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In News

Top 10 Reasons to Use Social Networks for Advertising

October 21, 2020 No Comments

By Thomas Glare.

Description: Despite the constant traffic in social media, some businesses still think they are better off not using this amazing and largely low-cost resource for advertisement. We have a few reasons why they might want to reconsider that opinion.

Introduction: Social media platforms are everywhere. If you have a smartphone and Wi-Fi, you have access to everyone you know and everyone they know every second of the day. And, while using it to reconnect with old friends is a pretty solid way to utilize such a versatile medium, it can also be a great resource for marketing.

These days, it seems like everyone has social media accounts. From toddlers to grandparents, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have kept us connected, for better or worse, and allowed us to know everything about everyone. It is even possible to win real money by clicking on an ad or doing a social media quiz.

Marketing in the Age of Social Media

In the past, ad traffic was expensive and could only come from television, radio, and newspapers. Promos run maybe once an hour to as little as once a week, and the target audience was only listeners, watchers, or subscribers. And advertisers hoped their target market was tuned at just the right time, but it was essentially a gamble.

These days, social media advertising has almost overtaken all other forms of marketing. As a matter of fact, when a marketing firm lists their services, if the phrase “social media campaign” isn’t mentioned, a lot of businesses will move on. It isn’t the niche market of ten years ago, but a living, breathing animal of its own.

Your Next Marketing Strategy

White pages do work, and emails are still a heavy hitter in the marketing game. But if you want to get the most eyes on your product or service, you can’t beat the endless traffic of the big three. These social media networks have made a killing based on this knowledge. So, why shouldn’t you?

Here’s how:

1. Ready and Waiting

Your customers are on social media. You want to connect with them. So, like AT&T used to say, “Reach out and touch someone.” They are waiting for you to tell them what you have to offer. Don’t leave them in suspense.

2. Branding

You aren’t just a business but a brand. And your brand is the face of your company. People recognize big brands because they stand out, and there is something special about them. Get your brand out there and introduce yourself!

3. Improving Relationships

Online reviews have replaced comment cards, and access to business owners has become commonplace. Using social media to stay connected with your customers is the best way to know whether your business is doing well, and what to do to fix it if something is wrong. Instantly.

4. A Wider Net

Any social media manager will tell you not to aim at small but launch a large campaign to draw big attention. As far as social media plans go, this is a valid idea. You may inspire new business just because you took a chance on an untapped market for your niche.

5. Low Money Down

Let’s say you are a casino. Your business is to bring in people with money to spend. But how? Free coupons! You put a free coupon for slots free spins on Twitter, and the traffic flows into your site. And you paid next to nothing for it. Social media marketing is the most cost-effective medium for product promotion.

img alt: social media marketing

6. Competition

Everyone has a business out in the world that is trying to take your customers and your dollars. And guess what? They already have a website and tons of followers, subscribers, and valued customers. They aren’t taking your business; you are giving it to them by not having a social media strategy.

7. Loyalty

People like to know who they are buying from. A bad social media brand can kill a business, just because of the owner’s improprieties. But if your customers are aware of your story, and it garners trust and makes you seem like a quality human-being, they instinctively want to support you.

8. Drawing a Bullseye

While you can throw out a huge campaign that blankets the entirety of social media, you can also target specific people, catering to your most fervent customer base only. It is similar to fishing with a bait that only certain fish like. Sure, you will get some outsider nibbles, but you will hook what you came for.

9. Up the Ladder

Along with knowledge of SEO, traffic algorithms have a hand in search engine rankings. The more people visit you, the higher you are on the list when customers search for your business. Typically, the average web surfer will pick one of the top five links when looking for just about anything.

10.Reaching and Grasping

Just like the Internet is global, so is social media. And that means you can now advertise all over the world from one or more platforms with ease and speed. Customers in Estonia can buy your product, receive it, and give you feedback in a matter of days, not months like in the past. It has connected the commerce of the world.

Conclusion

Social media management may seem a little odd to those with old school marketing ideas, and that makes sense. So many advertising fads have come and gone, it can be puzzling if getting an account for your business might just end up as a waste of time. But the upshot is that advertising on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are so quick and easy that you’re actually wasting more time trying to come up with reasons not to. Do you advertise your business on social media? Has it helped your bottom line and customer traffic?

By Thomas Glare

Thomas Glare runs a marketing firm and believes in the power of advertising through social media platforms. He recognizes it as a vital tool in promotional mediums and uses it on a regular basis for his clients to promote his own business interests.

In News

McDonald’s Surprises Parisians By Launching These New Unique-Looking Street Ads

October 15, 2020 No Comments

By Lukas Garnelis and Robertas Lisickis

When you think food advertising can’t get any better than it is now, someone finds a way to one-up the competition. It does raise the question of whether there is a point in advertising a thing we can’t live without, but I digress.

McDonald’s has come out with an advert—a street billboard—in the streets of Paris that has been drawing people’s attention lately with its unconventional public ad design.

Have you ever gotten so hungry that you’ve had the idea to take a bite out of a billboard?

Image credits: TBWA PARIS

So, McDonald’s—you know, that ginormous fast-food chain whose food people can’t help but crave every once in a while and effectively don’t need to be persuaded to want to eat it—has come out with an ingenious billboard design that has people captivated.

