Monthly Archives: February 2016

What’s the Best Way to Engage with your Customers on Facebook

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With over 1 billion Facebook users it is the largest and most popular social media website. Marketers often see social media as an easy medium to use as you can make mistakes and be reckless, but you get instant feedback on what works well and what doesn’t (Wyman, 2012). Although this is true, it is a large audience to make a mistake to. Therefore it is crucial marketers get their Facebook social media page correct which is why this blog has chosen Facebook as the basis of it’s discussion.

Screen Shot 2016-02-01 at 18.32.22

Number of Active Monthly Facebook Users (Source: Statista, 2016)

 

Engagement

Social media is peoples first choice for 1 in 5 people when they are in a complicated situation and want an answer (Simpson, 2016a). People want to gain something from following a brand. They want to be engaged with, therefore it is crucial if they have a complaint –you must be quick to respond to any query (Moth, 2015). This is corroborated by Hansson, Wrangmo, Solberg & Søilen’s findings (2013) that the optimal profile should be active, each activity must have a clear purpose & be useful to members, send out new & timely information which will not be seen as spam or bombarding their connections & if they choose to run competitions, it is only good if there is a useful prize. And finally, companies should take any critical comments seriously. However, their findings are from 3 years ago, which in technology is quite a while and Facebook has changed some of it’s features in that time. Nonetheless it does corroborate with current findings, indicating that these conclusions still hold.

 

Best Practice

Facebook allows businesses to be specific with who your ad reaches. It allows companies to filter by age, location, gender, likes and interests, you can also choose a headline and text, alongside an image or video to be displayed as the advert. They also utilize audience targeting. People who click on ads on Facebook tend to have a high bounceback rate, however when people do view a page they spend a large time looking through it. This can be useful for marketers when deciding on the content they want to market. Such as if marketers want their customer to explore their website, people are seemingly willing to explore it, and engage with any content. Additionally people already tend to be on Facebook as they are bored so are willing to read any articles – they want to discover new things, if you want to teach people about something new or give them a story, Facebook is the place to do so. Furthermore, because people are on Facebook for fun, content should be light hearted and something people would be really interested in (Chowdrey, 2016). Forouzandeh, Soltanpanah, & Sheikhahmadi (2014). also agreed that people should be provided with information that they will consider useful to them, and that it must not come across as commercial.

 

Perhaps best practice of a Facebook page for marketing is to create immersive content involving a mixture of text, image and video. With the rise of oculus rift this shift will change further however this is not yet known exactly how without it’s release (Simpson, 2016b). Users want convenience, therefore brands must make things easy for them, so when publishing a product, give them the link to the original product page. Additionally make it clear on this page the price, as price is the top priority for people when making a purchase.

 

Future

Managing how people see your content across related platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, or perhaps one day Google and Twitter through their integrations, starts to give you real control of your marketing – allowing you to stop wasting money by reaching someone in too many places (frequency capping) or even to tell a continual story across channels. The social platforms themselves have even started using real people to curate content instead of just algorithms such as Twitter’s Moments and Snapchat’s Live Stories.

 

Facebook allows you to learn more about your client than any other platform, therefore marketers should tap into this content to create unique experiences. This will become particularly important in the near future as personalisation becomes ever-more crucial, adverts will become increasingly personalised and relevant to improve efficiency of social media ad spend to reap the greatest rewards (Moth, 2015). Already companies such as Coca-Cola and Cadbury have segmented their campaigns, when clicking their Facebook you can see different adverts for different segments on their Facebook page, but it will have gone to different audiences. However, here marketers must be careful not to be too intrusive (Daykin, 2015).

 

How to Measure the Success of Your Facebook Campaign

A struggle with social media is how to measure it, with many profiles on private how can you measure how your campaign has affected them? Price (2011) suggested a number of ways.

  • Survey your advocate fans – how would they like to improve your product.
  • React to comments, initiate conversations with your clients, this has an additional upside of potentially attracting more fans on an advocate basis, allow you to build a measurable advocate network.
  • Create unique content, support channels and special relationship-based offers to fans which can be measured, in building a relationship with them, customers are more likely to place the product in their lives, in turn increasing brand equity.
  • Integrate Facebook into shopping experience. Create space for fan content, or expert voices which help customers find what they want, which can also then be used to measure the reactions of customers be it positive or negative and then act on this.

Although these are beneficial measures, he did not specify that you can measure popularity and effectiveness of a campaign by likes of a post and fans of the brands personal webpage which can also be useful measure, though must not be taken alone. Finally, Price’s findings were from 5 years ago, which again in technology years is a long time, which means there will probably be many more technological advancements such as algorithms which could be used. However, due to the amount of private profiles on Facebook, many firms cannot access peoples personal information due to privacy laws – only Facebook can, therefore making Price’s arguments more relevant today than they otherwise may be.

