Tag Archive for: Media

Instagram rocks influencer marketing (report)

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In the last weeks, influencer marketing has become the rising star among marketing tactics. This is not surprising as ad blocking makes the life for marketeers and their brand campaigns more and more difficult. The team at Hashoff, a micro-influencer platform, just recently published their latest annual report on influencer marketing which gives some interesting insights in an evolving marketing discipline (by channel like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and Vine).

From the 300 influencers that Hashoff interviewed, 99% stated that Instagram was their place to go to in order to connect with communities and brands. Furthermore, 56% of a very much engaged community spends more than four hours per day on social media. Over 20% spend almost an entire working day with seven hours on social sites.

There are already 12% of influencers that indicated that influencer marketing is their business profession. The rest of the influencers have a proper full- or part-time job next to their influencer “business”, with over a quarter of the influencers being students. Surviving as an influencer seems to be a hard business and the report suggests the impression that all influencer business is short-term and (spontaneous) campaign-based marketing activities.

It is interesting to see how much time influencers put in the quality of their content. Over one-quarter of the influencers of the report invest up to three hours for their content from idea to production, and some even up to five hours per piece (10.5%). Half of the respondents spend 10 to 60 minutes on their content pieces.

2017: Top Social Networks Data (Infographic)

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All marketers want to know in our seminars, where to find their audience for their next social media campaigns. Obviously, all decisions and spends will be depending on if you are focussing on B2B or B2C customers. Still, some general (social network) data might be helpful in organizing and planning your next campaign audiences.

The guys at Trackx have recently published a new infographic. This infographic gives us the latest essential data and key insights on the major social networks. Interesting that almost every third (28%) has only one social network presence. Generation X is almost a full working day on Facebook available. Youtube generates 2 Mio. video views in a minute on their platform. And for marketers might be interesting that more than every second user on Instagram follows a brand (53%).

But find the data that might be relevant for your knowledge here in this infographic.

How to Market to Generations on Social Media (Infographic)

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All brands and companies wonder how to market to different generations on social media platforms. Marketers see great opportunities in reach and relevance in terms of the content, the data and the insights around consumers and customers. No wonder, as there are over 2.3 billion active social media users globally across various platforms. Almost 9 out of 10 Millennials (87%) are connected with brands and their families and friends via social networking.

Although the social channels are becoming more and more a paid media, the most important message to all marketers will be to listen to their customers and to engage when they are active in their social worlds. In which way a brand is then capable of personalizing and individualizing messages and content is on a different page. So, it will always stay a balance between paid and organic content that brands need to deliver to their customers.

However, the main challenge is to understand on which platform which target group wants to be addressed in which way. What kind of content do you need? How do these people engage? And why for brands Twitter or Instagram might make more sense than Facebook and Pinterest in talking to some of the generations.

Check out the infographic by Webpage FX and get some interesting insights in audiences on major platforms. BTW: It’s a shame that LinkedIn often gets forgotten in these overviews…

How to market to each generation - infographic
Source title picture: https://pixabay.com/de/handy-smartphone-tastatur-app-1917737/

Content marketing – 90% generates no engagement (Report)

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When it comes to social selling, many companies and brand believe that content marketing is the secret sauce. But content marketing is not a lead engine when not controlled, qualified and distributed properly. A recent report by Beckon states that the average amount of image and video content from brands created and posted tripled since 2015. But not for the good.

The report finds that 90% of consumer engagement like Likes, shares and comments was generated by only 5% of that branded content. “In other words, 19 of 20 pieces of content pieces get little to no engagement,” it concludes. Considering all the buzz around content marketing that we could hear at digital events like dmexco, these numbers are quite interesting. And the doubtful success some companies pretend to have with it raises the question if marketers are not trying to sell too much with content marketing as Mike Templeman suggests in his latest article on Entrepreneur.

Beckon also shows that the volume of content from some brands is incredibly high. The data service company tracked 29,000 and 50,000 individual pieces of content by each one brand. It becomes clear that companies are wasting content and obviously do not know how to make most out of it. The data of the insights for the report was collected from companies like Coca-Cola Co., Gap, Microsoft, HP, Reebok, and others that Beckon is working with.

