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AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics?
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.
Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.
Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Media monitoring helps organizations stay informed about what’s being said across online news, print, broadcast, podcasts, and other media channels. Whether you're tracking brand mentions, measuring PR performance, monitoring competitors, or identifying emerging trends, our expert guides, best practices, and industry insights will help you build a smarter media monitoring strategy and make more informed communications decisions.

Discover expert media monitoring guides, best practices, and industry insights to track brand mentions, monitor competitors, and stay ahead of the news.

Media Monitoring: Guides, Best Practices & Industry Insights

There are few forms of online advertising today that are as ubiquitous and effective as display advertising.

If you’re looking for a way to reach new customers with your online marketing efforts or want to improve your existing display marketing efforts, you’ve come to the right place. 

We’re breaking down what online display advertising is, the benefits (and potential challenges) of display ads, ad examples, measuring advertising success, and much more.  

Benefits & Challenges of Display Advertising

Types of Display Advertising (and Display Ad Examples)

Online display advertising is a form of online keyword advertising that promotes a brand message visually using text, logos, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Digital advertising displays target specific user demographics to increase the ads’ effectiveness and overall campaign success. 

Display ads can help you promote your business when people are browsing Facebook, watching YouTube videos, checking Gmail, or using mobile devices and apps.

According to Google, the Google Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users worldwide, across millions of websites, news pages, blogs, and Google sites like Gmail and YouTube.

The success with display ads all comes down to targeting the right user at the right time with the right message. When done right, your brand can build brand awareness, drive clicks and traffic to your website, increase conversions and sales, and encourage repeat buyers.

There are several benefits of display advertising, but here are a few of the most compelling benefits:

Measurable results: Advertisers can track important metrics (impressions, frequency, CTR, etc.) from start to finish. This allows you to continually improve your ads as you go.

Advanced Segmentation: Advertisers can hyper-segment their campaigns with a wide range of audience demographics and options.

Precise Remarketing: Advertisers know that remarketing can be one of the most powerful tools in the conversion toolkit. Display remarketing campaigns allow you to reach relevant potential buyers with personalized content.

Mobile Friendly: Advertisers can reach the hundreds of millions of people that browse the internet on their mobile device. Display ads are formatted perfectly for a mobile screen, which helps to increase overall success rates. 

Currently, the biggest challenge that advertisers, brands, and marketers face relates to the continued reliance on third-party cookies and the fact that various web browsers are looking to crack down in the coming months.

Banner and display ads are everywhere online - so much so that users might not even notice them anymore. That’s known as “banner blindness” and it is a very real phenomenon in which users automatically tune our banner ads online.

For brands and online marketing professionals, banner blindness makes it very important to experiment with different types of display advertising. The most effective types of display advertising campaigns fall into three buckets:

Campaigns focused on increasing familiarity and brand recognition with the goal of increasing future sales and affinity.

Campaigns focused on getting users to click or engage with display or banner ads with the goal of generating sales.

Campaigns focused on targeting users that have interacted with your ads or visited your website in the past with the goal of improving conversion rates.

Now that you now a but more about display campaigns, you might be asking yourself: what kind of display advertising options are there? Given all of the advertising noise online, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the various types of display advertising to help optimize the effectiveness of your marketing.

Here are a few ad options that your brand can start experimenting with today (examples in the next section):

Google Display Network and Google AdWords (Google Ads)

As mentioned briefly, the Google Display Network is a group of more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. According to Google, Display Network sites reach over 90% of Internet users worldwide.

Google AdWords now known as Google Ads, provides brands and marketers with access to both the Google Search Network and Google Display Network (GDN).

Google Search Network is the most common, well-known form of PPC advertising. With the Google Search Network, your ads will be eligible to appear on Google SERPs (search engine results pages). 

Google Display Network (GDN) gives advertisers the opportunity to place their ads on a variety of sites across the internet.

Interstitial ads have become a mainstay in the era of the mobile phone.

Interstitial ads are full-screen ads that cover the interface of their host app or website. They're typically displayed at natural transition points in the flow of an app, such as between activities in a game.

