In 2018, audiences are actively spending more time consuming content produced by social media influencers than just passively sitting in front of the TV. Influencer marketing continues to strip revenue away from traditional television-based “celebrity endorsement” and Instagram with 900 million active users is a leading platform among marketers.
 
Marketing on Instagram with the right type of influencer can boost product exposure and drive sales far more effectively and efficiently than traditional marketing.
 
Here are three important benefits of influencer marketing:

Relevance
Influencers communicate in a voice and style that is relevant to a targeted audience.
 
Authenticity
Influencers have credibility with a targeted audience through the creation of authentic content.
 
Exposure
Influencer content is more likely to be liked, shared, tweeted, followed and this then leads to increased exposure.
 
If you are interested in Instagram influencer marketing, but need help identifying the right type of influencer for your business, and more importantly how much you should pay, then let us know.

Scopic works with businesses to identify more effective and efficient ways to increase exposure, contact us to find out more.

People across the globe will be fixed to their screens this Sunday (U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis | 3:30pm | USA time) to watch if coach Bill Belichick and Tom Brady can grab the honors at the 2018 Super Bowl LII.

Like years past, it won't just be the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles competing, but also the biggest global brands.
 
The Super Bowl is one of the biggest days of the year for major brands and they only have seconds to hold viewer's attention. The average TVC production costs over $1 million+ and brands will pay $5 million+ to get a 30-second spot during the big game.
 
Check out our top five TVC picks for Super Bowl LII.

I. M&M'S   |   Human

II. Amazon   |   Alexa Loses Her Voice

III. Doritos&Mountain Dew   |   Blaze vs. Ice

IV. Kia   |   Feel Something Again

V. Sprint   |   Evelyn

Nielsen a global leader in consumer measurement and information offers a look at the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sales trends for 2018.

Consumer habits continued to evolve with technology in 2017. Shoppers are buying smaller items online and seeking out healthier, fresher options. These behavioral shifts should serve as a good predictor of trends and opportunities in 2018 for FMCG businesses.
 
Watch the video: U.S. FMCG Trends to Watch in 2018
 
Scopic works with you to create more effective communications to grow your business globally, contact us to find out more.

Now we are in the last month of the year, it’s still not too late to start shaping your 2018 content marketing strategy. For B2C and B2B social media marketing to really engage in 2018, businesses must publish relevant, authentic and targeted content across selected platforms. To make this happen—you need to know and understand future audience trends.
 
But before we look at 2018, it’s probably a good idea to take a minute to review your social media content marketing wins and losses of 2017—where, when, what and how your target audience consumed your content—what were the results?
 
Okay, now you know what worked, and what didn’t work, let’s focus on the trends for the year ahead.
 
1. Be Visual
Research shows that video will play a greater role in the content marketing mix in 2018.  It may take time to plan, capture and edit video content, but your audience is more likely to engage with video than just text or images. In 2017 90% of all content shared on social media was video, but remember, to make this happen, you need to catch your audience's attention in the first 3 seconds.
 
More Ideas: 7 Ways to Create a Killer Marketing Video
 
2. Be Influential
People will want more authentic and credible sources of information prior to making purchasing decisions in 2018. For this reason, building audience relationships and partnering with a quality social media influencer could really boost your sales. In 2017 74% of people turned to their social media network for advice on purchasing decisions, and 40% of Instagram and Twitter users made a purchase based on the endorsement of a social media influencer.
 
More Ideas: The State of Influencer Marketing
 
Final Thoughts
Using video and influencers may seem like a solution to the lack of social media traction your business made in 2017, but it’s important that you don’t forget key marketing fundamentals.
 
1. Be Targeted
With an explosive amount of content being published across multiple platforms, you will need to be more targeted with the content you create, and where you publish it in 2018. This requires you to even better understand your target audience's social media habits. Take the time to identify, what content and which platforms have your target audience’s attention. Once you understand where the attention is, you can then better create targeted content that snatches your audience's attention from the competition.
 
2. Be Ready
In 2018 businesses with the highest and most effective consumption rate of social media content will be those businesses that conduct A/B testing (split-run testing) of the content they create, and the platforms they publish it on. Through A/B testing you will start to better identify/understand your audience's habits and this knowledge will then shape the content created and the distribution platforms used.

