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The real time marketing checklist – What brands should know before posting

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A few weeks ago during the Superbowl, Cheerios tweeted this picture.

Cheerios tweet

The photo was posted seconds after an impressive goal line interception by Malcolm Butler for the New England Patriots, and the image immediately went viral. At present it has 887 re-tweets and has been favourited 875 times.

The practice is called real time marketing and by interacting with current and popular, real world events companies are able to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ of a large audience at no extra cost.

Oreo made this strategy mainstream with the ‘dunk in the dark’ post during the 2013 Superbowl, where at one point, due to a technical failure, the stadium lost power and all the lights went out for about 5 minutes during play. During this time, a team of marketers working together in a ‘battle room’, exclusively to live tweet the match managed to conceptualise, create, and post the brilliant tweet below.

Oreo tweet – You can still dunk in the dark

This image was shared 20,000 times on Facebook, was retweeted 15,000 times and received 525 Million media impressions (5 times more than people who watched the game!) It also received 14 marketing awards and positioned Oreo as a leader in real time marketing (360i, 2015). Not bad for an unpaid ad right? Especially when considering 30 seconds of airtime during a Superbowl commercial break will set you back $4 Million! (On Marketing, 2014)

So agreed – Real time marketing can be great if its done right, but after witnessing the successes that I have just talked about, all sorts of companies are trying to get in on the action, unfortunately with forced, badly written and irrelevant posts which add little to no value to the brand. Take a look at these examples below.

Gap tweet

charmin tweet

Both Gap’s attempted exploitation of Hurricane sandy and Charmin’s slightly vulgar oscar tweet are completed un related to the events in question, nor do the events stand for any of the brand values. It comes across as if they are trying to shoehorn their brand and it is totally transparent to the customer.

Based on these right and wrong examples of real time marketing, I have established three questions that any marketer should ask themselves before embracing in the activity.

1. Is this post relevant to the event?

The number one question that a marketer should ask themselves before trying to involve themselves with a real world event is, is my post relevant? It is no good creating something and at the last minute trying to tie it into a real world event. This is ‘Real time’ marketing after all. The clues in the name! Real time marketing posts should be created with a specific point to address, and if you cant make that fit around one of your brands core values or products – just leave it, there will be other chances.

2.does the post set the right tone for the brand?

Gap and hurricanes are far from similar, but more and more brands are trying to get in on the buzz surrounding international events, even if it has nothing to do with the organisation in question, and more worryingly, even if it is a sensitive subject. What should be remembered in these situations is weather you want your brand to be associated with a certain topic. If a topic is very sensitive it is probably best to stay away, as trying to profit from a disaster or negative incident is never perceived well in the eyes of the consumer. Take for example the 9/11 memorial tweets by Verizon or Build a Bear (images below).

Build a Bear tweet

AT&T Tweet

These tweets received severe dislike from users of social media, and although it is respectable for a company to pay their respect for disasters like this, it is certainly not a place to stamp your logo, product or hashtag. Research done by Jansen, B. et al (2009), found that 33% of mentions of brands on twitter were negative or critical towards the company, and giving your customers a reason to be critical, especially on said platform is suicide.

3. Will my post add value to the customer?

Whether it increases brand awareness, entertains the audience or offers the customer something they want exactly when they want it, it is very important to make sure that your post offers some kind of value to customers. Would your customer get any benefit from seeing your post on their feed is a good question to ask yourself. Adding value is important and should be considered with regards to all social media activity, and if you haven’t yet nailed adding value on the most basic level, it might be worth going back to basics before attempting real time marketing.

There is still a lot to be learnt from real time marketing, but it will take time to truly understand how the customer reacts and responds. Is real time marketing here to stay? For now, most certainly yes. Its an impossibly cheap and effective way to increase brand awareness. However, my personal opinion is that people will soon get fed up of having their personal social networks, cluttered with what is essentially advertising. This will most certainly separate the boys from the men and brands that can not add real value to customers can expect a huge decrease in brand interaction as well as possibly loosing touch with their customer.

References

360i, (2015). The Oreo Blackout Tweet. [online] Available at: http://www.360i.co.uk/work/oreo-super-bowl/ [Accessed 17 Feb. 2015].

Jansen, B., Zhang, M., Sobel, K. and Chowdury, A. (2009). Twitter power: Tweets as electronic word of mouth. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(11), pp.2169-2188.

On Marketing (2014). Yes, A Super Bowl Ad Really Is Worth $4 Million. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2014/01/29/yes-a-super-bowl-ad-really-is-worth-4-million/ [Accessed 17 Feb. 2015].

More ‘brand’ for your buck – the best social media advertising for brands on a budget

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I have to admit, Im a total neat freak when it comes to my phone. Especially in regards to apps. I seem to constantly have hundreds of unused free apps on my phone which I downloaded for some reason or another and never used and so periodically, I like to go through everything and clear them out. Which is when it occurred to me – I have one whole page of social media applications (16 apps)!