McDonald’s has placed 3 lit street billboards around the city of Paris, France with pictures of two kinds of their signature hamburgers and a carton of french fries. Except they aren’t regular rectangular billboards that many of us are used to, but rather rectangles that someone has taken a literal bite out of.

An ad agency recently took that concept and made it into a McDonnald’s billboard that is literally bitten off

Image credits: TBWA PARIS

The entire design does have a silly vibe to it because the bite mark is just comically out there—who would try to take an over-sized bite out of a billboard picturing food? But, at the same time, it’s very on-point and the strangeness of it all manages to draw the eyes of passersby—exactly what an ad should be doing.

People with a keen eye will also notice that the billboards lack any branding. Besides the carton of french fries being packaged in the obvious red and yellow packaging that McDonald’s offers, there is no mention of it being McDonald’s. For all intents and purposes, this could be an ad for any other fast-food restaurant.

3 “bitten-off” billboards were placed in Paris, France that feature McD’s juicy pics of burgers and fries

Image credits: TBWA PARIS

But a supplementary video showcasing these same billboards clarifies that it is indeed McDonald’s—the classic golden arches appear right after the cartoony frames of the two burgers and french fry logos at the end of the video.

The people behind the billboards are TBWAParis, an advertising agency headquartered in New York City but with a presence all around the world, including Paris. It aims to bring a culture of innovation and to put companies’ brands at the heart of pop culture.

TBWA Paris is the team behind the billboards and they’ve been working with McDonald’s since 1985

Image credits: TBWA PARIS

The agency has been working together with McDonald’s in Paris for a while now—since 1985, actually. Their projects with McD’s include ad campaigns for the Sharing Box, “Being A Good Father,” and “American Summer,” among many others.

Now, this isn’t the first time someone has taken a bite out of a tasty food ad as Ben and Jerry’s also realized the same concept for an ad some time ago. The ad for B&J’s Pint Slices has been seen bitten off in Auckland, New Zealand. The Phantom Labs team are the people behind this one.

Interestingly enough, none of these ads feature any of McDonald’s branding, save for its colors with the fries

Image credits: TBWA PARIS

Watch the video advert showcasing the bitten-off McDonald’s billboards found in Paris

Video credits: TBWA PARIS

By Lukas Garnelis and Robertas Lisickis

Sourced from boredpanda

In News

Podcasts for B2B: how can you cut through the noise?

October 5, 2020 No Comments

By Rebecca Peel.

n the last few years, podcasts have exploded – but you don’t need anyone to tell you that. Every man, his dog, and his competitor have launched a podcast recently, and it’s hard to know where to start.

Podcasting keeps making the headlines, too. Joe Rogan went viral when he signed an exclusive deal with Spotify, and the streaming platform doubled down when they also signed Michelle Obama. In fact, journalists actually listen to more and more podcasts now to source quotes from people for their stories, quotes that are out in the public domain. And to make the case for B2B, one statistic found that there are avid fans of business podcasts in a massive 13 million households.

Podcasts are ideal for brand awareness and managing your personal brand, in an on-the-go, busy lifestyle. How do you get yours noticed in a landscape where the top 0.1% most popular ones reign and the market becomes more saturated every day?

You don’t need to create your own show to thrive in podcast land

People, and brands, launch podcasts on social media almost daily.

While this should be rewarded, people only have so many hours a day to listen to podcasts and don’t always have time for new ones. Plus, you need a lot of spare cash for ads and need to be ready to make a big commitment, having people lined up ready to guest each week.

If you’re starting out, you should dip your toes into the water first. Podcasts are fantastic for small and medium-sized businesses and their executives to grow awareness. By taking part in podcasts and guesting on existing shows, you’ll get:

1. Free advertising/brand awareness

2. Likely a 15-30 second slot to plug yourself

3. To promote yourself as a thought leader

4. See how other people run podcasts, for future reference in case you set up your own later

5. An opportunity to network and connect with key influencers.

How do I become a guest on podcasts?

There’s so many of them out there, it can be easy to become a deer in headlights at the vast number of podcasts available, but it doesn’t need to be scary.

If you start your own podcast, you need to grow it from scratch, develop a long-term content strategy, and invest a lot of time and money. But if you start by guesting on others – they’ve already done the hard work for you!

Research relevant podcasts by searching key terms

As of January this year, there were more than 850,000 active podcasts. The easiest way to filter down to find podcasts that are right for you to be on, to get in front of your audience is by searching for the key terms on your podcast app of choice.

For instance, if you search ‘SaaS’ on Apple, Google, Acast, Spotify etc, it’ll show the shows which mention SaaS in previous episodes, or their titles. Search for your job title, or for your audience base. For example, if your core offering is smart pay solutions, you can search for:

Smart pay
Finance
Young people + money
Retail

There’s also nothing wrong with just searching for top podcasts in your industry on Google, too – but some of these lists may be outdated, and the devil moves quickly, but podcasts move quicker.

Look at their relevance, not popularity

With almost a million podcasts, it’s impossible for them all to have high listening figures – there’s only so many hours in a day. Many should look at the reviews and ratings on the podcast to see how popular it is.

