socialmedia

Content Marketing: How are JISA providers doing it?

Laura Ruaux

Evidence strongly suggests that content marketing can be very valuable in terms of building consumer trust and reputations of expertise (Kristen, 2013). This is particularly important in financial services as consumers now demand to see evidence before trusting in financial service providers since the 2008 financial crisis sent trust levels plummeting (Johnson and Peterson, 2014).

Kristen (2013) outlines a number of factors contributing to successful creation of valuable content, and applying this to the online blogs of major players in the JISA industry provides some useful insight into competitor behaviour.

The blogs of the following JISA providers were examined: Scottish Friendly, Family Investments, Engage Mutual, Alliance Trust Savings, Sheffield Mutual and Shepherd’s Mutual.

Make Regular Contributions

While it is essential that all content is valuable to readers, the more regularly organisations are able to share good quality content the greater the visibility of their brand (Kristen, 2013).

The rate of content production among major JISA providers in the UK ranges from approximately once a week (Scottish Friendly, 2015a), to less frequently than once a month (Family Investments, 2015a). None of the providers seemed to operate on a regular schedule, providing content at regular but uneven intervals at best, suggesting that a planned schedule for more frequent and regular releases could benefit all providers (Kristen, 2013).

Make it Informative

Kristen (2013) also claims that informative and functional pieces of content are most valuable to readers and Ashley and Tuten (2014) state that the majority of social media content from organisations is designed to be just that.

However, users go to social media for both entertainment and information (Whiting and Williams, 2013), and in contrast to Kristen’s (2013) claim that the highest value stems from informative and functional content, Berger and Milkman (2012) argue that content which is entertaining will gain further traction and reach greater volumes of readers.

Of all six of the financial service providers examined only two had produced entertainment pieces in their last five content releases, and only one of these did so regularly. While the majority of providers produced functional and informative pieces, Engage Mutual (2015a) produced pieces that contained information but were largely entertaining, such as the article in Figure One below, titled ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ (Engage Mutual, 2015b).

Figure One

Figure One: Engage Mutual ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ (Engage Mutual, 2015b)

This is consistent with the work of Ashley and Tuten (2014) suggesting that most financial service providers may be prioritising producing valuable content over content which is more likely to be shared.

Be Specific: Know Your Audience

Kristen (2013) claims that valuable content needs to be directly relevant to the reader, and not generalised. This involves creating life stage and financial status specific content, something which it is clear that all of the JISA providers aim to do, however different products have different customer demographics and this suggests that these organisations should be splitting content by customer segment in order to provide easy to find and relevant content only.

There is little evidence of this occurring on any of the blog sites examined. Engage Mutual are the only site to segment their blog articles by topic, however this reduces ease of which articles can be viewed as multiple segments may apply to multiple demographics as these do not seem to be designed for particular customer segments, as shown in Figure Two below (Engage Mutual, 2015c).

Figure Two

Figure Two: Engage Mutual split content by topic (Engage Mutual, 2015c)

While the articles of all the providers are clearly targeting their customers, it is often unclear which customers they are specifically addressing and there is no apparent method of targeting articles to specific customer segments, something which could improve the value of total content which consumers read (Kristen, 2013).

Be Where Your Audience Are

Ashley and Tuten (2014) claim that the majority of successful social media marketers use multiple appeals through multiple channels to reach their audience. Kristen (2013) supports this action, suggesting that spreading a message through multiple channels increases an organisation’s visibility and opportunity to connect with the intended audience. This may involve, not only using different channels of social media, but enabling an organisation’s content to grace partner websites, online community sites and even non-corporate blogs that the target audience often visit (Kristen, 2013).

All six providers were examined to determine whether they shared their own content on social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook, or through third party retailers and bloggers. It appears that none of the providers share content through third party channels while every provider except for Family Investments uses some form of social media to share and promote their content. Thus reach for content produced by Family Investments will be severely limited in comparison (Kristen, 2013).

