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Archives for December 2012

How Will Brands Increase Social Media Marketing Budgets in 2013?

budgetIt’s not surprising that research shows brands plan to increase social media marketing budgets in 2013, but the biggest investments might not be in the areas you expect. Brands plan to increase budgets in many areas but two areas are the biggest focus for brands in 2013 — Facebook and social media management tools and technology.

According to eMarketer, research by STRATA found that 82.4% of ad agencies use Facebook most often for client campaigns followed by YouTube (41.9%), Twitter (36.5%), Google+ (25.7%), LinkedIn (23.0%), and Pinterest (23.0%). Other sites like foursquare and MySpace were cited as “most likely to be used for client campaigns” by just 4.1% and 1.4%, respectively.

Clearly, Facebook is the focus for brands. It’s used by more people than any other social media site, so Facebook should be a high priority for brands. However, breaking through the clutter of Facebook is very challenging. For brands that do it successfully, the rewards in terms of brand awareness, brand buzz, and even sales can be significant.

According to research by SocialVibe, 77% of U.S. internet users connected with brands on Facebook in October 2012. That’s significantly higher than any other social media site such as Google+ (14%), YouTube (13%), Twitter (6%), and Pinterest (2%).

Since Facebook is the biggest player in social media, brands plan to invest even more in marketing to consumers on that site than ever before. As eMarketer reports, brands expect to increase social media marketing budgets in several areas, but Facebook is always in the lead.

Research from Strongmail found that nearly four out of 10 business leaders across the globe plan to increase Facebook marketing investments in 2013. That’s significantly more than the number of business executives who expect to increase spending on social media management technology in 2013 (26.5%).

The survey results tell us that behind Facebook marketing, business leaders are most concerned with streamlining, analyzing, tracking, optimizing, and justifying social media marketing budgets in the future. The full breakdown of social media programs that business executives around the world expect to increase spending on in 2013 according to the Strongmail survey follows:

  1. Facebook marketing = 39.6%
  2. Social media management technology = 26.5%
  3. Viral/referral marketing campaigns = 23.6%
  4. Twitter marketing programs = 23.3%
  5. Appending social data to customer database = 18.0%
  6. Staff = 16.1%
  7. Training and education = 15.7%
  8. Pinterest marketing programs = 14.9%
  9. Listening platforms = 14.8%
  10. Agency services and strategy = 13.9%
  11. Other = 3.6%
  12. None = 21.7%

Did you notice that more than five out of 10 business executives surveyed by Strongmail indicated that they didn’t plan to increase spending on any social media marketing programs in 2013? Does that surprise you?

Review your 2013 marketing plan and see if your priorities align with the priorities of other business executives or if there are key differences. You might find some great opportunities to invest in marketing programs that other businesses are missing.

Image: linusb4

Storytelling for Luxury Brands Delivers Big Results and All Brands Should Take Notes

louis-vuitton-journeys-adBrand storytelling has never been higher on marketers’ radar screens than it is as we near the end of 2012. Thanks to social media, every brand needs to have a story that taps into consumers’ emotions and drives a connection that leads not just to awareness, interest, and sales, but also to vocal advocacy and guardianship.

Brands can learn a lot about storytelling from luxury brands. What’s the Louis Vuitton story? The Tiffany & Co. story? The Bentley story?

These brands are extremely meaningful to the customers who pay large sums of money to buy them, use them, and flaunt them.

Luxury Brand Consumers

Consumers typically purchase luxury brands for one of three reasons:

  1. To prove to themselves that they’re worth the higher price tag and possible higher quality that comes with a luxury brand (self-affirmation).
  2. To prove to others that they’re worthy of the luxury brand’s price and quality (peer-affirmation). This could come in two forms: proof that the person belongs in the “wealthy” or “better” group as the consumer perceives it (assimilation) or proof that the person is not part of the mass consumer audience (differentiation).
  3. To enjoy the real or perceived superior quality, performance, or results provided by the luxury brand (appreciation and/or entitlement).