 

Effect of Social Influence

Social media marketers should also factor in that social influence only impacts those who have a low level of involvement with the product. Social influence on social networks had significant impact on both perception of quality and buying intention. They also need to remember that consumers create content, so a brand must be able to generate positive comments to maximize effectiveness using social network sites influencing consumers’ purchase behaviour (Seng & Keat, 2014). However, these findings are limited as it was only about sports product, they only surveyed young people, and the effects of positive social effects of a fictitious new brand. Therefore it may be different for a non-sports brand, additionally it may also be different for an existing brand or product.

 

 

References

 

Chowdrey, N. (2016) Facebook, Outbrand & GDN Which content promotion platform should you choose? [Online] < https://econsultancy.com/blog/67381-facebook-outbrain-gdn-which-content-promotion-platform-should-i-choose/?utm_source=Econsultancy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6633195_2090-daily-pulse-uk-2016-01-07&dm_i=LQI,3Y67F,LRRZKK,E8W8F,1> [Accessed 25th January 2016]

 

Daykin, J (2015) Personalised marketing at scale is the next big thing in digital [Onliine] < http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/mar/19/personalised-marketing-digital-future> [Accessed 1st February 2016]

 

Daykin, J (2016) Five things great brands will do differently on social media in 2016 [Online] <http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/jan/05/brands-social-media-marketing-2016> [Accessed 13th January 2016]

 

Forouzandeh, S., Soltanpanah, H. & Sheikhahmadi, A. (2014). “Content marketing through data mining on Facebook social network”, Webology, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 1.

 

 

Hansson, L., Wrangmo, A., Solberg Søilen, K. (2013) “Optimal ways for companies to use Facebook as a marketing channel”, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 112-126.

 

Moth, D (2015) 11 Pivotal Social Media Trends for 2016 [Online] < https://econsultancy.com/blog/67325-11-pivotal-social-media-trends-for-2016> [Accessed 23rd January 2016]

 

Price, M. 2011, “Using facebook to measure marketing: is your facebook page generating results? Here are ways to both monitor and measure your social media efforts”, ABA Bank Marketing, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 26.

 

Simpson, J (2016a) Nine glorious digital marketing stats from the past week < https://econsultancy.com/blog/67388-nine-brilliant-digital-marketing-stats-from-the-past-week/?utm_source=Econsultancy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6643806_2092-daily-pulse-uk-2016-01-11&dm_i=LQI,3YEE6,LRRZKK,E9T81,1> [Accessed 23rd January 2016]

 

Simpson, J (2016b) How to succeed with visual content, according to Instagram’s top creative [Online] < https://econsultancy.com/blog/67295-how-to-succeed-with-visual-content-according-to-instagram-s-top-creative/?utm_source=Econsultancy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6539202_2048-daily-pulse-uk-2015-12-08&dm_i=LQI,3W5OI,LRRZKK,E18VE,1> [Accessed 25th January 2016]

Seng, C.S. & Keat, L.H. (2014) Marketing Sports Products on Facebook: The Effect of Social Influence, Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research, vol. 61, no. 1, pp. 65-73.

Statista (2016) Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 4th quarter 2015 (in millions) [Online] < http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/> [Accessed February 1st 2016]

 

Wyman, L (2012) ‘Facebook may prove important marketing vehicle’, 2012, Furniture/Today, vol. 36, no. 23, p. 12.

 

 

How Photos Can Enhance Your Digital Marketing Campaign Blog

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sImages are the most popular type of content on social media (Moth, 2015). They are particularly useful as they can transcend language and cultures (Lannon, 1991), however their use on social media has grown in recent years. The biggest Social Media app is currently Snapchat and Instagram is a hugely popular social media website. With photography being a clear trend in the fruition of these platforms, knowing how best to do marketing in this form should surely follow suit.

 

Know Your Brand Universe

Most importantly, a business needs to understand their customer, from there brands need to target their product to this customer (Ashton, 2015). People can create and discover content, therefore brands need to demonstrate their brand universe in an instant just by viewing the images on their Instagram. To do so, a brand needs to know what their brand universe is. Businesses need to tell a story, even create series’ and provide a clear connection between these images, stories and series’ and your brand. Soileau (2004) corroborates that in creating a general look on a photo series that connects to your brand allows for brands to be identified, which in turn increased customers 50%. However, this was only one case and it could be argued that it was trying to sell her brand thus limiting it’s reliability.

