Can SEOs make local search great again in 2017?
The road ahead looks rough for local SEO practitioners and agencies, but is there hope? Columnist Andrew Shotland takes a look at what recent trends mean for those who serve local search clients.
The post Can SEOs make local search great again in 2017? appeared first on Search Engine Land.
SEO and Digital Trends in 2017
Posted by gfiorelli1
Disclaimer: This post, as with every post that aims to predict the future, should be taken with a grain of salt — no matter how authoritative the author.
The main purpose of this post is to offer ideas and open a constructive discussion around the future of SEO and digital marketing over the next 12 months.
2016 is, finally, close to its end.
It was an intense year, especially when it came to SEO and Google in particular. Because I’m deeply convinced that we cannot attempt any preview of the future without considering what happened in the past, I invite you to look back at the events that have marked the evolution of Google in the past 10 months.
It is important to note that, contrary to more classic Google timelines, I prefer to see all Google-related events in the same place. I believe it’s the only way we can escape from a too-narrow vision of where Google is headed:
Click to view a larger image
Blue: Official Google Updates
Red: Businesses/companies acquired by Google/Alphabet
Green: Main posts in Google Webmaster Blog
Purple: Main Google patents published
Brown: Products Google launched in the market
What we can learn from this timeline?
This:
Google is steadily moving to a mobile-only world. Mobile-first indexing seems like the inevitable consequence of a year (or more) almost exclusively dedicated to evangelizing and forcing a change of mindset from desktop to mobile.
Albeit links are still essential for rankings (see Penguin 4.0), Google’s investigative efforts seem almost fully devoted to entity, predictive, and personalized search. Again, quite logical if we consider deeply personal devices like mobile and home assistants.
For the same reason, voice search seems to be the next frontier of search, partly because Bing — using a different business strategy than Google — may represent a big competitor in this arena.
Since John Giannandrea has become the Senior Vice President of Search at Google, machine and deep learning began to be used by default in every facet of Google Search. Thus, we should expect them to be used even more in 2017, perhaps with specific algorithms improving Hummingbird at every phase.
In a mobile-only world, the relevance of local search is even higher. This seems to be the strategic reason both for an update like Possum and all the tests we see in local, and also of the acquisition of a company like Urban Engines, whose purpose is to analyze the “Internet of Moving Things.”
The acquisition of startups like MoodStock and EyeFluence (but also Anvato and Famebit) seems to suggest that video/images and video/images marketing will be a central focus for Google, perhaps also because YouTube is struggling against Facebook (and not just Facebook) when it comes to videos/images and their monetization.
The shift from desktop-first to mobile-first
Until now, SEOs have considered mobile search to be one of the many specializations of SEO, on the same level as local search or international SEO.
That mentality did not change much when, back in 2015, Google announced AMP. Moreover, us SEOs considered AMP just another (often annoying) “added task” to our implementation checklist, and not as a signal of the real intentions of Google: Mobile search is all search.
With the announcement of mobile-first indexing, though, these intentions are now 100% clear, and somehow they represent a Copernican Revolution: After 18 years of prioritizing desktop, now we have to prioritize mobile.
The reason for this epochal change is evident if we look at the source of the search traffic (both organic and paid) for our sites:
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I designed this chart using the search traffic data Similarweb offers us. For all the industries categorized by Similarweb, I took the first five websites per search traffic volume in the USA during last November, and saw for each one of them how much traffic was from desktop and how much from mobile during the past three months.
Even though this analysis cannot be considered exhaustive and granular, as I hadn’t considered the industries subcategories and I hadn’t considered the “long-tail websites,” surely it’s indicative of a trend.
The results are clearly telling us that mobile search is bringing more traffic to websites than desktop: 20 industry niches out of 24 see mobile as their first source of traffic.
The four industry niche exceptions to this general rule are important ones, though:
Computer & Electronics
Internet & Telecom
Science
Travel
A good example of a website that still sees desktop search as its main source of search traffic is Tripadvisor.com:
Desktop search traffic represents 71% of all traffic from desktopMobile search traffic represents “only” 55.79% of all traffic from mobile
However, these same percentages should also make us reflect. They don’t mean that TripAdvisor isn’t visited on mobile, but that other channels are relevant traffic sources on mobile more than desktop (such as direct, not to mention the mobile-only app).
AMP, then, was the main character in the Google Search-branded storytelling about mobile this year.
Google announced AMP in October 2015, and by April already 37% of news sites’ articles had an AMP version, according to a study by the GDELT Project.
However, the same study reported that, globally, only 40% of all news sites articles had a mobile version of any kind.
It must be underlined that the GDELT Project study refers only to news sites and not ecommerce or other kinds of websites, which see heavier use of mobile or responsive versions. Nevertheless, it can still be considered a good barometer of the reality of the web overall.
Speaking of “barometers,” the Consumer Barometer with Google for 2016 is showing us important trends for the USA, like this one:
The percentage of people mainly using a smartphone is growing, while the percentage of people mainly using desktop is decreasing with respect to 2015 (or is stable if we consider the last 5 years).
Beware, though: If you analyze the trends in other countries, like some Asian or European ones, the percent of people using mainly smartphones is even greater.
Does this mean that we should neglect desktop search? No! If wid, it would be a big mistake, especially if our website were an ecommerce site.
The chart below, based on the same Consumer Barometer with Google data, tells us clearly that desktop is still by far the most-used device for product research (desktop is in orange):
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This insight must be considered if we’re planning to redesign our site, to find a balance in terms of site usability for both desktop and mobile… and I cannot help but think that the subtle (and recently not-so-subtle) suggestion from Google of moving from mobile/responsive to PWA is also influenced by this reality.
What to plan for 2017?
Prepare for mobile-first indexing
When Google announced mobile-first indexing last November 4th, it did not say that the change would happen that same day, or even after a few days.
Google, instead, said this:
To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first.
This means that we are still in a desktop-first index, but it’s almost sure that it’ll switch to mobile-first in 2017.
As happened with Mobilegeddon in 2015, Google is giving us plenty of time for:
Creating a mobile version with any possible format (m. site, responsive, adaptive, PWA) of our site if we still haven’t (remember how few news sites’ articles have a mobile version?).
Making the content and pages presented both in mobile and desktop versions the same. Be aware that this is the only possible way to really lose rankings, because if in desktop search we have visible content and pages that were discarded in our mobile version, when mobile-first deploys, it will lose that SEO visibility. For this reason, Google suggests responsive as the easiest way to avoid this problem.
Implementing structured data in our mobile versions, because it’s usually neglected in the interest of speed (and Google needs that information!).
