In Uncategorized

How to Balance Client Acquisition and Retention

July 1, 2020 No Comments

Deciding which growth strategy is worth the larger investment takes careful consideration of these key factors.

In most cases, business owners must strike a careful balance between client acquisition and client retention. Client acquisition refers to activities that help you attract new customers to the business, like marketing, advertising, and sales. Client retention is somewhat more nuanced, since it’s focused on making sure your current clients remain subscribed or loyal to your brand. It often includes strategies like customer loyalty programs and better customer service.

Each area requires investment and attention if you want your business to consistently grow, but how should you balance your budget between these two areas?

The Big Picture: Client Acquisition Versus Client Retention

Let’s start by taking a look at the big picture. For most businesses, client retention is less expensive on a per-customer basis than client acquisition. Why is this the case?

You can compare this to driving a motor vehicle. It takes far more energy to accelerate a vehicle from a resting position of 0 mph to a top speed of 80 mph than it does to take a vehicle cruising at 80 mph and maintain that speed.

When you win a new customer for your brand, you’ve secured their attention, their interest, and in most cases, their positive opinion of your brand. Once you have those factors in place, keeping them active is a simple matter. But taking someone completely unaware of your brand and turning them into a paying customer is a much more intensive process.

That said, you can’t afford to ignore client acquisition. No matter how good your client retention strategy is, you’re still going to experience churn. If you want to grow, or at least avoid active customer loss, you’ll need a steady stream of new customers coming to your business.

Client Retention Strategies

There are several strategies you can use to retain clients, including:

Add new products or features. Introduce new products or new features to keep your customers interested in your brand.
Improve customer service and communication. Make sure each customer has a positive experience, and make up for any bad experiences. Good communication is essential to keeping your customers invested in your brand.
Measure and improve customer satisfaction. Keep tabs on how your customers feel about your brand, and work to improve your areas of weakness.

Client Acquisition Strategies

By contrast, client acquisition strategies include things like:

Marketing. Brand awareness and reputation are critical in introducing new people to your company.
Advertising. You’ll often need the support of paid advertising, which makes your brand more visible and calls people to action.
Sales and customer referrals. An active sales team, in combination with a customer referral program, can bring even more people to your brand.

The Importance of Measurement and Analysis

Even though a high-level overview implies that customer retention is more important than customer acquisition, the exact payouts will vary from business to business. It’s therefore important to know the relative return on investment (ROI) you’re getting from each strategy in your overall campaigns.

How much is your company spending on customer retention strategies? And how much money do you make from a customer who stays loyal to your brand? Conversely, how much is your company spending on customer acquisition strategies? What percentage of your income is coming from new customers?

Only by measuring and analyzing your own strategies and results will you be able to find the right balance for your brand.

Key Variables to Consider

When plotting the balance between your customer acquisition and customer retention strategies, you’ll also need to consider things like:

The age of your business. New businesses don’t have many active paying customers. Therefore, customer acquisition is much more important to them.
Your unique business model. Your industry and your goals as a business will also factor in heavily to your customer acquisition and retention balance. For example, software as a service (SaaS) companies depend heavily on customer retention, since they’re able to collect monthly revenue for ongoing paid subscribers. Some companies are interested in accelerated growth, while others are content with a fixed-size customer base.
Your target demographics. Look at your target demographics through the lens of customer personas. Are these customers who remain loyal to brands when they have a good experience? Do they continue to spend lots of money with their favorite brands? How valuable are they, and how would they respond to various strategies you implement for your company?

Adjusting Over Time

Chances are, you won’t be able to strike the perfect balance between customer acquisition and retention immediately; instead, it’s something you’re going to have to adjust over time. The more you learn about the strategies you execute, and the more value you see from your previous investments, the more accurately you’ll be able to allocate your spending and strategic focus in the future.

By LARRY ALTON

INDEPENDENT BUSINESS CONSULTANT@LARRYALTON3

Sourced from Inc.

In News

Are You Posting Good Content? Find Out With These 16 Quality Assessment Methods

July 1, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

Successful PR, media strategy, creative and advertising executives from Forbes Agency Council share trends and tips

Content marketing has evolved to become a unique field within the marketing industry. One of the things that businesses have realized when it comes to content marketing is that quality trumps quantity. Companies have understood these developments, and as a result, have been taking more notice of what they share with their audience.

How does a business go about determining if their content is good enough to inform, educate and engage its customers? To answer this question, we consulted 16 experts from Forbes Agency Council about their own experience with content quality assessment. They share their favourite methods below.