Luxury Brand Stories

tiffany and co ad

With those primary motivators behind luxury brand purchase decisions, marketers can create branded stories that leverage the emotions which come with self-affirmation, peer-affirmation, and appreciation of the features and benefits that luxury brands deliver. Luxury brand stories can focus on:

  • Brand history: The story of how the brand evolved, about well-known individuals, groups, or entities who use the brand, and so on can support a person’s need for self-affirmation. Leveraging the long history of an established luxury brand is a perfect example of storytelling that can be used to market and sell products. Consumers aren’t just buying a product when they purchase a luxury brand, they’re becoming part of a respected history.
  • Brand performance: The story of how a luxury brand performs, meets consumer expectations, and delivers on its promise of quality and excellence are easy to tell in marketing and advertising. Just focus on consumers actually using the branded products.
  • Brand availability: The story of how a luxury brand is hard to get unless a consumer is part of an exclusive group is one that has sold luxury branded products successfully for a very long time.
  • Brand experience: The story of how the brand can be experienced works extremely well for marketing luxury brands. Rather than simply telling consumers how to use products, luxury brands are excellent at showing consumers how to use their products for self-affirmation, peer-affirmation, and so on.
  • Brand persona: The persona of a luxury brand can be used in various ways to create brand stories. From who the brand represents to who is worthy of mingling with the brand or owning the brand are easily turned into stories for advertising.

Storytelling has never been hotter in the marketing world, and marketers don’t need to look far to find inspiration. There is much to be learned from luxury brands that have been using storytelling to drive sales for a very long time.

Images: Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co.

Banking For Everyone, Made In Heaven

Freddie Mercury Made In HeavenIf you’re of a certain age and plugged into social media, a certain milestone may not have escaped your notice during November: the 21st anniversary of the death of Freddie Mercury.  A cracking excuse to get the old vinyls out an give them a spin .. or browse over to YouTube, whichever takes your fancy .. all the way from the original Queen album through to Made In Heaven.

Made In Heaven.  A practically unique album, in that it was released posthumously with much of the engineering work also being done after Freddie’s death.  You may have realised I’m something of a fan (“nut” has also been used) and I still have a little difficulty listening to the album.

Something I don’t have difficulty with though is the Spanish banking group Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, or BBVA for short.  Yes I know it’s a tenuous link but when I came across their CSR website, Banca Para Todas (Banking for Everyone), I really was mightily impressed by it.  It just so happens that I’m writing about it with Freddie very much in my thoughts… so there you go :)

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94% of Consumers Think Businesses Should Give Back

business of giving backConsumers are more likely to reward businesses and brands that give back to the community and world through charitable donations and socially-conscious initiatives. According to research from Cone Communication and Echo Research (infographic from Zendesk, no longer available), 94% of consumers think businesses should do more than make money. Businesses and brands should give back.

Specifically, consumers think businesses have a range of resources available to them, which those businesses should use to positively impact global issues. This isn’t an isolated sentiment. Over 10,000 consumers in 10 countries were surveyed, and the consensus was clear — consumers expect businesses to give back. Businesses that do can gain loyal customers. 47% of survey respondents indicated they are more likely to be loyal to a company that supports social and environmental causes, and 53% indicated they are more likely to recommend those companies and brands to other people.

It’s important to note that while there are specific causes that consumers are passionate about and believe that companies should support in order to drive changes (see the infographic below for the details), consumers also want companies to make internal changes to positively affect social and economic causes. According to the participants in this study, consumers most want companies to:

  • Change the way they operate = 34%
  • Apply unique business assets = 19%
  • Develop new products or services = 16%
  • Raise awareness and educate = 11%
  • Develop partnerships = 11%
  • Make donations = 7%
  • Donate employee time/expertise = 5%

Take a close look at the data above. The first step most companies and brands take to demonstrate their commitments to impacting social and economic causes is to donate money or require employees to donate money and time to charitable organizations. Are you surprised to see that the internal changes consumers most want companies to make in order to support social and economic causes don’t include making donations and donating employee time and expertise until the sixth and seventh items on this list?

Businesses should support economic and social causes for multiple reasons. Most importantly, they have the resources to make positive changes, but also because consumers want them to and will reward them with referrals and loyalty. For brands the benefits are numerous. At the most basic level, economic and social causes evoke powerful feelings in people, and tying emotions to your brand can have significant results to loyalty, advocacy, and sales. Never underestimate the power of emotional branding.

How To Create The Perfect Corporate LinkedIn Company Page

LinkedIn is one of the top social networking sites for businesses to be on in terms of lead generation: a Hubspot survey earlier this year stated that the effectiveness of LinkedIn for lead generation is 277% higher than that of Twitter and Facebook.

