26+ features for a successful Facebook social strategy

Facebook dominates social media use with an extensive base of 2 billion users who can be reached by organic or paid advertising tools and targeting options. But, it's easy to get lost in the various tools which are available and you can be left uncertain where to start. Having a holistic Facebook marketing approach that incorporates many of Facebook's features will help shape a larger and more targeted social strategy or campaign. Remember, you need to know what your target audience is doing on Facebook to peak their interest in your company/product/service. In Q3 of 2016, Global Web Index found that over a third of 16-64-year-olds answered that they had visited a company's page within the last month. And, over 20% stated that they had shared content (post, article, photo and video)…

Chart of the day: In the latest market research industry GRIT report, 6 in 10 are using online research communities, and over 8 in 10 have an interest in them. All hail the true superhero of market research.

6 in 10 (60%) are using online communities, with over 8 in 10 (82%) showing interest in them and over 2 in 10 (22%) also considering using them. Online research panels are a fast, affordable way of collecting insights from customers and audiences. The GRIT report produced by Greenbook, is a leading market research industry report. The survey also found that mobile first surveys are increasing in popularity and the shocker, text analytics are pretty popular too! It's great to see mobile first surveys are becoming a major source of data collection, with so many people using mobile phones and tablets, survey experience has in previous…

Is the rise of online bullying and hate / fake news putting the younger generation off interacting on Facebook?

Recent figures have shown that Facebook's monthly active users between 12-24-years old have decreased, but why are the younger generations moving away from Facebook in preference for other social platforms available? Whilst Facebook constantly dominates global statistics on active users worldwide, I've never been their biggest advocate. Reaching past 2 billion monthly active users in 2017, Facebook has always looked impressive on paper with its high user figures - but who are these users, what do they use Facebook for and why should we all care? 2 billion users does not mean 2 billion brand interactions, it does not mean 2 billion conversions and it does not mean 2 billion people are going to see your post and you'll become a social media influencer overnight. So why do we all hype about their…

What is 'extremely online' and how is it affecting children in Silicon Valley?

There’s a new buzzword on the streets: "extremely online." It means someone is constantly on social media. Whilst spoken in jest, it cradles a dark nuance. People are increasingly becoming addicted to ‘bottomless bowl’ apps. That term was coined by former Google designer Tristan Harris after a Cornell study found that people drank more soup when a bowl was constantly refilled. Many apps are designed to deliver a continuous stream of ‘bottomless bowl’ content.  Each screen-tap or swipe provides a morsel of satisfaction. News feeds keep people scrolling. Snapchat and Facebook ensures they check-in to check-out what friends are up to. Twitter provides a stream of endless schizoid and paranoid views. Hook-up sites like Grindr or Tinder deliver streams of non-starter, photo-finish relationships. For a growing constituent, life staring at smart device screens is beginning to feel like wasted time. Many are…

Chart of the Day: Consumer Interest in Using Voice Assistants and Voice Search

Originating from the smartphone trend of voice search, where Apple and Google introduced voice assistants on their smartphone operating systems, we now have voice interactions through the likes of Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa/Echo. This seems to be a growing trend across all the main digital platform providers and these voice assistants are predominately used for search queries.

Google highlighted that more than 20% of mobile queries are voice-based and this will only grow by 2020. 40% of millennials have already started making search queries through a voice assistant, prior to making a purchase. In fact, a research report from BI Intelligence shows that the younger you are, the more likely you are to switch to and prefer voice-activated search as opposed to traditional search engines. 

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Use these techniques to help convert and engage customers into repeat purchases and brand advocates across the customer lifecycle

Being a marketer can be exhausting. As if it wasn’t hard enough to attract new customers, now everyone’s talking about optimizing the entire customer lifecycle. (We’re tired just thinking about it!) If you’re trying to understand customer lifecycle marketing, grab a coffee and read on: we’re here to remedy your marketing overwhelm. In this blog post, we explain why you need to work across the entire customer journey, and how to do it well.

What is customer lifecycle marketing?

Customer lifecycle marketing is about making every touchpoint between a customer and a brand more profitable. A customer’s lifecycle describes their journey through the buying cycle. It includes every interaction they have with your brand along the way. And covers every marketing channel those interactions happen on. Creating a customer lifecycle marketing strategy helps you optimize each…

When it comes to selling online, a good marketer is doing their best to optimize the marketing funnel. But most often they do the online part of the job - supporting the customer on their way to the shopping cart

It is not new that we make our decisions emotionally, so often ignoring the rational part of the purchase while analyzing the product. When surfing online for a new pair of pants, we will buy only them, most likely. But what if we come to the store and try a new pair of pants on? What if walking between the aisles we will stumble upon an amazing blazer and a cool shirt? Well, we will try them on also, since we are already heading to the dressing rooms. More experimentation, assisted purchasing, great atmosphere, people around... The growth…

Chart of the day: A third of British people will exercise their right to be forgotten after GDPR comes into force on May 25th, 2018.

The research, conducted by media agency The7stars, found that a third of British adults plan to exercise this right after the European Union General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) come into force. The survey was conducted with over 1,000 UK residents and found that 34% want to use the regulations to stop companies from using their data for marketing purposes. Data protection and privacy are clearly quite big concerns for customers. The right to erasure of data applies to marketing data where there is "no compelling reason" (according to the ICO) for the data to be held for longer and is not required for processing, or in other words, it is no longer needed based on the fact the individual may not be using that service anymore (for example). Less…

Research giving benchmark of most successful acquisition channels for retail

It's useful to know how your business compares to competitors in terms of the mix of online traffic. You can use the Google Analytics benchmarking feature for companies of a similar size and sector and that can be useful for arguing the case for reallocation of acquisition budgets, for example, more investment in organic or paid search. It's rare for data to be published which compares your digital media mix, i.e. the relative importance of different traffic sources driving visitors to websites. So, I thought it would be interesting to share this data from US Ecommerce sites. Location: US Retail Date: Published Autumn 2017 Sample: Top 250 US retailers (so representative of common consumer behaviour) Source: Adobe Retail Industry report This retail visitor acquisition data shows that organic search is in the number…

The building blocks of an effective brand strategy

Since the turn of the millennium, more than 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies have suffered or failed due to digital disruption. With so many social media sites competing at nearly every turn, building a successful brand through digital marketing can be quite a challenge. Add ever-evolving platforms, like artificial intelligence, to the mix, and the challenge becomes exponentially more complicated. Technology and platforms that cater to users around the clock create a need for new business models that enable marketing to adapt appropriately. For example, apps like Instagram and Snapchat are highly reactive, meaning the old practices of curating and scheduling social media posts aren’t always viable. In many ways, successful marketing means successful storytelling. The goal is to expand the story to reach customers where they are. Therefore, the art of telling it will need to evolve if your brand is to withstand the test…