1. Do A Little Research

One of the more proven strategies to ensure you’re creating content consumers want is by leveraging properties that allow said consumers to ask their questions. Quora is one such property. Find a relevant category and look for questions that may be trending. Be sure to be as helpful with your response as you can. In doing so, you may find you’ve discovered something new to write about. – Stephen Kleiner, Bloom Ads Global Media Group

2. Look At Relevant KPIs

Quality content can be assessed by looking at KPIs (key performance indicators) including search visibility, dwell time and engagement. Search visibility shows how a website’s content ranks for a wide range of keyword combinations. Dwell time reveals the length of time a person spends looking at a web page’s content, and engagement measures the interests, opinions and thoughts of the reader. – Don Dodds, M16 Marketing

3. Start With Your Sales Team

“Quality” content is in the eye of the beholder — in this case, the customer. Starting with your sales team to find out what prospects are asking about and wanting to solve lets the marketing team focus on how to tell the story of how your brand can uniquely solve those issues. When you can answer questions before they’re asked in your own way tied to your brand values, that’s a quality promise. – Courtney Smith Kramer, Co-Active Training Institute / Co-founder PureMatter

4. Use Data And Analytics Tools

Instead of making assumptions about what your target audience finds useful, use data to see what actually resonates with them. Use analytics tools to understand how your content is being shared on social media and how it compares to your competitors. Dive into what types of content have been most successful for you and your competitors, and use that to assess your content’s quality. – JP Johl, AdTribute

5. Conduct A Content Audit

A content audit enables you to take a deep look at the strengths and weaknesses of your current content strategy in order to determine how to improve moving forward. A complete content audit includes assessing your current topics, link structure, metadata and so on. This allows you to identify gaps and pitfalls in your current content strategy that you can use to improve future marketing campaigns. – Adam Binder, Creative Click Media

6. View Its Quality In A Rounded Way

Impressions, interactions, consumption and the relationship between each are important data to understand in order to answer questions such as, “Is there enough?”, “Was it pitched at the right audience?”, “Was it the right ‘quality’?” But the eyes of your experienced content experts are still important perspectives to complement the data-driven universe. – Ken Mainardis, Getty Images

7. Monitor Engagement Statistics

The best way to assess the quality of your content is to monitor the engagement stats — views, shares, likes, comments and subscribes. If you’re new to generating content, take a look at your competition’s content and engagement. What generates the most buzz? Assessing engagement is a great way to give your audience more of what they want and stay top of mind. – Chelsey Pendock, Innovision Advertising

8. Ask Yourself If You Like It

If you, as a user, wouldn’t engage with your own content, it’s probably not ready for prime time. Before you hit publish, ask yourself, “Does the content inform, inspire or entertain you?”, “Does it serve a purpose aside from promoting your own business and agenda?” Make sure you’ve answered “yes” to both before putting it out into the world. – Kate Weidner , SRW

9. Determine How Much Value It Gives

By giving people a tremendous amount of value in the content that gets put out, you immediately build trust. People still buy from people and trust matters now more than ever. – Seth Winterer, Digital Logic

10. Work With Professional Editors

You should not have the same person who is writing content be the one editing it. Instead, hire an editor or work with an agency that has professional editors to review your content for grammar and style and ensure you’ve cited the correct sources and that the content flows organically. Editors do a lot more than catch misplaced commas, and they are well worth the investment. – Kelsey Raymond, Influence & Co.

11. Look At Your Biggest Competitors

Research is crucial when it comes to generating engaging content. Looking at your biggest competition and what they’re putting out in terms of content, be on top of what’s trending in your industry. Try and emulate what’s getting good engagement and make it better by adding more personality to it. – Sam Founda, Social Connection

12. Check Traffic And Rankings

Days after you’ve posted the content and made sure Google was aware of it, we suggest taking a look at the organic page traffic, number of associated indexed keywords and the rankings of those keywords. If you’ve written something of high quality that’s helpful to your buyers and also has demand in your marketplace, Google will reward that page over time with more views. – Dustin DeTorres, DeTorres Group

13. Plan Ahead With A Survey

Putting together a survey to assess key messaging to a targeted audience before going wide is an important tactic to build into your strategy. Before investing valuable time and resources in messaging that may not have the impact you initially thought, a survey gives you the opportunity to readjust on a cost-effective and targeted basis. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC

14. Assess If It’s Useful For Non-Customers

Ask yourself this question when reviewing a concept for any new piece of content: “Will this piece be useful to someone who is not a customer of mine, and might not ever be?” That question helps you determine if the content is valuable to a broader audience or simply serves as a soft promotion for your products. The best performing content is objective and product-neutral. – Amith Nagarajan, rasa.io

15. Aim To Answer Ideal Customers’ Questions

As a business, we’ve hired consultants to deep dive into our client’s psyche to understand their top questions and concerns in doing business with us. This has led us to a list of five key questions all prospective clients ask. One way we assess the quality of the content we put out is to ask ourselves if this content is going to help answer or provoke thought around one of those questions. – Patrick Dillon, WISE Digital Partners

16. Evaluate Relevance By Using Personalized Visuals

Quality content is increasingly rooted in relevance. Brands can tap into user-generated content (UGC) to create highly personalized messages through regional, demographic and culturally-specific imagery. Consumers want to see themselves, their lives and, subsequently, their needs reflected in the brands they support, which cultivates a high-quality overall brand experience. – Analisa Goodin, Catch&Release

Sourced from Forbes

In Jobs

Remote Part Time Digital Marketing Assistant

July 1, 2020 No Comments

Ardagh Agencies, 15 Upper Grattan Park, Greystones, Co Wicklow

This is a rare opportunity to get involved with an international commercial furniture agency.

If you are in college, particularly if you are studying marketing, this could be the perfect role for you!

The company is undergoing significant and exciting developments and needs enthusiastic marketing geeks like you, who are ready to learn and can work on their own initiative!

The role will initially include graphic design, copywriting, posting on Linkedin, Instagram, and email marketing.

However, this role could develop in any way that is deemed appropriate for the right candidate!

In other words, we are happy to build the job around you!

If you think this role could be of interest to you, get in touch, we have lots to discuss!

Click HERE to apply for this position.

In News

Snap gives new original short-form shows a boost with new AR features that pull in Snapchat interactions

July 1, 2020 No Comments

By TIM PETERSON

Quibi may be struggling to find its way forward, but Snap’s foray into short-form shows seems to be figuring it out, lifting revenue and sparking new programming expansion and innovation. Media companies have seen an ad bump for the episodic programs they air on Snapchat increase since March after Snap opened up shows to more ad dollars. And as show makers’ revenue is growing, so is Snap’s own slate.

At its virtual Partner Summit on June 11, Snap unveiled a group of new originals and announced several renewals with companies including Disney, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS. The new shows include three that will incorporate Snap’s augmented reality technology, such as dance series “Move It” that uses AR to track viewers as they learn moves. “The potential there is pretty massive, the fact that you can put a user into a show, into the flow of the narrative,” said Sean Mills, head of content at Snap, in an interview.

In cases where people will be able to share a show’s AR experience as posts on Snapchat, that could help to attract more viewers and potentially other shows as well. A new menu bar that Snap is adding to the bottom of its app should also help to draw attention to the enhanced content. That menu bar— which Snap is calling an “action bar” — will feature a play button logo that people can tap to view the Shows section in Snapchat. Prior to the update, people had to swipe left to the Discover section, which featured a small callout notifying people to swipe left again to view the Shows section.

Snapchat is updating its app with a new action bar.

Even without the AR feature or menu bar, Snap has been able to grow viewership for shows. In the first quarter of 2020, more than 60 shows on Snapchat attracted at least 10 million unique viewers each month, compared to 50 shows in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to Snap’s most recent earnings report.

In addition to viewership, the business around Snap’s shows has also grown. Last year, Snap paid 60% more money to Discover partners than in 2018, according to a Snap spokesperson. That money seems to be trending up this year, as Snap has opened up new ad demand to shows that it licenses non-exclusively on a revenue-sharing model and the high end of its budgets for Snap Original shows has also increased.

In early May, Snap began inserting non-skippable Snap Ads within shows to fill any inventory left unfilled by its pricier six-second, non-skippable Commercials, according to a media executive. A Snap spokesperson confirmed that non-skippable Snap Ads can now run within shows but said that the only way for an advertiser to specifically buy Snapchat’s shows inventory is by buying Commercials.

The non-skippable Snap Ads—which usually cost around $2 per thousand impressions based on the CPM Snapchat reports to publishers, according to one media executive—do not bring in as much money per unit as the Commercials that usually run around $10 per thousand impressions. However, the increased fill rates has boosted the revenue that media companies receive, on average, per unique view from $1.50 in March to roughly $3 by late May, per two media executives.

