Digital Marketing Managers: 3 Ideas to Increase Revenue with Social Media Advertising

As a Digital Marketing Manager reaching your high value customers is becoming more difficult in the disrupted marketplace. Likewise, thanks to digital and new media, audiences and channels are more fragmented than ever before. As a graduate student in the Northwestern University Medill’s IMC program, I have been researching social media advertising and found two articles that will help you understand and use social media in a strategic way.

In the article, “Social Media Advertising: The Complete Guide”, Christina Newberry discusses how online and digital media advertising are growing, especially social media advertising. The most used platform is Facebook covering 35.4% of the total display advertising in the United States. Companies are switching their advertising spending from traditional media to digital at a fast pace. Therefore, Christina Newberry decided to share some tools and recommendations to easily create ads in six of the most used social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. However, it is important to choose which platform is ideal for your organization and create unique content strategies that will engage your target market.  

-Christina Newberry @ckjnewberry, Hootsuite Blog

-https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-advertising/

Source: www.zeemo.com.au

Even though social media advertising has proven effective to reach a company’s target market, many consumers find targeted ads to be annoying and disagreeable. That is why ad blockers have become increasingly popular and this represents a problem for marketing communications. That is why Kevin Jennison enumerates in “Ad Targeting is failing users”, some recommendations that companies can implement to deliver a better targeted ad experience for consumers. His three recommended actions are to let consumers decide which ads they want to see, target users based on their actual context, or simply wait for advertising technology to improve with the hope that new algorithms will resolve this problem.

-Kevin Jennison @JennisonKevin, Ad Exchanger

-https://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/ad-targeting-failing-users/

Based on my review of these two articles and relevant studies I have done in Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communication program at Northwestern University, I have developed three ideas you should consider when planning social media advertising strategies.

·      Symbiosis increases results-

Traditional media advertising is not dead; investing in it can help support your company’s social media advertising strategies.

·      Divergence engages consumers-

Creating unexpected, “outside the box” social media strategies will make you successful and attractive in a world full of options where customer loyalty is slowly disappearing.

·      Embrace change fast-

Customers adapt to changes in technology and social media platforms faster than marketers and companies; you must react quickly, but accurately to stay relevant with your target market.

If you take into consideration the three ideas mentioned before, you will be one step closer to successfully plan social media advertising strategies for your company that stay in your target market’s minds.

About the Author:

My name is Alexandra González. I am a graduate student in Medill’s IMC program at Northwestern University with an expected graduation date of December 2017. I am looking to increase my knowledge in Digital Marketing and Brand Strategy. I have previous experience in communications and digital film production. Contact me at Twitter @asg1616 or Linkedin.

Travel Marketers: 3 Ways To Drive Engagement For Tourism Brands Through Pinterest

As a travel brand marketer, one thing you need to remember is that travelers rely increasingly on visuals when planning for a trip, therefore travel brands must leverage underused visual platforms like Pinterest to gain new opportunities to engage with customers. As a graduate student in Northwestern University's Integrated Marketing Communications Program with a passion in the travel industry, my research have presented two articles on why and how travel brands should continue exploring new, innovative and strategic ways to use this specific channel. 

The first article, One View On The Top Trends in Travel Advertising by Nick Vivion highlights patterns in social media marketing for travel brands through research done on travel advertisers regarding which social media platforms are found to be most effective. The main takeaway is that people are drawn to images and video content, and a large part of travel planning is dedicated to visual research. However, there is a lack of willingness on experimenting with visual social media platforms like Pinterest. Only 28% of travel advertisers plan to experiment with Pinterest this year, despite the high level of user and engagement growth and its visual interface that lends itself for travel marketing to millenials. 

