Hello, it’s the first
Monday of the month & we are back with Tech News.
If you are new to our blog,
we post Tech News every first & third Monday of the present month for you
to stay updated with the tech world!
If interested in our other
blogs, we will have the links listed below.
Till then check out the
latest major updates in the tech world.
Netflix stopped working on
some smart TVs from 1st December
Netflix recently announced that due to some technical limitations some smart TVs like Samsung & Roku won’t be able to stream Netflix. The service has already been affected by 1st December.
Users are unable to stream
service on 2050X, 2100X, 2000C, HD Player, SD
Player, XR Player, and XD Player.
Microsoft Announces Quantum
Computing programs with Azure Quantum
Microsoft has announced its quantum computing based cloud ecosystem named Azure Quantum for developers and enterprises. Quantum computers work on the principles of quantum mechanics and use superposition to perform operations.
Also, Microsoft has a three-pronged goal with Azure Quantum. It can be used for learning, developers can write programs with Q# and the QDK and test their codes against simulators.
From 3rd December,
mobile calls & internet charges will rise by 50%
Bharti
Airtel, Vodafone Idea & Reliance Jio recently announced that they are going
to rise their tariffs from December 3.
This is the first hike in the last five years in the country’s telecom space with Vodafone Idea & Airtel announced a maximum increase of 50% in its entry-level unlimited plan.
For
Reliance Jio plans will raise for mobile services rates from December 6
onwards.
For further details about the prize boosts check here.
New
Features Updates in Whatsapp
Whatsapp’s new feature update includes call waiting support. Currently, the update is only available for iPhone users. The Android update will be rolled out soon, according to reports.
Also, a
new feature, delete a message where a particular message will get automatically
deleted after a set period of time by the user is available now. Another
feature, multiple device support for its Android apps will be added soon.
Although, Sony has already shared a photo of two PlayStation 5 development kits,
Making gamers go crazy but
Sony recently confirmed that the PlayStation 5
will launch during the 2020 holiday season.
Sony has
created the hype with teasing few features added to PS5, which includes a
solid-state hard drive for faster loading, ray tracing graphics with 8K
resolution, and backward compatibility with PlayStation 4 games.
Xiaomi to launch Mi Credit
in India on 3rd December
After a huge success with its electronics, Xiaomi has decided to launch a revamped version of Mi Credit in India. The Chinese smartphone giant will launch its personal loan service, Mi Credit, for Xiaomi device users in India on December 3, 2019.
Any
user who is over 18 years of age can apply for a loan up to Rs 1 lakh, which
can be repaid with easy EMIs over a period ranging between 91 days and 3 years
from its Google Playstore app called Mi Credit.
Marketing Automation refers to the software platform which automates the marketing actions or processes.
Today digital marketing requires a lot of tasks like emails, campaign management, website analysis, social media marketing & so on. With market automation, these tasks become easier, faster & more efficient.
Studies show that around 51% of businesses use marketing automation tools for their businesses to grow.
Now,
while there are several of them available in the market, we have enlisted the
top 5 Marketing Automation tools.
HubSpot Marketing Automation
HubSpot is one of the most popular in terms of its features which includes sales software, marketing software, and support software, etc. The company had revenue of $271 million in 2016 with 34,000 customers across 90 countries and 3,400 agency partners.
HubSpot
Some of the key features of HubSpot include easy editing options & modifying a design. Creates an email template, automates the subject line and content for each recipient. It often optimizing a blog post & landing page based on keywords.
Marketo
Marketo products are used for small to medium-size businesses and large enterprises. Launched in 2006, it has a very good customer support system & the products are evolving on a regular basis.
Recently, the company has been acquired by Adobe and incorporated into its enterprise marketing cloud.
Marketo
Some of its key features include a web-based email marketing platform, landing pages, nurturing, web analytics, social media, etc. It even automates marketing campaigns and engages the customer in a personalized manner. Marketo even helps to identify the customer and their business which would generate more revenue for them.
SendinBlue
Started as a digital agency but ended up being quite a powerful email marketing tool, which, with time, transformed into a well-liked marketing automation software.
SendinBlue
Being a French company, SendinBlue was one of the first marketing automation companies to declare GDPR compliance.
It has some pretty interesting active features such as
reporting & lead scoring. It offers a free plan, which has all the basic
support along with phone support & can send upto 300 emails each day.
ActiveCampaign
This one is an integrated email marketing, marketing automation & small business CRM tool.
ActiveCampaign
It’s USP is its powerful & super flexible marketing automation functionality. This probably isn’t a good tool for beginners or those with low technical capabilities.
It is very affordable starting only at $9/month. Recently, ActiveCampaign released a site messaging tool, a chrome plugin, a marketing attribution tool, A/B testing within automation sequences, and a handful of other extremely useful upgrades.
Prospect.io
Prospect.io generally aims at companies looking for automated lead generation and sales activity.
If you are planning to use this software, remember that it
not designed to be the all-in-one sales and marketing platform like ActiveCampaign
but it does have features like drip mails.
After getting your account registered, Prospect.io will guide
you when it comes to setting things up, such as adding contacts, creating
lists, adding your sending address, and eventually sending your first set of
emails.
Also, after adding a prospect in Prospect.io, you can track
the emails that they have received, and see the time that the last email was
sent. You can also filter your prospects through each category as well.
Apart from these, there are few other options that you can go for. Ontraport, Pardot & InfusionSoft are few of them you can try out for sure.
However, while going for any marketing automation tool you
should keep in mind that each has its own set of drawbacks & advantages.
