What are internet trolls? How can Marketers coexist with them in this Digital Age?

“Information is power. Disinformation is abuse of power” – Newton Lee

The internet is an indispensable tool in our daily living. While the abounding benefits of the internet are undeniable, it has facilitated the dissemination of disinformation, some of which have dire consequences to companies and individuals’ image.

Trolling behaviors are defined as deliberate, deceptive and mischievous attempts engineered to elicit a reaction from the target(s), are performed for the benefit of the troll(s) and their followers and may have negative consequences for people and firms involved. (Golf-Papez & Veer 2017). While many provocateurs are simply instigating arguments for entertainment, there are some with more malignant intent – tarnishing reputations by trash-talking, engaging negative word-of-mouth, and misrepresentation of information. Here is a list of common internet trolls that marketers need to watch out and deal with.

Artificial Troll

Bot farms created to leave negative feedback and comments on forums and advertisements.

Some of these comments may seem irrelevant to your content, so no response is needed. Delete and block artificial trolls as you spot them.

Mindless Accuser Troll

People who make harsh comments and/or accusations that can tarnish the brand image. They may leave negative threads about you despite not having bought products or worked with the brand.

If these comments are abusive or hate-based in nature, simply delete and block. If the comments are about products or the integrity of the brand, then respond rationally and tactfully in a calm manner.

Angry Customer Troll

These are customers who have brought up their dissatisfaction on forums and communities, either because they struggled to get any response, or simply were unhappy with the purchase.

This is an opportunity to build your brand equity and credibility. Reply with empathetic concern. With appropriate and desirable commenting, a service recovery paradox may occur, and your customer conversion rate may go up!

The Troll Repellent

The best way of handling trolls is to halt them in their tracks before they went rampant. The ‘troll repellent’ refers to the code of conduct, which can be invoked when forum members step out of line. The common code of conduct entails: 1. Provocative comments will be removed 2. Users who breached the code will be given a stern warning 3. If disruptive actions persist, the user will be removed.

Have you came across any internet trolls? How do you handle them? let me know your thoughts and views below!

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What makes Gen Z tick? What channels should we use to engage them?

Gen Z is anticipated to make up around 40% of the customer market in a few years. With more people from this group joining the workforce in the near future, the purchasing power of Gen Z is expected to increase. To capitalize in the lucrative Gen Z market, we must first understand what makes them tick.  

People who were born after 1996 is referred as Generation Z (Parker and Igielnik 2020). Gen Zers are digital natives, who have no or little memory about the world as it existed before smartphones. In the late 1990s, consumers increased their access to available information (e.g. product specifications, comparative prices, product reviews etc.) through the use of the internet (Vollero et al. 2019), which in turn increases their consumer marketplace power as they develop the ability to express their opinions online and participate in decision-making. This concept holds true for Gen Zers, as the abundance of social media platforms (Communities, Publishing, Commerce and Entertainments) and product review pages have given them convenient access to insightful information. With limitless information at their fingertips, Gen Zers are open to change – constantly seek new ideas and experiences, and desire for their voices to be heard (TTI Success Insights 2019). They also tend to be more sensitive in product pricing, and will leverage on internet tools to source for the best price.

To market to them effectively, we must ensure that the media vehicles utilized are relevant, coherent, consistent, in continuity and complementary with each other. 

1. Social publishing – WordPress, Blogger, Youtube

Youtube and blogging sites are common platforms for micro-influencers. Employing youtubers as brand ambassadors is an effective way to engage Gen Zers, as 1) Youtube is the most common entertainment platform for Gen Zers, which maximizes effective reach and 2) Gen Zers will seek out opinion leaders to evaluate brands/products. As opposed to sharing the experiences associated with the product descriptively in social media, Youtubers are better in establishing the positive experiences in the consumers’ minds.

2. Social communities – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Community forums are essential in marketing to Gen Zers, as it fulfils their important need of expressing their opinions and getting involved in decision-making. Additionally, social communities are great platforms for brands to establish their brand positioning and value proposition, and to engage with Gen Zers in their customer journey.

This is the end of today’s post. Let me know your feedback. Thanks!

