Digital Marketing – the legalities, ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Who remembers this Adidas add?

This campaign was run earlier this year and was accompanied with the hashtag #therewillbehaters. This controversal add featured footballers who had been attracting attention for racism and violence

Source: Marketing Magazine UK

It was revealed by the director of global brand strategy Stefanie Knoren, that there is a shift where marketing moves from advertising to really creating value for people. Known further highlighted that customers expect products to be marketed to them at the right time and that Millennials (18-35) expect brands to ‘do good’.

So, my question to you is, how much do you believe that this shift is due to social media? Does social media influence us to raise and discuss particular issues that matter to us, and matter to how an organisation operates? How important is it to us, that organisations actually live by their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies rather than just having them there?

Source: Tupperware

There is a strong case for corporate social responsibility and the benefits that it may provide businesses such as gaining competitive advantage and reducing cost and risk. Feedback through social media needs to be immediate, permanent and extremely public. According to this Harvard article if individuals feel strongly about a companies performance on social or environmental issues, one small voice can quickly become a swam and potentially very damaging to executives and businesses. Notable examples include the viral video that Greenpeace used to attack Nestle over its use of unsustainable palm oil. After three months(!) of holding their ground against vocal protesters on Facebook, Nestle finally cancelled all contracts with rainforest destructors to stop palm oil plantations. This is a prime example of how social media was used to influence the behaviour of a company and their CSR.

I believe (and i hope you agree) that social media now requires not only the brand to be doing the right thing, but that they also are doing it for the right reasons. If they don’t, then then the cracks will start to show and the audience will force them wide open and shout them from the roof. And with the ever developing, ever changing technological advances it is much harder to hide as they know allow for an unimaginable degree of reach.

Smart brands, understand this and realise that they must be genuinely making life better in order to avoid the certain repercussions mentioned above.

So how can big companies find a balance? Ultimately a companies first priority is its shareholders, but then they also need to genuinely want to do good in the world, otherwise they’ll be criticised! So how do you think companies can find a balance?

Its a tough world I’d say.

Going Viral – the Holy Grail of Marketing

Having your social media post ‘go viral’ is the ultimate dream for digital marketers. Going viral means that posts get so widely spread on the internet that it is like a contagious disease.

source: Going Viral

So how can one potentially make their media viral? Kaplan and Haenlein identified that there are four groups of social media viral marketing campaigns

1. Nightmares – the case of JetBlue 2007 crisis whereby customers were delayed 9 hours and took their outrage to social media with streams of negative publicity.
2. Stokes of luck – the Diet coke and Mentos experiment whereby the Experiment #137  has 17,675,003 YouTube views
3. Homemade issues – Honesty is always the best policy. Sony Electronics created a fake blog that was instantly recognised as fake by their target audience
4. Triumphs – The act of spreading like wild fire. For example, the Burger King Whopper Sacrifice whereby in the space of the campaign life of 10 days 82,000 Facebook users downloaded the app to ‘sacrifice’ their virtual friends in order to receive free Whopper coupon.

They also came up with three elements that needed to be satisfied to reach a viral marketing epidemic.

1. The right environment (the size and the luck of being in the right place at the right time)
2. The right message (memorable and interesting)
3. The right messengers (marketing mavens, social hubs and salespeople)

So why do people share content? What is it that go throughs people minds to share information.

source: coschedule

 

According to this, 84% of people share to support a cause they care about. Therefore, for not-for-profit organisation or charity this is obviously very good for if you emphasis your cause or issues and remember to encourage your followers to share the posts then it is likely that your issue will be spread among the social media community. Check out this Facebook page The Climate Council who’s posts often get hundreds to thousands of shares

source: The Climate Councils Facebook page

 

But what does this mean for other – for profit – organisations? How can they create a desire from consumers to share their content? Many larger organisations will sometimes ‘piggyback’ and create partnerships with charities or NFP organisations. Such as the leading multinational technology and consulting corporation IBM who supports various charities with grants and initiatives to promote societal issues such as the environment, community economic development, education and health. Through this, organisations can create exposure for the chosen charity by exposing them on social media and in turn receive leverage and an improved image for supporting the charity. So it’s a win win situation really.