When an app shows an interstitial ad, the user has the choice to either tap on the ad and continue to its destination or close it and return to the app. Check out this example from Google:

During Google Marketing Live 2019, Google revealed that three 6-second bumper video ads were 107% more memorable, and generated 134% more purchase intent than a single 30-second TrueView ad.

Obviously, a video display ad is an ad in a video format. But in advertising terms, “video ad” typically refers to ads on online digital channels such as social media, YouTube, apps, and websites.

For example, Swiss clothing brand On runs in-stream video ads on YouTube promoting new product lines. The beauty of in-stream video ads is that they are charged on a per view basis, meaning you don’t have to bid against other brands: 

Google’s Dynamic Remarketing will create ads for you that include your price, image, and text of your choice, all based on the behavior of your website visitors. Mobile SMS provider, Attentive, uses Google Dynamic Remarketing ads on major publications like The New York Times to target recent visitors to their website:

Dynamic remarketing helps you build leads and sales by bringing previous visitors back to your site to complete what they started. 

We’ve been talking a lot about Google, but Facebook has a ton of value to offer advertisers at every stage of the funnel with their Facebook Audience Network. 

 According to Facebook, the Audience Network gives publishers and developers the option to choose between three different ad units: banners, interstitials and native ads. All three ad units have access to the same great targeting and advertisers, since the ads are automatically rendered to fit the unit you chose.

Of course, with a robust display advertising strategy, you’ll also want to know how your ads are performing and how to improve them over time.

Here are several key display ad metric analytics that you’ll want to measure:

Impressions: Impressions are when a display advertisement appears on a user's screen.  Impressions are not action-based - they are defined by a user potentially seeing the advertisement. This makes impression-based advertising ideal brand awareness campaigns.

Click-through rate (CTR): Click-through rate, or CTR, is an advertising metric that measures the number of clicks advertisers receive on their ads per number of impressions.

Views/viewers: There are several important metrics to consider when it comes to measuring video ad success. These include:
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Conversion: An action that's “counted” when someone interacts with your ad. For example, this might include clicks to your website or views of a video ad. However, that interaction must lead to a desired outcome (such as a purchase or a page view) as a result of the advertisement.

Tip: Learn more about Measuring Ad Campaign Effectiveness

Similar to many other things in marketing, it’s incredibly important to analyze the performance of your ads so that your brand can refine your campaign strategy. Consistent improvement and experimentation is key for overall display advertising success.

What is (Online) Display Advertising? An Updated Guide

Push and pull marketing are key elements of the promotional mix strategy, yet sometimes these terms leave marketers feeling puzzled. Marketing strategy expert and author, Terence Shimp, describes push-pull marketing as "physical metaphors characterizing the promotional activities manufactures undertake to encourage trade channel members to handle/ merchandise brands and persuade consumers to purchase them.” 

If you're not too sure what’s meant by pull vs push marketing, or how these two methods work together, then you've come to the right place. Use this article to develop the foundations of your own push-pull technique!

What Are the Pros and Cons of Push Marketing?

What Are the Pros and Cons of Pull Marketing?

The synergies: How push and pull marketing work together?

A push marketing strategy, also called a push promotional strategy, is a technique used by manufacturers to “push” intermediaries (like wholesalers and resellers) to increase inventories of their brand versus competitor brands. Following this, wholesalers also often turn to push marketing in order to persuade retailers to sell the goods through a number of tactics including:

In general, companies use a push marketing strategy when launching a new product or operating in a niche market. While this strategy does have its benefits, it also has some drawbacks that must be considered before deciding if this is the best option for you. Let’s explore both sides of the coin so you can base your decision on a well-rounded view.

Let's take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using a push marketing strategy:

Economies of scale are cost savings that occur as a result of making more of a product. If organizations are successful in their push strategy efforts and intermediaries put in a big enough order, companies get to benefit from larger cost-savings. 


When a push strategy is involved, demand is more forecastable and predictable as manufactures are able to produce and push as much or little as they wish. This production control has a significantly positive impact on supply chain management as technically, the demand should exceed the supply.