In her article Can Tourism and DMO’s Marketing Strategies Leverage Pinterest’s New Features,  Lydia Boyce furthered this notion of using Pinterest for travel marketing by discussing the importance of using visuals smartly. The new Pinterest feature, Rich pins, allow businesses to categorize their pins and send targeted messages to potential customers. Features like place pins let users identify places they would like to visit, or have visited before, leaving more information for people to plan their trips and to recommend/share to social media friends. The product pin allows brands to give product details such as price and where to buy the product, which can be utilized to sell hotel or event packages that would be pinned to the user’s Pinterest board, ready to be revisited once they have booked the ticket. It is important to be innovative in the way we reach the Pinterest community.

Based on these two articles and my graduate studies at Medill IMC, here are three action items I recommend for optimal engagement on Pinterest.

• Engage with Influencers: Gain credibility and reach by working together with Pinterest influencers and travel bloggers, collaborating your Pinterest board content together.

• Engage with Customer Pins: Ask customers to contribute to your Pinterest board by posting photos from their travel, or posting pictures of where they want to travel. This gives you a better idea of what customers are looking for in terms of content and travel packages.

• Engage with Rich Pins: Integrate rich pins feature to the overall story of your board, making sure you are giving customers the information they need for increased conversion potential.

It is important to understand that travel marketers should not just use Pinterest for the sake of adding another social media channel. The key is to engage users on that visual platform by thinking of creative and innovative ways to foster engagement that can ultimately lead to improved online conversions. 

Raissa Smarasista is a M.S. candidate in Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, specializing in branding and strategic communications and graduating in December 2015. Her passion in the travel industry motivates her goal to help tourism brands engage with customers in a more meaningful way. 

Contact via Twitter @smarasista or LinkedIn. 

Pinteresting Changes Will Affect Your Social Marketing Strategies

As a brand manager, it is important for you to evaluate newer media platforms like Pinterest and determine their role in your social marketing strategies. As a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC program, I have been studying social marketing and strategy, and found a few articles you will find interesting and informative. Recently, Pinterest launched a redesigned platform containing multiple changes to the much-loved pinsperational-sharing site. Although most Marketers are rejoicing at the ability to analyze and track their user analytics, there are some other changes that will change the way you’re socially marketing your brand. Here’s a quick rundown of what changed according to Stephanie Buck at Mashable.com:

• #Sorry: For all those marketers who formerly used twitter-verbiage to track and group content, you will no longer be able to search by hashtags.
• No more homepage comments: Additionally, you won’t be able to link directly to your brands website in the comments sections on other pages.
• Cross-Promotions: No more "liking" boards on Facebook or Tweeting at the same time that you pin.

via Empower.com

Pinterest, the “magnet for hip urbanites searching for the hottest wedding owns and apartment décor” according to Techcrunch attracts 15% of online adults. So how do you leverage these changes on this visual marketing dream to your brand’s benefit?

Although the cross promotional possibilities will be missed, guaranteed you’re not going to miss taking that extra step to go back to hashtags all of your keywords. From my review of these Pinterest changes and my work at Northwestern, here are three action items I recommend you consider, 

• Instead of blasting out generic content across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, use this opportunity to segment your customers by their social networking habits, likes and wants, and then act accordingly.  Pinterest took away cross-promotion but gave you analytics. So use them!  
• Disappointed about not being able to link directly to your brand? Quit being lazy: Hyperlinking to your brand’s content is not only tacky it also looks like spam. According to Pew Research, Pinterest users are typically well-educated digital natives and appreciate creative and compelling marketing.  
• The hashtag searching option isn’t the worst change to cope with. Although you’ll have to make slight changes to the way you group your content. Nothing here is catastrophic. Get some organizational guidelines in place and you're good to go. 

Pinterest has given marketers the greatest gift of all in their analytics capabilities. The lesson here is that Pinterest is no longer a segway to other mediums, but a place for your brand to live and breathe. Focus on creating content that is compelling, visually appealing and what your customer is interested in seeing, and watch your brand grow. 

Lindsey Duda is a student in Medill's IMC Graduate program at Northwestern University. She is interested in Brand Management, Consumer Insight, Strategy, and all things Gourmet. She can be found on Twitter @mld1983. 

