No Sacred Place: Ads Coming to Facebook Messenger

There are certainly mixed feelings when it comes to consumers and ads, especially as they’ve become more personalized.  Some view this as relevance while others fear big brother is watching.

Via a leaked document, TechCrunch reports that Facebook will be launching ads within its Messenger capability by Q2.  With 800 million monthly active users, Facebook will be seizing the opportunity to highly monetize another of its platforms. 

From a privacy perspective, Facebook will not let ads be sent blanketed or even to users who merely liked a company’s page in the past.  Specifically, ads will be sent to customers who had a message thread with an advertising company.  Interestingly, though, this strategy is in contradiction to a statement by Zuckerberg in 2014, questioning ads and messaging (voiced at the time of Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp). 

Possibly in preparation for this strategy, Facebook integrated “Click to Message” News Feed ads recently to get consumers to chat with companies.  Although details on what the ads can contain are not available yet, some options could include promotional messages, video content, or announcements on price drops.

Twitter has also recently stated it will be offering companies opportunities to engage with customers through direct messages. TechCrunch also goes on to acknowledge that if early tests lead to criticism by Facebook users, the whole thing could get kiboshed. 

Nielsen Adds Facebook Mentions to Social Content Ratings

Facebook Inc. Posts Will Help Gauge TV Ratings

www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/17/facebook-shares-will-help-gauge-tv-ratings.aspx

Rich Duprey

(TMFCop)

Feb 17, 2016 at 6:00PM

What you say about programming on social media, good or bad, will be tabulated to give marketers a fuller picture of viewer engagement. Nielsen will now track Facebook mentions in addition to Twitter.

Does what you say online translate into what happens offline? Consumer and media ratings giant Nielsen (NYSE:NLSN) thinks so, and it's expanding its coverage of what TV shows you're talking about on social media to make the data available to content production companies and advertisers. Your opinion apparently does count.

Nielsen began tracking show mentions on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) a few years ago, in what it called its Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings, but last month the consumer habits measurement firm announced that it was adding Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) mentions as well and would rebrand the service as Nielsen's Social Content Ratings.

The belief in the ability of social media to influence opinion has grown to such an extent that marketers have tried to harness the power of the hashtag by including them in commercials, TV shows, and movie trailers commonplace. Yet whether they can actually change consumer behavior to create a hit TV show is debatable. It may have been thought at one time that a program getting a lot of social media mentions would be a lucrative place to advertise on, because viewers were "engaged," but there's little evidence to back up such theories.

Comments, likes, or retweets don't indicate a person is actually watching the show, and may be little more than an exercise in measuring background noise. Nielsen, though, stops short of saying that's what its ratings service will deliver.

"By measuring program-related conversation across social networking services," the ratings provider said in a press release announcing the new changes, "TV networks and streaming content providers can assess the effectiveness of social audience engagement strategies and better understand the relationship between social activity and tune-in."

Or, shorter, here's some cool, additional data you guys may or may not find useful.

Just because tweets are mentioning a show doesn't mean they like it, or even watched it, suggesting rating based on such datapoints will have a lot of background noise in them.

After all, the SyFy channel's Sharknado was screaming across social media when it aired in 2013, the same year Nielsen began tracking Twitter mentions, generating some 5,000 tweets a minute. Yet with 1.4 million viewers, it did no better really than other original movies the channel made, and actually fared a little worse than Chupacabra vs. The Alamo, which drew in 1.5 million viewers. While there's something of a cult fandom behind the shark-storm movie, enough to allow SyFy to make two sequels to the movie with third slated for this year, it also continues to debase the reputation of the channel as a provider of original, quality content.

Perhaps Nielsen's social media ratings can help bridge that gap, but it's doubtful it will save us from such dreck being produced, as SyFy says it considers the movie a success as a result of the viewer engagement.
Nielsen's partnership with Facebook, though, is by nature going to be different from what it has with Twitter because when you Tweet something out on the platform, it's largely available for everyone to view. On Facebook, however, posts are more private, viewable only by those you allow to see what you write.

