Mobile may have changed everything, but that was only the 1st phase of the digital revolution that the marketing world can expect in coming years. Machine learning is poised to drive the industries next big revolution. As newer, smarter devices continue to merge, consumers are going to gravitate towards ‘natural’ ways of interacting with that tech, such as voice command. It then stands to reason that as machine learning becomes more sophisticated in enhancing consumers’ experiences, the expectations for more personalized and assistive experiences will continue to skyrocket. We’re heading to an age where friction means failure for marketers, and mass messages will increasingly cause consumers to move on. How can we as marketers deliver smart marketing that recognizes each customer as unique, while also driving the bottom line?

Raise the bar on mobile: Deliver faster, more relevant, more assistive experiences.

Be smart with data: A better understanding of consumers, coupled with smart automation, will enable personalization at scale.

Embracing omnichannel assistance: Leading brands will bridge online and offline, delivering seamless experiences throughout the consumer journey.

Talking Points
Have you experienced ‘mass message’ marketing, that you felt was ineffective? What do you think the future of digital marketing holds?

How do you build a website/experience for the multi-screen consumer? We already know that today’s consumers are constantly connected, moving between devices – from tablet to laptop to desktop to smartphone – and this is only going to become increasingly complex as new screen, and technologies (such as wearables), to other connected devices arrive in our lives and homes over coming years. You need to consider developing a multi-screen strategy that fits your customers and their needs. Ask yourself these questions:

• What goals do you want your customers to accomplish on your site?
• What do customers expect?
• Define your value proposition and answer the question ‘Why should I visit your website and use your business?’

 
Create a Familiar Experience
People who use a desktop will probably want to find the same basic content and user experience on other screens too. You should consider balancing those familiar functions while creating an experience that works on mobile and tablet.
 
Think About the Users Context
Consider what your customer will want from your site and digital assets when they’re on each kind of device. A user on the go may want a store locator or number to call, another may be in-store and looking for reviews of a product. How can you help them?
 
Capitalize on the Power on Mobile
Ask your team, how can we support our value proposition with device-specific features? E.g. a movie theatre chain may want to offer upcoming show times based on GPS locations of a user’s smartphones.

Talking Points Do you multi-screen? How does multi-screening customers factor into your digital marketing?

A recent report outlines how Facebook enables the targeting of children during ‘moments when young people need a confidence boost’ – by monitoring content shared.
The ability to target users based on their moods was made available to advertisers for a while. This tactic appears to breach Australian Code for Advertising and Marketing Communications to Children guidelines, and raises many interesting ethical questions about Facebook and content surveillance.
 
Talking Points
Do you think using this kind of data in unethical?
What do you think the future or targeted marketing content holds?

1. Facebook will be moving towards using augmented reality to connect us with our family, friends, and brands. Instead of funky glasses, Facebook believes that the camera will be the first mainstream augmented reality platform.
2. Camera Effects Platform: Zuckerberg launched the Facebook Camera Effects Platform – which allows developers to create frames, masks, and special effects for the Facebook camera.
 
3. Facebook spaces was announced, which is meant to be a new VR app where you can hang out with friends in a fun, interactive and virtual environment as if you were in the same room.
 
4. In line with Facebook’s push for camera to be the first augmented reality platform, Giphy launched three new products to make sharing GIF’s even easier, including Giphy for Facebook Live. With this tool, you and viewers are able to add GIFs to your live videos.
 
5. Messenger Business Bots
There are now over 100,000 chatbots on Messenger, and a series of updates was announced, including Chat Extensions which allows multiple people to chat with the business chatbot at the same time. Another update is that M, Messenger’s AI assistant is now able to listen to your conversations and make relevant suggestions at the right time.
 
6. Facebook is trying to help people discover businesses IRL by pushing parametric QR codes. By scanning these codes with the messenger app, people can find out more information about an event or business through a messenger bot.
 
7. Smart Replies for Pages
Smart replies has been rolled out, Facebook wants to help small businesses automate some of their customer support. The AI is able to grab information from your page, detect the question asked, and reply with the appropriate information.
 
 Talking Points What role do you see VR playing in the future? Is the tech over-hyped?

That's it for this Marketing Brekky- we look forward to seeing you all at the next event. Christina Marie Giuffré

Would you like to come along to the Marketing Brekky? Register here.

​Snap Inc. has been playing with drones! The New York Times recently reported that the company has worked on building its own drones.
Very little has been published on the topic, but rumours have been flying and the premise is intriguing — and not at all surprising for a company that defines itself as a "camera company" in its own mission statement. 
​
In a world where Facebook is continuously copying its products and offering it to a larger user base, it seems like Snapchat is looking for more unique paths to take. 

