Marketing Campaign: great success or a disaster?

Posted on November 14, 2013 by nika

As always, Heineken creates yet another amazing marketing campaign for its loyal customers:

How much do people love Heineken beer? That’s what the company wanted to know, so it created the Pic Your Travel campaign, which encouraged people to show their appreciation of the brand by submitting Heineken-themed holiday photos from around the world. Participants could see their pics uploaded to a 3D globe and be entered to win a 2 free trips to their dream destination.

However, this does not work always like that. Marketing campaigns can also result in the disaster for the company. These are 3 examples of the campaigns gone wrong : Hard lessons on social media . Showing examples of Molson Canada, Kenneth Cole and FedEx the author presents 3 life lessons:

Lesson #1: News travels fast, social media mistakes travel even faster.

Lesson #2: Don’t make light of a serious situation for cheap promotion (or, don’t tweet something you wouldn’t say around your mother).

Lesson #3: Every employee, partner and service provider represents your brand.

To Buy or Not to Buy? That is the question!

Posted on November 12, 2013 by nika

Another great article on Google think, this time about interaction with consumers via social platforms and its correlation to increased sales. I have already included some posts related to this topic, but extra insight and opinion is always for the better.

So Wildfire, the part of the Google family that focuses on helping companies manage their activity across all social networks, commissioned Forrester Consulting to study the relationship between social engagement and buying behavior. Specifically, they wanted to know how valuable socially engaged consumers are to brands. Through online surveys in May 2013, Forrester Consulting looked at five leading brands as examples and explored how people use social media to discover, explore, buy from, and engage with brands.

The new customer life cycle with social touchpoints at every stage

The results indicated that people who engage regularly with brands on social media tend to be better customers. For example, 71% of customers who engage through social media with one quick-service restaurant chain were likely to prefer that chain to similar restaurants, compared to 47% of non-engaged customers, and 75% of engaged customers were likely to have bought something in the restaurant in the past 12 months, compared to 66% of non-engaged customers. This might not be a big surprise, but what we did find striking was that engaged social followers follow a four-phase customer life cycle in which they 1) discover your company and products; 2) explore whether what you offer is right for them; 3) buy your products and services; and 4) engage with you, and with their friends and peers, after their purchase. So just as discussed during our emarketing classes, the consumer journey is cyclical. The argument is further illustrated by an example in the article. Here is Anna. Anna loves fashion and stays up to date with her favorite retailers, online and by visiting stores. Like 41% of social networkers who engage with brands, she follows their brand pages and profiles on social media and enjoys hearing about new collections this way.So when, why, and how does she buy? The process is no longer about one-off awareness creation. Anna’s relationship with this retailer is cyclical and constant.

Social networks are catching up with search and brand sites
What’s more, Anna will likely turn to social tools throughout each stage of the cycle. Forrester found a third of social networkers who engage with brands said they discovered new products through messages on social networks, and 41% said they did so through ads on social networks.

When it comes to how engaged social networkers explore and research brands or products, social networks were second only to search engines . As for engagement, we saw that social networks are catching up with brand websites as a means of staying in touch.

Brand advocates are also brand builders
The study also shows the important correlations between social engagement behavior and outcomes. People who engaged with a brand on social media on a daily basis were likely to make twice as many purchases from that brand than someone who engages only monthly. However, socially engaged customers’ value to brands goes well beyond purchase. By acting as advocates, these consumers help build brands. A brand’s advocates account for a significant amount of its earned media: Brands with high advocate populations generate up to 264% more earned media impressions per campaign than brands with fewer advocates, according to Wildfire’s 2012 study, “How Superbrands Breed Superfans.”

The meaning of search: how it shapes our lives and builds brands

Posted on November 11, 2013 by nika

Google Think is an excellent tool for resources,especially when it comes to marketing objectives : http://www.google.com/think/marketing-objectives/. I came across an interesting article regarding search nowadays.

Why do people search nowadays? Could you live without search for three days?

This seemingly simple challenge was at the heart of the research described in the article. The research project included 18 search users in the U.S. documenting when, how, and why they used search throughout the course of their day.

Why do we search?

There are 100 billion searches on Google every month. As a result, we know quite a bit about what people do when they search, and where, when and how they are searching. However, the question of why do we search is not fully investigated.“What we discovered is that people use search for many reasons — from answering the practical to pondering the poignant.”

These reasons were further subdivided into 6 categories:

Doing: Searching to convert information into action. This is the functional foundation of search. Examples: searching for opening hours of the store, how to fix a bike etc

Understanding: Searching to educate yourself on a particular topic. Examples: searching how to choose a house,how to grow a plant etc

Belonging: Searching to fulfill the need to connect and socialize with others. Examples: searching to connect with old high school friends or people suffering from the same medical condition. Social networks and different kind of blogs would mainly pop up in this search.