To get around that, Nielsen won't be the one actually monitoring what you say on the social network, but rather Facebook itself will be peering in on your conversations and aggregating the data, presumably keeping you anonymous while providing the ratings service with the following information:

• Whether a post is original about a show.
• If it's been liked, commented on, retweeted, or shared.
• The reach it's achieved, which Facebook describes as the number of impressions, or times a post is displayed and seen.
• Demographic information, such as age and gender.

Nielsen has also tracked YouTube views since 2012 and plans on incorporating Instagram mentions as well in the future. Whether that will provide any useful, actionable data for programmers and content creators remains to be seen, but maybe they only care that their shows are having something said about them. As P.T. Barnum was once reputedly quoted as saying, "I don't care what they say about me; just make sure they spell my name right!"

The next billion-dollar iSecret

The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something at its recent event, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

Fighting Terror with Nice on Facebook

A recent Wall Street Journal Article discusses how Facebook has added a new tool, counter speech, in the fight against terror.  These speakers are meant to contradict extremist views and posts with nice comments directly on those extremist posts or in direct messages.  A 2014 effort in Germany was cited which organized 100,000 people to infiltrate neo-Nazi Facebook pages in the same manner.

Facebook is willing to provide ad credits up to $1,000 for those that are willing to counter speak. They have also teamed with the State Department and Edventure Partners to entice college students all over the globe to participate in competitions for counter-speech.  They were given $2,000 budgets and $200 in ad credits.

Counter speech needs help and money to help spread the proverbial word.  The extremists have done an excellent job of putting money behind their hateful propaganda.  Now it's time to try an alternate approach.

While counter speech is largely unproven at this point, perhaps this is a step in the right direction by thinking about solving the problem in a contrarian way...with social media!  Clearly the status quo of never ending war is not solving anything and may even be inciting more extreme terrorism.  In order for anyone to listen, words of peace, tolerance, and understanding need to be spread by people like you and me; the common people.  We have all had enough of the hot air from our governmental leaders.

Video killed (is killing) the static ad star

Video advertisement on social media is becoming more and more the norm, and it makes total sense as to why. Video advertisements outperform static marketing due to the dynamism and interactivity. They are also more relatable to customers, as they do not hit the viewer with clunky and short messages with "Buy Now," for example. The video platform is growing faster than any other on social media, and often critics will comment that Facebook might move to a video only site. A 2014 Facebook study found there was an 87% increase in visitors to a product landing page in a video ad. This creates enjoyable barriers to entry for larger companies, as smaller ones cannot afford/do not see the value in creating video content as a means of engaging their customer. It also requires a lot of effort to create compelling content that changes often and sends a clear message. Also, sequencing ads (changing the order and content) can be costly and require a lot of resources only larger companies can afford. The challenge of video advertisement is that it is difficult to optimize and measure accurate view counts. As the majority of Facebook video ads autoplay, often, the numbers provided can be misleading. However, all this being said, video advertising is growing on social media platforms as companies continue to play with content and optimize the compelling variables of the ad, such as volume, size, length, and cover image.

Digital Media's Consumption Growth Slowing

Digital Media's Consumption Growth Slowing; So Is Traditional's Decline

Digital media’s consumption growth rate in the U.S. continued to slow last year, while the rate of decline in traditional media use (dominated by television, of course) also slowed.

Driven by higher smartphone and tablet penetration, new gaming console launches, and the draw of major political and sporting events, U.S. digital media usage rose 7.1%, to 18 hours per week, in 2015, according to PQ Media’s Global Consumer Media Usage & Exposure Forecast 2015-19.

That's lower than the 9.6% increase in digital media usage in 2014 (to 16.8 hours per week). Further, the projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2015 through 2019 -- 7.3% -- is barely above 2015’s growth rate. That CAGR will result in an average 23.9 hours per week of digital media consumption by 2019.

Digital media’s share of total U.S. media usage increased to 27.7% last year -- up from 25.9% in 2014, and from 17.3% back in 2009.

