Cadbury smashed its campaign targets and enhanced engagement by betting half its digital budget on Snapchat
With pressure on ad budgets, deciding where to spend your marketing dollars is as tricky as ever. When it comes to FMCG brands, TV is still often seen as the safe bet, the 'no one gets fired for buying IBM' option. But primetime TV slots are expensive and harder to quantify in terms of value when there are only ratings measures without direct measures of response via engagement or clickthrough rate or conversions as available for online marketing. For this reason and to reach audiences who are online, many businesses who convert their customers online (eCommerce, SaaS, news sites, gaming etc.) have moved the majority of their ad budgets to digital formats in recent years. It's easy to see why. You can track links, measure traffic, work out the conversion rate and thus establish what…
Periscope proves persistently more popular than Meerkat according to iOS rankings
Live-steaming has created a whole new type of social app, which has already started to have a major impact on how people are using social. Facebook has even sought to co-opt the trend by introducing it's own live streaming feature.
Brands have plenty to gain from live streaming; whether it's streaming a conference, a new technology launch or a behind the scenes video. When considering which live streaming app you should use when starting out with live streaming, the market has a clear answer for you- Periscope. It has been at the top of iOS ranking among social apps since it launched last year, and has pulled far ahead of it's rival Meerkat.
Source: Atlas
Data Source: Apple iOS app store rankings
Date: July 2016
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Our review of Twitter dashboard - the new web app that will let you schedule Tweets and review analytics all in one place
Importance: [rating=4] (For Small Businesses)
Source: Twitter blog
This week Twitter announced the launch of its latest offering to help attract and retain small businesses yesterday. It's called Twitter dashboard and it's been designed to help smaller companies get more out of Twitter, by providing scheduling and analytics all in one package.
We hooked up our account took Twitter dashboard for a test drive so we could let you know if it was worth using for your business.
Our initial thoughts from evaluating it are:
It's cleanly designed and easy to use. Everything is intuitive and extremely simple, so it's perfect for those just starting out who haven't already mastered slightly more complex scheduling and analytics packages.
The analytics are well presented, but the…
Using social listing to respond to your customers before they contact you
Let’s put the wonders away for now. Let’s talk business.
How do you know what people say about your company? How do you detect unhappy customers who don’t tell you in your face that your product sucks, but make sure the universe (or, in most cases, Twitter or Facebook) knows about that? Finally, how do you find people interested in the subject relevant to your business in real time and engage them before someone else does?
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to social listening.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening allows you to discover what people are saying online about your brand, product, competitors or any specific topic in real-time. You get instant notifications that allow you to act upon your mentions immediately. It’s super easy.
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When Parents and Grandparents started turning to Facebook, there was fear this would lead to a max exodus of the privacy conscious Millenials. Will this happen to Snapchat?
Well so far, so good. New data from eMarketer, has shown that Snapchat is getting more popular with the older demographics. Particularly from the ages of 25-34 and 35-44.
What's interesting is that this follows a very similar trajectory to that of Facebook - a rapid growth which started with the students and teens, before the slightly older generation of 25-34 and 35-44 year-olds began adopting it. Following from this, their Mums and Dad's, before finally a few Grandparents joined the party.
Although following a similar trajectory of Facebook isn't a bad thing; bearing in mind they have surpassed 1Billion users and are now valued at in excess of $330Billion, Snapchat still…
Snapchat's new offering provides a great way for brands to reach younger demographics.
Snapchat's massive popularity with twenty-somethings and teenagers has driven its massive growth, from an already impressive 50 million daily active users back 2014 to nearly 200 million today. Its users are highly engaged, and spend an average of 20-30 minutes per day on the App, fueling 10 billion daily video views.
The platform introduced some very basic advertising, in an attempt to monetise back in 2014. Now it's popularity has exploded, it will be looking into going public and increasing revenues, which means offering more and better ad options. So that is exactly what Snapchat has done, announcing an impressive range of new ad types as well the launch of an API for ads on June 13.
The new ad options launched yesterday include:
Ads between 'stories'
Snapchat stories let you see what people you are following are posting. Snapchat…
Social is the perfect way to influence your potential customers
Social selling is much discussed and often overused. People sending out endless tweets about your products gets tiring fast, and is unlikely to get anyone's attention. But if you can leverage the power of social media to influence your customers at the research stage of their buyer journey, it can be a very powerful tool.
A new study, which surveyed 2,017 people aged 18 and over, shows that 41% of people follow brands to see new product ranges when they launch and 35% use social to get ideas about what to buy when they next go shopping. This is somewhat higher for 18- to 24-year-olds at 47% and 40%, respectively.
Don't sell, influence
Once someone knows what they want, organic social is no longer necessarily the best tool for targeting that person. By that point, email, on-site optimisation or remarketing via social or display networks…
Getting social media right for B2B marketing is tricky, but not impossible.
In today’s Internet-driven marketplace, having an online presence is non-negotiable and has become an important part of B2B marketing for almost every business. When it comes to making purchasing decisions, your potential customers use social media sites and search engines to answer questions about the products/services you sell and to get an overall sense as to who you are, what you do and what others think about you.
Social media can help B2B companies by putting them in charge of their virtual identities. Far from being simply about status updates, social media is used most effectively as a brand shaper; a way to establish your company’s reputation and expertise, and to build a following based upon exceptional customer service.
Use social media to educate
For larger B2B businesses in…
One algorithm to bind them all
In March this year, Instagram continued with its plans to change its photo and video feed model to one which is algorithm-based rather than organic. This is not on the cards just yet – the plan is to introduce it over the next few months – but for a platform which supersedes the others in level of social network engagement and interaction, this move is very interesting indeed.
It is also one which is going to have a marked impact on brands, users and consumer behaviour. See this Gifographic for the statistics on Instagram growth. Like it's parent, Facebook, this new structure will now see images slotted into streams based on user actions, not in reverse chronological order. For the A-List it probably means very little indeed. For the rest, well, there…
New research shows the growing importance of social media in influencing purchase in younger demographics
Global Web Index, asked Internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 to compare their use of search engines and social media when selecting products:
"Which of the following online sources do you mainly use when you are actively looking for more information about brands, products or services?"
According to this research, search is still the go-to place, particularly amongst older audiences. However, the gap is closing for those aged between 16 and 34, since over one third of the respondents indicated they research products over social media.
As expected, as the age of respondents increases, the usage of social media for research decreases. Users between the ages of 35 and 44 lean more heavily on search, with only 29% of respondents saying they research brands,…