Experiencing: Searching to augment life’s moments in real-time, which is particularly compelling in mobile search. Examples: searching at a concert to learn about the artist, or find movie trailers while watching the Oscars.

Progressing: Searching for ongoing personal growth. Examples: searching how to lose weight, how to deal with stress, behave during the interview etc

Self-Discovering: Searching to develop and reinforce a sense of identity. This is abstract and rarely top of mind, but is a powerful, emotional payoff of search. Example: typing something you would have never told anyone.

Reconsidering the role of search marketing

Today, most marketers focus only on the ‘Doing’ aspect of search. Certainly search excels at these things, but a huge opportunity lies in the bigger picture. Your brand can join users who seek answers to their uniquely personal questions and explore their uniquely personal curiosities and interests.The key for brands is to think more broadly and strategically about the role search can play. Here are some questions to consider:

1) What are the core needs your brand fulfills — or could fulfill — in people’s lives?

2) Are you driving awareness and consideration for your brand amongst those showing interest in your category — or the key benefits your category makes possible?

3) What brand associations and core positioning do you drive through other media that you could be reinforcing through search?

4) Do you (or should you) have content to market that searchers might find valuable?

Six secrets from Google’s BrandLab

Posted on November 4, 2013 by nika

Kim Larson, a brand building expert at Google’s BrandLab, works with more than 100 global brands each year. As part of the Engagement Project, she shares how letting go can lead to more rewarding relationships.

Brands put a huge amount of time and money into getting their standards right. All this is crucial to establishing a brand’s identity, but too much control will not help you to be more successful. The most important thing, on the contrary, is… Let go.

Here are six of the secrets of brands that do this well:

Secret #1: Take a supporting role Let the consumer be in the center of the conversation.The more flexible, the higher the chances to succeed. The idea isn’t to leave the consumer alone. Instead you take part in the dialogue. .

Secret #2: Control is an illusion I came across an amazing quote in this article : “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” By opening channels where consumers can express how they feel about your brand, you can actually get more power to influence what people say and address it — the good and the bad.(That brings us back to all the conversations about listening to your customer and deciding whether to engage or not).

Secret #3: Make it easy to participate Not everyone will want to put an effort and speak up. So you should try to be creative and come up some easy yet interesting ways to engage with the customers.

Secret #4: If you open up, they will too One of the greatest examples is ‘Our Food. Your Questions’ campaign of McDonald’s Canada. The customers could post any questions they wanted and the company replied to all of them. This results in more and more questions being asked and a huge spread of the campaign. Here is one of great examples of the campaign:

Secret #5: Showcase experiences Create opportunities for people to share their actual experiences. “Show, don’t tell”. Prudential’s Day One Stories campaign in which thousands of people posted pictures of the first day of their retirement brought sharing experiences to a new level.

Secret #6: Trust your fans Trust your fans, they know what they want from you. Taco Bell does a great job at this. They consistently invite their customers to help redefine what their brand means over the last 24 months.Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed says, “You have to entrust 23-year-olds to protect or amplify the brand without the classic structure that organizations use to make decisions … If you are a control freak, you’re not going to like the future.”

Of course, a lot of the companies might be hesitant to accept the reality their brand currently exists in, however, if you want to succeed, let go…and embrace the change!

12 Ways how to keep your blog awesome

Posted on October 15, 2013 by nika

Surfing through SocialTimes, I came across some pieces of advice of one blogger about how to keep your blog interesting and awesome for the readers…Here they are :

1) Start with the end in mind

Picture what you blog will be like in a few years. A particularly interesting tip : purchase all the URLs that you can think of that are related to your brand. You never know when you will want to launch another site, write a book, etc. When creating social media accounts, think about the future. The author of the article,Karpovich, said that when people search for her, they always spell her name wrong. So, she decided to buy several URLs, including both correct and incorrect spellings and abbreviations of her name.

2) Offer something valuable to your readersCreate valuable content. Of course it is easier said that done. Try to find what interests people and what is it that they want to real in your blog. You do not have to post 7 times a week. Just be consistent even if you write less.

3) Get to know your readers, and it’s OK if your blog evolves

Don’t expect your blog to be perfect. It is quite lilely that the more you write, the better you get.

4) Good design is key

Think about what your blog design says about you. Would you like to keep it serious, fun etc?

5) Follow your gut

Write what you feel like writing. There must have been a reason why you decided to start a blog on the first place.

6) Know what your boundaries are, and stick to them

7) Promote, promote, promote

Promote your blog through social media, the local newspaper/website, writing guest posts, and commenting on other blogs. The more people talk about you, the better.

8) It’s all about building relationships

9) Treat your blog like a business

10) Keep learning

11)Have the right tools

12) Things change

In my case, I found 2, 4, 9 and 11 the most useful ones…And what about you guys?

