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Companies today spend a whole lot on marketing and advertising. According to Business Insider, America’s 100 biggest advertisers spent a record of $109 billion in marketing in 2013. One of the companies, Procter & Gamble, the top spender, spent approximately $5 billion on advertising in 2013. However, there is another method to market and advertise your brand effectively and efficiently at the lowest cost possible.

This strategy is known as the inbound marketing strategy. Inbound marketing is defined as the promotional strategy used by a company or organization via newsletters, SEO, social media marketing, blogs, and other forms of content marketing to attract and retain customers. Inbound marketing strategy focuses on catering advertising messages to people who are already interested in your product or services, as opposed to outbound marketing, where marketers push messages to the general public.

Inbound marketing relates to the sales or purchase funnel as shown on the left. The sales or purchase funnel is a model used by businesspeople to show the customer journey from awareness of a company’s product and service to finally purchasing it. Let’s take an example of an individual who saw a blanket scarf advertisement from Aritzia saying it is 50% off on Facebook (awareness) and is considering to purchase the product (consideration). Later, her celebrity she looks up to posted a picture on Instagram with the scarf, and the individual developed a liking for the product (preference). Few hours later, he unhesitantly purchased the product (purchase) online on Aritzia’s website.

An interesting fact to note is that this funnel on the left also shows two additional stages that marketers often leave out – loyalty and advocacy. If loyalty programs are implemented well, these two stages are crucial to attracting and retaining old customer, as it often brings long-term profitability to a company.

The sales and purchase funnel correlates to how inbound marketing strategy should be implemented. To convert a stranger (awareness) to a visitor of a company’s website (consideration), the inbound marketing strategy is to attract individuals via blogs and social media. Blogs could have mentions (@Aritzia) about the company’s product or service to induce greater awareness and consideration into using the product. An example of this would be Daily Hive‘s mention of Enchant being the world’s biggest Christmas
light maze. This post on Facebook attracted a lot of millenials on social media and a number of my friends went to visit the first day it was open.

The second inbound marketing strategy to convert visitors to leads (preference) is via call-to-action (CTA), forms, and landing pages. As shown in the Daily Hive post, their article included a CTA by hyperlinking Enchant’s website while mentioning the largest light maze coming to Vancouver.

The third inbound marketing strategy step is to close by converting leads to customers (purchase) via emails, signals, and workflows. Using emails and signals, they function as a reminder to the leads about the benefits of the product, optimally inducing them to buy the product.

The fourth step is a key step to the inbound marketing strategy, where you convert your customers to promoters. The inbound marketing strategy at this stage requires companies to host events and post smart content to engage and retain customers.

By hosting events, customers will post them on social media platforms using hashtags, mentions, and sharing of pictures that optimally increases the brand presence of your company on social media. Not to mention, these posts are technically free of charge, and serves as advertising for your product and service! Also, this also is a credible method of advertising because the customer’s post functions as a recommendation to his or her network of friends and family. According to Nielson, 92% of consumers believe that recommendations from friends and family are more credible than other forms of advertising. This is known as the positive word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM). Furthermore, 64% marketing executives indicated that they believe WOMM is the most effective form of marketing.

Developing and posting smart content, on the other hand, means to post the right content at the right time targeting the right customers who are interested in your product. This way, the post is relevant to the customer and will be more likely shared and cycled on social media platforms and function as a promoter of your company. Optimally, these posts will bring awareness to other new customers to move down the sales funnel.

In conclusion, utilizing inbound marketing is an effective and efficient method of advertising because WOMM is a very credible source for potential customers who are looking into using your product. Also, inbound marketing strategy’s cost is minimal, at 62% less than outbound marketing which often is mostly used by companies today. Hence, integrating inbound marketing strategy in your business strategy could be an asset for the company to achieve long-term business growth.

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Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/12-biggest-advertising-spenders-in-2013-2014-6
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberlywhitler/2014/07/17/why-word-of-mouth-marketing-is-the-most-important-social-media/#32edc6e87a77
https://www.meltwater.com/au/blog/6-steps-to-proving-our-worth-social-marketing-roi/

According to Bazaar Voice, 53% of baby boomers and 64% of millennials want more networks allowing them to share their opinions about brands. In addition, other studies have shown that consumers trust user-generated content (UGC) more than other forms of social media.

