Tag Archive for: Social Media Marketing

Generation Z Marketing Strategies

Gen Z now makes up 26% of the population and comprises 48% of the total media audience. Their spending power is estimated to be between $29 and $143 billion, without taking into account their influence on household spending. They are a formidable consumer demographic, but the generation gap leaves some marketers struggling to successfully reach them. 

It is true that conventional digital marketing strategies rarely work and there has yet to be a complete consensus of which methods are most effective. But experts are starting to come together to compile their best recommendations and guidelines for successfully marketing to Generation Z. 

 

Highlight Social Awareness 

This generation has a heightened awareness of issues plaguing our society and the rest of the world. They know that what’s occurring now has the ability to strongly impact their futures. Which is why if they discover that a company is engaging in objectionable practices, they will avoid doing business with them at all costs, while making it widely known. Conversely, brands that are positively contributing to society or the environment have the opportunity to be strongly supported by Gen Z. As individuals they have varying beliefs, but they share a number of ideals such as inclusivity, multiculturalism, social justice, environmental awareness, and anti-capitalism.

A great example of a company that has done this is TOMS Shoes. For every pair of shoes purchased, they donate another pair of shoes to a child in need. These are the kinds of campaigns and practices that this generation looks for before fully getting behind a brand. 

 

Focus on Mobile Platforms 

75% of Generation Z selected a mobile phone or smartphone as the device they use most. This means strategies aimed at desktop users are no longer effective, especially when it comes to eCommerce web designs. A study performed by Google revealed that Gen Z mostly uses smartphones to make online purchases, and highly prefer online shopping in general. This means all web designs must be mobile-friendly, the checkout process needs to be simple, and content must be created with mobile devices in mind. Voice search is something else to keep in mind, as its use is on the rise with Gen Z. So it’s important to produce website content which conforms to patterns from everyday speech.

 

Be Personal and Relatable 

Generation Z was raised on the internet, they’ve seen everything there is to see. Which means using traditional sales ad and blatant customer manipulation attempts will fail miserably. Aggressive ad copy should be replaced with relatable and relaxed language. They will only pay attention to ads that are directly related to personal needs and desires. They expect retailers to offer a more personalized experience based on the customer’s shopping habits and preferences. This can be accomplished by creating targeted landing pages, publishing content aimed at the right buyer personas, and giving personal replies to messages on social media.

 

Use Each Social Media Platform Differently 

Social media has been a part of Generation Z’s entire lives. They’re highly aware of what each platform is best for and use each reflectively. Which means you can’t advertise to them in the same way on every platform. Response Media’s study reveals that Gen Z: 

  • Showcase their aspirational selves on Instagram
  • Share real-life moments on Snapchat
  • Get the news on Twitter
  • Glean information from Facebook

Instagram is also most used for brand discovery, with 45% of teens using it to find new products. And YouTube is used most for shopping recommendations, followed by Instagram, then Facebook. These are all things that should be closely kept in mind when conducting social media campaigns, sharing content, etc. 

 

Create Quick, Effective, and Visual Content 

It’s a common misconception that Gen Z has an outrageously short attention span, 8 seconds to be exact. In reality, they actually possess a sophisticated filter that comes from growing up surrounded by a deluge of information. So yes, you have very little time to convince them that your content is worth their time, but if it is, they can focus (or binge) long enough to complete in-depth research on any topic. 

Additionally, 71 percent of 13 to 17 year olds spend more than three hours a day watching online videos. But that doesn’t mean you can throw any video advertisement in front of them and they’ll pay attention. On average, Generation Z clicks “Skip” on skippable video ads after only 9.5 seconds. It all stems back to growing up in an information overload environment. This means you need to start focusing on only giving them the most necessary and important material. 

