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  • Google Says To Reach YouTube Users On How-To Searches

    Google Says To Reach YouTube Users On How-To Searches

    Google is giving marketers some best practices for capitalizing on major growth in how-to searches on YouTube. Believe it or not, these types of searches have seen 70% growth year-over-year. A whopping one hundred million hours of such content has already been watched in North America in 2015, it says.

    In other words, this is an opportunity for businesses who can provide high quality how-to content to attract some eyeballs.

    This information comes from a Think with Google article by David Mogensen, Head of B2B Product Marketing for YouTube and Google Display (via Marketing Land). According to him, people look for how-to videos increasingly on mobile with 91% of smartphone users turning to their devices for ideas while completing a task.

    These searches are on the rise across all age groups, but millennials are especially likely to search YouTube for how-to videos. According to Google, 67% of them agree that they can find a YouTube video on anything they want to learn.

    I guess that’s why Google Helpouts didn’t take off.

    “Being there in these moments may be the single most important thing a marketer can do, but many aren’t,” writes Mogensen. “Marketing is still largely planned against brand moments and milestones, and it is anchored to campaign flights and product launches—not personal moments like these. The reason for this is simple. Most marketing plans are grounded in traditional one-way media: Broadcast from brands to large audiences.” Without signals of intent, traditional media makes it impossible to know whether someone actually needs or wants your product.

    “But when people ask how to do something, that’s a need,” he continues. “That’s someone asking, ‘can you help me out?’ Digital media let brands respond to those questions and be there at the very moment someone needs them most. Brands that successfully do this can win loyalty and drive sales to boot. In fact, nearly one in three millennials say they’ve purchased a product as a result of watching a how-to video.”

    He talks about how Home Depot has a bunch of how tos for home improvement and how Valspar has content about various paint-related subjects.

    Home improvement, beauty, and cooking are among the most popular categories for how-to searches.

    As far as best practices, Google says to identify the “I-wan-to-do moments” in which people have a need that your brand can help with. It says to find these moments across the whole consumer journey and put them at the center of your strategy. You should also figure out what questions and concerns people have related to the types of projects you sell or the projects they’re used for, and then create the content to serve as resources for those, it says.

    Google also suggests looking at when how-to searches occur, and making your videos easier to find by adding descriptive titles, details, and relevant tags to each video. Promoting the videos is another option.

    One thing that Mogensen didn’t really get into that is certainly worth considering is how frequently videos appear in Google search results. You have to imagine that there are plenty of these how-to searches happening right on Google.

    We recently looked at a study on Google Universal Search trends, and video is the most frequent type of universal result Google shows. They appeared in 55% of search results pages analyzed. While the percentage of search results pages showing video results actually fell over the course of 2014, videos appear more often than anything else by far. 80% of videos displayed in Universal Search results came from YouTube.

    Image via Google

  • Facebook Status Update Engagement Down 72%

    Simply Measured has a new report out evaluating the performance of the Facebook efforts from the top brands. The findings may help businesses of all sizes plan their own strategies.

    What strategies have you found to work the best in recent months? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    The study looked at data from 11,522 posts by 96 brands, 1,172,091,468 total fans, and 13,849 brand responses to 55,773 community posts and 160,681 comments. It focused specifically on brands from the Interbrand 2014 Best 100 Global Brands. Data is from 1/1/15 – 3/31/15.

    The study found that Facebook’s recent update to Page Like counts led to a 3% decrease in fans from Q4. The brands analyzed posted 12% less in Q1 than in Q4, and remained relatively stable on engagement levels. Engagement increased significantly at 43.5% year-over-year however. On top of that, the brands observed received 28% more shares in Q1 than in Q4.

    “Brands don’t need to post more to increase engagement—they just need to post more strategically,” the report says. “Expect to see a minor drop in fan count as inactive or spammy fans are weeded out. Facebook photos and videos received the greatest share growth and greatest engagement generally, indicating that Facebook users interact with these posts most often and most deeply.”

    Here’s a look at engagement and fan count by vertical:

    It’s worth noting that the media vertical posted most often and saw the most total engagement. This is in line with Facebook’s recommendation to publishers to post more frequently. Media properties saw a 15% engagement increase per post over the quarter.

    Automotive brands also saw 37% more engagement in Q1 compared to Q4, including 37% more comments, 30% more likes, and 151% more shares.

    The business services vertical led the charge by far for fan growth. Aside from this vertical and the restaurant vertical, fan growth has been abysmal.

    We recently looked at how bad businesses have been at online customer service. According to the study, the retail and automotive verticals sent the most responses to fans during Q1. Electronics and media responded the most quickly.

    “Links and photos dominate when it comes to overall engagement, but video and photos are the post types to keep an eye on if you want your content to spread more widely on Facebook,” the report says. “Top brands are investing less in status updates and yielding less engagement from this type of post.”

    Engagement on videos was up 8% quarter over quarter with most of that coming from a 43% increase in shares. Videos were the only content type that the brands analyzed actually increased (2%). Engagement on photos also increased by 6% with most of that coming from a 53% increase in shares.

    Here’s the kicker. Engagement on status updates dropped 72%. The study attributes this to brands posting fewer of them (40% less than the previous quarter).

    Media brands were most successful with links as a content type.

    “Retail brands have experienced lower engagement quarter-over-quarter, but higher engagement year-over-year,” the report says. “Retail brands excel with links and videos, and eBay does especially well among its peers in this vertical. This vertical responds to fans the most.”

    There’s plenty more where all of this came from, especially on an vertical-by-vertical basis in the report, which you can find here.

    Have you found status updates to be less effective on your own Facebook page? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Simply Measured

  • Here’s How To Measure Mobile Ad Viewability

    Here’s How To Measure Mobile Ad Viewability

    The Media Rating Council (MRC) just issued its interim guidance for the digital marketing and advertising industry on how to proceed with measuring and transacting around mobile viewability. This applies to the “Opportunity to See” an ad in a mobile web browser or a mobile app.

    As you may know, the MRC works with other industry organizations (ANA, IAB and 4As) under the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative. Its goal is to “facilitate industry discussion and conduct additional, necessary research to create permanent guidelines that account for the specific nuances of mobile web environments.”

    “In guidance issued in 2014, the MRC noted the need for further study to determine if existing Viewable Impression standards could apply to mobile,” an MRC spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Mobile presents technical complications as well as inherently different use cases because of how individuals interact with their devices.”

    READ: A Clearer Look At Mobile Ad Viewability

    For the most part, the new mobile guidance reflects the existing desktop guidance with iewable impression measurement of ads following the model: “50% of pixels in the viewable space of the browser for a minimum of one second for display and two seconds for video ads.”

    The mobile guidance also has a new metric for “Loaded Ad,” which “recognizes that measurement of both pixels in view and time in view may be particularly challenging in mobile at present.”

    “A Loaded Ad is a measure, explicitly designed as an interim metric specific for mobile in application measurement until such time that the state of that measurement fully matures, that provides users with some assurance that the ad did load on the screen, although it does not meet the requirements for qualifying as a viewable impression,” the MRC explains.

    So far, nobody has been accredited as yet by the MRC for mobile viewable impression measurement. It says the new guidance should be considered as a path for organizations that wish to become accredited to do so.

    “After the issuance of the desktop and video viewability guidelines last year, it became clear that technical characteristics of the mobile ad serving environment require the development of new or enhanced methods for determining the viewability of mobile-delivered ads,” said MRC CEO and Executive Director George Ivie. “Furthermore, the ways in which users interact with content and ads in mobile environments are inherently different from those observed in the desktop environment, possibly creating differences in where the moment of ‘opportunity-to-see’ occurs. As such, we will need to conduct extensive study, testing, and industry discussion to develop more permanent guidance. In the meantime, we have issued a set of interim approaches to mobile viewable impression measurement and reporting to allow the industry to transact in as seamless a manner as possible.”

    READ: Ad Viewability Contention Rages On

    The MRC notes that all previous guidance is superseded by the new guidance, which will remain in place until it issues a standard by the end of the year.

    Image via 3MS

  • Yelp Talks About Its Efforts In Ad Sales

    Yelp Talks About Its Efforts In Ad Sales

    Yelp released its Q1 earnings report on Wednesday, disappointing investors and sending its share price downward. The company did emphasize its rapid mobile growth. Another big focus of the company’s earnings call was on its salesforce.

    On its previous earnings call, Yelp had talked about beefing up its sales staff, saying it planned to increase sales headcount by 40% this year, with growth coming mostly in the U.S. despite its international growth efforts.

    “Many of those folks [salespeople] tend to come to us either straight out of college or within a few years thereafter, but we take all comers and there’s all different kinds of folks,” said COO and Director Geoff Donaker at the time.

    Sales headcount in the first quarter grew roughly 25% year-over-year.

    On Wednesday’s call, CFO Rob Krolik said they implemented a territory change within their sales organization at the beginning of the year in an effort to reach more local businesses, and this had had a negative impact on sales productivity. The change was reversed in March, however, and productivity has begun to recover. He also said Yelp intends to grow the sales team focused on national, mid-market, and franchise businesses.

    Donaker further explained that every year for the last five or six years Yelp has reassigned territories at the beginning of the year, but this year for the first time, hey took geography out of the equation because they wanted to make sure they got leads in to the hands of reps more quickly. They figured out, however, that geography was more important than they thought.

    They figured this out by the end of February, noting the “truisms of local sports teams, scores, and weather and when you’re talking to two different clients right after the other turned out to be pretty important.” They reassigned territories based on geography, and immediately started seeing improvement in March and into April.

    The company’s brand advertising revenue was down 11% year-over-year. It attributes this to the shift to programmatic advertising and the “industry’s desire to have advertising products that are disruptive to the consumer experience.”

