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Social Media Isn’t Just for B2C; the Right Tactics Build B2B Leads

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Some business-to-business marketers shrug off social media as a consumer branding and sales channel, sticking to company page branding and PR announcements on social platforms. They are missing a lead source, argues Tessa Berg, vice president of B2B agency Tenlo, in a recent MarketingProfs post. She urges B2B promoters to consider the many ways they can use social platforms to generate leads, and AccuList certainly supports these tactics via its own LInkedIn and Facebook/Instagram marketing programs.

Where to Go on Social Media? Where the Customers Are!

In deciding investment in social outreach to snag leads, start by profiling your target customers and where they gather on social platforms. Here’s a hint: 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, compared with 13% from Twitter. That doesn’t mean B2B marketers should exclusively use LinkedIn. For example, Twitter allows for more direct interaction with prospects. And with the proven effectiveness of video marketing, why not leverage platforms like YouTube and Instagram to stimulate interest via product or branding videos?

Supplement Organic Reach With Paid Ads

Social platforms want to monetize their audiences so the reach of organic social activity has been increasingly subordinated to paid advertising. At the same time, many social platforms have improved targeting options for paid advertising. So it makes sense to pair organic actions with highly targeted paid social ads. Social tracking data will uncover important insights into which content and messaging on which social channels generate the best engagement and site traffic. Clear calls-to-action driving to owned content (website or landing page) will help capture leads better than a generic “Contact Us.” Offers of engaging content, say a video on product installation or an infographic addressing a key issue such as sustainability, also help gather lead contact data, Berg adds. Don’t get stuck in a rut with success, however; Berg prompts marketers to vary the types of ads and the content of ads deployed to avoid losing audience interest over time in the fast-moving social world.

Answer Questions and Leverage Presentations to Make Connections

One of the easiest, most effective ways to create relationships with prospective customers is to address the questions they pose on relevant platforms such as LinkedIn, Quora, and Reddit, Berg notes. Empower social and technical teams to answer in a timely and effective way to position your company as an expert and build audience connection. As a bonus, you will likely boost SEO and keyword rankings at the same time. Also, most B2B organizations already create presentations on industry trends, product updates, and case studies, and this content is prime for boosting engagement, social sharing and viral reach, especially on platforms that are dedicated to presentations, such as LinkedIn SlideShare.

Make Social Engagement a Team Effort

Get company team members involved in a social strategy, urges Berg. After all, people work with people, and a display of your company’s talent and team culture can validate a partnering or purchase decision. Define a theme, outline appropriate content, explain the dos and don’ts of hashtags, make sure to run messaging by legal advisors, and then start with a test of “safe” content, adjusting policies if necessary, she advises. See https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2019/41608/seven-ways-b2bs-can-use-social-media-to-boost-conversion-rates-and-generate-leads?adref=nlt080619

Shoppers Demand Seamless Omnichannel Retail Strategies

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Omnichannel marketing is the rule for today’s retailing. While print catalogs continue as a vital merchant tool, with 42% of households reading catalogs per the U.S. Postal Service, integration of multiple channels–including online, mobile and social with direct mail–is now essential to our catalog and e-commerce clients’ success. Unfortunately, while the majority of consumers expect to shop seamlessly across all those channels, only 7% of retailers provide the unified “start the sale anywhere, finish the sale anywhere” experience that customers want, per the recent “2018 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey” by BRP Consulting, a retail management consulting firm.

Omnichannel, Cross-Device Shopping Is Now the Norm

Marketers just can’t afford to ignore that the majority of shoppers now interact with promotions, educational content and purchase services via multiple channels and devices. According to the same BRP study, three in five (62%) consumers surveyed said they check online reviews/ratings before visiting a store, yet just 61% of retailers offer consumer product reviews for research! Shoppers now rely on mobile to continue the digitally supported buying process in-store, with nearly 60% of shoppers looking up product information and prices while using their mobile phones in stores, per Retail Dive’s 2017 Consumer Survey. Also per BRP, nearly three out of four (73%) of consumers want the ability to track orders across all points of interaction, going beyond an estimated delivery date to include when the order is being prepared, date shipped from the warehouse, etc. Plus customers expect an automated return process, with 68% of consumers surveyed telling BRP they are more likely to choose a retailer offering an automated returns process.

