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In News

Brands bet on texts to pique customers’ interest amidst digital marketing upheaval

April 27, 2021 No Comments

The messages app is starting to become the most sought-after piece of digital real estate among brands and retailers.

Marketers at e-commerce start-ups say they’re increasingly using text messages to promote new sales or product launches. That’s because they are finding it more difficult to get customers to pay attention to emails, as some customers have now signed up for email updates from dozens of brands after a decade-plus of online shopping. Additionally, the upcoming iOS14 update threatens marketers’ ability to use targeted ads on sites like Facebook. As part of the iOS14 update, iPhone users now must opt in for apps to track their browsing histories. If customers don’t, marketers will no longer be able to use their browsing history on past sites, like e-commerce sites, to serve them targeted ads.

Put together, companies are coming for people’s most intimate form of communication, amidst a slew of digital marketing changes. Because people still use it to primarily communicate with friends and family, text messaging is one of the last methods of digital communication that hasn’t been completely overrun by brands. But since it’s still not primarily used as a marketing channel, marketers are still trying to figure out just how many texts from a brand customers will tolerate. Bombard customers with too many text messages, and companies risk alienating with them altogether.

“In many ways, I think SMS is the final frontier of marketing and brand communications,” said Kinfield CEO Nichole Powell, whose start-up sells skincare essentials for the outdoors like bug repellent and moisturizer. “As a consumer, I can see why — I gave up on my personal inbox years ago, and now even social media oftentimes feels quite saturated. There are brands that I’ve followed on Instagram for years, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw one of their posts.”

Investor and marketing strategist Nik Sharma said that part of what is fuelling the SMS boom is brands in search of more ways to “somehow keep [customers] engaged and get them on the path to purchasing something.” According to marketing platform Omnisend, the number of SMS messages sent by the more than 50,000 companies that use Omnisend’s software increased by 378% between 2019 and 2020, while email campaigns were up 108%.

The new SMS playbook

In speaking with marketers at e-commerce start-ups, they say they try to only text customers sparingly — often only a couple times a month. But they’re still trying to figure out what kind of texts — and how many of them — someone will tolerate from a brand. In one of the most criticized brand texts from last year, Fashion Nova, sent SMS messages to customers encouraging them to spend their stimulus checks on Fashion Nova products.

One of the most common ways that marketers are using the channel is texting customers alerting them to sales, as they’re betting that people won’t mind getting a text from a brand if it’s alerting them to a good deal. Brendan Hastings, director of engineering at DTC underwear brand Thinx, previously told Modern Retail that the company used SMS to promote its August sale. He said that Thinx has found that SMS messages receive open rates close to 100%, where email open rates are 15-30%.

Powell said Kinfield hasn’t yet used SMS to promote any sales — her company has primarily used it to poll customers about what type of packaging they’d like to see for future products — but hasn’t ruled it out in the future. “We’d prefer to take the time to get to know our audience and see first-hand what kind of things they like to use SMS [for],” she said.

Eli Weiss, director of CX and Retention at direct-to-consumer brand Olipop, said that his company has found success with using text messages to alert customers to new flavours. On Instagram, Olipop will encourage customers to sign up for its SMS list in order to get first dibs when the new flavour drops.

In December, when Olipop released a limited-time blackberry vanilla flavor, the company received $15,000 worth of sales in 15 minutes from people on its SMS list. Olipop’s email list still drove slightly more sales — but the company has ten times more email subscribers than it does SMS subscribers.

Weiss said that he doesn’t see SMS entirely replacing email — that rather, Olipop will only use it to “communicate with our most engaged group of people.” Weiss said that he plans to stick to sending Olipop customers one or two texts a month. Going forward, Olipop is considering using SMS to sell company merchandise, or to send customers more personalized messages from different members of Olipop’s customer service team.

“SMS is like any fun new marketing thing where right away it can kind of get abused…some brands are now sending three messages a week,” Weiss said. “I think the future is exclusivity and intentionality.”

Feature Image Credit: Ivy Liu

By Anna Hensel

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

Reliability in numbers: global agency initiative launched to champion better event marketing measurement

March 1, 2021 No Comments

By Paul Colston

As we see significant investment by brands in digital events and experiences, amid a period of seismic change for the meetings and events industry, a new affiliation of event marketing companies is launched. Two years in the making, the Experiential Marketing Measurement Coalition (EMMC) will dedicate itself to promoting better measurement practices across the industry.

“There were two factors impacting this public launch of the EMMC,” says founder and chairman Dax Callner (pictured), strategy director at UK-headquartered Smyle. “With the industry pause comes a moment to rethink everything: how can we return to live events with new ways of working to make them better for everyone involved? And also, what we are experiencing with virtual events is the flood of data that comes from digital. That’s requiring some event people to get a lot more data-savvy.”

In addition to Smyle, agencies involved in the EMMC include Freeman, GPJ, GES, InVision, ImpactXM, RedPeg Marketing and DRP (visit https://www.eventmeasurement.org/members for a complete list of participating companies).

