Digital CPG Blog

From a great – but depressing - infographic on social media ROI, the following data points are taken from a November 2011 global survey of marketers:

• Number of marketers using ROI to measure social media ((gain – cost)/cost) = 0
• Proportion using alternative measure of # social interactions generated (likes, comments etc) = 38%
• Proportion using alternative measure of revenue generated = 24%
• Proportion using alternative measure of awareness generated = 15%
• The top benefits of social media according to marketers are increased brand awareness (88%), brand ‘engagement’ (dialogue)(85%), increased sales (and partnerships) (58%), and reduce costs (41%)
• Nearly 70% of marketers believe fans are more valuable than non-fans (they bring in new customers, they convert better, they buy more often)

As Paul Marsden notes, it’s “odd that not one marketer in 700 makes the business case (ROI) for social media…”

Indeed! Have you measured ROI for social media? What do you describe as your top benefits of social media?

Marketers have long assumed content shared by friends or other influencers carries more weight than paid placements. Now GE has some proof:

People exposed via sharing had a significantly bigger lift in positive attitudes toward GE — associating the brand with such things as creativity and innovation — than people exposed via paid placements.

Overall, the “brand lift,” which measured the extent to which consumers said they saw GE as “creative,” was 138% higher for consumers exposed to via sharing through Buzzfeed than those who didn’t see it at all. Specifically, 17% of people found GE creative after viewing the content via sharing vs. only 7% of people who made that connection without having seen the advertising at all.

Consumers exposed via sharing were also 83% more likely to rate GE “creative” than those exposed to the content via paid advertising on Buzzfeed.

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Have you experienced shared content is better than paid advertisements? Has your brand experimented with this type of inventory?

Consumers are bombarded with programs, benefits, points and prizes. According to recent surveys, 1.8 billion loyalty-program memberships exist in the United States, with the average household participating in 14.1 programs. Yet more than half of those memberships are inactive, meaning the customer has stopped paying attention to the program and possibly even the brand itself.

Ouch!

A successful loyalty strategy is underpinned by the consumer’s emotional affinity with the brand, so the goal of should be to create sustained demand. Here are leading factors to consider in determining how best to achieve this:

• The consumer definition of value has changed. The consumer sees the reward program as part of an entire package when purchasing a product. This includes not just functional benefits, but also how he or she feels about the company itself. For example, is your company a leader on environmental sustainability both with your products and within your company? If that’s the case, sharing that information can improve your value to the customer.
• Brand equity-building and preference-building ideas will win against discount- or points-only approaches, and have lasting effect on brand loyalty. Offering customers the opportunity to purchase advance tickets for special events for example, or asking them to participate in a product feedback panel, is valuable in building their loyalty. A points program alone is not a big or unique idea. While it may be a cost of entry, or a tipping point for some segments, there needs to be a “wow” branded idea that sits on top of it. It also must be something that brand stewards and customer relations-management gurus can agree on.
• Complementary companies with shared audiences will increasingly work together. This “consortium” approach to loyalty is a trend. Enfamil and Pampers, as well as General Mills and Nestle, are good examples of companies taking this approach. The Jigsaw Consortium, for example, leverages a shared database between several companies to effectively target like minded-brand loyalists and also reduce their individual costs for data analytics.

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1. Heinz’s Balsamic Tomato Ketchup and personalised soup cans
Heinz has been pushing the boundaries in terms of use of Facebook to seed new products, first launching an app to send special bottles of its Balsamic Tomato Ketchup to Facebook fans – which was then rolled out the US after a successful testing phase in the UK.

The personalised soup can app used a similar theory – that passionate fans love unique and exclusive products. People could enter a name of a sick friend and send them a can of soup with ‘Get Well Soon’ on it, choosing from the brand’s three most popular flavours.

2. Burberry Body fragrance launch
Scott Galloway, New York University marketing professor and co-founder of think tank Luxury Lab told WWD.com late last year that almost 100% of brands cite Facebook as a source of upstream traffic. In an interview, said specifically that Burberry gets more traffic from Facebook than from Google.

Burberry is at the absolute forefront of innovation within social media, one example of which is the launch of its Burberry Body fragrance last year. This example is no longer live, but it’s such a relevant campaign that we couldn’t leave it out.

A video starring CCO Christopher Bailey launched the scheme (see below) – and people could apply for a free sample via the Facebook app. Burberry then extended this to allow people to buy full-size bottles of the perfume, with great success.

3. Amazon with Facebook and Max Factor
Procter & Gamble’s Max Factor make-up was for a time being sold on a shop tab on the brand’s UK Facebook page, with the check-out taking place on Amazon.

This is an interesting example, as the purchase wasn’t completed solely within Facebook. You’d imagine that Facebook wouldn’t want to relinquish control of the commerce aspect, and that Max Factor wouldn’t want to disturb its relationships with core sellers by going direct.

Yet the removal of any problems relating to logistics and fulfillment, combined with beautiful design, made this a great match theory. The fact that it’s no longer live however, and the page now links clearly to Boots and Superdrug’s websites probably says a lot about stirring up competition. That’s not to say that such a partnership wouldn’t work for other brands.

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Only about 30% of marketing executives feel like they know what’s going on in their content marketing department (evidenced by the Disagree slices in the pies above). That means 70% have no clue or are unsure about how to effectively apply digital tools to help their company grow, and lack a disciplined process for digital lead generation.

