Instagram Has No Idea What Digital Marketers Want

Today In Digital Marketing is a daily podcast showcasing the latest in marketing trends and updates. This week, Tod touches on:

• What AR Will Do For Your Marketing Campaigns
• Walmart Buys "Virtual Changing Room" Tech
• Pinterest Testing Livestreaming Tech
• Instagram Content Creation TestBelow is the transcription from this weeks topics

What AR Will Do For Your Marketing Campaigns

A few times a week, I'll jump on my TikTok account (@DigitalMarketingSecrets) and go live, answering questions people have about digital marketing.

Most of the questions I get are pretty basic — how do I get more leads for my gym, or which platform is the best, or should I focus on traffic or post engagement?

The answer to all these, of course, is "It depends."

But there's one question I don't answer this way — and that question is "What do you think is the next big tech for marketing."

I have an opinion here — augmented reality.

I think AR is on the verge of becoming the next great tech in marketing because it's aligning with four huge trendlines:

1. Mobile phones are now fast enough to handle advanced real-time AR rendering
2. Huge investments are being made in the connection between AR and e-commerce
3. All the social platforms are racing to build AR into their apps
4. Consumers are coming to expect offer and product customization from marketers

One of the platforms that wants to be out front: Snapchat, which has embraced AR from its early days, though it was used then more for fun than commerce.

Today, the company released a study [PDF] they did with Deloitte Digital, in which they asked 15,000 consumers across 15 countries what they thought of the whole space.

First, adoption rate — quoting Snapchat:

AR adoption is tracking with the mobile usage boom we saw in the mid 2000s: By 2025, nearly 75% of the global population and almost all smartphone users will be frequent AR users.

And they say AR is already influencing people's buying decisions — more than 100 million people currently shop using some kind of AR tech.

Here's SocialMediaToday's take on it:

The expanded potential of these tools, including virtual try-on options and digital product placement (like 3D visualizations for furniture) in the home, will build on this, making AR an even bigger consideration for more businesses over time. That becomes even more significant when you also consider the rise of eCommerce, which has seen a significant boost as a result of the pandemic.

And, back to the Snapchat study:

Consumers continuously expect more personalized and engaging experiences that enable them to interact with the world. The companies that embrace change can become dominant industry players – those that don’t, fall behind competitors …and sink.

Walmart Buys "Virtual Changing Room" Tech

Snapchat's not the only brand racing fast to get deeper into AR.

Walmart today announced they'd acquired Zeekit, a company that created a virtual changing room.

When the experience is live on their site, customers will upload a photo of themselves, or choose from a series of models that best represent their height, shape and skin tone — then the site will show them in any item of clothing, mimicking the experience of trying on clothes in a store. They can even share their virtual outfits with friends for a second opinion.

This isn't the first such tech, of course. Sephora's been doing try-on makeup for 7 years now. And Snapchat recently bought the sizing tech company Fit Analytics.

Despite the global pandemic that kept many people out of its stores — and actually, probably because of that, Walmart had a great 2020. E-commerce sales rose 79% for the fiscal year.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Pinterest Testing Livestreaming Tech

So AR will be big. What else is on the hot-list? 30 points to you if you said livestreamed e-commerce.

And now, one of the OGs of consumer brand awareness platforms is jumping into that as well.

Pinterest today said later this month it will host a three-day live virtual event, which will feature a range of live-streamed sessions from creators and celebrities. The big difference here — this won't be livestreamed on YouTube, viewers will watch directly in the Pinterest app. [register]

They will have a new Pinterest Live page, sort of an index of all the upcoming scheduled live events, with a Remind Me button.

For now, these events will only be available on mobile, and only to Americans.

In this first upcoming test, viewers will be able to comment on the video to interact with the hosts, but there won't be any kind of e-commerce integration.

But, quoting SocialMediaToday:

"...that's no doubt coming - with TikTok airing its own shopping-focused live-streams, you can bet that Pinterest is also eyeing the same, linking its expanding catalog of product pins into a live-stream experience that will eventually enable all Pinners to broadcast live, and promote their products within the app.
Which makes sense, especially given the popularity of food and beauty content on the platform. Through live-streaming, chefs will be able to guide Pinners through their recipes, while beauty creators will have a direct option to better showcase various products.
In this respect, live-streaming seems to fit perfectly within the Pinterest ecosystem - and when you also consider that video views within Pins increased more than 3x in 2020, there's clearly demand for more video content within the app.

Also, in related livestream news, Facebook this afternoon published a white paper on best practices for livestreaming company events on social.

Instagram Content Creation Test

An independent software engineer has found code on Instagram's web site showing that they're working on a publish tool there. You drag images on to the page, select a crop, a filter, and add captions. Basically the mobile workflow, but on the web.

And, sure, I guess, but have the programmers at Instagram not been told about Creator Studio? 'Cause I thought that's where they were going to consolidate everything. Or was that Business Suite? Or Creative Hub?

Anyway. My take: Who cares. We all use third-party platforms for this now anyway because they forced us to.

And the one thing social media managers actually need from Instagram, we still don't have: the ability to see and reply to DMs in the third-party tool of our choice. It's mind-boggling to me that Instagram still believes brand managers and digital marketers really prefer to handle DMs from our personal phones.

Mind-boggling.

Credit to Tod Maffin and the Today In Digital Marketing podcast, Produced by engageQ.com.