Beckon_Report

Beckon CEO Jennifer Zeszut states in an interview that some brands seem to have the primary key performance indicator (KPI) on content to generate more of it. Obviously the study proves that case with the numbers.

The reports claims that the value of paid versus owned media seems to be unbalanced which seems to be a proper explanation considering how social networks are changing today and becoming more of paid media platforms. Furthermore, the report finds that there is just a 7% increase among its clients in paid or so-called “working” media. Compared to that nonworking spending of their clients increased by 50% year over year, it shows how uncontrolled the budgets are spend in content production.

And despite the fact that programmatic is not everybody darling, the Beckon findings showcase that digital media bought programmatically by their clients generates twice the return on investment of other digital buys. However, just about half of measured digital spending was bought programmatically.

Spot On!
But the question is why this content is not triggering engagement. According to Beckon, often the lack of quality control at companies is a challenge. Many content teams simply overlook the content process by delivering guidelines and checking the produced quantity of content. However, they lack on proper content delivery and distribution. Content marketing is nice tactic but you need to know how to leverage social selling properly with the right strategic KPI set. Then content marketing gives you the right business impact.

Source title picture: https://pixabay.com/de/schüler-eingabe-tastatur-text-frau-849825/

Twitter Study: The value of influencers

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Some weeks ago in this post, we have tried to define an undefined social media species: Influencers. The feedback was very positive and many companies are still trying to find the secret sauce how to use and leverage the value of influencers for their brands and their sales funnel.

Now, a recent study by Twitter gives further evidence of the value of influencers, and on how they help positioning brands and in which way they might might upload the sales funnel. The first part of the study was meant to figure out amoung more than 300 users how they responded toward brand influencers.

The study conducted by Annalect, a data analytics company, in corporation with Twitter shows that almost 40% of the responding people stated to have purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on a social platform like Instagram, Twitter or YouTube. And another 40% stated that they are following brands on Twitter.

But influencers are not only valuable in terms of sales performance. They also make people share products they are using themselves. Almost one in five (20%) respondents claimed that they shared something they saw from an influencer. Amoung Millennials even one in three said they follow a social media influencer on Twitter or Vine.

The study comes like an extension of two former studies from Nielsen and Lithium making clear that Millennials trust different people in different ways. Interestingly enough, this study also states that influencers rival friends in trust building. Just 7% of respondents rely more on recommendations from friends (56%) than from influencers (49%).

“This is telling us is that you don’t have to be a mass media star or a household name to be influential and actually drive people to buy stuff.” Jeffrey Graham, Vice President of Market Research and Insights, Twitter

The Twitter-owned talent agency Niche revealed that the pool of influencers available to brands has grown from 6,000 to over 25,000 in a year. Honestly, we would say there os probably more depending on what you value: reach or relevance.

Twitter_Infographic_Influencer_2016

Spot On!
The smartphone has become the modern sales acceleration technology. Social influencers put trendy or interesting products on their sites or streams while walking down the street or by getting them from brands for free, and people following them would purchase those products. Have you not experienced this yourself?

The only thing we wonder is, how much would brands pay influencers to write about their product and share a picture of the product via their social media accounts? The numbers we know from influencers vary but maybe there is someone in the market who might want to share some insights.

Study: Millennials don't want brands to stalk them

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Credits: Gerd Altmann / pixelio.de

Credits: Gerd Altmann / pixelio.de

The vision of social networks was to create a better exchange between people – whether near or far. But where is consumers, there’s also brands trying to reach out with advertising to them on any available platform. A recent study now shows that Millennials are not really happy with the social advertising activities.

According to the study of Harris Poll (conducted on behalf of Lithium Technologies), that addressed more than 2,300 consumers of all generations, more than half of all digital natives (56%) report to cut back or stop the use of social media platforms entirely.

Even more, 75% of the responding Millenials stated that they feel stalked by brands on social platforms. The reason: The eager way brands do target them in their news feed with the ambition to build trust and loyalty with their customers or consumers via social media platforms in the U.S.