Snap’s ability to fill ads in media companies’ shows has been a point of frustration among media executives. “We had a show for a couple years and didn’t make our money back because there was no required fill rate and we didn’t have direct sales capabilities. They don’t give a minimum [revenue] guarantee, just the rev share, so you take on the risk as a creator,” said a third media executive.

Not all show makers run that risk, however. Snap pays some companies upfront for shows that are then made exclusive to Snapchat as Snap Originals, which the platform introduced in October 2018. In the past, the budgets for these shows have ranged up to $50,000 per episode for scripted series, which had been considered the high end. “The high end of the budgets is probably increasing, but we still have budgets in a really significant range,” said Mills.

In addition to expanding its slate of shows and the money behind the programs carried on Snapchat, Snap has worked to broaden the audience for its shows. In January, Snapchat debuted “Players,” a Snap Original scripted show produced by Loud Media about a high school basketball player. While the show seems readymade for Snapchat’s younger audience, Snap suggested Loud Media create Instagram accounts for the show’s characters. “They understand the shows they’re creating exist for an audience that’s on a lot of different platforms,” Loud Media CEO and founder K. Asher Levin said in an interview earlier this year.

Mills thought the Instagram promotion had been Levin’s idea, but nonetheless championed it. “While our shows primarily live on Snapchat, we have some episodes posted on other platforms and we certainly have handles on other social media to build a brand and let people discover it other places,” he said.

Snap’s shows have also helped it to change advertisers’ perceptions of the platform. One agency executive had previously considered Snapchat to be a messaging app for high schoolers. But in a meeting a few weeks ago, Snap presented some of its shows, including its original series with Will Smith titled “Will From Home,” that the agency executive felt could appeal to a broader audience than Snapchat’s core base of teens and twentysomethings. More than 35 million people have watched “Will From Home,” according to a Snap spokesperson.

“Creating these episodes for the platform that you can’t necessarily get anywhere else is pushing Snapchat out of the boundaries of just kids sending dumb photos to one other. I was pleasantly surprised during the presentation,” said the agency executive.

By TIM PETERSON

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In Jobs

Paid Media Lead, EMEA

July 1, 2020 No Comments

Qualtrics, Dublin, Ireland

Why Qualtrics?

Qualtrics is the technology platform that organizations use to collect, manage, and act on experience data, also called X-data™. The Qualtrics XM Platform™ is a system of action, used by teams, departments, and entire organizations to manage the four core experiences of business—customer, product, employee and brand—on one platform. Over 10,000 enterprises worldwide, including more than 75 percent of the Fortune 100 and 99 of the top 100 U.S. business schools, rely on Qualtrics to consistently build products that people love, create more loyal customers, develop a phenomenal employee culture, and build iconic brands. Qualtrics was recently acquired by SAP, and together we will accelerate XM and power the experience economy. Join us on this adventure that can open many doors! Join a company that is dedicated to your ideas and growth, recognizes your unique contribution, fills you with purpose, and provides a fun, flexible and inclusive work environment.

Expectations for Success

You will have a track record of successfully managing paid search, paid social, display, retargeting, media buying, & landing page optimisation. You will leverage that experience to build and manage programs on all relevant digital advertising channels. Through careful tracking and optimisation, you generate demonstrably ROI-positive leads and fuel Qualtrics’ growth in EMEA.

A Day in the Life

Execute, manage and oversee all digital advertising including PPC, display advertising, remarketing, paid social, and other online advertising channels.
Manage day-to-day optimisation activities including building and managing bidding strategies, quality score improvements, ad copywriting, testing and optimisation, keyword research, budget forecasting, campaign reporting and analysis, and continuous program improvement.
Own measurement and tracking requirements for all digital advertising ensuring we can track all stages of the funnel and effectively report on ROI
Analyse and report on key performance data to marketing and sales team leaders.
Own cost-per-lead and cost-per-sale optimization, focusing on conversion metrics to drive increased campaign ROI.
Manage any key 3rd party vendor or vendor relationships
Work closely with marketing team members (content, social, customer marketing, etc.) to deliver a collaborative strategy and drive high- quality traffic to core site and landing pages.
Work closely with the web development team to create and manage landing page optimisation tests to increase conversion volume and quality.
Build a strong relationship with the sales development team and assist in lead follow up processes through training and sales enablement materials about digital marketing

Skills/Experience Required:

Passionate about digital marketing and enthusiastic to learn
Bachelor’s degree in marketing, analytics or related subject
Passion for data analysis and working towards a clearly defined metric

Skills/Experience Desired:

3-4 years well rounded digital marketing experience
Agency experience will be a plus
Experience working with Marketo/Salesforce
Google Adwords Professional certification
Ability to speak additional languages a plus
Experience working with bid management tools a plus
Experience of running campaigns across multiple countries / languages
Experience working with Qualtrics a plus

Qualtrics is an equal opportunity employer

Qualtrics provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, genetic information, marital status or veteran status.