Finally, social media content marketing winners in 2018 will be those that grab and hold the audience’s attention in the first 3 seconds—it's that simple.
 
Scopic works with businesses to create content that grabs attention and builds engagement, contact us to find out more.

With Facebook now driving the increasing popularity of Instagram, it's fast becoming one of the leading social media platforms—current global community of 800 million. For this reason, a growing number of businesses are actively adding Instagram to their social media marketing mix.
 
To maximize the power and exposure of Instagram, these businesses need to utilize the use of Instagram hashtags.

Hashtags are basically words or phrases, that follow the symbol “#”. These #hashtaged words or phrases work to cluster and link your posts to topics with the same hashtag. The benefits for businesses and marketers is that hashtags are searchable and can be tracked. Using the most popular and trending Instagram hashtags can be a powerful way to increase exposure and draw attention to your posts, but don't over do it, use three to five as a guide.
 
Here are Instagram’s 10 most popular hashtags of 2017:

1. #love
2. #fashion
3. #photooftheday
4. #photography
5. #art
6. #beautiful
7. #travel
8. #happy
9. #nature
10. #picoftheday

 
Read Instagram's full report here: Instagram’s 2017 Year in Review

Branded Hashtag Idea: Create a hashtag that reflects your brand or campaign message. An easy example could be your business name, product tagline, or the name of a current campaign. Use it consistently on Instagram posts to drive exposure and awareness. An added benefit of using a consistently branded hashtag is that you will be able to track and analyze results.

More Ideas: Hootsuite's - The Complete Instagram Hashtag Guide for Business

Scopic connects businesses and audiences through creative communications, contact us to find out more.

As business becomes more globally competitive, Japanese companies need to better align with local English-speaking markets in order to expand and grow in the future.
 
We work collaboratively with businesses to create effective branding, communications, marketing and sales solutions that positively impact on future growth at a global level through our Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) partner services.
 
Outsourcing certain business processes offers a number of advantages for Japanese businesses.

Cost Reduction: Outsourcing helps Japanese businesses control costs and increase profits. Business process outsourcing provides a comprehensive range of business services at reduced costs including lead generation, email marketing, telemarketing, inbound customer inquiries and order taking.
 
Experienced Professionals: Recruiting new English-speaking employees and training them in product knowledge and services requires a lot of time and money. Through utilizing the services of business process outsourcing, Japanese businesses have the ability to have their marketing and sales divisions communicate directly with global customers in English in real-time.
 
Core Business: Outsourcing increases the time that Japan-based management and employees can better focus on their key domestic responsibilities. Business process outsourcing offers a flexible and customized way to grow Japanese businesses across new English-speaking markets without having to neglect core Japanese customers.
 
As a global partner, business process outsourcing partners add reach to Japanese businesses on an international scale through the integration of branding, communications, marketing and sales solutions.

If you like what you see and are interested in finding out more, then connect with us via email and we’ll get back to you on the same business day.

Business Outsourcing Inquiry
global@scopiccommunication.com
Communications Inquiry
hello@scopiccommunication.com

Japanese Webpage 
www.scopiccommunication.com/japanese

With so much attention on social media marketing and the role of influencers it is easy for businesses to overlook email as an important part of their marketing mix.
 
Findings from a recent Adobe survey (​Adobe Consumer Email Survey Report 2017) on email marketing indicate that consumers are sick of branded emails that are hard selling, uninformative and irrelevant.
 
However, there was a positive and that was consumers would still rather get an email offer from brands compared to direct mail, mobile apps or social media. As Adobe puts it, consumers still have a love affair with email, but these days a bit more balance in needed. 

As we hit the tail end of this year, it is nearly time to start evaluating your 2017 content marketing strategy.

​We know—you already know, to really connect and engage with your audience—it takes much more than just a few random minutes across the day—you must produce relevant, targeted, valuable and consistent content.

 So, which of these 2017 content marketing trends did your business embrace?