Eventually — and hopefully — reconsidering all the user experience and conversion optimization we offer on desktop and mobile (check out this deck by Talia Wolf from MozCon). For instance, in recent months — because of the Google demotion of tabbed content — many websites started to get rid of tabs and present all their content at once. This limitation won’t apply anymore once mobile-first comes.
Rethinking and planning a new link building strategy if we have a separate m. mobile site. This is more of a defensive strategy suggestion, though, because we still don’t know what will happen to inbound links to desktop versions in a mobile-first indexing world. It may happen that Google will find a way to make the Link Graph independent from the nature of the sites.
In light of what Google has told us about mobile-first indexing, and that you can find finely discussed here in this Q&A on Search Engine Land, If I had to give an extreme suggestion, it would be this:
if you have a very bad mobile version, and if you know that you’re not going to have a new, fully functional one in time for the end of 2017, then (absurdly) it could be better for you to have a desktop-only site.
In fact, Google has repeatedly said that mobile-first does not mean that it won’t index the desktop version of a site. To the contrary: If a site doesn’t have any mobile version, Google will index and consider for rankings its desktop one. And this will be the case even if that same website has an AMP version.
Finally, I strongly urge you to update (or download, if you still don’t use it) Screaming Frog.
In its very recent 7.0 version, Screaming Frog allows us to fetch and render crawled pages, something that before was only possible (and with a painful one-by-one URL process) via Google Search Console. Obviously, remember to set up Screaming Frog to emulate the Googlebot smartphone crawler.
Moreover, Screaming Frog now also alerts us to any blocked resource that could impede the correct rendering of our pages, again just as GSC does — but without the pain.
AMP
Despite some concerns AMP is generating amongst some bigs news sites, web owners, and SEOs, it doesn’t seem that Google will reduce pressure for a large number of websites to adopt it.
On the contrary! In fact, if AMP was at first directed to news websites (and blogs), recently Google started presenting AMP results for recipe sites too:
And for an ecommerce website like Ebay (one of the founders of the AMP Project):
Therefore, if your website is already receiving a great volume of traffic from mobile search, you might start scheduling the creation of an AMP version.
This should be a priority for a blog, a news site, or a recipe site.
However, if you have an ecommerce site, it could be interesting to AMP-lify a category to test the performance and ROI of creating an AMP version of it, as the AMP Project suggests here. Not every functionality that’s standard in ecommerce is possible with AMP, but if I had to bet, this is the niche where the AMP Project will see its biggest enhancements; Google and Ebay are too deeply involved to ignore it.
That said, if you are an ecommerce site, while it can be exciting to experiment with AMP, your real strategic choice should be going PWA.
Resources about AMP
What You Need to Know About Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) – Whiteboard Friday – Moz
How Google’s AMP Will Influence Your Online Marketing – Moz
Should You Implement AMP Pages on Your Site? – Builtvisible
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) – What You Need to Know – TheSEMpost
AMP Validation and Troubleshooting – AMPProject.org
How to implement Google AMP on your WordPress site as easily as possible – Search Engine Watch
wbAMP: Accelerated mobile pages for Joomla
AMP for Drupal 7 and 8
Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
I am quite confident that If there’s a main trending topic for 2017, it will be Progressive Web Apps.
Not only has Google already started evangelizing it publicly via its Webmaster blog and developer website, but Googlers are informally suggesting it in conferences and private chats.
As we’ve seen above, ecommerce websites are not yet fully AMP-lifiable.
Moreover, three seconds is the new fast, according to this study Google presented last September. Even a very well-optimized responsive or m. site can barely perform with an average SiteSpeed like that if we consider how heavy web pages are right now.
Then comes the other obsession of Google: security… and PWA only works with HTTPS.
So, it’s as easy as summing 1+1 to foresee how Google will push websites’ owners to go PWA.
The only setback to this evangelization, ironically, could be mobile-first indexing, which is still very uncertain in all its details, hence causing people to hold off.
However, if you’re an ecommerce site, don’t have an app, or are reconsidering the opportunity of constantly maintaining two apps (iOS and Android) because of the need to rationalize costs, then Progressive Web Apps can be your best choice, as they allow a website to work as if it were an app (and offline, too).
Again, as we sometimes forget, SEO’s future will be determined on a macro- and micro-scale by business decisions.
Resources about PWA
Introducing Progressive Web Apps: What They Might Mean for Your Website and SEO – Moz
A Beginner’s Guide To Progressive Web Apps – Smashing Magazine
Intro to Progressive Web Apps by Google on Udacity
Understanding language is the holy grail of machine learning
This phrase is the headline of the Natural Language Understanding Team page page on Google’s Research website. The author of this phrase? John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President for Search at Google.
On that same page, we also find this:
Recent research interests of the Google NLU team include syntax, discourse, conversation, multilingual modeling, sentiment analysis, question answering, summarization, and generally building better learners using labeled and unlabeled data, state-of-the-art modeling, and indirect supervision.
With that declaration in mind, we have a better understanding of what Google is doing by simply looking at some patents this team has published:
Annotating Topic Development in Information Seeking Queries
Contextual LSTM: A Step towards Hierarchical Language Modeling
Conversational Contextual Cues: The Case of Personalization and History for Response Ranking
Transforming Dependency Structures to Logical Forms for Semantic Parsing
Learning N-gram Language Models from Uncertain Data
et al (see them all here)
Context, as you can see, tends to be recurrent, and — as anyone who’s studied linguistic and semantics knows — this is a very easy thing to understand.
A classic example is how “carro” means “car” in Mexico and means “carriage” or “wagon” in Spain. The meaning of a world can radically change because of context, in this case cultural context.
Context is fundamental for understanding the meaning of the implicit and compound facets of any conversation, which is fundamental for the successful development of completely new search environments like Google Assistant and Google Home. Will Critchlow (with the collaboration of Tom Anthony) explained this well at The Inbounder last May:
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Finally, context and natural language are partly the basis (for what we know) of the infamous RankBrain, as vectors too are contextual (and contexts by themselves), as Bill Slawski explains in this post.
Moreover, Google finally seems serious about understanding one of the most common (and most complex) aspects of natural language: metaphors. And once they’re able to understand the meaning of metaphors, understanding the meaning of all the other rhetorical figures people use when talking (and writing) will be an easy incremental step for Google.
Why does Google have this irresistible interest in natural language?
Sure, on an ideal level, it’s because Google wants “to provide the better answer to users’ needs,” and to do that, Google must:
Understand what each web document is about (semantics);
Understand what users are actually searching for, now more and more using their voice and typing in the search box (natural language processing).
Another ideal reason is that “You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer”.
