Will Native Content Fall Victim to Fake News?

Originally appeared in O’Dwyer’s PR News.

Native ads have overtaken display as the most popular form of digital advertising, but the gaming of social channels and the mistrust of media based on cries of fake news threaten to usurp its value.

In general terms, a native ad is any paid content that mimics the design of the press-generated content available on the channel on which it appears. It can be a paid editorial that subtly weaves a brand’s value into the article. It can be a hashtag that a brand promotes to spur user engagement.

When done well, native ads can be informative and persuade the reader without violating their trust.

In the era of fake news, growing consumer confusion and mistrust, it’s more important than ever that native advertising content be true to this mission.

This article is featured in O’Dwyer’s Nov. ’18 Technology PR Magazine

Fake versus real content

Americans have been hearing a lot about “fake news” over the last four years. The term was actually coined by BuzzFeed editor Craig Silverman, who defined it as “completely false information that was created and spread for profit.”

The noise around fake news first reached a crescendo during the 2016 presidential election, when it dominated airwaves and altered the way some people perceived the mainstream media.

It’s still used in today’s tribal political warfare, which inaccurately calls out quality news content developed by respected news outlets as false. This misrepresentation can bleed over into mistrust of brand-based content. Consumers are struggling to distinguish between factual and manipulative content, as it can be hard to tell the difference between an outright lie intended to provoke a reaction and a sincere sponsored article designed to mimic objective content. Brands are struggling to walk the line between persuasion and transparency.

How has the relationship between consumers and brands changed?

We live in an era of values-based consumerism. In fact, a recent Forrester report found that seven in ten Millennials consider a company’s values when making a purchase — nearly 40 percent higher than the adult population as a whole.

Even among older generations, it’s becoming increasingly important for brands to declare — and act on — clearly defined corporate values. Customers today want authenticity from their favorite brands — whether it’s a declaration of corporate values or a shift toward more user-generated content.

Going forward, it will be increasingly common to see native ads that rely on user-generated content such as reviews and pain points. These ads will still match the channel’s form and function, but the content will be perceived as less advertorial and more authentic.

Why are native ads so effective?

As digital consumers, we’ve developed a remarkable ability to tune out unwanted information. Just look at the way browsing habits on Google have evolved. Five years ago, people started reading at the top of a search results page. Today, people have learned to start reading about a quarter of the way down, skipping over the paid ads and starting with organic results.

One of the reasons native ads are so effective is their ability to manifest as content developed by a credible third party instead of an advertorial.

According to a recent study by CMO.com, consumers are 25 percent more likely to look at a native ad than at a banner. These same consumers check out a native ad 4.7 times per session on average, versus 2.7 times for banners.

Native ads also have a significant impact on conversions and brand affinity. According to research published by Digital Relevance, native ads have been found to increase purchase intent by 18 percent and brand affinity by nine percent, when compared to traditional banner ads.

Brands are taking notice. According to Business Insider, native advertising will drive 74 percent of all ad revenue by 2021.

Where does public relations fit in?

PR practitioners have a responsibility to serve as brand stewards, helping companies define — and protect — their reputation. They also work closely with the media, leading to coverage that factually informs consumers of the benefits provided by their companies or clients. While it appears the PR person serves several masters, these roles can and should be balanced.

This becomes especially important when external factors such as fear mongering threaten to undermine credible content. PR must straddle the line between increasing brand awareness and affinity and producing honest content, both paid and earned.

When it comes to native ads, the following tips will help you develop a paid media strategy that’s positive and reflects well on your brand.

Lead with quality. While it seems obvious, it’s easy to find brands that don’t start with this commitment. Content must address a need, be written in a journalistic tone, adhere to the style of the publication and be non-promotional. Of course, depending on the content and publication, humor and creativity can be effective tools.

Educate on the value of transparency. Consumer trust is inherently fragile and, once lost, difficult to regain. PR professionals can help brands understand the value of transparency and honesty across every channel, including advertising.