UGC can be a good method to engage your readers and build trust within your customers. You may have encountered UGC efforts without even realizing them! For example, DailyHive (used to be Vancity Buzz) had posted an article called “Vancouver Cheap Eats: Tacos” mentioning restaurants such as La Taqueria, Tacofino, Tacomio; In that article, restaurants are actually exercising UGC on blogs to promote awareness for their brand.

• So, What is User-Generated Content (UGC)?

Technopedia defines it as “any digital content that is produced and shared by end-users of an online service or website.” It is any content that is produced or shared by users that are currently subscribers or members of the service only, not by the company itself. The content can be blogs, discussion forums, posts, chats, tweets, digital images, videos, audio, and etcetera, developed by users of online system or services.

• How To Use UGC In Your Business?

Most UGC campaigns have been promoted on social media or online in the past. Companies often reward consumer with prizes to encourage participation or positive presentation of their products and service.

Here are a few tips suggested by HubSpot when implementing an UGC promotional strategy:

1) Match your promotions with your audience type:
Many companies often ask individuals to upload photos or videos. Keep in mind, this may not be suitable for all companies. If your consumers are older in age, video clips and online social media UGC strategies may not be as effective.

2) Best to implement UGC campaigns that can help you advertise:
The goal of UGC often is to regain something tangible and repackage the content so you can use it for future marketing efforts. You should implement campaigns where the entries (e.g. photos, videos, testimonials) can be converted for future advertising purposes.

3) Make the amount of reward being given out equivalent to the effort required by consumers:
If you require consumers to make detailed and informative videos in high quality, it is only fair if your reward is large enough to compensate for their efforts, work, and loyalty!

4) Make entry stages easy and clear:
This means instructions of entry is clear, submission websites are easy to navigate, and forms are straight forward and simple to fill out. Ensure that your campaign complies with legal requirements of your area and informs consumers the restrictions your campaign is subjected to.

5) Finally, ensure that your campaign meets legal requirements:
Make sure you have asked for consent from consumers before using submitted social media contents and follows local or international laws (if it is a big UGC campaign you are running).

• Examples of UGC:

1) Coca-Cola – The best example that everyone is aware of would be Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, where the company produced customized Coke bottles with customer’s names on their bottle label. Exposure on social media, such as Twitter, increased since this campaign was available in different cities and customers were asked to share pictures of their coke bottles. This campaign started off in Australia in 2011, but expanded to other parts of the world, such as United States, United Kingdom, and more, due to its popularity. This UGC campaign itself attributed to a 2% increased in U.S. sales after a decade of declining revenues!

2) Starbucks – Starbucks also utilized UGC when they launched the “Starbucks’ White Cup Contest” in April 2014. Customers all around the world were asked to design their Starbucks cup and upload a picture of their final design on social media. around 4,000 customers had submitted entries within three weeks and Starbucks utilized this strategy to gain awareness and publicity.

Sources:
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/examples-of-user-generated-content#sm.0001wlr3v58exdgqqa72em0i8cg6l
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/3138/user-generated-content-ugc
https://thisisnotadvertising.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/coke_connect_land.jpg
http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/longcups-1024×341.jpg.jpg
https://interactiveonline.com/wp-content/uploads/pic-social-bubbles.png
https://interactiveonline.com/wp-content/uploads/pic-social-bubbles.png

On this blog, you can find blog posts about tips on social media marketing.

Businesses today are trying to engage and reconnect with their customers constantly. Most businesses do it via social media platforms by posting personal and professional posts. According to The Content Factory, 84% of B2B marketers integrate some sort of social media into their business. Hubspot had also mentioned that 92% of marketers indicated social media marketing was crucial for their business, with 80% claiming that their efforts increased traffic to their websites. So, what are the advantages for businesses to create a presence on social media platforms? Let’s first explore the commonly used social media platforms and marketing tools on the platforms. Then, I will evaluate the optimal time periods for businesses and individuals to post in order to gain the highest engagement. Finally, I will conclude with a few final comments for you digital marketers out there!