What makes a video go viral?

Posted on October 10, 2013 by nika

“Viral video” is one of nowadays widely used words however not too many people know exactly what it means. Is 1 million views considered viral? 10 million? And most importantly, how do you make your own video viral? These were some factors mentioned in the article . If you want your video to go viral that is what you need : viewership, buzz, parody and longevity.

Viewership

So how many views do you need to be viral? There is no exact figure to tell. Few years ago, viral was million. Now that is definitely not enough. With the growth of Youtube, you might probably need around 10 million views and quite importantly, in a short period of time.

Buzz

Viewership is not the only thing though. There’s got to be a lot of buzz around the video. They have to be talked about almost everywhere: both online and offline. Many of the most popular viral videos started with a simple tweet and the buzz just spread.

Parody

People loves imitation and parodies. So this can be a good old trick to make your video go viral. Just look at these old spice parodies 🙂

Longevity

Finally, even though you video has to go viral within a short period of time, it has to stay in people’s minds for some time. It has to stick with us. If you reach 10 million views but then in 2 weeks time or so, people start forgetting about you, your video cannot be considered viral.When this article was posted in May,2011 this video had 17 million views and was set as an example of a viral video. Now it has 50,396,952 views. Longevity point proven!

McDonalds will hire…a Chief Digital Officer?

Posted on October 6, 2013 by nika

Another proof of our earlier conclusions that almost any company nowadays should embrace ecommerce and take care of its online efforts…and the proof is…McDonalds! As surprising as it might seem!

McDonald’s Corporation has hired former Amazon and Yahoo executive Atif Rafiq as the company’s first chief digital officer. This shows the growing necessity for brands to communicate with their customers across multiple digital channels, even if this brand is McDonalds!

Sharing is caring

Posted on October 6, 2013 by nika

Following another discussion during the class on how important it is to be responsive to your customers via social media, I came across this quite interesting article.

It is a well-known fact that nowadays brands rely heavily on social media and particularly reviews.Those brands that respond to consumer reviews tend to have higher brand loyalty. Interestingly, shoppers who saw a brand respond to a review in which the product owner misused or misunderstood a product were 186% more likely to purchase than those who didn’t’ see the response!!!I Consumers who saw a brand respond to a negative review by offering a product refund, upgrade, or exchange were 92% more likely to purchase than consumers who didn’t see the response!! Seventy-one percent of consumers who saw a brand respond to a review changed their perception of that brand, cites the study. That brings us again to the disaster that United Airlines faced simply because they did not respond and did not admit their mistake at the very beginning.

So what does a brand’s response to a negative online review mean to its customers? According to the research study, 41% of consumers say it makes the brand seem like it really cares about its customers . Of course, brands should also not be too social; otherwise the consumers will think that once they start complaining and yelling that will result in refunds, free products etc

This sharing of ideas and services is also causing so-called collaborative consumption or, The Collaborative Economy. “This is embodied in the peer-to-peer lending economy in which consumers connect via social, mobile, and online to share their possessions, such as a car or an apartment.”

So in the end, it is always up to you what you make of your social media. However, one should never underestimate its power nowadays.

Marketers’ secret weapon

Posted on October 3, 2013 by nika

Following the discussion we had during emarketing class on how important it is to monitor social media and listen to your (potential) customers, this article might shed light on it.

“Social listening” has become incredibly important for marketers. Here are just a few facts and numbers from the article:

Over one billion active users are now on Facebook, and 200 million users are on Twitter. With the substantial amount of information shared on social media, marketers need to consider how to sift through data to find valuable insights.

Twitter is now a key driver for “Social TV.” More and more viewers are tweeting during program viewing to share observations and feelings for shows in real time, presenting new measurement questions and opportunities.

Fake social media offerings, coming in the form of a fake event or user group, are on the rise. According to an August 2013 Symantec Intelligence Report, fake social media offerings now account for 82% of all social media attacks so far this year, up from 56% in 2012.

So how can one distinguish between genuine useful data and fake social media? That is where social data analysts come in…The social data analyst brings in a combination of social and research methodology and can segment the data to eliminate the irrelevant information. A good analyst can point out where imposter information is clouding your judgement.

For example, when a marketer is trying to uncover new consumer audiences by analyzing social networks these people are using, social data analyst can be of great help.”In the end, it all comes down to knowing how to translate data from social media into valuable information. Employing talented social data analysts alongside a marketing team or finding external social data analysts who understand an industry and brand helps to translate specific social conversations into actionable business plans.”

So once again, never underestimate the power of social media and do your best to get the most out of it! However, be careful not to get lost in consumers’web of data 😉 Hiring such an analyst might be a good option to consider 😉