 

Final Thoughts 

When it comes to marketing to Generation Z, the most important thing is to forget all the misconceptions. They are not a generation of unintelligent, short attention spanned, detached kids that are dooming digital marketing for the rest of the generations. Every new generation of consumers means shifting marketing tactics and best practices in order to continue driving revenue and growing as a brand. When you execute your digital marketing strategy correctly, Gen Z can bring in major revenue, their own as well as revenue from their parents. They care about social responsibility, authenticity, and personable customer experiences. Brands have the opportunity to start engaging with socially active, highly motivated young people. They want to connect with companies, lead a following, or even become loyal brand ambassadors. Generation Z presents a new challenge that may just not seem worth it to some, but they offer the opportunity for huge payoffs with a little bit of work and understanding. 

 

More From Onimod Global

To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here!

 

 

LinkedIn Adds New Features to Campaign Manager

LinkedIn announced late last week that it will be adding three new features to their advertising platform. These features include brand awareness campaigns, website conversion tracking capabilities, and job applications. This new version will also have an optimized click pricing option. 

LinkedIn has recently been putting a lot of emphasis on improving the platform’s advertising capabilities and proving the product should be considered more in the paid social space. From updating ad targeting capabilities to new integrations, such as moat analytics integration for video marketing. The newest update is focusing on campaign objectives, ensuring it’s easier to achieve the right results that better align with them. The updated Campaign Manager has been in public beta since October, but LikedIn reports that it’s working, as customer satisfaction has lifted 67%. 

The New Campaign Objectives

Brand Awareness: Introduced as the first top of funnel ad objective to the Campaign Manager, designed to help advertisers increase “share-of-voice” on the platform rather than generating traffic. These campaigns are charged by impressions (CPM or cost per thousand), rather than clicks. 

Website Conversion Capabilities: Because “conversion” has such a broad range of meanings, LinkedIn has tightened the integration of its conversion tracking tool. Campaigns can now be created that are optimized for specific actions, such as purchases, downloads, or registrations. 

Job Applications: LinkedIn is a large recruiting tool for companies looking for new applicants. Now any LinkedIn Talent Solutions customer can create ads using Campaign Manager, driving applications to LinkedIn or back to the company website. 

Optimized Click Pricing 

Going along with the new Campaign Manager, LinkedIn has optimized their click pricing to better align with advertisers’ objectives as well. Meaning that you only pay for what’s valuable to you. For example, if website visits are selected as the campaign objective, the only clicks that are charged are those that made it to the landing page. For social engagement campaigns, pricing is optimized to include all social actions such as likes, comments, shares, etc. LinkedIn has been previously known as an expensive paid advertising platform. This new payment model is supposed to better align with larger objectives, and hopefully provide better ROI for advertisers. 

Final Thoughts 

LinkedIn is starting to become a much more marketing-friendly platform and a stronger competitor in the paid social space. When it comes to digital campaigns, it can be extremely beneficial when the machine learning systems have a better understanding of your objectives. Providing more variety in campaign goals, as well as different pricing models to match each type, will help advertisers get the results they need, while avoiding paying for the actions that they don’t. 

Putting these Features to Use 

At Onimod Global we’re experts in SEM and Social Media. We handle paid advertising on Google, Bing, and across all social platforms, including LinkedIn. We’ve recently been rolling out brand new LinkedIn campaigns for a few of our clients, and have started producing a few results. We understand that LinkedIn is not an appropriate advertising platform for all brands or all campaigns. Having the correct brand positioning is essential, and with our expertise we know exactly where you and your ads need to be. 

Learn more about what we do here, or if you’re ready to become a client, contact us here.

 

Collecting and Utilizing Customer Feedback

As we live and work in an era of unprecedented global transparency and digital experience-sharing, feedback has never been more business-critical than today. Feedback, both negative and positive, is constantly being shared about companies, products, and experiences. This is referred to as the feedback economy, and as it has grown, it has become the cornerstone of company growth initiative. 

The feedback economy has changed the way customers make decisions and their expectations are at an all-time high. While gaining customer feedback as become a no-brainer for most companies, analyzing and utilizing that feedback is not so simple. 