The EMMC will be welcoming individual members and corporate brands. It says benefits to membership include access to global benchmark data against key shared metrics, a certification process in conjunction with the UK Centre for Events Management at Leeds Beckett University and a public platform to promote better measurement of experiential marketing efforts.

The EMMC says its association of normally competing companies has coalesced because members believe that better measurement practices will enable the experiential marketing industry to come back stronger and smarter than ever before.

Agencies wishing to find out more about joining can visit: https://www.eventmeasurement.org or contact Dax Callner, [email protected]

By Paul Colston

Sourced from EN

In News

Trump Experiences the Downside of a Politicized Brand

January 15, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from The Customer

Since his election to the Presidency, the added-value the Trump brand engenders has ‘ping-ponged’ according to his political postures.

Editor’s Note: Brand Keys has been tracking consumer sentiment and brand loyalty for the past 25 years and has compiled one of the most robust longitudinal views of brand performance ever assembled. One of the beauties of this kind of research is that its utility transcends branding and loyalty and can be applied (very nicely) to things like politics. To wit, today’s news:

Trump Brand Loses Added-Value in 75% of Categories Tracked

Consumers – particularly republicans – see Trump as “Entertainer-In-Chief”
21% of Americans would tune in to ‘Trump TV’

For 30 years Donald Trump was one of the most powerful consumer brands that Brand Keys, the global leader in brand loyalty and emotional engagement research, tracked. Since his election to the Presidency, the added-value the Trump name engenders has ‘ping-ponged’ according to his political postures.

The Trump Brand Took A Sharp Right And. . .

Since Trump made a sharp right turn away from consumer marketing to politics, consumers’ tribal and political bonds have made their effects felt. “The Trump brand lost efficacy in a number of consumer categories it once dominated,” noted Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder and president. “It’s difficult for one brand, even one as strong as Trump’s, to operate successfully in the consumer and political arenas simultaneously.”

The Trump “Human Brand” – Lift And Drop

Mr. Trump was designated a “Human Brand” in 1991 by Brand Keys, which coined the nomenclature to describe people that were the living embodiments of particular value sets, who were able to successfully and profitably transfer those values to products and services. If a Human Brand could do that, it increased a product’s perceived value and desirability. Percentages reported by Brand Keys indicate the value-add (or reduction) produced by, in this case, adding the Trump name to a product category or sector.

Four Categories Survive Trump Politics and MAGA Hats Don’t Count

Ultimately, labels and retailers abandoned the Trump brand, and categories – clothing, suits, ties, watches, and jewellery traditionally tracked – vanished. “MAGA hats and tee-shirts were self-classified by respondents as ‘political statements’ rather than traditional clothing,” noted Passikoff.

Four categories in which the Trump brand still exhibits Human Brand-efficacy includes TV/Entertainment, Golf & Country Clubs, Hotels, and Real Estate. In the current tracking wave, the Trump brand decreased its value-add in three of the four categories. Only TV/Entertainment was up.

Political Branding Effects

The most recent national Brand Keys survey, conducted October 19-27, 2020, included 1,812 self-identified Republicans, Democrats, and Independents drawn from the nine U.S. Census regions. It examined the four categories where the Trump brand still resonates. The only category where attaching the Trump name showed any lift was TV/Entertainment – but only among Republicans.

Tuning Into Trump

Four years ago, when a win for Hillary Clinton was assumed, the expected move for then- candidate Donald Trump was a Trump TV channel. His surprise victory changed that trajectory, but with President Trump soon to exit the White House speculation about launching a Trump cable network has reemerged.

Twenty-one percent (21%) of the total sample indicated a top-two box likelihood (definitely/probably) of watching some form of Trump TV, with political affiliation clearly and unexpectedly influencing likelihood-to-view:

Democrats: 7%
Independents: 15%
Republicans: 41%

“Trump’s efficacy as the ‘Entertainer-in-Chief’ has already been demonstrated. Cable news network ratings have hit record levels since he became a candidate,” noted Passikoff. “And remember Trump was already a TV star as the host of ‘The Apprentice.’”

Launching a cable network is problematic as consumers continue to shift away from pay TV subscriptions. “It would be more viable for Trump to acquire an existing channel that caters to his conservative followers or to sign on as a program host at an established network,” said Passikoff. “Trump’s tweets reveal he already believes he is personally responsible for Fox News’ dominance in the ratings, although it has been the most-watched cable news source since 2002.”

“A Trump TV show might help to revive faded categories,” observed Passikoff, “This current survey is exclusively an American respondent group but there’s a whole world out there.”

Sourced from The Customer

In News

Emotional Design – The Difference Between Brands And Communities

January 13, 2021 No Comments

By Varsha Rao

Emotional design can seep into every level, be it a logo or the offline and online packaging, of any brand. As human beings, we respond to humour, love, pain and a plethora of emotions.

Good design has two layers: aesthetics and functionality. However, great design happens to have an additional facet to it, empathy. The emotional element of designing is rarely thought about, be it on the part of marketeers or designers. Creating catchy looking collateral and content for brands thrives on a single, detestable word – VIRAL. Unfortunately, this ugly V word is often mistaken to be a tool that builds rooted connections with its users when it’s actually far from it.