But then there are more earthly (aka: business) reasons:
Voice Assistants adoption is growing, as reported by MindMeld;
40% of Voice Assistant users started using it only 6 months ago, which is a sign that the “early adopters” phase seems passing testimony to the “mainstream users” phase;
Already 20% of mobile queries are Voice Search (and will be 50% in 2020, according to Microsoft);
The primary setting for voice search is our home (followed by our car), according to a KPCB study;
Already in 2014, Google was reporting that the biggest percentage of voice search users were teens. Those teens are growing, getting jobs, and becoming parents;
Amazon sold about 5 million Amazon Echo in the last two years, and Amazon reported that “Echo Dot and Echo Tap, two smaller and cheaper versions of the traditional Echo device, accounted for at least 33 percent of sales in the past six months” (source: Geekwire).
These are some of the reasons why Google developed Google Assistant (a completely new search environment, as defined by Google itself at Google I/O) and Google Home, and that’s why Google announced that Voice Search reporting will come to Google Search Console in the future.
As in the past with Android, Google is entering in the market when all its competitors are already established. Let’s see, thanks to the adoption of Android as a mobile OS, if it will be able to recover its position and eventually become the market leader.
What to plan for 2017?
When it comes to natural language, voice search, and intelligent voice assistants, what SEOs can do is more related to optimizing for the parsing and indexing phases of the Google algorithm than to rankings themselves.
I talked about this idea in my last post here on Moz — Wake Up, SEOs – the NEW New Google is Here — so I won’t repeat myself, but I do suggest you go read it (again).
More concretely, I would plan these tasks for the first month of 2017:
Implement structured data in the mobile version of my website.
This is needed not only because Google will eventually use mobile-first indexing and these usually don’t have schema implemented, but also because structured data is one of the fundamental tools Google uses for understanding the meaning of a web document. Moreover, Google is really pushing rich cards for mobile search, somehow replicating the incentivization strategy used in the past with rich snippets.
Are you worried about performance? Then it’s time to adopt JSON-LD (paranoiac thought: is this also a reason why Google strongly insisted on JSON-LD for structured data?).
Optimize for #0
Featured snippets are even more prominent on mobile search, and also used by Google Home to offer answers, even though — as wisely said by Dr. Pete here on Moz — it’s still not clear how that will translate into a click to our website.
Right now there are several tools that allow us to investigate and know what queries fire up a featured snippet (apart from all the other SERPs features). The ones I use are these:
GetStat
Moz, both Keyword Explorer (SERPS Analysis) and Moz Pro Campaigns (SERP Features and Analyze Keywords in the Rankings section)
SEMRush, in the Positions page of the Organic Research section of its Domain Analysis, which also offers to visualize a snapshot of the SERP for each keyword
SEMRush SERP snapshot, and an example of how a featured snippet can be generated from an ecommerce category page (the SEO for Amazon must be very happy, I bet).
Start using the Google Assistant API and experiment with custom voice commands
RankBrain is one of the fundamental bricks toward a natural language based search engine, so if you have not already done it, start rethinking keyword research, and stop generally talking about “topics” with no real actionable strategy behind it.
Consider branding as an SEO strategy
One of main characteristics of Google, enhanced by entity search and context, is personalized search.
Personalization, then, seems to be even more important if we consider personal assistants.
Personalization means that Google will more often present content from websites that are in our search history or — through search entities — linked from websites already present in our search history.
This means that if, on a short, tactical level it’s important to target long-tail queries, on a longer, strategic level the ideal is making our brand synonymous with our products and services. This can be achieved by targeting higher up the funnel with the right content in the right format, published and promoted at the right moment to the right people. This is very well described Jono Alderson at Searchlove London in 2015 (here’s the video recording):
Searching higher up the funnel from Jono Alderson
Reconsider Bing!
If you think that Bing is only “that search engine with cool background photos,” it’s time to change your mind. Bing is fueling the search of Siri and Alexa, apart from being the default search engine of Cortana. If you calculate how many iOS/OS X, Windows 10, and Amazon Echo devices are used, then you have a rough idea of how Bing could be important as voice search grows. You can read more about voice search, Cortana, and Bing in this post by Purna Virji.
SE.LO.MO (Search Local Mobile)
Only a few years ago digital marketers used to talk a lot about SO.LO.MO. (SOcial, LOcal, and MObile).
We were all talking about Foursquare marketing. Then Foursquare changed to Swarm, and we no longer talk about SO.LO.MO., partly because the marketing philosophy behind it has become a default practice.
However, now with mobile as the first search traffic source and the unstoppable success of personal assistants and chatbots (I invite you to look this deck by Jes Stiles), the idea of doing marketing locally and mobile is even more pressing and promising, although there are technologies like beacons that don’t seem able to conquer the market, maybe because they’re too advanced with respect to consumer behavior.
Returning to TripAdvisor as an example, if we look at which queries bring more organic traffic from mobile (and excluding branded searches), we see these:
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Apart from telling us that people in the USA really like to go out for dinner without any clue on where to go, what this simple analysis shows is that people search on the go more and more. They’ve finally understood that searches are localized and they don’t need to explicitly indicate their location. Perhaps even more important, they now fully know that their results pages are personalized.
What this snapshot above is not telling us, though, is a trend that could become the new normal in the next future: longer verbose queries because of voice search.
In fact, if we dig into the Similarweb mobile keyword report, we can start finding these kind of queries:
hotels on highway 41 near grand ave and rogers ct near waukegan il;
places in clarksville arkansas that fix cracked windshields;
restaurants open late in west side of south bend indiana;
five star restaurants like salvatores in western new york;
where to get breakfast near grand hotel francais paris.
The SERPs answering these queries, though, also show us one problem and one opportunity:
The problem is that these SERPs, while having a clear local intent, quite often do not present any local search pack.
The opportunity is that, despite these queries indeed being “local,” Google fails to offer relevant results able to answer them (see the “five star restaurants like salvatores in western new york” as an example).
Therefore:
Thinking of local search only as MyBusiness optimization may limit the opportunities businesses (especially local businesses) can have to earn SEO visibility and traffic.
Also, local business websites should start working to intercept the potential traffic generated by those kinds of queries. There is a real opportunity in those kind of queries, simply because (still) nobody is really thinking about them (apart fromTripAdvisor, as its result for “where to get breakfast near grand hotel francais paris” testifies).
How to achieve that?
Probably not by trying to target all the infinite possible combinations of local searches a user can do in relation to our kind of business and our location. That would be equal to creating content of very poor quality, when thinking about how Hummingbird and, in many aspects, RankBrain work.
This leads me to redirect you back to the previous chapter of this post about semantics, natural language, and context.