    40% of Yelp’s local advertising revenues in Q1 came from CPC advertisers, which was up from 32% in Q4.

    “This rapid shift to performance-based advertising has occurred faster than expected and we’re still relatively early in the development of our CPC product,” said CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. “We’re investing additional resources to scale functionality and expect CPC to remain a promising area of growth for our local advertising business.”

    Asked about how long it would take to roll out new pricing, Donaker said it wouldn’t take long and that it’s something they can do any time. He said it’s even already happening with parts of the salesforce selling “entry level” products to local businesses, which can start with smaller prices if they choose. These can be as low as as $25 or $50 a month for certain products.

    “That’s not typical but it is a product that is available today on a self-serve basis and increasingly available in full service as well,” he said.

    “What still needs to happen from a CPC perspective…kind of auction based pricing for us is no longer new, we’ve been doing this for a couple years now,” he later said. “It’s something that obviously there is a lot of expertise out in the marketplace and now with 90,000 advertisers and even more than that in terms of locations, there’s just a lot to be done to continue to make sure we’re doing the best we can for all our advertisers from the self and full serve perspective.”

    One analyst asked Donaker why Yelp isn’t building out its self-service ad business versus adding salesforce.

    He responded, “It’s growing quite fast as our full serve channel. We feel good about our 55% revenue growth overall and I think at the end of the day while we will continue to invest in our self-serve channel, what we continue to find in the marketplace is that local business owners actually want to talk to us on the phone. They want to be handheld through that experience. Whether they ultimately choose to do some of that work on a self-provisioning basis which we think of as sort of assisted self-serve or from a pure and full self-serve which is of course where we do all the setup for them. These are in many cases not marketing experts. They’re folks out running their businesses every day and they actually want to speak to somebody on the phone who can actually walk them through it.”

    This is, of course, where so many businesses have complained about their experiences with Yelp. There’s a documentary about that in the works, which surprisingly didn’t come up in the conversation on the conference call, despite making plenty of headlines in the media last month.

    Yelp maintained that the company will continue to hire more salespeople, and while additions were lighter than expected during the first quarter, Yelp expects to maintain that 40% increase for the year.

    The company also said it’s expanding the list of partners it’s working with in the programmatic field, where it’s already seen “fairly large growth”.

    Image via Yelp

  • Is Facebook More Small Business-Friendly Than You Thought?

    Facebook is dedicating more resources to trying to stay in the good graces of small businesses, even after it has continually made changes to its News Feed algorithm over the past year and a half, which have largely been detrimental to them.

    Do you think Facebook can still be a valuable asset to small businesses despite the organic reach issue? Let us know in the comments.

    According to the company, there are 40 million small businesses using Facebook, and last year, it enabled $227 billion of economic impact and 4.5 million jobs globally.

    Its latest small business efforts involve a new series of educational events and live chat support for advertisers.

    “Boost Your Business”

    First off, Facebook announced the 2015 Boost Your Business program, which is made up of a series of half-day and 2-hour pop up events, which will educate small businesses on best practices and the “latest marketing strategies and tools”.

    The company has partnered with famed Facebook marketing consultant Mari Smith, MailChimp, Shopify, Visa, and Zenefits to help with the events. Facebook’s own director of small business Jonathan Czaja will also be in attendance.

    The half-day events feature a small business panel and Q&A session moderated by Smith, a small business networking center in which attendees can speak with panelists, a “learn-how zone” with educational videos, Facebook/partner counters where attendees can speak with industry experts, two Facebook learning tracks (one on growing online sales and one on driving in-store sales), and partner sessions which attendees can choose from hosted by MailChimp, Shopify, and Visa. These events will also feature a keynote speech from Czaja.

    The half-day events cost $25 per ticket, and include a $50 Facebook ad coupon on arrival.

    The two-hour pop-up events include a network expo with small business organizations, the chance to meet business leaders and decision makers from the community, presentations of Facebook best practices, local small business panels, and the chance to win one of three $500 ad credit giveaways.

    Facebook describes Mari Smith as “one of the worlds most influential and knowledgeable new media thought leaders and one of Facebook’s top marketing experts.”

    She recently spoke with WebProNews about how businesses can utilize some of Facebook’s newer features in what could be a semi-preview of the types of things she’ll discuss at the events.

    In light of the organic reach blow Facebook has dealt to Facebook pages, we asked Smith at the time if she still sees Facebook as a viable platform for marketing a small business (especially one with a low marketing budget).

    She said, “Yes – I would recommend that low budget be allocated to what are called ‘dark posts.’ That is, ads in the News Feed that look like a Page wall post, but don’t actually appear on the Page. With very granular targeting to reach the exact target market, small businesses can do exceptionally well using Facebook. In addition, making use of custom audiences is a must. This is where a business can upload its own email database, or segments thereof, and place ads in the News Feed to that target group. Plus, using website custom audiences helps a business to retarget its website visitors with Facebook ads.”

    “Facebook recently introduced a new ad feature called ‘Conversion Lift Measurement’ to help advertisers track better ROI, especially offline sales,” she added. “Although the new metric is only available to select large advertisers, this is great news for small businesses when the feature eventually becomes available.”

    More on Conversion Lift Management here.

    “In addition, we’ll soon see the rollout of Facebook’s ‘Atlas’ advertising product that allows retargeting and tracking via mobile devices,” Smith said. “Retargeting typically works via cookies; however, cookies don’t work on mobile. The way Atlas works, is advertisers can then place ads to remarket to visitors whether they view on desktop, mobile or tablet. In other words, reaching the exact audience no matter what device they’re on.”

    “Page owners may wish to try out the new organic Interest Targeting feature to see if that helps create a greater reach,” she continued. “Prior to publishing a piece of content, admins can pre-select subsets of their fanbase. Another recent change is the ability to create a Post End Date – this stops a post from showing in News Feed at the specific time/date that you wish. Handy for, as Facebook states, ‘a publisher can use this to remove yesterday’s weather report from News Feed.’”

    We talked more about these features in an article here.

    Smith will only be appearing at the four half-day events in San Diego, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Boston. She had this to say on her website with regards to the event series:

    I’ve been a raving evangelist of the power of Facebook – specifically for business use – since I first joined the platform on May 4th, 2007. My 8th anniversary of being on Facebook (my ‘Faceversary’!) is coming up. This is truly the perfect timing for me to work directly with Facebook to support the deeper education of small and medium sized businesses – something I’m very passionate about, having lead numerous Facebook marketing live and virtual trainings for many years.

    As you know, there’s been innumerable changes to Facebook’s business pages, ads and News Feed algorithm over the years. What works for businesses in today’s Facebook world is very different to what worked even last year.

    I have long believed that the best antidote to lackluster results on Facebook is education. And, not just training on how to use the Facebook (ad) products; but a full-on integrated online marketing approach that includes optimized landing pages, lead generation, email marketing and customer relationship and retention strategies.

    Boost Your Business isn’t Facebook’s only new effort to educate businesses about getting more out of Facebook. About a month ago, Facebook announced BluePrint, a program that trains marketers on how to create better campaigns that “drive business results”.

    It’s kind of like a Khan Academy for Facebook marketing, and includes 40 learning paths/modules that can be accessed from desktop or mobile. They’re available to anyone with a Facebook account. Here’s a look at the different courses.

    Online Chat Support

    As mentioned earlier, Facebook is also launching online chat support for small business advertisers. They can access this by clicking “Get Help” on the Facebook for Business website. They can chat and screen share with a trained Ads Specialists and get “quick” answers to their Facebook advertising questions, according to the company.

    The feature will roll out in the US, UK, and Ireland for now, and will be made available to additional countries later in the year. Facebook says it will also test mobile chat and phone support this year.

    According to TechCrunch, Czaja says Facebook has “hundreds of reps” handling email and chat support, and that the company intends to grow that number “dramatically” in the coming years.

    Facebook Wants Businesses To Do More

    Facebook doesn’t just want to educate businesses and give them more tools. They also want businesses to “make themselves useful” as the Wall Street Journal reports. From that:

    Now, Facebook wants businesses to beef up their offerings, said vice president of small business Dan Levy. That could mean helping users book flights, get directions or schedule an appointment with a plumber. “We’re in the process of making a lot of updates to pages,” Levy said. “Increasingly the utility of pages for people and businesses is something that’s really important.”

    Some big businesses use their Facebook pages this way. Southwest Airlines LUV -3.47%, for example, has a “book now” button on its Facebook page that sends users to its website. Retailer J. Crew’s page links to its ecommerce site.

    Facebook is certainly forcing businesses and marketers to get more creative.

    “For brands who have put all their efforts into developing and growing a community on Facebook, the decline of organic reach feels like being denied access to their own fans. Brands now have to work harder to reach their target audiences, or, they simply have to cough up the money,” Moment.me CEO Dovev Goldstein recently told WebProNews. “For big brands with deep pockets, this might be less of a problem, but for small to medium businesses, this new development can seem to pose a big barrier to making social media work for them.”

    “While it might seem unfair to brands who have spent time and money growing their likes on Facebook, for social media marketers themselves, this development simply forces them to get more creative and clever in how they use the social medium as a way to promote their brand’s story,” he said. “Yes, the decline in organic reach does mean that social media marketing will have to be conducted differently, but it can also be looked at as a new opportunity to redefine how brands communicate in this space. Small businesses in particular have an opportunity to shine here. They can use their relatively small size to be hyper-targeted in their outreach, going after individual users as opposed to posting a promotional post designed to pull in more quantity over quality.”

    Is Video the Answer?

    Is video the answer to all of small businesses’ Facebook problems? Probably not, but all signs point to it being a pretty big help.

    The company has been constantly pushing video all year since its January announcement that video posts per person has increased 75% globally and 94% in the US. Numerous studies have since surfaced finding Facebook video to be a large focus of marketers and an effective tool. Video has trumped photos as the post format of choice for the best organic reach.