With expanding channels that allow brands to connect with their user base, brand owners and marketeers currently face a challenge they had never envisioned. In order to ensure brand visibility and find a place in the target audience’s mind, they need to constantly create and push out fresh content aggressively in order to stay relevant. Be it videos or posters, brochures, infographics, reels or G.I.F’s, nothing seems ever enough! The brand owners straddle a thin line where on one hand, they need to have a social media presence that reflects what their brand stands. On the other hand, however, they don’t want to create brand saturation either. From the brand owner’s perspective, the question of how much brand content is enough brand content, is a tough nut to crack. As for the user, most of brand content often feels like stale leftovers. Having been recycled and reheated many a times, for the user, most of these brand content simply seems like a rehash of the latest viral trend – oh no, not this again!

User Experience designer, Aaron Walter, in his book ‘Designing for Emotion’, talks about how emotional experiences imprint on our long-term memories. Designs have the capability of creating experiences where the user feels like their interaction with the brand is grounded in shared human interest as opposed to the mechanical feeling of interacting with machines. Don Norman, the author of ‘Emotional Design,’ breaks down his approach to creative design into three stages: building the appearance of a design, perfecting the way it works and lastly amplifying the long-term impact. It is in these core basics where most brands fail. Brand owners, marketeers and design agencies these days are so busy creating as much content as quickly as possible that they forget how unsustainable this whole vicious cycle gets. If anything, we need to evaluate and evolve the manner in which we measure the impact of digital branding, stepping away from number of views and clicks. Being able to create designs that allow users to be introspective, become aware of unhealthy social patterns, uplift moods or create a call for action for social causes, are the kind of meaningful experiences that helps a product or a services crossover from being a brand to becoming a part and parcel of the community.

Emotional design can seep into every level, be it a logo or the offline and online packaging, of any brand. As human beings, we respond to humor, love, pain and a plethora of emotions. Hence, a design can reach its fullest potential by being, not merely functional but also emotionally stimulating. The #likeagirl campaign by Always won an Emmy, a Cannes Grand Prix award, and the Grand Clio award not because it wowed the panel with its CPC value. 2017’s App of the Year Calm, is a product that cracked emotional design to the T. Designing with emotion reinstates the awareness in the user that the brand is genuinely invested in their growth as opposed to treating them as mere numerical targets. By daring to go beyond numbers and projections, these well-designed campaigns have added substance to their brand identity.

Simply put, as a brand, you have to look at the concept of success in long term perspective. By rising above immediate buzz, it becomes critically important that each element of your brand, be it your website, an advertisement or an entire ad campaign is a building block to your brand’s identity as well as longevity. To build meaningful relationships and interactive communities through a brand, what one needs is not design that is VIRAL, but design that is actually HUMAN.

By Varsha Rao

Sourced from BW BUSINESSWORLD

In News

Ad Age 2020 Marketers of the Year

January 5, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from AdAge

TikTok tops our annual list of the top performing brands of the year

The 10 brands that comprise Ad Age’s 2020 Marketers of the Year list didn’t just survive the pandemic, they thrived.

The list is topped by TikTok, which emerged as a major pop culture force and must-stop for an increasing number of brands, including several on our list. That includes cosmetics upstart e.l.f., which had the foresight to jump on the platform back in late 2019 with its 15-second “Eyes Lips Face” song, and has since amassed 10 billion views for its TikTok content. Other new economy brands making the list include meditation app Calm, whose Election Day marketing set a new standard for timely product placement. Online marketplace Etsy smartly tapped into trends like DIY and customizable goods, including, yes, masks.

But breakthrough marketing in 2020 was not confined to plucky start-ups. Stalwarts like State Farm, which is nearly 100-years-old,also cracked the list, thanks to a reinvention strategy that included putting a new spin on its iconic “Like a good neighbour” tagline. McDonald’s, No. 2 on our list, found ways to reach new audiences, including with its wildly successful Travis Scott collaboration.

The list—chosen by a team of Ad Age reporters and editors based on factors that include business results driven by breakthrough advertising and smart strategic thinking–is full of brand marketing lessons, including from an unlikely source: Conservative anti-Trump PAC The Lincoln Project, whose go-for-broke attitude shows that fearlessness is a key ingredient for great creative. “We’re not unemotional about this stuff,” TLP cofounder Rick Wilson told us. “We’re passionate about this stuff.”

No. 1: TikTok

No. 2: McDonald’s

No. 3: Lowe’s

No. 4: The Lincoln Project

No. 5: Etsy

No. 6: Calm

No. 7: e.l.f.

No. 8: Lego

No. 9: Adobe

No. 10: State Farm

Sourced from AdAge

In News

What Brands Need to Know About Marketing on Social Media, Amazon and Google Shopping

September 9, 2020 No Comments

By Madeleine Streets

For most of 2020, brand marketing has been a critical way for companies to connect with their consumer and try to preserve their loyalty. But these direct communications mostly focus on existing customers or those familiar with the brand; shoppers must have already opted into email or SMS updates, or visited the brand’s site. In order to reach new customers, brands must explore shared locations like marketplaces or social media.