So, what does this mean for brands? Do brands have to live according to a transformed version of the former cold call prevention: “Don’t stalk us, we follow you!”? The study suggests that direct targeting on social platforms via advertising might result in losing customers. It would be more effective to engage and to be present on the channels they use frequently. And also if brands might be tempted to leverage the huge purchasing power coming from the modern generations (Millennials and Gen Z make up 50% of the population), brands need to be careful not to waste the potential of social media and really meet their personal expectations. How challenging this might be in the end…

“The promise of social technologies has always been about connecting people, not shouting at them, and the brands that don’t do this risk their very existence.” Rob Tarkoff, President&CEO, Lithium Technologies.

But how can brands build trust, the study also asked? A question that is also raised in a bi-annual study from Nielsen and might be evaluated in comparison with those results. Obviously, online is their general source of information but their trust in online exceeds that of former generations by far.

Lithium Online Trust 2016

While in the Nielsen study, personal “recommendations from people I know” are leading, Lithium sees “online sites with product reviews” as the highest form of online trust creation. That websites are definitely not “dead” can be seen that both studies see websites kind of in the second place. And, whereas Lithium sees “communities of like-minded people” in the third place (just think about what their main product was…), Nielsen sees editorial content still a very important source.

In terms of service, the Lithium study shows that Millennials contact brands online (79%) and expect a response back within the same day – almost 10% more than Baby Boomers. So, if brands do not actively monitor and engage with the younger generations online, their brand loyalty might go down soon. The best way to interact with Millennials is described in a quote the study also delivers…

“I go on social media to see and know what my friends are doing. I don’t want to see ads clutter my news feed. If I’m interested in a product or service, I know where to look. Social media is a place for us to connect with our friends, not be attacked by advertisements.” Mallory Benham, Graduate Student (23)

So, what are your learning on targeting Millennials and Gen Z via ads on social media?

Social Selling is a Team Sport

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Credit: © vege – Fotolia.com

Credit: © vege – Fotolia.com

On the surface, social selling seems like an initiative reserved exclusively for the sales team. And while, yes, social selling is typically championed by a Chief Revenue Officer or VP of Sales, it integrates best into a business with organization-wide support.

Social selling is a team sport
The sales team impacts all departments of an organization, including client success, product and IT. But arguably the place where sales – and social selling – has the greatest influence is on the marketing team. And vice versa.

According to Sirius Decisions, 58% of marketing and sales teams say they are seriously misaligned. Some of the repercussions of a sales-marketing duo with no alignment? Lost leads, bad content and blind decision-making.

Sales and marketing teams need to get on the same page to ensure efforts aren’t going to waste (and feelings aren’t getting hurt). To be successful, sales and marketing must focus on 3 key aspects of a strong social selling initiative:

Content
A crucial aspect of social selling is the sales professional’s ability to provide valuable content – articles, white papers, videos, podcasts and more – to prospects in their network. Misaligned marketing departments can spend time and resources creating content for sales, but it is useless if the content doesn’t meet the needs of the prospect or if sales can’t even find it.

How do you fix it? By understanding the buyer’s journey, sales and marketing can together determine what types of content fit best for prospects at different levels of the funnel. Then, marketing can curate a database of content that is easily accessible and relevant for salespeople to use throughout their process.

Process
Implementing a well-run social selling program provides the sales organization a predictive, guided approach to everyday sales. In an environment where nearly 60% of the B2B buying process is done by the prospect before they ever speak to sales, reps need guidance on how, when, and where to connect on social networks. Marketing and sales need to understand and agree on their buyer persona so marketing can provide the resources that will guide sales to success.

How do you fix it? For social selling to become part of a sales professional’s everyday process, it must be easy for them to identify the best way to engage with prospects online. Marketing and sales must collaborate to identify the ways in which their buyers navigate the buying process. This enables marketing to develop relevant campaigns and channels for sales to leverage in their social selling practices, resulting in the most important aspect of all…

Leads
Too often, misaligned sales and marketing teams hurt themselves and end up doing more work when they let good leads slip through the cracks. Whether it’s marketing campaigns missing the mark on the right buyer, or sales failing to follow up on solid marketing leads, it’s a lose-lose situation.

How do you fix it? First and foremost, clearly define what each team will commit to accomplishing in order to support each other. As the saying goes: Build the social selling process, and the leads will come. When marketing provides sales the resources and tools to become problem-solving thought leaders in their networks, everyone wins.