1. Going mobile
As mobile device users surge and speeds accelerate, people want more than just text-based content. Mobile users want to find mobile compatible content quickly and easily, so make the user experience stress-free with clear headings, bullet points and quality visuals that engage users.
 
2. Going visual
Research shows images/videos perform much better than just words on a screen, but don’t compromise loading time. An easy way to increase loading speed, is to compress/reduce images and videos to ensure audience attention is not lost while waiting around.

3. Going live
With live content marketing becoming more achievable on mobile devices via FacebookLive, SnapChat, PeriscopeTV and Instagram Stories live streaming continues to explode. Both large and small businesses will easily be able to share product launches, new campaigns and branded events.

4. Targeting content
To truly connect and hold audience attention businesses can no longer be everything-to-everyone across multiple channels of communication. With a massive amount of content being published across numerous channels, businesses need to be more targeted with the content they create. 

5. Test driving
Through testing engagement, businesses will start to better identify audience behaviors that will influence the content created and the distribution channels used. Winners in the race of content consumption will be those businesses that conduct A/B testing (split-run testing) of content/channels - measure engagement, analyze results then create content that is personalized.
 
How did your business measure up!
​
Scopic works with businesses to create quality content that grabs attention and delivers a positive user experience, contact us to find out more.

1. You launch your social media platform/s with no (long-term) strategy in place.
​Without a clear long-term strategy in place and a commitment to that strategy you are doomed to fail.
 
Three important components of your social media strategy:

• Clearly define your objective — increase likes/followers, increase website traffic, promote products/services or create sales leads?
• Clearly identify your audience — sex, age, background, interests, location, preferred platform, preferred device (mobile or desktop) and social media habits.
• Clearly plan your guidelines — how many posts per day, what time, content type (text, image, video, audio, live), content length (300 word post, 15 second advertisement or 10 minute video blog) and importantly — who will manage and monitor the platform/s.  

2. You feel that you don't have the budget to go social.
Obviously a bigger marketing budget if implemented correctly — traditional anyway — should provide greater results, but this is where social media is different.
 
If you have an iPhone, an Internet connection and a well-developed social media strategy, you can now communicate with a global audience like a big brand without the obscene marketing budget. 
 
Just remember — keep it real — genuine, informative, entertaining and useful to the audience you want to engage with.
 
3. You feel you don’t need a social media presence.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
 
Social media is not just a passing fad: 

• Every second there are 61,500+ Google searches
• Every day there are 4.5+ billion Likes on Facebook
• Every day there are 500+ million Tweets on Twitter
• Every day there are 95+ million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram

Fact source: www.internetlivestats.com
 
If you are not social — you are not visible!

However, you may prefer spending your marketing budget solely on traditional forms of marketing (print advertising and television spots) that are overpriced with a rapidly eroding (attentive/engaged) audience. If this is the case, it’s your money!
 
Scopic works with your business to craft communications and marketing solutions that drive accelerated growth in a multi-channel world, contact us to find out more.

We have heard countless people tell us about how they have engaged the services of an SEO agency to increase the ranking and exposure of their business online.
 
Unfortunately, many of these experiences with SEO agencies end in negative results with a financial loss.

Like any purchase you make towards growing your business, we recommend you do some basic research first before choosing an SEO agency. Taking the time to watch this short Google video (prefer reading: do you need an SEO?) on choosing an SEO agency may save you thousands. 

Scopic works with your business to create marketing strategies designed to increase your exposure, contact us to find out more.

Color is one of the most effective ways to communicate your brand and products to your audience. Color contributes not only to distinguishing your products from your competitors, but also influences consumer mood and feeling.
 
Research into the impact of color in marketing, appropriately titled Impact of Color on Marketing found that colors really do influence the moods and feelings (positively or negatively) of consumers. This research paper indicated that between 60-90 percent of product evaluation and product purchase is based on color alone. Additional research has also shown in The Interactive Effects of Colors and Products on Perceptions of Brand Logo Appropriateness a correctly chosen color mix for your business logo can bring immediate value to your brand.
 
