Cloud as the influencer

Marketers are migrating towards cloud. Why?

1. Multi-Device Support: 

With the cloud, marketers no longer need to worry about hard drives or other local storages as their files can be accessed and shared over the Internet using any internet-capable device they have on hand.

2. Secure:

Security is no longer an issue with the cloud, as large and established companies have started entering the market, bringing with them their expertise and skills with regard to safeguarding the security of their customers. Additionally, marketers no longer have to worry about losing data to a hard drive crash or acts of god, as cloud service providers have redundant and off-site backups, which means it’s almost impossible to lose data completely.

3. Low Cost:

The real crowning gem of cloud computing technology is its cost-efficiency. There’s no need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on setting up an infrastructure, as a web enabled device and internet access is all that’s needed to get a cloud-based system up and running.

Some companies which have already moved to cloud for marketing purposes - 

1. SEPCO – SEPCO’s Marketing & Social Media Manager, Liz Karschner, uses HubSpot in order to take full control of the company’s marketing and steer it in the right direction. Of particular use to her are Hubspot’s powerful analytics and marketing tools. What’s more, the fact that Hubspot is on the cloud allows her to access and control SEPCO’s marketing anywhere, provided that she has access to an internet-capable device.

2. Whistler BlackComb – this is a ski resort situated 125 km north of Vancouver, which manages around nine different social networks. The resort takes full advantage of sveral multi-tiered social media campaigns to promote their resort and attract customers, and they use the HootSuite Dashboard to manage everything from a single place.

3. Whole Foods – this company has managed to attract over 50 thousand followers on Pinterest, and has used almost 970 pins to create a personality for the brand that reflects their core values. The company’s marketing director, Michael Bepko, controls all of the company’s pins from wherever he is currently at when the inspiration strikes.

How Amazon helps companies with Digital Marketing via Cloud Computing

Amazon Web Services offers a cloud computing solution that provides online and digital marketing businesses a flexible, highly scalable, elastic, and low-cost way to deliver their content.

Go big; not home.

When your campaigns launch, your traffic can increase by 100X or more. AWS Auto-Scaling provides the ability to easily handle the large changes in traffic that campaigns can cause without the need to procure large amounts of hardware or do capacity planning. With the infrastructure that already runs sites like Instagram, Reddit, Netflix, Pinterest, and more; you can be ready to go big.

The partners you already use.

The AWS marketplace is full of thousands of partners to provide you the software and services you want for your digital marketing. From big data products like MapR to packaged solutions like Adobe CQ; the AWS marketplace is the fastest way to get their software up and running in AWS.

Email with ease.

Email is a core part of many digital marketing campaigns. Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) give you the ability to cost effectively send email communications to large numbers of customers, and prospects. SES also helps by ensuring that you message gets delivered by pre-screening your message for content that might get your email filtered at the ISP so more of your emails get to your target.

Never make your customers wait.

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that can be used to deliver entire websites, including dynamic, static, and streaming content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

Super-fast access to your data.

DynamoDB is a NoSQL database that uses SSDs to provides single-digit millisecond latency access to your data; so you’re never waiting for your user insights database to deliver just the right content, at just the right time.

Petabyte scale data warehousing for all.

Amazon Redshift provides on-demand access to high performance, parallel queries on columnar data. Provision elastic, managed data warehousing clusters with built in encryption and backup in minutes, and plug in certified business intelligence tools such as MicroStrategy, Jaspersoft, Pentaho, and Tableau.

Hadoop all the way down.

Amazon Elastic MapReduce provides a managed, easy to use analytics platform built around the powerful Hadoop framework. Focus on your map/reduce queries and take advantage of the broad ecosystem of Hadoop tools, while deploying to a high scale, secure infrastructure platform.

We'll support you.

It takes a lot of work to launch a campaign. AWS can help by providing support for your campaign’s infrastructure needs. From free basic support (available to all customers) to dedicated Technical Account Managers and <15 min. response time support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year; we have people ready to help your campaign be successful.

Challenges that B2B marketer face

Challenge #1: Lack of Time

At the top of the list of content marketing challenges that B2B marketers face is the lack of time to “do” content marketing. In fact, a clear majority (69%) struggle to find (or make) the time to focus on their content marketing programs. So what can be done to remedy this issue?

