American Express Offers – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

    For those not familiar with American Express offers, it is a program run by AmEx where credit card members can sign up for discount offers (i.e. $5 off $50 spend) for specific retailers. Once opted in, the offers are valid for a limited time period and provide a statement credit (with a confirmation email once used). While this program can be useful (and I have used it many times), the operations and implementation seem to be stuck in the stone age which limits its value.

The good – AmEx credit card customers can achieve significant savings on products in addition to coupons or sales. AmEx pays nothing for these discounts while building customer loyalty and satisfaction. Participating companies can offer hyper-targeted promotions to AmEx’s customers rather than broad sales.

The bad – AmEx does offer some ability to look at offers on its app, but most offer reminders and marketing is done through a clunky email format. Due to this, it’s often not easy to remember which offers you have and when they expire.

The ugly – It’s 2020 and AmEx has not utilized many of the digital marketing tools and building blocks to enhance this offering. At a quick glance these could include:

• Analysis of offer take behavior to suggest customized offers (current list in not personalized)
• Utilize app push notifications (if offer is expiring, relevant offer released)
• Explore geo-fencing (at company cost) to pair with reminders to use your credit (if near or at a store that has an offer)

With some small moves, AmEx could unlock significantly more value from this program and stop letting in languish as an overlooked benefit.

Best practices for marketing on TikTok

 TikTok has emerged as one of the most popular social media platforms among teenagers, becoming the one of most downloaded app worldwide in 2018 and 2019. Currently, there are 500 million TikTok active monthly users around the world.

TikTok encourages users to upload short videos to share publicly on the platform, most of which are up to 15-seconds long. Its target audience are teenagers and young adults with age ranging between 13 to 24 years old. 

The ways that brands can market through TikTok is similar to most other social media platforms. Brands can either create their own channel and upload their own videos. They can also collaborate with influencers to spread content to their network and audience. Lastly, brands can also pay to advertise on TikTok through its platform. 

There are a few ways to increase brand awareness and generate engagement:

1. Hashtag challenges: challenges are an essential feature of the TikTok community and users take on these challenges to make video content, making a hashtag challenge go viral. Brands can therefore make up their own hashtag and encourage TikTok users to take them on. 

2. User-generated content: brands can strive to create unique and immersive experiences. Gen-Z love to share interesting sights and experiences online, and brands that can create experiences that are "TikTok worthy" can generate a lot of UGC that allows it to be discovered by more people.

3. TikTok ads: TikTok ads include in-feed native videos, hashtag challenges, Snapchat-style 2D lens filters for photos and videos, as well as brand takeovers. 

4. Influencer marketing: given the young demographic of TikTok users, they are less interested in flashy cameraworks and high production values. They tend to trust influencers they can relate to who are original and fun. Influencer marketing is therefore an integral to any brand's TikTok strategy.

Whatsapp and its potential to change how we shop

 

Whatsapp and its potential for to change how we shop

Whatsapp has more than two billion active users. However, so far Facebook hasn’t really monetized Whatsapp. The app is primarily a personal communication tool and Facebook doesn’t make money from the private chats. This makes Whatsapp very different from the Wechat app. Wechat was initially launched as a messaging tool similar to Whatsapp. The Wechat app added other functions: a wall to share pictures and article links, mini version of third-party apps for easy access, and payment options to send between friends. Wechat has developed different ways to monetize.

Whatsapp is yet to explore monetization strategies. With its large user base, Whatsapp has great potential to add more functions, including e-commerce. Whatsapp is used outside of the US as a messaging app for small e-commerce sites to communicate with their customers and take orders. Whatsapp already launched payment functions in India and could easily scale the payment function to other regions. It could integrate the current chat function and Venmo.

The app could also add more e-commerce functionalities. The app has a shopping catalog feature which allows business to utilize the platform to reach such a large active daily user base. It is also easy for users to share product links with their friends and family on Whatsapp.

 

References:   

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/technology/why-whatsapp-matters.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-whatsapp-shopping/whatsapp-adds-shopping-catalog-feature-courting-e-commerce-idUSKBN1XI050

 

What can B2B tech marketers do when the world is working from home?