David Mihm advises to Think of your website (or your client’s websites) as an API, adding that:
Even if you’re not a publisher in the traditional sense of the word, you should prepare for a time when no one ever visits your website. Awareness, research, and conversion will all happen in search results, and the companies whose websites facilitate that paradigm on the leading edge will be rewarded with more customers while competitors scramble to catch up. This means as much Schema.org and JSON-LD markup as possible, and partnering with third parties that have cut deals with Google to facilitate transactions (see: OpenTable and ZocDoc).
Because David is surely more expert in local search than I, if you want to dig into what could be the trends in this very important SEO area, I invite you to read his predictions in the Tidings blog.
THE IRRESISTIBLE ASCENT OF VIDEO (and the images strike back)Video
This post by Content.ly is old (July 2015), but it shared still-interesting stats via an Emarketer study about the growth of video consumption online.
Consumption of video online is growing, even though — apparently — it’s not really stealing time away from TV.
Things look different if we look at “generations” (I don’t really like marketing segmentations such as “millennials,” but we can still use them for brevity):
What this chart is forgetting, though, is the youngest audience (from 4–13 years old). If you have a child around those ages, you’ll agree that she consumes video mostly online. For instance, my kids’ idols are Iron Man, Aragorn, Luke Skywalker, and DanTDM, a YouTuber, who shares his videos while playing games like Minecraft.
Let’s add a final stat about what device is used the most for watching videos online:
Laptop & desktop are still the most-used devices, but smartphone is quickly growing.
Consider that:
The average age kids start owning a smartphone is 10.3 years;
Children from 5 to 13 years old (and also young people up to 20 years old) tend to me more visual than textual;
Their influence on the buying habits of their parents has been known for many years and, in 2012, it was equal to $1.2 trillion USD in spending.
I talk a lot about kids because they are the most crystal-clear example of why every technological platform is so devoted to video and video live streaming right now (Instagram being the last one announcing it on 11/21). However, this trend in consuming videos online (and YouTube still is the most-used channel) is common to almost every age group of Internet users.
Finally, if we pair to this video frenzy the equally irresistible rise of native advertising (pro tip: follow Melanie Deziel), then see that Google acquired companies like Anvato (a “video platform that guarantees video playback and monetization from signal to every screen” as it describes itself) and Famebit (an “Influencer Marketing Platform for YouTube, Instagram, and More”, as its title tag recites) is not a surprise at all.
Google needs to find new ways of monetizing videos… and YouTube is not enough anymore.
More concretely, if we think about our 2017 SEO and digital marketing strategy, video seems to be a channel that we should start exploring more seriously, if we did not consider it before.
And when it comes to digital PR, we should start considering online videos stars as much (if not more) influencers as any classic blogger.
Images
In 2017, for almost the same reasons explained above for video, we should expect a return in interest for images marketing, especially in Google search.
Let’s be honest: Images search, as it is right now, is the dinosaur of Google search. For us SEOs it hasn’t been useful in bringing traffic to our websites for many years and, for Google, it’s not profitable.
Maybe this is one of reasons why Google bought Moodstock and invests so much intellectual and machine learning efforts in image recognition.
People do showrooming… They go into a store, take photos of products with their smartphone, and then search for online offers for those same products.
It should not be silly to think that Google could “help” this search thanks to image recognition, because it already does it quite well with its reverse image search feature.
Moreover, with Schema.org/Product, we can tag the images of our products so that Google can easily pair product images to other characteristics like prices, offers, and stock availability.
With this data, it could start monetizing the Images vertical once for all.
[NOTE: As I was writing this, Google announced that it will start showing product schema rich snippets in image search results… so this is no longer a risky preview, but partly a reality!]
VR
What is the last company did Google acquire? Eyefluence.
What physical product did Google launch in October? The DayDream VR headset.
What was the most exciting feature that YouTube (and other platforms) rolled out? 360.
I’ll let you fantasize about the opportunities VR represents for the smart digital marketers.
Maybe in 2017 VR will still be an “early adopters” technology, but if I were you, I’d start preparing myself and clients to it.
Credits: The images in this post, if you didn’t guess it already, are from the HBO show Westworld.
The captions in the photos are from sci-fi movies and TV series titles (have fun discovering them)
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How to Successfully Market on Reddit [Webinar Recap] by @dantosz
If you have considered marketing your brand on Reddit, you have likely heard the horror stories. The AMAs gone astray or the sad attempt Pilot made at using a meme to promote their own brand. The horror stories are enough to scare away many a marketer. Here’s the thing – you CAN market on Reddit. But only if you approach the audience the way they like to be approached. This week, our SEJ ThinkTank webinar series welcomed back Brent Csutoras, the Chief Social Media Strategist for SEJ and a Redditor of more than a decade. If you are looking to succeed […]
The post How to Successfully Market on Reddit [Webinar Recap] by @dantosz appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Android Pay says “hajimemashite”
The next time you pop into your local “conbini”, your Android phone will be all you need to take with you. Starting today, Android Pay — the new digital wallet for Android smartphones — is available in Japan, helping you pay for things and earn loyalty points quickly and conveniently when you are on-the-go.
We are launching with Rakuten Edy, so you can use Android Pay at over 470,000 locations in Japan that accept Rakuten Edy eMoney – including shops like Bic Camera, Family Mart, Lawson, McDonald’s and Yodobashi Camera.
To start using Android Pay, download the app from the Google Play store onto an eligible Android smartphone running Kitkat 4.4 or above. You can create a new Edy card in seconds directly in the app, or, if you already have a mobile Rakuten Edy, you can also enable it in Android Pay. Adding money to your Edy card is quick and easy in Android Pay – you can top-up instantly in the app with your credit card, or at any local store that supports Rakuten Edy top-up.
To pay, just tap your phone to the eMoney reader and see your balance update. It’s easy to keep track of your purchases, with a long-term transaction history viewable right in the app. You can also add your plastic loyalty cards for supported point programs like Rakuten Super Points.
And there’s more to come. In 2017, we plan to continue working with FeliCa Networks to support more eMoney providers and are working with payments companies like The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd., Visa and Mastercard in many new ways – such as helping you speed through checkout with Android Pay in your favorite apps. Stay tuned for more announcements.
Get started with Android Pay in Japan today: download the app on Google Play, create a card and start shopping. And, as an added bonus, for a limited time, new users will receive a 400 yen sign-up gift when they create a Rakuten Edy card in Android Pay. It’s as easy as Tap. Pay. Done.
The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing: 6 Key Steps
There’s something kind of cool happening in the world of marketing.
Actually, there’s always something cool going on here. But as you may have recently heard, people are paying a lot of attention to something called account-based marketing (ABM). After all, over the past year, there’s been a 21% increase in the number of companies that have a full account-based marketing program in place.