So, it’s best to get personalized marketing automation
software suited for your company. Although it can be a little high on the
pocket, these are investments for your ultimate growth of business.
Want to get a customized market automation tool? Connect with Skyram Technologies. We have experienced developers & we are one of the leading agencies in Kolkata to develop customized marketing automation software. Contact us here!
Also, for more blogs of digital marketing read here!
CRM software has become one of the most popular tools in digital marketing. Companies are adopting or upgrading to new CRM systems to help them target the right customer and retain them for the long term.
Now, with
so many CRM tools in the market, you can get confused as to what tools to use.
Now before
going into further details, let’s understand what exactly CRM software is.
What is
CRM software?
Customer
relationship management (CRM) software is a broad category of tools designed to
keep track of their customer relationships, manage sales and marketing
processes, and deliver a more efficient service. It serves as a
repository of customer contact information, but also stores records of their
interaction data and helps facilitate workflow automation.
What are
the uses of CRM software?
·
CRM systems allow marketers to use
aggregated customer information to better personalize their marketing outreach.
·
A CRM system helps the sales team to
understand the context & content of the sales deal.
·
It helps to build customer relationships
with better targeting audiences.
Now that
we have an understanding of CRM tools, let’s talk about the top 5 popular CRM
software in the market.
ZOHO CRM
It is one
of the most sorted after CRM software in the industry. You can
utilize this web-based CRM to serve your clients and increase your business.
The main features which make Zoho unique are it’s lead & contact management, purchase control, sales pipeline management, sales force automation, etc. It has a trial version available.
Zoho CRM
With Zoho CRM, you can
follow sales, automate routine business duties, and engage clients on various
platforms.
Zoho is perfect for sole
entrepreneurs and small companies as well as medium-sized companies.
The Opportunity Tracking tool of Zoho allows you to track where your client is in the buying stage, as well as contact history, deal size & also competitor’s profile.
Salesforce
Salesforce is arguably the best CRM software in the market.
It is a
large platform, and a lot of services are available here, you have to choose
which one fits better for your work and opt for it. It helps
teams boost their sales, close deals, manage leads and boost productivity.
Salesforce is an integrated CRM solution that covers sales force automation,
customer service, marketing, campaign management and more.
The mobile apps for iOS & Android allow real-time information from its dashboard.
SAP SE
It is a multinational software corporation & currently ranks at the top in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) field.
SAP SE
Currently, the company serves more than 180 countries. The company’s ERP system enables its customers to run their business processes, including sales, production, human resources, and finance, in an incorporated environment. SAP software is used to support organizations with the management of business areas, such as finances, logistics, and human resources. It is mainly used by big companies with lots of target data & resources.
Oracle CRM
A leading player in the CRM market, Oracle helps businesses optimize their sales processes and boost sales productivity in effect. Its rich user-friendly interface helps businesses to oversee & manage customer relationships.
Oracle CRM
Once you have Oracle, you don’t need any added software to use it. There is no need for multiple logins. Oracle CRM also does this without compromising data security, with safeguards like Cross-Site requests, user validation, VPN, and advanced forgery protection in place.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
If you are an avid Microsoft user, you would know about Microsoft Dynamics 365. It is a paid platform but it is more than your average CRM. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service sectors, though Microsoft has been marketing Dynamics CRM as an XRM platform and has been encouraging partners to use its proprietary framework to customize it. Recently, it has also grown as an Analytics platform driven by CRM.
Other than these, few other software like HubSpot CRM, Salesmate CRM 7 Agile CRM are also often used by marketers to improve their customer management.
Hopefully, now you have an idea about the latest & most popular CRM tools in the market. However, just so you know that different businesses require different software. So, it may change with the type of customer you are dealing with.
Hopefully, now you have an
idea about the latest & most popular CRM tools in the market. However, just
so you know that different businesses require different software & every
tool in the market have their own limitations. So it is best to use your own
custom-made CRM tools which would perfectly fit your business dynamic.
But a very few companies
can actually provide you with a efficient CRM software. Good news is that in
Skyram Technologies you get personalized CRM tools. Want to try it out? Connect
with us here!
What is the best CRM tool according to you? Comment here! Also, for more such blogs read here!
Hopefully, now you have an
idea about the latest & most popular CRM tools in the market. However, just
so you know that different businesses require different software & every
tool in the market have their own limitations. So it is best to use your own
custom-made CRM tools which would perfectly fit your business dynamic.
But a very few companies can actually provide you with an efficient CRM software. The good news is that in Skyram Technologies you get personalized CRM tools. Want to try it out? Connect with us here!
What is the best CRM tool according to you? Comment below!
There was a dilemma about
the title of the movie. In fact, Kevin Feign changed the titles of nearly every
movie in phase 3!
Civil War was initially
titled Captain America: Serpent Society.
By this time Marvel started using Twitter as a tool for movie marketing. They started using a tagline “Who’s side are you on?” Team Cap or Team Iron Man? For the promotion to give it a game-like feel.
Captain America Civil War
Then came
the trailers & Super Bowl spots. The chanting of “United We Stand” vs.
“Divided We Fall” draws on the history of, you know, the actual civil war.
In 2014, a bunch of emails related to Spider-man movie tie-ups with Marvel Studio got leaked. People were eventually excited for the grand entry of Spider-man in Marvel & all of a sudden, Spidey was in Civil War!
Captain America Civil War
The trailer broke the internet.
On twitter #TeamCap and #TeamIronMan started making rounds creating hype for the movie along with emojis of from the movie. Also, if you use the hashtags for quite some time of the actors would call you out by the name! It was a mind-blowing idea!
