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Social Media: The New Frontier of Business Marketing 

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Social Media: The New Frontier of Business Marketing 

The emergence of social media is restructuring business marketing as most consumers connect with brands through online spaces. Consumer habits and values are constantly adapting to a dynamic digital ecosystem. Traditional one-size-fits-all advertising is progressively outpaced by personalized social media marketing campaigns. The capacity to reach wider audiences, as well as meet the needs of underserved markets, creates vast potential for brand expansion. Successful franchise marketing is intentional about its centralized message while still catering to targeted audiences–niche, regional, or global audiences will come from diverse backgrounds with diverse needs. A company gains a competitive edge in e-commerce spaces by remaining attuned to the complexity of market demands and social media trends.

Read also: Unlocking New Revenue Streams: How Businesses Can Leverage Digital Marketing Services

Businesses and consumers mutually rely on one another to mold market trends and boost one another’s engagement. Encouraging consumers to generate their own self-directed promotional content, including hashtags for visibility, is a cost-effective and socially influential marketing strategy. The recent cultural push for authenticity and relatability means brand strategists are themselves being called to cultivate meaningful marketing approaches.

Authentically Marketing with User-Generated Content

Audiences increasingly seek consumer content from influencers who align with their own interests and social identities. Current trends rely less on the influence of celebrities, instead favoring relatable micro-influencers who appear approachable and are more likely to interact with followers. Consumers can identify with accessible influencers and mirror their lifestyles by purchasing the products they endorse. Influencers appeal to a demographic similar to their own social identity, giving brands extended reach to any given content creator’s niche customer base, an essential franchise marketing strategy. Targeted ads demonstrate their own inclination toward authenticity as they aim to encourage pre-disposed interests in their services and products.

The advent of social media democratized the ability to influence trends. A quippy “story time” product review video in which an influencer is demonstrating a brand’s products can suddenly go viral, surpassing metrics unseen in traditional marketing. Millions of likes on a 10-second TikTok video points to the possibility of widespread brand recognition. Relatable and organic advertising makes consumers feel like they are part of an in-group.

Optimize Social Media Marketing Using Platform-Specific Features 

Brands gain the most from social media marketing efforts when they strategically integrate platform-specific features that enhance key facets of the consumer experience. Developing frictionless purchasing pathways, from start to finish, intuitively guides customers through every point of access. Digital touchpoints equipped with relevant links and information that steer users towards actionable steps enable longer engagement with content. Resources such as direct links to customer service reduce user frustration that might otherwise turn away business. A brand’s ideal customer profile will determine which platform is most fitting for connecting with that specific demographic.

Instagram showcases aesthetically pleasing, short-form, and interactive content. Consumers can weigh in on polls or ask questions, providing leads for professionals. Photographers, restaurant owners, and fashion designers all benefit from a highly visual medium.

TikTok is ideal for a younger base who values unfiltered, fast-paced content. Businesses can go viral through a strategically compelling short video. The production value is not as important as embracing Gen. Z and millennials’ memetic humor. TikTok works well with thought leaders such as cultural critics, educators, and creative professionals.

Facebook appeals to businesses seeking to reach an all-ages crowd that prioritizes customer support and values a sense of community. Local businesses and e-commerce sellers benefit from Facebook Shops and Marketplace. 

YouTube is optimal for long-form, educational content such as product tutorials and reviews. A longer video can be condensed into highlight reels and cross-posted to other platforms, generating more content with minimal effort. A professor recording his lectures for his students or a tech professional making how-to’s on learning programming languages would appreciate the long-form medium.

Gain Consumer Insights with Social Media Data Analytics Tools

Social media metrics assess a brand’s performance and content strategy by analyzing key performance indicators such as impressions, follower gains, customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and cost per conversion, among other data points. These metrics give insight into consumer behaviors and motivations, facilitating a refined approach to creating content that resonates with a brand’s ideal buyer persona. Data analytics guide the planning process and scope of franchise marketing. Brand strategists can identify the cultural tendencies of a geographic location and make informed decisions in meeting complex market needs. A predominantly Latino community might have targeted advertisements in Spanish or culturally significant menu items such as dulce de leche or horchata that aren’t located in other franchise regions.

Analyzing metrics informs predictions of future consumer behavior; for example, a consumer who has previously engaged in a brand’s content is inclined to have high conversion rates, eventually completing a purchase. Anticipating consumer habits gives brands the foresight to include specialized marketing tools, such as retargeting software, that remarkets the same ads to customers who are most likely to buy the product. Tracking content performance provides valuable insights to fine-tune future social media marketing strategies. 