And yet, it seems like account-based marketing is a fairly new concept to many people. A big part of that has to do with a lagging alignment between marketing and sales within many organizations — while this number is almost double what it was last year, only 60% of businesses say they’re “somewhat” or “tightly” aligned with sales.
But account-based marketing — and its success — is somewhat rooted in that very alignment between marketing and sales. And as you’ll see, it’s highly useable, if you know where to begin. That’s why we’re here to help.
But What Is Account-Based Marketing?
ABM is essentially a form of strategic business marketing. An organization takes an individual prospect or customer account — these are companies, not individual people — and treats it like its very own market, or a market of one.
So, in that context, it’s really just what it sounds like — marketing that’s based on a given account, existing or prospective. It’s typically done by enterprise-level sales organizations, and is mostly relevant to B2B efforts.
Why is that? Well, ABM is a particularly useful for organizations with multiple buyers or stakeholders. Part of its goal, says HubSpot’s Corporate Marketing Manager Sam Balter, “is to address the needs of organization by connecting with all of the stakeholders within it. That’s one reason why it works so well in B2B — oftentimes you have to work with five or more stakeholders in a given sale.”
That might seem a little tricky — especially, says HubSpot’s Senior Product Marketing Team Manager Jeff Russo, “from an execution standpoint.”
But it really boils down to six essential steps, which we’ll flesh out and tie back to inbound marketing — because while they’re two different concepts, they can truly complement each other.
Where ABM + Inbound Marketing Meet
Inbound marketing and ABM are, on the surface, a bit different in theory:
Inbound marketing primarily focuses on creating great content to bring prospects to you.
ABM puts the emphasis on individual prospects or existing accounts.
But they absolutely complement each other — in fact, we use them in tandem here at HubSpot. “Our sales team uses ABM and inbound marketing,” Balter explains. “They have a set list of target accounts, and use inbound marketing leads to supplement those accounts.”
You might notice that many of the above-outlined steps incorporate pieces of inbound marketing principles. And really, says Balter, that’s how ABM can be used “to build better relationships with target accounts.”
These days, customers really don’t enjoy feeling like they’re being sold to. That’s why it’s crucial that your marketing — even when account-based — provides value, and doesn’t push products. Emails, websites, and calls-to-action all have to be personalized for each target, especially when you’re trying to aid their discovery of your brand.
So let’s break it down. With a little help from HubSpot’s team of ABM experts — Sam Balter from above, Product Marketing Manager Ari Plaut, and Head of Corporate Sales Ryan Spillane — we’ll illustrate the steps you can take to implement and execute ABM.
The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing: 6 Key Steps
1) Identify your target.
Finding your target audience is a fundamental piece of successful marketing. Remember, we’re dealing with organizations here, not people — so don’t get this step confused with developing personas.
Rather, identifying your target accounts should be a collaborative effort between marketing and sales, since it’ll require data from both areas — firmographic data, which consists of things like industry, company size, location, and annual revenue, as well as strategic factors, like market influence, likelihood of repeat purchase, and expected profit margin.
While market research is a very valuable tool in determining this list, some of it is qualitative — that is the kind of information you’re able to contribute using intuition and experience.
2) Research your accounts.
Once you determine who your targets are, they goal is to treat those companies like big, organization-level personas. Remember — we’re not trying to develop personas for individual people here. However, it can help to have that detailed information and representation of your ideal business customers.
Being familiar with elements like the company structure and who the critical players are can, in turn, dictate how you convey your product or service to those targets, especially if you know who the decision-makers and influencers are. Sometimes, this information might already exist in-house; perhaps someone on your team previously researched this target, but didn’t complete the ABM process of reaching it the right way.
But if you don’t already have that information on hand, manual research might be required to get it. We find that LinkedIn is an excellent way to uncover that data with a fairly simple advanced search.
Let’s say someone was trying to figure out who the staff writers are on the HubSpot Marketing blog. Start by opening up an advanced people search.
Then, enter the name of your target the “Company” box. If you’re trying to find out who fills a certain role within the organization, put that in the “title box.” Be sure to set both the company and title to current.
3) Create your content.
Now that you’ve got the names of the key players within each account, you’ll want to create new content for them. That content should speak not only to the pain points of those specific employees, but more to those specific businesses.
Remember — at risk of sounding like a broken record — the ABM strategy is less focused on individual personas, and more on casting a wide net for new business. For that reason, this content should be focused on the single deals you’d like to make with each specific organization.
With this step, you might start to see how ABM and inbound marketing are able to work together, as it’s clear that quality, compelling content plays a role in reaching your account-based targets.
Not sure where to start? Check out this guide to creating useful content.
4) Choose your channels.
Even with the best content to reach your accounts, it won’t be very effective if you don’t use the right channels to promote it. It’s important to choose the right channels to deliver it, based on what’s most effective for a given organization or role.
Here’s where it might be helpful to know where the specific people within each target “live” online. The Pew Research Center Demographics of Social Media Users does an excellent job of profiling the users of five major social media platforms — Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. That should shed some light on which channels the people within each account are mostly likely using, and how they consume the content you’re custom-creating for each of them.
5) Run your campaign.
At this point, you’ve selected your targets, built out the specifics of their respective compositions, created content, and selected the channels you’ll use to promote it. Time to execute! Right? Well, kind of.
Running your campaign will require some care. You’ll have to coordinate your messaging across the various channels — you don’t want to send different signals to the same person within a target account.
That’s a big problem for many B2B marketers, according to Demandbase: “Unlike consumer marketers who have millions of potential customers,” reads its Account-Based Marketing: Fundamentals Every B2B Marketer Must Know report, “B2B marketers have a limited number of potential buyers.”
Perhaps that’s why, according to the same report, 82% of visitors to B2B sites aren’t even actual prospects. So choose and leverage the right channels properly — to target the right accounts, and to make sure the messaging isn’t repetitive or conflicting.
6) Measure your results.
A surprising number of CMOs out there have trouble proving the ROI of their marketing efforts — 67% of them, in fact. Every campaign needs to have its results measured properly, especially with methodologies that are somewhat new.
Ask the right questions when you’re measuring the results of an ABM campaign. According to our aforementioned team of experts, these might include:
Are we growing our list of known individuals within the target account?
Have there been any changes to the way these accounts are engaging with our brand and its content?
How much revenue have we generated from these target accounts?
There are also some tools available to help evaluate your marketing ROI. This guide, for example, explains how to measure your marketing campaigns using the HubSpot Sources Report.
Ready to Get Account-Based?
When it’s broken down into a few steps, account-based marketing seems a bit less overwhelming. In fact, as we covered, it’s not so different from inbound marketing, and works quite well with some of the inbound principles that we hold so near and dear.