One whole page of social media Apps on my phone

Screenshot of social media apps currently on my phone as proof!

Granted, I don’t use all of these, but I couldn’t bring myself to delete any of them, just incase I did get a notification. At this point I had a thought – What If I had to choose only one social networking site? And then I had a slightly more serious thought. What about businesses? On average in costs $4,500 to outsource Facebook and Twitter management (Contentfac, 2011), and so what if a company only had enough money to invest in professionally managing one, what should they choose?

The obvious choice is Facebook, it seems that almost everyone in the western world has an account, and the site pretty much includes all of the best bits from its competitors. Facebook has over 1.3 billion  active, monthly users, which is a billion more active users than its closest, western competition – Instagram, which has 300 million active users (yes, Facebook owns Instagram but lets look at platforms rather than organisations for now). This is then followed by Twitter 284 million active users (Statista, 2015). However, this doesn’t mean Facebook is the best, Whatsapp has 600 million active users yet, at the moment they are unreachable by brands and whose to say that users on Twitter don’t interact with brands more than those on Facebook?

Adweek (2015) looked into this and found that brand engagement was twice as strong on Instagram as it was on Facebook, with 6,932 actions per post on Instagram compared to 2,396 on Facebook. Another study by Smith (2012) looked at brand interaction between Facebook, Twitter and youtube but this time found Facebook to have the highest response to marketer action, followed by twitter. These statistics are interesting although should be taken with a pinch of salt, as the process of liking a photo on Instagram or Facebook is much less valuable to a brand than a re-tweet on twitter (Traphagen, 2015).

Another aspect to bare in mind when choosing one social network is price. Now, many smaller businesses are happy to just do this on their own, but there are a growing number of agencies who will manage social media accounts for you. This includes writing messages, creating photos and planning campaigns however all of this costs a lot. Contentfac (2011) found that to outsource the creation and management of A Twitter account companies pay on average between $2,000 – $4,000 a month and $2,500 – $5,000 for Facebook management! This is a lot of money and it could be argued that its not worth spending the extra money for a Facebook campaign compared to Twitter, especially when Smith (2012) found that Facebook generates only 4% more responses from its audience.

The last thing that needs to be thought about before leaping into the social networking stratosphere is, is the platform right for my industry? Facebook and Twitter are the most open with Facebook especially targeting everyone from teens to the elderly. Things like Instagram however are slightly more targeted. Fashion, food and luxury brands work great on Instagram, gaming companies – not so much. Sites like Linkedin are even more targeted and only really appeal to advertisers targeting other businesses. As a rule of thumb its probably best to stick to the more open sites unless your product really fits within another platform.

Its hard to say if there is a best social network but the thought behind this post is valid, as companies are surly reluctant to shell out a minimum of $2,000 per month for every social network they want to be present on. Looking at everything I’ve seen today, I’d have to say Facebook is the most important. I know its expensive and I know not everyone is willing to engage with brands but the potential audience is leaps and bounds above the rest and at the end of the day thats whats most important, right? Besides, you can always mirror your Facebook posts across platforms at no extra cost. Or at least until you have a little more of a marketing budget to shell out on the other social networks!

References

Contentfac, (2011). How Much Does it Cost to Outsource Social Media Marketing? . [online] Available at: http://www.contentfac.com/how-much-does-social-media-marketing-cost/ [Accessed 9 Feb. 2015].

Heine. C, (2015). Instagram Marketing Is Quickly Catching Up to Facebook. [online] Available at: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/instagram-marketing-quickly-catching-facebook-159249 [Accessed 9 Feb. 2015].

Smith, A., Fischer, E. and Yongjian, C. (2012). How Does Brand-related User-generated Content Differ across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter?. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(2), pp.102-113.

Statista (2015). Social networks: global sites ranked by users 2015 | Statistic. [online] Statista. Available at: http://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ [Accessed 9 Feb. 2015].

Traphagen, M. (2015). Why Engagement DOES Matter As A Social Media Metric. [online] Marketing Land. Available at: http://marketingland.com/engagement-matter-social-media-metric-114497 [Accessed 9 Feb. 2015].

How to write a great newsletter

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Email newsletters are now a big part of digital marketing and most if not all online firms have an email newsletter you can subscribe to, to receive updates on the company’s most recent happening, special discounts or targeted offers. Pavlov et al (2008) estimated that email marketing campaigns generate twice the return on investment over other forms of online marketing, so its easy to see why so many companies are taking part in the activity.

In this specific instance, I will be looking at an innocent smoothies newsletter to show how a company can write great marketing content through emails. I subscribed to innocent smoothies newsletter about four months ago on the recommendation of a colleague and I wasn’t disappointed. Innocent send emails weekly and it all starts with the subject line. A simple, yet intriguing selection of words which entice the user to click ‘open email’. Some of my favourite examples include:

  • How to break the internet: an innocent guide.
  • bunting, adventures and singing goats.
  • man puts trousers on with no hands.