To learn more about what we value read about it directly from our employees Qualtrics Life stories

Click HERE to apply for this job.

In News

‘I don’t want to rock the boat – even now’: Confessions of a Black media agency director

June 30, 2020 No Comments

By SEB JOSEPH

Agencies, like many businesses following George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer last month and the massive protests that have followed and continued with expanding intensity, have universally condemned racism with promises and platitudes from the C-suite.

But in doing so they have stirred up criticism among staffers concerned agencies won’t actually fight racism within their ranks and cultures with anything beyond empty lip service. In the latest edition of our Confessions series, where we exchange anonymity for honesty, we hear from a senior director at global media agency about the realities of working in businesses where racism and inequality issues facing people of color remain as entrenched as ever.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How has the agency’s stand against racism affected you?

It’s cool the company has publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement and the email from the CEO hit the points you would expect. But these are tiny steps in the right direction. There are still thinly-veiled everyday instances of racism. It’s easy to say you’re a not a racist, but the reason so many companies have been so tone-deaf on this issue to date is that they’re not anti-racist. These micro-aggressions aren’t really being discussed. And when they are it’s half-baked or in private.

What do you mean by anti-racist?

Even with all the rhetoric in the last few days, I’ve lost track of the number of video calls and WhatsApp Groups I’ve been brought into where I’m the only person of colour there. The rest are all white. I know for a fact that some of my colleagues in those meetings are underqualified to be there, while there are others who look like me that should. It’s this covert stuff that no one wants to discuss. It’s not racist per se, but there’s an extreme prejudice in agencies that will be hard to shake until this generation of leaders retire.

So the biggest block to anti-racism at agencies is leadership?

Take my team for example. There are four women, one is from Spain, another is from south-east Asia and the other two are from London, one is Nigerian and the other is from Essex, England. Then there are three men, one is white and from Essex, another is from Pakistan and I’m a Londoner. The team lead, however, is white. It’s like that across the agency and it’s been like that at other places I’ve worked. I’m not saying that white leaders are bad. But what this situation tells me is that leadership is reserved for a cohort of people who all come from the same place.

Have you tried to address this?

No. I don’t want to rock the boat — even now. I’m at a point in my career where I’m senior enough to have a few direct reports. The last thing I want to do is become known as the guy who plays the race card even if it is valid. It’s happened in the past at other agencies where I’ve raised certain things like why I’ve been passed over [for a] promotion for someone who hasn’t brought in half of the number of billings I have. People got defensive and wanted to silence me. Rather than let those responses get to me, I take those moments as a sign to move on. I can’t afford to have my career stall. Once I’m senior enough in this industry that’s when I’ll be able to bring more people like me through the agency.

So the only way you get promoted is to move to a different agency?

Yes. As a minority, you have to work harder by default. Being constantly on the move is stressful, but I’m aided by friends throughout the industry who help me with job prospects when they can. Career progression is a real worry for me. There was a pitch a year ago that the agency had a lot riding on. I did everything on that pitch, from leading the economic analysis of the client’s business to ordering the food when the team worked through the night on it. I was involved in the presentation to the client alongside some execs our agency usually bring in specifically for that part. When we won it I expected to be promoted. Instead, the promotion went to the white woman who presented my plan but hadn’t worked on it. What’s worse is there was no real explanation as to why I wasn’t promoted. I left shortly after.

Are there any senior people in the agency who can help or mentor you?

If you look hard enough there are black and Asian people who are making moves at the top end of this industry. I’ve got a lot of respect for them. But in my experience, they either can’t relate to me or are out of reach. A lot of those people went to private school and count ski trips as hobbies and come into work wearing Jimmy Choo trainers. I’d rather go to the beach and that’s too much cash to be wearing on my feet. There’s a small group of white people who all look and sound very similar at the top of the agency business. And the few people of color that do mix in those circles have to conform to behaving in the same way. As smart as they are, they can’t really help me.