Make it a bigger priority
As the old saying goes, you make time for what’s important to you. And I would argue that for many B2B marketers, while they understand the power of content marketing and would like to have robust content marketing programs, they struggle to commit the time, resources and budget to make their efforts successful. In order to be successful at content marketing, you have to commit to the long haul and prioritize your efforts.

Develop a roadmap
Only 44% of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy in place, and without a roadmap, it’s no surprise that B2B marketers find themselves pinched for time. A content marketing strategy should outline your overall goals, metrics, audience profiles and content needs among other things, as well as lay out a plan for how your content marketing program will be executed. This includes who will be involved, what will be required of them and how much time will need to be accounted for.

Better time management
With limited time, you’ve got to make sure you use the time you have wisely. Obviously, it starts with prioritization and a documented roadmap, but managing each deliverable, whether it’s a blog post, an eBook or an infographic, involves setting a deadline and working backwards to ensure everyone stays on target. Time management can be accomplished using something as simple as an Excel editorial calendar, project collaboration tools like Trello or Basecamp or a full-fledged content marketing platform like Kapost.

Challenge #2: Producing Enough Content

Unsurprisingly, 55% of B2B marketers listed producing enough content as a major content marketing challenge. Google has made it very clear that the days of manipulating their search algorithms for higher rankings are long over and instead marketers should focus on creating fresh, quality content. And a successful content marketing program inescapably requires producing a great deal of quality content So what are some ways this can be accomplished?

Repurpose content
It’s no secret that repurposing is a great way to get as much mileage as you can from each piece of content. But I’m not sure that every company is utilizing repurposing as fully as they could. A good approach would be to think about how content will be repurposed before you start writing and creating. You’ll want to consider every possible way that the same topic can be repurposed and populated in a variety of different formats and channels. Your content marketing program should include a healthy mix of repurposed content and new content as well.

Produce evergreen content
Certainly you’ll want to produce content that covers trending topics, industry news and the latest research reports. But the majority of your content should have a long shelf life and speak to topics and information that audiences will find valuable throughout the year and beyond. Just because an eBook or blog post seems old to you, doesn’t mean it’s old to a new visitor. Evergreen topics can be a steady, ongoing stream of social media content, website traffic, lead generation and can be easily repurposed for future content uses.

Outsourcing content creation
According to the report, nearly half (44%) of B2B companies overall outsource some or all of their content marketing functions. And the majority of B2B companies that outsource content marketing functions specifically outsource writing (64%) and design (54%). The fact is, producing remarkable content requires not just time, but specific talent as well. And not every B2B company has the internal staff with the skillsets necessary to produce quality content on an ongoing basis. This is where outsourcing some or all of your content creation to an experienced content marketing agency or freelance content creator could provide the resources needed to create enough content.

Challenge #3: Producing the Kind of Content that Engages

So it’s clearly a challenge for B2B companies to devote the necessary time to content marketing and, once they do, creating enough content is obviously a challenge as well. But the goal isn’t to simply create heaps of content; the goal is to create remarkable, magnetic content that engages your audience and accomplishes the goals that you’ve put in place for your content marketing program. So what are some ways B2B marketers can produce the kind of content that engages?

Focus on the audience
It goes without saying that to be successful in content marketing, you have to focus on your audience. So engaging content focuses on what the audience is interested in and searching online for, as opposed to just talking about your company. Be sure to leverage buyer personas in order to create engaging content that identifies and addresses the problems, challenges, questions and information gaps your audience might have and provides them with valuable information about those topics.

Map content to the customer lifecycle
The average company’s content is almost entirely focused on the purchase stage of the customer lifecycle, assuming that everyone is ready to stroke a check. But you need to create content that meets the needs of your audience where they are in the customer lifecycle —whether they are an unknown visitor on your website for the first time, a recently identified lead, a brand new customer or a valuable long-term client.

Share, don’t sell
Content marketing is not about creating content that’s a little more than thinly veiled sales propaganda. Content marketing is not about selling, it’s all about adding value by sharing relevant information that informs, educates and guides your prospects and customers—instead of simply pitching your products and services.

Make your copy and design outstanding
The price of entry for engaging content is outstanding copy and design. You can focus on your audience, map content to the lifecycle and share helpful information, but if your copy lacks substance, is poorly written or is riddled with misspellings and punctuation errors, your content will fall flat. Similarly, if your copy is remarkable, but the graphics, layout and overall design are generic, amateurish or non-existent, it will absolutely impede the success of your content.

