Bezos, CEO of Amazon, bought Whole Foods his largest acquisition to date.  Why?  Most likely to add to a huge distribution channel and jump into the grocery sector with both feet.  It that is the case, in a short period of time, he will change the face of retail grocery making easier and friendlier to the consumers while lowering costs.

The marketing model for the supermarket sector has remained the same for decades. The margin on food is low.  Supermarkets charge consumer good companies for shelf placement and end caps.  Near the register, near the deli, eye level, etc.  That’s where they make their money.  This is why in recent years, the size of the supermarkets has increased.  The larger the space the more marketing money they get.

This is also why all the new stores look the same as the old stores.  It’s the Olive Garden effect.

What’s wrong with this model?  It doesn’t take into account the customer experience and it’s incredibly inefficient.  If you’re under some illusion that Bezos isn’t aware of this limitation, you’re vastly underestimating the man who built Amazon.

“Sectors need to rethink how they interact with the consumer.  Mobile marketing is only one of the many changes coming.  Change now or you can be next Blockbuster.” Stated John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising.

What to do? At all costs, you must protect your 15-mile radius, where 90% of your customers live.  First, stop mailing coupons and putting them in newspapers.  Please. Second, create a geofence around each of your locations AND your competitor’s locations.   Tag all smartphones.  Put video ads in the tagged phones.  “Hi, I’m Sam from Star Market.  We have a new Coupon Club!  Pay $5 a month and get $10 worth of coupons!”  Device IDs will be captured from all devices that saw the ad (impressions). Users that clicked on the ad will have their IDs collected in our retargeting folder.  The user will then be taken to a landing page where we place a Facebook pixel that will capture their Facebook ID.  They will see the thirty-second commercial.  “Hi, Sam again. Join our Coupon Army for $10 a month and we will send $25 worth of coupons each month!  In fact, you can indicate which types of products you want and we will make sure that you receive coupons for those products if available!”  There is an email capture for additional information, but by this point, we already have the impressions, retargeting and Facebook IDs.

We drive customers to sign-up for the one-month program.  The supermarkets charge the consumer good company for the extra coupons, with $5 a month as profit.  After one month the shopper must sign up for an additional six months or $60 up front because they are guaranteed $120 worth of coupons.  You can now upsell them to the Gold Club, where they receive special offers only for Gold Club members (for only $10 per month extra, which is guaranteed in coupons with a one-year sign-up payment in advance).  The Platinium Club is where they will have a chance to win tickets to a Patriots game and a FREE Thanksgiving dinner (for another $10 per month paid in advance).  And the Super Platinium level gets all the benefits of the previous package and a chance to go to the Super Bowl and meet Tom Brady!!  The price is only an extra $75 per month or $900 up front.

So there you have it.  Up the ladder to $75 per month or $900 per customer per year paid up front.  Oh by the way since you are giving them in-store coupons the amount they spend in your stores will be much greater.  You are creating in-store promotions, engaging the consumer and receiving a tremendous amount of data.  All because you used mobile marketing and a $5 coupon.

With the impression folder, you take the IDs and run them through the Facebook converter.  The IDs run at a 30% conversion rate.  Now you have converted the impression mobile IDs to  Facebook IDs.  With the Facebook ID’s you can make a look-alike model using 1% of the US population.  This should give you about 2 million IDs. When you run a campaign you can drill down to your demographic even further.

Now you have a smart, almost zero cost way to engage your shopper and protect your 15-mile radius.  Jeff Bezos may be riding into town, but you will be reading to protect your base.

Noah Kagen (early member at Facebook and Mint and founder of AppSumo) has a great video about hiring employees.  Basically, he says that his goal was to hire good team members that needed to focus their skill set.  It’s more important to have a believer than a mercenary.

Let’s be honest… I don’t think the headhunter that is looking for their $5K bounty is going to be overly concerned about the long-term ramifications of your workplace environment.