“Reaching shoppers on external platforms is critical because it’s your way to introduce them to your brand on their turf, rather than your turf,” said Kevin Dugan, VP of agency services at performance marketing agency DMi Partners. “As someone is browsing Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, they are actively engaged with the content and if you meet them with the correct messaging and tone, it’s a powerful way to bring your products into their world.”

Unlike other segments, retail has been given designated advertising spaces within these platforms – think the Instagram “shop now” function or Google Shopping – and this ensures fertile ground for marketing initiatives. But while these platforms aren’t new or unknown to brands, effective strategies for social media, Google and e-commerce marketplaces each require tailored approaches.

For one, competition on these platforms is tough and can come at a high price; smaller businesses that need the exposure may be the same ones that are unable to afford to market their product extensively. Moreover, the saturated space means that effective advertisements need to stand out and resonate with the right audience, in order to generate real benefit for the brand.

“The way that these platforms have evolved over the last couple of years, there’s a lot more levers to pull around targeting that didn’t exist before,” said Mike Farrell, senior director of integrated digital strategy at marketing platform Sidecar. “A thoughtful targeting strategy would allow retailers to take that limited budget that they might have and really focus it in on the highest value customers that they’re going after.”

Platforms like Sidecar are specifically focused on creating marketing for these external platforms due to their specific requirements and data-rich nature. These function as a double-edged sword: With the right support, a company can tailor its marketing to each audience and reap rewards; without the ability to leverage data and optimize strategy accordingly, brands are likely to find their messages lost amongst the competition.

Then there’s the diversity of campaigns needed within each platform. DMi Partners’ Dugan warns against brands just setting a few generic social ads live and expecting traffic to roll in. Instead, he argued the importance of identifying different consumer groups based on their experience-level with the brand.

“We are always advocating for subtle differences in messaging depending on the audience we’re reaching on these channels,” said Dugan. “We suggest at least having top of funnel social ads, for your behavioural and interest targeting; bottom of funnel ads, for your retargeting audiences; and winback ads, for your custom audience of past customers.”

From a content perspective, marketing should consider the platform it’s on. Social media sites are well-suited to discovery and brand storytelling, although Dugan highlights the opportunity of Facebook Shops for a more direct-conversion experience. Google Shopping and Amazon are the most purchase-driven; clear product imagery and information performs well for shoppers who are ready to buy.

Farrell recommends that brands use their marketing to spotlight their best performing styles but in colourways that perhaps aren’t as popular; this evokes familiarity and novelty simultaneously. As a result, brands might be able to reduce the common diminishing of sales that occurs once the preferred shades sell out and also optimize inventory, which is a challenging area for many companies right now.

Feature Image Credit: URUPONG – ADOBE STOCK

By Madeleine Streets

Sourced from FN

In News

Brands say their digital transformation projects have accelerated by 6 years

August 18, 2020 No Comments

By Chris Ward

COVID-19 has forced many brands to deliver years-long transformation programmes in the space of a few weeks.

It’s been well-documented how quickly many brands have had to accelerate certain aspects of their digital transformation plans as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

But according to the Covid-19 Digital Engagement Report, the speed at which some companies have had to push forward their digital agendas has been extraordinary.

Surveying 2,000+ customer experience, marketing, operations and IT professionals, Twilio found that brands had had to accelerate their customer communications transformation strategies by an average of 6.1 years.

27% of respondents said COVID-19 had fast tracked their transformation plans by between 5-9 years. Astonishingly, 19% said it had pushed things forward by between 10-14 years.

Source: Covid-19 Digital Engagement Report

Omnichannel focus

Twilio’s study revealed a number of other surprising statistics, no less that COVID-19 had led to numerous barriers to digital transformation being broken down.

The top barrier was ‘getting executive approval’, which 37% of respondents said had been broken down as a result of coronavirus; this was followed by a ‘lack of clear strategy’ at 37% and a ‘reluctance to replace legacy software, at 35%.

Insufficient budget had also been a key factor for 34%, prior to the coronavirus crisis.

As well as breaking down barriers, COVID-19 has also propelled brands’ omnichannel communications strategies. 54% of brands have increased their focus on omnichannel communications, with 53% adding new communication channels since the start of global lockdowns in March, and 52% ‘speeding up their digital communications strategies’.

“Over the last few months, we’ve seen years-long digital transformation roadmaps compressed into days and weeks in order to adapt to the new normal as a result of COVID-19,” said Glenn Weinstein, chief customer officer at Twilio, responding to the findings.

“This has affected everything from the ways in which businesses talk to their customers, to how their workplaces function. We’re seeing how digital technologies are being used to completely reimagine the business landscape. Communications technology is at the heart of this transition to a flexible remote working model for employees, and a seamless, digital customer experience for businesses at large.”

Behaviour changes

According to Contact Babel research in June, 51% of contact centres have reported an increase in email use, with 47% reporting increases in webchats and 37% report an increase in social media use.

