind, it is time to put it into action and show everyone what you are capable of doing.

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1. Apple Pay
2. Android Pay
3. PayPal
4. Bitcoin

Apple Pay

Apply pay, making credit cards redundant since October 2014. Basically, Apple pay allows you to store your credits cards in your “Passbook”. Once the cards are stored, to pay for your shopping all you need to do is put your phone over contactless readers and your purchase will be completed. Now obviously the first thing that comes to mind is “but what if someone steals my phone?”, Apple came up with a quick solution to that. If your phone is stolen all you need to do is sign in to iCloud and enable “lost mode” which will suspend Apple pay. Another pro to Apple pay is that your card details are never actually stored with apple, but are stored within the phone itself, so every purchase you make will never be recorded with apple, so yes go ahead and order the Michael Buble Limited Edition box set, no one will ever know.

Android Pay

Who could have predicted Android coming out with a payment method after Apple did? Anyway, with android pay there is no application involved, all you need to is tap the phone over a contactless reader. Upon purchase, loyalty points and offers are automatically applied. Regarding your card safety, android has got your back, because android uses a virtual account number so that your credit card and debit card details will never be sent out. Whenever you make a purchase, android pay will give you the merchant’s name and number, for theft reasons. Lose your phone, don’t sweat it! Android device manager allows you to instantly lock your device, change your password and wipe clean all your personal info, you know, James Bond style. In the near future, android pay will be available for use at McDonald’s, Subway, Macy’s, Best Buy and many more retail outlets.

Paypal

Okay, so we see PayPal almost everywhere, but what exactly is it? Paypal provides users to pay online without revealing any of your financial data. The brilliant thing about paypal is that it uses the latest encryption and anti-fraud technology. Probably, the one place we all know paypal from is ebay. It simplified the process and made those midnight online shopping cravings a hundred times easier.

Bitcoin

The conception of bitcoin is kind of a mystery, but what we know is that it has become a massive online P2P transaction method. However, the thing about bitcoin is that it can never be regulated, and we all know what that means.
In 2014 the CEO of BitInstant, Charlie Shrem (bitcoin exchange) was officially arrested for selling over 1 million dollars in bitcoins to Silk Road users, who would use the bitcoins to buy drugs. Anywho, bitcoin is a new payment system of digital money. It is owned and run by the users around the world.

Conclusion

All in all, we may easily come to the conclusion that in just a few years time we could all say goodbye to our paper money, and say hello to cryptocurrency.

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