All the major brands like Pizza hut, Pringles, Audi, Harley Davison 7 even Skittles joined the team. Kelloggs even released Civil War based cereals.
Civil War
made around $1.153 billion, off $230 million budget
which was a no-biggie by this time with Marvel movies.
Doctor
Strange
New character, new genre all over again!
Doctor Strange
Also, Doctor Strange revolved around magic & had a psychedelic aura around it. It was not exactly ‘cosmic” like Guardians of the Galaxy which meant that marketing for this movie wants to engage more with the concept of itself than with its title character.
As many people were unaware of this particular genre so the team sold Benedict Cumberbatch instead of the character itself. Marvel very well knew the craze of Cumberbatch among the youth because of his Sherlock portrayal!
Even with
the posters, Benedict overpowers the plot with his presence.
Next game
the trailer, it was so good with all the reality changing stuff!
The brand tie-ins were kept minimal for this film. But of the coolest marketing, I noticed was an egg-marketing by Google where it was showing Sanctum on the Google Maps!
Google Maps
Doctor
Strange made about $677.7 million off of about a $165 million budget.
Guardians
of the Galaxy Vol- 2
Time for some cosmic fun again!
Guardians of the Galaxy was a risk, it’s sequel was the opposite. People already loved the goofy nature of the characters.
Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2
The team
used Baby Groot for most of the campaign.
The production was amazing, from the color palate to the VFX everything was so on-point that the marketing team had an advantage here.
Baby Groot personally popped up in commercials for Geico and Ford. A raccoon who was not rocket popped up in an M&Ms commercial. Dairy Queen got in on a marketing tie-in with the movie. Even Doritos jumped in which really showed the potential of the film.
Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2
Guardians Vol 2 made around $863.8 million off of about a $200 million budget.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was immediately put into development with James Gunn attached to write and direct again.
Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2
Spider-Man:
Homecoming
He is one of the favorite superhero from Marvel.
So
establishing character hype was not a problem.
Since Spider-man is still owned by Sony, his solo movies are Sony productions and are marketed by their marketing team.
They pumped up Tony Stark’s presence as much as possible. The best parts are the teen comedy stuff.
Spider-man: Home Coming
The
tie-ins were the usual Pizza hut, Synchrony Bank Goodwill and Dell.
For the
NBA finals, they released a series of ads, essentially a short film about Peter
Parker attending Tony Stark’s party.
Spider-Man:
Homecoming cost around $175 million & made $880.2 million
dollars.
Thor:
Ragnarok
This movie
was a bit different.
It dealt
with a very dark subject but it is one of the most hilarious Marvel movie ever!
Thor:
Ragnarok, made about $854 million off of a $180 million budget.
For the promotion, they started from the Civil War, released a short film tie in showing what Thor was up to at that time.
Thor Ragnarok
Then came
the trailer & posters which were so freaking good!
This
bright, colorful, psychedelic totem pole of a poster hits so hard.
For brand
tie-ups, they kept it minimal. The studio was so confident by this time that
they knew their movies could stand entirely on the power of their brand. And they
were right! You saw the numbers.
Black Panther
Black Panther was a much bigger event than a movie. It was as a cultural moment, not just a piece of entertainment, and it absolutely earned that position.
Black Panther
The
marketing positioned the movie about more than the superhero, it’s about
Wakanda.
Everything
about the movie screamed about pan-African aesthetics and that attention to
detail gave Black Panther even more credit.
Synchrony Bank was a promotional partner in this movie.
Black Panther
People
went out of their way to buy tickets for underprivileged Black kids. Saudi
Arabia made this the first movie in years they allowed to screen. Panther
made $1.347 billion off of a $200 million budget & was nominated for Best
Picture at the Academy Awards.
Avengers: Infinity Wars
Marvel started campaigning for the Infinity War from February of 2017.
Avengers Infinity War
After nine months, they released a trailer teaser of the movie framing it around the fans who made Marvel what it is today. They used footage of excited reaction videos from their past movies to once again build on that idea of culmination. It’s a nice way of saying this franchise belongs to its fans.
Avengers Infinity War
The
marketing tie-ins included Quaker Oats, Ziploc, Yoplait & Go-Gurt, and some
admittedly stylish Coke cans, Samsung, Audi,
Quicken Loans & so many more!
Even
Fortnite managed to put Thanos in their game. Fortnite is free and played
by Marvel’s exact target demographic, this was a great marketing move.
Infinity
War was made around $316 million & made $2.048 billion dollars.
Ant-Man and The Wasp
This movie
had a major challenge in front of them.
The end of the Infinity War was pretty dark. Now how do you follow up with such a massive movie when you aren’t continuing with the story? Marketing tie-in was much less during this time with only Dell & Hyundai pitching in.
Ant-Man and The Wasp did about as well as the previous movies making around $622.7 million off $162 million budget.
Captain Marvel
Captain Marvel posters were on-point. It was the first movie with a sole female protagonist. The Captain Marvel super bowl spot was pretty simple with chanting her tagline, “higher, further, faster” to show here power.
Brands like WNBA, Synchrony Bank, Dave & Busters tied-up with Captain Marvel.
It made
around $1 billion off of about a $152 million budget.
Avengers: Endgame
Avengers: Endgame
This was a phenomenon!
We all know what exactly happened with Endgame & how great it was as a movie so we will leave that out.
Just with the marketing, Endgame had Coke, Stand Up to Cancer, General Mills, Ziploc, Hertz, Geico, and Fortnite. McDonalds & whatnot.
An
interesting fact is that the name was decided much later during the trailer
probably because Marvel couldn’t settle on a perfect name.