Effective brands use color to great success to engage and connect with their audience. Before even choosing the color mix for your logo, marketing materials, website or product range it is important to firstly consider some basic points:
 
1. Color is memorable
Color is a central element of your visual identity. Carefully consider your visual identity color mix, as it acts like the personality of your business with your audience. While it is not the only element in your visual identity, it is definitely one of the first things seen and possibly the most memorable of your visual identity. 
 
2. Color is innate
Find out the demographic breakdown of your audience and what color mix may persuade them to act. Defining who you are speaking to will greatly influence your color selection. Now you know your audience, you will be able to choose a color mix that positively influences your audience’s moods and feelings.
 
3. Consider the competition
Check out your competition and consider how you can differentiate your brand and products from your competitors with color. This can be tough, as you will still need to connect with your audience and satisfy marketplace perceptions. A/B testing (split-run testing) of color options with your target audience will help you make an informed decision.
 
4. Consider the platform
Be sure that whatever color mix you choose for your brand and products it can work online as well as in traditional print marketing. What looks great on a computer screen in RGB may not look so great on paper in CMYK. Also, carefully consider the color mix for your online messaging, active text and purchasing buttons, so to complement and at the same time stand out from the other content on the webpage.
 
5. Be consistent with color
Your branding and visual identity needs to be consistent, clear and uncomplicated. When you try to do too much color, your messaging gets lost. By keeping things consistent and clear, you are keeping your visual communications strong and memorable. Color consistency will ensure your audience develops a visual connection and relationship with your brand's personality and products. This will inevitable influence sales. 
 
​Scopic works with businesses to create strong and memorable brands, connect with us to find out more.

This shift away from traditional “celebrity endorsement” can boost product exposure and drive sales far more effectively and efficiently than traditional marketing.
 
Influencer marketing has three key benefits:
 
1. Relevance
Influencers communicate in a manner that is more relevant and targeted to a specific audience or demographic.
 
2. Authenticity
Influencers have pre-established credibility with an audience and more importantly across their social media platform.
 
3. Exposure
Influencers directly engage with a targeted audience and have already built an existing relationship through quality content creation that is — shared, liked, followed… 

Scopic helps businesses better understand and engage with their target audience, contact us to find out more.

The key purpose of your communications and marketing activities should be to entice your client, visitor and/or potential customer to act. This is why you need to use strong and clear call-to-actions (CTA).
 
A CTA is the text and/or graphics you use to persuade your target audience to take positive action. An effective CTA grabs your audience and tells them exactly what to do next.
 
Choose specific objectives
Carefully consider how you want people to act and be specific. Create your CTA based directly on your marketing objectives. Use concise language and keep the actions required hassle-free.
Download your product overview? "Download Now"
Click on a specific webpage? "Click Here"
Sign up to your newsletter? "Sign Up Now"
Pick up the phone? "Call Today"
Visit your store? "Come In"
Send an email? "Email Us"

Use space and color
Carefully consider the negative/white space you have around a CTA as this space will draw audience attention to your key message.  Also, using contrasting colors will draw greater attention to the CTA. Use a different color for your key messages, active text and buttons, so they stand out from the other content on the page.

 Interested in finding out how we could help your business persuasively communicate? Let's connect.

As we grind through the start of 2017, now is a perfect time to review your online strategy. A sharp looking mobile-friendly website and fresh content are an essential combination for any online business.
 
So, let's review these basic tips to make sure you are maximizing your online exposure.
 
Focus on fresh content
To keep your business on top of organic search results it is important to consistently refresh and target your website content. Search engines like Google, YAHOO and Bing regularly change their algorithms and search factors to provide genuine search results to users. We recommend businesses to at least make use of Keyword Planner to better understand their audiences search habits when creating content. Simply, fresh and targeted content will keep your audience coming back for more.

 Schedule regular content reviews
Search engines use search-bots to gather information about websites on the Internet and then share it with users via SERPs (search engine results pages). This is why your business needs to schedule content reviews every few weeks to make sure you keep and improve your ranking. The content reviews should closely analyse basic data - Google Analytics - on page visitors, page impressions, user behaviour and experience. Creating, measuring and reviewing content will allow your business to learn what content is most engaging to your audience.
 