This year, there has been a significant rise in the number of people working from home. And this influences how B2B tech marketers should think about marketing.

B2B tech marketers should create campaigns that speak to the people behind the business, because B2B purchases are 50% more likely to buy a product when they see a personal value related to it. Hence, although it might not seem obvious, getting emotional can be successful.

Besides that, story telling is something that can also help.  Creative storytelling that touches issues that people can relate have an effect on the viewer and position the company as a solution to the problems presented.

Source: https://marketingtechnews.net/news/2020/dec/01/wtf-do-b2b-tech-marketers-do-when-the-world-is-wfh/

Black Friday becomes Cyber Monday becomes Cyber Week

     Black Friday wasn't too successful for a significant amount of retailers, which isn't shocking considering the state of the pandemic, and the escalating cases across the country. However, retailers that have hopped onto the e-commerce train weren't too upset as cyber Monday was the most successful of all time. Even more so, cyber Monday has extended into a whole cyber week. With a significant amount of the US population currently spending the majority of their time on the internet, retailers have done their best to maximize their attention by enticing customers with door-busting sales all week. Retailers have managed to take a day of shopping and have turned it into an entire week. Another interesting thing to note is that thanksgiving spending also increased by 22%. Customers stuck at home in more low key thanksgiving weren't as distracted and chose to instead shop on thanksgiving as a way to pass the time. 

    Most customers loved their new way of black Friday shopping, from the comfort and warmth of their couch. The situation in malls across America was much bleaker. Genuinely looking like cense out of a retail apocalypse, the malls were frightfully empty. This is no surprise considering indoor areas do not feel the safest right now. However, this new comfortable way of shopping will probably be the new norm. Even after the pandemic ends, customers have become very much accustomed to the ease and convenience of online shopping and retailers are being more than accommodating. A prime example is Nordstroms excellent omnichannel strategy of encouraging buy online pick up in-store, encouraging customers to stay out of stores but also not having to ship items by giving customers a 15 dollar credit for buying online and picking up in-store. 

The Burger King Marketing Strategy

 

The Burger King Marketing Strategy

 

Burger King and McDonald's hold fond memory of special “treats” as a child for me. Though as I grew up they have fallen more into the drunken food category, I still appreciate what they offer to the table. Whereas both brands are global and known for their burgers, it’s interesting to see how one marketing strategy trumps the other, in this case, Burger King.  

Burger King launched a social media campaign for its Whopper, showing how it became moldy over time. While the initial image of a moldy burger isn’t appealing, the shock factor emphasized how Burger King doesn’t use preservatives.

It also did a clever Whopper Detour campaign in December 2018 to promote the “order ahead” feature on its app. Customers within 600 feet of a McDonald’s restaurant were given a limited offer to purchase a Whopper for a penny. The app was downloaded over a million times after the campaign launch.

While Burger King is famous for trolling on its rivals, it also had campaigns that touch the heart and raise awareness. In early 2018, it launched Burger Queen in China on March 8^th as part of International’s Women’s Day. They asked participants to rate how they feel about themselves and invited them to Burger King where they were presented the Burger Queen, which had boxes with a mirror underneath the lid. This kind of campaign not only promotes their products but also highlights raising awareness for women to feel valued and happy.

Overall, while I still go to McDonald’s from time to time for my fix of chicken nuggets, Burger King’s clever social media, and campaigns indicate that it is a king in marketing as well.

Outsourcing x insourcing digital marketing

    Whenever a company faces a task that is away from their core purpose they should ask themselves whether is worthy to invest and develop those capabilities in-house or just outsource the production. Digital marketing is a great example of that, because several retailers are now investing in ads in social media but do not have enough scale to maintain a full time employee focused on that. On the other hand, hiring an agency to take care of all your posts can be quite expensive. So, what are the factors one should consider when facing this kind of issue?