Just like we said above — find those targets. Then, with inbound marketing, help them find you.
How are you using account-based marketing? Let us know in the comments.
Creating an Indispensable Welcome Email (Infographic)
More than 40% of brands forget one of the best performing marketing campaigns there is: the welcome email. This marketing campaign must-have generates, on average, 33% more engagement with your brand than your average email marketing campaign.
Are you forgetting about your welcome email? Or are you looking to make your welcome emails even better? Below is an infographic from InboxArmy about The Indispensable Welcome Email. In it, you’ll learn how to:
Showcase your brand
Generate interest in your products/services
Integrate your other channels (social, etc.)
Develop the welcome email content to establish the foundation for customer relationships
Take a look at the infographic below:
About the Author: Steve Johnson is the Marketing Manager at InboxArmy.
How to Create an Annual Marketing Plan [Free Tool]
Do you take a good, hard look at your team’s marketing strategy every year?
You should. An annual marketing plan helps you set your marketing on the right course to make your company’s business goals a reality. Think of it as a high-level plan that guides the direction of your team’s campaigns, goals, and growth.
Without one, things can get messy — and it’s nearly impossible to put a number on the budget you’ll need to secure for the projects, hiring, and outsourcing you’ll encounter over the course of a year if you don’t have a plan.
Of course, this type of planning takes a lot of time and effort. So if you’re strapped for time before the holidays, give our new Marketing Plan Generator a try. This tool simplifies yearly planning and lays your strategies, initiatives, and goals out in a template so you can identify what’s most important for the coming year.
Once you’ve filled in your information, you’ll come away with a plan that helps you:
Outline your annual marketing strategy
Identify your most important annual initiatives
Nix the projects that won’t help you hit your 2017 goals
Track the right metrics throughout the year
Align your team through a common mission
Pro Tip: The best way to set up your 2017 marketing plan is to start with quick wins first, that way you can ramp up fast and set yourself (and your team) up to hit more challenging goals and take on more sophisticated projects by Q4. So, what do you say? Are you ready to give it a spin?
You can find our Free Marketing Plan Generator right here.
Learning about the ho-ho-holidays with Google
The holidays are a time for celebrating traditions. Year after year, we tell favorite holiday stories and sing favorite holiday songs, whether for Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa. This season, you can help your students discover some of the history and heritage of popular holiday icons with two new Google Expeditions, which add a virtual-reality twist to learning. The first Expedition whisks students off to the Victorian London of Tiny Tim and the Ghost of Christmas Past, while the second takes them to the snowy world of Kris Kringle. For Hanukkah, students can also take a virtual museum visit to view photos and artifacts highlighting the richness of Jewish traditions from around the world.
Take a virtual visit to the Charles Dickens Museum
Many readers consider Charles Dickens the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His beloved 19th-century books include “Oliver Twist” and “A Christmas Carol.” The brick house at 48 Doughty Street is now the only remaining home in London where Dickens lived as an adult. His two eldest daughters were born here, as were some of his most important novels.
Now the Charles Dickens Museum, the house contains thousands of artifacts related to the author and his era. With the Charles Dickens Expedition, you can explore the house, learn the stories behind items on display, and discover what life in Victorian London was like for Dickens and his family. English teachers can lead students on a virtual visit while reading his classics to help students gain a greater appreciation for the life and times of the man who created Ebenezer Scrooge and other vivid characters.
Learn the science behind Santa
Mystery and wonder have always surrounded the jolly, bearded man who makes the holidays bright for children around the world. Now the Santa’s Journey Expedition offers lessons in some of the real science, technology, and ecology involved in this annual tradition. Students will marvel at the electrically-charged Northern Lights, glimpse at the camouflage and hibernation of Arctic wildlife, and learn why Santa really travels in a sleigh.
This Expedition will also delight students with five colorful panoramas of holiday moments, which teachers can use in conjunction with the lesson plan available on TES. They’ll see how different people and myths have contributed to making modern Santa, visit the wooden kota he calls home, and learn about his very own post office in Finland. They can peek into the stables where the nimble little Svalbard reindeer live, explore the great warehouse where elves make millions of gifts while playing international games, and learn how Santa achieves his incredible feat on Christmas Eve thanks to physics and technology — an unexpected science lesson that any kid will enjoy.
Teachers and students exploring the history of Judaism this Hanukkah can pay a virtual visit to Google Arts & Culture’s online exhibit of Judaica artifacts from Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center. It showcases a fascinating array of items from the everyday lives and holiday celebrations of Russian Jews dating back to Peter the Great. The exhibit serves as a history lesson on how Jewish culture and traditions in Russia have been sustained across generations and centuries despite major migrations, wars, and geopolitical changes.
As we wrap up our year and look forward to a new year of learning in 2017, our teams here at Google Expeditions and Google Arts & Culture wish everyone joy and happiness this season!
15 Brilliant Examples of Holiday Marketing Campaigns
Every year, as soon as Halloween is behind us, it seems like the floodgates open. Without warning, there are holiday marketing campaigns everywhere, with countless businesses rushing to cash in on a spending frenzy. There are holiday emails, social media posts, and TV ads — oh, my.
It might seem like holiday marketing is out of control. But some brands do it very, very well.
How? Well, these brands create campaigns that actually delight customers instead of adding to holiday “noise.” They evoke emotions and promote sharing, sometimes even connecting people with their loved ones, or partnering with a charitable organization. 
Great holiday marketing campaigns come in many different shapes and sizes. Check out 15 of our favorites below, and use these ideas to fuel your own holiday marketing ideas.
15 Brilliant Examples of Holiday Marketing Campaigns
1) Coca-Cola Canada: Peace on Earth … Or at Least in the Mall
When it comes to shopping malls during the holidays, it seems that people are highly divided. There are some who can’t get enough of the buzz and the decor (guilty), and some who want to stay as far away as possible.
Wherever you stand on the topic, Coca-Cola Canada found a clever way to brand the “mall-during-the holidays” experience by showing how our favorite beverages can bring us all together, even during tense times. Here, the company uses a video — shared across social media — in which two people fighting over a jacket are able to find peace by enjoying Coca-Cola products together.
Here’s to peace on earth. Or at least in the mall. #TasteTheFeeling
This installment is just one of the latest in the Coca-Cola company’s legendary holiday marketing campaigns — I mean, who doesn’t love the annual debut of the Coke-drinking polar bears?
2) REI: #OptOutside
Last year, REI made waves with its announcement that it would close the doors to its retail locations, headquarters, and distribution centers on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. Instead, REI invited its community to join employees in taking Black Friday off from work — and from shopping — to do what they love most: being outside.