Implications for Competitors

Within the JISA providers examined, content marketing strategy appears reasonably consistent. All providers agree that content marketing in financial services is important and at least offer occasional content pieces. Providers such as Engage Mutual and Scottish Friendly seem most engaged in producing and sharing regular content and interestingly these two providers also have the largest followings on both Twitter and Facebook giving their content the greatest reach. It seems struggling content producers could learn a from their example and incorporate entertainment pieces to boost brand awareness online, however according to Kristen (2013) even these providers could improve content marketing effectiveness using greater variety of media and more specific information.

For more information on how to create high quality content read:

Kristen, H. (2013) Content Marketing Strategies to Educate and Entertain, Journal of Financial Planning, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp 18-20

or visit http://bit.ly/15r8DKG to read Ashley and Tuten’s (2014) article on branded social content.

References

Ashley, C. and Tuten, T. (2014) Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploration Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement, Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp 15-27

Berger, J. and Milkman, K. (2012) What Makes Online Content Viral?, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp 192-205

Engage Mutual (2015a) ‘Health and Wellbeing’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/hub/health-wellbeing/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Engage Mutual (2015b) ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/top-secrets-to-looking-and-feeling-fabulous-over-50/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Engage Mutual (2015c) ‘The Hub’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/hub/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Family Investments (2015a) ‘From the Blog’ [Online] <www.familyinvestments.co.uk/family-nest/blogs/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Ho, J. and Dempsey, M. (2010) Viral marketing: Motivations to forward online content, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 63, No. 9-10, pp 1000-1006

Johnson, D. and Peterson, M. (2014) Consumer financial anxiety: US regional financial service firms’ trust building response to the financial crisis, International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp 515-533

Kristen, H. (2013) Content Marketing Strategies to Educate and Entertain, Journal of Financial Planning, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp 18-20

Scottish Friendly (2015a) ‘Welcome to the community blog’ [Online] <www.scottishfriendly.co.uk/community/blog/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Whiting, A. and Williams, D. (2013) Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp 362-369

Measuring success of social media consumer engagement: A look at Engage Mutual’s Twitter channel using Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle

Laura Ruaux

With 15% of the UK’s 40 largest websites by traffic volume being attributed to social networking sites, companies are increasingly turning to social media for customer engagement (Alexa.com, 2015; Peters et al, 2013). This seems like a good idea as companies can get their message out to a large audience at a low cost (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden, 2011; Vernuccio, 2014), but is this really an effective way to build customer relations?

This article examines Engage Mutual’s Twitter channel’s effectiveness at generating customer engagement using Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle.

Customer Engagement Cycle

Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle is built upon seven stages which aim to shape customer engagement. These are connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, commitment, advocacy and engagement. Customer engagement is the end goal and is defined by Sashi (2012) as the state where customers feel high levels of emotional attachment and rational reasons for loyalty, resulting in behaviour exhibiting brand advocacy and unconditional loyalty.

Figure One

Figure One: Customer Engagement Cycle (Sashi, 2012)

Connection

Social media platforms facilitate the creation of one-click connections which can, in time, become relationships (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden, 2011). These connections allow organisations to direct messages to an audience of consumers who have registered interest through electing to ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’ (Aichner and Jacob, 2015). Engage Mutual have direct connections to 1,591 followers (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015a), however, many of these are organisations themselves and therefore unlikely to be the target audience of Engage Mutual’s marketing activities. Despite this, connections with other organisations can act as endorsements and improve trust and credibility (Burton and Soboleva, 2011), such as Engage Mutual’s follower APS Group who have 1,143 of their own followers (APS Group Twitter, 2015).

Interaction

Once connections are forged, interaction is required to communicate with the audience. Interaction via social media offers significant advantages over more traditional methods of customer communication, which are limited by multiple factors such as customer availability and location (Sashi, 2012). The reach of messages sent out via Twitter are not limited to the number of ‘followers’ that an account has, as ‘retweets’ and ‘favourites’ can extend to new follower circles and beyond. With 288 million active users per month, Twitter is a platform with the potential to allow for interaction on mass (Twitter, 2015a).

Interaction on Twitter can allow for organisations and their audience to be constantly connected and this encourages two-way communication between parties. This is particularly important for Engage Mutual who operate in the financial services industry, as two-way communication is essential for encouraging repeat custom in this industry (Dunn and Hoegg, 2014).