Pinterest's New Business Pages Befriend Brands

Boards, pins, likes, repins—what does all of this Pinterest jargon have to do with building your client's brand? As a chief brand strategist, you must learn this social media startup's lingo. Pinners are your brand's new evangelists, driving more traffic to your website, stimulating engagement through comments, pins and repins and influencing trends. With Pinterest's launch of business pages on November 13, brands with an aspirational, visual content focus that want to speak to a female audience now have another way to engage consumers. As a Medill IMC graduate student at Northwestern University, I have experience crafting social media best practices for brands and as an avid pinner who follows her favorite brands on Pinterest, I have firsthand experience with the platform.

Image source: Curalate Insights

With a 56% increase in unique visitors year over year (TechCrunch.com) and with 11.7 million members as of May 2012 (MediaBistro.com), Pinterest is becoming increasingly influential. Once considered a mere virtual scrapbooking pastime for housewives, today Pinterest is an optimal platform for brands to engage with consumers. An Advertising Age article published earlier this month underscores the importance of brands establishing an identity on Pinterest, especially given the launch of business pages. Brands that were early adopters of Pinterest have already realized the strong correlation between browsing pins on Pinterest and subsequent online purchases. For example, early adopter Real Simple (the magazine with the most followers on Pinterest—over 100,000), regularly experiences surges in referral traffic to its website and bumps in subscription rates because of the popularity of its Pinterest boards. Its "New Uses for Old Things" board, which illustrates how ordinary household items can be used in novel ways, has over 166,000 followers. One of the board’s most popular pins, a Heinz ketchup bottle repurposed as a pancake batter pourer, generated 390,000 impressions and 4,260 repins. With the advent of Pinterest's business pages and its introduction of two widgets that allow brands to embed pins and boards on third-party sites, brands' potential for reaching consumers across platforms through sharing is amplified.

Allrecipes, the world's largest digital food brand, has experienced the power of pinners to evangelize content and to grow its online food community. A recently published Pinterest case study about Allrecipes demonstrates how Pinterest, when used by brands alongside other channels, including the brand's website and email marketing, creates a seamless experience across touch points and deeper engagement with the brand community. By adding "Pin It" buttons to its website, Allrecipes experienced more sharing of its content and extended the reach of its brand. For instance, Allrecipes redesigned its website during last year's holiday season to include the "Pin It" button above the fold and alongside videos and photos of food, making it easier for people to share content. The results were unprecedented: within three months, more than 50,000 recipes were pinned to its boards, creating 139 million Pinterest impressions and increasing clicks on Allrecipes' Pinterest content by more than 900%. Featuring strong Pinterest calls to action in its email marketing, including "Give it a Re-Pin," to its 6 million subscribers generated a fourfold increase in clicks to Allrecipes' website from Pinterest and a threefold increase in likes and repins. Further, Allrecipes identified key social media influencers—the Allrecipes Allstars—to create and share content on Pinterest, thus growing the passion community organically.

As a chief brand strategist, here are three ways you can advise your agency clients to best leverage their business pages on Pinterest:

1.  Create inspiring content. See Pinterest's platform as a way to further engage your brand's intended audience through captivating visuals and through presenting a specific topic your followers care about. For example, the holidays are a perfect time for retailers to create boards about seasonal trends and gift ideas. Follow Nordstrom’s Pinterest lead in terms of seasonal fashion trends with sales and aspirational visuals.

2. Share your brand’s core values. Express what the brand stands for through boards and pins. That is, what does the business care about? Whole Foods exemplifies communicating its mission of sustainability through its boards on DIY (Do-It-Yourself) projects and volunteering efforts.

3. Build a community. Use Pinterest to get feedback from pins and generate consumer insights. Listen to customers to learn what they want from the brand and keep their recommendations in mind when planning future products and services. Utilize Pinterest to identify brand evangelists who will be inspired by your content and who will share it accordingly, thereby strengthening ties to the community and helping to expand it. Brands such as Z Gallerie host “pinning parties” for pinners to collaborate on boards, creating opportunities for followers to create their own content and to further engage with the brand.