Analytics Need Complex Channel/Device Attribution

Merchants can leverage customers’ cross-device penchant to optimize acquisition and conversion, argues a Direct Marketing News article by Pierre DeBois. But they must keep in mind that, while the opportunity to boost ad frequency and content persuasion across channels is huge, smart management is required to avoid turning targeted promotion into a bludgeon. As Bill Kee, Google’s group product manager for attribution, highlighted at the 2017 Google Marketing Next conference, “If I am on three devices, and if I see your ad five times, it means you’ve reached me 15 times…believe me I get it.” The first place to start is good omnichannel analytics to understand the contribution of each channel to ROI and its place in the customer journey. Only then can merchants cost-effectively tailor targeting and investment to maximize sales. One useful analytics tool is Google’s Unique Reach report, which displays digital ad frequency metrics across devices, campaigns, and formats to measure how many times a person views a given ad, and combines attribution influences from AdWords, DoubleClick, and Google Analytics, suggests DeBois.

Using Images and Chat to Direct the Customer Journey

Good omnichannel analytics also can improve use of image and video content to maximize the proven effectiveness of image/video in digital engagement, to answer the customer demand for education, and to direct prospects through the sales funnel. However, quantities of images bombarding customers across multiple channels can overwhelm and confuse, so both media curation and a content mapping strategy aligned to the customer journey are needed. One example of a targeted image strategy is use of an “image story” feature on a social media platform to orchestrate images and/or a short video, notes DeBois. Pinterest Lens, Instagram Stories, and Twitter Moments are all image story features. Because the majority of consumers research products and services online now, marketers also can gain an edge over competitors by offering customer-facing elements such as chatbots. In contrast to apps, which may be used only for a few discrete tasks and then ignored, a chatbot’s programmable assistance can provide both engagement and continuing response performance improvement.

For more, see the Direct Marketing News article.

Social Media Pros Predict Wide Range of Changes in 2018

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Both B2B and B2C marketers are planning on investing more in social media marketing in 2018, per surveys. So AccuList USA’s clients may want to take a look at the trends that social media experts are predicting for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest marketing in the year ahead, as recently gathered up by Social Media Examiner.

Video Boom: Moves by LinkedIn and Facebook

Among the more than 33 predictions featured, multiple social media pros stressed the growth and impact of video, as “even simple selfie videos filmed on cell phones are propelling businesses higher than video-less businesses,” to quote one forecaster. B2B marketers will be pleased to know that LinkedIn advertising is expected to roll out video ads for business pages and geofilters for videos, now in test. Facebook, which remains the social media ad leader, is positioning to become a major player in online video. In 2017, Facebook debuted Facebook Watch for select creators (a TV-like option). In 2018, it is forecast that the program will expand to all people and pages on Facebook, and also that Facebook will likely roll out new features for video creators, perhaps including preferential Facebook news feed exposure for original native video, revenue-sharing deals, or even a dedicated video app. With the video boom, metrics will need to get more sophisticated across platforms. Since each platform counts their video views differently (Snapchat at 1 second, Twitter at 2 seconds, Facebook/Instagram at 3 seconds, and YouTube at 30 seconds), watch for marketers to go beyond number of views to data measuring the time spent and the attention held across all screens on all platforms.

Instagram Gains Ground With Marketers

Instagram is forecast to keep surging after fast growth in 2017, with 15 million businesses using Instagram by July 2017 (nearly double the 8 million businesses that used Instagram in March 2017), with 80% of Instagram accounts now following at least one business, and with global advertising set to reach $4 billion for 2017 year-end. One reason is that Instagram has been improving its tools for marketers, including InstaStories promoted within the  “news feed,” the Story Highlights feature that allows pages to host static collections of previously disappearing story posts on profiles, “swipe up” calls-to-action, posts that click through to online stores, and soon the ability to follow hashtags.

Rising Ad Costs Force Smarter Targeting, Metrics

The bad news for marketers is that the popularity of social media will translate into rising ad costs in 2018, with pricing of Facebook and Instagram advertising predicted to rise over the next 12 months. However, that cost trend should actually spur businesses hesitating to invest; marketers who commit to social media ads now will generate awareness, build audience (particularly via e-mail subscribers) and gain a competitive advantage in the increasingly crowded market. Given the rising cost to gain the attention of prospects and acquire customers, more businesses also are urged to hone ad effectiveness beyond generating leads followed with automated e-mail—for example using retargeting, AI and other techniques to ensure prospects see the most relevant messaging for their point in the customer journey. And, as cheap organic reach declines in effectiveness and paid ad costs climb, the importance of ad metrics increases. Whether on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter, marketers will need to track the metrics of each ad or promoted post, combining a paid acquisition model with historical data and personalized content if they hope to translate social media marketing into real revenue results in 2018, warn the social media mavens.