Mobile audio led usage growth last year, surging 33.5%. Increasing use of Spotify and other streaming music subscription services was a major driver, according to Patrick Quinn, president and COO of PQ Media. Mobile video’s usage growth was nearly as robust, at 26.9%

Meanwhile, traditional media usage in the U.S. decreased 2.4% in 2015, to 46.8 hours per week, after declining 2.1% in 2014, to 47.9 hours. (Television consumption is, of course, historically higher in even years, due to Olympics and election coverage.)

Despite continued growth of digital media consumption, traditional media’s rate of decline will not accelerate, according to the report.

Instead, the projection is for traditional consumption to decline at a compound annual rate of 2.1% through 2019, bringing usage hours per week for these media down to 43.1. (In comparison, in 2009, total traditional media hours consumed per week were 53.4.)

Television’s Continuing Evolution
Traditional media brands’ digital extensions are an increasingly important driver of online and mobile media usage.

“This is driving up overall media usage, as more content is repurposed for digital devices, such as Internet and mobile video streaming of TV programs and movies, online radio stations, Web-based multiplayer editions of console videogames, and mobile newspaper and magazine apps,” points out Quinn.

Within the overall media landscape, television continues to be the leading combined traditional and digital media “silo,” and aggressive players like NBCUniversal-Comcast are “strongly positioned” for continued growth, Quinn notes.

Driven by the expansion of devices for accessing television programming, including OTT video, laptop computers and smartphones -- as well as scripted shows created for non-broadcast channels -- total broadcast and cable television consumption (through traditional sets and all other devices) reached 32.4 hours per week last year, representing 50.2% of all U.S. media consumption.

By 2017, the increased availability of user-generated and other media content, combined with younger demographics watching less TV, will result in total television usage accounting for less than half of all U.S. media consumption (49.8%, or 32.8 hours per week) for the first time since 1953, when radio was still the dominant media choice, reports Quinn.

Still, PQ Media projects that traditional TV viewing will continue to dominate through 2019.

Museums are finally going digital

Museums are finding it increasingly difficult to compete in the evolving digital space. This is a shame, as their collections are often untapped assets of historic innovation and inspiration. In fact, most museums do not have even half their collection on view, and even fewer museums offer their assets digitally online. Yet, they are competing with the world of instant gratification, where museums face competition from their peers, but also from Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Museums compete more fiercely with media outlets than they do with peer institutions, for the most part. And media outlets already control the digital space. Museums need to evolve beyond the reputation as keepers of lost artifacts and into the thought-leadership space. Thus, museums are looking at ways in which they can leverage their unmatched assets to build a community digitally. Some early adopters, like MoMA, have created digital Pinterest boards and Instagram posts to reach out to the broader community that would not normally visit a museum. The Met has moved its entire collection online, allowing digital “visitorship” through its website as another touchpoint. The result is 2 million objects available for free with over 20 million digital “visitors” per year. The Met believes that these digital visitors eventually translate to onsite visitors, driving attendance from those who did not know the breadth of content that was available. This content is made available as a resource, but also as a tool to drive onsite and digital visits. The Met has three distinct physical locations, but calls its website its fourth. The Tate Modern in London considers its digital space to be its fifth gallery. The challenge now is finding the balancing act between using the online content as a resource (thus fulfilling the institution’s mission) and monetizing this strategy.

Luxury Cars in the Digital Age

Luxury automakers are becoming more focused on millennial auto shoppers, who made up 27 percent of new car sales in the US last year.  Of this segment, 41 percent use mobile channels to inform purchase decisions, both at the dealership and remotely.  Even more interesting is that of all drivers, 75 percent suggest they’d consider purchasing a car online (the end-to-end process).

Overall, automakers, particularly luxury brands, have been slow to adopt digital trends.  Notable standouts are BMW’s noteworthy investment in Instagram and Rolls Royce’s new website and mobile platform (see below) to more efficiently communicate to its target market.  In addition, Tesla and Land Rover have made investments to make mobile devices more usable.

Yet digital trends have ben changing, such as how businesses have been decreasing their number of posts on Facebook based upon feedback from the algorithmic newsfeed.  Automakers have not always responded well to such changes, as they continue to saturate the platform.  The US has had better performance than Europe, where the options to schedule test-drives along with see 360 views of the cars are missing on mobile sites.

