Instagram is a popular marketing platform for marketing related to categories such as Fashion, Entertainment, Celebrities, Food, Automotive, Education, Tourism, Non-Profit and Beauty etc. It has now become a place for brands as well as businesses especially related to the categories described above. Out of the 800 million Instagram members, 25 million are businesses (Business, 2018). Whenever companies want to reach out to their customers, increase the level of their sales, or try to build awareness for their brand, they use Instagram. If you are reading this, you might also be interested in reading the case study of Dunkin’ Donuts  (Instagram and Branding). However, as Instagram is growing and expanding its member base, while on one hand, it offers a great potential to the businesses for using it as a marketing platform, it poses many challenges to them too.  There are certain problems which need to be overcome.  For example, it becomes quite difficult for smaller businesses to get the visibility of Instagram they would desire especially when the comparison is made to the visibility available to the big businesses on this platform. Therefore, to successes knowing the tools well enough is not enough. A proper Instagram marketing strategy is required.

Strategy on Instagram

A successful business strategy can only be created if the marketer has the right benchmarks, deep insights, as well as a comprehensive understanding of ‘trends’. It is, however, important for the marketers to fully understand as to what the current benchmarks and trends are. After a careful analysis of the 2017 trends, postings, and hashtags, it was found that after analysing accounts of 790,000 members, and 3,706 brands from 9 different industries that on the average, more and more of the Instagram users are converting their member profiles to business profiles.  Interestingly, while the video is the most popular technology these days, photos or pictures seem to get the most engagement from the users.  It has been observed that on Instagram, most of the brands post on Thursdays whereas  the geolocated contents are concerned, carousels lead the rest. (Hubspot, 2018). For further reading about this report, click here.

Statistical trends in 2017

2.3% of all Instagram accounts are business accounts while 79.98% accounts are personal and 17.7% are private accounts.  In the last year, there has been a sudden growth of business profiles. Only from July 2017 to November 2017, there was a 66% increase in the business profiles (Business, 2017) which shows a sudden awareness among the business users of the potential and efficacy of Instagram for business and marketing & promotion. In 2018, the trend is not just likely to continue but is expected to grow even faster.

As far as the content types are concerned, it is true that videos are generating enormous interest, however, pictures still rule and with 86,5% of all the posted content on Instagram consists of a single photo only. The share of the videos is 8.9% while carousels take another 4.6%. Stories have been extremely popular in 2017 and over 300 million people are known to be engaging with stories every day. Interestingly, from the point of view of the marketing professionals, one-third of all the stories come from various businesses. In terms of the engagement exhibited by the Instagram users for the various content types on Instagram, photos were the most engaged content.  The engagement rates are simple to calculate.  The sum of the likes and comments are taken and if the profile is a business profile then the saves are added to this sum as well. The total is then divided by the number of followers.  It has been estimated that for a single photo posted, the median engagement rate appears to be 2.7%. Lower rates of engagement for videos and carousels have been observed which are 1.9% and 21.7% respectively (Hubspot, 2018).  To read the complete detail of the other interesting trends please  click here.

Brands on Instagram

498 Fashion brands, 308 from Beauty, 497 from Sports, 486 from Food, 495 from Entertainment, 498 from celebrities, 148 from Education, 209 from Automotive and 130 brands from the Non-Profit sector were analysed with the data being based on Iconosquare Brand Index.  The figure below shows the popular brand practices on Instagram in regard to their industries. The total number of the brands classified above was 3,706.

Figure 1 shows Brand Trends on Instagram  (Hubspot, 2018).

Brand-wise trends

Fashion has the largest space on Instagram. At least 805,204 followers follow it  and giving 16,616 likes and 102 comments per single post. These brands are the most frequent posters as well as they post at least 24 times in a month. Beauty Industry has thrived on Instagram. The two have their sense of aesthetics in common. Beauty brands are getting 68 comments and 4,071 likes per post and the number of followers is 609,502. Beauty brands on the average are posting with a frequency of 17 per month. The following shows the rankings of the Beauty brands measured in terms of the number of followers. For the complete report, click here.

Figure 2 shows Beauty brands ranked in terms of number of followers in millions on Instagram  (Statista, 2018).

Among the Fashion brands, the following is the status of the rankings of brands on Instagram as per Statista. The followers are recorded in millions. For the complete report, click here.

Figure 3 shows Fashion Brands ranked on Instagram as per the number of followers in millions (Statista, 2018).