    Below, there are some of the pros of each type of service:

• Insourcing pros
• More brand focused 
• Easier to align objectives with sales and inventory teams 
• Flexible marketing plan, can easily adjust priorities as they shift   
• Cheaper for medium to long term tasks 
• Outsourcing pros
• Pay for delivered content, not employees
• Does not consume time hiring or training employees
• Agencies can leverage work from previous contracts and deliver a better quality work in a shorter period of time
• Can be cheaper if focused in a one off project

    As we can see, both models have their advantages, thus executives need to evaluate the amount/frequency of work, marketing budget and purpose of the campaign before taking such a decision. Probably the best answer for that is to have a hybrid model, where the company insource routine activities and outsource very specific and one-off projects.

Source: https://www.cose.org/en/Mind-Your-Business/Business-Growth/Insourcing-vs-Outsourcing-Digital-Marketing 

Global Advertisement market will take at least 2 years to recover

According to a study by WARC, the global advertisement market should fall at around 10.2% this year and WARC warns that it might take at least 2 years for the market to return to pre-pandemic levels. James McDonald, head of Data Content at WARC adds that 2020 was the most hostile year ever for the advertisement market and that an immediate return to previous values is not likely since unemployment will contribute to reduce consumption and thus delay the recovery of the advertisement market. WARC also expects the market to improve 6.7% in 2021 but that would mean it will still only recivef 59% of the losses from this year. As a result, it is necessary to improve again 4.4% in 2022 to reach the same value of 2019. Interestingly, the digital marketing market remained relatively constant.

Salesforce will buy Slack for almost $28bn

Salesforce will buy Slack for almost $28bn

During the pandemic a surge of tools to work remotely was created. Slack had their IPO not so long ago at a valuation of $23bn.

This is not new for Salesforce, acquiring companies. In the past 5 years they acquired 27 companies, under their CEO , Marc Benioff, they acquired 60.

 Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/technology/salesforce-slack-deal.html

Why Black Friday and Cyber Monday Advertisings are coming earlier

 Many businesses are offering discounts earlier than the typical four-day sales period between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Some businesses are even using the weeks between the election and Black Friday to test out different promotion strategies so they can be fully ready for the shopping weekend.

The sense of urgency is partially driven by the shift of customer behavior from going in store in person to e-commerce. Coupled with the rising COVID-19 cases, most US customers will be shopping in front of their computer screens, rather than going to the retail stores in person. This makes digital marketing even more imperative.

According to Katya Constantine, the CEO of performance marketing agency Digishop Girl, there has been an increase in CPMs and a decrease in conversation rates following the election. This shows that since the election, more customers are interested in searching for deals in preparation for the shopping weekend, but few have committed. This is a great opportunity for businesses to gather customer behavior intel by trying out different offers.

According to Jeremy Sonne, managing director of Moonshine Marketing, he has seen improved performance in businesses that started running promotions earlier this year. Many businesses created three or four different offers to test out, before deciding on which one to go with.

 

Source:

https://digiday.com/marketing/time-to-test-multiple-offers-why-black-friday-and-cyber-monday-advertising-is-coming-earlier-than-ever-this-year/

Google Maps takes on Facebook (Again)

How many of you remember Google+, the social network that rolled out in 2011 and shut down in 2019. But it had obviously failed long before the official shutdown in 2019. Despite the wide-scale usage of google account for email, YouTube and Drive, they were unable to take on the social media giant Facebook in gaining active daily users. This time Google is focusing on just one aspect of social media, the newsfeed, and is bringing it to Google Maps. The "Community Feed" as google calls it will be initially focused on food and drinks. This scrollable feed will include content created by users and businesses that pertain to locations near you. The user will be able to like posts, follow creators and business, and even message businesses directly.