Given that every company is a media company nowadays, I’m surprised there’s so much uncertatinty in this area. Maybe we should remember, content doesn’t have to equal blogs or in-depth campaigns. It can be much simpler, and should start with a content inventory on your site.

Does your CPG brand know where it’s content is?

Online advertising spending will cruise past print in the United States this year for the first time, according to a new forecast by eMarketer.

Online ad spending in the U.S. grew 23% to $32.03 billion in 2011 and will grow 23.3% more to $39.5 billion in 2012, eMarketer said. That will put it above total U.S. magazine and newspaper spending, which will fall 6.1% to $36 billion this year, said the report.

Print ad spending in magazines will actually tick up to $15.4 billion from $15.3 billion, according to eMarketer. Magazine and newspaper publishers themselves enjoy rising digital ad revenue, which isn’t included in the “print” total being surpassed in this forecast. And marketers and agencies are starting to resist paying for online ads that many people never see.

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Facebook commerce has taken a lot of flack lately. So, does that mean social commerce overall is a bust? Probably not.

“Facebook’s role in ecommerce is currently in flux,” says eMarketer analyst Kristia Garcia. “Brands are beginning to realize its capabilities, while users are growing accustomed to mingling with companies online and sharing shopping activities with friends. Even though social media is still more of a marketing tool than a sales vehicle, Facebook’s influence on shopping behavior extends beyond triggering conversions on the spot.”

Retailers are still in the early stages of using social media as a sales vehicle, but the channel is poised for growth. Booz & Companyestimated that $1 billion in goods would be sold through social media in the US in 2011. That figure is expected to triple in 2012 and reach $14 billion by 2015.

Millennials don’t respond to TV ads as much as their elders. Younger people were less responsive to TV ads in studies from 1961, 1988 and 1999, and the differences are actually narrowing. The average lift in share of choice among millennials (ages 16 to 29) was 4.6 percentage points in 2011, compared with 6.4 points for boomers. But in 1988, there was an even bigger generational divide of 10.5 to 13.8 points.

Millennials are about as responsive to digital ads as other generations. The average share-of-choice lift for millennials for digital ads in the 2011 study was 6.0, vs. 6.8 for boomers and 6.4 for seniors, a much smaller difference than with TV.

Millennials respond to the same advertising approaches as prior generations. The biggest needle-movers for them in TV ads are brand differentiation, competitive comparisons, information about new products or features and superiority claims. Showing the product and the brand or logo longer also helps. So, sorry, all you agency creatives out there. You haven’t heard the last of “make the logo bigger.”

Millennials are more engaged in all kinds of media than older folks. In ComScore tests that ask people about how much value they place on a program or website, millennials had engagement scores that were on average 10.3% ahead of boomers for TV programming, but an even bigger 22.2% gap over boomers on digital media. Seniors had the lowest engagement scores.

Millennials may respond less to TV ads, but at least they remember them longer. Millennials are less likely than their elders to recall an ad immediately after seeing it, losing by a 43%-to-54% margin to boomers and seniors on this front. Three days later, it’s a different story, as 24% of millennials on average remember an ad vs. only 18% of seniors.

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Market research firm Kline reports adoption of social media marketing by beauty companies is growing, and makers of cosmetics and toiletries grew their viral campaign efforts this past holiday season. Driving the growth in their use of social media is the realization that consumers aren’t always reachable via traditional (and more expensive) channels, like television.

But that doesn’t mean that beauty marketers are moving away from traditional channels. Couponing promotions, for instance, have been popular of late due to a competitive pricing environment. Beyond that, Kline Senior Associate notes, “there is no cookie-cutter approach…and brands are experimenting with what approaches work best with their business model, their consumer base, and the image they want to project.”

But you can definitely use traditional channels like couponing in the social media channel as well. Indeed brands that do both will probably excel in their conversions.

If you’re wondering just how often you can engage with your customers, here’s the latest:

The average news feed post by a Facebook Page receives Likes and comments for 3 hours after being published. To maximize the engagement, impressions, and traffic driven by the news feed, Facebook Page owners should wait at least 3 hours between posts.

This new finding from a study by Facebook Page analytics company EdgeRank Checker could help Page owners avoid cutting short the lifetimes of their posts and overshadowing them with new content. Each Page is different and needs to find its own optimal posting frequency depending on its content and audicence, but no more frequently than every 3 hours is a good general guideline.

Last month after Facebook changed the news feed in September, EdgeRank Checker analyzed 30,000 posts by over 500 Pages with an average fan count of 140,000. The company defines the end of a post’s lifetime as when it receives 10% of the engagement per hour as it did in its most popular hour. It’s important to maximize engagement because this influences the EdgeRank, or news feed visibility of a post and a Page’s future posts. Engagement is also strong indicator that a post is being seen and receiving clicks for Pages looking to drive awareness or traffic.

The study found that the average post lifetime was 3 hours and 7 minutes, while the median post lifetime is 2 hours and 56 minutes. After a post’s death, it only receive a trickle of engagement and there’s little lost by posting again.

Of course, just because you can doesn’t mean you should post every 3 hours. Once to twice a day is plenty! Have you tested when and what to post on your Facebook page?