Endgame
made around $2. 7 billion dollars out of $356 million dollars budget.
Marketing
wise, MCU was set. They knew that the hype was already created & the film
was going to make history.
Spider-Man:
Far From Home
This one
came as a big surprise!
Everyone
thought Endgame would be the end of Phase 3 but nope, Marvel gave us one more
film to end the phase.
Far From
Home shattered industry records with it’s massive $288 million dollar marketing
budget.
Far From
Home touts the largest multi-tiered promotional campaign ever compiled for a
motion picture.
The
wide-ranging campaign promotional partners have activated their support via
multiple channels, such as 40+custom TV spots, stunts, social, activations, and
more.
They
created a 360-degree lifestyle experience for the fans to promote the movie.
The film
made $1.3 billion dollars in the box office!
Wow! That
was a huge one to write!
I hope now
you have a comprehensive idea of how movie marketing works? If you have
suggestions or funny bits about Marvel movies, or your favorite hero comment
here!
After the tremendous
success of Phase 1, MCU Studios became more confident to spread its wings.
We have already discussed the marketing strategy of MCU Phase 1 in our previous blog. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here.
They started Netflix series & Agents of SHIELD where they showed several characters, their journey; but for today we will stick to the movie phase 2 of MCU.
By now, the studio had
already established it’s mad fan base, Marvel became a household name &
they took bigger risks in terms of story or production.
This one is probably the
most popular Iron Man movie.
Off a $200 million dollar budget, it made around
$1.215 billion!
Yes, that’s right.
The first look was revealed at Comic-Con. It was the first movie after The Avengers. The trailer rocked. The thirty-plus Iron Man suits were never seen before & people went crazy over Iron Legion. They relied on Facebook to reveal the promos.
Iron Man 3
Audi, Oracle & Verizon partnered as usual to promote the film. here was a Stark Industries pop-up at Disneyland, and they even repainted the monorail for the movie.
Iron Man 3 Oracle
To sell
the movie in China, they included extra Chinese scenes in the movie. The
marketing team went extra for the movie just like Tony Stark!
Thor:
The Dark World
The second installment of Thor dealt with more cosmic enemies. One of the best things about the movie is its production design. It gave a dark almost like a DC world vibe to the movie.
Thor The Dark World
The marketing
team had not much to work with this time other than brand tie-ups, Burger King,
Skype & Harley-Davison.
They
approached marketing in a bit different way with Loki appearing in full
character at Comic-con. They mostly played off everything as their character to
gain audience engagement. The movie made around $644.6 million off $170
million budget.
Captain
America: The Winter Soldier
For me,
personally, this one is the best movie from Marvel Phase 2, in terms of
storytelling, character building, character deconstructing & production!
Also, just
so you know, the team had a hard time marketing this movie. Some of you may
remember that the first installment of Captain America was the second
lowest-grossing movie of phase one.
Now, how do you make people come to the theatre when a lot of them had a boring, uncool perception of Cap? The marketing team first let the trailer speak for the movie at first. The trailer was mind-blowing!
Captain America The Winter Soldier
A movie
about a WWII hero fighting modern-day politics & military operations anyway
was enough to pull crowds.
Then came
the tease about the incredible elevator fight scene.
At the 2014 Super Bowl, a new spot dropped to drive people towards the new full-length trailer online. It was a really cool move using national anthem to promote a movie about tumultuous politics!
Other than this the usual tie-ups of Harley Davison, Comic-Con was there. But this time the team relied on the content for marketing Cap.
Captain America
The cost
to make the movie was about $177 million & it
grossed a staggering $714.3 million. It is more than the first Avenger which
grossed around $370.6 million!
Guardians
of the Galaxy
This one
was a risk!
The
expectations weren’t high from this movie as it did not have any stars or that
they were introducing a whole other cosmic world into the world!
They chose to reveal the character-based trailer of the movie but surprisingly the social media went crazy over it!
Guardians of the Galaxy
Digital
sales went upto 700% the very next day. The
music, the language, the middle finger, they all represented something new in
science fiction.
Guardians
were a little different from the usual space movies like Star Wars or Star
Treck which dealt with more intellectual stuff. This one was charismatic,
charming & light-hearted!
Plus with the film’s unique production design it could basically sell anything! Starting from t-shirts, bags, kits anything. They had managed to set over 50 brands agreed to partner up on this one. It was the same strategy of putting character faces everywhere as they did with Iron Man. They even put a fake travel site online!
Galaxy Gateways
The movie
made $773.3 million, against $195.9 million
budget.
At the
time it became the third highest-grossing MCU movie behind The Avengers and
Iron Man 3. All of that is a testament to how powerful the Marvel brand had
become by then!
Avengers:
Age of Ultron
Everyone
was waiting for this one again!
The hype
was there. We all thought we were going to see Thanos this time but instead,
Marvel very cleverly announced the villain all at once.
The comic fan knew of Ultron, but for the rest of us, Ultron was a completely new character! Which meant the marketing campaign only really had to introduce him and make him threatening. Other than that, the hype was set with sky-rocketing expectations!
Age of Ultron
Marketing
tie-ins started early for this one. Samsung put out a hardware
show at the Consumer Electronic Show 2015, inspired by this movie.
Harley-Davidson premiered their first electric motorcycle for Black Widow to
ride in the movie.
They even teamed with ESPN to release the trailer during the 2015 College Football Playoff National Championship. A Hummel tracksuit, Adidas running shoes, an Under Armour shirt, Audi cars, Dr.Pepper drinks they did it all.