 

The Top Ways to Gather Customer Feedback 

Live Chat 

One of the best features an eCommerce website can have is live chat. This option allows companies to get closer to their customers by being able to immediately address needs or challenges. Companies can easily identify patterns of any recurring issues, speeding up the process of finding long-term solutions for those issues. There are a number of services that introduce live chats on any website, such as Zopim. You can make the live chat proactive by making it appear on users’ screens whenever they have been a page for a specified amount of time. This increases the efficiency of the feature and the chances of it getting used.

As with all forms of feedback, the quality of company response plays the biggest role in getting real results. Having employees constantly monitoring the chat is important, ensuring all customers’ questions or concerns are addressed promptly and legitimately. To go even further, you can get feedback on the live chat session. A short survey can be sent to the user, asking whether or not their experience was helpful. This can help companies immediately identify the effectiveness of the chat and chat-support personnel. 

Form-Based Surveys 

Surveys are the most basic and common way to gain customer feedback, but there are many opportunities for error when using this method. It’s common for companies to get carried away with too many questions, trying to get as much detailed feedback as possible. QuickTapSurvey discovered that the number of questions and time spent answering questions is not a linear connection. The more questions a survey has, the less time respondents spend on each question. Meaning that the more questions a survey has, the less accurate and reliable the responses will be. There is no ideal survey length, but from what research has gathered, the shorter the better. A good strategy is to make sure that every question has a clear purpose and will fulfill end goals.

It’s also important to include open-ended questions. While multiple choice questions are quicker for customers to answer, the answer choices are based on company assumptions. Open-ended questions give the customer the opportunity to give their unique and long-tailed opinion. These types of surveys should only be sent to engaged users that will take the time to provide the feedback. 

Consistently Monitor Social Channels 

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become an invaluable resource for customer feedback. Similar to live chat, there are a variety of tools available to help companies gather conversations that take place on social media about a brand, and even monitor social presence of companies and their competitors. Social listening is a great way to get closer to customers, improve user experience, and quickly respond to comments or issues. Just as with live chat, time is crucial when it comes to handling questions, complaints, or any kind of negative feedback, as it can spread quickly. Social listening requires resources dedicated to monitoring and responding to feedback, as some companies even turn to third-parties. Feedback monitoring should go even further than just on social media, as there are a number of review-based apps and sites that are valuable as well. 

On-Site Comment/Suggestion Boards 

Suggestion boards take gathering feedback further by allowing users to not only collaborate ideas with the company, but with other users as well. Depending on the type of board used, posts can be upvoted or commented on by other users. This can help companies discover what needs or opinions are most popular among their customers. Simplicity and ease of navigation is important. Users should be able to post and comment without any difficulties. Creating categories, allowing users to view the most popular posts, and making it searchable are all ways to increase efficiency and effectiveness. To get started, invite the most engage users to leave ideas, those that know the brand best and can leave legitimate improvement suggestions. After there is a strong base board, other users can be invited to start upvoting, commenting, or leaving ideas of their own. Real results take time, as feedback isn’t accumulated immediately. 

 

Using Customer Feedback 

Product Improvement 

Being able to identify product improvement areas is one of the best things a company can get out of customer feedback. More often than not, loyal and engaged users have developed an expertise of products and their features, maybe even more than employees. No matter how hard brands try to put themselves in their customer’s shoes, users will still have a different perspective and different ideas that wouldn’t have been thought of. It can save time and resources following user advice. Not only will customers appreciate that they’re being listened to, it can set companies apart from the competition as a business that genuinely cares and implements customers’ valid ideas. 

Prevent Customer Churn 

Negative feedback shouldn’t be swept under the rug or kept silent. This is crucial to improve customer service and experience. Ignoring negative feedback has compounding effects. A customer who has taken the time to contact you about a problem is much more likely to spread that information to others, especially if they were just ignored. Failure and negative feedback is actually an opportunity to foster a stronger and long-term relationship with that customer. Understanding these customers’ problems and ensuring future satisfaction is important. Keeping a consistent two-way conversation open goes a long way, by building trust and showing you care. Responding to negative feedback increases the chances of keeping an existing customer, which is cheaper for companies in the long run, and looks better all around.