    “I think all marketers have the opportunity to do video, and that’s pretty exciting, including SMBs who would never be able to hire a film crew and buy a TV ad,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg during the company’s earnings call last week. “We’re seeing those put videos in. Over 1 million SMBs have posted videos and done really small ad buys around them. And that’s pretty cool because I don’t think there are probably 1 million advertisers who have bought TV ads in that same period of time.”

    A study from Visible Measures found that Facebook is more effective than YouTube for driving immediate growth in video viewership, though YouTube still dominates as the video’s life goes on.

    Organic Reach Picture Worsens, But Ad Effectiveness Gets Better

    In terms of organic reach in general, Facebook is still making algorithm changes that are most likely unfavorable for Pages. As recently as last week, Facebook announced yet more changes, one of which will show some people more content from their friends and less from Pages.

    On the paid side of things, however, the effectiveness of Facebook ads appears to only be getting better. We recently looked at a report from Nanigans, which found that click-through rates increased 17% quarter-over-quarter and about 260% year-over-year as advertisers have embraced different types of ad formats like video and multi-product ads.

    We also looked at a report fro Kinetic Social finding click-through rates to be up 266% year-over-year with the average CTR across all Facebook campaigns continuing to rise. Here’s what CTR looked like by ad type, placement and vertical:

    Facebook is Giving Businesses More Tools

    You can hate on Facebook for the organic reach thing all you want, but there’s no question that the company has released a multitude of new tools that businesses can potentially take advantage of. This includes a lot of ad tools, but also other things.

    On the ad side, there’s the Ads Manager app, which helps businesses manage their ad campaigns from their mobile devices. It also launched the Audience Network, its mobile ad network, which lets mobile apps monetize through Facebook’s active advertisers. Other semi-new ad-related offerings include local awareness ads, conversion lift measurement, and of course product ads.

    A couple months ago, Facebook announced that it reached 2 million active advertisers. At the time, we ran through many of the company’s latest ad offerings including, but not limited to these things.

    In January, Facebook launched Place Tips, which appear at the top of users’ News Feeds to give them information about the places they’re at.

    At the same time, the company announced that it’s testing Bluetooth beacons with select businesses that allow them to tap into this functionality. For brick-and-mortar businesses, this is a major area to keep an eye on as time goes on.

    Facebook has made numerous moves, which point to the social network becoming a better place for businesses and individuals to sell products. In addition to the multi-product ads, Facebook acquired shopping search engine TheFind to incorporate its technology into the Facebook ad ecosystem.

    Facebook also has a Buy button, which is still only available on a limited basis, but it did give advertisers call-to-action buttons in December, which include a “shop now” option. The company has also added new buying and selling features to Groups.

    Another recently launched a tool that has the potential to benefit small businesses is a new standalone Android app called Hello, which serves as a caller ID app, but also as a provider of local business search and information.

    Opportunities with Messenger

    It also added peer-to-peer payments to Messenger, not entirely unlike Square’s Square Cash offering, which that company recently turned into a small business marketing vehicle with $Cashtags.

    And speaking of Messenger, in addition to turning the product into its own developer platform (which could provide some business opportunities itself), Facebook announced last month that it is readying some business-specific features for it. Businesses will be able to connect with customers directly through this intimate messaging platform, potentially replacing email as a communication channel for some customers.

    As a business, you can enable your customers to connect with you via Messenger. If they elect to do so, you’ll be able to send them personalized updates and talk to them in real time.

    You can use custom layouts for order confirmation, shopping updates, etc. As the company says, “This lets your customers keep all their order info in one place and reach out to you if they need to change anything.”

    Facebook is hoping businesses will use this to improve their customer support experiences, which as studies have shown, are not particularly great when it comes to social media.

    Budget and Time are Obstacles

    Besides the reduction of organic reach on Facebook, small businesses’ biggest obstacles are their budgets and their time/resources for marketing.

    A study from BrightLocal found that 34% of small businesses allocate less than 10% of their marketing budgets to online channels, while 50% allocate less than 30% and only 29% allocate over 70%.

    “I found this figure a little perplexing when you consider the other responses SMBs gave,” CEO Myles Anderson told WebProNews. “75% said online was effective at bringing in new customers & 3 of top 4 most effective marketing channels are ‘digital’. Yet SMBs allocate a disproportionately low % of their marketing budgets online. I believe the reason is a combination of a few factors.”

    “Many business owners handle it themselves so don’t assign a monetary budget to online marketing,” he said. “The survey showed that 64% of business owners handle their internet marketing themselves. Online marketing isn’t applicable or doesn’t work for some businesses so they don’t invest. Some businesses rely solely on Word of Mouth to bring in new customers so don’t invest in online. Budgets are too low to play in the online arena.”

    The study found a direct correlation between the number of employees the business has and the monthly marketing budget.

    30% of those running the business on their own said online marketing was simply ‘not effective’. When you have to do everything, it’s not hard to understand why that might be. The fewer people a business has, the harder it is to do marketing right.

    According to another report from Thrive Analytics, 77% of small and medium-sized businesses don’t think they have the time or knowledge to manage their digital media efforts effectively, while 70% wish they could take advantage of digital media to help them expand their businesses and reach.

    That study did find that just after company websites (and we’re talking a one percentage point difference here), Facebook and/or social media sites are the biggest area of focus for budget growth planned by SMBs over the next twelve months.

    However, other research finds that small businesses haven’t increased their social presences at all over the past year:

    “When you think about our marketer growth, I think we have an ability to grow both the number of advertisers who use our platform, but also the percentage of their business that we get,” said Sandberg on the earnings call. “So 30 million small business pages continuing to grow [again, now 40 million]. We have an opportunity to turn those businesses into advertisers and marketers, and that’s what we’ve done successfully and we’re going to continue to focus on that. And we do that by building very simple ad products.”

    “There are some who spend a large portion of their budget on Facebook, but that’s actually very unusual,” she told investors. “For most people, even when they start spending with us, we’re a small portion of their budget. And when you look at the consumer time we get, we are not getting the equivalent amount of time or resources from our marketers really of any size, and therein lies our opportunity to grow.”

    Yes, Facebook wants you to advertise. The free ride to the News Feed is a thing of the past, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Facebook isn’t small business-friendly. The advertising opportunities are only improving, but even beyond that, the company is putting out a lot of interesting tools and features that businesses may be able to take advantage of.

    Either way, Facebook is clearly dedicated to trying to win over the minds of distraught small businesses. How do you think it’s doing? Discuss.

    Images via Facebook, Socialbakers, Nanigans, Kinetic Social, BrightLocal, Thrive Analytics, eMarketer

  • Apple Watch Stars in Most Satisfying ‘Will It Blend’ Yet

    For about a decade, Blendtec founder Tom Dickson has satisfied his urge to destroy something beautiful by placing expensive things inside one of his blenders and pulverizing them. This exercise, which has been performed for products dating as far back as the original iPod all the way through every generation of the iPhone, has also satisfied his urge to sell blenders – or at least get some positive PR.

    Yeah, the Will It Blend? series is a giant commercial. Duh. But it’s also a series in which you get to watch Apple products get ground up into black dust. So it certainly has a lot going for it.

    I probably haven’t watched a Will It Blend? in a while – but for some reason the thought of watching Dickson destroy an Apple Watch was intriguing. More so than the thought of other devices.

    Don’t you want to watch a perfectly good Apple Watch get shredded to pieces? I’m not disappointed in my choice.

  • Digital Video Ad Budgets Increase, Facebook Best For Short-Term Reach

    Digital Video Ad Budgets Increase, Facebook Best For Short-Term Reach

    A new study from Advertiser Perceptions and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) found that 68% of marketers and agency execs expect their digital video ad budgets to increase over the course of the next year.

    The study was conducted based on a survey of 305 buy-side professionals, who largely expect that greater investment in digital video will come from overall rising ad budgets this year and as funds shift away from broadcast and cable TV. 67% said they anticipate their broadcast and cable TV ad spend to stay the same or decrease in the next year.

    67% also believe that original digital video will become as important as original TV programming within the next 3 to 5 years.

    Across the automotive, CPG, financial services, retail, and telecommunications categories, advertisers expect to spend more on digital video. 67% expect to move a portion of spend out of TV to do so. CPG, financial services, and telecommunications marketers expect the biggest impact to be on their cable TV budgets. 63% in the automotive category expect to get the funding from expanding budgets.

    “This study demonstrates unequivocally that digital video is a fierce competitor for advertising dollars,” said Sherrill Mane, SVP, Research, Analytics, and Measurement at the IAB.

    A separate study from Visible Measures is out, which looks at video campaigns on Facebook and YouTube. It finds that “alternative video platforms” like Facebook have become more important to brands and that Facebook has not only grown “tremendously” for total viewing, but that it’s also now the most powerful tool for driving immediate growth in viewership for timely video content.

    That study found that for brands that post their campaigns on both Facebook and YouTube, Facebook dominates viewership immediately following a campaign’s release. For the campaigns it looked at in March, Facebook reached 85 percent of its viewership in the first week after launch, while YouTube only reached 63 percent of its viewership during that time. But don’t let that fool you. It also found that YouTube still dominates reach in the long run. It just takes longer.

    They credit both YouTube’s functionality and consumer behavior for making YouTube more effective in the long term. According to Visible Measures CEO Brian Shin, the decrease in Facebook’s share of viewership over the course of time highlights how differently Facebook and YouTube function for both consumers and brands.

    “If something is hot and of the moment, such as a newly released campaign, the Super Bowl, or even a cultural phenomenon like Fifty Shades of Grey, Facebook and similar social media sites are incredibly effective for driving the spread of timely content due to the trending nature of the News Feed,” he said. “But the strength of Facebook to promote trending content also highlights how powerful YouTube remains as a platform for continued viewership.”