But Megaphone collected data on the US iTunes store which found that 80% of podcasts have no rating listed. Think about podcasts in the same situation as a microwave – who actually leaves ratings? Usually it’s those who think it’s the best microwave they have ever bought and it’s life-changing, or those who actively hate it. The millions of people who bought the microwave and think it’s good won’t leave a review. The same can be applied to podcasts.

You don’t need to guest on a podcast with 100,000 weekly listeners. All you need to do is make sure that they’re relevant. Don’t feel like you can’t ask the host or organiser who their target audience is, just to be sure, as they’ll have more of that data than you will be able to see.

If you do want to see what Joe Public has to say about the podcast, you’ll have a better chance by searching the name of it on Twitter and LinkedIn, where people tend to post about things they enjoy that are relevant to them and to others in their industry. At Hallam, we noticed that The Goat Agency’s podcast, The 30,000ft View, was being spoken about a lot on Twitter, and so pitched Susan Hallam MBE in to speak on one of their next episodes – which they said yes to.

Identify your niche talking point

You want to be seen as the expert, and that won’t happen if you’re just repeating what everyone else is saying.

What can you tell their listeners that someone else can’t? Think of it like a speaking slot – what’s your podcast USP? To identify what your brand, and your people can talk about, answer the following questions which might help you to identify your key talking points:

Do you have any major thoughts or controversial opinions on recent news in your industry?

What are you doing about consumer behaviour changes? Can you offer your thoughts on this?

Everyone’s favourite phrase – digital transformation. What are you doing to cater to it in your industry?

Do you have any major company hacks that you can share which have helped you to become more productive/successful/happier?

Are there any new regulations you can comment on?

What do you see people doing all the time that is wrong or you don’t agree with?

Any cool customer data you can share?

Securing the spot

Search on Twitter. Set up an alert on ‘IfThisThenThat’ which will help you to get alerted every time someone includes the word ‘podcast’ with the hashtag #JournoRequest or #PRRequest. This will save you scanning thousands of tweets a day.

Once you know which podcasts you want to go on, reach out to them and ask. They’ll likely have a website with their contact information, or it will be on their social media. Explain why you like their podcast, and what you can offer to their audience.

Connect with podcast hosts on Twitter and LinkedIn, and follow them on Instagram and Twitter. If you start to interact with them and build up a relationship organically, you’ll likely be ahead of the pack when it comes to securing that coveted spot. Kieran S-Lawler, Head of Content and Social Media at Hallam, was being vocal on LinkedIn, and his connections at Pitch Consultants noticed him. As a result, they invited him onto their podcast.

Thought Leadership 2.0

We all want to be thought leaders, and get in front of our audience. Adding value to a podcast will have people searching for you and your brand after, and one guest appearance can easily turn into ten. Once people hear you on one relevant podcast, they might invite you on theirs.

Guesting on podcasts will allow you to broaden your brand and reach out and build your reputation on the topic in your industry, whether it’s digital marketing, SaaS, hair and beauty, or finance.

It will also help you to increase your exposure and develop personal relationships, There may be an opportunity, should you eventually launch your own podcast, to invite them onto yours – with their raised following, you’re more likely to get a higher number of listeners.

Feature Image: Hallam comment on the growth of business podcasts and suggest that now might be the time to get in front of new listeners.

By Rebecca Peel.

Rebecca Peel is senior PR and content consultant at Hallam.

Sourced from The Drum

In News

How can marketing change the world for the better?

September 24, 2020 No Comments

By Jenni Baker.

Does marketing have the power to change the world? The year 2020 has forced us all to redress the net result of the industrial revolution, which spurred mass consumption and throw-away consumerism. So, can our industry – with the abundance of talent, skill and creativity- champion for a better future for all?

The Drum and Facebook have partnered to bring together teams from brands and agencies across the globe to provide some answers to this very challenging question. The idea is to get together experts from the industry to find solutions to business and societal challenges to help create value for the people and the communities it impacts.

The creative brief

Uniting three markets under the theme of ‘stakeholder capitalism’ – with attention to inclusion and diversity – three separate teams in North America, EMEA and APAC were put together to answer the brief that involves a rethink of how small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) that are run by minorities operate, and how as an industry we can help create more resilient businesses especially in these unprecedented times.

Each of the three regions were given three separate briefs – The US (North America) team’s brief is to focus on women run SMEs. So how to overcome systemic social and financial challenges while starting and sustaining female-led businesses? Do they need to approach entrepreneurship differently?

For the London, UK (EMEA) team the theme was immigrant-led small business. Are immigrant-owned businesses the untapped potential? What are the challenges and opportunities of migrant founders and their businesses?

The theme for the APAC team is silver start-ups. A growing number of over-65s are now delaying retirement by starting their own firm, fueling a ‘grey business’ boom. What are their challenges, can we identify the most pertinent ones and solve those problems?

The first meet-up

Each of the teams kicked off their first virtual brainstorm session to find a campaign solution that would positively impact the lives of minority groups operating in the SME market. Each of the teams were also given mentors to help guide through the process.