Brand equity is critical here, as paid search efforts on competitive brand names may be futile.  If someone is specifically searching for “Audi” or “BMW,” they are seeking relevant results and not open to additional ads.  Yet for the non-luxury brands, it is worthwhile to compete in the space for product terms such as ‘minivan’ or ‘sedan.’

Another missed opportunity is within the email channel, which currently accounts for 39 percent of dealership leads.  There is a better opportunity for prospect data capture to ensure local dealerships manage follow-ups and schedule test-drives.

As discussed in class, it’s critical to ensure your web presence is set to match your offline media spend and marketing efforts.  The latest James Bond film, Spectre, heavily featured Jaguar and Aston Martin vehicles.  Their websites saw traffic double in the month following the film’s release!

An additional digital trend in the automotive space is wireless connectivity for cars.  In a recent survey, 50 percent of respondents rated connected car technologies as ‘extremely important’, up from only 8 percent last year.  

http://www.luxurydaily.com/luxury-automakers-falling-behind-on-digital-marketing-l2/

3 Best Practices for PPC Strategy

This post was originally published on the Leap Clixx marketing agency blog and written by Peter Cartier. Read more at http://www.business2community.com/inbound-marketing/increase-ppc-roi-3-inbound-marketing-best-practices-01435432#2kk6hA0MW0mKTGHW.99

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be a highly successful and cost-effective way to attract qualified leads and guide them through the buyer's journey. 

According to SearchEngineLand.com, the top 3 PPC ad spots receive more than 40% of clicks on the page which obviously translates to a massive advantage as well as a prime opportunity for businesses facing heavy competition to rank high for popular keyword search terms.

However, simply launching a PPC campaign and hoping that it sweeps you away to a Lead Generation Wonderland probably won’t improve your bottom-line (though it will certainly improve Google’s). That’s because you need to enhance your PPC results with inbound marketing best practices to get the most ROI from your campaign.

Below, we highlight 3 best practices that should be part of your core strategy:

How Inbound Marketing Helps Increase Your PPC Campaign’s ROI

1. Keyword Selection + Buyer Personas

A major element of inbound marketing involves developing buyer personas. These are fictional profiles of your different target market groups that capture their goals, challenges, problems and interests.

In addition to using buyer personas to calibrate and create great content – such as blog posts, eBooks, Infographics, white papers, datasheets, and so on – you can use them to research and select low competition, low cost, yet high impact keywords (a.k.a. long-tail keywords) that will spark your customers’ interest. This can lead to more clicks, more conversions and more sales.

2. Landing Pages + Assets

One of the most common mistakes that businesses make with their PPC campaigns – and also one of the costliest – is that they only drive customers to an existing page on their website (usually their home page).

And while this is not always a mistake, in many situations, it would be far more effective to drive customers to a specially-crafted landing page that offers an inbound marketing asset, such as an eBook. This is because many searchers aren’t ready to buy yet. They’re in the research and discovery phase and the less work they need to do to find what they’re looking for the better.

For example, a customer who searches for “best office relocation company” could be presented with a PPC ad that invites them to download a free eBook, which responds to this inquiry (e.g. “How to Choose the Best Office Relocation Company”).

When they click the ad, instead of being taken to the company’s home page, they’re ushered to a landing page that affirms that they’re “in the right place” and makes it fast and easy for them to download their eBook after filling out a brief form. They get an impressive eBook, and you get their contact information – everyone wins.

3. Retargeting

Retargeting involves pushing specific PPC ads to customers based on their browsing history. For example, someone who visits a website that sells new cars would start seeing Facebook ads (by no coincidence) from companies that sell cars, rent cars, offer car buying information, etc.

Retargeting integrates effectively with inbound marketing because it helps “remind” customers to continue the journey that they recently started. What’s more, this reminder is not an aggressive sales pitch – which would be pointless, because if the customer wanted to buy, they probably would’ve done so already (i.e. nobody “forgets” to buy a car). And since inbound marketing is primarily about informing and influencing customers rather than directly selling to them, it’s the perfect way to re-kindle the relationship.

