Marketing Archives - Page 26 of 75 - Post Control Marketing

Mark Zuckerberg announced big changes coming to Facebook’s News Feed.

This is not the end of the world for marketers, but it should serve as an opportunity to re-evaluate your strategy. Remember that we have seen these kind of changes in the past. Early marketing strategies emphasized “Like us on Facebook” because back then a brand page “Like” meant real reach – as much as 26% in 2011. But as the News Feed became too crowded Facebook adjusted the algorithm and brand page average organic reach dropped to 6 percent by 2014. In 2016 Facebook further emphasized content from friends and family and average organic reach dropped to between 1% to 2%.

Facebook will now emphasize more “meaningful” interactions.

It is admirable that Facebook is making these changes to address problems research has revealed about fake news, depression, anxiety, and addiction. The News Feed will show more from friends, family and groups and less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. However, they acknowledge there are tight-knit communities around certain brands leaving the door open for organic reach. But if that content is passive, not generating comments, likes and shares, it will be de-emphasized. Video may even lose favor because it is more passive while content with longer comments could get a boost as an indicator of more meaningful interaction and sharing. While this may not mean an inevitable “zero organic reach” for all brands, it does require adjustments in your Facebook and larger social media strategy.

First, you may have to pay and pay more for Facebook ads.

Only 5 million businesses advertise on Facebook – just 8% of all 65 million business pages. Yet if more brands want to advertise these New Feed changes indicate that even paid brand posts may be reduced. A tightening of advertising inventory could increase ad costs. It is important to have the right metrics in place to ensure Facebook ads remain a good investment. Even a paid post only buys a view, content still must be good to elicit likes, comments, and shares that increase reach, drive referral traffic and help meet business objectives.

Next, you should consider other ways to get a consumer’s attention on Facebook.

If fans really “like” your content, then they will miss seeing it in their News Feed. You can remind them to like, comment, and share your content to keep it there. You can also remind them to, check their Pages Feed and update notifications settings from your page to ensure they see your posts. It’s probably a good idea to give them a reason why such as “Don’t miss out on our special offers” or “Continue to see our inspiring quotes, beautiful photos, funny videos, or how to tips.” Facebook is also emphasizing posts by groups. Creating a Facebook Group around your customers and brand could be another way to maintain consumer attention.

Then, check your social media customer response rate.

Remember that 67% of consumers seek out brands for customer service on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. This will not go away simply because they see less brand page posts in the News Feed. Research says that 71% who experience positive social customer service experience are likely to recommend the brand to others while 88% are less likely to buy from companies that leave complaints on social media unanswered. Customers also spend 20-40% more when companies engage and respond over social media. Are you losing more customers from unanswered consumer posts than you’re bringing in with brand posts? If your social customer care is not up to par you may be getting negative brand shares you don’t want appearing in News Feeds anyway.

And remember to always keep the broader perspective in mind.

You shouldn’t rely solely on any one platform for customers. A basic social media mistake companies still make is not considering a multichannel social media strategy. While 85% of the Fortune 500 are on Facebook only 75% are on YouTube, just 53% are on Instagram, only 42% have corporate blogs, just 31% are on Pinterest, and only 1% are on Snapchat. Now may be a good time to diversify your social media presence looking at other social channels, and other paid and earned opportunities in digital and traditional media as part of an integrated marketing communications plan. But also keep in mind that good content will get shared no matter where it appears. In the larger perspective of viral marketing if someone likes content a brand has created anywhere online they will share it with their friends in Facebook and through other means you can’t measure like Dark Social.

How to adjust your social strategy based on Facebook’s News Feed Changes:

Get fans and followers to share your content for you. How? Make content worth sharing. Page likes or followers aren’t enough, post likes, shares and comments will bubble up.
Get consumers to engage. Views are not enough. Mark Zuckerberg says “passive viewing of even entertaining or informative content won’t be emphasized. Build a tight-knit community around your brand and “moments in the world that matter” to drive conversation.
Increase ad spending. Up your Facebook advertising budget, but monitor results. Reduced ad inventory will increase costs, so track engagement and other business metrics to ensure a positive ROI.
Don’t forget customer service. Customers will still seek you out on Facebook for help, to ask questions and to get real service issues resolved. Ensure you have a good cross-discipline social customer care system to respond.
Become less Facebook dependent. Facebook says time spent on the service will go down. Develop a multichannel social media strategy considering other platforms and re-evaluate your overall IMC plan. Social media should only be a part of a complete paid, owned, earned and shared effort.

At the end of the day social media marketing is about creating quality content that attracts attention and drives conversation.

Moving forward, getting people to “Talk about us on Facebook,” may be more important than ever and Facebook may become less of a major platform for some brands. With these changes on the horizon now may be the time to conduct a social media audit and not simply rely on a social strategy you set up years ago or simply stay with existing brand social channels only.

Social messaging is instant messaging or chat applications created around social networks for communication on mobile phones with less limits and more features than traditional texting. They use the app’s interface and the internet to send messages rather than SMS service. Messaging apps are popular and have grown to over 5 billion monthly active users worldwide. Top apps pull in over one billion each such as WeChat (1.2 billion) and Facebook Messenger (1.2 billion), Kik (300 million), Viber (236 million), and Line (217 million).