With the introduction of business pages, Pinterest is laying the foundation for an increasingly brand-friendly platform. Social media industry analysts believe that this launch foreshadows the release of Pinterest tools with greater data and insight-generating capabilities for businesses. Pinterest is moving away from a purely editorial model to a more commercial one that brands should embrace to extend reach and drive engagement. Brands, welcome to the new social media trifecta of tweets, likes and pins.

Maegan C. Paniewski is an IMC graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications where she is pursuing a concentration in Brand and Advertising Strategy. She is an experienced creative director and photographer and enjoys running and practicing yoga. Connect with her on Twitter @mlotusdesign and LinkedIn.

Learn To Target...Like CPG Does

As a graduate student in the Nortwestern Medill IMC program, I have been studying best target applications by social marketers. In the past decade, the lack of face-to-face interaction in the store had been a challenge for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) folks. But things started to change with the expansion of technology and tools. In the face of intensifying competition, digital channels will be critical in keeping your brands relevant to the consumer. To be specific, the CPG industry has been hit hard by the economy in recent years, and as a result, private labels are gaining more popularity. There is no better time than this for brands to start embracing social media as a form of trusted, earned media.

It is important to understand your competitors’ strategies (obviously leaning towards social and interactive now) in order to stay ahead of the pack. A research conducted by dunnhumby reveals that shoppers who already had a history of brand purchase are more effective in social media marketing. CPG firms would need to do more to take advantage of retail data by looking for shoppers with high frequency of purchase in their brands and locate them on social media platforms. Building authentic voices will help influence other consumers and eventually drive sales, creating a strong foundation for a profitable growth of the company.

The social marketing program will be heavily reliant on shopper marketing data. In addition to the frequency of purchase (most likely an indication of loyalty), CPG firms will need to target demographics profile while also  considering their customers’ social influence scores (e.g. Klout) in order to find the right advocates for the brand. My recommendations include:

1) Observe what people think about your product – finding what customers have been sharing online e.g. uploading product picture on Facebook wall, or writing reviews on the latest items they purchased on Amazon. This way, CPG marketers can monitor real-time user experiences and obtain feedbacks promptly. There is also a possibility of improving product design by finding what they might have missed out during product testing via observing discussions around the brand.

2) Improve in-store experience – letting some of the more socially-engaged customers do their job, for example, customers sharing experiences via their smartphones while also being able to research similar offerings online, or scanning the QR codes to deepen their purchase experience right in the aisle. 

3) Share what your customers care – posting the latest trends on social media. We can do extra research and analysis to find out what the consumers really want to stay ahead of the competition by, for example, observing the meals people prepared and shared on Pinterest to learn what they are looking for in the grocery stores in terms of convenience and creativity.

4) Activate the dialogue – creating a space where customers who have a history of purchases can tell their personal stories and share their expertise. We already know that word-of-mouth and personal recommendations are one of the biggest drivers to purchase in the CPG category.

Yet, the biggest mistake is to let the advocates run the program themselves. We need to provide guidelines and activities to keep these consumers engaged and motivated, hence the need to strike the right balance between over-monitoring and letting the social marketing program run itself.

Arisa Kulpiyavaja is a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC program. She is a marketer with a long passion in the consumer packaged goods industry, specializing in branding and marketing analytics. You can reach Arisa on http://www.linkedin.com/in/arisakulpiyavaja or follow her @arisaimc.

5 Tips to Enhance Your Social Media Presence

After analyzing the presence of social media in more than 50 cooperate and non-profit organizations for my job at Northwestern Alumni Office, I feel a strong impulse to share my learning and give some advice. I know most people, no matter how much they are into the social media business, would not like to read almost each single post from 50 Facebook pages. My wild guess is…if you are not the person who writes every Facebook post or Twitter tweet of your company, you probably have never read all of these posts of your own business. OK. You can’t wait, can you? Here you go:

Post beautiful pictures about your products, animals who need to be adopted or your campus! Your posts are for humans, and humans are visual animals! (Don’t ask why Pinterest is getting popular anymore…) If you want your followers to know that your company has a new CSR initiative of helping children in the inner cities, please don’t post the first paragraph of your press release on your social media pages! Give your readers a picture of a smiling kid with an introduction of less than 140 characters (The Twitter rule applies to every social media platform). Trust me, the child’s smile would work much better than a bunch of rhetorical words.