• The Platforms:

Facebook dominates as the #1 social media channel with 1 billion Facebook users. Salesforce completed a descriptive research and in their 2015 State of Marketing report and discovered that Facebook is the #1 social media channel for marketers in 2015. Let alone, there are 40 million small businesses on Facebook. The justification, claimed by Hubspot, for the 40 million business pages on Facebook is due to customer’s expectation of businesses having three social media pages of some sort. Online web pages act as a source of information and are crucial to reaching customer satisfaction. Social media sites are also shown to drive 31.24% of all referral traffic onto the web in December 2014 and Facebook itself drive 25% of the 31.24% alone.

Instagram falls as #2 social media platform with 500 million monthly active users and 300 million daily active users, with 80% outside of the United States. Given that, Instagram could be a social media platform to reach global consumers. Also, Instagram makes it easier for marketers by offering advertising tools such as their photo advertisements, video advertisements, and carousel advertisements. Photo advertisement is a clean and simple canvas that utilizes primarily imagery to advertise. Video advertisements, on the other hand, allow visuals with sound and motion in landscape form for 60 seconds. The carousel advertisements allows a swipe function that shows additional images (not videos) and a call-to-action button.

Twitter follows Instagram holding the #3 most popular social media platform. Twitter has 313 million monthly active users and 1 billion monthly visits to sites. Again, 79% of Twitter users are out of the United States, making global advertising easier for businesspeople. Twitter’s Goal-Based Marketing allows you to set a budget and pay only when effective – defined as getting user follows, retweets, replies, and clicks – with no minimum spending required. Furthermore, Twitter conveniently targets audience through the usage of keywords in tweets to maximize relevancy on their feed. Lastly, you can amplify your messages by directing tweets from your account to people who are interested in your business.

• When should I post on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media platforms?

1) Facebook:
Not to any surprise, Facebook is often used at work or at home on mobile or desktop. According to CoSchedule, the best time to post on Facebook is between 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. during the later days in a week, such as the Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Specifically, the best time to post is Saturdays and Sundays at 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
The second best time to post on Facebook is Thursdays and Fridays between 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The third most popular time to post on Facebook is on Wednesday at 3:00 p.m.

To gain the most sharing of your posts and click through rates, the general suggestion would be to post at 1:00 p.m., followed by 3:00 p.m., and 9:00 a.m.

2) Instagram:
Instagram is often used on mobile devices, so users tend to use this social media platform any time. Readypulse discovered that the best time to post on average is at 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. The reason behind 2:00 a.m. is because fewer people are active on Instagram during that period and by posting, you would engage more users using Instagram at that time. The reasoning behind 5:00 p.m. is that most people are done work for the day and possibly are browsing on social media before they head home.

Specific timing during days of the week to gain the most engagement:

• Monday at 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.
• Tuesday at 3:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.
• Wednesday at 5:00 p.m.
• Thursday at 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m.
• Friday at 1:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.
• Saturday at 12:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m.
• Sunday at 5:00 p.m.

3) Twitter:
Twitter is often used at work or at home between breaks and commutes. Hubspot claims that the best time to post on Twitter is between 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays. Oddly, the timeframe from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Wednesdays seem to engage a lot of people as well.

• Conclusion:
In general, having a strong online presence on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, would be an asset for businesses. Utilizing social media platforms can potentially enlarge your exposure to customers, reach target population, and lower your marketing expenses (managing a Facebook or Instagram account yourself is literally $0)!

Keep in mind, as effective as social media platforms can be, marketers have once defined an 80/20 rule – only 20% of your content should be directly about your product. 80% of your social media content should be about complimentary content. In addition, set weekly or monthly sharing contests or goals to keep your customers and fans engaged. Moreover, develop a steady feed with matching filters and messages to create a consistent brand image. Other than that, you are all set to you!

Sources:

18 Reasons Why Your Business NEEDS Social Media Marketing

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/06/26/top-10-reasons-your-brand-needs-to-be-on-facebook/#4114871a2d94
https://business.instagram.com/advertising/
https://business.instagram.com/
https://ads.twitter.com/login?gclid=Cj0KEQjwhvbABRDOp4rahNjh-tMBEiQA0QgTGp9PLYeVch7iJvblVusGTyqgDnTblSfYFcrlBKBUbXgaAv0g8P8HAQ&ref=ca-ps-go-branded-mktg-broad
https://about.twitter.com/company
http://www.good-citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/networking.jpg