Zendesk research also highlights that customer support tickets have seen a huge surge in usage on messaging channels such as WhatsApp, which has increased 148% since late February.

Despite the huge jump in consumers wanting to communicate with brands, they still expect a human response, further complicating brands’ communication strategies.

Sitel’s recent survey and report, COVID-19: The CX Impact, revealed that 87% of consumers want to connect with a human to resolve critical issues, despite having a preference for resolving problems with self-service.

21% of consumers indicated they were happy to start using voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa as way of engaging with brands, yet a huge proportion of the research’s survey also acknowledged they valued emotional intelligence and empathy in a customer service interaction, something they were unable to obtain from automated assistants and bots.

“The last three months have challenged consumers and brands like never before, and we are all faced with understanding a new reality: How do we shift from adapting to the crisis to driving a success strategy in this future world?” said Martin Wilkinson-Brown, global CMO at Sitel Group.

“In this quickly changing world, customer experience is truly one of the only ways for brands to stay competitive within their industries and now more than ever it’s critical to meet consumers where they want to interact with brands.

“Combining human-led technologies with searchable knowledge bases and even branded online communities to handle common issues and typical contact drivers will reduce inbound call volumes and traffic to other live channels. This will actually drive costs down while improving CX for all customers, regardless of their channel of choice.”

Feature Image Credit: istock/CSA

By Chris Ward

Sourced from mycustomer

In News

How Brands Can Stay Engaged With Customers

July 31, 2020 No Comments

By Benjamin Vaughan

Establishing customer engagement and keeping them engaged is more important than ever for brands. Now that many brands have temporarily lost the ability for invaluable face-to-face contact with customers, it’s crucial that they diversify their engagement for this new normal.

What are brands having to do differently?

Where possible, brands are figuring out if and how they can offer their services online. This is understandably tricky for people like hairdressers and massage therapists. And even if people working in these professions did manage to offer services online, they do so at the risk of their post-lockdown income—will people want to pay $50 for a massage if their partner can do it for free?

Many of the bigger consumer brands quickly boosted their capacity for home deliveries to account for a much higher online demand. And some restaurants and bars developed delivery systems for the same reason.

Aside from simply making an income from customers, brands need to work out how to keep their customers engaged with their products or services.

Livestreaming

Customers can’t pop into their local branches for now so they’re not able to get a feel for the brands’ latest offerings. Through livestreaming, brands can give customers introductions to new products and services, delivered by a representative of the brand, just as if they visited a branch.

Fitness and wellness coaches have embraced livestreaming as a way to host classes and training (often for free). Giving customers the real-time presentation a livestream affords, a brand can really make them feel included and maintain the idea that they’re consuming the product or service.

Goodwill gestures and rewards

Brands need loyalty right now. And the kind of loyalty we’re used to isn’t possible—rewarding x amount of purchases with a free gift isn’t very useful. Offering gestures of goodwill and usable rewards will make customers feel thankful and it’ll give them a helpful reminder that the brand is still around and that it’ll still be there when lockdowns are eased.

Goodwill gestures have proved to be valuable to brands from a marketing perspective too. Lists have been doing the rounds of companies offering discounts to essential workers and stepping up to the fight against the virus. Among them are the likes Armani, Kiehl’s and Co-op. Conversely, those that haven’t shown the same goodwill now belong to their respective lists of brands to avoid.

Keep customers informed

As a way of keeping customers included and nudging them with a reminder that they still exist, brands should keep customers up to date. Whether it’s updating them about new products or announcing a charitable scheme, customers will appreciate the heads up. And since they’re online more than usual anyway at the moment, they might even feel more inclined to share it with their network.

Don’t stop there

Here are a few more tried and tested ways brands and online communities can boost engagement (whether or not there’s a pandemic):

Offer value

People will engage with truly valuable content. This might be through blogs, video, images, livestreams, and so on. Whatever form it comes in, it needs to inspire, entertain and inform.

Take a personalized approach

People thought chatbots would revolutionize customer service. Those people were wrong. Customers still need the personal touch. Brands still need to make them feel valued and listened to—they must be responsive to their community’s questions and comments

Help customers to help others

Step 2 can lead to step 3. Brands want their customers to contribute too. Customers can sometimes take the role of ad hoc customer service representatives and marketeers, if they’re treated well in the first place.

Reaffirm your mission

Customers should be reminded of why brands exist. What are they trying to achieve? What problem do they solve? What is their mission? Customers need to feel the excitement they felt the first time they came across a brand.

Be transparent

Customers respect honesty and transparency, even when things aren’t going so well, When brands communicate openly and trust customers’ perspectives, they’ll win trust and strengthen loyalty.

Stay consistent

Remaining consistent is key to building brand loyalty. If a brand is consistent with what it provides, it’ll become ingrained in customers’ minds and loyalty will become second nature.

Conclusion

It’s vital that brands maintain their customers’ engagement, and it’s at times like these that businesses experiment with new ways of delivering services and satisfying customers. That’s really exciting and let’s hope it sets a trend for the future too.