    “Content discovery on Facebook is very much dependent on the Facebook News Feed, which is a function of what a user’s friends are sharing, as well as recommendations based on trends and a user’s interests. Because discovery is so dependent on sharing, viewership soon after content gets hot’ is strongest on Facebook,” says Visible Measures. “Conversely, YouTube acts as a depository for video and millions of users go there first, or arrive via Google search, to find video content. This user paradigm enables videos to have a much longer shelf-life on YouTube.”

    “While Facebook can be counted on for viral lift, if your video doesn’t ‘pop’ on Facebook it will vanish pretty quickly, whereas slow and steady evergreen content can pay dividends for a long time on YouTube,” marketing consultant Brian Honigman told us in January.

    According to Shin, Facebook will have to amp up its video discovery and search options if it wants to compete with YouTube for the long term.

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke a little bit about Facebook’s search efforts during the company’s earnings conference call last week.

    “If you think about the overall web, there’s a lot of public content that’s out there that any web search engine can go index and provide,” he said. “But a lot of what we can get at are recommendations on products and travel and restaurants and things that your friends have shared, they haven’t shared publicly, and knowing different correlations, or interesting things about what your friends are interested in, and that’s the type of stuff, those are questions that we can answer that no one else can answer, and that’s probably going to be what we continue to focus on doing first. And I think what you’re seeing is that as we enable more use cases and as we just get a lot of the basics right around performance and bringing the mobile features into parity and beyond what we’ve been able to do on desktop, the volume is growing quickly.”

    Though he wasn’t talking specifically about video with regard to search, the huge increase in video sharing on Facebook will only add pressure on Facebook to handle video search better. Right now, Facebook’s search feature doesn’t even include a video option. That definitely needs to change, and I have no doubt that it will in time.

    Facebook has been testing some functionality, which could help in the discoverability department. It’s trying a feature that automatically plays another video once the one the user is currently watching ends. This is something YouTube started doing a while back.

    Earlier this year, Facebook announced that video on the social network had increased 75% over the past year. Socialbakers, at the time, found that for the first time, brands were sharing Facebook videos on the social network more than YouTube videos. And with good reason. Facebook is said to give more weight to native videos in News Feed ranking.

    Socialbakers also recently found that Facebook video tends to get better organic reach than regular status updates, links, or photos.

    “The real growth point today is in videos,” it said. “While they are relatively more promoted than photos – 27% of all videos are promoted, compared to 17% of photos – there are so many more photos than videos that the new format is still far more effective at reaching audiences.”

    Facebook expects video specifically to bring it more mobile ad dollars.

    “Looking ahead, we believe video will play a significant role in bringing more marketers to mobile,” said COO Sheryl Sandberg during the earnings call. “More than 75% of global video views on Facebook occur on mobile – and we believe mobile video will become more important to marketers over time.”

    Asked about video ad pricing, CFO David Wehner said, ”Video is effectively winning in the auction if it’s higher priced. So if somebody’s willing to pay more for a video, it’s going to get served before another type of format ad. But there’s not really a price differential you’re paying for a video, it’s just what are you willing to pay into the system. So there’s not differential pricing by product, it’s just what are you willing to bid for the format that you want to show to the people that you want to show it to and that’s how the system works.”

    Last week, Facebook announced the launch of Anthology, a new marketing program that gives brands access to a group of well-known video publishers to improve the quality of video ads.

    Images via Facebook, Socialbakers

  • New Program To Add Business Value To Pinterest

    Pinterest just announced its new Marketing Developer Partners (MDP) program with the goal of helping businesses get more value of their Pinterest efforts.

    It’s basically like Pinterest’s version of similar programs from other social networks, such as Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program, which recently became Facebook Marketing Partners.

    “The program helps businesses optimize and scale their Pinterest marketing and improve Pinterest for Pinners,” a spokesperson for Pinterest tells WebProNews. “The initial MPD program is made up of a limited, carefully selected group of developer partners who meet the needs of existing businesses on Pinterest and align with Pinterest’s core value of putting Pinners first.”

    These partners include: Ahalogy, Buffer, Curalate, Expion, Newscred, Percolate, Shoutlet, Spredfast, Sprinklr and Tailwind.

    Ahalogy focuses on a Pinterest-specific marketing solution. Buffer lets brands publish, schedule, and measure performance of Pins from a single dashboard. Curalate focuses on helping brands use imagery to build awareness, engage customers, drive traffic, and make sales. Expion is about managing content and customer relationships in social channels, and lets enterprises manage multiple brands or markets from one interface. NewsCred gives brands access to a large content marketplace and original content creators. Percolate lets brands manage all their marketing activities. Shoutlet helps brands build relationships through data acquisition, customer insights, and enterprise integration. Spredfast lets marketers manage social connections and amplify content. Sprinklr enables enterprise brands to connect with customers on any platform, and Tailwind lets brands integrate content creation, publishing, community engagement, analytics, and reporting into a single platform.

    All partners are using Pinterest’s Content Publishing API to make it easier to create, schedule, and publish pins and boards.

    The spokesperson tells us Pinterest is also in the early days of testing its Ads API in the U.S. in an effort to help advertisers optimize their campaigns and find “sustained success” on Pinterest. MDPs are focused on these two APIs.

    “We excited to work with these Marketing Developer Partners and to support businesses on Pinterest,” says Pinterest’s Jyri Kidwell. “We also think it’s important that our Pinners have the best possible experience on Pinterest and continue to see high quality Pins, so we’re going to keep our MDP standards high as the program expands in the future.”

    All of this is designed to make it easier for marketers to find content to pin, and ultimately to pin that content in the most effective way possible. The company has also been hard at work on making things easier for all users in general.

    Last week, Pinterest shared some new information on how it uses predictive technology to suggest boards for users to pin content to. It’s using smarter technology for this, and says early results have shown an increase in pinning and a reduction in the number of abandons on repin flows.

    One of the biggest changes Pinterst has made in recent memory, in terms of making it easier to find valuable content, was the launch of Guided Search, which Microsoft’s Bing search engine is now basically emulating.

    Earlier this month, Pinterest announced the launch of a new Pin It flow to make savings things easier and faster. More on that here. It also made changes to make it easier to share content to Facebook.

    Image via Pinterest

  • Sheryl Sandberg On What Facebook Is Doing For Small Businesses

    In recent months there have been a lot of articles written about how Facebook is hurting or “failing” small businesses.

    In November, Tech Times wrote that “Facebook is killing small business entrepreneurs”.

    Last month, Fast Company published an article called “How Facebook is Failing Local Businesses“.

    Are these stories exaggerated? It really depends on the business, but in general, probably. Either way, it seems worth taking a look at what the company said about small and medium sized businesses on its earnings call on Wednesday.

    In her prepared remarks, COO Sheryl Sandberg said, “In Q2 of last year, we shared that we reached 30 million active business Pages on Facebook. This number continues to grow as more and more small businesses are using our free Pages product – and we remain focused on converting these Page owners into advertisers. One way we’re doing this is by providing simple, easy-to-use products; over 80% of new advertisers start with entry-level tools like a promoted post or Page like. We are increasingly focused on making sure these tools work well on mobile. We’re also educating marketers on how to use Facebook more effectively. We recently launched two online training resources: Blueprint, for large clients and agencies, and ‘Learn How’ videos for small businesses. These efforts are paying off. In Q1 we announced that we now have over 2 million active advertisers.”

    She talked about SMBs more during the Q&A session at the end of the call. Here are her words on the subject (via Seeking Alpha’s transcript):

    I think all marketers have the opportunity to do video, and that’s pretty exciting, including SMBs who would never be able to hire a film crew and buy a TV ad. We’re seeing those put videos in. Over 1 million SMBs have posted videos and done really small ad buys around them. And that’s pretty cool because I don’t think there are probably 1 million advertisers who have bought TV ads in that same period of time.

    …

    On SMBs, we have a very small test in the U.S. We started last quarter for buy-on Facebook, and that enables people to buy products from merchants with a buy button on Pages, and it is a product that is used and aimed at SMBs. We’re also very focused on helping SMBs have a presence, especially a mobile presence. 35% of SMBs in the United States, which is probably ahead of most other countries, don’t have a web presence at all, and an even smaller percentage of SMBs have a mobile web presence or any kind of mobile presence that works. And so Pages are a good and free and easy way to have a mobile presence, and that’s something we’re very focused on growing.
    …

    When you think about our marketer growth, I think we have an ability to grow both the number of advertisers who use our platform, but also the percentage of their business that we get. So 30 million small business pages continuing to grow. We have an opportunity to turn those businesses into advertisers and marketers, and that’s what we’ve done successfully and we’re going to continue to focus on that. And we do that by building very simple ad products.

    And then when you think about the percentage of spend we have, what I said before on this call, which is we only have a small percentage of even our large customers, that’s true of our small customers, too. Now, there are some who spend a large portion of their budget on Facebook, but that’s actually very unusual. For most people, even when they start spending with us, we’re a small portion of their budget. And when you look at the consumer time we get, we are not getting the equivalent amount of time or resources from our marketers really of any size, and therein lies our opportunity to grow.

    One of the things that has been the biggest thorn in the side of small businesses (especially those with lower marketing budgets) is the fact that Facebook keeps changing its News Feed algorithm in ways that prevent Facebook Page posts from being seen by more people without having to pay for visibility.

    In fact, the company just announced more changes this week, which don’t look particularly good for these businesses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed these on the earnings call as well, though his words probably aren’t of much comfort to those who have been suffering from these changes.