“Never leave Social media to marketing alone. Marketing spreads the brand and product messages. Sales plants conversations, seeds solutions and harvests on needs.” (Martin Meyer-Gossner on Social Selling)

This is a guest blog post by PeopleLinx CEO Kevin O’Nell. PeopleLinx helps B2B enterprise sales teams activate socialselling with individualized guidance.

The value of (online) influencers: An attempt to define an undefined digital species

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They blog from the first row at catwalks. They share cool design gadgets on Instagram. They strike a pose with a selfie in front of 5-star hotels on Pinterest. And, they record „Let’s plays“ for Youtube while testing the latest computer games. The one thing they have in common? They are online influencers. A digital species that challenges and changes the marketing world of models, testimonials and the publishing industry.

According to an annual Nielsen study, it is a common knowledge that people trust most in recommendations of people they know. In the past, marketers put models or celebrities in this „recommendation seat“. It was meant to address two benefits: Brands intended to grasp some of the consumers’ attention by trying to hitch-hike on the wave of VIP awareness and public relevance. And, they used the reach of magazines and the trust those public voices had for the people.

Nielsen Study Trust 2015

It seems to me that the tables are turning now, and marketers have to rethink their brand extension strategy.

1. Models – the personalization dilemma
When using models, brands couldn’t tell exactly which audience they were addressing. It was a marketers’ and model agent’s best guess which model fits which brand. However, a model does not have a transparent target-group. They are just faces without any open address books or lead list.

Social influencers are their own agents. Their content markets their personality, their personality defines their content, their reach expresses their quality. They have got fans, followers, and friends that everybody (not only when following them) can see. A clear defined and dynamic target-group that is commited to them and engages with them on a regular basis. What they say gets read. What they state is trusted. In fact, their consumer opinion becomes one of the most trusted sources that people believe in – more than traditional ads of any kind.

Just imagine the influence on purchase intent, when an influencer is posting online to a large audience of friends and fans. Social influencers are perceived of their active and growing audiences as “more real” than models, somehow even as “friends”.

But also the traditional model business is affected by the upcoming influencer trend: Previously interchangeable and relatively anonymous faces are now increasingly becoming personal brands thanks to their personalized Instagram and Snapchat channels and/or (mostly fashion- and beauty related) blogposts. Consequently, numerous models with significant reach are also acting as influencers to their audiences.

2. Testimonials – the authenticity dilemma
Testimonials need to match brand authenticity and follow the brand message in order to become valuable for marketers. Serious investment in dollars does not allow a testimonial’s mistake. Contracts are long-term and include testimonial involvement not only in all brand campaigns but also in personal PR and marketing engagement during the contracting period.

Money counts for testimonials – as much as monetary rewards do for online influencers. This is definitely true for the fashion and beauty industry, states the “Fashion & Beauty Monitor” report in partnership with Econsultancy named “The Rise of Influencers“. However, three out of five surveyed influencers believe that the “relevance of brand in relation to own area of expertise “is essential when collaborating with marketers. Influencers are very well aware of their personality as brand that has to be secured and consequently, they do not sell everything just because they are asked to. Of course, this in return means a certain loss of control for marketers when working with powerful influencers. Just to state an example, years ago, I offered MINI a cool opportunity to collaborate with me. I fear the idea never reached the BMW four-cylinder tower – perhaps for fear of losing brand control?

Think about it: How authentic can testimonials be that are selected by brands as of their popularity in sports, fashion and lifestyle? Testimonials sell their media value. On the contrary, engagement with influencers can only work when brands do not act too commercial with them and meet their personal authenticity. Social influencers are personal brands; authentic brands that companies can collaborate with.

3. Publishers – the relevance dilemma
When content from influencers gets more attention (and is trusted more) than content from advertising, relevance becomes a critical tipping point. For years, marketers and PR experts were convinced that “serious” traditional publishers are more relevant to readers than bloggers or any other form of social media active people. Thus, they invested serious dollars in brand building activities with the publishing industry. Today, these very media houses are approaching influencers to increase their declining media value.

A recent study by Collective Bias shows that content from influencers is viewed for more than 2 minutes (which is 7 times longer than the digital display ad average with a view time of just 19.2 seconds). Plus the relevance of someone’s personal opinion -whether rating, recommendation or review- has become of high value for consumers. Now if content from an influencer is relevant and perceived as being “authentic” , publishing is facing serious competition in the future.