This year, REI is back with the #OptOutside campaign in full force. It’s getting attention from some pretty big names, including the National Parks Foundation, which is putting its own spin on the #OptOutside movement.
The campaign is even motivating other brands to add a charitable element to the movement. Outdoor Research, for example, will donate $10 to Paradox Sports for every Instagram post containing both the #OptOutside and #OutdoorResearch hashtags.
Source: Outdoor Research
3) WeWork: #wwgiftguide
It might seem tricky for B2B brands to pull off delightful holiday marketing. But WeWork, a provider of co-working and office spaces around the world, has disproved that perception with its #wwgiftguide campaign.
It kicked off with an article in Creator, WeWork’s magazine for entrepreneurs, titled “Holiday Gift Guide: Best Gifts with a Personal Touch.” Over the course two weeks, there were four segments of the guide published, each with a different theme — “gifts with a personal touch,” “gifts to get the party started,” “gifts for the family,” and “gifts for the digital nomad,” to name a few.
Our favorite part? Each gift guide features products from WeWork member companies, helping to support the community of creators for which it’s known. And to help promote the campaign, the stories have been shared across social media with the hashtag #wwgiftguide, encouraging people to share what they’re gifting this holiday season.
Source: creator
4) HotelTonight: Visit, Don’t Stay
During the holidays, time with family is inevitable — whether you like it or not.
But HotelTonight has a plan to help, by making it easy for holiday travelers to visit family without staying with them. The solution? An easy-to-book hotel room, using the brand’s website.
The campaign is widespread across social media. First, there’s a Facebook contest, in which followers can share a story of their worst/funniest holiday family memory in the comments.
Then, followers on Twitter are invited to participate in the conversation, using the #HotelTonight hashtag.
Ready for the holidays? Grandma’s inflating your air mattress & checking it twice. Maybe this year you should visit, not stay. #HotelTonight pic.twitter.com/gWZUU8T8qg
— HotelTonight (@HotelTonight)
November 22, 2016
The campaign also uses quirky, chuckle-worthy print and audio ads, like this gem that invokes nostalgia of our own wacky relatives.
Source: AdWeek
One of our favorite parts of this campaign is that it’s multi-faceted. It takes a single idea — that we aren’t crazy about some of our relatives, but can’t be rude about it — and executes the message across a variety of formats.
5) Dollar Shave Club: Holiday Shave Set
Sometimes, we enjoy some good, snarky marketing. Maybe that’s why we can’t stop giggling at this video promoting Dollar Shave Club’s Holiday Shave Set: the gift that other gifts can’t handle.
It’s a great example of a simple, funny video perfect for social media. This snowman on a sweater was too jealous to handle the awesomeness of the Holiday Shave Set — hence, the hair dryer. It shows how brands can incorporate the familiarity of cheesy holiday traditions like wearing ugly sweaters into their own marketing, while simultaneously demonstrating how their products or services can spice up the standard holiday monotony.
The DSC Holiday Shave Set is such a perfect present, other gifts can’t handle it.
6) Hinge: See What We’re Thankful For
This holiday season, what are you thankful for? Back in November, dating app Hinge sent around an email posing the same question to its members, using the opportunity to talk about its recent rebrand and subsequent growth — something for which Hinge itself has enormous gratitude, according to the email.
The timing for this sort of marketing is impeccable. The holidays are notorious for the sentimentality they invoke among the masses, and the desire to spend them with “someone special.” (In fact, ads that capitalize on sentimentality have been shown to score 50% higher in emotional appeal, no matter what the season might be.)
Hinge used this email to harness the holiday spirit and redirect attention to an app that helps people find meaningful relationships, instead of, well, shorter-term alternatives.
[Click here to see the full email]
7) Lagavulin: Nick Offerman’s Yule Log
This one is an oldie but a goodie. Actor, writer, and humorist Nick Offerman loves his whisky. He’s sung about it before, and last holiday season, he joined his favorite whisky brand, Lagavulin, to film a 45-minute video of — wait for it — Offerman sitting in a leather chair next to a crackling fire, drinking whisky and looking calmly at the camera. Where do we sign up for that gig?
“This is smart branding on Lagavulin’s part,” Kristina Monllos wrote for AdWeek. “Creating an extended ad that can serve as a conversation starter — should consumers swap the traditional Yule Log video for Offerman’s at parties — will also get everyone talking about the brand.”
Since the video was initially released, a new 10-hour version of it became available. Consider it our gift to you.
8) BarkPost: Yappy Thanksgiving Eve
Holidays are traditionally a time to be spent with family. For many of us, that includes our dogs.
BarkPost is no stranger to marketing campaigns that help “dog ruvers” include their furry friends into day-to-day life. In November, the pet-friendly brand showed how to do that at Thanksgiving, with a clever email that included holiday-themed cartoons and videos, feeding safety tips, and other holiday survival techniques — which, of course, involve your dog.
Plus, check out that adorable call to action at the bottom of the email: “Stop getting cute dogs in your email. Unsubscribe.” I mean, who would want to unsubscribe from that?
9) Edeka: Wihnachtsclip – #heimkommen
Remember that sentimental value of holiday marketing that we mentioned earlier? Well, here’s a tear-jerking example for you from German supermarket Edeka. Its 2015 holiday TV advertisement “Wihnachtsclip – #HeimKommen” — which translates from German to “Christmas Carol – #Homecoming” — is all about realizing what really matters around the holidays: spending time with family and the people you love.
In the ad, an elderly man prepares to spend yet another Christmas alone, since his kids usually cancel their planned visits last minute. Then, the ad shows his various grown children receiving letters saying their father has passed away. When they arrive at home, though, they’re surprised to be greeted by their very alive and very healthy-looking father. He says, “How else could I have brought you all together?”
Other than the delicious-looking meal they share at the very end, there’s no hint that Edeka is a supermarket — but you can bet the video is emotional and shareworthy. The ad garnered 33.5 million views on YouTube within a week of posting.
This year, Edeka is at it again with its “#Zeitschenken — EDEKA Weihnachtswerbung” ads (which translates to “#Time — EDEKA Christmas Advertising”), this time showing how the frenzy around holidays can keep us from remembering the most important thing of all — spending them with the people we love.
10) HubSpot: #HolidayHub
Microsites are a great way to highlight a specific campaign or target a specific buyer persona. Here’s an example of a holiday-themed microsite HubSpot created, highlighting our #HolidayHub campaign and targeting ecommerce customers. (Check out a few more ingenious microsites in this blog post.)
The site is filled with holiday marketing resources, which isn’t a far cry from the type of content we publish to our normal website — except this time, it’s themed. Plus, who doesn’t love a countdown?