Having a quick look at someone’s professional history on LinkedIn might be considered ‘OK’, but there’s a point at which everyone starts to feel a little squeamish at the accessibility of social media.
 
This leads us to Picci: an innovative new app using facial recognition technology to connect people through photos. The app was developed here in WA and launched late last December. This was just in time for its first adventure – Wonderland Music Festival – where a drone flew above festival-goers, snapping pics, and sending them to people who downloaded the app.
 
In the world of Picci, you don’t ask for someone’s phone number; you just take a selfie with them.

​Commonwealth Bank is kicking off a new brand campaign to better understand the uncertainty many Australians are feeling about the future. Commonwealth Bank has evolved its ‘Can’ campaign to understand what is important to customers 'in an uncertain world'.
 
The campaign extension has been developed on ‘the back of research that found 66 percent of Australian adults admit to feeling uncertain about what the future holds, primarily surrounding cost of living.’
 
Stuart Tucker, General Manager of brand, sponsorship and marketing services at CommBank, said that the bank recognised that a new landscape required a new approach to address issues for customers. “It’s only natural that people feel uncertain – look at the events of 2016. We’re hearing this through our conversations with customers and through our market research.”

Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that they have again enabled emojis to be displayed in the search results' listing page.
​
In June 2015, Google removed emojis from showing up in the results after promising to disable them due to webmaster abuse.
Well, I guess Google had a change of heart and wants them to show up for queries related to emojis.
​
A Google spokesperson told us they added it back when emojis are relevant. “We have added a feature to our snippets to feature emojis where relevant, useful and fun,” Google told us. “You’ll see them crop up across various snippets moving forward,” Google said.

The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) have released an update to their best practice guidelines with a significant focus on social media and social media influencers. The guidelines simply state that advertising must be recognisable by the audiences viewing the content. Moving forward, Influencers that have profited from a brand to advocate their products and services need to highlight this fact to their audiences.  
 
Anyone involved in advertising and marketing a product to an audience will need to abide by these changes. This includes brands, media, agencies and influencers choosing to represent brands.
​
You now have a greater responsibility in ensuring your audience knows which content is sponsored and which is organic. If you have been engaged by a brand to contribute to a marketing strategy, you are obliged to tag the brand and include a hashtag indicating sponsorship (i.e. #ad, #sp or #sponsored).

Growth Driven Design (or 'GDD' for short) is an emerging and updated way of thinking about web design.
It focuses on tying in the web development process more closely to sales and marketing objectives, relying on iterations and insights from real data to determine actionable insights and deliver high value quickly. 

There are 3 core pillars to the GDD methodology:

1. Minimise the risk of website redesigns
2. Continuously learn and improve
3. Keep marketing and sales informed

Image Source: Hubspot http://growthdrivendesign.com/

Digital marketing moves fast and keeping up to date can be challenging, especially in a city like Perth where the amount of offline events and official seminars are somewhat limited.

Thankfully, there are a number of excellent online resources available these days, mostly free, which can give great insight and help you stay ahead of the curve.

Some of the best examples include:

Hubspot Academy
Provider: Hubspot, Cost: Free, Certification: Yes​
Content / Level:
Hours of detailed, high quality video resources covering trending industry topics such as Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing, Growth Driven Design ('GDD') and more.

Udemy
Provider: Various, Cost: Varies (some are free), Certification: Varies
Content / Level:
An online education hub with courses on pretty much anything. Over 45000 courses and 15 million students.

Find more here

Many organisations still struggle to target a millennial audience. This is a generation that doesn't respond in a conventional way to traditional advertising methods, challenging the status quo and leaving many marketers scratching their heads.

Some attempts to target millennials have gone better than others. Some are painfully amusing and some are just... well... painful.

Which of these categories do think this latest video from the Department of Finance (entitled 'The Game Changers') falls into?

That's it for this Marketing Brekky- we look forward to seeing you all at the next event. Christina Marie Giuffré

Would you like to come along to the Marketing Brekky? Register here.

So many of us time poor marketers used Twitterfeed to auto-post content from selected blog sites to our social media platforms. Imagine our despair when we saw that it will be shutting down. Yes, you can use Buffer or Dlvr.it but we loved the simplicity of Twitterfeed and the great free service it offered users. We know we shouldn't be admitting to auto- posting some of our content but it really did get great engagement and helped us to focus on other things.