When using a push marketing technique, the time it takes to generate sales is often faster due to the force in which you present your products and services to the end customer. 

Since a push promotional strategy relies heavily on outbound sales, the model needs to be supported by a strong salesforce that's able to build opportunities by networking actively with retailers and distributors in the market – and this takes time.


Companies using push promotional marketing are at the mercy of the negotiating power of retailers and distributors. For example, if the product is new, it’ll likely be seen as riskier since it’s less profitable and is therefore less likely to be stoked.


Push strategies rely heavily on discounts and offering them to resellers can be expensive - so expensive that your business may struggle to recoup. Sometimes companies are even forced to sell each unit for less than their own manufacturing or acquisition cost, which makes push marketing unaffordable for some companies. Leading on from this, the longer you apply push marketing, the more difficult it becomes for you to get resellers to pay your regular prices.

Pull marketing is the polar opposite of push marketing. So what is an example of market pull? Well, it involves stimulating demand for a product or service and persuading consumers to ask for the product in retail outlets. The goal of this type of promotional marketing strategy is to “pull” customers into store or have a product “pulled” off the shelves, so to speak. Rather than trying to sell to a wholesaler, the manufacturer instead uses a market pull promotional strategy to focus its promotion on the customer and motivates them to want it. They do that using tactics such as:

It’s also worth noting that a modern-day pull marketing strategy tends to use various pull media channels, from social media to pay per click, since the modern-day customer journey is fragmented. This means companies need to be present on the various channels that the audience are using to discover and research. Want to learn more about optimizing your customer journey strategy? Take a look at our ebook, “Demystifying the B2B Online Customer Journey”.

Let's take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using a pull marketing strategy:

Long term success is ultimately determined by the interest of the end buyer. Applying a pull strategy helps you to be more audience-focused and relevant. For example, unlike push marketing, pull marketing allows you to add an element of personalization to your marketing strategy. And with 80% of customers now saying they’re more likely to purchase a product or service from a company that provides personalized experiences, this is now something that is needed to survive in this day and age. Not only this, but personalization also puts you in a better placed to drive brand loyalty and brand equity, both of which are key advantages of a pull strategy.


A pull strategy model can be a powerful way of understanding how a new product is received. Say you’re a new brand and don’t yet know the scope of your audience, based on interest from customers, marketers can test and identify whether their audience has accepted a new product in the market and how large buyer pool may be.


When audiences want your goods, naturally, brands have stronger bargaining power with distributors in the market. You see, distributors don’t want to let customers go, so they’re more willing to negotiate with brands who’re benefiting from pull marketing success. 

Companies that solely focus on pull strategies often miss the market penetration trick. Since the pull marketing strategy model relies on people who already know they have a need, those that have a strictly inbound organization are losing out on market share by excluding people that aren’t yet aware of their brand. Basically, it's almost impossible to build brand awareness by only using a pull strategy as the attention is on consumers already interested in your product or service.


Creating high demand using a pull technique can be difficult in a competitive market. Interest doesn’t just appear, any marketer will tell you that a lot of time and effort goes into generating content that facilitates it.


Expanding on the point above, pull marketing strategy efforts can also be difficult to measure. While quantifying marketing ROI has come a long way in recent years, it still has some way to go, especially when it comes to attributing acquisitions.

Now we understand the benefits and drawbacks of solely using a push or pull strategy, let’s take a look at the synergies between them. 

There are a number of elements at play that influence decision-making around whether a marketer leans more on a pull or push marketing strategy, including goals/ objectives/ KPIs, the type of product/ service they offer (industrial or consumer?), type of buying situation and more. Having said that, blending elements of push-pull marketing together is where the sweet spot is at, after all, push and pull models naturally align. Here's an example of how push and pull marketing work together: 

In order to boost sales of a newly launched product, a manufacturer decides to promote to the end consumer (pull). Knowing the importance of balancing promotion with intermediaries too, they decide to simultaneously offer trade discounts (push) in order to 'move' their products through distribution channels.

