Social Media Platforms Archives - Page 8 of 13

July 5, 2012

Forget Engagement, Consumers Want Simplicity

In a world where brands are constantly fighting for attention, many marketers are asking themselves a key question: What is the best way to impact purchase decision and brand loyalty?

The IBM Institute for Business Value found that 60-65% of business leaders who believe that consumers follow their brands on social media sites because they want to be a part of a community. Only 25-30% of consumers agree. The top reason consumers follow a brand? To get discounts – not exactly ideal for a company’s bottom line.

On top of trying too hard to engage with consumers via social media, marketers are generally pushing out too much information, causing people to over-think purchase decisions and making them more likely to change their minds about a product, be less confident in their choice and less likely remain loyal to the brand.

So what should marketers do? Here at Corporate Executive Board, we surveyed more than 7,000 consumers and interviewed 200 marketing executives across consumer brands and industries to find out. The answer: Simplify the decision-making process, so much so that consumers actually think less about the decision. Marketers can do that in three easy ways by helping consumers:

Trust the information they receive
Learn effectively without distraction
Weigh options confidently

When used together, this approach is known as Decision Simplicity.

Download the full report

July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

Aston Martin Vanquish Social Campaign a Huge Success

British automaker Aston Martin chose digital to market its new Vanquish model and saw a more than 100 percent increase in visitors to its Web site from social media channels among users in Germany, the United States and its home country.

The digital campaign that spanned Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the Aston Martin Web site began June 20 and centered on a digital car configurator, images and a video. The automaker saw the highest traffic on its Web site ever

recorded during the first three days of the campaign.

“Luxury automotive brands have communities of people that are incredibly passionate about their product,” said Jenn Heinen, associate director of social strategies at Morpheus Media, New York.

“Leveraging any kind of community-driven platform makes perfect sense to distribute content to a group of people who are already engaged with a product and lifestyle,” she said.

“Especially with more niche communities, the excitement and eagerness to interact with this kind of content makes social platforms all the more impactful for content syndication.”

Aston Martin recorded June 20-22 as its three highest traffic days on its global Web site at http://www.astonmartin.com. It saw the average number of daily visitors to the site double in the first seven days of the Vanquish campaign, per the brand.

As compared with the same period seven days earlier, the automaker saw a 216 percent increase in visitors to the site from the German market. There were also 162 percent, 102 percent and 81 percent increases in visits from consumers in Britain, the U.S. and China, respectively.

“Luxury automotive brands have communities of people that are incredibly passionate about their product,” said Jenn Heinen, associate director of social strategies at Morpheus Media, New York.

“Leveraging any kind of community-driven platform makes perfect sense to distribute content to a group of people who are already engaged with a product and lifestyle,” she said.

Especially with more niche communities, the excitement and eagerness to interact with this kind of content makes social platforms all the more impactful for content syndication.”

July 2, 2012

Leveraging Social Media in Food Marketing

When it comes to learning about food, nearly half of consumers use social networking sites, and 40% use Web sites, apps or blogs, according to a new study from The Hartman Group and Publicis Consultants USA.

“Consumers used to rely on mom and family traditions for meal planning, but now search online for what to cook, without ever tasting or smelling,” said Hartman Group president and COO Laurie Demeritt.

In addition, nearly a third of Americans overall — and 47% of Millennials — use social networking sites while eating at home.

So how can food makers and retailers best leverage this social media power?

June 20, 2012June 20, 2012

Farmers Insurance Journey to Social Media ROI

Very informative presentation by Farmers Insurance Group’s Director of Social Media, Ryon Harms. Ryon shares how they help their agent engage on social media, insure compliance and measuring social media ROI.

Ryon talks about how their Facebook engagement strategy is focused on their people instead of their product and gives examples of how their local agents are connecting daily with customers.

Take out from the presentation:

Social media is about relationships, not product or services, relationships generate ROI
The best social media ideas will probably come from the field
Your employees are valuable resources in your social media programs, don’t cut them off social media, empower them
Don’t write off social media as a business generator
I regulated environments you need to have a system to monitor social media conversations, the same way you need to monitor websites and emails for compliance.

