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Telling Stories That Will Captivate Your Audience

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When it comes to telling stories in the world of marketing, this goes much further than talking about our product and its advantages. Stories allow us to connect with our audience in a much deeper way and generate positive emotions towards our brand.

One of the keys to generating powerful and effective stories is to know our audience. We have to understand who they are, what they like, what motivates and excites them. Our stories must activate their emotions and imagination and connect with them in a way that it moves them to share the message with others.

When we are developing a content marketing strategy,  there are some elements we need to factor in to get the audience to engage and connect with us as a brand. 

Connection

First, we have to make sure that the story is connected to our brand, even if it’s not the main focus, our product always has to be present. We could be facing the risk of having a great story but the audience doesn’t know who is telling it. 

 

Emotions

Our story must have an emotional element that resonates with the audience. It has to generate some sort of reaction; happiness, intrigue, curiosity. Anything that gets the audience interested and they feel identified and motivated to engage with us. This is the best way to establish a dialogue, we want to encourage them to tell us their own stories and express themselves.

 

Delivery

Finally, we want to make sure we are using the right channels. In digital marketing, storytelling can happen in many platforms, and social media is a great tool. We can share videos, images or create an entire multi-channel approach. The important thing is that the story gets their attention and involves the audience.

Digital Innovations and the future for agencies: Interview with Peak Seven CEO Darren Seys

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Darren Seys is the founder and CEO of Peak Seven Advertising, an award-winning advertising, and marketing agency in Boca Raton. With over two decades of experience in the industry, Darren leads a talented team of results-driven marketers and creative designers to achieve great results and help their clients’ business grow.

I had a chance to talk with Darren about his work in advertising and how the digital and technological transformation has impacted the way agencies work today.

 

Thank you for your time today Darren. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself and your company, Peak Seven?

I grew up on a farm, moved to South Florida, and got my start as an illustrator for Nascar. Ultimately ended up in Boca Raton. Had an agency and sold it and started Peak Seven in 1999. Peak Seven is a full-service Ad Agency, that started of really with a branding and design background and morphed into a more of a high-level technology digital marketing agency, with branding as well, but the digital took over the branding as far as our main services.

 

How do you think the role of the Agency has evolved through the years?

Agencies typically would actually manage the media at a high level, some ad agencies made most their money in media commission. But it has evolved now, where the transparency out there, that the media outlets have basically stepped around agencies and sell direct. So agencies had to make themselves more valuable in other ways.

Fortunately for the agency world, technology has evolved so much that it basically gave the agency a ton of value in the strategy side of the business. It allowed us to have a skill set that a lot of people couldn’t find. You would have, not just an artist and creative people in-house, but now you also have roles like digital strategists, and of course, media still being a big part of it.

 

What are your greatest concerns as the CEO of a digital agency?

That technology gets so advanced that you can do the bulk of what we are doing now, yourself (the client). The metrics and the platforms will basically do so much testing for you, even if you aren’t doing it well, it can actually funnel it through to where it allows you to get high performance, even without heavy strategy or agencies behind it, trying to create the best opportunity for you to gain ROI on your money.

You already have platforms like Facebook and Google that kinda tell you, you should be doing this, consider that. With Facebook now you can upload five headlines, five subheaders, ten images and it rotates to a hundred different scenarios and combination of an ad, something you could never do before, you can run a Facebook campaign yourself.

 

What are the biggest challenges for digital agencies in today’s digital environment?

Staying ahead of it and finding what actually works best for the client. Obviously, we have our verticals that we deal with, but it’s forever changing. Right now, the best thing for agencies is a lot of new technology that will continue to come out, it makes us stay ahead of the game.

Also, talent, high-level talent. That literally makes a difference in the performance. You are always going to have the marketing strategy side of everything, forgetting the technology for a second, someone that has to put together the plans, ideas, the vision, the target audience and what the client is trying to go for. The technology comes in the implementation and in reaching those goals.

It used to be you bought tv, you bought radio, you ran print ads, newspaper ads, and that’s how you reached your market. Now, there are thousands of different channels to reach them, then what metrics you use for KPI’s, so data analysis and data crunching is the space that’s gonna be hugely valuable in the future, already is now.

There are agencies out there already hiring data scientist, and they are starting out at $200,000 out of college, based on their degree and what they did, just to crunch the data. You know why? It’s all trackable, and then you just have to do actionable items out of it.

 

What are your thoughts on the digital and technological transformation affecting this industry? We hear about AI, chatbots, programmatic advertising, voice search and so on. How do you think all of this is impacting ad agencies and clients?

AI is going to be everything. I was in Hong Kong and I saw some demonstrations of what they are doing now with it and it’s literally going to be everything in my opinion. You can feed it so much information and it’s so smart that it can learn from it. On your day to day communication, the first point of contact in your company a lot of the times is a person, that is getting eliminated, now with bots and AI, we are even going to be able to get faces that are computer generated, and they will talk and everything.