Engaging Millennials

63% of millennials say that they are more likely to engage with a brand if it approaches them on social media. Instagram is a popular larder of social media and with time the purchasing power of the millennials is rising, and it would continue to do so as they start to get more and more positions of responsibility and authority. Brands are engaging them more and more as they often reply to comments of their followers and even feature them in stories. As Influencer marketing is getting stronger, the big influencers are getting more expensive for brands to hire so micro-influencers are gaining more and more importance. This trend would continue.  In fact, 70% of the young YouTube subscribers prefer to trust influencer opinions as compared to celebrity opinions thus, Instagram is going to be even more important for marketing for brands in the future with passage of time (Lifestyle, 2017). For a complete video on Instagram and Influencer marketing, please watch this video.

To conclude, as with any sort of marketing, it’s all futile until the point that you find what works best for your product and customers. You could read the best practices but you get results only through testing.  I wish you best of luck in creating the best content for your Instagram.  Also, I have attached a link to an interesting journal article for further readings. Please feel free to share this blog, leave comments and suggestions.  

Further readings:

Instagram Photography for Place Branding

Bibliography:

Business, I., 2017. Celebrating a Community of 25 Million Businesses. [Online]
Available at: https://business.instagram.com/blog/25-million-businesses
[Accessed 10 February 2018].

Business, I., 2018. Businesses Love Instagram. [Online]
Available at: https://business.instagram.com/a/toolkit
[Accessed 10 February 2018].

Hubspot, 2018. Instagram Marketing 2018 Trends & Benchmarks Report. [Online]
Available at: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/456580/IG%202018%20Report/Instagram%20Marketing%202018%20(final).pdf?t=1517318235523
[Accessed 10 February 2018].

Lifestyle, A., 2017. INSTAGRAM PREDICTIONS FOR 2018: INFLUENCER MARKETING, LIVESTREAM TOOLS, SHOPPING TAGS, s.l.: YouTube.

Lavoie, K. 2018. Instagram and Branding: A Case Study of Dunkin’ Donuts. Strategic Communications Elon University 2018 [Online]. https://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/academics/communications/research/vol6no2/08_Kally_Lavoie.pdf [10 February 2018].

Statista, 2018. Leading beauty brands ranked by a number of Instagram followers as of December 2017 (in millions). [Online]
Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/536991/leading-beauty-brands-instagram-followers/
[Accessed 10 February 2018].

Statista, 2018. Leading fashion brands ranked by a number of Instagram followers as of December 2017 (in millions). [Online]
Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/483738/leading-fashion-brands-instagram-followers/
[Accessed 10 February 2018].

Thelander, Å. and C. Cassinger. 2017. Brand New Images? Implications of Instagram Photography for Place Branding. Media and Communication 5(4): 6 [Online].

Like all other competitive industries the travel and tourism businesses are stepping up their game to meet needs of customers. It is a no secret that with the adoption of internet in our everyday’s life today’s customer is more educated and hence demanding. This market environment has created a potential opportunity for travel businesses to engage with their audience with the latest tools and technology. According to this quick research, it appears that Virgin Holidays spent about £XXX just last month to acquire website visitors and potential customers searching online for holiday travel. To see how its done click here. So, what is this online customer acquisition tool called SEM and how is it helping travel brands to engage and serve more customers, let’s dig a little deeper.

Search Engine Marketing is the practice of internet advertising. The aim is to improve the ranking of the website in the search engine results. When a certain keyword is entered into search engine query, the most relevant paid advertisement appears. The visitor clicks on that ad and book a flight. This is called Search Engine Marketing. Worldwide tourists are the target customers of travel brands because 81% of tourists conduct online research before booking a flight for their tour. They go to Google, Yahoo or Bing and search for airlines to book their flights. Those travel companies’ ranks higher in this organic search results that have optimised their site and built a lot of important incoming links (Xiang, 2011).  Online travel sales in 2016 was 564.87 billion U.S dollars according to an online statistics portal for market data called Statista and the numbers are expected to increase (see figure 1). For further information click here.

Figure 1: Global online travel sales (statista, 2018)

What do you think?

SEM is an acronym for Search Engine Marketing. Simply blasting out impersonal messages to thousands of tourists with no context is no longer going to cut it the way it might have been in the early 2000’s. If you are not using SEM, then you are going to miss all the potential revenue that would be attainable only if you have invested in the right tool that is SEM. To target potential tourists via SEM, the travel brands first create a strategy by determining the budget, amount of tourists they need and their marketing objectives. Then, they create a list of keywords which the tourists use in the internet search engine.

In the next step, the travel brands optimise their website by rewriting its content and removing any graphics and flash content which prevents the search engines to read the websites content. Then, they generate hyperlinks of their website with the websites of reputable companies. Landing pages are also developed and ads are created to target tourists. They also make blog as part of their SEM strategy.  Subsequent to this, the travel brands create accounts with Google, Yahoo and Bing and set up their campaign with the network and start tracking results (Catherine Murphy, 2008).