For example, the aforementioned car shopper can be retargeted with a PPC ad that invites them to download an eBook entitled, “The 5 Things You Must Know BEFORE You Buy a Car!” Or the offer may be an Infographic covering ways to slow down new car value depreciation. Neither of these are sales pitches, yet they achieve the goal of pulling the customer back into the relationship – one that they’ll hopefully move forward and ultimately lead to making a purchase in the near future.

The Bottom Line

For many businesses – particularly small ones that have well-heeled competitors with huge online marketing budgets – PPC campaigns can be highly effective and surprisingly affordable. But the campaigns have to integrate with inbound marketing. When that happens, businesses spend less money and less time to get more customers and more sales. And isn’t that the point of all this marketing in the first place?

Seamless/Chipotle

In light of Seamless closing for lunch today in order to have a company-wide safety meeting, Seamless sent an email blast letting people know that they have plenty of other options for burritos:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chipotle-closed-20160208-story.html

No Chipotle for lunch today: Its U.S. restaurants shut for a food safety meeting

Chipotle's sales have slumped after two E. coli outbreaks were tied to its restaurants.
(Stephen Brashear / Associated Press)

Samantha MasunagaContact Reporter

Don't plan on eating at Chipotle before 3 p.m. on Monday.
The Denver-based burrito chain is closing all of its U.S. restaurants for part of the day so its employees can attend a company-wide meeting to discuss food safety changes and allow staff to ask questions.
 
All restaurants are to reopen at 3 p.m. in their respective time zones. As of December, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has 1,971 locations across the nation.

At least one company is jumping to capitalize on Chipotle’s brief nationwide shutdown. On Monday morning, food delivery service Seamless sent an email to its customers announcing that it can come through with other Mexican food choices “when certain restaurants are closed (you know who).”

Chipotle's sales have slumped after two E. coli outbreaks were tied to its restaurants. In November, Chipotle temporarily closed 43 restaurants in Washington and Oregon after 22 cases were linked to its eateries. Those locations have since reopened.

In December, there was a second, smaller outbreak of E. coli tied to Chipotle restaurants. A total of five people were affected in Kansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma.
Last week, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the two outbreaks tied to the chain appeared to be over. The CDC said it was closing its investigation, though it was unable to determine a food or ingredient responsible for the contamination.

 

In December, the company took another hit when 141 Boston College students were reported to have contracted norovirus after eating at a nearby Chipotle restaurant.

Chipotle was also subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in connection with a criminal investigation conducted by the U.S. attorney's office for the Central District of California in conjunction with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations.

As part of the subpoena, Chipotle was asked to show documents relating to a norovirus outbreak in August at a Simi Valley restaurant. Chipotle has said it will fully cooperate in the investigation.

The scope of the investigation was expanded last month: Chipotle was served with another subpoena, this one requiring it to provide additional documents and information related to its food safety dating back to January 2013.

Dangers and opportunities for social media in medicine

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3863578/

This article discusses the dangers of social media (SM) in medicine while exploring how specific changes in settings on sites like Facebook may be making SM a less perilous environment for health professionals. It also provides illustrative examples of three promising avenues through which SM can most contribute to medicine:

1.       improving communication with patients

2.       enhancing professional development

3.       contributing to public health research and service

The dangers of social media:

Concerns about liability, litigation, privacy, lack of time/compensation are valid and shared across the spectrum of health professionals and medical professionals are wise to be exceedingly cautious about any foray into SM.  Examples:

1.       SM enables distasteful content to be publically posted by med students, residents, and other healthcare providers.

2.       It “violates” the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship by facilitating online “friendships” and reducing privacy

To address these issues, the article describes ways in which professional organizations, e.g., AMA, have published guidelines for the ethical use of SM.  Also, the authors elucidate on privacy settings on social networking sites have begun to evolve in favor of greater safety for physicians to facilitate such information-sharing.