    Facebook did make another announcement this week, which could potentially be good for small businesses with Facebook pages. It launched a new Android app that provides users with Facebook information for caller ID as well as business search functionality. These separate Facebook apps, however, don’t always gain a ton of users, so it’s hard to say what kind of impact this one will have.

    Image via Facebook

  • Does Your Business Have The Time To Get Online Marketing Right?

    Does Your Business Have The Time To Get Online Marketing Right?

    The fewer people a business has, the harder it is to do marketing right.

    Most small and medium-sized businesses don’t think they have the time or knowledge to manage their digital media efforts effectively, according to a new report from Thrive Analytics. 77% said as much, while 70% wish they could take advantage of digital media to help them expand their businesses and reach.

    Is a lack of time preventing you from being able to take care of the marketing strategy you’d like to employ? Let us know in the comments.

    The data comes from a survey of over 1,100 SMBs collected in January.

    “The problem is most small business owners feel current marketing providers don’t have their best interest in mind,” says Jason Peaslee of Thrive Analytics. “Owners often feel marketing providers push “flavor of the month” products on them and don’t bother to learn what they actually need. Current providers are falling short on several fronts including poor product performance (60 percent), and poor service levels (55 percent). This contributes to high digital product churn rates (+40 percent depending on the product) and low satisfaction scores given to current providers.”

    “Many smaller sized businesses have tried to go the Do-It-Yourself route leveraging their can-do spirit,” he writes. “However, they are falling short in a number of areas as well. Only, 55% have websites and those that do have websites don’t have mobile optimized ones (40% percent). Only 31% have a strategy to attract the mobile consumer and those that manage their own websites update them infrequently (58% percent every six months or more). This further illustrates the fact they need help as well.”

    The report finds that 51% of small business owners have a positive outlook on their business for the year, and 31% are willing to increase budgets and invest in digital solutions if it makes sense for their business.

    The biggest areas of anticipated growth are company websites, social media, mobile advertising, display ads, paid search, SEO, online video, and email marketing. Most of the categories with less anticipated growth are offline channels like yellow pages, radio, magazine ads, TV, newspapers, and outdoor advertising.

    You can find the report here.

    We recently looked at findings from BrightLocal, which found that smaller businesses are more afraid of increasing their online budgets compared to those with larger headcounts. Here’s a look at company size vs. planned spend on internet marketing in 2015 from that:

    “From further analysis we can see that larger organizations are more bullish about increasing their online spend, while smaller (which make up the majority of our respondents), are less assertive,” said BrightLocal’s Ross Marchant at the time. “Not only is there a higher sense of uncertainty in the group, but there are far more who confidently say they will not increase their online marketing spend.

    eMarketer is pointing to recent polling by Ebiquity for American Express OPEN, which despite Thrive’s findings that social is ranked as the second most effective marketing method, found that small businesses haven’t increased their social presences over the past year:

    Businesses not utilizing Facebook more might be missing out on some serious clicks, as research from Nanigans we looked at earlier shows CTRs have jumped 260% over the past years as businesses take more advantage of video and multi-product ads. More on all of that here.

    Is your business struggling with online marketing because of time and/or a lack of resources? Do you expect things to improve in the near future? Let us know in the comments.

    Images via Thrive Analytics, BrightLocal, eMarketer

  • Facebook CTRs Up A Whopping 260% Year-Over-Year [Report]

    Click-through rates for Facebook ads have gotten tremendously better over the past year if findings in a new report are any indication. This comes as advertisers adopt different types of ads and become less reliant on organic post reach, which has declined significantly for many of them.

    Nanigans released its Global Facebook Advertising Benchmark Report for Q1, which it says represents ad impressions delivered by those using its software. It finds that global CTRs increased 17% quarter-over-quarter and about 260% year-over-year.

    This, according to the ad tech company, indicates that advertisers continue to “effectively reach and engage relevant audiences” on the social network.

    “Global CTRs for Facebook ads continued to rise in Q1 2015, signaling growing engagement rates across desktop and mobile,” the report says. “Average CTRs in Q1 were 0.81%, up 17% from Q4 2014 and up 260% from Q1 2014. Nanigans customers in the ecommerce vertical saw CTRs increase 12% quarterover-quarter and 281% over the previous year.”

    “Companies advertising desktop and mobile games saw average CTRs dip 9% in Q1,” it adds. “Mobile App Install Ad CTRs increased 3% quarter-over-quarter, but decay in other ad units brought the over all average down. A longer-term view shows increasing engagement among gaming advertisers, with CTRs increasing 150% year-over-year.”

    The report also finds that advertisers have increasingly adopted newer ad products from Facebook over the past quarter, with spend on video ads increasing 2.8x quarter-over-quarter and spend on multi-product ads increasing 5.2x.

    CPCs declined by 17% quarter-over-quarter, and CPMs decreased 3%, but according to Nanigans this is due to seasonality and the quarter following a “competitive Q4 holiday shopping season.”

    Facebook has made a ton of improvements to its ad products over the past year, which have no doubt added considerably to the impressive rise in CTRs. In February, the company announced that it reached the milestone of two million active advertisers. At the time, we reflected on many of these improvements.

    You can find the full Nanigans report here (via Marketing Land).

    Images via Nanigans

  • You Thought Brands Were Into Facebook Video Now…

    As you know, Facebook video is booming, as is marketers’ interest in it. The company revealed earlier this year that the number of video posts per person increased 75% globally and 94% in the US over the course of one year. Globally, the amount of video from people and brands in News Feed grew 3.6x year-over-year. And that was as of three months ago. A much bigger deal has been made of Facebook video in that time.

    Mixpo conducted a survey among 125 agencies, brands, and publishers to get a feel for their existing video marketing habits and their plans for the future.

    “In August of last year, comScore found that for the first time Facebook had more video views than YouTube on desktop,” the report says. “Since that time, the two have been battling it out month by month for the top spot. Facebook’s meteoric rise is driven by their growth in video views per person, which have nearly doubled year-over-year from January 2014 compared to January 2015. With Facebook’s reported video views exceeding three billion per day in January of 2015, a figure that had tripled since September of 2014, that means comScore’s desktop numbers only represent one tenth of Facebook’s total video views.”

    Advertisers and agencies plan to run video campaigns more across the board, including on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Vine, Google+, Snapchat, and even Pinterest (in that order), according to the report. Last year, when Mixpo conducted a similar survey, more respondents (77.8%) said they planned to run YouTube videos compared to 63% for Facebook. This year, however, it’s 87% for Facebook compared to 81.5% for YouTube.

    This doesn’t come as much of a surprise. SocialBakers recently shared data showing that brands are already sharing native Facebook videos on Facebook more than YouTube videos, which was pretty much unheard of a year prior.

    Mixpo notes that there is also substantial interest in Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

    One interesting finding from the report is that even though Facebook is a social network/marketing platform, and video advertising plans are all over various social platforms, 83% of companies don’t consider their social team the primary strategy driver for ads run in social.

    “Several years ago, social campaigns were all about generating earned media through viral content,” says the report. “These campaigns were primarily managed by people with the word “social” in their title. Only recently have the paid media offerings of the social networks truly matured, which their advertising revenue growth reflects. In 2014, social advertising spending grew 40% to $8.5 billion3. Accordingly, 60% of social campaigns; which are now mostly paid; are falling under the purview of digital media teams rather than social teams. In fact, social teams only drove the primary planning for social campaigns for 17% of the respondents.”

    Also interesting are the metrics advertisers are placing the most value on. Views and completion rates are both absent from the top three.

    The free report also walks you through some case studies for Facebook video.

    Images via SocialBakers, Mixpo

  • Square Gives Small Businesses Attractive New Email Marketing Option

    Square just announced a new service that might make email marketing service providers a little nervous. It’s called Square Marketing, and comes with an email marketing solution for small businesses, who use Square for payments.

    It’s unclear exactly how many active merchants Square has under its belt, but according to stats the company released late last year, its merchants make up the 13th largest American retailer. The company told AdAge it has “millions of small businesses” using Square to process transactions. That’s a lot of small businesses who can potentially rely on Square for their email marketing efforts.

    Square Marketing is part of a new suite of “customer engagement tools,” which the company says is “uniquely suited for local businesses,” and link online marketing efforts to sales in the real world for those using Square Register.

    “You can choose from several beautiful, customizable email templates to create a promotion, an announcement, or an event invitation,” the company explains. “And Square gives you something no one else can offer: preorganized lists of customers who’ve already visited your store — whether loyal, casual, or lapsed — so you can target the right audience with the right message from day one. You might invite loyal customers to a ‘Friends and Family’ event or maybe re-engage lapsed customers with a special deal.”

    “More importantly, Square Marketing closes the loop for brick-and-mortar businesses,” it adds. “Traditional email marketing tools show how many people opened your email. But with Square, you see precisely how marketing drives in-store sales, whether customers come back, and how much they spend when they do.”

    This all sounds quite attractive for small businesses with physical stores – many of which are still only tip-toeing around online marketing in the first place.

    According to the company, the offering caters to a speedy email marketing process, as the templates and distribution lists it builds let you “go from idea to sent email campaign in minutes.”

    The Square Dashboard shows results from the email campaigns, including return on investment for each email.

    There’s a free version in which you have to pay ten cents per email and one that costs $15 a month for unlimited email and additional features. Here’s a comparison of what you get with each.

    Square has been running a pilot test of the service with some sellers. Those who sent out promotions saw open and redemption rates at 2x the industry average, according to the company. One user, who owns a bakery, said she sends out promotions once very two weeks to about 800 customers, and that it’s been a great way to get people into her store.

    “Those numbers translate into real dollars,” it says. “Square sellers generated nearly $1,000,000 in sales tied directly to promotion redemptions.”

    It says it surveyed its merchants and that 80% of respondents said they’re “very likely” to recommend Square Marketing to colleagues.