Each equally wacky but somewhat tempting. If you would like to know more on any of these titles, I thoroughly encourage you to subscribe by clicking here.

Once you have opened the email, they’ve got you (and not in a bad way). for innocent enthusiasts the newsletter provides interesting content on the week’s events such as the weekly segments: ‘drinker of the week’ or ‘inside fruit towers’. Although this content isn’t directly trying to sell anything, the brand logo together with making the reader feel like an fundamental part of the business or ‘family’ is enough to make a reader, at the very least contemplate buying an innocent smoothie next time they are looking through the refrigerated drinks at Tesco on their lunch break.

I found it odd that Innocent chose not to use any personalisation on their emails. this a tactic that many firms use to capture the attention of readers but innocent seem to have chosen a more generic, newspaper standpoint. White et al (2008) believes that the personalization of an email should only depend on the specificity of the offer, and where there are no specific offers for each customer in the innocent’s newsletter, this may be the reason that they have chosen to avoid the personalization approach.

However, just because they aren’t personalizing their emails, doesn’t mean they don’t want to track their customers – after all this is the reason of an email newsletter. To sign up, you must provide your email and date of birth, it sounds harmless enough but with just this information they have a key method to contact you as well as some great statistics on their target audience. furthermore, embedded into the email are unique tracking codes that allow innocent to pinpoint each customer. Images are saved under paths with references such as ‘SubjId=12345’. Allowing Innocent to see who has what emails to find out what content is the most dependable. This is a key tool many marketers use to gain some more data on its customers but is this right or wrong? Personally I believe that giving away some information is a small price to pay for such interesting content. and at the end of the day, this information is only being put back into the company to aim their products more specifically at their customers which will benefit you!

In conclusion, Hats off to innocent, they have managed to create interesting content through practical email newsletters and in my opinion, any small companies (and even large organisations) should take after their example in creating clean, unique and interesting emails. take a look at the screenshot below and make sure to subscribe and check out the innocent newsletter for yourself.

 

 

 

Pavlov et al, 2008. ‘Toward a sustainable e-mail marketing infrastructure’. Journal of Business Reseach, Vol 61, No. 11, P. 1191–1199.

T.B. White, 2008 ‘Getting too personal: reactance to highly personalized e-mail solicitations’. Mark Lett, Vol. 19, No. 1  P. 39–50.

Big Data Ted Talk

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I have just watched a very interesting Ted Talk on Big Data by Hans Rosling. If you have a couple of minutes spare I would recomend watching this as it shows data in a more interesting format than bar chats on a piece of paper. It looks at usually boring statistics such as life expectancy or wealth distribution over time as clear animated represenations. I found some of this information extreemly interesting.

 

Big Data – Real world examples

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With technology advancing so quickly, the use of Data is increasing and becoming more usefull. Data is used in a variety of ways that couldnt have been possible years ago, organisations like Wallmart collect and analyze big data on customer transactions. it is estimated that they collect 2.5 Petabytes every hour from customer transactions, enough to fill 20 million filing cabinets of text. This data would have been near impossible to analyze 30 years ago, but now this information can be taken straight from a digital database and put into tables and graphs, allowing busisesses like wallmart to quickly spot trends in consumer spending (McAfee, A., & Brynjolfsson, E., 2012).

Another example of companies using big data is the example of Passur Airlines (McAfee, A., & Brynjolfsson, E., 2012) who noticed that airline ETA’s were not as accurate as they could be and were costing arilines millions in dellayed flights and un-predictable flight shcedules. by combining a range of publicly sourced data such as weather and how busy the airport is, as well as information they were able to source through there own planes real-world arival and departure times, they were able to create a much more accurate flight estimates. As the program went on, Passur airlines began to gather the data to forecast future flights and also allow themselves to check what happened in similar, previous situations when looking at flight times.

This build up of Data allows marketers to gather data on you and market products more specifically to the customers needs. Businesses like Amazon and google have been doing this for years and it allows Amazon to recomend products to you with a high degree of accuracy, google to charge more for there heavily tailored ad service, which knows more about you that most people would probabally imagine through the use of their mobile opperating system which constsantly knows where you are, to their search engine which knows exactly what you are looking for. The Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has already come out in saying that they plan to be able to know exactly what their users want yo watch, before they even click it, creating a constantly streaming service of videos, specifically tailord to the user (Aultta, 2014). It is easy to see how powerfull big data can be, especially now that organizations are easily and quickly able to analyze this.

 

 

Ken Aultta, (2014).  The New yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/03/outside-the-box-2. Feb 2012, Accessed: 16th October 2014

McAfee, A., & Brynjolfsson, E. (2012). Big data: the management revolution. Harvard business review, 90(10), 60-66.

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