The second tactic companies use is ads on Indeed.com.  It reminds me of the old days when the media buyer would default to print ads whenever there was a tough decision to be made in the marketing budget.  Everyone read the newspaper and it was comfortable… in the long run that didn’t work out.  The problem with putting ads in Indeed.com is that it attracts a less desirable employee.  In all likelihood, potential employees answering an Indeed.com ad has been let go of their job and doesn’t have any professional contacts.  If the employee was exemplary, they would have already been scooped up by a company; that hasn’t happened.  So, you are dealing with a pool of prospects that are not either team players but have good skills. Or maybe they are good team players but have extremely diminished skills with little upside.  Doesn’t sound like an ideal pool of job candidates I would like to be choosing from.

Quite frankly, another issue is employers are given control of the job search process to outside forces whose first priority is not to find a candidate that’s a good fit, but rather to bring in candidates for the sake of, well… bringing in candidates.

Copley Advertising has come up with a better way, one that will give a free flow of candidates to the employer and still retain control of the process at a fraction of the cost.

First, we sit with the client and find which positions need staffing.  Then, we select about 40 companies with current employees they believe would be a good fit for their company (skill and culture-wise).  We geofence the companies and tag all smartphones in the targeted company and play a :15-second video.  The video is of one of the company’s employees saying, “Hi, my name is Jane.  I like working at company X because of their corporate culture”.  Corporate culture is one of the four key points that workers -especially highly trained young workers-look for in a workplace.

Once the target sees the ad, we capture their device ID.  If they engage with the ad, we place their ID in a retargeting folder.  After the target clicks on the ad, they are taken to a landing page with a video. “Hi, my name is Jane and I’m a Systems Analyst at Company X.  We have a great company culture, work/life balance, promotion track and a good pay scale.  Below are some additional videos of friends of mine who also work here. If you leave your email, we can send you some updates concerning changes in the employment climate and pictures from outings we have had.  Hope to talk to you soon.”

You would have links to another video that will have other employees talking about the company and suggesting email sign up. If the target doesn’t sign up, that’s fine because now we have three ways to track the ID: the impression IDs, retargeting IDs and the Facebook pixel on the site.

We set up a Facebook retargeting campaign using the captured Facebook IDs. Running the impression IDs through a Facebook converter, we end up with a 30% conversion rate. Now you’ve essentially exchanged impression IDs for Facebook IDs. We then create a look-alike model with the Facebook IDs matching the main data points, identifying similar Facebook users in the US. We set the look-alike to 1% of the US population and will end up with about 2,250,000 Facebook IDs with similar data points.  You can start a campaign with the data and drill down to focus on specific location and behavior indicators; you can drill down further again using Facebook’s Audience Insights.  Once you have a critical mass of retargeting IDs, you can launch a campaign that receives on average 2X to 16X click rate.

And the great news is that you will now have a short-term and long-term funnel that you can draw from when need. You’ll be able to filter candidates that fit your company and those that don’t.

After the campaign is set up and running for about a month, there is a nominal maintenance fee needed to keep the captured IDs in place.

“We’ve found recruiting in its present form to be outdated and ineffective. Copley Advertising’s goal is to disrupt the space and introduce a clean, modern model that is beneficial to both the company and the candidate. Win-win means just that.”  John Flynn, CEO, Copley Advertising.

Or you can go back to someone who is going to charge you $5,000 per body or to place ads to non-networks, rusty-skilled candidates on Indeed.com. Good luck with that.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Copley Advertising

Brookline, MA 02445

John Flynn

jflynn@copleyadvertising

617-595-0138

Sometimes buyers have a split personality regarding mobile. On one hand, they see the possibilities of geotargeting smartphones, running video ads, downloading IDs of tagged users that received an impression and a retargeting folder for devices that engaged with the creative. It is exciting and makes billboard, TV, and radio advertising look inefficient-which is true, they are.

