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.
(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
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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.
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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.