I believe Google's community feed will end up being more like yelp, where people will only engage with it if they are looking for something specific. I believe they will have a hard time providing the entertainment factor of a true social media platform and will end up being more paid advertising for businesses. I am skeptical that this new attempt at taking on Facebook will pan out much better than the previous one.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/google-maps-takes-on-facebook-with-its-own-news-feed/

Netlix’s Digital Marketing Strategy As Told By Social Media Engagement

 It is well known that Netflix’s twitter responses are often a part of their Instagram strategy. A sassy response, pop culture relevant memes, a hilarious misnomer and politically motivated clap backs are hallmarks of the content giant’s digital marketing strategy – a tactic that has positioned the company well among millennials and the Gen-Z population even when its content has missed the mark. Where other social media accounts shy away from multiple replies, retweets and controversial messaging, Netflix uses this as an opportunity to build community leverage. While these digital marketing strategies are important for customer engagement, they are also an important differentiating factor as streaming wars ensue and media platform competition grows.

 

Vulture Magazine writes brilliantly about one of Netflix’s most recent (and widely successful) campaigns. In September 2020, Netflix kicked off its first-ever global brand campaign, a 27-country promotional effort built around the tagline “One Story Away.” “Netflix will be attaching that phrase to digital, TV, and billboard advertisements around the world, starting with a 90-second video spot that combines clips from more than two dozen of its original titles and narration by different members of the company’s creative family (including director Ava DuVernay in the United States). All of the ads will feature Netflix’s familiar red progress bar, an artistic tool meant to underscore how the progression of a storyline can change how viewers see things.”

This campaign and Netflix’s social media strategy may not seem to have much in common but there is an important digital strategy at play. Netflix has been moving away from a content platform to being a content creator. These strategies of polling users, engaging with them and aggregating existing content allows Netflix to gain further insight into customer preferences (both through A/B testing but also through the volume of responses and the high engagement they receive), which prove vital in the expansion of their content offerings.

New Google TV Integrates With 30+ Streaming Services

Google has come out with a new platform called Google TV (formerly "Play Movies") and in addition to being able to use content from its own services like YouTube TV, Google TV can also aggregate and organize content from a number of other sources, including major third party streamers like Hulu and Disney+. 

Below is the full list of streaming services that are supported on the platform:

• ABC
• Amazon Prime Video
• AMC
• A&E
• CBS All Access
• Crackle
• Comedy Central
• DC Universe
• Disney NOW
• Disney+
• Epix Now
• Fox Now
• Google Play Movies (now Google TV)
• Hulu
• HBO Go
• HBO Max
• History
• Lifetime
• MTV
• NBC
• Pluto TV
• Showtime
• Showtime Anytime
• Sling TV
• Starz
• TBS
• The CW
• TNT
• Tubi TV
• VH1
• YouTube TV

This new Google TV platform replaces "Play Movies," which wasn't widely used, and makes things more streamlined by directly placing your account-wide Google watchlist on your TV. It is available on the new Chromecast and will be launched on Android phones as well.

PepsiCo's in-house technology informs radical shift to digital

PepsiCo has accelerated growth from traditional TV to streaming while expanding its online sales. 

At the center of their efforts is their ROI engine that has supposedly increased their return on investment during campaigns. 

ROI Engine's genesis predates the pandemic, with the idea around the technology first emerging a year and a half ago amid a broader reassessment of PepsiCo's marketing measurement.

The fact that ROI engine was deployed beforehand helped PepsiCo accelerating and enjoy growth in digital sales in the pandemic particularly in North America. Now it's time to deploy it in the rest of the world.  

Facebook seeks to help businesses advertise and sell with Kustomer acquisition

 Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/30/facebook-acquires-kustomer-a-crm-start-up.html

On Monday 11/30, Facebook announced that it had acquired Kustomer, a CRM startup that leverages AI and process automation to provide an efficient platform for companies to manage sales and customer relationships.  While most of Facebooks acquisitions have been consumer-facing (Instagram, WhatsApp, Giphy, etc.), this acquisition signals Facebook's intent to provide even more services for companies who are using the platform to advertise and sell their products.  With a Kustomer integration, companies could feasibly advertise and close sales on platforms like WhatsApp and Messenger, branching beyond display advertising and Facebook's Marketplace platform, ultimately driving more conversions.  This will likely be a big revenue driver for Facebook as well, which earns 99% of its revenue from advertising.