For more predictions, see https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-predictions-2018/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=NewsletterIssue&utm_campaign=New

Marketing With Online Video? If Not, You’re Behind the Curve

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In supporting our digital marketing clients, AccuList USA has seen rapid growth in online video use, and a recent Forbes magazine article by John Hall, CEO of Influence & Co., cited video as one of six essential trends to include in 2018’s digital marketing budget. Why? Researchers forecast that by 2020 online video will account for 80% of all consumer internet traffic. Already over 500 million people are watching video on Facebook every day. If you want a crack at that audience, you’ll need to join the video world.

Low-Cost Video Ads Boost Engagement and Sales

Video ads are not just good at promoting brand awareness and engagement; they deliver sales. Video creation service Animoto’s most recent survey of 1,000 consumers and 500 marketers reinforces online video’s clout: 64% of consumers say they purchase after watching branded social videos. No wonder more businesses are jumping on the video ad bandwagon and investing in paid/sponsored video as well as paying to “socialize” or promote videos. Helping the video boom is the relatively low production cost; in fact, 92% of marketers told Animoto they make videos with assets they already have. Meanwhile, a nationwide pricing survey of videographers and photographers found that the average small business marketing video cost less than $1,000 in 2015 and a medium-sized product demo video was around $2,000.  Cost is not a barrier; coming up with engaging, targeted content is the challenge.

Marketers Focus on Multiple Platforms, Mobile Viewing

So what platform will best deliver the target audience? Animoto’s survey shows where consumers engage with branded videos daily: 49% on Facebook, 32% on YouTube, 24% on Instagram, 22% on Snapchat, and 22% on Twitter. Most brands hedge their bets by using multiple platforms, paying to capture eyes on YouTube and Facebook, for example. The more important goal, regardless of platform, is to optimize for mobile viewing since 84% of online video viewers watch on mobile devices–which is why 81% of marketers are optimizing their social videos for mobile viewership, per Animoto. Timing counts, too. Animoto’s survey found 33% of video consumers watch during the lunch hour, 43% during the afternoon, 56% during the evening, 38% before bed, and 16% in the middle of the night.

Square, Live and Soundless Creatives Gain Traction

Square video, as opposed to horizontal video, is growing in popularity, with 39% of surveyed marketers creating square and/or vertical videos now. Why? Square videos take up 78% more space in the Facebook News Feed, and get more engagement, than horizontal videos, according to Animoto. Live streaming video is also growing in popularity. According to IT/networking giant Cisco, live Internet video will account for 13% of  total online video traffic by 2020. But before you spend time and dollars crafting a great video sound track, note that video editing software firm Camtasia reports that 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound.

For a summary of Animoto’s social video marketing findings, go to https://animoto.com/blog/business/state-of-social-video-marketing-infographic/

 

Harnessing Social Media to Drive Nonprofit Success

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At the upcoming Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) 2017 Conference, we expect to hear a lot about nonprofit social media strategy and will be offering AccuList USA support with our Social Media Users List of Lists and Digital2Direct program combining highly-targeted direct mail with social media advertising on Facebook. Of course, social media success is a moving target, so we wondered what social media trends will impact fundraising this year. Here are some insights:

Be More Visual, Personal, Responsive

A 2017 Redstart Creative blog post identified several noteworthy nonprofit social media trends. As in the rest of the digital universe, video is the new response-getting must, and now nonprofits can use live video to boost reach and engagement via tools such as new Facebook features allowing live video to be pushed to followers in notifications or timelines. As social media algorithms reduce organic reach and ad competition intensifies, Redstart advises uncluttered “less is more,” quality-over-quantity content that focuses on resonating with the target audience. “Reply and engage” should be a new mantra, too, especially since major platform Facebook began keeping score publicly on all brand pages last year by adding a notification that tells viewers how quickly the page replies to messages. For nonprofits, trying to woo and keep donors today means storytelling content and engaging personality, Redstart stresses; so don’t be afraid to embrace video, memes, emojis and gifs.