Following is the list of the three teams:

Team US

Tom Spaven, brand director, Bombay Sapphire, North America (mentor)
Stephanie Walker, innovation marketing manager, Pepsico
Cassie Begalle, strategy and innovation brand Manager – U by Kotex, Kimberly-Clark
Iyanni Callender, junior art director, Strawberry Frog
Paola Ortega, associate strategy director, DDB Chicago
Michael Rodriguez, content strategist, 3 Leches Creative

Team UK

Arjoon Bose, marketing head- culture & brand experience (Europe-Australasia), General Mills (mentor)
Andre Campbell, partnerships lead, Mercedes-Benz
Fatima Diez, head of marketing, MunchFit
Shannie Mears, co-founder & talent chief, The Elephant Room
Jade Nodinot, former creative associate, BlackBook London
Emma Luxton, former senior account executive, Avantgarde London

Team APAC

Erica Kerner, SVP, marketing strategy & partnerships, ONE Championship (mentor)
Triveni Rajagopal, global digital director, skin cleansing and BPC, Unilever
Chandini Malla, senior manager, Diageo
Bryan Martin, social media executive, Reprise Digital
Adrianne Pan, planner, Havas Singapore

Team US: A fact-finding mission

Gender equality is at risk of being set back decades in the current climate – not just minorities in general, but especially women in it. In the US, the focus is on women-owned SMEs, looking at how female-led businesses can overcome systemic social and financial challenges, as well as addressing the different approaches that this cohort might have to entrepreneurship in order to succeed.

One such challenge was posed by keynote speaker Victoria Monsul Singolda, owner and creative director of Iris & Virgil, who discussed that though it might be true that for women-led businesses, their vulnerabilities as women and as small business owners are compounded, there needs to be a gender-smart approach because not all women-led businesses are the same.

“I never really thought of myself as a female business owner, I’m just a business owner. Maybe because my mother was very dominant in the household, she was a student, she was a business owner, she was a mum, we always saw her, we were always together. Maybe that’s why I never thought that there was something different or special being a girl.”

Headed up by mentor Tom Spaven from Bombay Sapphire, the team immediately honed into “resilience” and “impact” as the insights towards this gender-smart approach.

The team delved into discussions to align on common goals and objectives. The first step was to focus on the challenges in order to find the most creative solution – with three key take-aways that these women are lacking: Knowledge and resources to tap into; a community to help them venture into this new world; and platforms available to really share and have people learn more about.

The team then decided that the initial insight-led approach would begin with a fact-finding mission to assess the situation and the scale of the problem that the campaign needed to solve; followed by the consumer insight to understand the deep motivations and needs of the target to ultimately give the barrier they need to start to push against in order to solve the problem; and finally, culture listening around this topic – all of which would help to get a clear, sharpened brief about the real problem they are trying to solve.

Team EMEA: Move from ‘pivot to evolve’

On the other side of the Atlantic, Team EMEA, led by mentor Arjoon Bose from General Mills, tackled the untapped potential of ethnic minority and immigrant-owned founders, their challenges and opportunities.

“The last few months have been testing and I think we’ve all come up with a ton of learning. But I think we’re at that stage right now where we’re needing to move from pivot to evolve,” said Bose. “A growth mindset is what we’re going to have to need as we come out of this and prepare to get stronger and accelerate.”

After hearing from keynote speakers Sharon Jandu, director, Yorkshire Asian Business Association and director, Northern Asian Power List; and Steph Douglas, founder, Don’t Buy Her Flowers, it was clear that a heavy emphasis on networking, relationships and experiences, along with access to digital technologies, were key in bringing this community together.

“For an SME, they are so busy doing what they do that they don’t have the time or the capacity to think about what they can do – or they don’t have the networks to enable them to get the contacts to get investments or to get ideas. They are constantly running on a treadmill, trying to do and keep what they are doing alive. How can we stop them becoming so absorbed in their business that they can actually distance themselves and look at it from an aerial perspective?” asked Jandu.

The team identified the need to listen and learn directly from migrant-led business owners themselves to understand their experience, their struggles and challenges with direct feedback through focus groups and on-the-ground research. This would allow them to narrow down into one or two sectors that need the drive and support. They identified Facebook’s own small business community as a great place to start to create a questionnaire in order to gain invaluable insights to help shape their strategy.

“The opportunity that digital gives us to connect these immigrant-owned businesses with each other and provide each other with their own experience and their own knowledge can be a very valuable thing that we could leverage if it’s relevant to their challenge,” said Fatima Diez.

Team APAC: Reinventing and re-energising culture

With a growing number of over 65s now delaying retirement and fuelling a ‘grey business’ boom, the focus for Team APAC was on overcoming the challenges faced by the silver start-ups, particularly when it comes to navigating through the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentored by Erica Kerner from ONE Championship, the team was presented with a keynote talk by Jeremy Nguee, founder, Preparazzi Gourmet Catering; Batu Lesung Spice Company; who helped his mother set up Mrs. Kueh, a local sweet treat business. They touched upon some of the unique experiences and challenges of their business that they ran from home.

Hoping to learn from this experience and translate these lessons to help support silver entrepreneurs and home-based businesses through his volunteering role in the Hawkers United Facebook community, Nguee said: “I think this is going to be a very, very big market. There are a lot more home-based businesses coming up because of high unemployment in the market.”

Inspired by the talk, the team decided to focus on Singapore food culture and food service industry run by silver entrepreneurs, that has an international dimension throughout much of its history but continues to retain features firmly rooted in the locality so that the global and local are not always distinct. The team wanted to understand the different segments of businesses and the landscape in which they were working in.