    Images via Square

  • Using Personalized Data Critical To Brand Loyalty

    As more consumer data is available to brands than ever before, you might think that brands would be able to capitalize on this, and know their customers better than they know themselves, and in turn inspire increased brand loyalty. You’d be wrong, however.

    Earlier, we looked at a new study from IBM and Econsultancy, which found that businesses think they know their customers pretty well, while consumers strongly disagree. Considering that consumers are the ones who get to make the call about whether or not to be loyal to a brand, that’s probably the side you should be listening to.

    “Researchers asked consumers if they had changed providers in the last 12 months,” explains IBM. “The question focused on several service areas known to be inherently sticky, including banking, mobile, internet and satellite/cable. 49 percent of consumers said they changed service providers in the last 12 months with experience-related factors playing a prominent role.”

    30%, it found, switched because of provider failure, while 51% cited customer experience as the number one factor. 59% switched because the new company offered something better, with 42% referring to the actual products as the top factor, followed by experience at 29%.

    “The customer is in control but this is not the threat many marketers perceive it to be. It’s an opportunity to engage and serve the customer’s needs like never before,” said Deepak Advani, General Manager at IBM Commerce. “By increasing investments in marketing innovations, teams can examine consumers at unimaginable depths including specific behavior patterns from one channel to the next. With this level of insight brands can become of customer’s trusted partner rather than an unwanted intrusion.”

    Loyalty360, the loyalty marketers’ association, just shared some comments from Tom Santora, chief marketing officer at Omni Hotels & Resorts.

    “Brand personalization has never been more vital than it is today to capture and maintain brand loyalty,” he told them. “Omni has been rooted in personalization/customization way before the days of Big Data. We are in the business of creating memorable experiences for our guests–and with that, personalization was a key driver of that for us. Ten or 15 years ago, this was done at the property level, through guest interactions, and some through follow-up email surveys, etc. Take for example, a bellman, who will ask guests what they’re up to today, and then ask them about it upon return–that is personalization.”

    “Brands have access to more data about their customers than ever before,” he is quoted as saying. “Along with that comes the opportunity to personalize and therefore maximize the brand experience of our guests– both online and in-hotel–so that they will return and develop longer-term loyalty. Now we can help personalize a stay based on information collected from a variety of sources. A few off the top of my head at Omni include: Medallia scores, Trip Advisor feedback, social channel monitoring and responses, and a customizable program for Select Guest loyalty members.”

    He went on to talk about a system the company has developed for its loyalty program in which members themselves build and customize their stays.

    Last week, Bond Brand Loyalty released some findings from a survey, which found that a third of consumers agree they would not be loyal to a brand if it were not for a loyalty program. 70% of consumers were found to be a top contributor to brand loyalty, which ranked higher than factors like product and service availability, brand communications, and even overall price, according to the firm, which polled 10,000 consumers on loyalty initiatives across the retail, consumer packaged goods, financial services, entertainment, and dining industries.

    “Brands with established loyalty programs now must make the shift to the future of loyalty and an experience-based model that is consistent with the overall brand,” said Bond Brand Loyalty CEO Bob Macdonald. “It’s more important than ever that companies focus on their best customers, and their data, to design a more personalized and authentic experience, which can help build stronger, more meaningful bonds with customers.”

    You can find that full report here.

    Related: Study Looks At Top Brands For Customer Loyalty

  • Brands Don’t Know Their Customers As Well As They Think They Do

    IBM and Econsultancy have some new research out suggesting a “massive perception gap” between how well brands think they are marketing to their customers and how well customers actually think brands know them. Businesses think they’re doing a pretty good job. Consumers, not so much.

    Do you think you know your customers well or do you need some improvement in that area? Share your thoughts.

    The study, which surveyed businesses and customers specifically in the United States, found that about 90% of marketers do agree that personalization of marketing campaigns is critical to their success. Even still, 80% of consumers polled don’t think the average brand understands them as individuals. This is despite consumers sharing more personal details with businesses than ever before. Some how, brands are still failing to make the most of it.

    It probably comes back to the smart data versus big data concept.

    “2015 is about smart data,” James Whatley, the social media director at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, London, recently wrote a blog post. “With Facebook killing its organic reach, the free ride is over – and you’ll have to start remembering to commit media money to hit your social targets. This is not news. The thing that continuously blows minds is just how niche you can get with that detail. In the autumn of 2014, one enterprising data monkey even managed to get his targeting so perfect that he set about specifically serving ads to his roommate as part of an elaborate prank. That’s mind-blowing.”

    “In 2015, it would be great if the creative industries could get familiar with the smart data available to them,” he added.

    The IBM/Econsultancy research found that 80% of marketers “strongly” believe they have a holistic view of individual customers and segments across interactions and channels. They also strongly believe in their ability to deliver “superior experiences” offline (75%), online (69%), and on mobile devices (57%). Yet just 47% of marketers say they’re able to deliver relevant communications.

    Worse yet, customers don’t think they’re getting personalized experiences. Only 37% said their preferred retailer understands them as an individual. And that’s the preferred one. Only 22% said the average retailer understands them. 21% said communications from their average retailer are “usually relevant”. 35% said communications from their preferred retailers are “usually relevant”.

    According to IBM, this all may contribute to why shoppers leave a brand’s website without completing their purchase. Shopping cart abandonment is, after all, only growing as an issue for businesses.

    “One explanation for relevancy void may be a lack of innovation for the multi-channel lives we all lead,” IBM said. “According to the study, only 34 percent of marketers said they do a good job of linking their online and offline customer experiences. With the vast majority of dollars spent offline and the majority of product research happening on the Internet, the two are already linked for consumers but this gulf must close for marketers if they are to advance. One issue is the technology of integration, with only 37 percent of marketers saying they have the tools to deliver exceptional customer experiences.”

    It’s all effecting customer loyalty as well. The survey asked consumers about changing providers in several areas “known to be inherently sticky,” only to find that 49% claimed to have changed providers in the last year with experience-related factors playing a prominent role.

    30% said they switched because of failure on the part of the provider, and 51% specifically cited customer experience as the top factor.

    “The customer is in control but this is not the threat many marketers perceive it to be. It’s an opportunity to engage and serve the customer’s needs like never before,” said Deepak Advani, GM at IBM Commerce. “By increasing investments in marketing innovations, teams can examine consumers at unimaginable depths including specific behavior patterns from one channel to the next. With this level of insight brands can become of customer’s trusted partner rather than an unwanted intrusion.”

    Getting better at customer service would probably help a great deal too. As we explored in another article, businesses are having a tough time getting it right online.

    Are you getting personalization right or is this a struggle? Let us know in the comments.

    Via Digiday

    Image via PR Newswire

  • 5 Potential Ways To Increase Email Signups

    After all these years, email is still the most effective online marketing channel. Chances are you’re spending a lot of time trying to improve your search and social campaigns, but don’t forget how valuable email subscribers are. You need more of those.

    How do you try to increase your email sign-ups? Share your ideas in the comments.

    There are tons of things you can do to potentially increase your signups. To cover them all adequately would require a book rather than an article, but here are five quick hits from people who have put together larger lists of ideas (click any of the links for even more tips).

    1. Make it easier to subscribe

    BufferSocial says it was able to double email signups in 30 days by essentially having great content and making it easy for people to sign up. The content is a given, but how easy are you making it for people to sign up?

    The company says it went from just using a slideup to using 9 different means of collecting signups: SlideUp, HelloBar, HomePage, PostScript, SideBar, Twtiter, Facebook, and Qzzr. The slideup still accounted for the biggest amount of signups, but the hellobar was a close second.

    2. Leverage webinars

    WordStream recommends utilizing webinars as a means of collecting emails.

    “Use your webinar signup form to collect email addresses before viewers attend the advice,” it says. “Bonus benefit: hosting a webinar gets your name out there and shows that you are a knowledge powerhouse to be reckoned with and admired. Who wouldn’t want to sign up for your newsletter?”

    3. Make your button interactive.

    KissMetrics suggests making your submit button interact with the user.

    “What if you made the submit button interact with and react to the user’s action?” it says. “One marketer did just that, testing a submit button with a red border that changed to green when the mouse was moved over it. His little conversion test resulted in a 40%+ opt in rate. The reasoning behind the color change is that it visually and subconsciously moves the user from “Stop” to “Go”, giving them the initiative to make that click.”

    4. Make people feel like they’re part of something

    Copyblogger suggests showing people that they are part of a group – a group that likes your emails.

    “Why not show them what other people are saying about becoming a subscriber?” it asks. “This is especially effective if you can get a testimonial from someone respected in the industry. Don’t leave your testimonials to your testimonials page, put them where people need them. If you have a good number, display it. If you get a lot of comments, be sure your comment number is displayed at the top of your posts. If your number of monthly visits is reasonably impressive, make that prominent. If you have a good twitter following, highlight that. Large numbers immediately help new subscribers feel like they are becoming a part of something.”

    5. Encourage Forwarding

    Anyone can forward an email regardless of its contents, but it might not hurt to include a link in yours encouraging recipients to do so. It just might mean more signups.

    “People respond well to recommendations from those they trust,” says WiredImpact. “As such, adding a simple ‘Forward to a Friend’ link in your email newsletter can help to improve the reach of your messages and add interested subscribers to your email list. Such a link can turn your subscribers into brand advocates, allowing them to send your message to their friends. Additionally, the recipients of forwarded messages will likely be fairly receptive to at least exploring your organization if someone they trust is sending it their way.”

    Think about it. If someone is forwarding your email to someone, it’s because they think it’s specifically relevant to that person. If that person then subscribes, that’s a valuable addition to your list.

    Don’t forget to get them to open your emails once they’ve signed up. Here are some tips for subject lines that might help in that department.