As marketing professionals, we need to create market demand (awareness) and then help develop the lead pipeline (sales). Initially push marketing helps generate the need and a pull marketing strategy offers a way for users to satisfy that need. Because of this, companies rarely exclusively use either approach at a given time, instead, they integrate push-pull marketing so they can benefit from the advantages and limit the drawbacks of each push and pull technique.  

An integrated marketing communication strategy (ICM) refers to the process of creating a unified and seamless experience for customers. The model attempts to meld all aspects of marketing communication, such as advertising, promotions, direct sales, public relations, social media, etc., so that all align in harmony as a unified force. While a push marketing strategy deals with resellers, the resellers ultimately interact with consumers on the brand's behalf, so it’s important that marketing professionals cultivate seamless experiences with both intermediaries and the end customer. This is when integrated push and pull marketing become paramount. 

For integrated marketing communications to be successful, the marketer must ensure push and pull strategy messages communicated across all push and pull channels are aligned. As mentioned, when all channels work in synergy, it manifests a unified force – one not to be reckoned with! The most common disconnect between a push and pull strategy occurs between personal selling and other elements of the promotional mix, so pay close attention to breaking down the silos and creating sales enablement material that can support integrated communications. If sales and marketing are singing from different hymn sheets, it's easy for the message to become blurred and confusing for the consumer.

So there we have it, how to identify the difference between a push and pull strategy, why both models are needed if you’re to successfully balance the process of creating market demand and sales and how to integrate your push pull technique. If you’re in the process of launching a new product, consider the points given in this article before deciding on the best push-pull model and approach to take. We're always here for a chat, so if you'd like to learn more about creating a push pull model that works for your business, fill out the form below and we'll be in touch! 

Push and Pull Marketing: Differences and Synergies

If there is one thing we know for sure, it is that 2020 is the year that is defined by change and uncertainty. And change doesn’t come slowly - it arrives swiftly, with very little warning, and demands immediate action. From a business perspective, it’s a reminder that we need to be constantly looking ahead; ready for innovation, ready for change. As Marketers, now is a good time to start looking at trends that will impact where the industry is going in 2021 and how these trends could be used for your future strategies. What does 2021 hold for Marketing?

In a recent LinkedIn Live hosted by Meltwater’s Enterprise Director, Julia Nill, the Chief Marketing Officer at Standard Bank Group, Thulani Sibeko shared his key insights on the top 3 things to know about when it comes to the Future of Marketing.

“None of us planned for COVID but what we can’t avoid is that COVID is with us,” Thulani shared on the impact that the current global pandemic has had on numerous industries, including marketing. Due to COVID, priorities have changed, causing a shift in the strategies we had in mind for 2020. What started out as a health pandemic soon turned into an economic one, as travel was banned, borders were closed and businesses were in jeopardy. This then ultimately led to COVID having social implications, such as living under lockdown regulations and working from home. 

So how will marketers navigate a post-covid world? Thulani shared how for marketers, they need to consider the implications of COVID on the economy and society, and how the core of marketing is meeting people’s needs in a profitable way. 

“Suddenly, the needs of people, driven by these social and economic drivers have changed in many ways. For example, if you are in the luxury goods space, people have deprioritised a lot of luxury products and don’t require those as much. But if you find yourself in the health-related products, the demand for those has shot up.” With the priority of consumers now different to what they may have been at the start of 2020, what can marketers do to meet their current and future needs? 

For one, marketers need to realise how the community has now taken on an important role beyond your target audience and core customer base. Think about Nike and how, at the start of lockdown regulations across the globe, they asked their customers to “play inside, play for the world” for a campaign that still encouraged people to keep active but to do so indoors instead. This, together with how premium fees for their Nike Training App were waived encouraged a sense of community in a world where social distancing was the sudden norm.

Marketers need to understand who their audience is and ensure that they personalise their customer journey. Creating buyer personas is still relevant, and will continue to be relevant, because of how it allows marketers to personalise at mass scale. Once marketers have refined their method of doing things that matter to their customers, the more likely they will succeed. 

