3 marketing buzzwords to know

In the rapidly changing marketing industry, there are just too many “buzzwords” which are overrated and overused, and keeping up with all these trends may be a difficult task. However, the following 3 buzzwords are the most talked-about terms in our industry, and they mean bigger marketing trends that all marketers should look out for.

Script Consultants will help you understand these buzzwords and show you why they are important to know.

1. Native advertising

Number of Twitter mentions over the past 30 days (via Topsy): 8463

Number of Google search results: 112,000,000

Native advertising is a form of online advertising technique that matches the form and function of the platform where its content is published on. Many people use it interchangeably with the term sponsored content, such as Facebook sponsored posts, promoted tweets or sponsored articles.

The main goal of native advertising is to increase brand awareness and social engagement. According to research from IPG media lab, native ads are viewed for the same amount of time as editorial content, and 32% of their respondents said they would share a native ad as compared to 19% of them who would share a banner ad. There is a general positive attitude towards native ads as people do not find it as disruptive as traditional advertising.

Native ads come in many different forms. Some examples are shown below:

This is a Buzzfeed post, sponsored by Pepsi Next. If you remove the Pepsi Next brand name, the post looks exactly like any other Buzzfeed posts, with similar content and structure.

This is a sponsored post by IBM on The Atlantic. This article is written by IBM, yet, the article matches the editorial and design style of The Atlantic. Note that there is also no call to action for both articles. As mentioned, these brands just want to increase social engagement and brand awareness.

2. Growth hacking

Number of Twitter mentions over the past 30 days (via Topsy): 14,124

Number of Google search results: 19,700,000

Growth hacking is a term created by Sean Ellis, founder of Startups-Marketing, meant to describe the marketing techniques used by start-ups to grow their company. It involves the use of creative, clever and non-traditional methods to increase growth rate of a company. Such techniques often include search engine optimizations and social media, which focus a lot on content and are relatively cheap.

A good case study of growth hacking is Dropbox, who analysed the science and psychology of consumer behaviour to attract more users to join. Dropbox gave away 500MB worth of storage space with their easy-to-use referral program and grew from 100,000 users to 4 million users in just 15 months. Ever since then, the company has been growing rapidly.

3. Big data

Number of Twitter mentions in past 30 days (via Topsy): 293,934

Number of Google search results: 794,000,000

Big data is used to describe an enormous amount of data such that traditional data processing applications become inadequate. It is used frequently by people who want brands to invest in more technology for their big data. As the infographic below sums it up, big data has these characteristic 4 Vs – volume of data that can be stored, velocity or rate of data stored, variety and the veracity of data available.

Big data is important to marketers because they can allow marketers to describe their target customers with a level of accuracy and detail unfathomable years before. While the traditional marketing efforts were limited to the number of subscribers to newsletters or returns on direct mail, modern marketers can get data on much more details such as digital clicking behaviour, time spent on various sites, purchase history, time awake, calorie intake and the list goes on.