 The article points out, however, that the tone and content of existing guidelines focus is proportionately on the risks rather than the benefits of SM, and suggests an expectation of misuse rather than consideration of how technologies might be used in a positive manner.  Therefore, it raises the following topic:

Opportunities in social media:

There are manifold opportunities for professionals to use vast social networks to improve the wellbeing of patients and contribute to public health through the provision of high quality health information.  Examples:

1.       SM can help extend care into the community and foster prevention without a massive time commitment from medical professionals:

a.       Teams of professionals using a joint Facebook Page to organize walking, running, or weight-loss clubs, or using status updates to keep patients and families informed about local events (i.e., farmers’ markets, 5k runs, weather advisories, etc.)

b.      Encouraging health screenings or mobilizing the community around local advocacy measures such as the construction of walking paths, reduced emissions to improve air quality, increased funding to fight obesity, etc.

2.       At other levels of public health, organizations are using keyword content from social networks – particularly the rapid micro-blogging site Twitter and other location-based technologies – to track health and welfare, rapidly disseminate information, and respond to disasters.

a.       The CDC tracks Tweets for information pertaining to flu outbreaks while maintaining an active presence on Twitter and Facebook to share frequent flu-related updates.

3.       Medical centers and hospitals have begun directly harnessing the viral power of SM to spread health messaging throughout their regions of service.

a.       The Mayo Clinic has been an international leader, establishing a Center for Social Media devoted to cultivating a presence on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter and offering patients a vast library of podcasts and blog posts written from health professionals

As a physician, I have struggled with some of the privacy issues surrounding SM, but have also realized the many important potential benefits.  As indicated in the article, I do also feel that there needs to be a better understanding and undertaking of how exactly the powerful tools of our age can be harnessed to promote individual and public health as well as personal growth and development.

Wearable Tech

I recently received a FitBit as a gift and have become a true believer in the advantages and disruptive nature of wearable technology. The device passively collects data on my heart rate, steps taken, stairs climbed, and even my phone calls. It knows my every move and constantly communicates with my phone and computer.  As wearable devices continue to evolve and improve, I'm very curious to see how digital marketing evolves to capitalize on the immense amount of data that wearables capture. Given that wearable devices aim to reduce the time between intention and action, it's only a matter of time before marketing strategies evolve to leverage the behavioral information gathered by wearables to predict our behavior. I have a feeling that in the not so distant future, my suite of connected devices (including my wearable) will be clever enough to know what I want for dinner, when I’m getting sick, what time I should go to sleep to be fully rested, who I want to call, what I want to listen to, and where I want to go. Advancements in wearable tech will continue to expand the methods that marketers employ to analyze and influence customer behavior.

Peer Promoting: The Benefits of Social Media Engagement for the Entertainment Industry

By Blaire Townshend

Though I am a member of the oft-mentioned Millennial generation, I am new to the world of social media. Unlike many of my peers, I don’t find that hashtags, retweets, and Instagram posts come naturally to me. However, in a quest to make myself less antediluvian, I have been attempting to understand the complexities of these vast online communities and their implications both for my field of interest (arts and entertainment) and for society in general. What I have gathered quite quickly is that social media not only has the potential to revolutionize marketing tactics, but has already done so. In the interests of time I will speak to this revolution as it pertains to digital arts marketing, but as I am sure you are well aware, no market is unaffected.  

What is truly incredible about these mediums is their capacity to encourage consumer driven marketing. A perfect example of this is live tweeting; the phenomenon of responding to events in real time on Twitter using predetermined hashtags pertaining to the subject material at hand. While I was observing arts events and bemoaning declining audiences and lack of widespread support, my peers were busy beaming relevant discussion topics to a global audience of millions and thus bringing exposure to the art. And this without any urging from the producers of these events! In essence, they were marketing arts events for these producers. On their own time. For free. In marketing parlance, these tweeters exemplify the ideal of the net promoter; an enthusiastic supporter of a good or event who takes it upon themselves to recommend that good or event to their peers. This is an incredibly cost-effective marketing base for organizations to tap into.    