However, relevance needs to meet relevance both ways. Just putting brand messages into the mouth of online influencers won’t accelerate a brand’s value. In order to become relevant to an influencer and his or her audience, a brand needs to be “love-brand” in a social influencer’s mind. If not, the influencer will be perceived (and probably also act) like a traditional publishing product without a media-kit.

Solving the dilemma – budget and advertising strategy
The world of testimonials, models and publishing is changing with the rise of influencers.
More and more companies and brands start working with social influencers. I personally doubt that they will completely replace models, testimonials and publishing houses, but the future will tell. However, the world of recommendations will be redefined by a new species.

Nielsen Study Recommendation 2015

According to a recent #BrandofMe study, brands invested 1 Bio. USD in 2015 in influencer programs on Instagram only. Influencers earn between 500 and 10.000 USD per Instagram photo or Youtube video – obviously depending on their media reach. Which means that some influencers get paid as much as some publishers for their ad space. A lot of budget that moves away from traditional brand building worlds.

The question is what values more to brands in terms of business impact: tradition or progression. But that question can only be answered when brands understand the power that online influencers can have on and in the sharing economy.

Marketing Campaigns Examples for Gambling Websites

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Gambling is a competitive industry just like any other and as with other industries advertising campaigns can be the key to a site’s success. There are many different incentives used by those in this sector to entice in new players and make themselves stand out.
One of the most prolific deals that gambling sites extend to their public is a bonus, whether it’s totally free or comes with a deposit. These work particularly well as it is seen by many as an equivalent to free money to use however they please and works as an excellent incentive.

Roulette

Another way that sites can get players in the door is by creating a theme that’s on trend. This could be anything from a movie to a character and online casino sites that will be opened in 2016 or those that already exist are using this to its full advantage. This tactic taps into an existing fan base and combines recreational gaming with a concept that players already know they enjoy. Branded slot games are a growing trend because of this, as players see a movie that they enjoy reincarnated and can’t wait to take it for a spin. This also helps the site seem more personable and friendly, especially if they use a mascot.

Being social with players gives another boost to the ranks of a casino. As we all know social media is an excellent way for brands to reach out and be seen by a wider audience. The use of incentives by online casinos also helps when using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as they can boost posts that offer the best deals.

Typepad

Television advertisement is a medium that never grows old and many gambling sites now rely on creating an eye-catching advert. This can be a little trickier than advertising online however as there are governing bodies that must review these adverts.

Gambling Kid

The need to drive traffic to a site is felt by every business on the internet and these are just a few ways that gambling sites manage this flow. They still rely on basic advertising principles but they are tailored to the market.

Study: Social Media making millennials less social

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Sorry millennials! Us, the Baby Boomers, we have suspected this for quite a while. While you might be reading this post on your smartphone, you are probably somewhere in a park, in a bar or a coffee shop, chatting up some of your fellows. Ever considered to stop reading this during the conversation, or better before you started talking?

In a recent study by Flashgap (which findings come close to a study from 2014), it becomes clear how obsessed millennilas are with social media and how much it is affecting their social lives. The study states that 87% of millennials admitted that they are distracted by their smartphones when they are going out.

Now, this might be some predjudice from males but females seem to be slightly more addicted. 76% of females replied they do check social media platforms 10 and more times when they are out of home. Their male counterparts are less active with just 54% answering accordingly.

Flashgap Study 2015 Unsocial Millennials

Now, the question is why the millennials are so engaged in their social media lives? The answer ist hat more than half of all millennials (54%) fear to miss out on the latest news, when they are not checking social networks regularly.

The funny thing is that many millennials (74%) do post when drunk, but in the end regret it afterwards. Whether it is the drunk selfies, any kind of revelations of love to exes friends or any other sort of revealing messages that go along streams and messages. 71% of millennials regretted posting a picture on a social network after more than 3 drinks.

Spot On!
So, why is Flashgap promoting this study? They have got a new app that might become the answer to saving millennials from social media nightmares. Flashgap is a time-delayed photo-sharing app. With over 150,000 users, Flashgap could really become a solution. And guess what?! The app was inspired by the bachelor party film, ‘The Hangover’. Surprised?