Messaging use is increasing among all groups.

A Nielson Messenger survey found various generations are using messaging from Millennials (65%) and Gen Xers (65%) to Boomers (63%) and say that messaging improves their lives and their relationships by making communication simpler (69%), more ongoing (65%), easier for groups (65%), and more frequent (63%). People are using messaging to stay up to date with friends and family (59%) and to extend their networks (54%). Over the next two years they expect to use messaging apps more for communicating one-to-one (50%), with groups (60%), and, the most increase, with businesses (67%). In fact, 53% said they would be more likely to shop with a business they could message directly.

People like social messaging for features such as text chats, group chats and notifications, but also social features like status updates, media sharing and stickers. With advanced features they can chat with friends, obtain customer service, make calls, play games, access content, and buy products. Messaging apps also let businesses use chatbots to for customer service, sending content to users, selling products and services and purchase advertising.

The most popular messaging apps vary by region. According to SimilarWeb, WhatsApp is the dominate messaging app across most of the world. Facebook Messenger has supplanted it as number one in countries like the US, Canada, Australia and select Western European countries. WeChat is dominant in China and smaller messaging apps are most popular in other regions like Line in Asian Pacific countries and Viber in Eastern European countries. The messaging app Kik is unique in that it is most popular among a demographic – younger users age 13 to 23. Another messaging app consideration for B2B is Slack, which is a main internal communications tool for many companies.

How to integrated messaging into marketing communications.

As with other social media platforms business and organizations should consider adding messenger apps to their marketing, advertising and public relations strategies because their customers are increasingly using them and are beginning to expect brands to be there as well. Messaging apps can provide access to direct sales, customer service and to extend the reach of brand content distribution in an area known as dark social, the —84 percent of online sharing through private channels without a referral source. Thus, it isn’t tracked as social shares or referral traffic.

Broadly there are three ways brands can interact with consumers via messaging apps. Content marketing in messaging apps can do more than share with engaging ways to tell stories, demonstrate products, create engaging quizzes, trivia and games. Special offers, sales, promotions and even direct sales can occur in messaging apps unlike social networks. Also, the real-time nature and privacy of conversations makes messaging an ideal environment deliver customer service.

Much of these attractive features are enabled by chatbots. Chatbots are computer programs that simulate human conversation for customer service or information acquisition and distribution. Chatbots can be used for customer service, but can also be used to make brand content fun and engaging. One of the best ways to fully understand the possibilities of using messaging apps for social strategy is to see what brands have done on various messaging platforms.

Some examples of brands leveraging messaging.

The NBA increased basketball fan engagement during the NBA Finals and the NBA Draft. NBA’s bot on Facebook Messenger provided fans with instant access to highlights resulting in over 350k interactions. Teen celebrity magazine J-14 used two bots to deliver content and customized quizzes on the messaging app Kik to build up a young consumer subscriber list of 500,000. Miller Lite created a football game day collection of branded digital stickers used in Kik and Viber. The campaign led to over 600,000 downloads and millions of sends.

The British fashion brand Burberry took a different approach reaching consumers in China with a culturally relevant campaign via WeChat. During the Chinese New Year Burberry sent users an image of a letter with a pink bow and told them to “Shake” to open the gift and send a personalized Burberry greeting to a friend and celebrate Lunar New Year. Users could shop their New Year collection within Burberry’s WeChat store and sign up to win limited edition Lunar New Year envelopes to be picked up in-store.

Two food brands have created messaging strategies to help consumers make meals built around their brand’s as ingredients. Hellman’s mayonnaise created the “whatscook” WhatsApp campaign in South America where by entering numbers on the website chefs would contact consumers in WhatsApp offering live cooking advice. Based on a picture of ingredients chefs provided recipes teaching users to cook with pictures and even videos. Average interactions were an amazing 65 minutes and the effort reach 5.5 million people. Knorr foods created a chatbot, Auntie, to answer the question “What’s for dinner?” for moms in Thailand using Line. Auntie provided personalized recipes for great family meals which were viewed over 1.6 million times resulting in an increase in Knorr stock cube consumption by 50%.

Macy’s has partnered with Viber to offer in-chat shopping where users can search and share Macy’s products in the messenger app. While purchases happen via a link, the messaging platform is working on full in-app ecommerce features for the future. Adidas has used WhatsApp to build hyper local brand communities in cities across the world. The brand has found messaging to be a great tool for fan engagement offering members first notice of news releases, invites to events and access to Adidas’ ambassadors. Finally, cosmetics brand Sephora has found a way to simplify their scheduling process in Facebook Messenger. Their reservation assistant makes it easy for users to book makeovers and that has helped increase in-store sales.

Messaging social media advertising options.

Like many other social platforms, social messaging apps have also moved to paid social with native advertising options. Facebook Messenger offers sponsored messages, Kik offers promoted chats and Viber offers sponsored content. Line sells in app ads and WeChat offers Moment ads. WhatsApp is still holding out and has not offered native advertising options for businesses and organizations.

Has your brand considered using social messaging apps? In what ways could your target consumers benefit from increased engagement in these platforms?

For the latest changes in social media strategy consider Asking These Questions To Ensure You Have The Right Social Media Strategy and its a good idea to Perform A Social Media Audit at least once a year.