Focus on rich content
Keeping search-bots fed on fresh "content rich" information will see your business climb the search engine ranks. Rich content could include: product updates, product reviews, industry facts, tips and tricks, product tutorials, employee or customer profiles, company news. With a massive amount of content being published across numerous platforms, businesses need to offer truly rich content more than ever before. Basically, the richer, more valuable the content on or linked to your website, the higher your ranking and this means more eyeballs are on your business.
 
Want more, then check out our content marketing trends for 2017 and SEO tips for 2017
 
 Scopic helps businesses better connect with people in a smarter way, contact us to find out more.

As the end of this year quickly moves closer, it is not too late to start proactively planning your 2017 marketing strategy and related marketing spend. Ensuring marketing success in the year ahead, requires you to reflect, focus and plan now.
 
Use these simple five steps below to create a plan to drive business growth in 2017.
 
1. Create a marketing schedule
Get a 2017 calendar and mark each day/week you want to launch a marketing campaign for your business. Mark days/weeks that are key sales periods on your “Marketing Schedule” – of course this will vary depending on your products/services and key markets. Remember, to make sure you firstly take the time to review your current 2016 marketing periods/activities and identify what worked for your business.
 
2. Identify marketing deadlines
Now you have created your “Marketing Schedule” for 2017 – for every day/week you marked, count back four weeks and mark it as “Marketing Deadline”. This is when you should have your marketing strategy finalized and ready to go. Too often marketing campaigns are rushed and this impacts on the creative aspect being compromised.
 
3. Consider strategy time
For every day/week marked “Marketing Deadline” schedule at least two weeks before as “Strategy Time” – this is when you need to take a few hours to review the overall marketing strategy to make sure it is inline with current objectives and market trends.  Marketing KPIs you need to be measuring to better understand your ROI may include: website traffic and level of engagement, social media reach and engagement, marketing qualified leads (MQL), sales qualified leads (SQL), and of course sales growth relevant to a particular marketing campaign or promotion.
 
4. Allow for production time
Effective marketing campaigns take time to create, test and revise. Booking quality advertising space or media spots also takes time and by leaving it too late you may be limiting your options. This is why it is extremely important to plan ahead.
 
5. Build professional connections
Finally, now is a great time to start to build new relationships with marketers, designers and media outlets in preparation of launching your 2017 marketing activities. By reaching out now you will be able to start to grow strategic relationships with key partners. Like effective marketing, creative business relationships take time to grow.

Scopic helps you better engage and connect with creative communications, contact us to find out more.

​Nielsen a global leader in consumer understanding shares the keys to unlocking the millennial mindset. With millennials making up nearly 25% of the globe's population at 1.7 billion people they are about to make a substantial impact on the global consumer landscape in the immediate future.
 
" Millennials are also a demanding generation that wants a more balanced, healthy lifestyle, and they want to be more informed about companies, their products and their business practices. They also expect products to do more for them and for their community."
 
According to Nielsen, “core values and characteristics will remain the key influencers and drivers for how Millennials think, spend and act throughout their lifetimes.”
 
Read more here: The keys to unlocking the millennial mindset
 
Scopic helps you better understand and engage with your target audience, contact us to find out more.

Now we are officially at the halfway point of 2016 – 1st July 2016 – it is a good time to evaluate your social media objectives and plans for 2017.
 
What we continue to find interesting about 2016 is the preferred communication platforms and behaviors of Japanese users on social media. With much of the world dominated by Facebook 1090M+, Japan users continue their love affair with LINE 50M+ and Twitter 26M+. Even the way Japanese users post and interact on third-placed Facebook 25M+ is different compared to United States users; with a slower shift to video posts and a greater preference to link content in Japan. It will be interesting to see whether Facebook uses their rapidly growing Instagram 8M+ user base (55% Females) in Japan to generate growth and synergies across the two platforms in 2017.

See the statistics here: www.socialbakers.com/statistics/facebook 

In 2017, we see Facebook move to become an even more valuable tool for professionals and businesses as it continues to strip away at Linkedin's 340K+ user base and gains the respect of major Japanese brands. 

Scopic works with your business to identify the best social media platforms to increase your customer engagement, contact us to find out more.