 

Popular Instagram Pages

Users are 58 times more likely to engage with a brand on Instagram than Facebook and 120 times more than Twitter (Ratcliff, 2014). The average user spends 21 minutes a day on Instagram (Moth, 2015). 76% of users are aged between 16 -34. Interestingly sports brands rank the highest on hashtags, and National Geographic and Nike ranking highest in terms of followers. Michael Kors gained 33,000 new follows and reached over 6 million people in it’s first sponsored post. Average post engagement rate and profile interactions are higher on Instagram and Twitter highlighting the rise of the photo. However, it is difficult to get sponsored posts on Instagram, therefore the success of the Michael Kors campaign is difficult to replicate.

 

Nike’s Success

 

Interestingly Braithwaite (2002) stated that imagery appears to be objective, because it’s about experiencing something directly for oneself which takes on a personal reality for each viewer. This can clearly be seen in sports as people need to see and feel a skill before actually executing it. In turn people develop a habit of positive visualization by visualizing what needs to be done for success – focusing on specific actions related to winning that are under your control. This then allows people to raise their confidence, boost their effort levels and put mind and muscles into synchronicity – this positive visualisation and allowing someone to feel as if they are experiencing an activity is something marketers need to utilise in their campaigns. Perhaps the fact people are experiencing this positive visualisation, such as in the image below – they can visualize themselves doing such an activity – is why Nike have such a large following, corroborating with Braithwaite’s finding. Interestingly, Braithwaite’s views have held for a number of years as Mani (1993) corroborated that self-referencing and imagery increased elaboration and persuasion for non-fear appeals. Nike has also stuck to Branthwaite’s 3 key features of images. 1) Clarity – the key focus of the image is the runner, which is very clear and one can visualise themselves being that runner. 2) Simplicity, clearly the runner is the ‘figure’ and the trees are the ‘ground’, in his ‘figure-ground’ relation, allowing people to focus on the image, and understand that they too should be running with the help of Nikes clothing, however there is not too much going on in the image that people feel a need to scrutinise it. Finally, 3) the image has engaged and communicated a mood of happiness, it is a pretty landscape and people feel better being healthy especially surrounded by such beautiful nature, allowing the brand message that people should keep fit to be engrained as the focal point of the image. Despite the findings being from over 10 years ago and not necessarily about imagery in social media, they still seem to hold true with the increase in personalisation and success of Nikes campaign in showing a skill which allows you to feel as if you are doing it and positive whilst doing so.

Screen Shot 2016-02-01 at 14.57.43(Source: Instagram, 2016)

 

Pinterest & Purchases

 

People can now purchase pins on Pinterest however, Instagram has more conversions from viewing an image to purchasing a product via a link to their website on their profile page. However, soon Instagram may also be introducing a ‘buy’ button, giving rise to even more conversions and purchases on instagram, making ecommerce much easier as people no longer have to leave the site. Although this makes it easier, ecommerce removes Pinterest from being a social media site to another ecommerce site. Removing a site from its roots, athough making things easier, is a risky move (Berzgal, 2015). This proved true through the likes of like2buy – when customers click like on a photo they are taken to an area that allows them to purchase the product – and like2knowit tag – allowing people to receive an email about content available for purchase –Vogue abandoned this practice suggesting it wasn’t too popular and people would prefer to go through the traditional channels of finding the product on the site themselves after they’ve seen the image on social media (Ratcliff, 2014).

 

Further Tips for Enhancing Your Images

Gender specific content is important, it has a five times greater success rate than unisex content. It is also worth factoring into any campaign that more women use all social media sites (except LinkedIn) than men. Again it is important lifestyle and cultures of company’s are displayed – this in turn creates an emotional tie with their consumers. Messages promoting the culture increase engagement and revenue. Furthermore, identifying and targeting specific Instagram accounts are the best way to gain conversions, at least for the moment (Berzgal, 2015). Brands need to drive brand equity, instead of focusing on the hard sell they need to build relationships with customers that have already engaged with your brand and chosen to be on your page. improves loyalty and the customer lifespan whilst not annoying those that do not want to find out about your product (Ratcliff, 2014). Where possible companies should also always tag their images as not only may this get the image trending and more visibility but it also makes the image appear higher in search and search engine results.