Empower Employees

Customer feedback can be used as a driver to motivate employees. If there has been consistent positive feedback about one feature in particular, share that with whoever is responsible and the team as a whole. It’s a good strategy for encouraging healthy competition among staff. Similarly if there is any consistent negative feedback about one specific feature, pass it on to those responsible. They should communicate with the dissatisfied customer directly. It can make employees feel more in charge and encourage them to take ownership of products or features. Sharing interesting feedback can help teams start deeper conversations about products and come up with new improvements and ideas. 

Identify Potential Advocates 

Consistently gathering customer feedback can help quickly identify those that are most satisfied and the most loyal. The next step is to develop those customers into valuable advocates. Get them sufficiently educated and excited about products so they can accurately share and recommend them. Advocates don’t need monetary rewards to be motivated. Give them shout-outs on social media, send them exclusive information, deals, or even hand written notes. New customers often trust other customers more than companies themselves. It’s a good sign if more than just the company is boasting about how great their products are.   

 

Final Thoughts 

Creating a product and marketing it well is only half the job. The feedback economy is growing, companies can take advantage of it by having a lasting commitment to gathering, analyzing, and sharing feedback to anyone that plays a vital role in product and business development. Customer feedback is becoming more and more essential for growth and mastering customer experience. A company that falters in listening to customer feedback is a company that will most likely falter in all other areas. 

 

More From Onimod Global

For more digital marketing tips, updates, and the latest news, check out our blog page here, or learn more about Onimod Global here.

Instagram Advertising: Is It Right For You?

Instagram has recently announced that they are going to start displaying ads in its Explore tab. The Explore section allows users to browse new content while discovering new accounts based on their interests. The platform says they will be introducing ads “slowly and thoughtfully” in the coming months. They want Explore to be the best place for people to discover something new and for businesses to connect with people who may become meaningful customers

Instagram is becoming an increasingly popular marketing platform, as it has been reported they’re experiencing more user engagement growth than its parent company, Facebook. This new update gives advertisers even greater opportunities to reach users beyond just their feeds. While the benefits to advertising on Instagram are rapidly growing, the cons are still there. So, how can you be sure that Instagram is the right platform for you? 

How Instagram Advertising Works

As most other social platforms, Instagram advertising is utilized to grow brand exposure, website traffic, generate new leads, and hopefully get leads closer to converting. As the platform is visually based, text ads are not a thing here. Marketers must use images, a set of images, or videos, which can be accompanied with text, to reach users. 

The Pros 

Ultra Specific Targeting Capabilities 

Instagram falls under Facebook, meaning marketers have access to the same demographic targeting mechanisms on both platforms. Companies can target users based on interests, location, behavior, etc. Instagram offers a variety of campaign goal options, ensuring marketers are optimizing ad spend. 

Unique Visual Ad Formating 

Instagram ads allow marketers to maximize the extent of visual content. Companies can captivate users and create brand awareness by using high quality photos or videos. These photos and videos can be displayed as traditional posts, or there is the option to show them as stories as well. Companies have also started to reach out to influencers on the platform. Influencers are users that have a large and established following, whom companies have started paying to promote their products on their account. 

Higher Engagement Rates 

Instagram is a personal, conversational, and engaging platform. Engagement rates are 10 times higher than Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 times higher than Twitter. Their formatting makes it possible for users to gain access to sales pages in just one click. Marketers can include call-to-actions to begin the checkout process, encouraging purchases straight from the app. This design eliminates the usual obstacles involved with online sales, allowing for instant gratification. 

The Cons 

Limited Audience 

While the platform offers a monthly user base of over 800 million, 90% of their users are under 35 years of age. Instagram is perfect for brands looking to engage with a younger audience, but those with an older target audience may find themselves struggling. While there are older users, very few are active. It’s also not the best platform to reach men. While they are on Instagram, it’s not as heavily as on other apps. Those brands exclusively targeting older ages or men may find it better for ROI to turn to other advertising platforms. 

Time-Intensive 

Staying fresh and relevant is crucial on a platform with large numbers of younger users. Authenticity is especially important here compared to search platforms, such as AdWords. Users begin to notice if brands are constantly regurgitating the same content just to increase posts. Brands have to be consistent with responding to comments, posting new content, and incorporating as many visual elements as possible to encourage interaction.