It's unclear when we might expect changes to Facebook's core platforms; they'll want to make sure an integration with such revenue implications is done right.  However, with the resources Facebook has at its disposal, I'd be surprised if we don't start to see these options popping up for advertisers very soon.

Lonely Planet sold to US Digital Marketing Group - Red Ventures

 

Travel guide publisher Lonely Planet has been acquired by US digital marketing group Red Ventures for an undisclosed sum.

Red Ventures aims to propel Lonely Planet it into the digital era while “remaining committed to publishing the guidebooks that have made Lonely Planet the iconic brand it is today”.

Red Ventures said Lonely Planet had produced over 150 million travel guidebooks, reaches 186 million people annually and covers 22,000 destinations around the world.

As the pandemic hit in March and April, Lonely Planet announced office closures and redundancies across the group, including several at its Dublin office. While the company said it would continue publishing its country guidebooks, it cut back several ancillary services.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/lonely-planet-sold-to-us-digital-marketing-group-for-undisclosed-sum-1.4424895

Miguel Fernandes

Amazon's Biggest Holiday Shopping Year Despite the Pandemic

Today, Amazon reported that it experienced its biggest holiday shopping season in 2020. Independent businesses selling on Amazon surpassed $4.8 billion in worldwide sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, which is up 60% from last year. 71,000 small and medium-sized businesses had seen sales above $100,000.

At the same time, foot traffic to stores on Black Friday dropped 52% compared with last year. Amazon is one of the best positioned retailers to continue benefiting from this trend. As more users will continue fearing going out and instead will order online, the market which Amazon dominates, Amazon will continue reaping benefits until the arrival of stronger e-commerce competitors.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/01/amazon-announces-black-friday-cyber-monday-2020-results.html

When social media campaigns start using TikTok

A new addition to marketing campaign has been the use of TikTok given its extensive reach to younger audiences. With the rise of its popularity, Instagram released a similar feature, 'Reels', to compete with TikTok. However, Reels has yet to gain traction with users. Meanwhile, Snapchat has already decided to join the bandwagon with its own knock-off version of TikTok called 'Spotlight' to draw in user engagement. Similar to TikTok's algorithm to populate users 'For You' feed, Spotlight curates the best snapchats that are submitted by users to populate others feeds. With a new feature, Snapchat will have to leverage digital marketing techniques to boost popularity so it will be interesting to see if it gains traction.

Can TV ads make the jump to a digital world?

     Since the beginning of time (or at least network TV), brands large and small have advertised on television ranging from smaller cable advertising buys to million dollar Super Bowl ads. Reach was a huge advantage provided by television as huge numbers of individuals watch. There was also some ability to target specific customers using demographic ratings and targeting programs that are more watched by your preferred demographic. As digital ads have risen in popularity bringing the ability to hyper-target customers, the appeal of TV advertising has begin to fall.

     Earlier this month, Nielsen announced that it had partnered with Vizio and other smart TV manufacturers to allow tracking of over 55 million televisions at the zip code (in some situations household) and individual ad level. This increased tracking is expected to raise ad rates due to the more precise targeting and success tracking involved. What this does not address is another big problem that TV advertising (and to some level digital advertising) grapples with. For a digital ad, you can track immediate clicks and purchases and use that to better gauge effectiveness of your add. While this change in TV advertising is positive it still does not address the issue of calculating ROI that advertisers face since they can't connect TV impressions to sales. Based on this, I foresee a short-term bump in advertising rates for TV advertising due to this Nielsen trend but a long-term shift to digital advertising and TV streaming advertising (which has similar problems to this new system but allows even more hyper targeting).  