Be personal. Again, Facebook is not somewhere to release your press release. It’s true that you represent an organization; it is also true that social media began with interpersonal communication. If you, as an organization, want to leverage social media magnetism, follow the rule and talk like a PERSON. If you are a fashion brand, “talk” like a young lady who tries to make herself beautiful everyday. If you are a college, “talk” about what college students care about: finals, commencement, or a new coffee shop where they would like to spend their afternoons.You’d better never talk like you are “offering” something great and your followers should pay for it with both money and gratitude. It’s you who should show gratitude for all the attention and followers you get. So, make your audience’s lives happier,prettier and easier with your posts.

Be consistent over your different social media platforms. I’ve seen organizations act like two totally different people on Facebook and Twitter: one is charming and intelligent, the other one is like a loser who has lost all  interest in life. Brands should always act like a woman in love, who tries to show the best side of her to her crush. So dress up for every occasion because you never know when your customers will be viewing your page. Don’t go out, or open your account on a new social media platform, if you are not ready to show your best side.

No more than 10 posts or tweets a day. Even if you are an attractive and sexy 20 something, do not walk around your secret crush’s window more than 10 times a day. It will lead to beauty fatigue and it only takes his one click on “unlike” or “unfollow”, and you are gone forever.  Less than 5 Facebook posts and 10 tweets is a good limit. After all, you don’t have so much information to share, do you? Too many posts or tweets are as annoying as spam emails.

Be a listener. There is a lot of advice telling you how to “talk” on social media platforms, but not how to “listen”.  If you go to some top brands’ Facebook or Twitter pages, you will find that they spent a lot of time answering questions or replying to posts from their followers. In a word, they listen. There was a famous case about how Chipotle avoided a PR disaster by quickly responding to a tweet about its failure to inform consumers about some of its ingredients. Don’t just re-tweet or “like” posts that mention you, please. When your followers bother to type your name in their posts, they don’t expect you to make them “famous” by retweeting their post; they did that to start a conversation with you, and you should feel grateful for their interest and efforts. If you are popular, like Starbucks, it may take you a long time to reply to every mention. So missing one or two may not matter too much for you. But it matters to that particular customer. 

     Some of my advice may not seem new to you; but this insight is generated from comprehensive research. As a Master’s student, who concentrates on Internet Marketing and Market Research, conclusion from data analysis is vital for me. I cannot accept people who just walk into the conference room and exclaim, “You know what? I am gonna trust my gut to initiate a new social media strategy and spend the 100,000 dollars!” Thanks to MedillIMC, who did a good job shape me from  a “free spirited” person to a data-driven, consumer centered marketing professional.

Katie Li is a current graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC marketing program, with 5 year work experience for Microsoft and Ogilvy in China. Katie decided to move to the U.S., when the death of her lifetime icon Michael Jackson revived her long-time dream of living in the U.S. Katie aims to find a job in the Internet Marketing and Global Marketing industries after graduation. She shares her learning, interest and passion towards her profession and life through @iamkatieli on Twitter and http://www.linkedin.com/in/katiewenli on LinkedIn. 

Fashion, Bow Down to Your Social Media Savior: 3 Ways to Pique Brand Interest with Pinterest

By Martha Dominique Sojka

Any designer worthy of an atelier on Avenue Montaigne will tell you that fashion is meant to be an experience. And ideally, it’s an experience that makes consumers feel so trendy, sophisticated, and confident that they’re compelled to come back, time and time again. It’s all about creating the experience; it’s all about delivering on that lifestyle.