In fact, a Forbes article from 2014 speaks specifically to the effects that live tweeting has on platform engagement (Bercovici). It claims that “programs whose cast members live-tweet when the show is airing generate 64% more discussion” (Bercovici). I can certainly attest to the fact that this is still the case two years later—when Grease Live aired this past week, and stars such as Julianne Hough and Aaron Tveit took to Twitter and Instagram to share their experiences backstage, express their excitement, and just generally check in, my social media feeds exploded. People could not seem to get enough of the up-to-the-minute, intimate feel of these posts. They responded in kind, and as a result, Grease Live was the main topic of conversation on Twitter and Facebook for hours that night.

The beauty of these scenarios is that the marketing personnel of these productions can do relatively little and reap fantastic rewards. Encourage your stars to engage in light commentary, promote a few backstage Instagram posts, and your fans will do the rest of the work for you. Obviously, this is an oversimplification of the marketing process. However, the fact remains that the resulting online conversations generate the very organic word of mouth that marketers lust after. And it is important to note that word of mouth is overwhelmingly what this generation responds to. The statistics say it: the Broadway League demographics report found that word of mouth and personal recommendations were the most popular methods for gathering information and making choices about arts events (Demographics). The experts say it: Chris Anderson reminds us that “fundamentally social media is a peer-to-peer medium”—in other words, the online generation values and trusts the recommendations of their peers (Anderson 242).

When marketers understand this and take advantage of this, they encourage the use of social media as a platform for “peer-production”, where “users happily do for free what companies would otherwise have to pay employees to do”—recommend these events to each other (Anderson 219). Anderson flippantly describes this as a transition from “outsourcing” to “crowdsourcing”, but I feel that his description is wonderfully apropos (Anderson 219). In a market such as the arts, where paying for wages and advertising campaigns is at a premium, who in their right mind would refuse the assistance of that crowd? I may be slow on the uptake, but even I can see that encouraging such collaboration is #ontrend.

Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. New York: Hyperion, 2008.

Bercovici, Jeff. “Twitter Quantifies Impact of Live-Tweeting on TV Engagement.” Forbes Tech. Forbes. 18 Sept 2014. Web. 4 Feb 2016.

“The Demographics of the Broadway Audience 2013-2014.” The Broadway League. The Broadway League. 2014. Web. 6 Dec 2015.

Digital Marketing for Non-Profits

Non-profit organizations benefit a lot from the Digital Marketing development. First of all, non-profits are now able to reach a large audience through relatively low cost online marketing. Second, telling a touching story is very important for non-profits and leveraging digital tools make their messages much more powerful. Finally, online payment technologies integrated into online marketing campaigns drive potential donors quickly from interest to action.

I would like to share some interesting example of digital marketing campaigns created for non-profits.

1.  Disillusioning the audience on the importance of likes

UNICEF Sweden made a clear distinction between giving a ‘like’ and giving money in its campaign ‘Likes don’t save lives’. Apart from images, UNICEF also made YouTube videos with Swedish celebrities trying to buy food with likes. This campaign was a response to a growing concern, that many people viewed liking an organization page on Facebook being equal to donating money.    

 

2. Building relationship

Futures Without Violence (devoted to preventing violence against children and women) was good at getting users to their webpage but did not succeed in making them stay long, explore and return. As a solution, Media Cause built custom landing pages collecting emails from visitors. First, they identified top downloaded factsheets sharing interesting data on violence and then suggested these factsheets on return for an email address straight on a landing page.

3. Following progress on Instagram

The Good Agency created an Instagram campaign for WaterAid to help them raise £2.5m and bring clean water to 134,000 people in Malawi. Main idea of the campaign was that donors could follow the progress of the Big Dig in real time and most importantly see it when clean water arrived – all through Instagram posts.

4. Optimizing landing page

CreakyJoints (online community for people with all forms of arthritis and autoimmune disease) wanted to increase conversion rate of its Facebook Campaign. Advertising agency working on the campaign brought registration form straight to the landing page and changed the language to clearly describe membership benefits. As a result conversion rate increased from 8.28% to 21.27%