Retailing CMOs: 3 Recommendations to Better Incorporate Social Media Into Your Marketing Strategy

Social media has become the place for consumers to find and connect with brands on a personal level. A majority of consumers incorporate some form of social media in their shopping process and a fast growing portion of them are purchasing through social platforms. As a senior marketing leader and social shopper, understanding the trends and bettering my social strategy is critical for continued revenue growth. 

The article, Do Today’s Retailers Still Embrace the ‘Change Markers’ in a Company?, gives perspective on the advancement of social media in the consumer sales process and its role in forming genuine connections with your customer base. Steven Sumner provides compelling statistics to reenforce the growing social shopping trend and the need for marketers to consider social as a key element in their strategy. CMO's can't afford to ignore the importance of social media today and its impact on the shopping process.

                                     Image from Convert With Content. 

Jan Skrabalek's, 4 Impressive Benefits of Social Selling, is an actionable followup to Sumner's article. She defines social selling, sales interactions with customers via social media, and gives four key benefits of continuing to evolve your social media strategy. Consumer engagement through social content is key to gaining social relationships, loyalty, insights and referrals. 

Based on my analysis of these two articles and my experiences at Northwestern Medill IMC I've developed 3 recommendations that you should consider next time you are building your marketing strategy. 

• Elevate Social Presence – Build a social strategy that genuinely engages and educates your audience. 

•  Social Influences Shopping– Social media influences the shopping process when content adds value for your followers.

• Recommendations Rule– Engage followers by asking for feedback and get them talking about you.

Consider bettering your social strategy with these three recommendations to increase engagement and social consideration with your brand’s followers. 

Robyn Petit
I am senior marketing leader in the consumer technology industry pursuing a master's degree at Northwestern University. I have passion for data driven marketing and finding better ways to engage and resonate with consumers. Connect with me on Linkedin and Twitter.

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Makeup Artists: 3 changes that will drive significant traffic to your YouTube Channel

Among all the influencers that are trending on social platform, a group of them has been getting most attention since the beginning. They are the makeup artists that share their routines or favorite products to the public. Since there are no professional classes for applying makeup, a lot of people rely on these videos to learn more about beauty and makeup and I'm of them. I found these two videos that are very helpful and, as a a graduate student studying Integrated Marketing Communications in Medill, Northwestern University, I would also like to share my take on them.

Wesley Benjamin Carter often shared amazing makeup style on his YouTube Channel. He is genuinely an artist. In this video, Natural Male Makeup Tutorial, he shared a more natural and everyday style. He talked a multiple of his favorite products and his routine in applying them. The products he talked about are all quite affordable and I believe it's very useful for any guy trying to learn how to apply an everyday style make up.

Image Source:  https://www.cakapcakap.com/mengulik-tentang-serba-serbi-influencer/

The second video is by EMAN. In this video, The Best Makeup for Work / School/ Everyday, she introduced her make up routine that is suitable for work or school. She focused on the needs of this group of people, that is they need their makeup to stay on for an entire day. As this video was published in the beginning of fall, she also introduced colors that are suitable for fall weather and outfits. 

I learned a lot just from watching these to video. But as an audience and a student in marketing, I believe there are improvements that can be made which will further increase the traffic to their channels.

• What is it?: List the product's name in the video instead only in the intro area will make video easier to follow.
• What about me?: Everyone has different skin situations, so keep in mind to make differentiate tips for different group of audiences. 
• Hong long will it take?: The audience would be interested to know how long the routine will actually take (minus the introduction process), so maybe include the time consumed somewhere. 

Makeup tutorial video is a highly competitive market. Thus, if you are looking to become a makeup artist YouTuber, make sure you keep these three points in mind.

Richard is currently studying in the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Medill, Northwestern University. He has great passion in branding and hope to make a career in marketing or advertising industry. Outside of school, Richard has great interest in photography. He believes taking photos is a way of sharing how he sees the world. He is also very fond of the fashion industry. He always stay on trend by following the latest styles and newly released collections. Learn more about him on his LinkedIn and Instagram.

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Digital Marketers: 3 recommendations to maximize the impact of your influencer marketing program

The rise of social media has made Influencer Marketing a must-learn lesson for all digital marketers. With a special form of collaboration between business and influential individuals, Influencer Marketing has become a popular trend that brings in millions of dollars and prospect customers for brands --- and the trend is continuously on the rise. As a future brand marketer and a social media addict myself, I found this topic fascinating. I will share two articles that came to my interest in this topic recently, and my own take on what contributes to building a successful influencer marketing program.

The first article, written by Neal Schaffer on his professional blog website, gives his own expert viewpoints on the How to Strategically Build an InfluencerMarketing Program. Everyone can be an influencer as long as they are widely recognized, connected, and trusted by a community. Digital influencers and their earned trustworthiness among the audience are powerful resources to brand marketers. According to Neal, there are six critical steps he mentioned to build a well-functioning Influencer Marketing program, covering the whole roadmap of researching, creating, understanding, engaging, amplifying, and finally measuring. Especially, engagement has become a key driver to program success.

Image Source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/influencer-content-campaign-cheat-sheet/

While Neal reveals the full roadmap, Elise Dopson gives the best advice on Databox in terms of how to effectively measure and track Influencer Marketing campaigns. As data suggests, 93.4% business perceive Influencer Marketing as extremely or at least somewhat effective. Among The 10 Most Important Influencer Marketing KPIs she suggested, there is no single KPI can define the performance or quality of an Influencer Marketing campaign alone, thus the importance for marketers to keep an eye on all of these important metrics, ranging from as tangible as ROI or CPC, all the way to audience engagement or loyalty.

Combing these two perspectives and my own experience as an Integrated Marketing Communications graduate student, I have developed 3 recommendations for digital marketers to maximize the influence of their influencers:

• Understand the Community – Research until sufficiently and deeply understand the community your major customers are at before picking the right influencer and deciding the right influencer marketing strategy.

• Focus on Engagement – Drive deeper engagement to arouse actual action and drive conversion, rather than merely focusing on getting a wider reach.

• Maximize the Social – Use multiple social channels to create an omni-channel influencer marketing strategy, and amplify your brand messages through paid social media if necessary.

Keep these recommendations in mind before you decide on a specific influencer or influencer strategy, and get maximum 'influence' towards your brand!

Erin GUO is an Integrated Marketing Communications master student in the Northwestern University. With great passion and relevant skills for digital marketing and creative strategy, she plans to pursue a brand marketer career path after graduation in December, 2019. Feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn or Twitter.