Admittedly, it’s hard to replicate those experiences and lifestyles online, and so it’s no surprise that the fashion industry has been slow to adapt social media into its marketing strategies. Traditional social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook transform the vivid, visually-laden fashion landscape into little more than words and tiny, static banner ads. Where’s the imagery, where’s the color? Where’s the experience?

How can fashion reap the benefits of social media, when the existing platforms take the very heart and soul out of it?

Fashion, your social media savior has arrived. Say hello to Pinterest.

Tailored to the Industry
 What makes Pinterest so lucrative for fashion? Its very nature plays to two key strengths of the industry: it’s visual and it’s social. In fashion, a picture can tell the whole story. And Pinterest affords fashion brands the ability to propel their stories in a way that is engaging, personal, and far-reaching.

It boils down to one thing: Pinterest is a huge referrer of web traffic. So huge, in fact, that it has recently become the top traffic driver for retailers, beating out Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Because a link is always attached to a pinned image, users are clicking on these links and visiting company websites and blogs. And this translates into increased engagement, visibility, and sales.
                                                                                             
As Johanna Murphy, VP/Ecommerce for Kate Spade puts it, “Pinterest is kind of the fuel for the overall fire to the brand that will ultimately drive sales”.

The Wall Street Journal seems to agree. The publisher’s recent foray into Pinterest centered on creating a New York Fashion Week pin board as a means to increase engagement with existing customers as well as potential new ones, and "[reach] readers in a different environment and bring them back to [the] site”. Read: an increased and engaging web presence can go a long way. 

Time (and Presence) is of the Essence                                                                                Don’t delay with getting your brand on Pinterest. The fashion brands that will reap the greatest benefits are those that will establish their presence the quickest. As with any social media tool, if brands are not there when the site is first gaining traction then any future endeavor ends up feeling like a corporate intrusion into a personal space. To be authentic and influential, brands need to find a role for themselves on Pinterest early on in the game. 

Disclaimer: This does not mean setting up a brand pin board, slapping on your products, and waiting for the traffic to pour in. Sure, you’ll get some activity; however, getting that coveted customer engagement and influential WOM takes more than simply replicating your spring catalog and calling it a day.

Below are three ways to up the ante on your Pinterest presence and use the social media tool to skyrocket consumer engagement levels and website traffic:

1. Concentrate on the lifestyle, not the product: Says Murphy of her Pinterest philosophy, “[Pinterest communicates] our brand: who we are, what we believe in…if you go there and start just pinning your own stuff, without having the mood, the spirit of the community, you’ll turn people off”. Remember this—you’re not blatantly advertising products, you’re selling a lifestyle. Your Pinterest page should put your brand’s lifestyle on display in a way that’s beautiful, organized, and social. In addition to products, pin to music, moods, and thoughts that inspire you and your target audience. Check out ban.do, Lilly Pulitzer, and Barney’s New York—they’re doing it right. 

2. Get creative with contests: Contests are great ways to motivate and engage your customers and followers. Have customers curate boards featuring your products on their personal accounts, or launch a contest board on your own account and ask customers to pin specific types of items. Take inspiration from Ann Taylor’s Heart Fashion and Guess’ Color Me Inspired contests and get creative with themes. Offer prizes to the individual that creates the best board and/or the person whose pin receives the most action (this will encourage them to spread the word about their own pin, giving the contest greater reach).

3. Offer special ‘Members Only’ deals to spur loyalty: Have a "Pinterest Exclusive" board featuring hand picked products from your website that will be discounted at checkout using a special code (i.e. “PinterestDeal”). Put the price in the pin description box to generate the price ribbon. This will garner attention to that specific board and allow users to quickly recognize the products as featured and/or on sale.

So, is your brand ready to start pinning? It better be. Pinterest is the new trend on the block, and as we all know, in fashion it really doesn’t pay to ignore the next big thing.

  
Martha Sojka is a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill IMC marketing program specializing in branding, analytics, and digital marketing. Her focus is on the fashion, beauty, and lifestyle industries. She is set to graduate in December 2012. Martha can be reached on twitter using the handle @MarthaDomiSojka