Even Gillette announced to make super-advanced razors with colorful models based on the male Avengers!
Gillette
For a
$365.5 million budget, Avengers: Age of Ultron made
around $1.405 billion dollars!
Ant-Man
For many, they thought that phase 2 will end with the Age of Ultron. But MCU had to offer a little extra treat for us!
Ant Man
For
Ant-Man, the marketing was done adorably!
They knew
from the first that they had to sell the character based on how funny he is!
And it worked marvelously.
They chose Paul Rudd, an actor with classic comic-timing along with Michael Douglass to match-up the gravitas. Tiny little Ant-Man billboards with real working LED lights that popped up all over the country.
Then to connect directly with the Marvel Universe, they put out a small version of him on important Marvel characters! Check this out!
All the marketing
was again based on the character himself & Rudd’s charm played it well!
Ant-Man
wound up making about $519.3 million with only
$130 million budget.
How are
you liking our series so far? Comment down here!
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated itself as one of the most celebrated pop culture around the world!
They have a unanimous presence today. I mean can you point out a single soul who hasn’t seen or at least heard about Avengers: Endgame?
However, one of the things that we don’t often talk about is the way Marvel marketed their films. It took so many years to create the legacy they have created today, but it all started with Iron Man in 2008 after.
After Kevin Feige became the President of Marvel Studios in 2007, the whole marketing game changed for the club!
Kevin
is responsible for a worldwide gross of $26.8 billion through the films he produced.
Since
we love films, you will be awestruck to know the length they have gone to make
Endgame a phenomenon!
For
today we will stick to Phase 1 which includes- Iron Man 1 & 2, The
Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor & The Avengers.
Iron
Man 1 & The Incredible Hulk
One of the most celebrated Marvel superheroes, the world got a sneak peek about the film in 2006, two years before the film released at San Diego Comic-Con.
The poster only had the classic red suit & the whole offline campaign like posters, Slurpees & even LG limited edition phones were introduced to make enough noise.
Iron Man 2008
And the BIG advantage of Iron Man was – Robert Downy Jr. His charisma, charm & the fact to completely blend into the character of Tony Stark worked for the film. It was as if he was born to play Tony Stark!
They dropped some video games, action figures & big brands like Burger King, who actually gave out Iron Man toys. Audi & Oracle were other major promotional partners for Iron Man. It’s estimated the marketing budget for Iron Man ranged somewhere from $50 to $75 million.
Marketing for The Incredible Hulk was a little hard because of its previous darker version by Ang Lee in 2003. So the makers tried to distance the 2008’s version away from Hulk (2003). This one marketed as a summer popcorn superhero movie.
Incredible Hulk 2008
The Incredible Hulk was released in the same year as Iron Man 1, so it was an instant connection. There were online contests to win Hulk Smash Hands if you followed the movie’s Facebook or MySpace page.
7-Eleven
kept up with Marvel to feature special Slurpee cups and a whole new
limited-edition flavor: Radiation Rush! And then, of course, there were Burger
King toys.
This
whole campaign was done to ensure that the audience knew that this hulk was
different. The movie was made of $150 million budget & grossed around
$263.4 million.
Iron
Man 2 & Thor
Iron man 2 was pretty easy to market. The character was already established.
They introduced a new character, War Machine! And that’s what most studios miss. Marvel introduced the characters one by one. This way the audience focused on each new character & builds a better connection with them, creating a separate fan base for each character.
Iron Man 2 & ORACLE
Audi
debuted another car in this movie and LG attached their phones again, even
though Tony Stark uses a fake Stark Industries phone in the movie. They used
around $100 million to market the movie& they checked all the boxes.
It was time for another superhero- Thor!
Thor was not our usual superhero. He was from a different world, he was a god! Thor’s marketing technically began at the end of Iron Man 2’s credits. Thor was not a human, so the makers had to introduce a whole new world to the audience.
Thor 2011
In the beginning, Thor had a whole bunch of posters, almost like they couldn’t figure out what the final definitive image for the movie should be. But later, the used their iconic ‘character poster’ & it worked!
Thor 2011
They
sold the movie as a clash between the two worlds- Earth & Asgard!
For offline marketing? Well, check this out!
Thor 2011
Clever
right?
Thor made $449.3 million off a $150 million budget, outperforming
The Incredible Hulk!
Captain
America: The First Avenger
By
this time, Marvel had already had a rising fan base around the world. So,
selling a character from World War II, with severe moral rights was not at all
easy.
Also, by now people knew that The Avengers was coming & he was the last piece of the puzzle, a very important one.
Captain America: The First Avenger 2011
To get the marketing right, the team did a survey to find out how familiar people were with Cap. In Russia, South Korea & Ukraine who was unaware of Captain America, they simply titled the film as The First Avenger. And for the rest of the world, they marketed it with his original name.
Keeping the tag as “The First Avenger” simply connected the dots
directly.
They
made sure to market the poster without Cap’s helmet, as Evans was still not a
popular face among the audience.
The
Avengers
Marvel
played it smart.
They
already had Spiderman & X-Men series from their universe who had created a
dramatic record.
So
Marvel Studios had to break the big screens-without losing the superheroes.
On
the other hand, they had to compete with DC.
For The Avengers 2012, the studio started building stories with
individual stories from 2008!
It would have been easy for Marvel to throw all of their remaining characters into The Avengers and make a quick buck. Instead, they opted for brand building to bring more audiences to the Avenger. And it played out just like that!
The
Avengers wasn’t marketed like it was a movie, it was marketed like the cultural
moment it eventually became.