By SEB JOSEPH

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

A Complete Overview of Social Media Advertising for Small Business

June 30, 2020 No Comments

By Anders Hjorth

Social media advertising allows businesses to reach users during their prime time and in pleasant, entertaining and engaging ways. Find out which platform suits your needs.

Social media has become a mass media, but a personalized one. Remember that scene from the film Minority Report where Tom Cruise walks through a shopping mall and the interactive ad displays address him as a different person, because they scanned his new eyes and took him for someone else?

Social advertising is moving in that direction: No user experience is ever identical to another on social media.

Each screen a user sees comprises numerous elements, that are all optimized by algorithms, which in turn feed on data the user has declared, and on behavior the social network has detected. Some of these elements are advertising. Personalized to the user’s profile, and designed to be a part of the experience.

Overview: What is social advertising?

Social media provides a useful and entertaining experience to its members for free. In return, social media platforms monetize user data by providing powerful digital advertising solutions to advertisers.

Advertising through social media takes the form of banners, posts or videos. Social media ads, many very creative, blend in with the context and appeal to the user.

In a Snapchat campaign for Bacardi, branded filters were used to enable users to send branded postcard-like snaps to their friends from the music festival they were attending. Source:

Snapchat

Benefits of advertising on social media

One of the great benefits social media provides to businesses is the establishment of a direct relationship between you and the user. Advertising through social media creates, extends and activates these relationships. Let’s look at social advertising benefits for businesses.

1. Audiences can be precisely targeted

Users enter their data into social platforms: names, photos, job titles, location, marital status, friends, and much more. Social platforms monitor behavior and interest.

This data enables advertisers to reach the right audience and create targeted ads for it. If an advertiser has a well-defined target market, they can deliver it via social media advertising. Advertisers no longer target media channels, they target audiences via media platforms.

2. Social ads address “awareness”

The “hierarchy of effects” model, often used in marketing and advertising to describe the mental stages a user moves through before purchasing a product, contains three stages:

Cognitive (awareness and knowledge)
Affective (liking and preference)
Conative (conviction and purchase)

Social media advertising is good at addressing the cognitive and affective stages. This makes advertising on social media complementary to direct mail, search marketing, or retail media, which have their strengths at the conative stage.

3. Everything is measurable

Every social media ad impression leaves a digital trace. Every click can be tracked. User characteristics and user behavior can be related to each instance of advertising within a social platform.

So much data exists that it becomes challenging to figure out what is significant and what isn’t. Once advertisers choose the right social media metrics, however, this data will be easy to track and optimize via the social platforms.

4. Social advertising is scalable

Social media advertising costs for a campaign can start as low as $10, and the advertiser has control over timespan, targeting and creative. It can also cost $10 million and cover the globe. Between the two, advertisers have ample room to test, learn and adjust.

Marketers, mainly using social media advertising to boost and enhance their content strategy, can monitor and manage it directly through their favorite social media management tool.

5. Social ads can trigger actions

Whereas social media advertising is often used for building awareness, it can also trigger actions. It generates likes and follows, and can also generate clicks to your website and create leads for your sales and marketing teams.

There is even a rising social commerce trend, where social media advertising feeds directly into the conative stage: users can buy products directly on social media.

The 5 best social media platforms to advertise your small business

The Facebook Ads platform is dedicated to social media advertising, and the Google Ads platform also spans other forms of digital advertising. We will focus on the social media advertising aspects of seven digital advertising platforms.

Platform 1: Facebook Ads: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger

Facebook controls the most powerful advertising platform in the world, as it combines Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger together on the same infrastructure.

Most advertisers, however, will consider Facebook and Instagram to be two advertising platforms, and WhatsApp and Messenger to be additional features.

Characteristics of the Facebook ads platform:

Massive reach
Very powerful targeting
Innovative and adaptive ad formats
Machine learning used to improve performance
Most controversial use of user data

Facebook Ads by, itself, is probably the strongest social ads platform and is now also the backbone for advertising on Instagram. Depending on your campaign objective, the platform can activate one or more of its advertising channels.

Platform 2: LinkedIn Ads

The LinkedIn advertising platform stands out for its strong business focus. It’s increasingly integrating with the Microsoft Advertising platform and has access to a powerful technological backbone in its mother company, Microsoft.