On the other hand, buyers have an issue with perceived waste. They want to build a geofence around a store with no leeway, but there are a couple of problems with this. First, people enter and exit the store to go their cars, bus or walk to their next destination. This is an overflow that should be captured. Second, when we drill down to lat/long we are hitting a small target on the planet earth; rather, we would be more comfortable to drill down to .2 miles out. This gives the system room to breathe.

We can set up a campaign for each location and monitor to see if the click rate is within goal projections. If the ID pool was polluted, this would be the first line of defense to indicate there is a problem. As we use our optimization the program (app placement, operating system, etc.), we’re making the campaign efficient; this acts as a filter to weed out any underperforming impressions.

We capture impression IDs and the IDs that have engaged with the creative. The impression ideas will then be filtered by additional mobile campaigns: retargeting IDs will come in between 2x and 16x and have already passed the first test by engaging with the creative.

When Copley Advertising reviews the program, clients ask how many locations they can geofence. One… three? 40. I like to start with 40 because I need data. The more data we have, the quicker we can optimize and build ID folders. This way, when during the first week, we find four or five locations getting lower than a .2%, we pull those locations and stop delivering impressions and ask for five more locations to take their place. Over time, we like to get down to about 15 locations that are doing very well, fully optimized, with a large impression ID pool and a retargeting campaign ready-to-go.  Now that is fun.

“Copley Advertising is first and foremost a resource. I want every company or agency to know that they can call Copley Advertising and we will break down exactly how we create and implement a mobile marketing program. If they become a client, that is secondary.” says John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising.

So, remember what I said: go with a geofence with a radius of .2 miles and rest assured that when it comes to data, less is more because its geofencing, not geo-strangulation!

Facebook’s hot streak continued with a strong Q2 2017 earnings report. It earned $9.32 billion. Revenue growth was 44.7 percent year-over-year.

Mobile now accounts for 87 percent of ad revenue, or $8 billion, compared to 85 percent last quarter and 84 percent a year ago. Total ad revenue was $9.16 billion.

The Facebook numbers are crushing it; they hit all the projections and their main issue is that they are running out of space to advertise (a preview of my blog next year blog “It was the Instagram, stupid”). But the main takeaway for mobile marketers is that 87% of Facebook’s revenue is mobile. 87%! So, less than 13% of revenue is severed digital. Is Facebook’s reporting for the last three years a behavior limited to Facebook or is it a system shift in the way we are using the Internet?

Search Engine Land reported late in 2016 that, “It’s Official: Google Says More Searches Now on Mobile Than on Desktop.” Google said that.

So here we are again: another milestone. Another indicator the mobile has and will continue to rule the world! With mobile-only apps like Instagram and Snapchat not hitting stride, there is a lot of room for revenue. Mobile marketing companies such as Copley Advertising have tapped into supply-side app platforms like MoPub, Rubicon, Smatto and others, providing an endless sea of impressions available through their network. In 2017, mobile marketing will continue to move at breakneck speed. If medium and large companies have not allocated enough of their marketing budget, they will find themselves playing catch up.

Everything is a learning curve and for companies just getting into mobile (or yet to do so, in the future), they’re going to pay a much higher price than early explorers. As with any advertising and marketing system, it takes time to understand which aspects of mobile marketing make the most sense. Maybe a DSP that delivers impressions at a high rate of speed? Or a platform with granular reporting? Low CPM with high frequency? App placement by 1,200 impressions and no clicks? Android or iOS? There are just so many questions that can only be answered by taking the program out for a drive.

Plus, client’s goal projections need to be aligned as mobile is not (for the most part) a CPA-driven media outlet. Things like email collection are short-sighted. “Email is fine, but the goal is to engage the target to such an extent that we will have a major influence on both their long-term and short-term decisions.” states John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising.

While spending on mobile advertising is taking a larger chunk of companies’ advertising budgets, many are not yet adopting the right tactics. When starting to run mobile advertising campaigns, a company should consider working with a proven mobile marketing agency; this will help you find your targeted demographic and help your company become an important influencer in that target’s decision-making process. Once that formula is found, a funnel of prospective customers can be sent to a landing page to capture their mobile ID and retarget it with offers and quality content. This will increase short-term action and longer-term influencers and will do so by not only 2X, but 10X!