Marketing for this one was already done. All they had to do was throw in a bunch of shots where the characters interact with each other to build excitement. For brands, you may ask? They had every brand with them!
The Avengers 2012 & LandO’Forst
Starting from Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Audis, Dr. Pepper, Hershey chocolate, Oracle, to even Norton Anti-Virus!
The Avengers made $1.519 BILLION out of $220 million budget!
On
a strategic level, Marvel didn’t just aim for big bucks right away. Instead,
they took slow & steady to let the brand grow & let ENDGAME happen!
Currently,
Marvel has its movies mapped out until 2028, and that foresight is what makes
their success possible.
We hope you understood how Marvel invested in their marketing in Phase 1. Don’t worry, we will cover the other phases as well! For now, check out our other blogs here!
Whether it’s a small or a multi-million dollar business, to meet customer needs & achieve success you will need a strong digital marketing strategy.
As you can understand that Airbnb, Uber, Myntra did not achieve success by just good luck right?
However,
luckily enough with each passing year, the online market is filling up with a
lot of marketing tools to drive traffic, target your audience & understand
your business analytics. Some of them work well, some of them don’t. Also, each
have their own purpose.
Digital marketing is a vast subject with many categories under it. Today we will be dealing with the top 5 Business Analysis tools that we prefer.
Here
you go.
AHREFS
Type – Paid.
Started off as a digital marketing tool only for backlink analysis, this tool has made it’s way up to the top favorite of every digital marketer. AHREFS is one of the most popular digital marketing analysis tools used for preparing audit reports, backlink analysis, URL rankings, competitive analysis and many more.
AHREFS
Not only analysis, it is often used for SEO analysis as well.
Few
of its advantages are:
·
Providing qualitative inputs for organic search reports
·
Does extensive backlink analysis, even for your
competitor’s website.
·
Keyword research tool provides competitor keyword analysis
·
Gives you URL rating
·
Provides detailed historical backlink data analysis.
·
Helps to develop perfect content strategy
SEMrush
Type – Paid.
This one is extremely popular. A complete marketing toolset, it is a competitive analysis tool that allows you to take a close look at what your competitors are doing online.
SEMrush
One of the top benefits of SEMrush is that it allows you to see a wealth of information like keyword analysis to discover your competitors are using, find new organic competition, see their ad strategies and budgets, analyze ad copy and keywords, learn more about their display advertising to help you find new publishers and more.
It also allows you to see who is linking with you with the help of its backlink analysis tool.
It can be used by anyone who likes to keep a tab on the
market, competitor’s analysis & so on. This tool is especially helpful in
displaying ROI of SEO and content services in a dashboard format.
SPYFU
Type – Paid
It is an American search analytics company that started in
April 2005.
It shows keywords that websites buy on Google Adwords as well as the keywords that websites are showing up for within search results.
In addition to your own keyword research, you can use SpyFu to better understand the approach that your competitors are taking, both with paid and organic search.
Some of the top benefits of SpyFu are:
·
Very easy to use
·
It is great for PPC
competitor’s research, SEO competitors research, & Keyword research.
·
Shows your competitor’s
keywords that you need to buy.
·
Shows keyword ranking
history
MOZ PRO
Type – Paid & have a free trial
Moz Pro is a SEO analytics and performance platform, built by industry experts. Along with providing intelligent data & tools, it can be used to provide great actionable insights. It is almost like a complete toolbox with all the separate tools inside.
MOZ Pro
Moz Pro saves you time by putting all of your SEO
analytics in one place, with results you can trust.
It is used by industry professionals & online marketers
at an extensive level.
Few of the advantages of Moz Pro are:
·
Boosts your online
visibility.
·
Gets you the highest
quality data from the industry.
·
Has endless features for
SEO insights.
KISSMETRICS
Type – Paid.
Kissmetrics helps you to track analyze and optimize your digital marketing to find more of your best customers and keep your current ones.
It is ideal for marketers wanting to incorporate both analytics & automation in an effective yet intelligent marketing dashboard. Currently, Kissmetric’s domain is owned by Neil Patel, who bought it from Space Pencil for $500,000.
Also, if you are looking to increase your conversion rate,
customer retention, customer base, this tool can be of great benefit & a
time saver.
Few of the benefits of Kissmetrics are:
·
Makes better decisions by
analyzing intelligent audience behavior.
·
Engages with automation.
·
Comprehends reports to help
you understand where are you losing customers.
·
Drives better retention
& customer behavior.
·
Creates audience analytics
to help marketers with personalized communication.
Other than these, Clicky, Similar Web, Bitly, Cyfe are few
other free marketing analytics tools available in the market which can also be
used.
We hope that you have a complete guide on the must-have
marketing analytics tools available in the market.
But some of these tools need some professional assistance. Want to get a detailed online market analysis? Connect with Skyram Technologies where our digital marketing experts will guide you to make your business much better! Contact us here.
Also, if you are interested in our other blogs, click here!
Have you ever wondered how
do you get advertisements whenever you open certain apps?
For instance, let’s take Truecaller. You often get recommendations from Nykaa or Myntra whenever you open the app. Now how does this work?
What goes behind the scene
for in-app advertisements?
Here is a guide for you.
What is In-app
Advertising?
In simple words, it is a marketing strategy mainly for mobile, where app developers get paid to serve advertisements within their mobile app. Not only this technique drives more mobile usage but it also drives global media consumption.
This makes
in-app advertising one of the most effective channel for brands & agencies.
Why is
it effective?
There are a number of reasons for it.
Users spend more time in their apps.
Apps are
capturing the audience’s attention more than just mobile browsing.