 

Snapchat

People are inceasingly turning to social media where their content is private and they do not have to care what others think of their content, this is why Snapchat has become the most popular private social platform. With 7bn viewers per day, it is increasingly more exciting. Especially when considering Facebook has 8bn views, with many more users (Simpson, 2016). It is important to advertise your snapchat, put you snap id on your website and other social media platforms. Here it is also useful to publish unpolished content, as this is what users can relate to – creating more of a relationship between brand and customer (Francis, 2015). Various popular events are broadcast on snapchat. This means that something goes out to every single person who owns snapchat whether they are friends with the person on snapchat or not. However, now companies can also broadcast particular events, in turn advertising their company. A good example of this is when Tidal held a concert exclusively for their customers, with performances from the likes of Beyonce, Nicki Minaj and Jay-Z. Not only does this make people feel like they are having a more personal experience with the brand but this also gave people an insight into what they could obtain if they became a customer.

 

Engagement with Clients

Companies must be sure to not lose touch with engaging their clients like they do on traditional social media platforms such as Facebook, potentially ‘Regram’ing images of their clients wearing their clothing – even responding to complaints in this manner with an image of what compensation they will get with a caption such as ‘Apologies, this is in the post for you’. Furthermore companies can add in their clients snapchat videos into their snapchat stories to make people want to post about your product and event – giving it further ‘word-of-mouth’ advertisement.

 

Limitations

It is tough to measure the success of social media campaigns. However firms such as Brandwatch are currently in the process of creating algorithms whereby an image is inputed into the search algorithm to allow for analyzing the success of an image marketing campaign (Hackett, 2015). In addition, Twitter is increasing the character count, meaning less need to analyse text in a picture, however, businesses will have to focus on the quality and richness of the image to have the greatest impact on your audience (Simpson, 2016). In the meantime, businesses will have to stick to old measuring techniques such as laddering – constant probing as to reveal the hierarchy of important aspects of an image and how it made customers feel;bubble drawing – customers imagining they are in the situation of the image to see how the ad will echo in consumers’ mind at the point of sale/when using the brand; metaphysical thinking to force non-rational expression of inner personal and intuitive reactions to the images; and synaesthesia – experiencing the image with a group of people together, overlapping sensations across different senses – to see how the image makes people feel (Branthwaite, 2002). Although one key thing that has been missed due to the article not being based on social media is that it can also be measured by the number of likes a photo has, number of followers a business has and the number of hashtags posted after your image to allow you to know how successful your campaign is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Ashton, D (2015) Three examples of high-performing visual content marketing [Online] < https://econsultancy.com/blog/66148-three-great-examples-of-high-performing-visual-content-marketing> [Accessed 25th January 2016]

 

Berzgal, G (2015) Is Pinterest or Instagram better for driving ecommerce? [Online] < https://econsultancy.com/blog/67306-is-pinterest-or-instagram-better-for-driving-ecommerce/?utm_source=Econsultancy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6558050_2051-daily-pulse-uk-2015-12-11&dm_i=LQI,3WK82,LRRZKK,E2P0J,1> [Accessed 25th January 2016]

 

Branthwaite, A. (2002) “Investigating the power of imagery in marketing communication: evidence-based techniques”, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 164-171.

 

Francis, W (2015) How brands can break into Snapchat [Online] <http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/dec/21/brands-snapchat-marketing-social-platforms> [Accessed 13th January 2016]

 

Hackett, B. (2016) Brandwatch lecture notes distributed in Digital Marketing at The University of Brighton on 6 January 2016

 

Instagram (2016) nike [Online] <https://www.instagram.com/nike/> [Accessed February 1st 2016]

 

Lannon, J. (1991), “Developing brand strategies across borders”, Marketing and Research Today, pp. 160‐7.

 

Mani, G. (1993) ‘Imagery in Marketing Communications: Beyond Pictures and Visual Processing’, Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 476.

 

Moth, D (2015) 20+ Instagram stats marketers need to know [Online] < https://econsultancy.com/blog/65939-20-instagram-stats-marketers-need-to-know/> [Acessed 25th January 2016]

 

Ratcliff, C (2014)How can ecommerce sites use Instagram? [Online] < https://econsultancy.com/blog/65822-how-can-ecommerce-sites-use-instagram/> [Accessed 25th January 2016]

 

Simpson, J (2016) How to succeed with visual content, according to Instagram’s top creative [Online] < https://econsultancy.com/blog/67295-how-to-succeed-with-visual-content-according-to-instagram-s-top-creative/?utm_source=Econsultancy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6539202_2048-daily-pulse-uk-2015-12-08&dm_i=LQI,3W5OI,LRRZKK,E18VE,1> [Accessed 25th January 2016]

 

Soileau, T. (2004) “imaging: Using digital photography for effective marketing”, Dental Economics, [Online], vol. 94, no. 9, pp. 112.

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