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Overcoming the implications of SEO Marketing.

“No website can stand without a strong backbone. And that backbone is technical SEO” – Neil Patel

Internet users in Singapore have grown exponentially from 4,179.6 in 2014, to 4,892.5 million in 2019 (Euromonitor International 2020). This equates to 84% of Singaporeans who use the internet!

While many businesses used to abuse ‘black hat techniques’ such as adding hidden comment tags, meta keyword stuffing, and link selling to boost their site rankings, Google’s algorithm changes; implementation of the Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird algorithms, have successfully oppressed these SEO malpractices. However, these changes also have drastic implications on law-abiding businesses. The Panda algorithm implemented in 2011, demotes sites that Google deems to be of lower quality, and vice versa. According to insider information from Google employee Amit Singhal, the prominent criteria for high-quality sites are insightful relevant information, along with the originality and credibility of content (Marie Haynes 2014). The Penguin algorithm introduced in 2012, guards against sites that had bypass Google’s algorithms by creating unnatural backlinks (E.g. self-made anchor texts), to increase their search rankings. In contrast to the Panda and Penguin algorithms, which is to filter out low-quality and untrustworthy sites respectively, the Hummingbird is in fact a completely new Google engine with a goal to better understand a user’s query.

It is inevitable to have sites on similar topics with slight keyword variations, while we are marketing products in the same product category. Unless we have a monopoly in the industry, repeated information will be present in the promotion of our products. These undesirable implications – lack of originality and insights, will undoubtedly affect the quality of our sites. In handling the aforementioned issues, we can make use Canonical Tags to solve the issue on duplicate content. To overcome the lack of content originality, it is imperative for us to comprehend and leverage on Google’s search engine. Furthermore, we have to integrate our understanding on the SEO – Keywords and technical optimization, with market research, such as our target customers, their goals and motivations, to effectively devise a SEO strategy.

On a final note, it is advisable to follow conventional SEO practices, given the strict regulations put in place by Google. To avoid being marked as a dishonest site, we have to proactively identify and remove untrustworthy links that point to our sites. Alternatively, we can utilize a disavow tool to alienate from untrustworthy foreign links.

Do let me know your comments below!

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How can Marketers leverage on IoT to capitalize on consumers?

“The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the internet did. Maybe even more so.” – Kevin Ashton

The Internet of Things (IoT), refers to the billions of physical devices around the world that are connected to the Internet, all collecting and sharing data (ZDNet 2020). Thanks to the rapid fall in costs of electric components, and the ubiquity of wireless networks, we can conveniently connect different objects by adding a level of digital intelligence to them, thus enabling real-time data communication.

In the digital era, marketers can jump on the bandwagon and develop innovative strategies to engage the audience better. For instance, in the context of domestic living, we can retrieve and interpret data from smart home devices (e.g. Speakers, LED bulbs, home systems, security cameras) to understand the consumers’ home routine, habits and tendencies, so that we can provide real time point-of-sale notifications at optimum timings via well-tailored advertisements to trigger their immediate purchase. In 2014, Google acquired Nest Labs, the home gadget maker company, at $3.2 billion (Wohlsen 2014). Google’s purchase intent is to understand people better through data collection from smart appliances, to maximize profitability. This reflects the importance of IoTs in the contemporary marketing landscape. Additionally, we can also obtain insights on the consumers’ latent motives by observing their daily living through smart speakers and home systems, and activate or suppress their problem recognition through informed advertising.

Marketers can also leverage on IoTs to uncover new opportunities, such as connecting with new communities. Wearable smart devices (e.g. Smart watch, fitness trackers, smart glasses) allows users to share posts generated by the devices on social media platforms, which eventuate in the development of new communities centered around the users of such devices. Once these communities are uncovered, we can connect with these like-minded groups and convert them into customers further down the road.

Although the IoTs is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 19% from 2017 to 2022, and is estimated to be US$1.5 trillion by 2022 (Inforcomm Media Development Authority 2020), the implications of smart appliances such as hacking and personal privacy intrusion can impede the diffusion of IoTs. As such, it is important for marketers to understand the consumer perceptions on all the relevant IoTs, to determine which are the best mediums for data collection.