Content marketing is certainly a marathon, not a sprint, and should be viewed as an ongoing program and not a short-term campaign. Because of that, challenges will continue to persist because while content marketing is a simple concept, the execution can prove to be difficult. Hopefully these ideas will help you overcome these top challenges.

Evolution of Cloud Computing Market

Phase 1: Monolithic (Early). Early cloud computing services will be based on proprietary/internal architectures – islands of cloud services delivered by megaproviders. This is what Google, Salesforce and Microsoft look like today.

Phase 2: Vertical Supply Chain (2+ Years). Over time, some cloud providers will leverage cloud services from other providers (for example, ISVs moving into SaaS on top of Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform, use of Force.com, use of Google App Engine). Still proprietary islands, but ecosystems starting to build.

Phase 3: Horizontal Federation (4+ Years). Smaller providers will federate horizontally to gain economies of scale (and efficient use of assets) – also, enterprises will leverage horizontal federation for peak capacity (overdraft protection, cloudbursting). There will be more choices at each layer of cloud computing, and standards will gain momentum.

Social Computing :-Social Media + Cloud Computing

Digital marketing is a marketing media which is associated by the use of the internet connected devices such as, computers, tablets, smart phones and games in order to engage customers with online advertising. Digital marketing is one of the most exciting and interesting media of advertisement for every business. Digital media marketing includes- social media marketing, mobile marketing, search engine marketing, online PR checking, email marketing, online advertising, measurement and web analytic, best practice digital marketing and many more fields which are very useful in the growth of the business. Digital marketing will somehow helps in increasing the brand loyalty and conversions among the customers. If effectively designed, digital marketing media can benefits you and your business as much as you want to grow in the market place. Digital marketing is best practiced through cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a type of computing network which depends upon sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices for handling the applications. Cloud computing is eventually compared to grid computing. Grid computing is a type of computing where the unused processing cycles of all the computers present in a network are connected in order to solve problems very intensively for any stand-alone machine. Today cloud computing technology has proved itself. And many industries have realized the benefits cloud computing provides. As a result of this, almost every business and industry is started integrating the technology into their business. Increase in the growth of cloud computing is because of the immense ability to change the ways and techniques in which the business can reach and engage their customers. Cloud computing is not new technique. It is the service that is provided for the customer, over internet.

Most of the cloud computing servers are provided to the customer on their mobile servers also. One of the main benefit of cloud computing is, cloud services can rapidly increase technology capabilities without requiring large investments to build new data centers. Digital marketers are under tremendous pressure to meet market demands of implementing new technologies along with creating new ideas. In this concern, cloud computing has the potential to help them to meet the current business needs, at very affordable cost.

If talking about the relation between digital marketing and cloud computing, cloud computing plays a vital role in the advertisement process carried through digital marketing. Because of the immense flexibility and benefits, many businesses and industries have already switched to cloud computing in order to increase their customers through digital marketing.

There are several reasons, why marketers are migrating towards cloud computing:

One of the main reasons for the migration towards cloud computing it supports the multi device connection. With cloud computing, marketers don’t need to worry about hard drives or any other local storage. If you are using cloud computing, the files can be accessed and shared over the internet by using any internet capable device.

Another benefit of using cloud computing means you need not worry about the security. Large and established companies have entered the market with their expertise and skills with regards to safeguarding the security of their customers. Using cloud computing will also benefits in overcoming the risk of losing data due to a hard drive crash.

Apart from this, cloud computing industry has lowered the cost of transaction. Now there is no need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on setting up an infrastructure as a web enabled device and internet access is all that is needed to get a cloud based system. In order to get the best digital marketing services you can contact to various companies or IDF-Agencies

Millions of people are connected to the Internet and a lot of those people are connected on social networking sites.

Social networks have become an excellent platform for sharing and communication that reflects real world relationships.  Social networking plays a major part in the everyday lives of many people. Facebook is one social networking site that has more than 400 million active users. The possibility of social media and cloud integration is compelling.

Social networks are being more than an online gathering of friends. It’s becoming a destination for ideation, e-commerce and marketing. For instance, there are some organizations and integrated applications that make use of Facebook credentials for authentication rather than requiring their own credentials (for example the Calgary Airport authority in Canada uses Facebook Connect2 to grant access to their WiFi network).