According to E-marketers over 25% of total media time and 89% of mobile time is
spent in-app. This makes it a perfect opportunity for your brand promotion.
Not just
social media but nowadays a wide range of apps are available in the market for
the audiences.
Come on,
there is an online rummy game app in the market now!
Reports
have been that Facebook went from virtually no mobile advertising revenue to
earning 41 percent of its overall revenue through mobile app in approximately
12 months.
Better
Targeting
When
advertisers market within apps, they have a very specific view of their
audience. This is due to a few reasons, but it is mostly due to an app’s
ability to pull direct demographic and geo-location data.
This makes it easy for advertisers to precisely locate their audience. The audience targeted through in-app advertisements has more potential to turn into customers.
In-App Targeting
Higher
Click Rates
According
to Medialets, the click-through rates for apps are 0.58 percent whereas the
mobile Web only has a 0.23 percent CTR.
Another
study showed that in-app ads perform 11.4 times better than normal banner ads,
demonstrating why in-app ads are often superior.
Thanks to
the wide variety of creative options available on mobile, it becomes easier to
download the app & start browsing.
No Worry
of In-app Adblocking
For any
kind of in-app advertising, be it display ads, banners, video ads or any other
creative, there is no fear of your ad not showing. That’s because, within
apps, there are no ad blockers.
Getting
Audiences’ Proper attention
For
instance, when you open a newspaper or magazine, how many ads do you see? At
least 3 to 4 right?
This is
where in-app advertising can prove enormously useful. Regardless of whether an
advertiser is running 300×250 banners or fullscreen videos, there is almost
always only one ad on screen at any one time. This way, brand messaging and
positioning are not competing against any other ads for the end user’s
attention and awareness.
Some
strategies to keep in mind before you go for in-app advertising:
·
Get accustomed to the mobile programming supply chain & understand
how the whole process works.
· Choose your supply partners properly. Working with a small selection of supply-side platforms (SSPs) will give you higher control over the ads & you get the best return of investment.
·
Interactive videos, impactful display ads can hold your viewer’s
attention. Make sure you get the message right to your viewers.
· Generic apps like gaming apps have a higher audience reach. You can easily target your audience there. Also, apps like “Clean master” are used by all demography.
Clean Master In-App Ad
Social, News, and Gaming
are three of the app categories with the highest mobile user penetration, which
makes them effective for reaching a diverse base of engaged users.
Generally, in-app ads are
done in two formats:
Video Ad
Here there is a small video
of some seconds that engages the audience on the small screen. It is an integral
part of advertisement & mobile video ad formats that can effectively
deliver engaging brand messages.
Display Ad
It is fairly simple &
provides advertisers with a flexible way to scale their campaign reach within
the in-app environment.
In-app advertisement has a
huge potential with endless marketing opportunities.
To be honest, to stay
relevant in this competitive market you need to have in-app advertisement
campaigns to capture your audience.
Want some help? We at Skyram Technologies will provide you with customized in-app advertisement campaigns to reach your maximum target audience. Connect with us here!
Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of digital marketing.
Even when the world is
spending half of their lives on social media, email marketing still boasts
itself as one of the most relevant forms of promotion, especially remarketing.
Now, we are aware of the
fact that in the past few years, email marketing saw a considerable amount of
drop. In fact, between 2008-2012, as
McKinsey’s iConsumer survey reported there was a 20% drop in email usage.
However,
the numbers have changed with a recent resurge in email marketing. Now why
email marketing is making a comeback?
Apart
from being a tried & tested method, there are a number of reasons why email
marketing has made a comeback recently.
Personalization
Email marketing is a great way to connect with your audience personally. You can engage with the customers one-on-one.
Many brands use various tricks to make the mails look more personal. For example, using the customer’s name rather than just putting “Dear Customer” on it.
Cost-effective
Whereas on one hand, you need to spend quite a lot in other forms of online marketing like Google Ads, Pay-per-click ads, Display Ads & so on, email marketing can be cost-effective. And on top of that, you can target your audience directly.
Emails
& Mobiles
If you
are a marketer you have probably noticed that an increasing percentage of your
audience uses a mobile device to interact with your brand.
Email marketing pairs
seamlessly with mobile, as it enables businesses to get subscribers’ attention
almost instantly.
Keeping
the customers informed
Email is
far more detailed than a social media post.
As a
marketer are dealing with audiences whose attention spans seem to get shorter
every day. Email marketing comes in handy to inform the buyers regarding
offers, discount coupons, promo codes, sales, etc.
ROI is
easier to measure
Social media has some drawback to measure ROI for a brand.
Email
marketing, compared to social media targets a specific audience which gives a
better track record of ROI.
Through
email, you can track buyers as they experience your campaigns, from
clickthroughs to conversions, you can see how buyers react to each part of the
content delivered. You can have a record of your buyer’s journey.
Returning to the longer form of content
Email marketing can be done
through long, curated mails, the kind of content which can be taken seriously.
People pay attention as long as they need to when they’re engaged.
Due to its current
resurrection, B2B marketers are increasing their budget every year. Not
surprising as email marketing is providing excellent results. A survey by
GetResponse that analyzed four billion emails sent in 126
countries across 19 industries by marketers with at least 1,000 contacts.
A report by the American
Marketing Association says that welcome emails have an average open rate of
84.22 and a click-through rate of 25.91.
From an industry
perspective, the food industry has a huge email marketing campaign results. For
a restaurant, the average open is 37.40 % while in the travel
industry it’s 22.79%.
NICHE INTERESTED GROUPS
With the rise in
technology, email marketing is becoming more & more intelligent.