Do you know of any other organisations that support charities?

The issue with creating viral content is giving it meaning. How many memes or pictures have you seen that have thousands of shares or thousands of likes? But what do they really mean? Viral content needs to have a purpose, an objective, something that aims to create change or create awareness. It needs to influence a target audience in some way give people a reason to share it and a reason to prefer your brand. So what do you think marketers need to do to create viral and worthy content? Content that provides people with the want to share it? If you know of any please share in the comments!

SEO: Its going straight in my basket

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when there is something you wish to find more about? For me its ‘Google it’. So obviously, having your business page be the

Source: Moz

first link to pop up means that you are probably going to receive the most exposure (as let’s be honest who really scrolls through the 21 million results found).

This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes into play. This basically refers to how much relevant text, content, links and page titles that search engines are looking for. It is a ranking of how high up the list of search results your business page appears. It is used to assist in the development and awareness of a company in a non-paid organic way.

It is interestingly pointed out by Ravi Sen, that SEO actually has high implementation costs and unpredictable traffic. This therefore, makes it not very popular among the marketing professionals. Sen highlights that actually paid advertising is more popular, as they are cheaper and are guaranteed to appear at the top of the search engine. However, how much do you really agree with this? Personally, I never click on the top links if it has the little yellow ‘ad’ icon. As you can see by the purple viewed links I do not like the little yellow ad.

However, the Search Engine Land article states that search engine marketing – including SEO – was the most effective source for acquiring new customers in 2014 for 85% of online retailers

source: Search Engine Land

Furthermore, there seem to be a number of huge benefits of SEO these include

1. Results are low in cost
2. Increase traffic
3. Improved brand credibility
4. Better ROI
5. Keeping up competitiveness
6. Brand awareness

So, why would anyone not want to use SEO? Personally, I think that it is a very good marketing tool. Do you agree with me? SEO all the way? Or are you a more paid advertising kind of person?

Are we all involved in a mobile affair?

There is no point in denying that there has been an increase in the number of people using smart phones. 64% of Americans now own a smart phone of some kind. Mobile media time is now greater than any desktop or other media with mobile digital media time in the US now being significantly higher at 51% compared to desktop (42%).

However, after reading through the weekly readings and actively taking note of how far away my phone is from my hands during the day, its begun to sink in how dependent our world has become on technology. I understand the positive benefits of mobile technology and how this is extremely useful for marketers. I was recently in Europe and in order to get onto the wifi at cafes and shops often we had to share our location. This is a jackpot for marketers, using our strong desire for online social connection to market their brand! What easier way of getting people to spread the word of your brand by making them share it with their potentially hundreds of friends so they can get onto social media? In my opinion, not much else.

However, I cannot help but see all the negative implications of this rapidly growing future of dense technology integration. Things are getting out of control and literally compressed into the palm of our hands! So I am going to take a step back from the marketing side of things and take a look into the empire of the mobile technology that we now face…

Written and directed by Gary Turk, ‘Look up’ is a fascinating, eye opening film highlighting how much we miss when our eyes are looking down. This video currently has 53,231,357 views. I wonder how many of these were viewed on a mobile phone…? Is this video thought-provoking or hypocritical? Decide for yourself, but, it made me question ‘is it all worth it?’

Are we really that uptight we can’t miss an update? How useful and important are they really? If someone relayed all their status updates face-to-face how long would you stay standing in front of them? Personally I’d walk away after the first one.

Now don’t get me wrong, I admit that I am just as guilty as probably all of you when I say that I constantly know how far away from me my phone is and that its probably been about 20 minutes since I last checked Instagram. Every night when I get into bed I plug my phone into charge right by my bed and I think that it is necessary for me to scroll through my feed again, just in case someone new has put up a post that probably isn’t of any importance to me. I am a grown woman I should not need constant connectivity to a phone. Will I really regret not waking up at 3am when one of my drunken friends decided to message me about the really sexy boys who’s name she can’t remember?  The answer? Probably not.

