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“You can ignore everything on social media platform but memes” says Brittney Helmrich, Business News Daily Staff Writer. “The term meme is coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in 1982” as Brittney states in her blog post.

I found this idea really interesting, what better way to put your advertising campaign out there in an easy, interactive and shareable way but memes. People not only like them but memes tend to go viral as stated in the blog post. One of the most successful meme advertisements is done by Denny’s, Seamless and others. Memes fit two categories: if you are a new company (want to go viral on internet) or if you are an old company (want to increase interactions).

However, just like one size doesn’t fit all, memes is not for all companies. If the company is strictly professional and targets the market where fun can be unprofessional, memes can adversely affect the reputation of the company. The concept of memes backfired for companies like FAFSA as mentioned by Brittney.

A careful selection of meme marketing, based on the reputation and image of the company, can be really beneficial. When I think of my client Sunberry Fitness, I feel memes marketing can be really effective. It could be used in email marketing by my client, in order to increase click through rates. Something that makes people laugh about fitness definitely does attract attention. This could be done to increase client interaction with Sunberry Fitness as well.

Source: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7431-memes-social-marketing.html

We have always thought of LinkedIn as a means of connecting professionals. Imagine a platform where several businesses and professionals meet, can there be a scope to perform B2B marketing? Author Neil Patel, the Chief Evangelist of KISSmetrics, suggests seven ways in his blog to do so.

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• Turning company page into lead generation: Neil states that no one really pays attention to boring company details which we generally see, therefore, a business should create a page with attractive image, clear pitch (about the company) and recent updates option (this should allow to views to start and interact in conversations).
• Showcase page: Companies should take advantage of showcase page option on LinkedIn, which will give views further information about the company.
• Advances searches: Companies should connect and reach out to prospects found through advanced searches. This helps narrow down the target prospects and is more efficient.
• Save searches: After target prospects have been identified, companies should save them for future.
• Search groups: Companies should look into joining groups which are relevant to the line of work and be an active participant.
• Start groups: Once a company becomes a leader in a group, the company should open its own group to facilitate conversations.
• Publish content: Companies should publish content which they feel is relevant and adds value to the readers of the company followers.

In my opinion, using LinkedIn to perform B2B marketing can be very effective as a business can filter its prospects through advanced search. It is easier to find like-minded and common interest individuals; therefore, promoting a company value proposition using LinkedIn can be useful to the target market. This can lead to business to business connection and the relationship can end up in a future business prospect.

Lastly, a social platform like LinkedIn can also be used to build effective personal connections following the same steps as above (mentioned by Juilo, Comm 464 professor).

Source: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/linkedin-strategies-b2b-marketing/

According to the study “Connected Consumers Are Not Created Equal“ more than half of the sample size spend most of their time online. According to figure 1, social media accounts for the maximum activities in these 11 countries. Figure 2 identifies that the younger population aged between 16 to 35 years are influenced to make decisions based on social media. “The impact of social media grows smaller as age rises” says Cynthia Boris, marketing pilgrim writer.

Figure 1

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Figure 2

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In my opinion, when companies have a younger client group, the focus should be to create a strong online presence. Some questions that companies need to consider:

• Does the product have strong advertisement that influences the viewers to share or like it?
• What is the feedback (positive or negative) from the users of the product?
• How is the company responding to the customer feedback?

Based on the number above, we can’t stress less how important it is to create a positive online environment for the product. As Paul, Comm 464 professor, mentioned that it is essential to be able to create online loyalty for a product. Companies should look for ways to satisfy customers and provide excellent service that makes customers be a spokesperson for the person. If people are talking “good” and “positive” about a product on social media, the company will be able to create a need by tapping a wider market and influence people who base their decisions on social network (figure 2).

My takeaway from this article is that creating a positive and likeable image is vital on social network. If a company wants to be liked, have regular customers and have loyal spokes person online, ensure strong social media presence.

Source: http://www.atkearney.com/consumer-products-retail/connectedconsumers

According to Financial Times, from an anonymous source, Facebook is launching a new product entering the professional world. The best feature of this is product is that you will be able to access newsfeed, group message and share files online, however, the feeds will be completely separate from your personal account. This type of feature is a competition to already established professional usage platforms such as Google, IBM etc., as stated by Jason in his blog post.

Moreover, this can more or less replace cloud computing. From a marketing point of view, there is no scope as of now because Facebook is making this product free of any advertisement. However, the approach of certain Canadian websites to promote shopping while at work such as buy your shoes at work to get discount, is an interesting concept that can be implemented through this Facebook product.

In my opinion, if Facebook is able to target professional people to watch a quick advertisement while at work, can open up a huge advertisement scope for companies who focus on goods and services for professionals. For instance, Facebook could open up a small window on the screen to play paid and targeted advertisements to the product users. These users should be able to buy the product with just one click and get it delivered to their office or home address.

If implemented properly, this can turn out to be an efficient while-at-work advertising gun for Facebook.

Source: http://mashable.com/2014/11/16/facebook-at-work-2/

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When Facebook was first introduced to public, users were only able to interact with their friends with random advertisements on the sidebar. In the course of time, Facebook not only changed its user interface but also advertising algorithm.