Characteristics of LinkedIn Ads:

Clear business focus
Strong targeting of professional audiences
Maturing platform
Reputation for high cost

Platform 3: Twitter Ads

The Twitter advertising platform is not as powerful as the two above platforms, but Twitter has an interesting positioning as a great add-on for other social networks. The quality of its user data is not as good as the other platforms, but it is strong on topical and thematic targeting and for events.

Characteristics of the Twitter ad platform:

Lower volumes
Strong topical targeting
Specific communities and events
Reputation for low costs
Complementary to business activity on Twitter

Platform 4: Google Ads: YouTube and Google My Business

Google never created its own social network despite the efforts put into Google Plus and other initiatives. However, many consider YouTube to be a social media platform and the more recent Google My Business platform also has some social media resemblance.

Characteristics of the social media dimension of Google Ads (YouTube and Google My Business):

Massive video reach on YouTube
Low cost per view on YouTube and innovative ad formats
Strong integration with the Google advertising technology stack
Effective social-local advertising on Google My Business

Emerging platforms: Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat

The social media landscape is constantly changing. Recently the video-driven social media platform TikTok has entered the scene in a significant way. Its closest competitor, Snapchat, had experienced spectacular growth.

The emergence of new players like TikTok and Snapchat makes it hard for existing players like Pinterest or Twitter to keep growing because they are all fighting for the attention (and dollars) of the same audience.

Emerging social advertising platforms:

Pinterest: The creator of pin boards where users can gather images from around the web thematically and share with others, is still going strong. It’s finding itself a positioning on social commerce, as it has the power to inspire users for their purchases. If the platform can generate sales and connect to its advertising, it has strong arguments for attracting more advertisement.
TikTok is reaching a young audience massively and strongly influences this group. Its recent advertising offering is creative, including formats like stickers, filters, and overlays.
Snapchat has also seduced a large young audience which can be difficult for advertisers to reach. Its creative, innovative, and fun use of digital media shines through in its advertising formats.

In a campaign on TikTok in Thailand, Colgate used an innovative ad format. They designed a clickable “branded effect” triggering a visual effect of exploding hearts when users made a “kissy face”. Source: TikTok

Social ads are a world of opportunity

Social media advertising is a mass media that can entertain, influence and seduce its audiences. Social media platforms provide powerful targeting capabilities and innovative ad formats.

Advertisers can start small and scale infinitely, but need to be very clear about their objectives, to reap the benefits of social ads. Finding the right social network and reaching the right audience can be challenging, but the opportunity is huge and the benefits can be significant.

By Anders Hjorth

Sourced from the blueprint

In News

Coca-Cola eyes streaming, real-time content production in marketing restart

June 30, 2020 No Comments

By Dianna Christie

Dive Brief:

Coca-Cola will restart its marketing efforts soon after pressing pause during coronavirus lockdowns, according to a WARC report.
The brand plans for a new focus on agility and flexibility as it — and consumers — emerges from the pandemic. Real-time content production and streaming will also get a bigger focus in the beverage giant’s marketing plans in the months ahead, when Coca-Cola expects to adjust spending based on the current moment, per WARC.
The company had kept up its social engagement during lockdown but had pulled other forms of advertising during the pause. “The decision to be dark is not sustainable in the longer term and especially now that our customers are going back to being active,” Barbara Sala, Coke’s CEE strategic connection and media director, said at the IAB Europe Interact conference this week.

Dive Insight:

As restaurants and bars closed up shop and concerts and sporting events were canceled during the early stages of the pandemic, Coca-Cola downshifted its advertising. The brand turned its focus from out-of-home, billboards and TV to smaller digital and streaming options to connect with people looking for entertainment at home.

Now that world is slowly beginning to reopen, Coca-Cola is forging a new way forward that includes digital efforts similar to those the brand explored and employed during the pandemic.

Sala said during the conference that lockdowns showed how “digital has been very much able to, immediately and in real time, reach our consumers in many different forms … and some of them really astonished me.”

During the early days of stay-at-home orders, Coca-Cola signed on as the exclusive launch partner to BeApp, a new music streaming platform that integrates gamified and social media elements into the virtual concert-viewing experience. Coke Studio Sessions has featured a number of high-profile artists such as Katy Perry, Miguel, Steve Aoki and the cast of the musical “Hamilton.” This experimental push could signal some of the campaigns that could come as the beverage giant pushes forward.