Engage Mutual interact with Twitter users in a number of ways including sharing timely informative articles, such as in Figure Two, interacting with associated organisations, such as in Figure Three, and interacting with consumers, such as in Figure Four.

Figure Two
Figure Two: Engage Mutual share timely news articles (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015a)

Figure Three
Figure Three: Engage Mutual interact with associated organisations (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015b)

Figure Four
Figure Four: Engage Mutual interact with consumers (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015c)

Satisfaction

Despite this evidence of interaction, the successful progression to customer engagement requires that consumers are satisfied with the interaction (Sashi, 2012). Without satisfaction a connection may end and therefore evidence that customers connected to Engage Mutual on twitter are feeling satisfied can be found in connections that still exist after an interaction is completed.

In the instance of the interaction shown in Figure Four above, the customer that interacted with Engage Mutual did not maintain a relationship with the company by electing to ‘follow’ their profile. In contrast, the customer interacting with Engage Mutual in Figure Five below has elected to ‘follow’ Engage Mutual and therefore the connection is maintained as future messages published by Engage Mutual’s Twitter account will reach this customer.

Figure Five

Figure Five: Engage Mutual satisfy a customer through interaction (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015d)

While Engage Mutual are successfully satisfying some users, it is clear that they are not providing satisfaction for all users who interact with the channel. Li, Berens and de Maertelaere (2013) claim that channels with clear and specific purposes have greater ability to satisfy users. The Engage Mutual Twitter channel is generic (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015e) and therefore the goal of interactions may be unclear. In the example of the unsatisfactory interaction in Figure Four, the organisation have responded to the user with gratitude, however had this interaction taken place on a channel specific for customer support Engage Mutual may have responded with reassurance of after product support, which may have resulted in satisfaction and a continued connection with that user.

Retention

Of those users that Engage Mutual can satisfy through interactions they are able to retain connections, as in the example in Figure Five. Retention can be developed over time as satisfaction may be cumulative (Sashi, 2012). Retention can also be achieved through creating strong positive emotions towards a brand, however with low levels of brand saliency in financial services it can be particularly difficult for organisations such as Engage Mutual to achieve this (Dunn and Hoegg, 2014; Baumann, Elliot and Hamin, 2011).

Commitment

The next stage of the cycle, commitment, can be achieved through affective customer loyalty, where consumers form an emotional attachment with the brand (Sashi, 2012). Alternatively, this can be achieved through cognitive loyalty, where rational consumers remain loyal due to lacking a better option (Fraering and Minor, 2013). While effective in the short run, commitment in the long run will require Engage Mutual to incite strong positive emotions in users, by going above and beyond customer expectations (Fraering and Minor, 2013).

Advocacy
While it is difficult to measure the commitment of Twitter users to Engage Mutual, it is possible to see demonstrations of brand advocacy for Engage Mutual’s social project, as in Figure Six below.

Figure Six

Figure Six: Engage Mutual social project advocates (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015f)

Brand advocacy on Twitter is particularly visible as it becomes very straight forward for advocates to share their views and feel connected with a brand (Sashi, 2012). A large number of consumer interactions on Engage Mutual’s Twitter page are sending messages like these, allowing the Engage Mutual brand to be spread into new circles of users, thus improving brand awareness (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014). The popularity of sharing the social project content likely stems from it being likeable, easy to share, relevant to many people and accessible through multiple channels, both offline and online (Mills, 2012; Engage Mutual, 2015).

Engagement

The last stage of achieving customer engagement is turning advocates into fans who will remain unconditionally loyal to a brand (Sashi, 2012). To achieve this, Engage Mutual needs users to feel extremely high levels of satisfaction in interactions, a rational reason to commit to a brand and affective loyalty (Fraering and Minor, 2013; Sashi, 2012). Engaged customers add value to an organisation’s brand and act as advocates when interacting with other users thus creating a community within a brand (Sashi, 2012). There is no evidence of Engage Mutual customers engaging in this way and the topic ‘#engagemutual’ does not contain user to user discussion (Twitter, 2015b).