“The complexities of Asia, the complexities of the segment, the types of digital, could become such a beast,” says Kerner. “My instinct is to start with the data. Starting a business now, no matter what your age is a challenge and a lot of small businesses are obviously struggling to survive. We’ve got a lot of things to think about. What aspect of this do we want to try to unbuckle?” asked Kerner. “In Singapore we are losing a lot of that Hawker culture and if we can find a way to re energise it, and bring more people back into it, it’s good for all of Singapore culture.”

The next steps

Over the upcoming weeks, the teams will continue to work on their campaign and then subsequently present the big idea for solving that problem.

The final ideas will be entered in The Drum Social Purpose Awards.

The Drum consulting editor, Sonoo Singh, said: I’m inspired to see the true power of marketing when used to promote issues that are critical to our societies, persuade a change in behaviours, and influence a positive shift in behavior that would benefit our environment. Having been involved with all the teams, I cannot wait to see the final outcome of this very challenging brief.”

By Jenni Baker

Sourced from The Drum

In News

More companies join Facebook ad boycott bandwagon

September 23, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from CNA

REUTERS: A long list of companies have pulled advertising from Facebook Inc in support of a campaign that called out the social media giant for not doing enough to stop hate speech on its platforms.

The Stop Hate for Profit campaign was started by several US civil rights groups after the death of African-American George Floyd in police custody triggered widespread protests against racial discrimination in the United States.

Following are some of the companies that have decided to support the campaign:

Starbucks Corp

The US coffee chain said it would pause advertising on all social media platforms while it continues discussions internally, with media partners and civil rights organisations.

Unilever Plc

The consumer goods company said it will stop advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the United States for the rest of the year, citing “divisiveness and hate speech during this polarised election period in the US.”

Adidas AG

The German sportswear giant said it and subsidiary Reebok will pause advertising on Facebook and Instagram globally throughout July.

Walt Disney Co

The media company will slash its advertising spending on Facebook, the Wall Street Journal reported, adding that the time frame for the pullback was not clear as some brands paused their ad spending for longer stretches.

Coca-Cola Co

The beverage maker will pause paid advertising on all social media platforms globally for at least 30 days, Chief Executive Officer James Quincey said in a statement.

Merck & Co

The drug maker said it was stopping ads on Facebook and Instagram and was monitoring the actions Facebook takes.

Target Corp

The retailer said it was pausing all ads on Facebook and Instagram throughout July and was re-evaluating its plans for the rest of the year.

Ford Motor Co

The No 2 US automaker said it would pause advertising on all social media platforms in the United States for 30 days, adding that it would evaluate such spending in other regions as well.

HP Inc

The computer maker said it was stopping US advertising on Facebook until the platform puts more robust safeguards in place against objectionable content. It added that it was reviewing its social media strategy across all markets and platforms.

Lululemon Athletica Inc

The yogawear maker said it would pause paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Levi Strauss & Co

The denim maker said it and subsidiary Dockers would pause all ads on Facebook and Instagram, calling on the social media company to take actions to stop misinformation and hate speech.

Beiersdorf AG

The Nivea cream maker said it was pausing ads for all its brands on Facebook and Instagram throughout July.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc

Chipotle said it was temporarily pausing paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram starting Jul 1.

Diageo Plc

The world’s largest spirits maker will pause all paid advertising globally on major social media platforms from Jul 1.

Clorox Co

The bleach maker said it will stop advertising spending with Facebook through December.

Verizon Communications Inc

he telecom operator said it was pausing advertising until Facebook creates “an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable”.

The North Face

The outdoor brand, a unit of VF Corp, said it would pull out of all Facebook-owned platforms.

Ben & Jerry’s

The ice-cream maker said it would pause all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the United States as of Jul 1

Magnolia Pictures

The film distributor and studio became the first Hollywood company to join the movement. The company said in a tweet it would stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram, starting immediately, through at least the end of July.

Patagonia

The outdoor apparel brand said it would pull all ads on Facebook and Instagram through at least the end of July.

Source: Reuters/ec

Feature Image Credit: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Sourced from CNA

In News

To Pay for Social Media Advertising Or Not When, Why, Why Not, How!

September 15, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from B&T Magazine.

Nicola Moras (main photo) is an online visibility expert and author of Into The Spotlight, a guide to help you step up your online visibility, become a rock star in your industry and make your business thrive. In this guest post, Moras takes a look at the pros and cons of paid social media advertising…

To the uninitiated social media advertising can have the allure like that of the holy grail to Indiana Jones. Whilst the adventure may not be quite the same, put a foot wrong and BOOM! You end up falling into the abyss of closed ad accounts, pages shut down and worse – you could lose all the equity you’ve spent time building up on your pages.

I’ve heard the cries time and time again: “Social media advertising doesn’t work” and “We did an ads campaign and we got nothing from it”. The fact of the matter is this: most people who try to advertise on social media fail dismally – not because the advertising doesn’t work, but because the strategy they’re using quite frankly, sucks.

It’s tough to know what to do. We’ve all heard the success stories from using social media advertising, so why does success seem so elusive? We’re badgered by the platforms to ‘Boost to reach more people’ and to ‘advertise to reach more people’. There’s the prompts that tell you that ‘this post is getting more engagement than usual. Boost to reach even more’. Phew. No wonder everyone’s confused. Throw into the mix the adverts managers, the placements, the targeting, the creative options and what platform to choose.