By Benjamin Vaughan

musician, I had my own community of fans and followers. What I didn’t have was my own space to grow and manage that community in the way that worked for me. So, I set out to create that space, and in doing so, found a lot of other community managers with the same problem as me. Health and wellness coaches, film stars, YouTubers, politicians and celebrity chefs were all looking for a solution to the same problem. Disciple is a community media platform that, unlike Facebook or a website, empowers community hosts to build, manage and control their own private, social apps. Our platform gives communities their own mobile meeting spaces to gather and interact in the ways that work for them.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

8 of the Most Important Instagram Trends to Watch Right Now

July 23, 2020 No Comments

By Katie Sehl,

Like most social media trends, Instagram trends move quickly. And in 2020, change has been fast and furious, with a global pandemic, social uprising, and competitors, shaking things up.

Trends make the difference between looking out of touch or ahead of the curve. That doesn’t mean you should throw your social media content calendar out the window. It means you should stay informed and stay flexible.

There’s a lot to stay on top of at Instagram. From Instagram Story trends to Live Shopping, and Instagram Shops, we break down the biggest trends on the app.

Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a lifestyle photographer used to grow from 0 to 600,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.

9 of the most important Instagram trends in 2020

These are the top trends on Instagram to watch right now.

1. Brands and influencers reckon with racial inequality

On June 2, Instagram feeds were checkered with black squares in support of Blackout Tuesday. The original concept, The Show Must Be Paused, was created by music executives Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas, as a day for the industry to “take a beat for an honest, reflective, and productive conversation about what actions we need to collectively take to support the Black community.”

But the black squares swiftly became symbols of performative allyship. The posts inadvertently drowned out the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, a channel activists use to relay vital information. Many brands and influencers who participated were called out for virtue marketing or hypocrisy, spurring calls for transparency and action.

Designer Aurora James’s #15PercentPledge initiative calls on big retailers to pledge %15 of shelf space to Black-owned businesses. Brands including Sephora, Rent the Runway, Cupcakes and Cashmere have since made the pledge. UOMA Beauty founder Sharon Chuter launched #PullUpOrShutUp to challenge brands to back their marketing with employee diversity statistics.

Instagram plans to reexamine how its policies, tools, and processes impact Black and other underrepresented communities on Instagram. The company will focus on addressing harassment, account verification, content distribution, and algorithmic bias.

Black creators and professionals have also been speaking out about tokenization, pay disparities, and being sidelined. Several celebs, public figures, and influencers have responded to this disparity by sharing Black influencers and businesses or hosting account takeovers. As a result, many Black creators have seen their followings double overnight.

The social momentum behind Black Lives Matter is stronger than ever. But as initiatives like #PullUpOrShutUp demonstrate, brands need to know the difference between social trends and social movements. As eTalk CTV reporter Tyrone Rex Edwards said, “My trauma is not a trend.”

Anti-racism, inclusive marketing, equal pay and opportunity are not trends. They’re the new norm and the bare minimum of what consumers expect from brands going forward.

2. Instagram goes Live

Stay-at-home orders and event cancellations have helped propel Instagram Live viewership figures to new heights. Between February and March, the number of people tuning in for live broadcasts rose by 70%. More than 800 million people now watch live video daily across Instagram and Facebook.

Live lineups have been packed with star power. DJ D-Nice’s #ClubQuarantine sets have featured shoutouts to Rihanna, Zuckerberg, and Joe Biden as the viewership count soared above 100,000. Former U.S. President Barack Obama and Justin Bieber were among the 50,000 viewers punctuating a live convo between NBA star Stephen Curry and Dr. Anthony Fauci with emoji.

As people look for ways to replace in-person activities, brands and creators have jumped on live, too. In fact, 80% of live broadcasters have fewer than 1,000 followers.

Instagram Live sessions include everything from cocktail and comedy hours to virtual protests, yoga classes, and drawing tutorials. Desktop functionality, added in April, has made tuning in a lot more practical.

Like Instagram Stories, live videos tend to be more intimate and spontaneous than posts in the feed. Hosts can also respond to questions and comments in real-time, which is why Live videos tend to average six times more interactions on Facebook.

It’s too soon to know what staying power Instagram Live may have in a post-COVID world. For now, Instagram is rolling out enhancements, such as the option to save videos to IGTV and run fundraisers. Live Shopping and Badges allow creators to monetize livestreams.

Instagram is also testing showing two-rows of Stories in the feed, with live videos up top.

Until in-person activities resume, expect to see more memes and innovation on the Instagram Live front.

3. Creators can now make money directly on Instagram

Since its inception in 2010, Instagram creators have mostly monetized their audiences through affiliate marketing and brand partnerships. New features introduced in May now allow creators to make money directly.

Instagram is now testing Badges with a small group of creators and businesses. During a live broadcast, viewers can spend 99 cents to $4.99 for heart badges to stand out in the comment stream and unlock features. During the test phase, creators will receive 100% of revenue earned from these badges.