From this evaluation of Engage Mutual’s Twitter channel it is clear that Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement model can be useful in evaluating the success of a channel. It becomes apparent that a channel can have users at many stages at any one time and that one type of interaction and response does not suit all users. Engage Mutual’s Twitter account does add value to the brand, increasing reach of the brand name and allowing advocates of the brand to easily share their views with others. While there are clearly some issues to address in order to make progression through the cycle more successful, it appears that medium size financial services companies can benefit from using a Twitter channel to engage customers afterall.

For more information on the customer engagement cycle visit http://bit.ly/1ziG4NO to read Sashi’s (2012) full article.

References

Aichner, T. and Jacob, F. (2015) Measuring the degree of corporate social media use, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp 257-275

Alexa.com (2015) ‘Top Sites in United Kingdom’ [Online] <www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/GB> [accessed 27th April 2015]

APS Group Twitter (2015) ‘APS Group’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/aps_group> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Baumann, C., Elliot, G. and Hamin, H. (2011) Modelling customer loyalty in financial services: A hybrid of formative and reflective constructs, International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp 247-267

Burton, S. and Soboleva, A. (2011) Interactive or reactive? Marketing with Twitter, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 8, No. 7, pp 491-499

Dunn, L. and Hoegg, J. (2014) The Impact of Fear on Emotional Brand Attachment, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp 152-168

Engage Mutual (2015) ‘OneFamily Foundation’ [Online] <https://foundation.onefamily.com> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015a) ‘The particular torture of primary school offer day’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/588622764833054720> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015b) ‘It will be sunny this weekend, we’re being optimistic!’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/583560345442213888> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015c) ‘Lovely to see our CTF leaflet on Twitter’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/580350020458844160> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015d) ‘It does – great shot’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/578871484426412033> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015e) ‘Engage Mutual’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015f) ‘Thanks for spreading the word about this great opportunity’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/588664092279341056> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Fraering, M. and Minor, M. (2013) Boyond loyalty: customer satisfaction, loyalty, and fortitude, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp 334-344

Hanna, R., Rohm, A. and Crittenden, V. (2011) We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem, Business Horizons, Vol. 54, No. 3, pp 265-273

Li, T., Berens, G. and de Maertelaere, M. (2013) Corporate Twitter Channels: The Impact of Engagement and Informedness on Corporate Reputation, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp 97-126

Mills, A. (2012) Virality in social media: the SPIN Framework, Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp 162-169

Peters, K., Chen, Y., Kaplan, A., Ognibeni, B. and Pauwels, K. (2013) Social Media Metrics – A Framework and Guidelines for Managing Social Media, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp 281-298

Sashi, C. (2012) Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media, Journal of Management History, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp 253-272

Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S. (2014) Brand strategies in social media, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp 328-344

Twitter (2015a) ‘Our mission’ [Online] <https://about.twitter.com/company> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Twitter (2015b) ‘#engagemutual’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23engagemutual&src=typd> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Vernuccio, M. (2004) Communicating Corporate Brands Through Social Media: An Exploratory Study, International Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 51, No. 3, pp 211-233

What factors determine the reach of your content?

Laura Ruaux

While a full blown viral campaign may seem unachievable for many, studying what drives the most successful viral campaigns could provide valuable insight to content marketers in terms of creating communicable marketing content.

So what are the key factors for successful traction of marketing campaigns across the web?

Triggering an Emotion

Berger and Milkman (2012) claim that content that triggers an emotional reaction is more likely to gain peer-to-peer traction than functional content. Furthermore, triggering negative emotions, specifically anger or anxiety, increases the likelihood of sharing, although promotional marketing will not often aim to associate these feelings with their own brand (Berger and Milkman, 2012).

One campaign which made good use of this type of emotions was Always’ Like A Girl campaign, which to date has reached over 50 million views on their YouTube channel.

Always: Like A Girl Video Campaign (Always YouTube, 2014)

More commonly, content containing humour is shared between individuals and groups as even positive emotions such as this are contagious (Du, Fan and Feng, 2014). Despite dealing with a very serious topic, Metro communicated a public health message with humour and to date have over 100 million views on YouTube with the Dumb Ways to Die video.

