SEM SEO Synergy A Win Win Digital Marketing Strategy

Deepak Mankani, our SEO Director shares his views on Search Experience Optimization and is ranking at number one position good enough for SEO?

SEO for B2B Business

Implementing SEO can help bring qualified leads to your B2B website. Here’s a quick guide on B2B SEO for an insight into search engine optimization for B2B business.

SEO in 2022 Search Experience Optimization

Deepak Mankani, our SEO Director shares his views on Search Experience Optimization and is ranking at number one position good enough for SEO?

Future Focus 2022: The New Intersection of Media

Operating in the intersection of 3 Cs can help brands win

At the launch of the dentsu-e4m advertising report 2022 on Tuesday 1st February, iProspect’s Global President Amanda Morrissey shared the global perspective of convergence. Morrissey began her keynote address by highlighting that the actual convergence of media happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We have been talking about the convergence of media quite forever but all these years media was focussing on consumers' life, not in the technology world. The actual convergence happened during the pandemic when the long-pending fundamental change occurred”, Morrissey said.   While most media experts blame it on a change in consumers’ behaviour during the pandemic, Morrissey says otherwise. According to her, “It is not just the changing consumers’ behaviour because their behaviour has been changing earlier as well. It is actually a change in consumers’ conscience; the way they think about their problems and the lens through which they see the world has fundamentally changed. And this will continue to change their decisions moving forward.”   She noted that consumers' are now experiencing new ways of interaction with brands, new ways of entertainment, they are learning how media operates and how it gets delivered and that is where the lines of fundamentals are blurring.    “We can’t think of offline and online journeys separately because they are intertwined,” says Morrissey adding that the digital and virtual worlds are blurring and sometimes they are replacing the physical world as they all are interlinked. The pace of this change is not slowing down.   Morrissey laid emphasis on the 3 Cs for convergence-culture, content, and commerce. Explaining the success formula for the advertising sector, she noted, “Opportunity for growth lies in the intersection of culture, content and commerce, all powered by data. Brands will win in this world of convergence if they operate on intersection of culture, content and commerce and focus on delivering today and building a better tomorrow simultaneously”.   “We need to think about tomorrow, today, Morrissey said, adding that the change in fundamentals is being witnessed all across the world”, she added.   Citing the example of the UK, where she resides, Morrissey said that doorstep delivery of items grew by 120 percent in the pandemic which created huge opportunities for brands that were into d2C segment and those with physical shops to incur losses in the tune of 22 percent. She said that the US is expecting up to 18-45 percent growth in various categories in the online commerce segment. She also highlighted how the Chinese purchased over 40 percent of the goods online even before the pandemic, compared to 22 percent in the UK and 18 percent in the US.   “The behaviour of Chinese consumers is not due to technology but their openness to brace new things and willingness to shop online. The markets adopted technology according to the consumers' need, Morrissey further added.   Citing a quote by Cedric Charbit, CEO of Balenciaga-“We need to set ourselves up to anticipate the change, rather than process the change when its too late”, Morrissey advises marketers to be ahead of consumers and not respond to their needs.   She also gave an outline of changes likely to appear in the future such as everything will be shoppable, all forms of brand conversations be it video or text or anything, will allow shopping and contactless payment.   “Consumers' expectations are super high. They are very demanding now. The question is how brands are readying themselves to treat their consumers meeting their expectations. Apart from brand building, marketers will have to provide seamless experiences and interaction points to their consumers. Every media should be like performance media,” Morrissey explained. She said that her company is offering a series of tools to brands to keep a track of consumers interactions.   Talking about Metaverse and NFTs, Morrissey says innovations of the virtual world have started blurring lines with the physical world and the brands should be ready to leverage these technologies. “We are planning an entire ecosystem for brands that operate in the intersection of physical, digital, and virtual world to offer a broad range of immersive experiences. We are also working on how to add haptic technology in the virtual world so that users can touch and feel in the virtual world and bring them into the real-life world. We are also working on NFTs for clients,” Morrissey told the audience explaining how iProspect was blending virtual and physical worlds for the brands which want to remain ahead in the race.   Morrissey further added that the consumers will take decisions based on their gut feelings and hence brands should substantiate every claim that they make about any product, they have to have a sustainable strategy. “People focus on healthcare and wellness. Self-care brands will be expected their products of impact on consumers' lives, health monitoring, make more experiences able to make better choices. Predict and add value”, she said.   Adding further, Morrissey noted that ethics is at the heart of decision making and that brands need to think about the environment, ethical growth of business because consumers can see everything that brands do, including the supply chain.      Find the article originally published here: http://ow.ly/4jIM50HS072 Content 0