Find the right mix of native ads and earned media. There is no denying the effectiveness of native ads, but a well-rounded outreach strategy will always yield better results. Earned media carries special value, whether it’s a contributed article or a high-impact feature story. It’s a little harder to earn coverage than cut a check, but the impact is worth the effort and will boost the efficacy of native efforts.

Craft ads that won’t leave your customers feeling deceived. Not all native ads are created alike. Some are virtually indistinguishable from editorial content; others are clearly marked as sponsored content. If a native ad feels promotional on any level, it can be interpreted as deceitful on every level.

What’s the future of native advertising?

Marketers and brands alike are extremely bullish on native advertising. When looking at the numbers, it’s easy to see why. Native is having a tremendous impact on the advertising and PR worlds, with one forecast by eMarketer projecting 40 percent annual growth over the next few years.

Publications are equally reliant on native ads. For example, these ads are responsible for three-quarters of The Atlantic’s annual ad revenue.

With so much money driving native content, it’s important for PR professionals to get a handle on how best to navigate what can be a gray area and ensure that ethical and quality standards are maintained. Native’s long-term health and success will ultimately depend on providing value to the reader.

Old Websites Are Bad for SEO. Here’s How to Fix Yours

Search engine optimization is constantly changing. What worked last year (or even last month) may no longer be an effective strategy.

Just look at the way SEO has changed in the last decade.

Ten years ago, keyword-dense pages were viewed as the surest path to the top of search results. In response, marketers started stuffing keywords everywhere — on the home page, in half-baked blog posts, even on the background of pages in white (read: hidden) text.

After that it was backlinks. Google no longer trusted marketers to be honest about their sites, so it turned to external sources as a form of social proof. The more links pointing back to a website, the more relevance and value Google assigned it.

Of course, enterprising marketers quickly found a way around this as well. Websites full of spoofed content sprang up overnight, providing hundreds (if not thousands) of fake backlinks to companies.

Today, Google is taking a new approach to SEO. Instead of relying solely on content to determine results, the search giant is also looking at user experience.

The logic behind this is fairly simple — a search engine’s primary function is to serve people the best results. If a page is slow to load, riddled with pop-up ads or hard to read on mobile devices, it negatively impacts the user experience. Google views these pages as “poor” results and penalizes them in its search algorithm.

Making sense of the latest trends

Right now, the prevailing thought among SEO experts is that the following issues negatively impact a website’s ranking:

• Pages that are slow to load
• Pages that are “top heavy” with too many advertisements above the fold
• Pages that are not mobile friendly
• Pages with duplicate content
• Pages with outdated content
• Pages with low-quality content, e.g., spun articles or pages with 1-2 paragraphs of text

As a content marketer or web designer, this presents a unique challenge. How do you optimize your website for the future if the rules are constantly shifting?

Fortunately, everyone has to play by the same rulebook. The brands that find success are the ones that:

1. Pay attention to the latest SEO trends and best practices.
2. Are willing (and able) to quickly implement content and design updates, based on the latest best practices.
3. Understand the needs and motivations of their target audience.

That last bullet point is especially important. It doesn’t matter if you rank highly for keywords your audience is no longer searching for — you need to meet them where they are already located.

If you want to rank higher in search results, your website needs to be optimized for the current best practices. That means a responsive design that works on all devices. It means pages that load quickly and aren’t bogged down by too many ads. It means informative content that’s easy to access and gives people a reason to stay.

Why does my bounce rate matter?

Imagine opening a report on your website’s traffic and discovering that your home page has a bounce rate of 50 percent.

In simple terms, this means that every other person who visits your home page leaves without clicking anywhere else on the site.

Are alarm bells ringing in your head?

They really shouldn’t be. As a general rule of thumb, a bounce rate below 40 percent is considered excellent. Anything between 40 and 60 percent is considered average. It isn’t until you hit rates of 70 percent and higher that there is real cause for concern.