Required to Work Through Mobile Devices 

While you can access the platform through a web browser, abilities are extremely limited. Users are required to post through apps on mobile devices. Once the ads are initially posted they can be shared easily throughout multiple campaigns, but you must be able to access the account on a mobile device. Brands that aren’t so mobile-friendly may run into frequent obstacles. 

Conclusion: Is it right for your business? 

The biggest factor that goes into the answer to this question is target demographic. If your target audience is exclusively those 50 and up, Instagram is probably not the ideal advertising platform. That doesn’t mean you should immediately dismiss the possibility of Instagram ads. Similar to what happened to their parent company, Facebook, the number of older users will increase as the platform continues to grow. The decision is ultimately up to what you believe is right for your brand. 

At Onimod Global we are experts in SEM and social media. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interating, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do here, or contact us today here.

LinkedIn’s Newest Update Makes Advertising More Transparent

Company transparency is especially important when advertising on the internet, social spaces in particular. Social media users want to feel safe and ensured that their information isn’t going to be exploited for advertisements. LinkedIn just recently announced it has launched a new update, called Ads tab, for company pages. The intent is to bring even greater transparency to ads, increasing trust in their environment, while benefiting companies and users.

What is Ads Tab & How it Works

The Ads tab will be available on company pages, showing sponsored content ad history for the last six months. Members can view all native ads running in the LinkedIn feed through the tab, but the advertisers will not be charged for these engagements and the clicks will not impact campaign reporting.

LinkedIn said in the announcement that “the Ads tab builds on similar tools they’ve recently introduced to help members understand and control their ad experience, including new ad settings that each member can access from their LinkedIn account.”

They also added that this is just the first of many updates they have in the works to provide members with useful information about the ads shown to them on LinkedIn. The Ads tab will be implemented across their platform over the next few weeks, meaning it won’t be available to all companies immediately.

Why We Should Care

Transparency is something that benefits both companies and LinkedIn users. This extra layer adds more security to the LinkedIn platform, making it a more trusted source, attracting more users. An increase in users means the potential to gain a larger audience, and ultimately larger ad reach.

Putting it to Use

At Onimod Global we are your in-house cross-channel digital marketing experts. We offer services in SEM and Social Media. We handle paid advertising on Google, Bing, and across all social platforms, including LinkedIn. We market across multiple social platforms to create visibility for your company in places your customers are searching, interacting, and engaging. Having your brand in the correct positioning in essential, and we at Onimod Global have the expertise to know exactly where you and your ads need to be.

Learn more about what we do here, or if you’re ready to become a client, contact us here.

How to Optimize Your Dark Social Usage

Private messaging apps such as WhatsApp, direct messaging via social media, emails, etc. are all referred to as “Dark Social” by marketers because content shared through these platforms are particularly difficult to track and analyze. This is becoming an increasingly popular way for users to do their social sharing. Read more

How To Create Loyal Customers With Social Media Transparency

Customer loyalty is a priority and goal for all companies in existence. How to create those loyal customers is much easier than you may think, and it all has to do with transparency. According to the social media company, Sprout Social, 86% of surveyed U.S. consumers think it is more important than ever for businesses to be transparent.

 

Customers are much more willing to show loyalty to companies that are consistent with being clear in communication, open, and honest. For example, an 89 percent of U.S. customers are willing to give a transparent brand a second chance after a bad experience, and 85 percent are willing to stick with them through a crisis. These astonishing numbers prove that transparency is key to business success.

 

Gaining Trust and Sales From Transparency

Customer loyalty will come with your ability to communicate the message of transparency in the most effective manner. Customers that also purchase from you only on occasion poses an opportunity to convert them into being a loyal customer.

Typically, organic brands are very transparent because that information in their ingredient lists is crucial to their brand message. If you take a look at Horizon, the organic milk brand, you can locate any of their organic farms on their website as well as seeing their manufacturing processes, stories about the farmers and shipment processes. This is all given directly on their website with 100% transparency, making them an elite brand that does millions of dollars in sales each year.