Or… you can buy a newspaper ad.

Copley Advertising is a mobile marketing company that uses the tools of mobile targeting and their worldwide relationships to help clients reach and influence their demographic. Call (617) 651-2249 or email [email protected].

In our video, “How Staples Can Make Back to School Last All Year”, Copley Advertising lays out our plan to make engage back to school shoppers all year long.

First, Staples needs to geofence all stores during the back to school season. They can run video ads on tagged devices showing the top-selling (profitable) items. When a tagged device user clicks on the ad, they are taken to a landing page with an additional video ad featuring a chance to win a Staples “Spring Break on Campus” event. It will include an opportunity to sign up to receive free coupons throughout the school year, important tips on what students need to kick off their new year, how to get the most out of your academic experience and a Spring Break contest in which customer can enter to win with friends and host on campus: Staples Spring Break!

So, what have we accomplished? First, we tagged all in-store devices and if the user has seen an ad (impression), we download their ID to a Google Sheet. Second, if the tagged device user clicks on the ad, Copley Advertising places their ID in a retargeting program where the user will be served new creative immediately for up to 30 days after they leave the location; this helps ensure they didn’t forget certain (highest profit margin) items. If the device user signs up for the email program, Staples can send them newsletters with study tips, information about how working out affects your grades, advice for on-campus relationships, and more. This will help to make Staples a trusted agent with their audience. Then, when the occasional ad for a sale item is pushed it would no big deal. Oh… and don’t forget the big countdown to the Staples Spring Break! The winner will be able to win a large bash featuring Staple’s products on campus. The extensive video will be used to promote products featured at the event and a new landing page will be created, introducing people to ways they could be next year’s winner. Content, engagement, value, and trust time and time again. With a few small steps, you can easily keep clients engaged with your products and programs, all year long.

And remember the list of IDs that is captured when the tagged user views the impression (ads) during the back to school rush? Copley Advertising can create a look-alike model based on the demographic characteristics from the list, and increase the total pool to 2% of the US population. Then, we can drill down to store location, age, gender, interests and other demographic qualifiers. A/B testing of market areas, creative or products is only a click away.

Copley Advertising is a mobile marketing ad agency: we only do mobile. Any questions, please email [email protected].

USA Today reports, “Millennials… have been shaped by a variety of influences, including the fact that they grew up with technology. An ethnically and racially diverse group and one that is highly educated but also under-employed, Millennials are generally optimistic and resilient but also stressed…”

Given the new reality, what are the options? Enter geofencing.

Millennial women’s smartphone is their number one screen. By geofencing an area, you can drill down to identify and target advertising to mothers’ smartphones. Then, running a video ad is an effective, efficient way to reach your target demo.

But where should you geofence?

Copley Advertising has found that parks with playgrounds (day-parted Monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm) is an excellent geo-target. It’s hard to pinpoint moms in a large group, but parks are great. We have a list of hundreds of parks with playgrounds in cities across the country with a large population of mothers. Copley Advertising geofences your geotarget—in this case millennial mothers—and places video ads in the tagged smartphones.

How does it work? Well, when the demo clicks on the ad, their device ID is placed in a retargeting folder. Once we have a critical mass of IDs, Copley Advertising can start a separate retargeting campaign. We have seen the click rate for retargeting campaigns run from 2X to 16X versus regular campaigns. Mothers today have so many ways of getting information—they’re really bombarded; tracking data can be a key tool for effective future campaigns.