Dentsu Ad Spend 2022

The new dentsu Ad Spend Report forecasts 9.2% growth in global advertising investment in 2022, outpacing real GDP growth[1]projections by 4.7 percentage points. Dentsu combines data from more than 50 global markets on a semiannual cadence. The current report anticipates US$745bn in global ad spend.   When compared to the recovery period following the 2008 financial crisis, today’s post-pandemic ad spend is expected to outpace post-2008 ad spend by almost three to one. In 2022 global ad spend is forecast to grow by 9.2%, almost three times more than the 3.4% growth in 2011. Comparing the two-year post-crisis ad markets, in 2022 the global ad market exceeds the 2019 pre-pandemic ad market by18.7%, whereas in 2011 the global ad market was 1.0% less than in 2008.   Following a 29.1% increase in 2021, we forecast Digital investment to grow by 14.8% in 2022. This will bring the Digital share of spend to 55.5% (US$408.4 billion) of the total as spend – meaning that the Digital share of spend will become twice as big as the Linear Television share of spend (26.9%) for the first time.   Growth across social media platforms is expected to continue this year, supported by short video formats, better commerce infrastructure like shoppable ads and streamlined payment processes. Advertisers have increased focus and resources into e-commerce, increasing display and search budgets on retailer web sites in reaction to new consumption habits. Search spend is forecast to grow by 16.9% in 2022 to US$144.9 billion, and Social spend is predicted to grow by 21.4% in 2022.    2022 is a year when media pricing is expected to be under pressure because of the continued economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic and expected inflation. For the first time, the FIFA World Cup will clash with Black Friday and Christmas and is likely to cause a bottle neck of ad-spend which could inflate media pricing further. Long-term media planning with clear targets and potentially front-weighted investments are highly recommended.   The growing importance of gaming and virtual worlds also gives us a vision of what might be coming with the next evolution of the internet: the metaverse. Although the metaverse does not fully exist yet, this open ecosystem made of hybrid, shared spaces that blend physical, digital, and virtual realities is expected to create tremendous opportunities for advertisers to reimagine their branded experiences.[2] This is an area where brands can experiment and innovate in 2022. This space could be less reliant on advertising, which will require brands to start testing new ways of interacting with consumers and start exploring new advertising paradigms.   We invite advertisers to reflect specifically on three of the brand considerations covered in the report as they develop their 2022 media strategy:   Adapt media strategy to shortages   As shortages continue into 2022, brands need to adapt their strategies to make the most of their media dollars. Upper-funnel programmes tasked to build awareness or engagement pre-sale are long-term endeavours that are not so impacted by supply chain. Conversely, direct response-focused digital media programmes optimised towards conversion are more stressed by these implications, given the difficulty of selling unavailable inventory. Brands should use structured data and feeds and automation to better inform their audiences about product availability by dynamically adapting the content of ads.     Boost E-commerce through retail media   As people constantly reinvent their unique path to purchase, media plays a paramount role in reconnecting brands to the consumer journey by enabling more personal, contextual, and valuable shopping experiences. Retailers, marketplaces, social platforms, grocery services, and super apps are all actively developing media portfolios with unique commerce-first solutions. Advertisers should include this growing media segment in their media mix. They should also strive to close the gap between discovery and purchase across the customer journey by making media campaigns directly shoppable where possible, leveraging the live commerce opportunity, and exploring relevant uses of technology such as augmented reality (e.g., through virtual product try-on).     Invest in brand to avoid growth plateau   Although newcoming players tend to focus their media activities only on performance-based tactics, familiarity is critical in times of uncertainty and is key to shaping long-term preferences. Therefore, advertisers should cultivate durable emotional connections with consumers through storytelling across their stores, products, and media campaigns. Performance marketing tactics can be used in a complementary way to address audiences that have been exposed to brand-building efforts. This balance of brand and performance will enable more continuous growth and will keep acquisition costs lower than trying to force one’s way to growth solely through performance-based tactics.   Of course, all forecasts are dependent on the evolution of the global pandemic, new COVID-19 variants, and related government restrictions. We recommend the industry keep a close eye on key economic indicators, which is what we’ll be doing in partnership with our clients at iProspect to ensure we’re ahead of any impacts to campaigns and business growth. For more information, please download the full dentsu Ad Spend report   [1]OECD, OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2021 Issue 2: Preliminary version, Table 1.1 - December 2021 - link [2] Dentsu, The irresistible ascent of gaming in 2021, December 2021 - link Content 0