 

The Role Of Social Media

In this same report, 81 percent of the group consumers say that businesses must be transparent on social media. This is more than they expect out of politicians (79 percent), friends and family (66 percent) and even themselves (71 percent). This adds a significant amount of pressure to a brand’s plate making sure they are proactive with mistakes and responding to customers at all times.

 

Here is an example of the makeup brand rising in popularity daily, Morphe, disclosing a mistake in production via Twitter to all 526,000 of their followers. It is statements like this, in addition to publicly addressing customer concerns, that consumers expect from businesses.

 

As relationships are continuously built through social media channels between brands and consumers, people want business to be more open and honest than ever, especially in public settings. Marketing teams that accept this expectation and do their best to treat transparency as a mandatory business practice are the most likely to retain customers and increase sales in doing so. Long-term, transparency is a differentiating factor that will motivate consumers to stick with your brand through a difficult times and to remain loyal over time.

 

More From Onimod Global

We would love to work with you and help you optimize your social media strategy for any event your company is hosting. To contact our experts or request a quote, please click here. We can’t wait to hear from you!

 

How To Drive Event Engagement With Social Media

Social media marketing can be a fantastic tool to use in a variety of campaigns, especially in event promotion. This tool has not only changed the ways people promote events, but it has also changed how influencers and consumers can engage with brands and events associated with them. Social media marketing strategies allow for an open conversation between a brand and the consumer, and this is one of the most crucial steps in ensuring a successful event with high engagement.

Whether your event is a corporate event, an influencer party, a festival or concert, social media marketing can be a driving factor in your success if used correctly. Here are several ways you can use social media to drive engagement before, during, and after your event.

 

Pre-Event

 

Content Strategy 

In the initial stages of event planning, you will want to have a rough outline of social media content for the months, weeks, or days leading up to your event. Your company may already have an existing content plan in place for event management, but it is always in your best interest to customize the strategy to your specific event.

Social media content should be centered around the concept of your event, and all of your posts should match the tone, whether that be serious or more creative. Anything you create should also drive consumers to a landing page for sign-ups, donations, or anything related to the promotion of your event. Be sure to include educational pieces about featured speakers, sponsors, and any topics the event will be covering.

 

Influencer Involvement 

Get your sponsors and speakers involved! Most times influencers will be excited to help you push your event on social media, especially if they are a featured speaker. Create graphics and other messages that are easy to share on all social platforms, and also create content specifically related to sponsors that they can easily share as well.

Sharing, in this case, is caring for the success of your event. Be sure that any social content you post and push to consumers is readily available to share among event attendees. Don’t under-estimate the power of social share, this will increase your visibility with little to no cost associated.

A great strategy would be to invite a sponsor or influencer to take over your Instagram account or do a Facebook Live feed. It’s a place for your own followers to get excited about the event that you’re hosting, and it also gives the fans or followers of the influencer a chance to be directed to your page for more information on what they are sharing.

 

The Day-of

 

Vlog

Especially if this is event is annual, creating excitement around the event for years to come will be based out of any content and footage you have from years past. Occasionally, this may not be allowed depending on the privacy or overall tone of the event. However, if your company allows you to do so and it makes sense in your content strategy to create footage for the upcoming years, we absolutely recommend filming as much as possible.

 

Live Stream or Social 

This is an example of a live Twitter feed wall shared by Social Media Today, which are typically big hits at any conference or event. Common tools that will help you build a live-feed for your event are: TweetBeam, Twitterfall, Twubs, and HootFeed from Hootsuite.

 

Live Updates On Your Social Networks

Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are perfect platforms for this strategy. A unique content idea you could do at a convention would be to interview guest attendees on your company Instagram or Snapchat story. Tweeting live updates from the event is also a great way to interact with any attendee using the event hashtag that you create. This will allow you to retweet easily, and Instagram also has the new feature of being able to share photos on Instagram stories with credit to the user.