Overwhelmed yet? You’re in good company. The good news is that there is a simple way to navigate it to ensure that should you choose to spend your hard earned dollars on advertising on social media, you’re going to get a return. (Otherwise don’t do it!)

1. When should you pay to advertise?

There is a golden rule to advertising on social media and that is this: Only advertise when you are generating leads and or sales. Generating a lead means obtaining a name and email address from someone. You can then stay in contact with them through your email marketing. A lead is not a ‘like’ or a ‘follow’.

The only other instance that you should pay to advertise on social media is if you are wanting to actively promote something that you are selling. For instance your event, product, program or a service.

If you are not wanting to do either of the above, then you should not be paying for advertising!

2. Why would you?

Facebook is the best social media advertising platform available to us right now. The platform has the biggest volume of users sitting at 2.45Billion monthly active users. Half of those are active daily and on mobile devices. You have the most targetable audience online sitting there in Facebook daily. Your people are on Facebook. It doesn’t matter what you’re offering, what you’re selling, what business you’re in. Your people ARE on Facebook. They may well not be on there using it the way you are. They may be using it to stay in touch with

their families, check up on what their children are doing. They may even be using it for work.

When people are on social media, their guards are down and they are more likely to be inspired by your content, your marketing and your advertising than on any other medium available to us right now.

3. But how do you do it?

Firstly, you have to know who your audience is and you need to identify a problem of theirs that you can solve. You will create something of value that you can give to them for free in exchange for their name and email address. You’ll then email it to them! (All of this should be automated, by the way!).

When you know who they are and the free item (digital ideally) you’re going to give to them, it’s time to head into the Ads Manager. Do not ‘boost’ a post from your page. You always want to use the Ads Manager facility within the platform. You can test, measure and fine tune within the ads manager. It’s very difficult to do it should you choose to create an ads campaign any other way.

From there, you’ll choose your audience targeting (you can be very specific), your creative and hit SUBMIT! Test and measure for a short period of time. A couple of days should be enough to see the leads starting to flow.

Social media advertising is the best it’s ever been…when you have the right strategy behind you.

Sourced from B&T Magazine

In News

Targeting Households Using Addressable TV Advertising Is Being Tested

August 28, 2020 No Comments

By Brad Adgate.

After several years, advertisers, content providers, ad tech companies and program distributors have been busy laying the groundwork for dynamically inserted television advertising. Addressable TV allows advertisers to deliver more targeted ads to individual households via cable, satellite or telco set top boxes or web-enhanced “smart” TVs.

The potential for addressable TV advertising could be big. Mitch Oscar, the director of advanced TV strategy for USIM says currently, there are about 54 million MVPD (cable, telco or satellite) households that are linear addressable and 35 million that are ad supported video-on-demand addressable households. As a result, Oscar estimates there are 66 million unduplicated addressable TV households. In addition, Mitch Oscar also notes there are also about 25 million homes with web enhanced TV sets currently capable of receiving addressable TV advertising via automated content recognition (ACR). Some of these homes however, may also be an MVPD subscriber.

Using addressable advertising, an automotive ad can promote a different car model to different households. A politician can insert a different campaign issue to different voters or a prominent packaged goods marketer can advertise different products to different households.

Addressable advertising could give the TV ad industry a much-needed revenue boost. In the first six months of 2020 another 3.8 million homes cancelled their cable TV subscription, resulting in a loss of subscriber fee revenue into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, the ratings for many top tier entertainment networks have been in decline, as viewers migrate to content from streaming video providers. The loss of audiences has also impacted ad revenue, especially during a recession.

In recent years, annual TV ad spend has been stagnant at around $70 billion. Some industry analysts project ad spend for addressable TV advertising could grow from $1 billion in 2017 to over $5 billion by 2021. The cost of an addressable TV ad would be greater than a typical linear ad, with the idea being a more relevant ad message would elicit a more emotional response to an engaged viewer, resulting with an increase of sales. A study from Bill Harvey Consulting found addressable TV advertising has a higher return-on investment than either digital media or linear television.

In the past, addressable ads were limited to the local two minutes each MVPD sells every hour. These MVPDs use their own set top box tuning data, first party data from an advertiser (or third-party data from Experian and Acxiom), as well as other technology to send targeted ads based on zip codes, cable zones or even down to individual households. The amount of addressable advertising inventory will increase notably as national networks, which sell about 14 to 15 minutes of commercials every hour, get more involved.

There are two industry trials currently taking place in the smart TV universe; Project OAR and Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising.

Project OAR: One initiative in addressable TV advertising is Project OAR (standing for Open Addressable Ready) which was created in March 2019. The goal of OAR is to set standards for addressable TV advertising using an open source. OAR is a consortium started by TV manufacturer Vizio and includes many prominent content providers; Disney Media Networks, NBCUniversal, CBS, WarnerMedia’s Turner, Hearst Television, Scripps and AMC Networks. These programmers account for 80% of all linear TV viewership.

Inscape, a data-tracking company owned by Vizio, developed OAR’s technology using ACR. In June 2020, OAR began the first phase a live test which provides more relevant ad messages for both linear and on-demand on smart TV’s. Participating were Fox, ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, Scripps, and AMC Networks. A second phase is scheduled for mid-August 2020 and will include Disney Media Networks, Discovery, Hearst Television and WarnerMedia.

