MKTG177
Why do consumers post content?
1. Altruistic based utility (consumers receive utility when adding value to the online community, providing information to others, or helping others): concern for other consumers, helping the company, social benefits 2. Consumption based utility: consumers receive utility through direct consumption of the contributions of others: post-purchase advice seeking 3. Approval utility (self-image): consumers receive utility when others consume and approve of the user's contributions: informal approval, recognition 4. Homeostase utility: consumers receive utility when restoring equilibrium to their positive or negative experiences: expressing positive and negative emotions, "venting" 5. Social utility: consumers receive utility when enjoying social experiences in an online environment, connect with each other, generate discussions 5. Economic utility: consumers receive utility when responding to direct economic incentives, free drink if you check in on Yelp, like us on Facebook 6. Bandwagon effect: many consumers prefer to follow the trend and post similar content, similar valence reviews, need to feel accepted, show that they are similar 7. Differentiation effect: some consumers want to be perceived as an expert, tend to post more negatively, others want their messages have a greater impact (posting different messages may lead to greater impact) 8. Crowding out effect: altruistic contributions diminish if there is less impact, as a result image related content may crowd out altruistic content
Traffic sources
1. Direct: organic, just show up, typed in URL 2. Search: organic (driven by SEO), paid (driven by search ads) 3. Paid referrals: from advertising, from email marketing 4. Non-paid referrals: links from other sites 5. Social referrals: links from social sites (but no ads on those sites) Also need to know what happens after traffic arrives ex. visits, pages/visit, average visit duration, bounce rate
Text analysis
1. Identify focal topics (nouns) 2. Create a bag of words to describe each of the messages 3. Create message X noun matrix
Listen and observe: five stages
1. Listen to conversations about a brand or company 2. Listen to what people say about the competitors 3. Listening to what people say about the industry or category 4. Listening for the tone of the community 5. Listening to different social media platforms and channels
Why social media marketing is different?
1. Traditional: company just talked to customers, Now: customers talk to the company and to each other 2. Control (traditional) vs contributions (SMM) 3. Requires trust building: company needs to be earnest, down-to-earth, trust is slow to earn but easy to lose 4. Unique combination of marketing creativity and technology
Issues with SMM
1. Uber: former employee posted a blog detailing sexual harassment at Uber, video of CEO arguing with Uber driver 2. SMM is not free: content development is a big time investment along with strategy development
Why do we care about SMM?
1.Lots of users, growing, Most active users on Facebook, whatsapp, qq, fb messenger 2. People trust recommendation from people they know and other consumer reviews
Brief history
1997-sixdegrees.com: users could build profiles, display list of friends, got lots of users but not enough funding 2001-Ryze.com first subscribes became entrepreneurs and investors behind Friendster, Tribe.net, linkedin, never got enough people 2003: Myspace: hoped to gain estranged Friendster users, but influx in teenagers helped them rise in popularity, in 2007 it was the leading social networking site 2004-The Facebook: started with harvard students, then grew to all US universities, high school, then global, in 2008 overtook Myspace, today most popular network
Who posts?
90-9-1 (2006) 70-20-10 (Today) Power of the vocal minority
Consequence of online social networks
Blurring of the line between business and personal life
Decisions about owned media
Content: what will you say, where will you say it, to whom will it be said Need to see how content performs with your target audience ex. website visitors, customers What works and doesn't work in regards to engagement and specific objectives you have set Need data-drive marketing
Advantages of marketing with social networks
Facilitate social conversations, build brand awareness, find new customers, help conduct brand intelligence and market research Best marketing with social networks comes from the customer or fan base not the firm
Biases in social media data
Generalizability, bandwagon effects, differentiation effects, self image, virality, incentivized opinions, fake reviews
Consumer purchase decision process with social media
Generated WOM content on social media effects every step along with firm generated content
Targeting ads and posts on social platforms
Google+ has a built in targeting mechanism with its circles: targeting by age and location to brand pages, hashtag search is key feature on many platforms; possible to access trends in real time Emojis are a potential targeting item: instagram users include emojis in hashtags, making brand and trends, searchable, and able to reach target audiences Facebook has revised its audience targeting: at first, brand had to develop profiles, then fan pages, then were given the option of creating brand pages that had more features than personal pages, then several upgrades including targeting options, initial targeting options, initial targeting options for brand pages were demographic, later targeting by interests, activities, behaviors Targeting options differ from one platform to another : careful social media marketer understands the platform
Global view on social networks
In other countries: different social network sites have risen to prominence India and brazil: Google's orkut China: QQ Russia: VK Brazil: Baidu
Benefits of SMM
Increased exposure, increased traffic, developed loyal fans, provided marketplace insight, generated leads, improved search rankings, grown business partnerships, established thought leadership, improved sales, reduced marketing expenses
Paid media
Media activity related to a company or brand that is generated by the company or its agents Ex. offline: traditional ads like TV, radio, print, outdoor, sponsorships, direct mail Online: display/banner advertising, search advertising (google adwords), social network (e.g. Facebook ads), electronic direct mail (ex. email advertisements) Search and display Ads are the biggest by spend
Owned media