You’ll be interacting with avatars all the time, and not even realize it, they are going to be so educated that people are going to accept it. Fifteen years ago you never thought you would buy a car online, and years from now people are going to be communicating with these avatars like it’s no big deal, my rep is Johnny and he is not even real. To me artificial intelligence is huge.

 

In your opinion, what’s the biggest trend in the near future that marketers should not ignore?

On the digital marketing side, I’ve heard that with these privacy laws, what you were able to do, you were able to target people with geo-fencing, geo-targeting, income, gender and all those types of things. The reality is the more the privacy laws expand, the less that stays relevant. So, ironically, the organic results are gonna come back into play, the whole world of SEO, that was kinda pushed with paid, SEO may come back to play because you’re not going to be able to target as much.

Cookies are going to get removed, from browsers and everything like that. I think even this week, Chrome is going to be losing those cookies, right, so when you look at retargeting, remarketing, as they say, a cookie may be active for 24h hours. That changes everything on paid advertising.

I also think there’s a trend where most verticals, if they are performance-based campaigns, are going to end up in a few channels, based on the verticals you’re in. We work with Real State so we have some channels that just perform, you’re not really going to do anything else. It used to be back in the day, with magazines, you would run 10 magazines because you weren’t sure which one was going to be working, now you’ll just know.

To me, it really affects brand awareness, because businesses don’t really look at it as a KPI or ROI. I spend a thousand dollars and had 100,000 impressions, that doesn’t work. You want to spend a thousand dollars and get leads. So brand awareness is getting much more difficult to actually sell and perform, to clients, because they have a budget, it’s super tight, everyone’s budgets are getting tighter, so if you can’t produce leads and or tangible assets that they can translate back to sales, you’re toast.

For some, it’s not like you’re Coke or Pepsi, where you can just put up billboards to keep people reminded of you. At least in the space that we deal in.

 

What would be the best recommendation you could give to businesses starting with digital advertising?

Take small budgets and test, test all the channels to see which one is performing the best for you. Define what your metrics are for performance, what does well, what doesn’t. If you do want to have some branding and exposure, try to work with two separate budgets, one that will be allocated to brand awareness and the other that is dedicated to performance. If you muddle the two together is going to skew the numbers on your ROI performance and not really be fair.

But yes, just test multiple channels, whether it is Pandora radio or Twitch, Snapchat, all these different channels, you don’t know which one is going to work best for you, maybe some of them will be a little more obvious, don’t be afraid to mix it up. You can’t just go with what’s working today, you will be surprised because there are so many niches online with all these different components.

Customer Experience and Omnichannel Marketing

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It’s quite amazing when you stop and realize how much has marketing evolved throughout the years, especially thinking about channel marketing.

Today, industries traditionally centered in physical stores, like retail, for example, have already started making a switch to adapt to the new shopping behaviors of the digital era consumers, merging analog and digital worlds to create an integrated, omnichannel experience.

I recently attended the Digital Branding Analytics Miami 2019 Conference #DBAmiami and while listening to Kathy Mayor, CMO of Boxy Charm and former SVP & Chief Digital Officer of Carnival Cruise Lines, this whole concept of omnichannel marketing and customer experience really started to take form. Kathy spoke about her experience on Carnival and referred to a “7 part framework” highly focused on the consumer, their thought process, passions, experiences, and how to use this knowledge to find the best ways to approach them.

Brands that work with omnichannel strategies focus on understanding their audience, their customer journey and how the right combination of channels, campaigns, and content can finally influence purchases. As Kathy pointed out, they want to be able to reach all kinds of segments in the market, that’s why Carnival works not only through multiple channels, like social media, events, and activations, but with different partners like Amazon, Buzzfeed or celebrities like Ellen Degeneres or Guy Fieri and leverage the associations and distribution of these brands to help them tell their story and relate to their audience.  

Kathy mentioned a great example of how Carnival incorporated partnership into actual parts of their product with their work with Guy Fieri. Not only is he a spokesperson for the brand, but they have worked together in several campaigns, like “Carnival’s Kids BBQ Challenge” in Texas, the “#thankyouburger” campaign in support of the military and the launch of the “Guy’s Burger Joint” restaurant on board their ships, bringing all the positive associations with the celebrity’s brand into an actual experience for consumers.

Understanding their audience, and the benefits of each channel can help brands craft stronger strategies that will ultimately allow them to engage with their customers and offer them a far more rich and unique shopping experience.

 

You can watch Kathy’s incredibly insightful presentation in the video below.

Ingredients for Success: Experiences & Personalization

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Companies are no longer just concerned about meeting sales goals, in the latest years, marketing strategies have shifted their focus into the consumer, understanding that buyers are not just looking for a product, but a complete, personalized shopping experience.

In order to create customer-centric strategies, we must be able to understand all the aspects surrounding consumer behavior and apply all gathered knowledge to improve customer experience. The rapid growth of technology and social media, new generational shopping behaviors, cultural shifts and so on, have created a new consumer who is much more demanding and less loyal.