However, while change in a post-covid world is inevitable for marketers, Thulani highlights that there is a difference between forced change and choiceful change. “There are certain things that have been forced on us because of current circumstances, and I believe that it will be a mistake if we assume that all of the change that we see will automatically translate into the new normal because as soon as people have choices, the things that were forced but weren’t meaningful to them will be dropped. So it is important that we stay on top of understanding our customers and their motivations.”

For many consumers, brand purpose has become increasingly important as the functionality of a product begins to fade away and brand experience takes its place. Brand experience not only encompasses how customers are made to feel about a particular brand but also what that brand stands for and their guiding principles. Where does marketing fit into this and will it play a bigger role in driving sales?

“In many ways, the elevation of brand purpose has brought marketing to the table, even in organisations that have not been marketing-centric, there has been a growing appreciation,” says Thulani, who seems brand purpose and brand promise as inseparable. Over time, we have seen customers make the change towards choosing brands who choose things that actually matter to them. This goes beyond catchy slogans and logo designs; consumers now want to put their money behind the brands that are doing the right thing and standing for something other than making a profit. 

This will tie into your brand purpose and refining why your organisation exists beyond this profit motive. Are you looking to source from local manufacturers? How have you protected employees during the current pandemic? These are just a few examples of what consumers could be asking themselves as they begin to support the brands that choose to support what matters. For marketers, this will be the competitive advantage that they need to tap into when it comes to distinguishing themselves in the marketing landscape from here on. Brand purpose affords differentiation and for marketers, this is the compliment you want to receive. Couple this tapping into creating an emotional connection with your customers and soon enough, marketers will find the sweet spot that will make them stick in the minds of their audience. 

“The importance of commercial value and connecting with customers, for me, is inseparable,” Thulani shared and sees that investing in marketing means doing so at the appropriate levels that depend on the objects that need to be achieved. According to a study from Marketing Week, 65% of marketers foresee a decrease in their annual marketing budget as a result of COVID-19 and the cost pressures that came with it. However, Thulani, much like many other CMO’s, remain optimistic about retaining the marketing budget spend because the rewards are still reaped but merely deferred for now. 

Marketers will face the challenge of securing marketing investments to achieve their objectives but how can they overcome this? By accurately showing the return and impact that marketing has on the commercial aspect of an organisation. Creativity may shine in this regard but what marketers need to do is make the link between customer aspirations and translating that into commercial value. How? By looking into using the right marketing tools and software to accurately depict this. The global use of technology has increased this year and it has also become increasingly important that marketers have the right technology to help them meet their objectives. 

In Garnter’s 2019 CMO Spend Survey, marketing tools, on average, make up a quarter of the marketing budget because of the advantages that these tools bring. While fighting for investment in marketing may seem like one impossible task, the rewards reaped are priceless and echo Thulani’s sentiments on investing in marketing to help the organisation achieve commercial success. 

Where does this leave the future of marketing? 

"I've seen extremely encouraging examples of companies and brands all over the world giving their customers breathing space and being there for them even in times of trouble," Julia said in closing the conversation with Thulani on what brands have done during this crisis period, and what they need to do in the future. 

Marketers will need to get comfortable with being flexible and knowing how to think fast and act quickly to not just the current situation but to any situation that may come in the future. As we adjust to the new normal and a post-covid world, marketers will not only need to familiarise themselves with how COVID has impacted marketing now but ensure that they have an understanding of its impact for the future. Adjustment and innovation will be key for marketers but one thing that should remain constant is the brand purpose and making sure that taking the time to create valuable and meaningful connections with customers that will extend well beyond 2020. 

Watch the full LinkedIn Live to learn more from Standard Bank’s Chief Marketing Officer, Thulani Sibeko.  To stay up to date with more LinkedIn Live videos, follow Meltwater's LinkedIn page.  

The Top 3 Things to Know About the Future of Marketing

Social distancing, face masks, lockdowns, working from home, airborne diseases, sanitising yourselves - the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about changes to how we lead our lives these days. The pandemic has affected every industry and how businesses run their operations. The digitalisation of services in the banking industry has been around for some time. And now it has become a critical part of our daily lives. Meltwater dives into the social media data to uncover the latest trends in the virtual banking industry in Hong Kong.