Don’t believe me? Watch this video

Will you scale or fail? Position your travel business for progress now. Read on for some of the best SEM tips, how to do it.

To optimise the results of SEM, travel brands uses Google AdWords which is a paid search platform. Travel brands uses Google AdWords to make their website listed on the first page of Google Search Engine. SEM means to build rapport with the tourists. Remember SEM when it comes to create lasting relationships (Pan, 2011).

To target potential tourists via SEM, travel brands add useful content, a discussion forum, video and audio files into their website so that visitors experience satisfaction with it. The travel brands also uses a tracking tool named as “Web Analytics” to have a quick glance at what is working in the Search Engine Marketing and what is not. This allows the travel brand to save money by removing wasted advertising and further optimising its website. For example, marketing directors checks their “Google Analytics account” to detect which websites are sending them more tourists and then they increase their advertising through Search Engine Marketing with them (Killoran, 2013).

Think Big and Focus!

So how travel brands use Search Query Performance Report in SEM?

Travel companies generate a “Search Query Performance” report to find and remove off-target keywords. This report is analysed to identify which keywords did not receive any clicks and which search queries triggered your ad that were clicked on too. After the analysis, existing keywords list is improved by deleting old keywords and replacing them with better targeted keywords. Then, take it as a step further and create new ads text specific to identified search queries.

Why you really need SEM?

Before you get caught up in the hype, you first need to know how SEM accounts are used.

Travel companies have a control where their ads are displayed. The ads appear in search engines by city, state, country and worldwide according to its choice. The companies fine-tune their targeting even further by setting the daytime to display their ads. They also create settings that on which devices the ads should be appeared, such as desktop or mobile. By targeting most relevant tourists, travel agencies reduce their unnecessary spending. No other marketing medium can do this (Sen, 2005).

The keywords that travel brands use for Search Engine Marketing include “Book & Plan, Travel, Holiday Travel, Fly with us, Explore, Meals on Board and Seat Reservation” etc (how different search term performs for example: Holiday travel & Travel).  These keywords help the companies to achieve higher clicks through rates. Travel brands also uses “WordStream Advisor” tool that provides alerts to the marketing manager about which ads are performing strongly and which areas need improvement for immediate results. This makes it easier to manage Search Engine Marketing. Your travel company’s path to success is less complicated than you think. You just have to realize it. SEM has shown its potential to bring together the physical and digital world in 2017. If you are going to use SEM in 2018, the cost is well worth it in my opinion.

2018 is going to be an enthralling year. I can’t wait!

What are your holiday plans? Feel free to share it!

Bibliography

Catherine Murphy, H. a. (2008). “Do small and medium-sized hotels exploit search engine marketing?.” . International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management , 90-97 Volume 20 Issue 1.

Killoran, J. B. (2013). “How to use search engine optimization techniques to increase website visibility.” . IEEE transactions on professional communication, 50-66.

Pan, B. Z. (2011). “The dynamics of search engine marketing for tourist destinations.” . Journal of Travel Research, 365-377 Volume 50 Issue 4.

Statista. 2018. Worldwide digital travel sales 2020 | Statistic. Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/499694/forecast-of-online-travel-sales-worldwide/ [5 January 2018].

Sen, R. (2005). “Optimal search engine marketing strategy.”. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 9-25 Volume 10 Issue 1.

Xiang, Z. a. (2011). “Travel queries on cities in the United States: Implications for search engine marketing for tourist destinations.” . Tourism Management , 88-97 Volume 32 Issue 1.

Before we learn how to analyse Snapchat for marketing, it is imperative to talk about how Snapchat really works as a digital marketing channel. Snapchat is a social networking application for iOS and Android mobile phone users that enables you to take up to 10 seconds of videos or photos with or without using different filters available through the application itself. This is called snaps. The snaps can then be used in a number of different ways:

• Users can upload it straight to their Snapchat story, which can then be seen by the public or users can set the privacy to friends or their followers and it last for 24 hours.
• Users can also send their snaps as messages to their followers or a group of selected friends.
• Directly send it to somebody as a private message.  For further readings please click here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPzZevSbgGk

Snapchat has 178 million daily active users internationally according to an online statistics portal for market data called Statista that specializes in market research and market studies (Statista, 2017).

This blog supports Dave Chaffey’s marketing tactics such as “Viral Marketing and Online Partnerships” (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2015). 10 billion daily video views by 178 million daily active users create a perfect user generated, viral marketing & online partnerships opportunity environment for businesses to use snapchat as a marketing tool (Statista, 2017; Statista, 2016). For further reading please click here.