But in order to unlock LinkedIn’s potential, it is first important to ensure that your company page is optimised and all the important features are being taken advantage of. This guide will take you through the process of creating the perfect LinkedIn company page, whether you are creating a new one from scratch or want to optimise your existing one.

Getting Started

If you already have a company page set up on LinkedIn, DON’T skip ahead, as the chances are your company information section and images may need to be freshened up.

Overview

So the first stage of creating your company page is to fill in the overview section, in which you can go into great detail about your company, more so than on any other social media channel. It asks you to provide details such as company size and type, operating status, location, etc. All this should be filled in with as much detail as possible, as it gives potential leads an insight into your company, something which is attractive when looking to do business with a new company on both a B2B and B2C level.

About your company

Then there is the company description and specialities section. The company description is where you should go in depth about your company’s main aims, goals, background, etc. but NOT services and products. There is a separate area on the page especially for listing every product and service in detail, which we will discuss later, so simply give an overview of the work you do, and if needed just enough information about the services/products to give a better understanding of the business.

When describing your business, try to break the text up with bullet points, paragraphs, etc. as so many business just rattle off their whole history in one long chunk of text, which is not attractive to the eye nor is it easy to read. And make use of the specialities section, as this allows you to take a keyword or small phrase and have it highlighted/standing alone from the description, and will ensure your company is more search-friendly when these specialities are typed in by a potential lead.

Use imagery

And last but not least, the images. There are three separate areas in which you can upload an image on a company page. There are the standard and square logos, and there is the header image, a fairly new addition to LinkedIn which works similarly to the Facebook cover photo. The logo images are self explanatory; simply upload a version of your logo into both boxes. The header however can be anything you choose. Some companies use a promotional image that is different from their logo but highlights what they do, where as others who are looking to attract new potential employees might have an image of the team to show they are an employee driven brand. This header image can be changed at any time, and you may want to swap and change the image as different things are happening within the company.

A great example of this in practice is the BP company page, who have uploaded a simple logo and used the header image to paint a picture of their business as THE brand to work for:

 

Company Status Updates

Just over a year ago now LinkedIn threw company pages a lifeline by adding the Status Updates feature, which was, until last year, reserved for personal profiles only. The reason these company status updates are such a lifeline is because these updates are delivered not only to followers’ news feeds but also directly reach a more targeted audience.

Keep content fresh in order to keep your followers up to date with your company’s exploits and to keep your brand appearing in their news feeds, and also show new potential followers that your page is active and interesting to follow.

Unilever’s company page is a prime example of using their status updates, as they link to external sites to show off their recent achievements:

Products/Services Tab

One of the main purposes of the LinkedIn company page is to generate leads and promote your products and services, which is why there is an entire tab and section devoted to this purpose. As mentioned earlier, the products and services tab allows you to add each one with its own title,  logo or image, and description, with the option for people to recommend each one (which touch on in more detail later in the article). You can also use the ‘spotlight’ function to highlight any product or service, which is great for highlighting any new products/services, offers, trials, etc. Just make sure you are constantly updating and refreshing this tab as out of date offers can clutter the tab and do not give a good impression.

PepsiCo use their products and services tab to max by promoting each brand they hold under the PepsiCo umbrella, and using the descriptions to go into more detail about each brand’s product ranges:

 

Recommendations

Everyone knows that in today’s tough market reputation is everything to a company, and that is why LinkedIn offer the chance for other LinkedIn users to post a recommendation about your company and their products/services. It is important to encourage people (but not push) to not only follow your brand but recommend the products and services they buy from you. Add links to your email marketing campaigns directing people to your company page, and when sending out follow ups to people who have used your products and services ask if they would mind taking a moment to go on and write a recommendation.

Microsoft have had some very happy customers, with almost 2,000 recommendations for their 18 products and services:

So there we have it: some great examples of how to do company LinkedIn pages well. Make sure you’re logged in to get the best view of how they’re using LinkedIn…

EU continues corporate governance reform

EU slow corporate governance reformLike a slow, inevitable, irresistible piece of origami, the EU’s plans on corporate governance reform in line with general CSR principles continue to unfold.  This latest instalment looks at corporate governance and follows on from a public consultation and green paper in 2011.

Sixteen areas have been identified and put into an action plan.  Some will require regulatory changes, all will be enacted during 2013 unless further investigation is required and all, with the exception of the SPE proposal, will apply to all listed companies across the EU.

Generally they fall into three broad categories: transparency, shareholder power and cross border ownership.

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