    Do you utilize any of these ways of increasing sign-ups? Which ones? Let us know in the comments.

  • Study Looks At Marketer Perceptions of Mobile Ads

    Study Looks At Marketer Perceptions of Mobile Ads

    The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a new study conducted by Ovum looking at over 200 brand marketers and their perceptions of mobile advertising. It found that most (76%) perceive programmatic buying to be an important development in mobile advertising, but that few are currently buying programmatically.

    According to the study, two in five (41%) marketers said mobile programmatic advertising would help them reach their target audiences, but only 27% are actually buying inventory that way. 18% use private exchanges and 17% use open exchanges. Some use both.

    “It is clear that programmatic advertising is strongly embedded in the minds of many mobile marketers,” said Anna Bager, SVP, Mobile and Video at the IAB. “However, there is still much work to be done before mobile programmatic can reach its full potential. IAB is committed to educating mobile marketers about the benefits of this growing format and, towards that end, recently released a Mobile Programmatic Playbook. Our efforts on the mobile programmatic front have only just begun, and we look forward to increased adoption as familiarity improves.”

    73% said they’re interested in connected TV advertising opportunities, while 69% are interested in opportunities in cars. 66% are interested in wearables. The IAB notes that mobile marketers that rate themselves as being “fairly or very experienced” at mobile see greater potential for these platforms (80% connected TVs, 78% connected cars, 75% wearables).

    Here’s a look at buying habits:

    The study found that 65% have been spending more on mobile over the past two years, and 9% have increased their mobile budget by over 50%. Budgets being affected by mobile ad substitution include PC/desktop digital (31%), TV (31%), Outdoor (20%), and Radio (18%).

    87% of marketers say they’re satisfied or fairly satisfied with the performance of their mobile ads, while 8% say they’re completely satisfied. 14% expect their companies’ mobile ad budgets to increase by over half in the next two years. 57% they expect them to rise by under half.

    Privacy concerns remain with 37% indicating privacy is a very important issue compared to 22% in 2013. Other concerns include device operating system fragmentation, lack of standardized metrics for measurement, lack of agency expertise in mobile, and there being too many different ways to source or buy mobile inventory.

    “With mobile taking a more prominent role in consumers’ lives each year, an uptick in marketers’ potential concerns surrounding mobile privacy is no surprise,” said Mike Zaneis, EVP, Public Policy, and General Counsel at the IAB. “The IAB is in full support of the Digital Advertising Alliance’s work on this front. Its recent release of new user-friendly tools for mobile choice and transparency brings new level of consumer control to the fast-growing mobile medium.”

    Here’s a word cloud looking at thoughts on the state of mobile advertising on one word:

    It looks like advertisers are pretty optimistic.

    You can find the study here.

    Images via IAB/Ovum

  • How Brands Are Generating Engagement On Instagram

    A shockingly low percentage of brands are using Instagram despite its potential for excellent engagement, according to Yesmail study we recently looked at. That will likely change over time, but for the time being, brands have a great deal to gain in a space that is significantly less crowded than Facebook.

    Are you utilizing Instagram in your marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments.

    Socialbakers has put together a new set of statistics about Instagram engagement. According to the firm, 6% of all Instagram posts were videos in 2014.

    “That may not sound like much, but it’s a 600% growth rate year-on-year,” writes Socialbakers’ Alexandria McCulloch. “We took a look at more than 2,000 brand, media, and celebrity profiles and analyzed over 600,000 brand and media posts to get a clear picture of 2014 on Instagram.

    Here’s a look at average profile interactions on the top 10 most engaging profiles across the celebrity, media, and brand categories.

    “According to the data, celebrities received 3× more interactions than the most engaging brands,” says McCulloch. “Notice here that the top brands and media are garnering similar levels of interactions. With so much talk about the changes in the News Feed on Facebook, this demonstrates that Instagram is somewhat of an equalizer among other platforms in terms of interactions.”

    Indeed Facebook’s News Feed changes are driving brands to Instagram.

    “Facebook’s News Feed algorithm restricts the organic reach of content on the platform, and is particularly punishing for brands with large followings (500k+),” says L2 in its recent Instagram Intelligence Report. In contrast, Instagram communities defy gravity, with no negative correlation between a brand’s follower count and engagement rate.”

    Brands’ follower counts grew 26 percent overall last year, according to that.

    While video on Instagram may be on the rise, it’s still largely a photo sharing service, and photos get the highest volume of interactions at 13% on average, according to Socialbakers.

    Have you considered how brands are using Instagram’s filters? Believe it or not, most aren’t even using them. Take a look at this:

    “81% brands’ photos are posted under a normal filter (#nofilter) – which indicates that they’re probably already touched-up or altered in another third party program before being uploaded to Instagram,” writes McCulloch. “Importantly, it also shows that brands care more about the network than the actual photo-editing capabilities. Brands know their Instagram followers are more interested in beautiful images that tell a story than any filter or shadow alterations.”

    The research shows the services, alcohol, auto, retail, and beauty industries use filters more often than others, and that brands are only stylizing their videos 10% of the time.

    Here’s a look at average engagement rate by the length of the text that accompanies a post:

    And here’s how brands are using hashtags on Instagram:

    So why aren’t more brands taking advantage of Instagram?

    Bob Sybydlo, Director, Market Intelligence and Deliverability at Yesmail tells WebProNews, “Instagram is still a fairly new platform, and is late in the advertising game – the platform introduced sponsored posts just two years ago. It’s possible that before 2013, marketers didn’t view Instagram as a must-have, but rather as a nice to have. As engagement and users increase, I have no doubt that we’ll see more brands adopt the platform.”

    More insight from him on the subject here.

    Earlier this month, Instagram announced that it’s testing a new way for brands to deliver ads on the network with its Carousel ad format.

    Just this week, the company launched a new photo collage app called Layout.

    If you’re a business just looking to get started on Instagram, here are some tips on that.

    Why do you think businesses aren’t taking more advantage of Instagram? Discuss.

    Images via Socialbakers, Instagram

  • Facebook Teaches Marketers Some Things With Blueprint

    Facebook marketing hasn’t gotten any easier over the years, and perhaps in recognition of that fact, the company just announced some new resources for marketers aimed at helping educate them on better leveraging the social network as a marketing platform.

    “At Facebook, we’re working to provide resources and tools that help every marketer, including the two million businesses advertising on Facebook, grow their business,” the company says in a blog post. “Earlier this year we launched Ads Manager app to help businesses manage their campaigns on the go. Today we’re launching new educational resources that provide answers and training to all Facebook marketers, from small businesses to big brands and agencies.”

    The first one is called Blueprint, and is described as an education program that trains agencies, partners, and marketers on how to use Facebook to create better campaigns that “drive business results”. It includes online courses as well as in-person training and certification.

    There are 40 learning paths/modules, and you can use it from the desktop or mobile. It’s available to anyone with a Facebook account. You select the courses you want to take, and take them at your leisure.

    “In addition to using our tools and platform more effectively, you’ll have insights and knowledge in Facebook that others won’t,” the company says. “So you can have a specialized skillset to offer clients looking to take their marketing to the next level.”

    When you start, you give Facebook your company name and work email address, then plan your path. You can start by choosing one of eleven categories: Introduction to Facebook, Best Practices, Facebook Pages, Purchasing Ads, Managing Your Ads, Advertising Objectives, Targeting, Campaign Optimization, Reporting and Measurement, Additional Insights, and All Courses.

    Here are the courses/paths offered (along with their descriptions):

    1. A/B Testing

    A/B Testing can help you compare the performance of two different ads for the same campaign. This course will teach you how to take advantage of Facebook’s ad optimizer so that you can identify which of your ads are delivering the best results.

    2. Ad Policies

    The Facebook ads team has developed a set of guidelines that keep Facebook the fun and safe place people have come to expect. This course will help you understand those guidelines while sharing and promoting your products and services.

    3. Ad Reporting

    Facebook Ad Reports gather and display the metrics from your campaigns, ad sets, and ads. This course will teach you to understand the metrics in these reports so that you can reach your business goals, as well see who is engaging with your ads.

    4. Ads Create Tool

    There are a variety of ways to advertise on Facebook. This course will walk you through the various options for ads, as well as help you create ads on Facebook that will accomplish the marketing objective you have for your business.

    5. Ads Manager

    Ads Manager is where you can view, edit and access performance reports for all your campaigns, ad sets and ads.

    6. All Content [Curriculum]

    Selecting this curriculum will enroll you in ALL available courses – go for it!

    7. App Engagement

    Encouraging people to use your apps after they have installed them is important to any app developer. This course will show you how to persuade people to use and advertised app once they have installed them.

    8. App Installs

    Mobile app ads are an increasingly popular method of advertising. This course will show you how Facebook can help encourage people to install your apps.

    9. Boost Your Posts

    Having your posts visible in people’s News Feed can lead to increased engagement, which often allows you to reach even more people. This course will show you how to boost your posts so they are more likely to appear in your audience’s News Feed.

    9. Brand Best Practices

    Facebook is one of the best places to raise brand awareness. This course will show you how successful integration of Facebook’s tools can build brand awareness and ensure your message reaches your desired audience.

    10. Brand [Curriculum]

    This learning path is focused on how to achieve brand-based marketing objectives on Facebook to drive business results: best practices, planning reach, using video, targeting, and measurement solutions for brand.

    11. Brand Measurement Solutions

    Learn about a new approach to measurement—an approach focused on people rather than cookies and clicks.

    12. Business Manager

    Business Manager is a tool to help businesses and agencies manage their Facebook Pages, ad accounts and apps in one place.

    13. Buying Channels

    There are many channels for buying advertisements on Facebook. In this course, you will learn about Facebook’s Ad Auction, Facebook Marketing Partners and Insertion Orders (IOs) so that you can determine the best methods for buying ads on Facebook.