There is a certain report which aims to create a Social Storage Cloud that looks at probable mechanisms to be used in creating a  dynamic cloud infrastructure in a Social network environment. It is believed that combining the pre-established trust with suitable incentive mechanisms can be a way to generate sustainable resource sharing mechanisms.

Social network is a dynamic virtual organization with inherent trust relationships between friends. This dynamic virtual organization can be created since these social networks reflect real world relationships. It allows users to interact, form connections and share information with one another.  This trust can be used as a foundation for information, hardware and services sharing in a Social Cloud.

Typically, cloud environments provide low level abstractions of computation and storage. Computation and Storage Clouds act as building blocks where high level service Clouds and mash-ups can be created. Storage Clouds are often used to prolong the capabilities of storage-limited devices and provide transparent access to data from anywhere.

A large number of commercial Cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2/S3, Google App Engine, and smaller scale open Clouds like Nimbus and Eucalyptus provide access to scalable virtualized resources. Through pre-dominantly posted price mechanisms, these computation, storage, applications resources can be accessed.

Thus, a Social Cloud is a scalable computing model wherein virtualized resources contributed by users are dynamically provisioned amongst a group of friends. Users may choose to share these resources freely and make use of a reciprocal credit-based model; This compensation free model is similar to the Volunteer computing approach, where guarantees are offered through customized SLAs.  However, accountability through existing friend relationships exists in this model.

By leveraging social networking platforms, people can gain access to huge user communities, exploit existing user management functionality and rely on pre-established trust formed through user relationships.

How IBM uses cloud to help companies with their marketing performance

IBM joined by more than 100 business partners, launched the IBM Digital Marketing Network in the CLOUD to help chief marketing officers and their teams more quickly and easily integrate new marketing services to measure and improve their effectiveness in real-time.

IBM Digital Marketing Network provides customized dashboards for e-commerce, mobile, and digital marketers allowing them to view how their marketing campaigns are performing across paid, earned and owned channels.

According to IBM 2013 State of Marketing Survey, USD 83 billion is lost due to inconsistent customer experiences. As part of IBM’s Smart Commerce initiative, its Digital Marketing Network can syndicate real-time analytics to any marketing service such as Google Display Network, Doubleclick Search and Badgeville, to help marketers create a more consistent and compelling customer experience based on individual buyer behaviors.

Why is this important?
Because creating a relevant experience is necessary.

Clients can now monitor real-time activity throughout the network in customized dashboards for e-commerce and mobile. This is particularly important at a time when companies are aiming double-digit growth in online ad sales for the past three consecutive years.

Myron.com, a provider of promotional business gifts, is using the IBM Digital Marketing Network service to manage real-time re-marketing campaigns to automatically re-engage customers with more relevant display ads and gain deeper insights to onsite behaviors. IBM's marketing network gives myron.com the ability to implement and manage their own digital marketing campaigns; it also improves the implementation time-lines of our digital efforts and we see the immediate impact and results.

IBM Digital Marketing Network customers now have integrated access plethora of solutions from certified partners in digital marketing areas. Given below are a few - 

to buy targeted ad inventory from numerous sources

enabling the collection of audience intelligence towards better ad relevancy

for helping companies and consumers manage data privacy preferences

for managing customer engagement via social media or crowd sourced means

Source: press releases of IBM

What cloud computing means for digital marketing?

Cloud computing is the greatest tool in the hands of digital marketers as it can be used to market and evangelize every part of the value chain that the customer would interact with. Given the nature of the social environment, "those" customers will make sure to share their experience in the online social circles. This information can be diverted back to the business to improve the processes and to create a relationship with the customers.
In other words, products and services are nothing but commodities. It is the user's experience that is going to differentiate the business. Cloud computing traces and tracks these patterns for improvement.

Let us take the example of Amazon. The login data, activities, information etc of its customers is stored on the cloud. The accurate and readily available data streamlines the marketing and sales strategies.

A business model which can accommodate a variable based pricing structure like in Amazon will be a success. Amazon calls its business model as elastic cloud because it allows its customers to use its services "as needed" basis. Amazon wants to deliver movies to people's homes through internet so it is building its business by renting to other companies its technology infrastructure. Therefore, its partner Netflix is concentrating on finding movies rather than building larger and larger data sets.