June 19, 2012June 19, 2012

LinkedIn Adds New Targeting Options

Last October LinkedIn announced marketers would be able to post status updates to their company pages. Now the business-minded social network is adding the ability for marketers to pinpoint those posts at specific groups of followers.

Companies can target status updates based on seniority, job title, geography, company size, industry and employee tenure. “To now go out and be able to target vice-presidents of IT at companies with 500 employees and larger and send them a very specific message about enterprise software, that is a very specific message that those people have a high interest in receiving,” explained Jonathan Lister, LinkedIn’s vp of North America sales and marketing solutions.

LinkedIn has been beta-testing targeted status updates since April with 50 companies, and Lister said these posts have been broadly shared and commented upon to date, delivering more followers to the participating marketers. For instance, one of the beta customers, Salesforce, used the targeted updates to drive participation in offline events and saw a 30 percent increase in participation, Lister said.

June 5, 2012June 5, 2012

Are you ready for the EU Cookie Directive deadline?

26th of May 2012 is the official deadline for websites to conform with the EU Cookie Directive which requires all European websites to request permission before serving cookies to their visitors. Cookies are generally used to improve the visitors’ experience by remembering what visitors are doing and displaying differently based on that information. Most tracking software also use cookies to collect data, so without cookies on your website, tracking like Google Analytics won’t work. The reason the EU Cookie Directive exists is because cookies watch the activities of visitors, so could be seen to infringe on their privacy…I can see the point but this directive is creating way more problems than it’s solving.

In order to get permission you are forced to either stop site visitors when entering your site with a pop up and demand permission at that point, OR use a banner at the top or bottom of your website asking nicely. The first option is intrusive and may well put a lot of visitors off your website altogether. The second option risks being ignored by people who just don’t understand what they’re agreeing to. What does that mean? Any tracking cookies won’t work – a missed opportunity to gather some useful data, potentially on a large chunk of your website’s visits. Also any cookies that help to make the visitor’s website experience more customised and enjoyable won’t work. Oh and not forgetting: if you’re running ads on your website that are highly targeted to the visitors, they also won’t work without getting cookie consent. If this is your website’s source of revenue, it’s a big problem!

What does the EU Cookie Directive mean to you?

You can either:

Ignore it (and risk hefty fines)
Stop using cookies (you’re be surprised by how much of your website actually uses cookies to run)
Install the ability to request permission BEFORE using cookies on your website

How can you comply with the EU Cookie Directive?

May 16, 2012May 16, 2012

Facebook Paid Ads, GM Cuts But Ford Steps on the Gas

On the eve of Facebook’s wildly anticipated initial public stock offering, General Motors said Tuesday that it is “reassessing” its spending on Facebook paid ads — about $10 million — but “remains committed” to the social network as part of “an aggressive content strategy with all our products and brands.”

In other words, GM will not pay Facebook for ads but will continue to maintain content, for which Facebook doesn’t collect revenue. News of the decision was first reported in the Wall Street Journal.

GM’s position is far from universal. Ford Motor said it would “accelerate” Facebook paid ad spending in conjunction with the content it’s producing for the network.

But GM’s pullout points to Facebook’s biggest challenge: Though most consumer brands see the social network as a way to connect with consumers, opinions are mixed on the value of paid ads there. Posting messages is free, but Facebook astonished the market in February when it revealed that only 16% of “fans” see any given piece of content. To reach more “fans” as well as their friends, marketers were urged to buy advertising.

Automotive is a tough category for Facebook, as the purchase cycle is long and many factors influence a decision. A spokesman for the company said it would have no comment on GM’s decision.

Sources told Ad Age that world’s second-largest automaker has been reviewing the effectiveness of Facebook paid ads vs. placing content on the site for a while. (GM named Carat as its new media spending agency in January.). GM spokesman Tom Henderson said that the carmaker would continue to budget for content spending on Facebook “because Facebook continues to be a really effective tool for engaging with our customers.”