    14. Campaign Structure

    Facebook’s campaign structure makes it easy for you to organize, optimize and measure the performance of your ads. In this course you will learn how to organize your ad within the campaign structure on Facebook.

    15. Clicks to Website

    A well-placed, informative ad can often encourage people to visit your website. In this course you will learn how best use a Clicks to Website ad to drive people to your website.

    16. Creating a Facebook Page

    Creating a Facebook Page is easier than you think. This course will walk you through the simple steps associated with creating a Facebook Page, as well as help you understand how to start connecting with others through building an audience and posting.

    17. Creative Best Practices

    A successful Facebook campaign allows you to share real, authentic conversations. This course will show you how using creative best practices can pull an engaged audience into the conversation.

    18. Data Driven Marketing [Curriculum]

    This learning path is focused on learning the basics of Facebook for data partners.

    19. Digital Buyer [Curriculum]

    This learning path is focused on agencies and advertisers who are interested in learning about the basics of buying advertising on Facebook: the tools, advertising objectives, targeting options, campaign optimization best practices, and reporting.

    20. Digital Planner [Curriculum]

    This learning path is focused on agencies and advertisers who are interested in learning about the basics of planning advertising buys on Facebook: insights to inform campaigns, Reach and Frequency planning, advertising objectives, and targeting.

    21. Direct Response Best Practices

    Whether you’re driving sign-ups on your website, sales in store, or installs for your mobile app, this course will introduce you to the products that can help drive your business objectives.

    22. Direct Response [Curriculum]

    This learning path is focused on how to achieve direct response marketing objectives on Facebook to drive business results: best practices, buying channels, advertising units, targeting, and measurement solutions for DR.

    23. Direct Response Measurement Solutions

    Learn about a new approach to measurement—an approach focused on people rather than cookies and clicks.

    24. Event Responses

    Event planning through Facebook is a great way to connect with your audience. In this course you will learn how you can bring more people to your event with a well-placed Facebook ad.

    25. Facebook Exchange

    Facebook Exchange helps you reach people who have expressed an interest in your product or services by helping you to expand your reach to relevant audiences through real-time bidding.

    26. Facebook Terminology

    Facebook connects you with the people who matter to you so you can deliver personalized marketing at scale and realize real business results. Learn about the terminology we use related to marketing on Facebook.

    27. Introduction to Facebook Pages

    Having a Facebook Page is the first step towards giving your business a voice on Facebook. This course will show you how having a Facebook Page helps you share your stories, as well as connect you with your audience.

    28. Mobile SDK

    Facebook’s Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) allows you to enable your app to connect to people using Facebook. This course will show you how to use our development kit to make those connections.

    29. Offer Claims

    A well-placed offer can be a great way to engage existing audiences and bring renewed attention to your business. In this course you will learn how you can promote timely discounts and other deals within your Facebook News Feed through Offer Claim ads.

    30. Page Likes

    Likes are critical to promoting what your company is saying. They can also help determine what posts people are enjoying and sharing with friends and family. In this course you will learn how to promote and acquire additional Likes for your Facebook page.

    31. Power Editor (Advanced Advertisers)

    Power Editor is a tool for advanced advertisers. This course will help you understand how Power Editor allows you to import data from Excel, as well as make managing bulk ads, individual ads, ads sets and multiple campaigns much easier.

    32. Reporting & Analytics [Curriculum]

    This learning path is focused on learning the basics of campaign reporting and analytics on Facebook. This includes reporting against business objectives, examples of successful measurement, and how to tie campaign insights to reporting.

    33. Sight, Sound, and Motion

    With more video viewing than ever before, Facebook provides an opportunity to reach the people who matter to you through their Facebook News Feed. This course will show you how sight, sound, and motion can drive awareness of your brand.

    34. Successful Campaigns

    Have you ever wondered what makes a successful Facebook campaign? In this course you will have access to some of the possibilities, as well as learn how campaign goals play a vital role in many Facebook success stories.

    35. Targeting – Custom Audiences

    Sometimes the most valuable audience is the one you already have a connection with. This course will teach you to use Custom Audiences to reach people across devices based on the data you already have access to in a privacy-safe way.

    36. Targeting – Lookalike Audiences

    Lookalike Audiences are based on sophisticated modeling and identify people who share similar likes, interests, or characteristics as your current audience. This course will help you understand how and when to use Lookalike Audiences.

    37. Targeting – Standard Audiences

    In this course, you will learn how Standard Audiences can help you reach the right people at scale with minimal waste.

    38. Video Views

    Facebook combines the power of sight, sound and motion with unparalleled reach, mobile engagement and fine-grained targeting capabilities. In this module you will learn how video ads can showcase your products, ideas, and business.

    39. Website Conversions

    This course will show you how using Facebook’s conversion pixels can help you track what people are doing on your website and provide you with data about how your ads are doing, allowing you to optimize your actions on Facebook.

    40. Welcome to Marketing on Facebook

    Learn why Facebook is the perfect place for advertisers and businesses to connect with real people and build connections through photos, videos and ads. See how successful brands leverage the relationships build on Facebook to drive real business results.

    You can select any of these options and click “enroll” where you can then launch the course. You can also “drop” courses as you see fit.

    Think of BluePrint as the Khan Academy for Facebook marketing. It’s only available in English for now, but will be expanded into additional languages in the future.

    The second new offering from Facebook is called Learn How, which is also described as an online learning center. This one helps businesses do more with Pages and Ads by way of videos, images, and step-by-step instructions. It features answers to frequently asked in-depth while serving as something of a reference library.

    This resource is available in 14 languages on desktop and mobile. It can be found on the Facebook for Business site. That site, by the way, has also gotten a refresh with a new layout and new content. Give it a look when you get a chance.

    Images via Facebook

  • Why Aren’t More Brands Taking Advantage Of Instagram?

    We recently looked at a study from Yesmail, which found a shockingly low percentage of brands are using Instagram despite the visual social service providing excellent engagement for most brands that are taking advantage.

    The study found that while brands on Instagram experienced a 278% growth in followers in 2014, only 23% of the 2,000 brands it analyzed are actually on Instagram. That’s compared to 80% on Facebook and 82% on Twitter.

    We decided to reach out to Yesmail for some additional insight into why brands aren’t taking more advantage of Instagram in their marketing efforts.

    Bob Sybydlo, Director, Market Intelligence and Deliverability at the company tells WebProNews, “Instagram is still a fairly new platform, and is late in the advertising game – the platform introduced sponsored posts just two years ago. It’s possible that before 2013, marketers didn’t view Instagram as a must-have, but rather as a nice to have. As engagement and users increase, I have no doubt that we’ll see more brands adopt the platform.”

    Asked about how easy it is to build a successful marketing strategy on Instagram compared to Facebook or Twitter, Sybydlo says, “I think that each platform presents benefits to marketers, and if marketers optimize each social network correctly, can be successful. What sets Instagram apart from other social platforms, however, is the fact that Instagram’s main purpose is to share photos and videos. With more than 70 million pictures and videos shared daily, marketers can easily get involved with Instagram’s highly engaging platform.”

    “One of the main goals when Instagram introduced sponsored posts in 2013 was to make their advertisements feel as organic as possible, and in my opinion, the social platform has been successful,” he adds. “Instagram’s unobtrusive nature is part of the reason marketers can be hugely successful on Instagram. Consumers expect to see all types of images on Instagram, and as a result, won’t be thrown off when a brand gets involved in sharing. Additionally, Instagram’s new carousel ad offers a flexible way for brands to not only share, but tell an interesting story. Instagram’s carousel blog post explains that consumers are inspired to learn more about a brand if they have shared a photo or video.”

    A New Way for Brands to Tell Stories on Instagram from Instagram on Vimeo.

    To make itself more appealing to brands, Sybydlo says Instagram should continue to grow its advertising platform, noting that carousel is a step in the right direction.

    “By offering new and unique ways for advertisers to tell their story, Instagram differentiates itself from competitors and appeals to marketers,” he says.

    On industries with the best chance of finding success on Instagram that aren’t really using it, Sybydlo says, “We’ve found that CPG, retail and hotel brands have the chance to be highly successful on Instagram, especially if they are also on Twitter and Facebook, but aren’t utilizing it to the best of their ability. As we mentioned in our report, restaurants have the highest adoption rate – just 31 percent.”

    “Other obvious industries like apparel brands have the ability to make a big splash on Instagram,” he adds. “Just as apparel brands like Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters have seen success through picture sharing on Pinterest, these brands can do the same by utilizing Instagram.”

    Since he brings up PInterest, I can’t help but be reminded of a discussion we had a while back with Curalate CEO Apu Gupta, who said, “The primary difference is that Pinterest tends to contain more imagery generated by brands while Instagram tends to contain more user generated content. In many ways, these two platforms represent a continuum from pre to post purchase. If Pinterest is what people aspire to own or try, then Instagram is where consumers go to celebrate what they did. Beyond that, Pinterest’s layout offers the opportunity to thematically organize images to tell a broader story, whereas Instagram is more temporal and favors singular arresting images that document the ‘moment.’”

    As I’m sure you’re aware, brands have had some trouble reaching their fans on Facebook over the past year or two as organic reach for Page posts has dwindled. We recently looked at a report from L2, which found that this is causing brands to flock to Instagram. The question remains, however, are they following a sirens’ song? Will Instagram (which don’t forget, is owned by Facebook) eventually do the same thing to brands?

    Sybydlo says he expects Instagram to offer more advertising opportunities for brands, which might coincide with algorithm changes of an Instagram news feed.

    “Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, a change like this won’t surprise too many people,” he says. “By contrast, the carousel app will be free for advertisers, which leads me to believe that Instagram will remain somewhat hands-off.”

    We’ll see what happens.