 

 

According to Google, about 62% of consumers are expecting brands to deliver a consistent experience every time they interact with a brand, but only 42% believe brands are actually doing this. Providing an entirely personalized experience throughout the customer journey should be one of the ultimate goals for businesses, but it’s not always easy to execute.

The retail industry is one leading the way, integrating both online and offline to provide a better customer experience. Recommendations based on purchase history, personalized emails, incentive-based campaigns to promote customer advocacy, “buy online, pick-up at the store” options, these are just some of the few ways retailers are taking advantage of customer data and technology to provide a seamless shopping experience.

The changes in consumption behaviors in today’s market is pushing companies to look for ways to get customers attention by not only selling products and services, but an experience. Unique and memorable experiences that makes them fall in love with your product or service, and that will not only generate loyalty, but advocacy, something extremely valuable for companies in today’s digital environment. Offering a unique experience focused on the customer’s journey will help brands stand out in a saturated market and build a strong, long lasting relationship with their audience.

Fake influencers, fraud and the dangers of “shady” practices online

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Today it is almost impossible not to have heard the term “influencer”, and even though this strategy is not entirely new, since brands have been using celebrity endorsement way before the appearance of Instagram, Youtube or Facebook, its use has been growing increasingly with the rise of the internet and social media.

Big and small brands continue to incorporate influencer marketing into their marketing plans, from macro-influencers with millions of followers to more accessible or local micro-influencers with follower counts in the thousands. In all cases, marketers and brands are looking for more effective ways to reach their audiences in an overly saturated market, and influencers provide a platform to engage with consumers through someone they trust, is an expert in the industry or even admire -as is the case of celebrities.

 

But as popularity rises concerns do too. With an industry that is growing so much that is expected to be worth up to $10 billion by 2020, everyone wants their share and shady practices started to come into attention. Fake followers, bots, fraud and false advertising are some of the topics that concern both brands and consumers. It doesn’t take more than a quick search on Google to discover tons of internet “companies” offering followers for a very low price and with “instant delivery!”, proving that there are still a lot of regulation issues that need to be addressed.

For companies, investing thousands of dollars on fake influencers or fake engagement can not only affect them in their wallets, as they will see little or no return in their investment, but could potentially ruin the relationship with their consumers, perceiving them as untrustworthy. On the other hand, consumers may be affected by deceptive advertising, as popular influencers and celebrities share sponsored content with products they really don’t use, of dubious effectiveness or even promoting, without knowing, potential scams (Fyre Festival anyone?).

In summary, what we must rescue from all this is that any strategy that we implement for our brand has to be done right. When it comes to influencer marketing we have to do the research, make sure accounts are trustworthy, that their followers fit our target market, that there is an authentic relationship between influencer and brand and to avoid at all cost any dishonest practices.

Why should marketers care about Storytelling?

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One of the goals of most brands when deciding to invest in digital marketing is to make real connections with their audience in the best ways available through the many platforms that we have available today. Costumers want to feel that brands understand them and that they provide valuable content that truly speaks to them. When costumers feel that they are taken into account they are more likely to be loyal to a brand and consequently generate conversions.

Storytelling is one of the marketing approaches that helps brands reach their audiences in a much more personal level than traditional advertising. As its name suggests, storytelling makes it possible for brands to tell their stories and help them build their identity and reputation. This story conveys values and ideas that will make a stronger bond between brands and their customers.

That’s what consumers care about at the end, especially the younger generations. They are interested in what a brand promises them, what it makes them feel and how they see themselves in that social spectrum consuming that brand.

Today the big challenge for marketers is to create the best stories to get attention, to entertain and persuade in a few minutes, that’s why social media is an amazing tool that brands need to take advantage of when telling their stories. Taking social media, not as another distribution channel, but a channel to spark conversations and transmit genuine experiences.

Business Transformation. How the luxury goods industry is changing in the digital age.

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While the traditional concepts around luxury focus mainly on exclusivity, latest changes in the industry and the growth of e-commerce are generating a shift in the way consumers see luxury, where they no longer care for possessions as much as they value the experience. Luxury brands have already started to take advantage of the endless possibilities offered by the digital environment, and are trying to make sure that their brands and products are perceived as a total consumer experience.

This makes the concept of “worth of mouth” and the rise of social media influencers gain even more important when it comes to generating marketing strategies for the new generation of consumers. According to the Global Powers of Luxury Goods 2018 Report, published recently by Deloitte, Millennials and the Gen Z consumers are driving the growth of the luxury goods industry, shaping to be more than 40% of the market by 2025.

Unlike older generations, millennials and centennials are expecting to find their brands online, they want to interact on social media, they want to see the products “in action”, and when it comes to the purchasing decision, influencers play a major role. They have become a direct connection between a brand and the consumer, not only will they give reviews about a sponsored product, but they will portray the lifestyle and the life experiences that come with it.

All the big names in the industry are understanding and adapting to these changes, as the focus of their efforts has to move from objects to experiences, what makes their brands unique and how to connect emotionally with the consumers of the new generations.