Project OAR is available on 10 to 13 million web-enhanced Vizio TV’s. One of the goals, is to build scale by allowing more partners into the consortium with hopes they will be available on all “smart” TV’s. This will require the participation of TV manufacturers Samsung, LG and Sony. Also, as part of the OAR consortium are TV ad delivery companies; Comcast’s FreeWheel, AT&T’s Xandr, Google Ad Manager and Invidi that are implementing technical integrations.

Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising: In February 2019 Nielsen launched AVA, focusing on addressable advertising for web enhanced TV sets. The announcement had come after Nielsen acquired addressable TV technology provider Sorenson Media, which was in bankruptcy protection. Nielsen integrated Sorenson with ACR technology from Gracenote and Qterics, a smart TV software and privacy management company, to accelerate their addressable TV initiative.

AVA will be using 15 million smart TV sets from LG Electronics. The addressable initiative has the participation of nine national content providers; A&E Networks, AMC, Discovery, Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal, Univision, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia. They account for about 90% of all linear viewership. Nielsen had launched a two-phased beta version in January which has been extended until the end of 2020 due to the pandemic. Mitch Oscar notes, as a long-time ratings supplier, Nielsen may be serving ads and verifying the impressions, instead of using a third-party, this could be an issue for advertisers.

On Addressability: In June 2019, Comcast, in partnership with Charter and Cox, formed On Addressability, an addressable consortium with a goal to develop industry definitions and standards, provide education for advertisers, and identify best practices and business standards for transacting on addressable campaigns. Also, the three cable operators hope to pool what they learned from offering addressable advertising to help other content distributors do the same. In June 2020, AMC Networks became the first content partner followed by Discovery in late July. Canoe Ventures provides the backend ad tech support. Collectively, the three cable operators have about 27 million addressable ready TV homes.

Measurement Challenges: With several trials taking place there are several industry issues facing addressable advertising such as inventory maintenance, revenue sharing and privacy. Another issue is audience measurement. Prasad Joglekar, the SVP & General Manager TV, cross platform products at Comscore says, “Addressable TV occupies somewhat of a middle ground between traditional linear TV and digital video advertising. Today, most addressable TV advertising is viewed as an evolution of TV. As such, the default measurement lens that gets applied is the traditional TV lens, which ratings and panel based. This leads to 3 significant measurement issues that various industry players are sorting out:

First, the things that make addressable TV interesting – the ‘breaking’ of the live spot, the delivery of multiple advertisements within the same unit etc. – are precisely the things that make it impossible to measure with a panel, or as a traditional age-gender rating. Trying to shove what is inherently an impression-based buy into a spot-based measurement scheme doesn’t work.

Second, for national addressability, a 30-second unit must be individually enabled in 3 to 5 different operator and distribution platforms. Each operator’s addressable insertion, pacing and reporting stack is unique. It is a hard and laborious process to measure each platform individually, and then combine the numbers to create a true national view.

Third, when an ad is made addressable, some impressions are targeted, but the vast majority are not. On average, ~30% of the impressions in a spot will be targeted. The impressions not targeted are seen as suspect or remnant and tend to be devalued. Decorating those impressions with useful, actionable audience attributes, across the 3 to 5 operators described above, is a measurement and planning problem that must be solved.”

As the industry continues to test addressable advertising and develop standards, Mitch Oscar agrees that similar to digital media, the currency for addressable advertising should be audience based, instead of ratings based, that has been the traditional measurement for linear TV for decades.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY IMAGES

By Brad Adgate

Brad Adgate is an Independent Media Consultant

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Marketing has the power to change the world

August 5, 2020 No Comments

By Emma Mulcahy

Marketing holds a unique place in the modern world; it has the ability to challenge and shape perspectives, to inform culture and to kickstart movements.

Now, in a time of global crisis, we see more clearly than ever the industry’s ability to effect real change, by driving positive messages and offering platforms to those that need it.

It is in the spirit of this fundamental belief that The Drum and Facebook have teamed up to launch the ‘Marketers Can Change the World’ global initiative, which aims to unite and support the industry across three areas: EMEA, North America and APAC.

At its heart, Facebook exists to help create and sustain communities, even from a distance. Now, during Covid-19, that distance is felt more than ever. Pledging to donate $100mn to 30,000 small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) across these markets, Facebook will support established and rising marketing leaders to rethink how these businesses are run and how we can make them more resilient in times of struggle.

Discussing the exciting new initiative and how marketing can effect positive change in the world is; General Mills marketing head- culture & brand experience (Europe-Australasia), Arjoon Bose, Bombay Sapphire brand director, North America, Tom Spaven, Facebook global industry relations and intelligence lead, Sylvia Zhou, and The Drum associate editor, Sonoo Singh.

What steps have been taken?

“You’ll have seen the Coronavirus Information Centre located at the top of your news feed from the start of the pandemic,” says Zhou. “This was introduced so that our users are up-to-date with news and developments, from a source they can trust.” Facebook has also offered free ads to public health authorities such as the W.H.O, created Community Help where people can support their peers and recently launched Facebook Shops to help users pivot their business online.