This comes to the end of the post! Please let me know your thoughts below!

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Is there a secret recipe in developing successful mobile applications?

“If your plans don’t include mobile, your plans are not finished” ­– Wendy Clark, Ex-president of The Coca-Cola Company

The smartphone penetration rate as share of the Singapore population has increased from 77.37% in 2015, to 82.33% in 2020 (Statista 2020). As smartphones have become an indispensable device for everyone around the globe, an IMC plan not comprising of mobile marketing is like an autonomous vehicle without wheels. In the digital era where information is at your fingertips, it is imperative for marketers to upkeep with consumers’ mobile usage trends, to satisfy and adapt to their ever-changing needs and habits, or risk getting displaced by competitors. This is even more so when marketing to the growing demographic group, Gen Zers, who prioritized involvement in decision-making and getting their voices heard above all else.

After justifying the importance of mobile marketing, the real question is: is there a secret recipe when it comes to developing applications?

Upon researching on successful yet widely differing applications such as Youtube, Whatsapp, and Facebook, I found some commonality in them.

1. These applications all solve important needs of consumers – psychological needs, self-actualizing needs etc.
2. They are usable across frequented platforms – desktop computers, laptops, tablets, phones etc.
3. Monetizable. These applications allow users to make a profit – leveraging on the platforms’ in-built features, or the platforms itself.
4. Low learning curve – These applications are user-friendly.

These commonalities all stem from one word, and that is empathy. The underlying reason on why some applications stood out from the rest, is because the developers clearly understood the needs and wants of their intended audiences, and work towards fulfilling those demands. Hence, the secret recipe is empathy.

So how and where can we empathize with our target customers? The best platforms will be 1) social communities (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. that facilitate interaction), 2) relevant community forums, and 3) customer support.

All in all, I believe that empathy is a key success in marketing. When we integrate empathy in all our marketing activities, there is a good chance for success!

What are your thoughts? Let me know below!

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Why do ideas go viral? Is it luck or is it strategy?

“Virality isn’t born. It’s made” – Jonah Berger

Have you wondered why some of the world’s most popular brands like Dove and Coca-Cola can achieve unfathomable success, despite having little differentiation in their respective industries? Is this simply luck, or are there some underlying reasons that contribute to their success?

I would think it is the latter.

According to Jonah Berger’s 6 “STEPPS” strategy on creating viral content, there are 6 interrelated elements (Social currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, Stories) which, if incorporated, make your idea much more likely to be shared around (Trivunovic 2013). To date, the strategy holds true as it is applicable to successful brands today.

Take Singapore Airlines (SIA) for instance, who was named “The best airline in the world” for 22 years. The airline’s brand story promises on genuine quality and excellent customer service (Martinroll 2019), which they upheld to this date. With SIA’s prestigious reputation, will you, as a Singaporean or brand loyal customer, be proud of her advertisements, and subsequently share it? Hence, social currency is present as there are incentives to share. SIA’s advertisements are on social communities and publishing platforms, so public sharing is hassle-free. The “Singapore Girl”, which have been a consistent visual advertising slogan of SIA, will trigger consumers’ memories and experiences of the airline, and help SIA achieve TOMA. However, for an idea to be effective, simply having a strong impression is inadequate. In SIA’s advertisements, such as “Making every journey personal”, the core message is always on delivering her brand promises – top-notch customer service and genuine quality. The trust, emotions and practical values SIA customers associate with the brand, is what truly distinguished SIA, and help her attain the brand equity she has today.

While the 6 “STEPPS” illustrates how 6 interrelated aspects of marketing can bring ideas to new heights, I believe that the key success factor of any viral idea is emotion. From the 6 “STEPPS’, the intensity of the story, social currency, trigger, and practical value aspects are inseparable from emotions. Going back to Dove and Coca-Cola, the main reason for their success is brand positioning. When your ideas connected with your audience at the emotional level, such as Dove’s empowering message from the “Real beauty sketches”, and Coca-Cola’s slogan “Taste the feeling”, there is a great chance your idea will go viral!

What are your thoughts on the post? Do let me know!

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