But here is the real magic: moms network! When a mom clicks a video ad they are brought to a landing page that plays a 15-second commercial from the advertiser. It shows how the advertiser is supporting an environmentally cause or product. Moms are highly sensitive to environmentally-friendly products and Millenial. So, if they sign up for the newsletter updating how the advertiser’s campaign is going the advertiser will donate $1 to the campaign. This is so worth it for the client. In the upcoming newsletter, it will instruct moms to create moms for “xxx” groups to help the cause. Before you know it, you will be engaging your demographic for months. And moms will help you add other moms because of the tight-knit networking nature.

Archaic tools used to reach moms are simply no longer effective; with mobile geofencing, we have the new tools to meet and engage with a new generation of moms.

Off-Campus Housing properties need to fill beds. The competition is fierce. There seems to an insatiable appetite for newer and better. But if there was an ability to meet the short term goals of filling units and create a consist pool of would-be renters that would be an interesting model.

Mobile Marketing can deliver that model. Here are some key aspects that mobile marketing uses to create a campaign for off campus housing properties.

Video Ads – The rise of video ads continues. The price has dropped and video ads are more effective than banner ads.  Another important aspect is that they tell a story. Marketing is all about telling a story.  By delivering your commercial to the tagged smartphones you can bring your property to them before they visit you.

The first week can be an introduction video commercial the second week could be commercial inviting device users to an event at your property and so on. After the device owner clicks on the video they are brought to your landing page to see the conclusion of the presentation. Copley Advertising is offering a video commercial in each tagged smartphone on campus. All user data (engaged IDs) is stored for future retargeting.

Geo-Conquesting – Your best demographic is students living in other off-campus housing. Even if the property is not in the targeted demographic the results we have seen is that the click rate is still between 2x to 6x higher than the average campaign.  Plus delivering those impressions that engaged to the retargeting pool is key.

Data – Many mobile platforms ignore the data. Copley Advertising helps clients see that each target location has subtle differences. Drilling down to operation systems (Android or iOS), app placement (which apps are overperforming and which apps are underperforming) and creative A/B testing. This information changes from college to college.  It’s extremely important that the information from the data guide the campaign.  This will increase effectiveness and efficiency.

Mobile marketing is not about just geofencing. Copley Advertising has the tools and experience to put together a complete marketing program that will reach off-campus housing’s short term and long term needs.

Questions? info@copleyadvertising or (617) 651-2249.

As students thoughts turn to the new academic year, Higher Education Marketers naturally look for ways they can target college students and entice them to consider their campus for their courses. With smartphone usage becoming almost synonymous with students at nearly all levels of education, geofencing to target specific demographics such as student populations or specific student personas is a tactic that should be considered, especially by those with limited budgets.

The Numbers Stack Up

Considering that many college student’s lives revolve around their smartphones with over 6 out of 10 students claiming to regularly use apps for games (73%), music (67%), entertainment (64%) and social networking (64%), it is easy to see that college students are spending more of their time on mobile devices than ever before, and this is at the expense of computer access, TV’s, e-readers and handheld gaming devices.

Kristin Kollbaum director of marketing and communications at Northwest Iowa Community College saw these figures and decided to give geofencing a try to fill the newly created Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) classes at the nearby Sioux Centre Hospital (SCH).

She began by setting up a geofence which targeted people within a 60-mile radius of SCH, ensuring that when people within this boundary went online they would be presented with ads about the CNA course and job placement.

With a small budget of just $1,200, Kollbaum achieved a 0.73% click through rate which resulted in 35 people attending an informal meeting about the course and two classes being run that year. A phenomenal effort for a small campaign and budget that was run in an area of low unemployment which typically made filling these positions a difficult task.

How to Leverage Mobile Targeting Capabilities to Reach Student Audiences

Geofencing is most definitely a game changer for Higher Education Marketers. By drawing virtual boundaries around physical areas and combining this technology with the layering of specific lists of websites relevant to apps which your target demographic are likely to use, marketers are able to build custom audience profiles and provide specific, targeted messages that are much more likely to be acted upon than more traditional forms of advertising and communication.