Polish the Art of Engaging

Need some tips for donor engagement on social media? A recent NonProfitPRO post by Dale Nirvani Pfeifer, founder of Goodworld, cited three basic steps–and she included images of real-life digital successes. Step No. 1: Respond quickly. As Pfeifer notes, 83% of Twitter users and 71% of Facebook users expect a brand to respond to their posts within 24 hours, and more than half of Twitter users expect a brand to respond within 2 hours! Social-media monitoring tools like Google Alerts and Mention can help keep track of responses to supporters. Step No. 2: Get personal. Responses can include a personal touch, but less time-consuming tactics include tagging supporters in thanks, or a simple “like” or “share” of comments. Step 3: Honor your donors. Even if thank-yous can’t be personalized, you can make donors feel special on social media by posting a “thank you” message after a successful fundraising post. Plus, part of honoring donors is transparency, Pfeiffer adds. Post organization news, fundraising goals and impacts; making donors part of the success story will build engagement, loyalty and a desire to give more.

Tap the Power of Social Influencers

“Influencer marketing” is a buzzword at the top of marketers’ agendas in 2017. A recent post on npENGAGE by Jeanette Russell, marketing director of the social engagement platform Attentive.ly, underscores the power of influencers to greatly extend the reach of fundraising campaigns.  Attentive.ly evaluated 90 of its nonprofit customers and found that the top 5% of influencers on a nonprofit’s e-mail list of 140,000 can reach an average of 34 million people, or 85% the total reach of e-mail and Twitter combined. Wow! So how do you identify influencers? You use a social scoring methodology, such as Klout’s algorithm, to assign a score based on measurable factors: reach/number of followers, engagement of followers, relevancy, post frequency, and relationship with the organization. Then you segment the influencers and their messaging into three main categories, Russell advises: VIPs (such as entertainment stars or politicians) who need high-touch, major-donor-style treatment; Media (Blogger) Influencers who can be recruited to post or Tweet to pools of followers, either on their own or as part of investment in a blogging program/network; and Everyday Influencers, who form the largest group and are already on nonprofit e-mail lists so they can be quickly energized by e-mails asking them to share or post easily accessible content.

For examples of successful nonprofit influencer efforts, as well as tips on crafting effective influencer e-mail campaigns, see the the full article at https://npengage.com/nonprofit-marketing/socialmediainfluencers/

2017 Multi-Channel Marketers Challenged by 3 Key Digital Trends

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As this year’s marketing gets underway, we want to alert marketers seeking our multi-channel support services to three important 2017 digital trends recently cited by digital marketing hub ClickZ author Rebecca Sentance.

‘Mobilized’ Search Is Digital Marketing Must

Marketers need to go beyond “mobile friendly” to a “mobile first” strategy given current search trends. Though ClickZ’s own Intelligence Report on 2016 mobile marketing found that 56% of client-side marketers and 44% of agency respondents still described their mobile ad efforts as “beginner,” big search market changes will spur more mobile strategy investment this year, Sentance notes. Think mobile is over-hyped? Sentance asks you to consider the following: Search-engine giant Google has removed the “right-hand rail” from the search results page and moved to only displaying paid ads at the top and bottom, making the main search results layout more adaptive to mobile; Google continues to strengthen a mobile-friendly ranking system that penalizes websites that aren’t mobile-optimized; and Google announced in October that it would further favor mobile search by splitting off desktop and mobile into separate search indexes, with mobile as its primary index.

‘Visualized’ Social Marketing Wins Followers

Marketers need to embrace visual elements and visually focused platforms for more effective social media performance. Sentance points out as an example that YouTube was the fourth-most cited channel of the 2016 Marketing Trends Survey when respondents were asked to name the top three performing networks for their social media marketing efforts (behind Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). And though Instagram came in fifth place, the rise of visually focused platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat is undeniable. For example, Sentance reports that Instagram is far outstripping social competition in follower growth, with a median average of 6-8% follower growth month on month. So it’s no wonder that formerly text-based social media leaders Facebook and Twitter have made it a priority to meet the competitive challenge this year by integrating more multimedia into their platforms, with the addition of GIFs, short videos and live video streaming.

‘Commercialized’ Social Offers Sales As Well As Branding

Finally, marketers should stop assuming social media is mainly a tool for brand and traffic building rather than direct sales. Social media and e-commerce have been overlapping more and more, Sentance argues. She cites the launch of Facebook Marketplace, the acquisition of Famebit by Google/YouTube, and the change in Pinterest’s business profiles to showcase Buyable pins more prominently as just three recent examples of the trend to integrate e-commerce with social.

To read the complete ClickZ article go to https://www.clickz.com/three-major-developments-that-will-shape-multi-channel-marketing-in-2017/108468/