Content marketing is the new currency of our digital age, and if done correctly offers the most effective way to connect and engage with your target audience. To get real results, it takes much more than just a few minutes a day and random articles about your products or services.

Here are five content marketing business basics for free.
 
1. Make sure your content is engaging
Your headline and first sentence must grab the attention of your target audience. Make sure your heading is engaging and is what your audience needs to read.
 
Good headlines include:
What is it about?
Who should read it?
Why it should be read?
 
Also, as mobile device usage grows and speeds reach new levels, people are wanting more than just words. Statistics compiled by HubSpot show images and videos perform much better than just text-based content on a screen.

1. 40% of people respond better to visual information than just text-based content
2. Facebook posts with images generated the most likes, comments and shares
3. Video posts attract 3 times more inbound links than just text-based content

See all the statistics here: 19 Reasons You Should Include Visual Content in Your Marketing 
 
2. Choose the best platform for your content
There are plenty of media platforms to publish/post your content other than your website, so take the time to check out which platforms your target audience is engaging with on a regular and genuine basis. Unless your business is a major global brand, you are probably safe with choosing just a few from the more common platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter or YouTube.
 
3. Maximize your time, money and energy
Content marketing is all about quality and not quantity. In a saturated environment businesses need to look and think outside the box to create attention grabbing content. Take the time to research, create and schedule quality content.  Remember, content such as product/service advice or tips are a value add for your customers. Your target audience will keep coming back to you if they discover something interesting, informative, useful and engaging. 

4. Create a content calendar and guidelines
Create a content calendar and guidelines to manage/monitor your content marketing. These content planning tools will keep your content focused, fresh and visible in the right place at the right time. Having clear content marketing guidelines will provide consistency for your business across various media platforms. Keeping your content consistent will ensure your audience develops a connection and relationship with your business. 
 
5. Monitor your content
Track your posts to learn what content, platform and timing is most popular to your target audience. Google Analytics gives you important information on page visitors, page impressions, and geographical tracking. Being able to accurately measure the success of your content marketing is a fundamental element of any business. Over time you will start to identify trends that will influence the content you create - results drive decisions!
 
Scopic works with your business to build creative content designed to increase your exposure, contact us to find out more.

In 2015 mobile Internet usage continued to skyrocket and 2016 looks no different.
 
According to a white paper by commScore Digital Future in Focus over the past 4 years “smartphone usage is up 394 percent, and tablet usage is up a whopping 1,721 percent as these platforms now combine to account for 60 percent of digital media time spent.”
 
Read the report: 2015 U.S. Digital Future in Focus

Mobile-only Internet usage is becoming the norm, so 2016 is a your time to go mobile.  
 
Here are 5 simple rules to consider before creating your mobile website.
 
1. Quick and easy
A mobile website must be quick and easy to navigate. Mobile site users want to find information hassle free, so make things easy to find with clear buttons, icons and headings that guide and inform users. The less pinches, swipes and taps the better.
 
2. Short and simple
Users on mobile devices looking for products or services don't want to waste time, and really don't want to scroll, scroll, scroll through long paragraphs. Keep paragraph length to 2-4 lines. Use short, simple, targeted sentences that engage and help users find what they want. Sentence length should range from 10 – 30 words.
 
3. Minimize input info
Mobile users are working on a small canvas, so limit the amount of information you require them to tap in. Using drop downs instead of input fields will make things much easier. Also, make sure the input font size is readable at least 14 px.
 
4. Stay on message
Make sure your brand and communications (logo, colors, copy and style) are consistent across your desktop and mobile platforms. Brand consistency will ensure users develop familiarity with your business, and with familiarity comes brand trust and loyalty.
 
5. Time to test
Once your mobile website is live test it on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets of all shapes and sizes. Also, make sure you test it across various operating systems like Windows, iOS and Android. Finally, check your page speed with Google PageSpeed Insights.
 
Scopic helps you build your global audience through creative communications, contact us to find out more.

We love sharing simple ideas that will help increase your bottom line.

Stay in touch with the latest creative ideas and smarter solutions for your business with our Ideas blog.

Scopic helps you connect with new audiences through creative communications, contact us to find out more.