Of course, no marketer worth their salt is going to be happy losing half of their potential customers. If 40 percent is considered excellent, why not push for 30 percent?

Lowering your bounce rate is one of the most effective ways to improve your website’s ranking in search results. If your rate is too high, Google assumes that you were a poor result for that search query.

How do I lower my bounce rate?

There are three things you can tweak to lower your bounce rate — your content marketing, your demand generation strategy and your website’s design:

• Content Marketing: Content marketing is great for driving traffic to your site and giving people a reason to stay. For SEO purposes, try to display recent content or updates near the top of your page. Not only will this give visitors something to click on, but it will make your site appear fresh to Google’s search crawlers.
• Demand Generation: Are your paid ads and outreach efforts attracting the right audience? If the wrong people view your website, it doesn’t matter how strong your positioning is or how modern your site looks — your conversion rate will suffer. It’s also important to point people to the right place. If you are targeting a particular segment of your audience, you may want to create a dedicated landing page that addresses their unique needs and pain points. You can point your paid ads, marketing collateral and social links to this page, saving your visitors the effort of finding it themselves.
• Design: The way your content is presented has a huge impact on its ability to capture attention. Make sure your positioning statements are prominently displayed and visible as soon as someone visits your page, on any device. Don’t ask your visitors to scroll too far down to see relevant information. Whenever possible, avoid nesting content on sub-pages — people have a hard time navigating multi-level menus on mobile devices.

If all three of these elements are working in lockstep, your brand should have a content marketing program that is targeted, easily accessible and front of mind for any website visitors.

At Karbo Communications, we specialize in content marketing programs that increase visibility and drives sales. Our team of marketers and search engine experts can help your brand cut through the confusion around SEO and deliver lasting results.

Standing out in a buzzword-ridden market

As today’s tech markets become increasingly oversaturated, it’s difficult to stand out and easy to resort to established buzzwords. Formulating the right message — and communicating it in a way that is unique and compelling — is crucial to ensuring your target market knows who you are, what you do and what your brand stands for.

Here are some strategies to ensure your brand’s voice is heard in a crowded space.

Talk about the specific pain points your solution addresses.

Companies competing in the same market tend to be locked into similar jargon. In an effort to create differentiation, some brands rely too heavily on technical specifications and data points. Instead, try speaking simply to the problem that your brand solves. What do your target customers need in their toolkit or solution? How can you articulate this, without relying on buzzwords like “innovative,” “comprehensive” or “transformative?”

Whenever possible, provide anecdotes or use cases that demonstrate how your product or solution can be applied in the real world. Customer success stories will always carry more value than any piece of sales collateral — it’s tangible proof that your product or solution can get the job done.

Discuss what you prioritize.

What are your motivations? If your answer is simply to provide a product or solution, you need to revisit your brand story. Try speaking to your values and how they have influenced your products and solutions. Nowadays, customers latch on to socially conscious approaches that understand not just their pain points, but larger issues in their vertical. State your goals and envision the long-term impact of your presence in the market. Doing so will provide a clear roadmap of where you want to go and how you can position your brand.

Offer your level of expertise and background.

People love a good story. Examples of success inspire not just minds, but also purchases. Build credibility with your own background. Discuss what influenced the rise of your product — especially if this resonates with common experiences or pain points in your company’s target vertical. Describing your experience will bolster your credibility as a thought leader and provide context for your brand’s offerings.

Less is more.

Make sure your language is accessible. Your messaging should successfully inform the function and purpose of your market without falling prey to unnecessary flash or too much technical jargon. Say what you need to say and nothing more.

…and that’s it!

Painting a unique picture of your brand requires a solid sense of identity, a clear understanding of your audience, and insight into current and future market trends. If you are able to concisely outline these aspects of your company, personal experience and product, you’ll be able to stand tall among your competitors as they chant the same, anemic buzzwords.