It is one thing to have a handy device that can hold all your information and data to help you make it through the day, but it is a very different thing to allow them to fill every moment of your day.

This video highlights the best possible over use of our phones ever. (In my opinion). Actress/comedian Charlene deGuzman’s short film ‘I forgot my phone’ highlights the soul-sucking, awkward times of our modern age. This video has received 48,414,687 views and again I wonder how many of them were viewed on mobile phones…

Next time you are in a lecture, take a glance around the room. How many people can you spot playing on their smart phone? It seems ironic that while we sit in a lecture theatre listening to people who are trying to help us develop the skills we need to get a good job in the real world. That we are to involved in our ‘social’ media feeds to even pay attention!

Let us take a minute, put down the phone and take a deep breath. Now think, how many people did you talk to today? Not because you had to, but generally because you wanted too. Do you ever have ‘me’ time and not look at your phone? How many of you say you’re going to bed but then spend time playing on your mobile phone? Enough is enough, put down the phone, go for a walk and say hello to someone new. You never know who they could turn out to be…

Research and evaluation. Successfully managing and monitoring your online presence.

It may seem creepy, but businesses can now monitor how many times you visit their site.

For businesses, monitoring their site is something that is absolutely vital so they can manage and maintain competitiveness, as well as delving deeper into understanding consumer wants and needs. For us, (me) I find it a bit creepy that businesses can see what prompted me into clicking on their site, but as a future marketer, I guess this is something I will soon be wanting to know when it comes to my business so guess I shouldn’t get to annoyed that other businesses are using me to figure out it out for themselves.

According to Internet Marketing: strategy, implementation and practice there is a strong metric framework that needs to be defined to help businesses monitor and maintain their online presence.

1. Channel promotion

These measures consider where the web site users originated. Log file analysis can be used to assess which intermediary sites customers are referred from and even which key words they typed into search engines when trying to locate product information.

Have you noticed how many adds for sites pop up on Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr?!

The other day I was casually scrolling through a Tumblr feed and a ‘sponsored’ page popped up for Converse shoes, without really realising
it I suddenly found myself on the Converse tagged Tumblr page and I don’t even follow them! After creating this sponsored posts for Tumblr, Converse topped 182,000 reblogs and likes for the first 24 hours of the promo on site.

What websites have you found yourself on because you’ve been prompted from other pages? Did you find yourself reading through or even buying anything?

2. Channel buyer behaviour

This helps businesses monitor the content that was accessed on their site, how long they visited and whether any satisfactory marketing outcomes such as sales were made. Google Analytics is a web analytic service that tracks and reports website traffic.

Have you ever found yourself online shopping and absentmindedly put items into the basket, then once getting to the check out looked at the total price (cried a little on the inside) and closed the page? Me too. But, have you ever then received a follow up notification or email from the site ‘reminding’ you that you have items in the basket? This tactic here, helps businesses further promote themselves by reminding you of your previous behaviour. Unfortunately for me, it is not very often that I get to go back to my basket and a few days later a little package of goodness arrives for me. But, has this ever happened to you?

3. Channel satisfaction

This is a vital aspect that all businesses need to flourishing at. Online methods such as questionnaires may be used to assess customer opinions of a website and how valuable its content is. These results help businesses understand which parts of their online presence are attracting customers and what parts are not. Tweet Alarm is an automatic monitoring system whereby the producer receives an email whenever someone tweets about their brand or product! With over 5000 tweets being made every second, I can understand why this tool would be a very useful one to have.

4. Channel outcomes

Measuring the conversation. Businesses can measure the number of people who make it to the check-out and compare to the number of people who actually make a purchase.