A Unified Social Media Network for Convenient User Experience 

The ease of the digital age redefined consumer priorities, accustoming social media users to seek convenience in digital spaces. A multi-platform network creates a unified, intuitive user experience maintaining customer ease and comfort at the forefront. Online audiences anticipate a user-friendly, comprehensive consumer experience that intuitively guides them through action points from start to finish. An omnichannel marketing approach curates a consistent social media identity across platforms. 

A cluttered social media network is disruptive to the flow of business operations. Each stage between brand discovery and purchasing should naturally lead to the next actionable step. Centralized content management ensures cross-platform uniformity. Maintaining a similar tone, aesthetic, and quality are social signifiers of brand trustworthiness.

For a freelance streetwear designer, an omnichannel ecosystem would be personalized to the visual focus of her career. Knowing her audience, she advertises her clothing line using inexpensive stickers and pastes them around areas her ideal demographic would naturally be, primarily around skate parks and coffee shops. A skater at the local park notices a QR sticker on the skate ramp. He clicks through to an interactive, multi-hub portal with links to several points of access to the freelance designer’s independent clothing line and her other creative projects. Her website leads to several other relevant landing pages–art commission request form, a GoFundMe for a short film, and pictures of past art exhibitions she participated in. Engaging authentically is a priority for her audience.

Modern marketing strategies are still developing as culture and norms change with time. Social media advertising is a reflection of current cultural attitudes. An increasing demand for authentic marketing strategies may signify a societal shift toward valuing genuine expression, enabling more innovative and distinctive forms of connecting to consumers.

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How AI is Revolutionizing Social Media Marketing: 5 Innovative Strategies for Instagram in 2024

Introduction

Social media marketing has become an important aspect of a brand’s overall marketing strategy, with Instagram emerging as one of the most popular platforms for engagement and brand visibility. With over a billion active users, Instagram offers brands the opportunity to reach a wide and diverse audience. The growing importance of social media marketing, particularly on Instagram, cannot be overstated, as it enables brands to connect with their target audience, build relationships, and promote products and services effectively.

Read also: Marketing Your Business on Instagram

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly impacted social media marketing strategies by providing new tools and techniques to enhance campaign performance and audience engagement. AI is transforming the landscape of social media marketing by automating tasks, analyzing data, and offering valuable insights that were previously difficult or time-consuming to obtain.

The purpose of this blog post is to explore five innovative AI-powered strategies for successful Instagram marketing in 2024. By leveraging AI technologies, brands can optimize their Instagram campaigns and maximize their success on the platform.

The Power of AI in Social Media Marketing

AI is revolutionizing social media marketing by automating repetitive tasks, providing in-depth data analysis, and generating actionable insights. This leads to increased efficiency, improved targeting, and enhanced content creation. Utilizing AI in social media marketing can offer numerous benefits for brands, including:

  • Increased Efficiency: Automating tasks such as scheduling posts, analyzing data, and generating reports saves time and resources.
  • Improved Targeting: AI analyzes user data and behavior to help brands target their audience more precisely, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.
  • Better Content Creation: AI can generate creative content ideas, captions, and visuals, allowing brands to maintain a consistent and appealing presence on Instagram.

5 Innovative AI-Powered Strategies for Instagram in 2024

1. AI-Driven Content Creation

AI can be utilized to generate creative content ideas, captions, and even visuals for Instagram posts. AI-powered platforms can help brands discover trending topics, create engaging captions, and design visually appealing graphics. This approach ensures that content remains fresh and relevant, which can boost audience engagement and growth.

2. Smart Audience Targeting & Segmentation

AI can analyze user data and behavior to identify ideal target audiences for Instagram campaigns. By leveraging AI-driven insights, brands can segment their audience based on preferences, interests, and behaviors. This precise targeting allows brands to reach the right people with the right message, ultimately increasing the chances of conversion and engagement.

3. Personalized User Experiences

AI can be used to personalize the user experience on Instagram through tailored recommendations, interactive chatbots, and custom content feeds. Personalized experiences are crucial in social media marketing as they foster deeper connections with customers and enhance engagement. By using AI to understand individual preferences, brands can create tailored content that resonates with their audience.

4. Shoppable Video Optimization with AI

Shoppable videos are a powerful tool for driving sales on Instagram. AI can optimize shoppable videos by tagging products, targeting audiences based on user preferences, and providing real-time analytics. This allows brands to create seamless shopping experiences and measure the effectiveness of their shoppable video campaigns.