So which bank came out on top in social media and has got everyone talking about it? Our data showed that ZA Bank, in the period between February 2020 and June 2020, was the most mentioned virtual bank in Hong Kong’s mainstream media. The bank’s media coverage exponentially increased from 52% to 65% between the periods of February-April and May-June in 2020. During these periods, Mox Bank and WeLab were the two next talked about virtual banks across Hong Kong news channels.

Since February, ZA Bank was already the most mentioned virtual bank across Hong Kong news channels, with a relative share of voice of 52.07%, followed by Mox Bank with 22.3% and WeLab with 14.82%.

Since early-May, the share of voice of ZA Bank has grown even more significantly to 64.67%. 

So what caused this focus on ZA Bank’s virtual banking experience? Mainstream media’s focus on the HKSAR government’s newly-introduced cash payout scheme boosted ZA Bank’s presence because netizens started to discuss referral bonus schemes for account openings. As ZA Bank had attractive offers for the cash payout scheme, this translated to more people talking about the bank. This was also reflected in the Social Keyword Cloud for virtual banking in the same period. Most keywords were in relation to ZA Bank’s referral scheme and invitation codes were also shared to increase the awareness of the bank’s promotions. 

Factors contributing to the Virtual Banking Buzz

News mentions of virtual banks at both peaks on June 2nd-3rd (96 mentions) and 8th (93 mentions) revolved around the cash pay-out scheme that was rolled out by the HKSAR Government. Interestingly, the articles by New Holiday Magazine and New Monday, which were shared/liked/commented on most during the respective dates, listed out the monetary incentives traditional banks and ZA Bank offered to attract account-opening under the cash pay-out scheme. New Holiday Magazine has generated 24412 social echoes on Facebook, whereas New Monday was shared/liked/commented on social media for 980 times.

Most of the trending keywords are associated with ZA Bank’s referral scheme, such as “定期存款” (Translation: Time Deposit) (87 mentions) and 活期存利率 (Translation: Demand deposit interest rate) (81 mentions). Clicking onto the themes, we can immediately see the invitation codes of ZA Bank linked with these keywords. “眾安銀行” (Translation: ZA Bank) (20 mentions), “ZA Bank 眾安銀” (13 mentions) and “ZA 銀行開左戶” (Translation: Opened account at ZA Bank) (82 mentions) also appeared frequently in the social discussions. It is likely that the referral scheme paired with several discounts has heightened the awareness and attracted an increasing number of customers for ZA Bank.

Discussions continued through early-June, given some obvious spikes on the chart. There were 184 discussions starting from June 1st, and more than 90% of discussions (134 in total) revolved around ZA Bank.

Riding on HKD10000 Government’s cash payout, ZA Bank’s decision to offer $1000 on top of the cash payout has accumulated 64 mentions, accounting for 35% of total mentions.

On the other hand, 36% (67 in total) are referring to the referral scheme of ZA Bank. Those who registered for ZA Bank were sending out invitation codes on the Internet, in order to get a 2% p.a. rate-up coupon, in different threads, particularly discuss.com.hk. 

Reluctance Towards the Virtual Banking Industry

A sentiment analysis on virtual banking showed there were almost 13 times more negative mentions than positive ones. There were a total of 57 mentions with negative sentiments within the period of 1st June to 9th June. Neutral sentiments were generally made up of invitation codes for the referral scheme. A few factors which drove away potential customers from virtual banking were notably found in discussion boards.

We noticed some negative keywords such as 小便宜 (13 mentions) in the keyword cloud. They were linked with LIHKG posts where netizens highlighted their security concerns of facial recognition required by ZA Bank. This unsettled potential customers who were worried that the biometrics requirements would be used to cross-check their identity when captured on CCTV. Also, these measures were only required by virtual banks, but not traditional banks. This led to some discouraging others from registering.

Top social post with negative sentiment around virtual banking


The tweet by @samhon852 that potentially reached 6.94K readers showed that some netizens deemed the referral scheme as a highly contentious move. The netizens complained about ZA Bank’s biometric measures when opening an account, suggesting that ZA Bank would “collect your personal data for China”.