Source: Instagram

Tests for IGTV ads are underway as well. These ads can last up to 15 seconds and appear after someone clicks to watch the full IGTV video. On par with YouTube, 55% of ad revenue is shared with the creator. In addition to ads, Live Shopping tools now let creators and brands tag products during live videos.

Source: Instagram

These changes come as competition to retain creators heats up between platforms. They also cater to a cohort of “specialized” creators who monetize their audiences by offering valuable content, rather than featuring valuable products and experiences in their content. It’s why many are shying away from the label influencer in favor of the term creator, or even ambassador.

Brand partnerships will still remain an important source of revenue, but they’ve already become a lot less transactional. Expect to see some fine-tuning in the Brand Collabs Manager from Instagram (and Facebook).

4. Instagram Shops set brands up to cash in on conversions

Instagram Shops promise to make it easier for brands to make money, too. Shops let businesses create a storefront directly in the app, so people can buy without the need to visit a website. By eliminating this friction, brands should be able to drive significantly higher conversions and sales.

In May, Instagram and Facebook launched a phased rollout to businesses globally. The plan is for the shopping experience to eventually be integrated across all of Facebook’s apps. Once complete, it will mean that when someone puts something in their cart on Facebook, they can check out later on Instagram using stored credit card info or Facebook Pay (which will likely be integrated, too).

Source: Facebook

To improve discoverability, Instagram will soon have a dedicated Shopping tab, like the Explore tab, which already features a shopping section. Accounts with shops have a View Shop button on their profiles, as well as a shop tab. Businesses can customize how collections appear, connect loyalty programs, and benefit from the platform’s built-in AI to create personalized experiences.

There are now more ways to spend money in Stories, too. In addition to product tags, companies can share gift card, food order and donation Stickers.

Set up Instagram Shopping so you can sell your products.

5. Shopping and advertising get AI-powered upgrades

More people shopping across Instagram and Facebook means more data. And more data brings the company closer to its vision of “making anything shoppable while personalizing to individual taste.”

To make anything shoppable, the Facebook engineers have developed an A.I called GrokNet that can automatically tag the products in a business’s catalog in seconds. The A.I., which is already used on Facebook Marketplace, can scan photos, identify attributes such as colour and style, cross-reference with catalogs, and suggest descriptions. On the flip side, this data is used to deliver better search results and targeted ads to users.

Rotating View is another A.I. project that aims to enhance social shopping. The feature, which allows people to create 3D-like images, is currently being tested on Marketplace. Maybe it will crop up on Instagram, too.

Instagram may soon introduce ads that use augmented reality to let people “try on” beauty products or preview furniture in their homes. Facebook already offers an AR ad format, and Zuckerberg recently announced more developments are on the horizon.

Read our complete guide on how to advertise on Instagram.

6. Instagram Guides accompany the rise of “info-social”

Brands and influencers often get asked for recommendations, from “where should we eat in Marrakech?” to “how do you talk to your kids about climate change?”. In the past, these requests have been handled by referring followers to highlights or blog posts. Now guides can be created directly on Instagram.

Source: Instagram

According to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, guides were initially developed for travel, but that idea was curtailed by the coronavirus outbreak. Instead, they launched under the theme of wellbeing, with more themes coming up. Instagram recently assembled a racial justice resource guide, too.

Guides have their own devoted tab on profiles, and can be shared to Stories or appear in the Explore tab. They can include curated posts and videos with added notes and tips.

There’s a growing appetite for informative social content. On TikTok, educational videos are surging in popularity, especially in China, with a reported 14 million “knowledge-based” posts created last year. In the United States, career coaches, personal finance experts, and fitness experts are finding success on the app.

On Instagram, everything from “practice accounts” to doctor and nurse micro- and nano-influencers are popular, proving that engaged communities are much more valuable than high follower counts.

7. Values take center stage

Authenticity is a big buzzword in the influencer industry. But it’s not just an influencer trend. Consumers increasingly demand authenticity from brands, too, especially in the form of transparency.

As brands and influencers use their platforms to take a stand, promote values, and support causes, transparency will be more necessary to retain authenticity. For example, sustainable beauty brand Elate Cosmetics goes into great detail to explain the eco-attributes of its products and practices.

Influencers will share more about their decision making in general, and be more upfront about why they partner with specific brands. To maintain trust, disclaimers and clear labelling between spon-con and regular posts will be necessary, particularly in Stories.

With social advocacy on the rise, Instagram has added several fundraising tools, including live fundraisers and donation stickers. The company is also reportedly testing the option to add fundraisers to profiles. Nonprofits already have access to account Donate buttons.

Instagram is also adding context to posts from high-reach accounts. In April, the company started piloting a feature that shows location and where followers are based on posts from these accounts.

Source: Facebook

8. TikTok, Twitter, and Giphy invade Instagram

The days when Instagram was only a place for filtered images are long gone. Instagram’s feed now features everything from memes and Twitter takes to TikTok challenges, special effects, music, and more.