Marketing for a Pandemic Holiday Season

This year, the sales surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday looked different from the typical Black Friday sales that customers have gotten used to. Instead of one-day-only “doorbuster” sales with a myriad of discounted products where customers line up outside for these limited in-store offerings, retailers across the world, including big box retailers, have had to find new ways to approach these sales in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Specifically, many retailers are doing away with offering the best deals in-person, and stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy have made some of their most enticing sales online-only to de-emphasize the importance of in-store shopping. This shift toward online shopping is creating another challenge: ensuring that customers receive their purchases in time for the holidays. With postal services more burdened than ever (as people send away for things that they would normally buy in-person, whether it is food, household supplies, or holiday gifts for others), retailers have changed their marketing and overall approach to online sales. First, they are spreading out the promotions over a period of days and even weeks to smooth demand, and many offered these sales earlier in November and even in October to account for shipping delays closer to the holidays. Second, they are encouraging in-store/curbside pickup for items bought online to alleviate challenges regarding shipping, with some stores like Nordstrom even offering small gift cards/free cups of coffee/other incentives to pick up your online order in-store or at curbside. Stores will likely use these tactics more to drive in-store/curbside pickup as the holidays get closer and postal services become more strained.

While some customers prefer this new approach to holiday sales, which allows them to explore more in a given amount of time and make all the purchases they want, retailers also understand that online sales make it harder to encourage impulse purchases: customers have more time to think about a particular item before purchasing, and they are not swayed by the holiday music/decorations or chaos/crowds that make them feel the desire or need to buy something in a rush. I will be interested to see what other marketing tactics retailers roll out in the coming weeks to combat these challenges and encourage holiday shopping in this pandemic environment.

Sources: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/30/cyber-monday-2020-time-to-test-the-limits-of-e-commerce-.html , https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/23/holiday-2020-so-long-doorbusters-retailers-roll-out-weeks-of-deals.html , https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/23/holiday-2020-so-long-doorbusters-retailers-roll-out-weeks-of-deals.html 

Is SMS Marketing Effective?

From an efficiency standpoint, SMS marketing naturally seems like an obvious channel for brands to leverage.  When you look at the statistics side-by-side with email marketing, SMS has a lot going for it.  In terms of open rates, emails garner an average of 20%, whereas SMS offers are opened at a rate of 98%.  This makes sense given that so many of the often hundreds of emails we receive on a daily basis are spam and get deleted before they opened.  It also makes sense given that text messaging is our most commonly used form of regular, instant communication.  So when you see a text message pop up, you are highly likely to at least open it.  Additionally, a text message usually gets a response within 90 seconds (and 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of being received), whereas it takes people an average of 90 minutes to respond to an email.  But what about return on investment?

Given that SMS marketing has become so much more popular and widely used by brands in recent years, the hypothesis is that in the near future, SMS marketing may come up against some of the same roadblocks that email marketing has had.  These challenges include the high spam rate, which goes hand-in-hand with the changing psychology around people coming to expect that a great deal of the texts they receive in a day will be marketing messages, and therefore disregarded as spam before opening.  But before that happens, brands using SMS marketing can mitigate future challenges as much as possible and get the most ROI out of their current SMS methods.  

There are some key contributors to ROI in SMS marketing.  Be timely and relevant - SMS ads are particularly useful with real-time deals and coupons, flash sales, etc., so utilizing this channel well for these initiatives will pay off.  Keep it short and well-communicated - SMS messages should be communicated in 160 characters or less and should be written in plain, conversational English (using all caps and emojis is never a good idea, if people see that in an email it’s a first indication of spam, so the same holds true for a text from an unknown number).  Make the click-through as frictionless as possible for recipients, which can easily be done with a call-to-action button or direct link.  Finally, and most importantly, know your audience - do the due diligence necessary to home in on your target demographics, particularly for just-in-time deals, for which SMS as a channel is particularly effective.

All in all, companies should develop a strategy that incorporates both SMS and email marketing, as both can be highly effective for different reasons and at different times.  The timing is paramount, and just as important is getting permission to send a text message.  Your audience may completely abandon you if you send them a text ad without their permission.  If used with the right methodology, SMS can be just as effective as (if not more so) and yield comparable ROI to email marketing.