Spaven speaks of Bacardi’s commitment to their consumers during this trying period: “The bar and events industry was particularly impacted by Covid-19, so we wanted to give back to the businesses that have continually supported our business.” The project pledged $3mn in financial aid to bars and bartenders facing difficulty during this period, as well as offering up their platforms and marketing expertise for those that need it. For Bacardi, it was a case of serving those that serve them; an idea also seen at General Mills. With the enforcement of lockdown, Bose understood that it was essential to reiterate the kitchen as being the heart of the home and to promote the everyday products needed by families.

What more can bigger brands do to provide support?

“Now is the time to be bold and responsible,” Bose responds. Marketing has always been at the forefront of significant change. He argues that during these difficult times marketing gives consumers a reason to spend and a reason to hope. Now is the time to reiterate brand identity.

Spaven believes that going back to basics is the surest way to engage your consumer base. “The fundamentals of marketing, as well as of human behavior don’t change, only budgets and resources do.”

What are the objectives of the Facebook project?

The ‘Marketers Can Change the World’ global initiative supports small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) across EMEA, North America and APAC and will focus predominantly on those run by immigrants, senior citizens, or women. “Statistics show that businesses run by these marginalized groups encounter more difficulties in acquiring resources and financial funding,” Zhou shares with us. The project will give rising stars in the marketing industry the opportunity to collaborate with senior mentors with vast experience in the field. Working together on a prescribed brief, the teams will create business policies that give value for the people and communities they impact. Facebook will provide essential training and access to tools that will allow these businesses to thrive both during and after the pandemic.

What knowledge will the mentors be able to impart?

Both Arjoon Bose and Tom Spaven express their sincere gratitude at having been asked to take part in the initiative as mentors. “This is a great opportunity to listen and learn from others, and to experience situations in a new way,” Spaven says. These views are echoed by Bose, who recognizes this opportunity to collaborate with different people and teams, as a teaching moment.

“I hope to be able to provide a fresh perspective to the team members and ask the right questions,” shares Spaven. This initiative lets teams combine the quick thinking of big brands with the even quicker movement of smaller, more centralised businesses.

At the heart of this, is our consumers- and their needs are changing rapidly. How are brands able to keep pace with this?

“Brands have to always be open to change,” states Bose. “Whether that’s remaining open to rethinking your retention strategy, trying out new tools or reprioritizing your products in line with consumer needs- we must be agile.”

Similarly, for Spaven businesses should always be thinking about their brand experience and how this meets customer needs. “Purpose is so important for every brand, but that doesn’t mean they all have to save the world,” he affirms. Understanding your brand’s mission and ensuring you deliver that, ethically and responsibly is enough.

Spaven adds that diversifying the industry needs to be a top priority if we are to truly meet the demands of today’s consumer; “It’s not about ticking a box, it’s about benefitting your bottom line- it’s just good business sense.”

Zhou agrees: “This mission is at the core of what Facebook wants to achieve in this initiative. By channelling our every effort into increasing the visibility of these groups, we want to create a ripple effect throughout the industry. This project will reveal the true power of marketing to influence for good and change the world for the better.”

By Emma Mulcahy

Sourced from The Drum

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

Media agencies are changing fast to make advertising work better

June 29, 2020 No Comments

By Christian Juhl

People, not machines, remain the key to understanding the changing market.

One of the truly great things about advertising is that it is ever-changing.

It is an industry that requires continuous stewardship to meet evolving consumer behaviours and technological innovations – finding new, better and different ways to communicate, captivate and convert.

These worldwide lockdowns, and the dramatic impacts they have had, have forced advertising to dig deeper to identify relevant and appropriate ways to engage with consumers.

When there are more questions than answers, and universal uncertainty about what lies ahead, how do we provide the right guidance to our clients?

“Adaptability” and “pivoting” have quickly moved beyond buzzwords and become a foundation with which to approach our business.

Behind these business shifts, our people have had to adjust too.

These adjustments have made them acutely aware of the changing behaviours of consumers, the evolution of their needs and how they experience brands today versus even eight or nine short weeks ago.

The world is forever different and it’s on us to help our clients decipher what all of this means for brands; which shifts are temporary and which will be long-term.

This pandemic has also afforded our industry the chance to look in the mirror, fast-track our roles in the ecosystem and determine how we can best spend our energy to make advertising work better for people.

As Mark Read, chief executive of Group M’s parent company, WPP, recently said: “We’re seeing 10 years’ worth of innovation crammed into a few months.”

The big question is: what are we – media agencies – doing to continue to innovate for our clients, especially when no-one knows what’s next?

The decisions we made 12 weeks ago, before the coronavirus crisis gripped the world, don’t carry the same consequences they do now; the stakes are higher.

Few service businesses have the scaled expertise across categories to identify best practices in addressing changes to consumer sentiments, preferences and behaviours like media agencies.

We are in the unique position of having a fairly holistic view of the insights about shifts and trends in consumption, content and sentiment that are otherwise disparate and disconnected – giving us a thorough understanding of what has really changed.

When consumer habits and behaviours changed literally overnight, it was this unique vantage point that allowed us to quickly identify the optimal approach.

And, as marketing budgets were suddenly cut around the world, we maximised the intelligence our data and insights provided to make the remaining dollars work harder to achieve our clients’ business goals.

It has allowed us to optimise workflows across marketing functions and find new ways to work with media owners to maximise the value of a buy.