Notably, the LIHKG thread titled as “ZA 虛擬銀行騙局” (Translation: ZA Bank Scam) was reposted on Twitter by @Hkers51 and several netizens. The discussion thread accumulated over 4 pages, 81 replies and 158 reactions. As expected, it addressed the concerns regarding the facial recognition and data security of ZA Bank. It is likely that these concerns contributed to potential customers hesitating to sign up for virtual banking.

2. Perception of E-Banking and Virtual Banking

There was a discussion thread on 21st May that generated a high volume of attention - “虛擬銀行既成立，係咪利多於弊？？“ (Translation: Do the advantages of virtual banks outweigh the disadvantages?). A worrying trend of the discussions in the threads revealed that netizens did not realise the difference between e-banking and virtual banking. Many highlighted that the two services were the same and this contributed to them not signing up for virtual banking services as they felt it was redundant.

Undoubtedly, discussions about offshore accounts saw a boost since the first mention of the recent turbulence in Hong Kong on May 21st. There was a 4928% surge in discussions regarding offshore accounts (including both News and Social) during the period of 21/5 - 9/6 in Hong Kong, compared to the last period. The trending themes regarding offshore accounts within the period are mostly associated with the recent legislation.

There were 191 news articles on offshore accounts in total during the monitored period. In early June, there were some spikes on the topic of offshore accounts, peaking on June 1st. Interestingly, the SCMP publication, with the highest potential reach of 21M, and the article by Headline with top social echo (4575 Reposts; 1 Retweet) both mentioned how netizens’ worries regarding the recent turbulence in Hong Kong  and the United States’ decision to revoke preferential treatment led to offshore account openings and panic-buying of US dollars.

There is an apparent increase in discussions about offshore banking as well as overseas banking. It suggests that netizens are currently looking for new banking options with offshore banking. As no offshore banking services were available in Hong Kong virtual banks, it may be seen as a competitive disadvantage against overseas virtual banks. 

Naturally, netizens began discussing alternative options on virtual banks and conversations on overseas-based institutions gathered steam during the recent turbulence in Hong kong. Netizens gravitated to this option as traditional banking presented an economic stumbling block. This however posed stiff competition to Hong Kong’s virtual banks.

There were 199 mentions since May 21st. The peak on May 22nd, highlighted an article that potentially reached 327K readers and garnered 927 reactions on a how-to guide on opening offshore accounts through traditional banks, securities and overseas virtual banks, published by U Blog. Benefits of overseas virtual banking such as low deposit requirements were mentioned in the article. Similar news articles can be found in late-May and early June, as the discussions continued to rise in June.

The largest volume of forum discussions (50 in total) occurred on June 9th. Many posts discussed offshore account openings in overseas virtual banks. Specifically, LIHKG’s forum discussion threads relating to opening offshore accounts with a lower to no deposit requirements have garnered 5807 comments and 850 reactions. Additionally, the discussion thread was retweeted and accumulated 1.25K reach.

This brief overview on what netizens have discussed on virtual banking and its related topics in the past five months revealed that more awareness is needed to inform people about the service. The misinterpretation of e-banking and virtual banking services needs to be clarified so that people can make better informed opinions which would inevitably lead to better take-up rates. ZA Bank’s competitive rates and promotions may be a driving force in its coverage but a better awareness campaign of the benefits of virtual banking and dispelling misunderstandings on security should benefit virtual banking providers, especially local ones. 

Despite the recent turbulence in Hong Kong being a leading motivator of potential customers opting for overseas banks, local virtual banking providers such as ZA Bank, Mox Bank and WeLab can refocus on developing better outreach programmes to give assurances to its current customers and engaging with netizens as they are a potential pool of future leads. Finally, virtual banking is a highly beneficial service which customers can fully optimise to fit into their everyday lives, especially during a pandemic. And this is where banks can step in to fulfill the fiscal needs of Hong Kong residents.

Trends shaping the virtual banking industry in Hong Kong

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