[Read more…] about 7 Sections for a CSR Website | Part 2 of 2
Facebook Lets Select Brands See Fans’ Likes
Enabling brands to see the other pages, brands, television shows, bands, and so on that fans of their own Facebook Pages like is just one more useful component of behavioral targeting that brands want desperately. Using tools like Wisdom, Infinigraph, and Relevvant, brands can access some of this data already, and advertisers can use tools like SocialCode and Wildfire to make better decisions to drive maximum results. However, incorporating access to all of the data directly through Facebook will surely be popular among brands and advertisers.
Of course, the reaction from Facebook members might not be as positive, since Facebook is so often attacked for revealing too much private information about users to organizations that are willing to pay for it.
Social data is valuable, and Facebook is sitting on a massive amount of highly-personalized social data. Facebook knows this. It holds the power, and only time will tell if this new feature will expand to more brands in the future. The number of ways that brands can use this data to provide relevant offers to existing customers, meaningful offers to new customers, and co-sponsored offers to both audiences are vast, and creative brands will undoubtedly launch innovative and effective marketing initiatives using this data in the near future.
Think about how your brand could use data, which shows everything your brand’s Facebook fans like. Having access to that information would enable you to launch timelier offers and better targeted offers. Most importantly, this data could make a significant difference in generating positive marketing ROI.
What do you think?
Image: Denis Dervisevic
Marketing, Investor Relations and the Pareto Principle
This comes into play in investor relations in two important ways. First, almost every investor relations department I know works with constrained budgets and limited staffs. As a result, they need to be efficient with their time and effort. (My personal theory for this is that IR usually reports to the Chief Financial Officer and not the V. P. of Marketing, but that a topic for another day.) Second, most companies today are 70% – 80% owned by institutional investors, and it is within this group that the 80/20 rule has effect. Plainly put, 80 percent of the shares in a company are usually held by the top 20 percent (or less) of the institutional shareholders. Therefore, in order to efficiently reach the maximum number of shares in your investor relations efforts, you need to give first priority to the top 20 percent of your institutional shareholders.
As an example, and in order to put some numbers on this theory, let’s say that a large company has 500 institutional shareholders and 100,000,000 shares outstanding. A typical investor relations staff cannot reach out and be in contact with 500 investors every quarter. There is usually not enough personnel and budget to get the job done. However, the 80/20 rule tells you that of the 500 institutional investors, 100 investors will control 80,000,000 of the 100,000,000 shares. One hundred investors is a much more manageable number for investor relations departments to stay in contact with.
It’s a simple marketing principle: Take care of your best customers. This is not to say that you violate disclosure practices in prioritizing your shareholders. Material, nonpublic information should always be released to all shareholders at the same time. Rather, these large investors should never be disappointed because you failed to regularly communicate with them regarding normal, nonmaterial voluntary disclosures. A good investor relations department will have standards for how often these shareholders should be “touched” and a tracking system to make sure they are being met.
Stock Prices Move with Twitter Brand Mentions
The study analyzed 26 million tweets with each mentioning at least one of 13 brands from the BrandZ Global 100 Brands list: Adidas, Clinique, Colgate, Gillette, Hugo Boss, Nike, Pampers, Pepsi, Ralph Lauren, Samsung, Intel, Tesco, and Sony. Next, the data was compared to over 8,000 television and radio mentions, 17 months of stock price data, over 18 months of Google search data, and 270,000 pieces of consumer-generated content from online reviews — all for those same 13 brands.
Key findings from the study include:
- A high volume of brand mentions on Twitter typically coincides with a high stock closing price for that brand.
- Brand buzz on Twitter typically does not fall as a brand’s stock price falls.
- Twitter users are different from users of other social channels and are more likely to reveal their personal interactions with brands.
- Mentions of brands on Twitter has grown by 113% from 2011 to 2012, which is lower than the 143% growth in the volume of tweets per day recorded during the same period.
- Original tweets about brands are on the decline.
- Retweets about brands are on the rise.
- Google search interest in brands does not correlate to Twitter mentions, stock performance, or television and radio mentions.
Bottom-line, brand mentions on Twitter are valuable, but they differ from other types of brand mentions simply because people use Twitter differently than they use other social channels. As I’ve written many times on Corporate Eye, a fully-integrated marketing plan that leverages traditional marketing tactics and new media marketing tactics (including Twitter and other social channels) is the most powerful and successful.
What do you think about the Bazaarvoice Conversation Index findings? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on Twitter marketing and the value of brand mentions for your company.
Image: Bernard Goldbach
New Green Marketing Guidelines – A Guide
Environmental or ethical claims in marketing should .. be correct and precise and exaggerations as to the company’s or the product’s ethical qualities or positive effects should be prohibited
Now the US too has issued tighter guidelines.
This month the Federal Trade Commission reissued its Green Guides for the first time since 1998. These lay out the standards expected to be followed by advertisers in the US and go into far greater depth than the Danish guidelines.
Furthermore websites are mentioned specifically in a number of places in the guidelines as examples, so it is clear that these guidelines apply to online marketing as well as any other form.
Businesses from other countries therefore need to be acutely aware that their websites may fall foul of these much tighter guidelines, especially if they’re targeting the US market.
So without further ado, here’s a brief run down of the new rules:
2012 Global Brand Simplicity Index Ranks Most Simple and Complex Brands
In all, the index surveyed 6,067 consumers in seven countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America to identify their perceptions of 125 brands in 25 industries.
Key findings from the survey and corresponding report include:
- Across all industries, consumers are willing to pay more than $30 billion for simpler products and brand experiences.
- 80% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand because it provides simpler experiences and communications.
- Globally, consumers rank the internet search, electronics, and restaurants industries as the simplest while general insurance, health insurance, and utilities are ranked as the most complex.
- Google ranked as the simplest global brand, but Google+ was among the least simple global brands. Facebook also ranked as a complex brand (ranking 118 out of 125 brands).
The brands that consumers ranked as simplest globally are:
- Google: Brand Simplicity Score = 891 (Simplest Brand Globally)
- McDonald’s: Brand Simplicity Score = 812
- IKEA: Brand Simplicity Score = 789
- C&A: Brand Simplicity Score = 782
- Apple: Brand Simplicity Score = 779
- Pizza Hut: Brand Simplicity Score = 778
- Nokia: Brand Simplicity Score = 772
- Yahoo!: Brand Simplicity Score = 768
- Carrefour: Brand Simplicity Score = 767
- Aldi: Brand Simplicity Score = 761
The brands that ranked at the bottom of the list making them the most complex globally are:
- O2: Brand Simplicity Score = 487
- Groupon: Brand Simplicity Score = 481
- Google+: Brand Simplicity Score = 465
- Bupa: Brand Simplicity Score = 461
- EasyJet: Brand Simplicity Score = 461
- Europcar: Brand Simplicity Score = 446
- AXA: Brand Simplicity Score = 414
- E.ON: Brand Simplicity Score = 377
- Allianz: Brand Simplicity Score = 283
- Ryanair: Brand Simplicity Score = 260 (Most Complex Brand Globally)
The full index report is available here and includes more data as well as rankings for specific countries and regions such as the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, India, and the Middle East.
Image: Siegel & Gale