Advertisements are targeted towards Facebook users and it is tailored based on what posts users have liked or read in the past. Users are able to follow or unfollow a brand, which helps marketers to identify the users who actually like the brand rather than throwing in an advertisement on the newsfeed of a user who doesn’t like the brand.

Moreover, an interesting fact about Facebook is that when you search for an item online in other platforms, Facebook can identify the trend and suggest advertisements accordingly. Whenever I Google a watch or search for an item on Amazon, Facebook gives me suggestions on my newsfeed with related items.

I find this intriguing and Facebook algorithm is taking online advertising to a new level. Marketers can benefit by being efficient when advertising only to the users who will actually value them, increasing ROI to a greater extent. Users can benefit themselves by avoiding being bombarded with advertisements they are not interested in. Overall, a win-win situation created through Facebook’s new advertising technique.

The release of a new iPhone edition has always been front-page news, with a large number of loyal customers lining up right before the store opens. The new iPhone 6 had the same expected response, till the news of iPhone 6 bending went viral on internet.

One of the world’s strongest brands Apple struggled with the viral and bad mouth-to-mouth advertisement. However, the fact is that only 9 complaints out of 10 million units sold were received about the phone bending backwards. One possible reason could be that before opening the box, the buyers might have damaged the phone.

Internet users definitely ignored the fact that only 9 complaints out of 10 million units are very insignificant. The reason is that the way the negative advertisement was staged had a significant impact on Apple’s reputation.  Competitors such as Samsung, also used the opportunity to pick on Apple showing the strengthen of negative advertisement.

In my opinion, when negative facts go viral about a product, the company needs to take immediate action to protect it. The later you respond, the more damage it does. In this case, least effort was shown by Apple.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shelly-palmer/have-an-iphone-6-apple-sa_b_5900160.html

Consumers are bombarded with millions of advertisements. It is very easy to not pay attention to those advertisements. With boring advertisements, users can skip it right after the skip button pops up, leaving the advertiser with only 6 seconds to grab attention. On televisions, people are able to record shows without advertisements, leaving no medium of interaction with the product.

Interactive videos, when delivered to targeted audiences, have shows to be more effective than traditional advertisements. Such videos tend to have more than 90% view completion rate. If advertisements are made keeping the same format as television and online, it will have ineffective as it does not give the user any chance to interact with the advertisement.

However, effective interactive videos focus on the rich content and not only to increase brand awareness. The result of this rich content, when targeted to specific audiences, increases interaction and goes just beyond brand awareness. Customers tend to go further and like other social media platforms for the product, such as Facebook, Twitter etc.

I believe, the habits of users have changed. The users are looking for concise, relevant and interactive advertisements. Use of interactive video, which is not as widely used as any other form of advertisement, can make a significant different in driving traffic for the product. Hence, make the products online presence effective.

Youtube

Source: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=99168&PageNum=1

Progressive Insurance deploy open-source data analytics software to drive new customers to its website. The software measures the effectiveness of online advertising that helps Progressive Insurance marketing team to understand the behaviour of customers and what the customers are looking for.

Previously, Progressive Insurance spent millions of dollars based on the strategy: number of advertisement reach along with number of clicks and number of last touch drives policy sale. However, using analytics software, the company formed a cross-functional team of IT and business analysts and built a prototype software in cloud.

The software allows analyzing months of advertising data in hours, which took days in the past. It enables marketers not only to see which site the customer clicked on before visiting Progressive Insurance’s site but also what combination of ads the customer looked at before buying the policy. This allowed the marketers to understand the customers better and tailor what the customers are looking for, avoiding overlaps.

As a result, it leads to more efficient online policy sale. In my opinion, if this software is applied to other consumers goods, such as cameras, the companies will know what kind of features/combination of products a camera user is looking for before buying the product in real. This will lead to more tailored advertising.

Source: http://www.cio.com/article/2686835/data-analytics/progressive-insurance-uses-data-analytics-to-fine-tune-ad-strategy.html 

Tweet Activity Dashboard is a free analytics from Twitter that allows a free analytics offering to see how subscribers engage with contents on the social media website. While testing the dashboard, brands that advertise on Twitter, were able to reach at least 30% of their followers per week.

With the new dashboard, marketers are able to see how many times the posts have been seen on website and mobile devices. The data can be broken down hourly including the number of retweets, replies, mentions etc. The details of users demographics, locations and interests are also captured.

The toolset can hurt Google Adwords, as marketers are able to test the effectiveness of their ads without using Google. The tweets, which the dashboard can test, do not necessarily need to be advertisement tweets but literally any tweets. This will enable the general user to see how effective the content of their tweets are to the subscribed followers.

I believe this toolset can be very effective for marketers as well as general heavy twitter users. This will allow us to see what types of content/advertisements are most successful and liked by subscribers. This can also be used to pretest ideas for future marketing campaigns.

Source: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Columns-Departments/Insight/Twitter-Updates-Its-Analytics-Offering-99261.aspx