But Coca-Cola won’t be the only company rethinking digital strategy post-coronavirus. Chief rival PepsiCo also cut back on nonessential ad spend during lockdowns in favor of consumer activations that tapped into what was becoming popular during the pandemic. This included integrations with actor John Krasinki’s feel-good “Some Good News,” a YouTube hit that recently sold to ViacomCBS and a Tostitos Facebook livestream where Bill Murray and Guy Fieri competed to make the best nachos.

Feature Image Credit: Marc Fulgar / Unsplash

By Dianna Christie

Sourced from MARKETINGDIVE

In News

We Are Living In An Affiliate World

June 29, 2020 No Comments

By Molly Mulloy

If Madonna doesn’t start playing in your head when reading that headline, you’re much younger than me. But more importantly, the word “affiliate” should send your mind scrambling as we all try to adeptly learn the ins and outs of affiliate marketing in today’s publishing world.

Affiliate marketing is a payout to affiliates, generally influencers or media that promote your brand or product with a unique link that tracks their contribution to your sales. When a sale is made from their link, they earn a commission, generally 5%-10% of the product cost. You can think about affiliates, also known as publishers, as external salespeople for your brand — they essentially market your product, whether consumer packaged goods, consumer electronics or pretty much anything else you can physically sell.

As a communications executive, the first media outlet I really saw put affiliate deals to works was Wirecutter, a product reviews site that was quick to monetize and today sits within The New York Times Company. This new model was a critical development for publishers because media outlets struggled to make up for declining ad sales. Today, most media outlets have commerce teams that handle their affiliate programs. Transparency is critical, so most publish their terms to explain the separation of editorial content from affiliate programs.

Most influencers also leverage affiliate programs today. They use their personal brand equity and channels to endorse and promote products, with affiliate revenue often representing their largest stream of income.

The adoption of affiliate marketing today is incredible: 81% of brands and 84% of publishers leverage it, with spend increasing 10% a year, expected to reach $6.8 billion in 2020.

Today, an entire industry has popped up to broker affiliate deals, working with both brands and publishers to set up programs, including SkimLinks, CJ Affiliate, Share a Sale and Rakuten. Behemoth Amazon runs its own affiliate program. And while the company recently cut its affiliate rates dramatically, Amazon’s sheer size will continue to drive a massive volume of affiliate sales and commissions.

Making Affiliate Marketing Work For Your Brand

As PR practitioners, we are seeing more media connect us to their commerce editors, and more influencers request either that we provide an Amazon link or details of our affiliate program. We also have media tell us who they work with, and we find CJ Affiliate and SkimLinks to be the most common, with CJ claiming Buzzfeed, CNN, Time and Wirecutter as a few of many publishing partners, and SkimLinks claiming Condé Nast, Gizmodo, Hearst and HuffPost.

Brands today should have affiliate programs, and if not, they should make their products available on Amazon. When pitching a product to media, including an Amazon link or an FYI link to the brand’s affiliate program is common practice for PR practitioners.

Marketers should take the time to connect with commerce editors to understand the unique programs and policies for their key outlets. The brave new affiliate world we live in is not going away, and being able to navigate it expertly is critical to a brand’s success.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Molly Mulloy

Career PR executive who made jump as partner into startup agency, Crafted Communications. Haven’t looked back. Read Molly Mulloy’s full executive profile here.…

Sourced from Forbes

In News

10 Essential Tips For Small Business and Startups From Expert Entrepreneurs

June 29, 2020 No Comments

By Carlla Keyl

These days, it seems like everyone is hoping to become an entrepreneur and come up with “the next big thing”. Who can blame them? When successful, the benefits to owning a start up are obvious: being your own boss, creating something from scratch, bringing value to the people around you and, of course, making a bit of coin along the way. But the key phrase in that equation is, “when successful.” Too often, start-ups fail — 75 percent of them, to be exact, says The Harvard Business Review. So what goes wrong?

Failure doesn’t preclude you from ultimately succeeding

Unfortunately, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. Or at least, not by nature. To run a good business you have to be able to assume the proper role. If that means doing things and acting in ways that don’t come naturally, then so be it. Otherwise, you will risk failing like that 75 percent. Here are eight crucial points the pros agree are prerequisites to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Take risks and be willing to fail

Failure doesn’t preclude you from ultimately succeeding — in fact, it’s often a necessary step. The best entrepreneurs don’t let the fear of failure prevent them from going for what they believe to be a great idea. Some of those risks won’t pan out, but the ones that do will be the ones that define you. READ MORE

By Carlla Keyl

Sourced from Medium