To keep up with competition from TikTok and Snapchat, Instagram’s been on a feature-adding bonanza—especially in Stories. The recent acquisition of Giphy, which already sourced 25% of its traffic from Instagram, will add to a collection of interactive features that already includes stickers, filters, and other special effects.

Despite more content variety in the feed, the Instagram aesthetic still creeps in. As Arimeta Diop points on in Vanity Fair: “It’s the end of the iPhone-Notes-App-Apology Era.” Bold typefaces, templates, and hand-drawn sketches have proven more popular, thanks in part to Instagram’s strong design community. Infographics and visual storytelling have taken off, too.

Most cross-platform sharing is up to the users, except when it comes to Facebook’s family of apps. Further integration between Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger—on the front and back end—is looming. Beyond a fully integrated shopping experience, Facebook is developing an option for users to view and reply to Instagram Stories from Facebook.

Facebook is also planning to merge messaging across its apps by the end of this year. Once complete, Instagram users would be able to message friends on WhatsApp and Messenger, even if those friends don’t have Instagram accounts. This level of integration would make the app family comparable with the WeChat, the super app that dominates in China.

Manage your Instagram presence alongside your other social channels and save time using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can schedule and publish posts, engage the audience, and measure performance. Try it free today.

By Katie Sehl

Sourced from Hootsuite

In News

Brands can turn the tide during coronavirus by building new consumer journeys

June 16, 2020 No Comments

By Shawn Lim

Brands need to focus on hyper-localisation by connecting with consumers where they are, as Covid-19 has dramatically changed consumer behaviour and altered the path-to-purchase, according to Facebook and Boston Consulting Group.

According to a new report called ‘Turn the Tide’, released by Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, the use of micro-targeting can help brands get the first-mover advantage. This is because countries are being divided into different zones, with distinct restrictions due to the pandemic, so they need to build social connections despite social distancing, by engaging with consumers in their context

To cope with pandemic lockdown, which has caused significant disruption for communities and businesses, people are spending more time on social media platforms. This means brands have an opportunity to build stronger dialogues and deeper connections with users.

The aim of the guide, according to Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, is to guide brands to adapt to the pandemic and ensure business continuity.

Nimisha Jain, the managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, says: “We are experiencing unprecedented shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviours as 80%+ consumers will continue to practice social distancing and are bringing the outside inside, over 40% of consumers are dialling up on health and wellness spends, e-commerce adoption has already advanced by two-three years, to name a few.”

“These aren’t just temporary surges, and many will last longer and become more defining traits. Our analysis reveals that only one in six companies emerged stronger in past crises. Players who show the agility to reinvent their value propositions, go-to-market plans and business models to address these demand shifts, will be the ones that set themselves apart from the pack.”

In addition, the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

For example, brands can bring alive experiences through virtual launches and product demos as people turn to virtual experiences for every facet of their life. Facebook said it is already seeing more brands explore Facebook and Instagram ‘Live’ to connect with their followers and customers, with brands now thinking about using social media platforms for new product launches too.

Heeru Dingra, the chief executive officer at WATConsult tells The Drum the agency has modified its planning and strategy around the new consumer journeys, urging its clients to follow a simple mantra of ‘solve, serve and sell’.

She explains brands should focus on solving the problems their consumers face, serve their purpose and the result thereof could be the sale of services or products. She notes a lot of brands have understood this concept and have already started altering their approach to fit this mantra.

“We leveraged the power of gaming and re-created one of the most iconic games of all time, Ludo, for our client Tata Motors. Titled #SafetyFirst Ludo, this version aims to spread awareness about the importance of personal hygiene and social distancing amid the Covid-19 outbreak,” she says.

She also calls out work by Bajaj Allianz General Insurance called #CareWillOvercome, which salutes frontline workers, while a #ReconnectWithStarbucks campaign turned the act of baristas calling out people’s names into a digital phenomenon.

She adds: “These examples summarize how we integrated the need of the hour that is to maintain social distancing, continue to concentrate on personal hygiene and at the same time have our heartfelt appreciation for the ones who have been fighting for us day and night, into our brand approach in some way. This helps to amplify the brand message while being sensitive to the current situation, serving the purpose of extending the required communication and increasing as well as sustaining brand recall.”

The report also advised brands to look at their media mix models to drive growth by aligning to new media landscapes. According to the report, when brands, especially those with traditional product categories, start spending more online, they need to understand incremental outcomes, as well as cross-platform efficiency.

This would increase the need for digital measurement standards, such as custom mix modelling (CMM) by Nielsen, which Facebook said it had piloted last year.

Gautam Mehra, the chief data officer for South Asia and chief executive officer of programmatic at Dentsu Aegis Network observes the importance of moving away from traditional marketing metrics to real business metrics that can be measured and improved on an ongoing basis.

“With the impetus of commerce, CRM and digital transformation, I think, every company will now have a direct-to-consumer line of business and will want to bring themselves closer to the consumer, and rely less on the intermediaries,” he explains.

While most brands are dealing with huge change across many aspects of business, focusing on the changing customer journey is a good place for marketing to focus attention.

Feature Image Credit: the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

By Shawn Lim

Sourced from The Drum