Mine is Bigger Than Yours: Positioning That Moves Markets

Philip Kotler, affectionately known as the “Father of Modern Marketing,” once defined brand positioning as the “act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market.”

It’s a lesson that any company, from scrappy upstarts to enterprise brands with a century of success, should take to heart — no matter your vertical or target audience, distinction is the key to effective positioning.

However, most companies fall short of this charge. According to Forbes, just one in four corporate brands is perceived as different from their competitors.

For brands looking to gain a competitive edge, the represents a tremendous opportunity.

What are the markers of strong positioning?

We’ve all seen messaging that fails to accurately communicate a brand’s vision or key benefits.

Whether it’s a lack of differentiation, failing to identify market hot buttons or putting technology ahead of customers, poor positioning can render other marketing efforts futile.

Instead, your messaging should:

• Cast your audience as the hero: When a brand is excited about its technology, it can be difficult to talk about anything else. But that’s exactly what some of the most successful companies do. Instead of focusing on granular details or rehashing spec sheets, try highlighting how you can help your audience solve their problems.
• Show strong differentiation from competitors: At Karbo Com we think in terms of firsts and onlys. Brands should do the same. Not only does it create the vertical separation that reporters crave, but it forces you to laser in on your solution’s unique benefits.
• Be compelling and tied to current trends: Strong positioning is important, but it won’t get much visibility unless you are able to connect your brand to larger events or vertical issues. Opportunistic coverage is a great way to drive eyes to your solution while reinforcing its value within the market.
• Speak to the needs and motivations of stakeholders: Many brands have a hard time segmenting their message for multiple audiences. Just consider the number of people involved in choosing a new software solution. At an (extremely) high level, you might need to convince IT decision makers, business analysts, end users and C-level executives that your software is the right choice. Your best chance for success? Start with a foundational message (your core value proposition) and tailor it for each persona’s needs and/or pain points.

Overhauling your brand message

Successful positioning is not only knowing what to include, but what to leave out. As a brand, this means having a clearly defined vision, access to data, input from stakeholders and more.

The following are some of the elements that go into the positioning process:

• Research: The foundation of any positioning overhaul should be an in-depth analysis of your brand, your market and your competitors. Are there any gaps between your messaging and key vertical issues? Be sure to include product designers, engineers and business development specialists within your organization — they often have insight into additional pain points can be leveraged.
• Stakeholder audit: The most effective positioning is visionary, not reactionary. Instead of getting trapped in a perpetual cycle of read and react, try dictating how people talk about your market. Soliciting input from internal and external stakeholders can help you identify future or under-represented vertical issues — and where your brand fits in the conversation.
• Inventory analysis: Itemizing your brand’s strengths and opportunities can help drive the tone and tenor of your messaging. Start with a series of questions. What are the top characteristics that make your brand attractive? Are there any important features or technological capabilities that give you an edge over the competition? What are the specific market conditions driving your approach toward success?
• Strawman positioning: Once your research is done, a round of strawman messaging — organized by company, technology and market — can help differentiate your brand and identify key trends to leverage in the months ahead.
• Testing: No positioning exercise is complete without a few surprises. You could have the perfect benefit statement — written in clear, compelling language, tailored to a ready-made audience, delivered on the right channel at the right time — and it simply won’t perform. The key is constant measurement that allows you to refine your message’s tone, tenor, audience and format.

Measuring success

Positioning overhauls are rarely a binary exercise.

Although driving sales should be the ultimate goal of any marketing effort, the way you get there — and the metrics used to define success — varies by your brand and starting position. Metrics that are top of mind for one company might not matter for others.

Just think about the business value of a reduction in negative sentiment. For an enterprise brand coming off a wave of bad press or a PR crisis, this carries tremendous value. For a startup looking to increase its share of voice, it’s not as important.