 Dave Chaffey’s six digital marketing channels (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2015).

Snapchat as a digital marketing channel can support marketing in a number of different ways, to learn more about it please click here. In this blog we will specifically look into Audi’s marketing success with Snapchat.

A very successful campaign on Snapchat from Audi, who were the sponsors of the 2014 Super bowl. Largely viewed as one of year’s biggest sporting events. In order to maximise their reach during this event, they decided to go after the audience who wouldn’t normally be affiliated to the luxury car brand. Throughout the game they sent very simple Snapchats to football fans, of animals and food that were photographed with a camera phone, with witty captions. Fans loved them so much that they took to other social networks to share their feelings about Audi’s Snapchats. Please watch in the video below.

The results were very impressive; 9,600 more followers in 48 hours and reaching to 10,500 followers in total, 100,000 total views on Snapchat, and 37 million total social impressions. This also pushed Snapchats ability to keep up with the volume of user growth. By using Snapchat, Audi gained a huge engagement with new audiences (Audi, 2014). For further readings please click here.

Why did Audi chose snapchat as their marketing channel?

Audi collaborated with Huge and did a survey around individuals second-screen habit when watching TV. The study found that 59% of 2013 Superbowl used their mobile phones during the game (MMA, 2014).  Based on this study Audi found the potential opportunity for a viral marketing to a specific audience and chose Snapchat. 

What success did Audi have with Snapchat marketing?

Audi got more online engagement than any of its automotive rivals on the greatest marketing day of the year and increased its brand awareness on both conventional and web based social networking among Millennials. Snapchat also told Audi that they were the fastest-growing followings they had ever seen (Audi, 2014).

How did Audi use Snapchat to market the Audi brand?

Audi teamed up with The Onion to deliver contents that isn’t about football. You can see some of the snaps in the video above. Audi only used simple photos taken with a smartphone (see the picture below ), the success factors that played behind the campaign going viral was that audi created clever messaging with simple content. This approach engaged more users to pay attentions to their snaps because of the quality and the relevancy of the content as opposed to other brands’ endeavours at “real-time” recordings and more difficult approaches.

Audi’s snaps of a dog during the 2014 Super bowl (Audi, 2014)

Obviously, results for everyone aren’t likely to be quite so spectacular, but it goes to show that thinking outside the box goes a long way!

When did Audi use Snapchat and what advantage they had to chose that specific time period?

Audi started to use Snapchat on the the greatest marketing day of the year; the 2014 Superbowl. It is when millions of people watch the game and in 2014  it had 112.2 million viewers which set a record, as the most watched event in U.S television history (Stelter, 2016).  Having done a research on individual second-screen habit it makes Snapchat the perfect choice for Audi as a digital marketing channel and a lot cheaper than advertising on TV.

To conclude, Snapchat is comparatively a new digital touch point; the above analysis may not be a fully exhaustive critical review of Snapchat as marketing tool. However, I would like to know what do you think of my effort and I am very keen to know about your experience of Snapchat. Please leave your feedback, reviews and suggestion in comments section.

Bibliography:

Audi,. 2014. Audi | Huge. Available from: http://www.hugeinc.com/case-study/super-bowl-snapchat [30 November 2017].

Chaffey, D. and F. Ellis-Chadwick. 2016. Digital marketing. 6th ed. Harlow [etc.]: Pearson.

MMA, 2014. Available from: http://Audi Takes Snapchat by Storm on Super Bowl Sunday [1 December 2017].

Paul, L. 2017. Logan Paul on Twitter. Available from: https://twitter.com/loganpaul/status/486232814195843072?lang=en [29 November 2017].

Statista, 2017. Snapchat daily active users 2017 | Statistic. Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/ [29 November 2017].

Statista, 2017. Snapchat daily active users 2017 | Statistic. Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/513494/snapchat-daily-video-views/[29 November 2017].

Shields, M. 2017. NBA Embraces Snapchat and Google Hangouts For the NBA 2014 Draft. Available from: https://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/06/24/nba-embraces-snapchat-and-google-hangouts-for-the-nba-2014-draft/ [29 November 2017].

Stelter, F. 2016. Super Bowl 50 audience is third largest in TV history. Available from: http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/media/super-bowl-50-ratings/index.html [1 December 2017].

Whitney, M. 2016. Snapchat, Facebook Roll Out Charitable Functions. Available from: https://www.mainstreethost.com/blog/snapchat-facebook-charitable-functions/ [29 November 2017].