Metro: Dumb Ways to Die Campaign (Metro YouTube, 2012)

Being Specific to the Viewer

Botha and Reyneke (2013) show that when content is specific to the viewer, and they perceive it to be relevant to themselves and their circle of connections, then they will be more likely to share content. This is satisfying the spreadabililty factor of the SPIN framework which Mills (2012) has created to model user content sharing.

For example, BuzzFeed article ’21 Things All Sisters with a Three-Year Age Gap Know’ already reached ‘trending’ status less than 24 hours after being published (Buzzfeed, 2015).

Figure One

Figure One: BuzzFeed’s specifically targeted content (BuzzFeed, 2015)

Influencer Involvement

Celebrities and high profile influencers can also increase the likelihood of something spreading, for example the No-Makeup Selfie campaign which aimed to raise money for Cancer Research was supported by large numbers of female celebrities who joined the campaign by sharing their own user created content of self-portraits via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, reportedly raising £8 million for the charity (Guardian, 2014). Incentivising an appropriate influencer to share content can also significantly increase the reach of your content (Kumar and Mirchandani, 2012).

Network Characteristics

Social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook are designed to facilitate sharing by making the process as simple as possible. Mills (2012) claims that content is more likely to be shared if the channel that it is on makes sharing as simple as possible by placing the share tool close to the content and quick to complete, such as the single-click ‘retweet’ function on Twitter.

Furthermore, having content spanning multiple channels will increase the likelihood of it being shared as well as the size of the networks that it is on, which determines the number of people that the content can be shared to at once (Mills, 2012).

A strong example of a successful multimedia marketing campaign is John Lewis’ ‘Monty the Penguin’ campaign which spanned Youtube, television, paid search, email and Twitter (Ashford, 2015) and lead to a 19% increase in online purchases over the Christmas period on the previous year for John Lewis (Agg, 2015).

Figure Two

Figure Two: Monty The Penguin Twitter (Monty the Penguin Twitter, 2015)

Overall, these successful campaigns which gained high levels of traction online strongly support the work of Berger and Milkman (2012), Botha and Reyneke (2013), Du, Fan and Feng (2014) and Mills (2012). These common themes can be abstracted from viral campaigns and applied to the creation and sharing of content created to boost brand awareness and customer engagement so it’s important to incorporate network and content design specifics such as these into your content marketing strategy and planning processes for success.

For more information on what makes content go viral visit http://bit.ly/1J9NClW to read Mills’ (2012) SPIN framework and http://bit.ly/1zqiYov to read Botha and Reyneke’s (2013) article on motivation for sharing on social media.

References

Agg, S. (2015) Logistics industry this Christmas, Motor Transport, 26 January 2015, No. 1, pg 14

Ashford, Z. (2015) ‘Mobile Marketing’ [Lecture Notes] Brighton: University of Brighton Business School, Unpublished

Always YouTube (2014) ‘Like A Girl’ [Online] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Berger, J. and Milkman, K. (2012) What Makes Online Content Viral?, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp 192-205

Botha, E. and Reyneke, M. (2013) To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing, Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp 160-171

BuzzFeed (2015) ’21 Things All Sisters With A Three-Year Age Gap Know’ [Online] <http://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/things-sisters-with-a-3-year-age-gap-just-know#.my5y5nQv3> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Du, J., Fan, X. and Feng, T. (2014) Group Emotional Contagion and Complaint Intentions in Group Service Failure,  Journal of Service Research, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp 326-338

Guardian (2014) No-makeup selfies raise £8m for Cancer Research UK in six days, Guardian 25th March 2014 [Online] <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/25/no-makeup-selfies-cancer-charity> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Ho, J. and Dempsey, M. (2010) Viral marketing: motivations to forward online content, Hournal of Business Research, Vol. 63, No. 9-10, pp 1000-1006

Kumar, V. and Mirchandani, R. (2012) Increasing the ROI of Social Media Marketing, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp 55-61

Metro YouTube (2012) ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ [Online] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Mills, A. (2012) Virality in social media: the SPIN framework; Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp 162-169

Monty The Penguin Twitter (2015) ‘Monty the Penguin’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/MontyThePenguin> [accessed 29th April 2015]