The ultimate sign of positioning success for any brand? When your competitors start parroting your messages.

At Karbo Communications, we specialize in guiding brands through the complete positioning process, from market research and internal audits to the development of positioning statements. The end result? Clear differentiation, nuanced messaging, increased market understanding, and a clear roadmap of trends and opportunities to leverage in the months ahead.

Just Make ‘Em Laugh

Exhaustive studies by people wearing white coats and smart glasses have determined that laughter is good for you. It’s really good, actually. Far outweighing diet soda or Skechers Shape-ups. The endorphin rush, the flushed cheeks, the bellyache—humor is the gift that keeps on giving, the sensory thwack that no drink or drug can ever fully satisfy.

But enough poetry, for this is a practical guide to the integration of humor in brand identity and its importance to innovation, ROI, paradigm shifts, and other industry jargon.

Humor isn’t easy. Ask any comedian who’s bombed in front of a boozy New York crowd. But that’s why it’s the best practice. Its subjectivity makes it the hardest to nail. Sentimentality in advertising is effortless. That recipe is as follows: one part sweeping exterior shots filtered like an Instagram sunset with serious-faced actors gazing off to somewhere, a stern voice-over, a dog, and ambient indie melodies.

Humor keeps the brand honest and shows the audience the tongue is firmly placed in the cheek. Look at the genius of Bundaberg Rum’s golf course interlopers or any of the bizarre Old Spice spots. They get the conversation started and once it starts, there’s no stopping it.

To get started, here are some quick tips for wild success:

1.)   Know your audience—understand to whom you are speaking so intrinsically you could write their memoirs.

2.)   Have a sense of creative direction—this helps the inventive and organizational powers of a dynamic agency (the good folks at, say, Karbo Communications) to take you where you want to go.

3.)   Strategic flexibility—know what you’re trying to accomplish, but feel comfortable to go down a tangential road.

Simply put, the funniest things are rooted in truths. Old Spice is funny because it plays off this concept of beer-drinking, tree-throwing, damsel-rescuing dudeness that the brand has created and now embodies. They found their core tenant and invented their own language. It gets people talking and clicking and sharing.  Less frequently does your friend say: “Dude, watch this video. It’s like the movie Philadelphia, just, you know, an ad for glue.”

So do it right. Don’t skimp or rush or shortchange your writers or settle for lukewarm content. If so, you’ll end up with lame jokes from a Britishy reptile that can’t even distract a six year-old.

Alex May, Writer

Case Study for Inseego

Background 

 

Inseego Corp. is the industry leader in 5G Enterprise cloud WAN solutions with millions of end customers and thousands of enterprise and SMB customers on its 4G, 5G and cloud platforms. Inseego’s 5G Edge Cloud combines industry’s best 5G technology, rich cloud networking features, and intelligent edge applications. Inseego powers new business experiences by connecting distributed sites and workforces, securing enterprise data and improving business outcomes with intelligent operational visibility—all over a 5G network. 

Although widely known and publicly traded, Inseego is in a field of other established legacy global competitors and had negative earnings reports for over a year. Additionally, Inseego has pivoted its direction from pure hardware to a focus on a software solution that blends the best of 5G and edge cloud. The company has a new CEO and a sharpened focus on channel and key partners. To promote awareness of these new initiatives and to amplify differentiation, other positive factors and increase the company’s market standing, Inseego hired Karbo Communications as the U.S. agency of record in December 2021. Inseego selected Karbo Com based on the team’s strategic prowess, proactive and creative approach to PR, proven track record, ability to elevate thought leaders and increase brand awareness with earned awards and speaking opportunities.