 

Post-Event

 

Gratitude Via Social Platforms

The content strategy doesn’t end at the event, the really successful conventions and events will always take it one step farther. Here are where the opportunities to engage with your attendees with give you the maximum value of social media marketing. Starting with gratitude, it will always go a long way to thank speakers, sponsors, and guests via social media to ensure they know that their presence was appreciated by your company. This will in turn help you build bonds and gain lifetime customers.

 

Creating Promotion For Next Year

Now that you have all of this material and content, it is time for your social team to get to work on compiling a promotion video or more social content for next year’s event. This can include testimonials from this year’s attendees, quotes from speakers and sponsors, and any footage of your guests having a great time!

 

More From Onimod Global

We would love to work with you and help you optimize your social media strategy for any event your company is hosting. To contact our experts or request a quote, please click here. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Brand Ambassador Marketing Strategy: Is It Worth It?

The way a company chooses to market itself can play a huge role in their success or downfall. One valuable aspect of marketing is the brand; it is so important that most large companies have entire departments dedicated to branding. With the growth of social media over recent years, brand ambassadors are at the forefront of digital marketing strategies within thousands of companies.

 

What is a brand ambassador?

A fairly self explanatory term, but by definition it is someone who represents your brand, product, service or event. Typically when we think of brand ambassadors we envision celebrities who are paid to support a brand. This is still a very popular form of influencer marketing, but a brand ambassador doesn’t have to be a celebrity. It is transforming into customers and even employees taking on roles of brand ambassadors.

Lonely Brand shares an updated version of what brand ambassador marketing has transformed into in recent years:

“In 2017 brand ambassador marketing has become, at it’s core, the employment of people with specific influence or expertise to create and participate in your brand marketing strategy, usually leveraging their own popularity on social media platforms to drive value.”

 

Where to start?

A great place to start is with the employees at your company. When you have a product, service, and brand that everyone loves, employees will be more excited to promote your company organically and get involved. A Nielsen study shows that 84 percent of people trust recommendations from friends, family, colleagues over other forms of marketing.

In addition to this, employees’ social followers are seven times more likely to convert on company content than other types of leads are.

Advertisements pose a great challenge in attempting to get people to convert, where brand ambassadors have much more trust and a larger reach across social media channels.

 

Is it worth it?

Implementing brand ambassadors in your marketing strategy is becoming more crucial in marketing strategies. Social media is growing more every day, and it is imperative your employees and customers are driving the online conversations about your brand in a positive direction.

For more information regarding digital marketing expertise, trends and insights, visit the Onimod Global Website. We provide weekly news updates on the latest in the world of digital marketing. Enjoy!

 

 

Facebook Ads Now Available In Marketplace

The Facebook platform has been revolutionary in terms of advertising in recent years, and it’s about to get even better: Facebook ads in Marketplace. If you have yet to be introduced to the Facebook Marketplace, it is an excellent place to buy and sell items listed from people in your local community. You can sell essentially anything from clothes to furniture, even vehicles and real estate. Facebook has now begun allowing businesses to advertise in Marketplace for the first time since that platform was created in 2016.

These ads will appear alongside all posts from people selling in your community, and these ads are able to run anywhere else on the Facebook platform. Facebook has been running tests for these ads, and the results have shown an increase in return on ad spend.. over double the return!

 

Facebook shares some of the benefits of being able to run ads in Marketplace:

“Advertising across our platforms enables you to reach your target audience wherever they’re spending time, giving you more opportunities to connect with people likely to be interested in your offerings.”

 

Facebook also gives a couple of helpful tips with things you should know about Marketplace ads:

  • Ads in Marketplace will also show in News Feed. It isn’t currently possible for an ad to show only in Marketplace.
  • You can also track conversions using a Facebook pixel with your ad.
  • And, of course, all ads must comply with the Facebook advertising policies.

 

Currently, the only audiences that can be targeted with Facebook ads in Marketplace are the US and Canada, and over the next few weeks you will also be able to target Australia and New Zealand audiences.

 

To stay up to date with the latest digital marketing news, follow our blog with weekly posts from the experts at Onimod Global.