According to the attrition rate graph on the right, it can be seen that for a set time period, only a certain number of visitors make their way to product information, then an even smaller number of people actually put a product into their basket and an even smaller number of people will actually make a purchase! Obviously businesses would want to have a high attrition rate and therefore have as many customers actually buying the product as putting the product in the basket. As i’ve already pointed out, I am generally not one of these people, but how could I be? I get nervous putting my credit card details online, so if I knew that a site was secure or that other people I knew has bought off the site (and if I could acquire the funds) I might be more likely to purchase the product. Do you ever experience any resistants to purchasing a product?

5. Channel profitability

Finally, a businesses ultimate goal is to be profitable. By setting themselves targets to reach, they will be better able to monitor their online activity and thus may be more likely reach their desired levels of profitability. As an old bird once told me ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’

How to be more socially engaging on Facebook.

The social networking world is a big place and sometimes it can seem quite scary. As a young business owner, staring at a company Facebook page trying to think of something engaging and interesting to write about can be daunting. So how can we make ourselves better at it? The answer is simple, practice.

It seems that people who are more active on their own Facebook page are better at producing an interesting and engaging company page.

The challenges and opportunities of social media are extensive. But the first point about being social, is to be active!

In this Blog, I’ll help you realise that the more you market yourself (and as part of the technologically savvy generation, this is something we should all be good at) the skills and knowledge may be applied in a similar fashion to a business Facebook page.

1. Write Shorter Posts 

According to The Statistic Brain Research the number of words read on pages with 111 words or less was 49% where as the number of words read on pages with an average of 593 words was 28%! This highlights that the shorter the post, the more engaging it is for others.

Furthermore as shown in this graph from Track Social, the smaller the number of characters (0-70), the higher the number of likes and comments (around the 4500 mark). Highlighting that an increase in characters only shows a decrease in the interaction.

2. Ask Questions 

If you ask questions, you are bound to get responses. Generally speaking people like to help out others and are more likely to respond when the answer is a simple one, that does not require too much thought (or maybe I’m just lazy).

For example,

‘Which places are best to visit in Europe?’

‘Where can I find the latest episode of Game Of Thrones?’

you get the point…

By asking questions you are inviting people to engage and be interactive with you.

(c) Hubspot

According to this graph, questions that begin with ‘should’ or ‘would’ are more likely to get responses than those starting with ‘how’ or ‘why’. This could be because the former only require simple ‘yes or no’ answers where as the latter require a bit more thought and consideration. Obviously we are all lazy and it’s not just me.

3. Post more photos 

Photos are visually engaging, and as highlighted through this Hubspot study. Posts that are accompanied with a photo receive a huge 53% more likes and 104% more comments than posts without a photo!

However, sometimes photos alone are not good enough, people are generally more likely to understand and remember a post when there are some words that accompany it. The key word – infographics

What was the last post you made? Was it a photo post?

4. Friday Funday 

According to the Social Intelligence Report published in 2014, Fridays are the best day to post because it has the highest engagement level. Guess its true that they call it FriYAY!

the study shows that

• 17% of comments occur on Fridays
• 16% of likes occur on Fridays
• 16% of shares occur on Fridays
• Sundays are the least likely days to receive a comment on post

When was the last time you made a Facebook post? Was it on a Friday?

Finally…

All of this information is merely just statistics, and not every statistic can always be applied to everyone. Take a look at your own personal Facebook page do any of these statistics reflect in your posts?

This is what I found on mine;

‘Sail Croatia Vibes..’ – 40 likes, 2 comments

‘Happy 21st Con’ – 62 likes, 3 comments

Platform 9¾ – 6 likes, 1 comment

As I discovered, my photo posts that were accompanied with short text received many more likes, than my post that didn’t have any accompaning words. What about your feed? What post received the most attention and got the most interaction with your friends?

Welcome to my blog

Hello everyone!

Welcome to my blog! As part of my Bachelor of Business Marketing at Monash University I am undertaking a digital marketing unit. This blog site is where I will post about all things digital marketing.

This is where I will share my strong opinions about digital marketing (hopefully supported by some interesting evidence!) as well as latest digital marketing trends and latest news and hopefully many more exciting things! Stay tuned guys! 😊