Serving ads or messages to students while they are at a specific location keeps your institution’s offerings well within reach and at the forefront of their mind when it comes to course applications. Just as we outlined in a previous post, secondary action – meaning people who take some sort of action after seeing an ad are more than twice as likely with geofencing, and students are no different.

Pinpoint the Students You Want

As colleges grow and almost resemble small cities with sports stadiums, shopping malls, and restaurants, it also becomes easier to target students with specific interests. The ability to geofence all or just part of a college campus such as the sports stadium or restaurant frequented by a particular set and couple that information with a list of websites, along with times that people are using that facility and a number of other variables, allows marketers to become very specific about who will be presented with their offer. It also allows you to reach out to your specific student personas with a ‘personal touch’ and gives you the ability to tap into what that individual may already be considering in terms of further education and present your institution as an option that should be considered.

By providing your college’s options to relevant students at the right time you’re increasing the prospective student’s trust in your organization and developing trust in your institution is certainly one of the first steps towards recruiting graduates. Furthermore, as Generation Z and Millennials have grown up as digital natives, many now have come to expect, even welcome, personalized and targeted campaigns, seeing these as an expression of a college’s willingness to put their individual needs and motivations as a priority.

With well over 86% of all students owning a smartphone and almost half owning a tablet, and these figures rising year on year, geofencing and specific, targeted campaigns that make the most of your student personas and dollars are certainly worth thinking about.

Copley Advertising has a team of geofencing experts who are able to help you create an effective campaign that targets the student personas identified by your institution. They can do all of the technical work for you and make the magic happen.  Have questions? [email protected]

He’s right.

Right now Facebook is an incredible value.  $6 CPM is a steal based on the platform’s capabilities.  Every month Facebook rolls out new features and updates.  It’s an embarrassment of riches.  Here are the top five features that make Facebook’s Mobile DSP Platform a great fit for B to B mobile advertising.

Self-Optimizing – I am a big fan of granular reporting.  Most of the time I like to get my hands dirty and pick which apps are performing, tracking operating system click rate, creative A/B testing and many other benchmarks.  Facebook’s self-optimization will choose which demographic features (age, sex, placement) is working and move your impressions to ensure a lower cost per click.  And Facebook does a very good job.  They will even notify you if they think a change in targeting is needed to further optimize your program.

Video Ads – You can upload your video ads to the Facebook platform in seconds and begin your video campaign.  I use my YouTube videos and never had an issue.  When the campaign starts Facebook will log in views, how long the views are and the price per view which is usually pennies.  Why is Facebook doing this?  YouTube.  Facebook wants YouTube out and is replacing it with its own video platform.  The engagement rate using video ads is huge.   Video ads are taking over mobile.  It’s another differentiator from other advertising.  The fact that Facebook recognizes this and makes life easy is huge.

Dark Posts – One of my favorite phrases in media…Facebook Dark Posts.  In reality, it’s easy to do.  The point of dark posts is that the ad is not posted to your “page” when published. An example is my business page is Copley Advertising.  I use my platform to post ads for clients all the time.  I don’t want every client’s ad on my newsfeed.  Dark Posts helps solves the problem.  Plus it seems the click rate is very good on average.

Targeting – Facebook has great targeting.  You can target by street address, hobbies, last time you traveled, what newspaper your demo likes,  job title, company employed by, Facebook groups, pages you follow, income and on and on.  Pretty impressive.  Plus setting up different Ad Sets for each test is easy.  With Split Testing you can increase your optimization and Facebook will reward you with a cheaper CPM.

Ease of Use – Facebook has made the platform very easy to set up with little or no knowledge of code.  The ad manager is great for the majority and the Power Editor allows the user to take a deeper look at the campaign and offers more tools to play with. There is no reason why you can’t have your first Facebook ad up in minutes.

So why is Facebook doing this?  Easy.  Money.  They are proving that they are a serious B to B DSP mobile platform.  They are looking to attract big companies and agencies to hop on the program.  Facebook is a great mobile platform for B to B advertising.  Use it now because late 2017 it is going to cost you a lot more.