Case Study for vFunction

Background 

 

Many of today’s enterprises rely on legacy Java applications to power their businesses, and face an urgent mandate to move to the cloud as quickly as possible in order to retain competitive market positioning, innovate their businesses and respond to unexpected events like COVID-19. Over time, these enterprises have amassed huge backlogs of 100’s and even 1,000’s of legacy monolithic Java applications to modernize, hampering business transformation initiatives and creating drag on IT departments. Manual modernization tools and projects are slow, costly and ineffective, and modernization strategies such as “lifting and shifting” and containerization without breaking into microservices yield limited benefits. Adding to the complexity, these enterprises often lack the resources and skills to modernize their enterprise applications. 

That’s where vFunction comes in. vFunction eliminates the frustration and pressure of today’s cloud native modernization projects. vFunction enables technology leaders and developers to automatically modernize 1,000s of legacy apps, while removing manual processes and eliminating constraints like time, cost, risk, and limited skills. 

vFunction hired Karbo Communications to launch the company from stealth and announce funding to boost awareness and accelerate the company’s go-to-market strategy. vFunction selected Karbo Communications due to the team’s expertise in SaaS, cloud and B2B technology markets, highly strategic approach to PR and content, proven track record of success building brand awareness, driving leads and growing sales, and communicating highly differentiated market positioning.

Case Study for Incognia

Background 

 

As technology continues to evolve, security and data privacy will remain at the forefront of innovation as fraudsters are consistently looking to outsmart the latest security solutions. The security market is saturated with biometric offerings including facial recognition and fingerprinting and mobile phone users are often quick to provide personally identifiable information (PII) if they believe it will help keep their mobile app profiles secure. Incognia has a different approach – location technology.

Incognia came to Karbo Communications to launch under a new name in the US market, and to help educate the market on location technology and communicate their use cases across multiple market segments. The company looked to drive lead generation and sales through an integrated PR approach. The agency saw an opportunity to educate the market on the importance of Incognia’s technology and ensure that IT decision makers across key vertical markets including payments, fintech, retail, food delivery, gaming and more were aware of the power of location technology to keep users secure and free from friction. As a startup who would go from launching in a new country to successfully announcing their series A funding round, it was critical that Incognia found a partner who could drive market leadership by driving education and differentiation via a thought leadership platform.

Case Study for Mapbox

Background 

 

Mapbox provides precise location data and developer tools to help change the way the world is navigated. Mapbox technology enables applications and experiences across automotive, travel and outdoors, retail, logistics and more. In fact, over 700 million people worldwide touch Mapbox maps each month. Mapbox selected Karbo Communications as a communications partner to assist with messaging and market positioning, to secure top flight media visibility, bolster analyst relations, and grow brand awareness that contributes to sales growth.

Case Study for ConsenSys

Background 

 

Web3 is the newest iteration of the World Wide Web, with a focus on decentralization, blockchain and token-based economics. Much like the first dot-com boom of the late 1990s, companies are focusing on securing mindshare and market share. A company with “first mover” advantage in Web3 is ConsenSys, the blockchain software firm founded in 2014 and the company behind Ethereum, MetaMask and Infura.  

As the industry began to grow, ConsenSys saw competitors developing rival products and tools. This led the company to prioritize establishing a wider brand presence for their industry-leading development tools and to maintain and grow their market share.  This is where Karbo Com enters the story.

In March 2022, ConsenSys hired the agency to help position its developer tools, specifically Infura, as the platform of choice for this community. The company recognized that Web 2.0 developers looking to transition to Web3, or perhaps develop in both worlds, needed to better understand what differentiates ConsenSys and Infura from so many other choices.

Concurrent with all these efforts, ConsenSys was undergoing what was among the biggest events since the company began and perhaps since Web3 originated – “The Merge.” With The Merge, Ethereum was transitioning from “Proof of Work” to “Proof of Stake,” with the objectives of increasing security and scalability while dramatically reducing the energy consumption/emissions. 

Within nine months, Karbo had garnered more than 2,300 stories for ConsenSys in outlets ranging from CNBC to TechCrunch to Decrypt, met with top industry analysts, secured speaking opportunities at leading industry events and won top-tier awards.