After a three-year hiatus, our popular Speaker Series is back! These are breakfast-style events, hosted at our offices and broadcasted for modern marketers, like yourself. The latest took place at our new San Diego headquarters, where our panel of Red Door experts discussed how to prioritize the latest marketing trends and make investments that deliver meaningful results in 2023.
You can watch the full session below, or continue reading to learn more about the highlights to take with you into the new year.
Noteworthy Q&A:
With Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, what are the notable pros and cons of acquisition for brands and advertisers when considering Twitter?
People who are active on Twitter are still a valuable audience and will continue to fight for Twitter and what it stands for, so there's definitely opportunity there. That said, targeting has always been one of Twitter’s weaker elements. Looking at the cost realistically, it's more expensive than TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. Overall, site engagement looks similar. It's still an option to evaluate based on your audience and their presence on this channel. It’s a relatively easy channel to set up and the ad specs are relatively similar to other platforms, so you still have an opportunity to test and see what happens first.
How has TikTok shifted the model for organic and paid promotion?
It’s been said that TikTok is shaping marketing culture. But at this point, TikTok is shaping our culture, period. TikTok is the first social platform that really blended organic and paid very well. It's clear from the way it's set up and the way users use the platform, authenticity is really the word that comes to mind. With other social platforms, there's a lot of reviews and legal rounds that go into "Can we say this? Is this image what we're looking for? Does this represent our brand?" With TikTok, there's going to be a little more freedom, because the trends move really quickly. You have to be yourself and join in on what's trending on the platform. And this doesn’t have to be costly. TikTok’s Creator Center, allows brands to dig into the platform without committing a ton of your own time and resources.
Are there any overlooked opportunities that brands should consider as part of their creator or influencer strategies?
The continued rise of creator UGC is interesting. Essentially you take their content and put paid budget toward it, which gives that sensibility and feeling of UGC without having to invest at the level of a bigger brand collaboration or sponsorship. The second opportunity is audio. If you can find the tie-in between a piece of trending audio and piece of your brand story, that's really powerful. There’s also opportunities to partner with artists themselves to try to create songs that you think will go viral or to create audio clips that work really well for this type of content.
What opportunities does Web 3.0 present?
NFTs are interesting in their ability to promote your brand, create that community, and carry it forward. NFTs are a great opportunity to understand the relationship between something that we can hold and something that we can't hold. And why there's value in both. Web 3.0 also presents an opportunity to rid ourselves of the social media “middle man.” There's an adage inside this land that goes, "people not platforms" or "people before platforms." There's also an opportunity to develop a different sense of community and an ability to go directly to your audience. Because of that, we need to keep community as central to our conversations and think about how we want to start building a sense of community.
How will tracking need to adapt to new experiences going forward?
Tracking is going to be very different. Google Analytics will be a bigger part of your day to day. Marketers are going to have to care even more about the user experience. That's going to be a big shift as well, because we spend a lot of time looking at the ad, the copy, to target all the optimizations we can make. Second-party data will become more prevalent, with the removal of third-party cookies.
What are considerations for US-based companies with respect to global privacy requirements?
Data privacy is everyone’s responsibility, and neglecting it can come with a hefty cost. The most important thing to do is get a consent management platform. If you don't have something on your website that pops up saying, "Do not track me, do not sell my information, I'm okay with all of that," then you're probably going to be headed toward fines in 2023. You should be updating your privacy between six months and every quarter.
Regarding social responsibility, how should brands consider their role in the world?
Saying something about everything that's going on in the world right now would be your entire messaging strategy. Anticipate that there are going to be opportunities to speak up about various issues and places where brands stand related to those issues. Have those challenging conversations with leadership all the way down, asking, "What is our opinion? When do we speak? When do we stay silent? How do we want to speak?” and turn those answers into a plan.
It is equally important to dial back and think about what’s happening internally at an organizational level. Social responsibility is more than a marketing tactic, it’s about your vendor relationships, your employee base, your social and digital footprint, and your environmental impact. Our advice? Start at the root and then the marketing will follow.