Media activity related to a company or brand that is generated by the company or its agents in channels it controls Ex. offline: retail in-store visual merchandising or displays, brochures, company press releases, online: company/brand website, company/brand blog, company-owned pages/accounts in online social networks (Ex. twitter account, facebook brand page) Online properties that you fully control and own: website, mobile app, blog, customer community, facebook, twitter, instagram accounts/pages Very important: because it is inbound Now considered all content you create for your brand/product that isn't advertising
Earned
Media activity related to a company or brand that is not directly generated by the company but rather by other entities such as customers or journalists Ex. Offline: traditional publicity in professional media outlets (ex. press mentions), offline WOM between consumers Online: WOM referrals (invitations to join a website), posts in online communities, posts in online social networks (ex. tweets, status updates), posts on personal blogs, online ratings and reviews (ex. yelp, amazon)
Tension between firm content and user content
Problem recognition: Firm-advertising, no publicity is bad publicity: only for products with low initial awareness, negative UGC can cause consumers to perceive a need but with diminishing marginal returns Information search: firm (owned media, product description), large part of consumer's information search today involves UGC, UGC impacts whether consumers continue the search process, consideration set formation Alternative evaluation: firm-owned media, comparative advertising, consumer reports, UGC especially ratings is used to compare products during evaluation stage, UGC impacts which product attribute are perceived as important Purchase decision: firm (coupons, time-sensitive discounts), UGC guides consumers about where to buy, discussion boards share content on time-sensitive sales, positive WOM can trigger an immediate buy decision
Social media marketing
Process of understanding consumers, generating conversation, and gaining attention through social media sites Creating buzz thru videos, tweets, or blogs Building ways that enable fans of a brand to promote a message themselves Based around online conversations Listening to consumers
Reach vs influence
Reach: easy to measure, number of friends/followers, views, greater reach are most effective at impacting the early stages of a consumer's purchase decision process Influence: hard to measure, need a method that attributes purchase activity to the influencer rather than other marketing actions after controlling for reach, use field experiments, other stat methods, individuals with greater influence are most effective at impacting the later stages of a consumer's purchase decision process
Social media monitoring
Return on investment, market intelligence Process of finding and listening to content on the social web Given its size and growth, a daunting task, but there are many powerful tools that can help Marketers must understand which metrics have a direct impact on their business results One way to track brand mentions is to identify the keywords that will retrieve relevant data Keywords can be tracked using google analytics and other tools Ill-defined search terms waste resources, produce misleading results, doing more harm than good
Targeting in SMM
Right person to get, right content, right place, right time, right format, right language, right device Most common characteristics marketers use to identify and profile target markets are demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioral based segmentation
Social media marketing plan
SMM plan details an organization's social media goals and the actions necessary to achieve them, understanding corporate and marketing strategies and the creation of promotional strategies, without integrated strategies and solid SMM plans, there is little chance of successfully executing SMM
Importance of owned/earned media
Shifting money out of paid and into owned and earned
Social media platforms
Social networking sites: facebook, linkedin Microblogging sites: twitter, tumblr Publishing tools: wordpress, blogger Collaboration tools: wikipedia, wikitravel Rating/review sites: amazon rating, angie's list Photo sharing sites: flickr, instargram, pinterest Video sharing sites: youtube, vimeo, viddler Personal broadcasting tools: blog talk radio
Effective Advertising
Targeting: matching ad to website content increases purchase intent Getting noticed on a webpage: increasing obtrusiveness increases purchase intent But if you do both together this will lower purchase intent Best two options 1. Highly targeted but small text based, not visually appealing 2. Not targeted but big, image/video based, visually appealing
Owned media analytics
Traffic source analysis: seeing who comes to your owned channels Time series analyses: understanding trends in traffic and engagement Clickstream and conversion analyses: seeing what they do once they are there
Social media marketing research (market intelligence)
Twitter is loaded with market intelligence Use the social media knowledge and run text analysis to figure out what people are talking about online
How ad targeting works on SM platforms
Twitter offers: follower targeting with choices including followers of competitors and similar audiences, behavior targeting that uses data from Twitter business partners about online and offline product-related behaviors, keywords that are used in twitter searches or in Tweets, event targeting: twitter furnishes a global event calendar, provides audience data from last year's event, and enables targeting of the audience for the current year's event
CTR (clickthrough rates)
Typically very low, 0.10% (1 in 1000), CTR does not necessarily increase with ad size, you can focus more on mindset metrics like purchase intent, brand favorability, awareness
Impact of UGC/WOM
UGC/WOM: more word of mouth, altruism, self image, homeostase, social, bandwagon, differentiation
Role of influencers
User generated content posted by influences are disproportionately more impactful
Growing importance of photos
Visual image sharing on smartphone grows, people like/comment more on visual posts, FB status updates with visuals attract the most comments highest engagement score, photos encourage shares, photos achieve the highest engagement Much higher incidence of photo pertaining to products and services: consumers like to share what they buy, photos are visually appealing for sharing Ability to showcase the product: reviews and other text describe, not show, higher interest with photo-based content Analysis still based on corresponding textual content such as descriptions or hashtags