Whereas previous years have
seen segmentation by gender and location, going forward, marketers will have
the ability to break down their segments even further, into segments of one.
A good email marketing with
proper information, engaging content can earn a niche group of audience.
People like lawyers,
businessmen, IT companies can be a target for email marketers. Even young
professionals can be targeted through email remarketing as they spend a lot of
time on their mobile phones.
FEW PREDICTIONS
Authentic Communication
When your emails are more personal
& authentic, you earn a loyal fan base.
Check out this email from Fitbit thanking their customers to celebrate their 10th year Anniversary!
Fitbit
Your subscribers want to
connect with your brand and the people who run your company. Incorporate storytelling
in your marketing and increase the visibility of your company’s human side to
appeal to even more of your subscribers and ultimately convert them into paying
customers.
Optimizing emails for
mobile
We have already seen a huge
rise among the marketers who want to optimize their emails for smart phones.
Optimizing email marketing
for mobile means crafting your entire customer journey for mobile users will be
important in 2020.
Artificial Intelligence
This one is a no brainer!
AI is & will further
benefit email marketing. Usage of AI will help companies understand their
demography better, channelizing their marketing towards their target audience.
Email Subscription
Chatbox
An email subscription
chatbox can ask new subscribers what type of content they’d like to receive
from you and how often, allowing them to basically self-segment. In this
way, the audience will be encouraged to find more about the company, stay
updated.
Want to invest in email marketing for your company? Contact Skyram Technologies for email marketing, curated especially for you. Connect with us here.
I don’t think that there was a single soul in the country who was spared from this massive marketing strategy by the film.
But how did a film became this mammoth of a brand?
Apart from the film being a visual art itself, filled with dance, drama romance & action, the makers invested in an aggressive marketing campaign for the film.
Both of the films were made in the 400-450 crore range, so you can very well imagine the plethora of money the producers spend on promotion & marketing of the franchise?
Major marketing moves
Online Strategy:
Facebook
Facebook became a major platform of promotion for the team of Baahubali. They started running various campaigns on Facebook including the ‘Baahubali Profile Picture Frame’ contest, some live videos & other interesting tit-bits of the films.
One of the most popular was Baahubali-themed animated stickers inside the FB Messenger app. It was a gem & spiked thousands of downloads within weeks. At present their FB page has over 4.21 million followers & it’s still counting!
Twitter
Twitter has always been a favorite of any marketing team for movies, the reason being most movie stars & movie lovers are supremely active on this platform.
Baahubali team stirred a huge buzz with many hashtags like #Baahubali, #BaahubaliOnJuly10th, #LiveTheEpic, #ReLiveTheEpic, #Baahubali2, etc.
Their campaign “Baahubali Quest” became extremely popular with #ADayWithBaahubali, which was done to provide lucky tickets urging them to follow the cast & crew of the movie.
Youtube
Comparatively new in the movie promotional game, many Bollywood has started using this platform to unveil their “Making of” & “Behind the scene” videos.
Their snippets of these short videos, promo dialogues, kept the audience on their toes. The inside look of the filmmakers took the audience through a journey, therefore connecting with them personally!
As a part of their promotional marketing strategy, months before the first movie came out, they announced a unique number where, if followed it would give exclusive updates of the film to their fans who registered on 27th December 2014.
This was a fairly new & innovative marketing plan on behalf of their team.
Game creation
To connect with the young crowds, the team developed a game with Moonfrog studio.
It was another fabulous marketing move! Just think about it. Generally, young crowds are more tech-savvy than elders & they kept engaging their young audience with the game. It generated over 10 million downloads from the Google Play Store with an average rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars.
Now that we have discussed about the online marketing strategies, let’s have a look at some of the offline marketing approach by the team.
Offline
IPL season launch
Most of the moviemakers avoid the IPL season for their movie launch, but not the Baahubali team!
The used the opportunity & captured the entire single screens for 3 weeks. They used about 1000 hoardings with an average visibility of 5000 per day.
They took a risk but it worked for them & how!
Multi-lingual
The makers did not want to restrict themselves only to regional languages like Tamil or Telugu. To have a nationwide release the film was made in four languages- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam.
This move was crucial as it made the film widely acceptable to global audiences.
Animation series
Baahubali teamed up with Amazon to create their own animation series before the release of Baahubali: The Conclusion. The series was aired on Amazon Prime with a motive to sustain the movie’s buzz from the first part to the second.
Partnering up with major brands
Nestle, OPPO, Britannia, MacD, Bajaj Almonds Hair Oil, you name it & they are there!
The team incorporated major brands with the movie as a part of their marketing campaign.
Pre-bookings
They tied up with Bookmyshow, Paytm movies and ticknetnew.com and tempted the audience for pre-booking by giving those discounted coupons and other offers. As a result, they had multiple bookings for the same movie.
Outcome
The first movie ended in a major cliffhanger!
The mimic question “Why Kattappa Killed Baahubali?” went viral!
Within no time the hashtag #WKKB was on everyone’s mind, even the ones who somehow had missed the movie!
Every other WhatsApp forward message or Troll pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram had posts/feeds flooded with priceless memes around it, every other day. It made the audience laugh hard till their stomach hurt and this scenario continued for many months ahead.
This made enough buzz for the second part of the movie.
Baahubali: The Beginning garnered around 600 crore worldwide. It topped Google (India) “Trending movie” list in 2015.
It had a historic run in the theatres. It became the first Indian movie to gross over 1000 crore in all the languages. And it did that within 10 days of its release!
It broke all the records worldwide & made a benchmark for any further movie franchise to be made in India!
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