Sources:

https://optinmonster.com/sms-marketing

https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2019/01/roi-showdown-sms-marketing-vs-email-marketing

Measurement challenges for LinkedIn and Facebook

 As we've discussed in class, measurement can a huge benefit of digital marketing. Compared with traditional channels like radio and tv, it is much easier to link advertising to action in digital channels, where a user can be tracked from impression to click to conversion. However, many ad platforms are still figuring out how to effectively measure the efficacy of digital campaigns . Below are two articles highlighting recent measurement errors by LinkedIn and Facebook, both of which overcharged customers. While LinkedIn's issues were relatively minor and resulted in illegitimate charges of less than $25 for 90% of affected customers, Facebook is dealing with relatively more reputational blowback. 

Going forward, it will be important for ad platforms to proactively identify the ways in which their attribution models can 'break,' and ensure they are transparent when escalating these issues to their customers and the media. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedin-finds-measurement-errors-that-inflated-video-and-ad-metrics-11605228577

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-latest-error-shakes-advertisers-confidence-11606346927

Managing Success for B2B Social Media Marketing

Managing Success for B2B Social Media Marketing

Link: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/b2b-social-media-marketing/

While it’s true that many of the top brands leveraging social media operate in the B2C segment (such as Nike, Starbucks, and Applebee’s), it doesn’t mean that B2B companies don’t have a place in the social media arena. 

In terms of platforms used, 65% B2B players use LinkedIn to acquire customers, 55% use blogging, 43% use Facebook and 40% use twitter.

The problem that many B2B companies often face is: a lack of knowledge and an awareness of social media or not having the right staff/resources to run their social media campaigns.

For successful social media marketing, a B2B company needs to take a strategic approach and execute their campaign with precision. This can be done through 3 steps:

1. Define clear marketing objectives: Having measurable goals that are relevant to the big or small business will help create a winning B2B social media marketing strategy. You need to ensure that each goal set is smart and measurable in nature so that gauging success becomes simpler, and more scientific. Build a social media plan with targets and timelines to generate targeted leads, build a reputable brand and offer online customer service.

2. Identify the target audience: Social media is made up of diverse people, so not everybody is going to be interested in the content you share. Which is why it’s important to reach out to an audience that connects to you and your content. You want businesses who pay attention and listen to your advice. Being in the B2B segment, this not only helps you build a list of followers, but also lets you create real authority and a positive brand in your niche. By adding more value to your social media content, you will slowly but steadily differentiate your business from other companies that are not putting the effort in B2B social media marketing. Know your priorities, analyze competitors and their social media strategy, decide on what content to share and create and assign personas in a structural manner.

3. Choose the right social media channels: Every social media network is different. And the people that use it have different interests and priorities. When your B2B company experiments with social media marketing, it’s important to understand the importance of selecting the right social media platform. Effectiveness ratings for B2B platforms is as follow: LinkedIn 66%, Twitter 55%, YouTube 51%, SlideShare 41%, Facebook 30%, Instagram 22%, Pinterest 20%.

Text-Messaging, Influencers and Amazon Fashion's Capsule Collections

 Amazon Fashion has bet big on Influencers in order to build demand for their business. Amazon Fashion debuted "The Drop" last year featuring capsule collections designed by influencers and only available for 30 hours. By utilizing this format, they are able to tap into the high demand that surrounds street style and limited-edition drops (ie. Yeezy, Air Jordans etc.). Street style and hype beast fashion have exploded in recent years- yet despite the lack of traditional advertising the most iconic streetwear brands still spend a lot of money marketing their drops through expensive photoshoots, fashion shows, and sometimes even tv show or movie-length commercials.

Yet, with The Drop Amazon has avoided much of the marketing cost by relying on influencers as designers. They launched with 5 influencers (each with their own unique style) who all had at least 1M followers. They then used these influencers to tease their respective launches on their Instagram and YouTube pages leading up to the launch. Doing the lead up they also had their influencers ask their followers to sign up to receive text alerts for when the capsules dropped also giving Amazon a whole skew of consumers to push texts to for every subsequent drop. The Drop has quickly grown with celebrities such as Kendall and Kylie Jenner joining for a capsule collection. Additionally, this brought many more people to Amazon Fashion who may have scoffed at it before. It has firmly placed Amazon into the fast-fashion world and the company has quickly gained their footing.