The animated snow effect was created using HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript. You can learn how to implement an animated snow effect on HubSpot’s Design blog. Alternatively, you could create an animated GIF to create a feeling of animation — Here’s a beginner’s tutorial for creating an animated GIF in Photoshop.
11) Samsung Galaxy: Unwrap The Feels
Samsung has had a bit of a tumultuous year. But now, the brand is seeking to bring some holiday cheer to the masses with the gift of its Gear VR.
We’ve anticipated that virtual reality would become an increasingly important marketing device, especially when it comes to brands creating an experience for consumers. With technology from products like Gear VR, people can create their own experiences from the comfort of their own homes.
Samsung is building on that for the holidays with this video that shows relatives gifting their loved ones with the freedom to experience anything — and the feelings that come with it. Watch as the different recipients show a broad range of reactions, from elation, to shock, to wonder.
Samsung also incorporated a social media sweepstakes into the campaign. For a chance to win a Galaxy S7 Edge and a Gear VR, Twitter users were invited to tag a friend with the hashtags #GalaxyS7edge, #GearVR, and #sweepstakes, along with a few words on why that person deserved the gift of virtual reality.
Tag a friend + why they deserve a #GalaxyS7edge + #GearVR w/ #sweepstakes. You both may win. Happy holidays. Rules: https://t.co/hNpt6Onhlz pic.twitter.com/cukTVfg82j
— Samsung Mobile US (@SamsungMobileUS)
November 21, 2016
12) Sonos + Spotify: #PlaylistPotluck
One great way to celebrate the holiday season is with an event. And with events typically come music. Spotify is aware of that tradition, which is why it created #PlaylistPotluck.
It started with a partnership with Sonos. The brands got together to turn playlists into something like a potluck in which everyone contributes something to bring the event together (the tagline of the campaign is “One home. One host. Everyone brings a dish.”) Only, instead of contributing food or drink, everyone contributes a tune to a collaborative playlist.
Oh, look. That feature is available with Spotify!
The idea is delightfully interactive. Instead of using traditional invitations, guests RSVP to the potluck by adding songs to the collaborative playlist. And the cherry on top? Both brands also partnered with the PBS series “Mind of a Chef” for a televised holiday special, in which various celebrity chefs will be using the feature for their own meals.
What we love about this campaign is the fact that it incorporates several different elements and media formats to make it cohesive — a speaker system, a music-streaming app, and a televised special. Plus, if you participate, you’re entered for a chance to win your very own dinner party, hosted by a world-renowned chef. Bon appetit — and rock on.
13) Google: Santa Tracker
While Google’s Santa Tracker has been around for a few years now — and we recommend checking out the back story here — its features have evolved over time. This year, for example, “Santa’s dashboard,” a virtual display of the technology that powers his global travels on Christmas Eve, will debut.
It’s hard to narrow down what makes the Santa Tracker so delightful, but if we had to summarize it, we’d say this — it combines the holiday wonder of a belief in Santa with real-life technology. What a wonderful way to teach kids about the web, while also allowing them to be kids. (Although, we adults certainly appreciate it, too.)
This year, Google has even introduced a B2B element of the Santa Tracker by sharing the code with developers and releasing other elements of the tool as open source. Why make all of that information public? To inspire developers to create their “own magical experiences based on all the interesting and exciting components that came together to make Santa Tracker,” writes Google’s Developer Programs Engineer Sam Thorogood.
Up until Christmas Eve, visitors can have a peek at the “North Pole,” to see what Santa’s elves are up to as the holiday approaches.
14) John Lewis: #BusterTheBoxer
When U.K. department store John Lewis debuted its 2016 holiday ad, Buster the Boxer won the hearts of audiences around the world. (My colleague, Karla Cook, wrote more about the ad here.)
What really delights us about #BusterTheBoxer — which was turned into a promotional hashtag — is that John Lewis didn’t stop at a TV commercial for its holiday marketing. By dedicating an entire section of its online shop to Buster and his friends, the brand created an interactive experience.
Check out the video below. It provides a 360° user experience to explore Buster’s garden, where the very trampoline being promoted in the original ad was installed. We’re looking forward to seeing more 360° video used in marketing — this season, and beyond.
15) H&M: Come Together
One look at H&M’s YouTube page, and it’s clear that this brand knows how to use video marketing to its advantage. H&M’s holiday marketing is no exception. Its latest holiday video, directed by Wes Anderson and starring Adrien Brody, made headlines almost immediately upon its release. Twenty-four hours after its premiere, it was still the #1 trending video on YouTube.
The video takes viewers through the experience of a train conductor and passengers faced with severe weather-related travel delays. Nineteen minutes after the conductor calls in a request for an emergency supply of festive materials, the passengers — all donning H&M apparel, of course — make way to the cafeteria car, which has been transformed into a winter wonderland.
We’re particularly fond of this ad’s subtlety. Rather than screaming, “Here are the new winter items in our catalogue,” H&M managed to incorporate its fashions into the storyline of a video that had very little to do with apparel. Remember: Holiday marketing doesn’t have to be in-your-face as much as on-brand and memorable.
Go Forth and Be Merry
Out of all the things that we appreciate about these campaigns, there might be one thing we like the most — the fact that they put the fun back in holidays. This season, don’t let the stress get to you. Have a laugh or a cry with these examples, and please, be merry.
From our family to yours, happy holidays.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.
What are your favorite holiday marketing campaigns? Share with us in the comments.
Upgrading SMS for Rogers customers on Android
Many of us rely on SMS every day — to make plans, confirm an appointment, or stay in touch with friends. But even as smartphones have become more powerful and the apps we use on them more vibrant, SMS hasn’t changed a lot. It’s still just plain text. We believe this standard messaging experience should be better, so through a mobile industry initiative called RCS (Rich Communications Services), we’ve committed to working with carriers and manufacturers to upgrade SMS to a more enhanced messaging experience for people everywhere.
Last month, we announced our first carrier supporting this richer messaging experience. Now we’re bringing RCS to even more people by working with Rogers Communications to launch RCS messaging to their Android customers in Canada.
Rogers customers will have access to enhanced features — including group chat, high-res photo sharing and read receipts — as part of their standard messaging experience on Android. You can access the upgraded messaging experience by downloading the Messenger app for Android devices from the Google Play Store, and the service will be powered by the Jibe RCS cloud. We’re beginning to roll out the enhanced messaging experience today, and it will be available to all Rogers customers soon.
Next year, Rogers intends to preload Messenger as the standard messaging app for new Android devices. We’re excited to provide a better messaging experience to Canadians, and look forward to launching RCS with more partners in the coming months.