Determining strategies
What are the overall goals, what was learned from listening, what best practices can be applied, goals may change be flexible
Porsche Case
What is a porsche? masculine, small group/fraternity, fun car --> fast, performance, love for sports cars, german manufacturing, exclusive, expensive, not a family car What is a SUV? soccer moms, rugged, comfortable, practical, safety, family, status/image
Goal
a broad primary outcome
Business objective
a measurable step you take to achieve a strategy
Metric, examples
a number, can be a count, ratio, etc. can be quantitative or qualitative 1. Exposure: quantitative (page visits, visitors, unique visitors, visits per channel, reach (total follower), opportunity to see, CPM (cost per thousand exposures) 2. Engagement: quantitative (repeat visits, time spent on site, total interactions on post/page, likes/shares/comments/+1s, click-throughs, number of followers/friends, total audience of all shares, interaction with profile, use of hashtags) qualitative (mentions, people talking about brand) 3. Influence: quantitative (links, association with brand attributes, purchase consideration, likelihood to recommend) qualitative (sentiment-positive, neutral, negative- net promoter score, klout score) 4. Impact: quantitative (new subscribers, number of referrals to website, number of content downloads, abandoned shopping carts, number of sales leads, conversion rate, sales, repeat sales, purchase frequency, cost savings) qualitative (satisfaction, loyalty) 5. Advocacy: quantitative (online ratings, ratio mentions to recommendations, number of brand fans/advocates) qualitative (content of ratings/reviews, organic posts by advocates, employee ambassadors)
SMM planning cycle
creating a social media plan is a continuous process, skilled SM marketers constantly monitor the progress of the plan's action elements -modify them to improve results -test alternative approaches 1. Listening 2. Setting goals 3. Defining strategies 4. Identifying the target audience (market) 5. Selecting tools 6. Selecting platforms and channels 7. Implementing 8. Tuning
What is the ROI of SMM
difficult to define the relevant terms in a marketing context
Online UGC
economists consider as a public good: costs time and effort to create, benefits the entire society important issues with public goods: tragedy of the commons, undersupply of public good
Video content
engagement, allows for more creativity/emotions/senses, can create strong connection to consumers, good for storytelling, enjoyable to most viewers, video stimuli more appealing than text or a photo, more senses that are involved in gathering information the more engaging the process becomes Viewers become more vested in content when a human face is attached to it Communication studies estimate that 50%-80% of meaning is conveyed through body language; a well-made video deepens the communication experience
Controlled experiment (a/b testing)
experimental group: who received the treatment control group: who didn't receive the treatment ex. one group exposed to Facebook post, another is not exposed
Conversions to goals
goal could be selling something or could be some other form of engagement, figure out the conversion probability for each user segment, figure out the conversion probability from a given page or after doing a certain number of things -can help identify bottlenecks in the traffic flow
Setting goals and objectives
goals must align with overall marketing objectives, key objectives of SMM include: customer service, brand awareness, building brand preference, acquisition of new customer leads, loyalty program
When selecting a SM platform
marketers need to consider the characteristics of the target audience ex. is the target consumers or professionals? social networks for consumers, linkedin for professionals, where do they hang out? go there, is my product visual? instagram, pinterest, youtube, do they like to collaborate? wikis, are product demos needed? youtube Consider the capabilities of the network
Evaluation
measure and demonstrate how SM activities have contributed to achievement of business objectives (ex. sales, profit, customer lifetime value)
Measuring
measurement of a firm's SMM activities is no longer optional, measurement enables marketers to: assess progress toward achieving marketing goals, determine how strategies are performing, make necessary adjustments to achieve goals
Ratings and reviews
one of the most critical type of user generated content social media, dissemination of scaled opinions: easy way to process information, allows for ease of comparison during the evaluation stage of a customer's purchase decision process, textual information
Page level vs content level
page: analytics to track overall performance of a social site (ex. FB brand page, twitter account) Content: analytics to track performance of specific pieces of content (ex. post, tweet), use content level analytics to understand what content works and what content doesn't work with respect to social engagement and if applicable, clicks/conversions
Strategy
the approach you take to achieve a goal
Clickstream
the path a visitor takes through a site, a map or network, important in regards to your goals (if they are on page X what is the likelihood they will get to page y)
Earned analytcis
tracking buzz and sentiment
Social owned analytics
traffic: incoming traffic to social page, community, blog Engagement: what people do -with social there are more things they can do, positing activity (posts and comments), social sharing activity (likes and shares) More important to use your content to generate social engagement Owned content--> earned media buzz ex. Facebook brand pages: brands post content (Text, images, videos, events) and users socially engage (like/comment/share), user engagement creates stories (earned media), content has to encourage engagement for WOM to spend
Dissemination of non-scaled opinions
very low incidence of posts about content pertaining to products and services, mostly textual content (difficult to compare across users, need advanced listening tools and machine learning to digest), majority of product-related social network activity come in the form of likes, shares, retweets, etc. rather than original user generated content
Engagement
website engagement: duration/time on site, pageviews, social engagement: likes, comments, shares, posts
Types of UGC
word of mouth, altruism, self image, homeostase, social, bandwagon, differentiation