Patagonia's Anti-Black Friday/Cyber Monday Stance

 While many brands were gearing up for a productive sale season over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, offering promotions including discounts and gifts with purchase, Patagonia took a stance against the sales rush. The outdoor apparel brand is know for its sustainable practices, and has boycotted Black Friday before, arguing that increased consumer spending during sales causes unnecessary waste and a large carbon footprint due to increased shipping of products. 

This year, Patagonia released a poem via a newspaper ad to express their viewpoint, which soon went viral on Twitter. The poem was very clever from a marketing standpoint because of its creative simplicity. Read top to bottom, the poem sounds like a defeatist resignation, giving into the unavoidability of the climate crisis. However, once you get to the end of the poem it prompts you to read it again bottom to top, and this time it is a declaration of hope and call to action. The poem follows in the footsteps of Patagonia's 2011 ad "Don't buy this jacket". Instead of contributing to the noise and excess around Black Friday, which results in unnecessary waste that is harmful to the planet, Patagonia is using it's voice to inspire change. 

The ad is especially powerful because it is doing the opposite of what most other brands are doing, it is asking you NOT to consume. This creativity and uniqueness caused it to trend on multiple social media channels, further spreading the brand's message. Patagonia is sacrificing Black Friday revenue to stay true to it's principles, which in the long run makes people even more loyal to the brand. 

To read more, see: https://www.fastcompany.com/90580854/patagonias-palindrome-poem-ad-is-a-check-on-runaway-black-friday-cyber-monday-spending

Can Big Tech Buy Public Opinion?

Can Big Tech Buy Public Opinion? 

Along with food and family, football is usually a central activity in thanksgiving festivities across the country. There are usually several games shown on TV, whose ratings are consistent with major primetime events throughout the year. It is also one of the best times for advertisers to get in front of consumers who are typically in a warm family setting when watching the games. This year, it was hard not to notice who was advertising. Almost every break featured a commercial from Amazon, Facebook, Apple or Google. With the slight exception of Apple, all these ads were not selling you a specific product, they were selling themselves. The themes were, Amazon cerates jobs! Google is trustworthy, and Apple protects your data! So why are they spending so much money for primetime ads, if they are not directing you to a specific product? What all these companies have in common are that they are under heavy investigation for Anti-trust violations. This means the government is starting to think they are too big and powerful. One way to fight regulators, outside of court, is through swaying public opinion. This is clearly what these companies are trying to do on Thanksgiving. The question is, can it work? Obviously, it takes more than just commercials to improve favorability about a company, but notice, you now have a bit more information on Amazon's corporate practices. Through their ads, we now know they are focused on climate change, employee a lot of people and donate to local schools. We still may distrust Amazon and the others, but be careful, as you will surly see more public opinion ads in the coming year. 

-Alton

The Best Black Friday Campaign #OptOutside

 

eCommerce is changing how we buy, sell, and market products. First, the rise of eCommerce vendors and marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay drew attention away from brick and mortar stores. In more recent years we are seeing a slight rebalance, in that vendors and marketplaces are recognizing that digital shopping experiences can not only supplant but also bolster in-person shopping experiences.

Within some industries, particularly those that sell non-differentiated, commoditized items, eCommerce makes sense. We don't need to touch and feel five different brands of AAA batteries or K-cups to make a selection. Outdoor adventure gear is another story. I, like many others, enjoy walking around shops like Moosejaw or REI. I enjoy speaking with experts about gear, seeing the new technology in bicycle frames, or just playing with the headlamps. Fortunately, these companies understand the needs of customers like myself and have accommodated our desires. REI is a mecca for fans of the outdoors. Further, REI is learning how to use digital marketing to drive more people to their stores, just not on Black Friday.

In 2016, REI launched a campaign asking its shoppers to AVOID their stores on Black Friday. To give its employees time to rest and to help people appreciate the outdoors on this semi-holiday, REI launched the #OptOutside campaign. Three years later, REI still runs this campaign and has gained partners such as the National Parks Foundation. By drawing from its brand identity and mission to help people do what they love most - experience the great outdoors, REI launched a creative and successful marketing plan.