5. Enhanced Performance Tracking & Reporting

AI can track and analyze Instagram campaign performance in real-time, providing brands with valuable insights into what’s working and what needs improvement. AI-powered tools offer comprehensive data on engagement, reach, and conversion rates, enabling brands to optimize their campaigns for better results.

Conclusion

In summary, the five innovative AI-powered strategies for Instagram marketing in 2024 offer brands the potential to maximize success on the platform. By leveraging AI-driven content creation, smart audience targeting, personalized user experiences, shoppable video optimization, and enhanced performance tracking, brands can elevate their Instagram campaigns to new heights.

AI holds the key to unlocking new possibilities for social media marketing, providing brands with the tools and insights they need to thrive on Instagram. As the platform continues to evolve, embracing AI-powered strategies will be essential for brands looking to stay ahead of the competition and achieve their marketing goals.

omnichannel

The Importance of an Omnichannel Approach for Great Customer Experience

The omnichannel approach to customer experience has become an essential investment among companies focused on maintaining a strong brand reputation. It means providing a unified experience through all channels and platforms that consumers use to interact with the brands they use. In other words, it’s become more important than ever to communicate the same messages across all channels in which customers choose to engage. Done successfully, an effective omnichannel platform will deliver a resolution-centered, personalized experience to every customer – no matter how they connect with an organization.  

Seventy-three percent of consumers point to customer service as an important factor in their purchasing decisions, making the customer experience the number one driver of brand loyalty.1 While brand loyalty is an important factor in the success of a company, it is shockingly fragile. In fact, one in three consumers say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. Most of the 32% of customers willing to abandon a brand after a bad experience are the Gen Z and Millennial generations, who assign lofty significance to how a brand treats and values them.1  

More companies should expand to the omnichannel customer service model. It has shifted from being appreciated to being largely expected by these market-driving generations of consumers. It promotes consistent brand messaging and enables brands to protect their customer relationships across multiple platforms. Right-place, right-time engagement can be the difference between whether a customer chooses your brand or a competitor – and whether they stick with your brand for their next purchase decision.

The Risks of Neglecting Social Media Customer Experience  

The average social media user has roughly 865 followers across all platforms.2 No matter how strong a company’s other means of communication – phone support, chat operations, self-service – a lack of social media engagement exposes your brand to the possibilities of neglecting customer questions and feedback, resulting in a bad reputation when it comes to customer service. All it takes is one consumer posting a bad complaint on their social media platforms for their 865 followers to see. Furthermore, 60% of customers who complain on social media expect an initial brand response within 15 minutes. Brands lacking a social media customer response strategy, or brands with understaffed digital engagement teams, have no way of redeeming social media brand perception to consumers in a time when there is a mass customer pivot to social channel utilization for customer care. 

Neglecting social media can also lead to inconsistent brand experiences that break customer loyalty, lose moment-of-purchase sales opportunities, and alienate buyers in the research and observation stages. By using omnichannel communication, a brand can avoid these mistakes and keep the company’s reputation in the good graces of loyal consumers.  

Social Experience Management Solution Sets 

Having consistent customer service across all channels can be greatly beneficial to a growing company, so it’s important to know how to do it right. Social experience management can be broken down into three solution categories: social care, reputation management and content/community moderation. Utilizing these three categories and correctly implementing omnichannel approaches is the best way a company can provide the customer service and experiences that consumers expect to receive from their favorite brands.  

Social care is the monitoring of all social media channels. The key is knowing when to listen and when to respond. It’s also essential to align all social media channels in messaging and brand voice. To do this well requires response teams ready to reply to all customer questions, complaints, and praise. Having sales conversion and cart value strategies for consumers are shopping through various media outlets is also important, as is detailed engagement and KPI reporting on engagement and brand performance 

A second specialized area of social experience management is reputation management, where companies complete all online reputation assessments and social media campaign activation. Screening for inappropriate or malicious content aimed at your brand can help companies get ahead of an issue before it escalates into a problem. It’s important to brainstorm brand, product, e-commerce, and retail-based strategies that focus on review response, as well as addressing questions at the point of digital sale. These efforts can determine whether a customer decides to buy your product or return to your location.  

Another key component to reputation management relates to incorporating the right social media customer engagement campaigns. A great campaign will align with the efforts of the marketing teams and agencies to maximize campaign reach and amplify the goals of current social promotions and objectives. Social media customer engagement campaigns can be fundamental to showing what values your brand has above and beyond basic digital customer care, which is another reason why it’s so important to incorporate into your brand’s strategy.  

Finally, content and community moderation is another integral part of ensuring the company’s presence is being represented accurately across all platforms and that community forums are being cultivated in a way that promotes brand loyalists and new advocates alike. Moderating uploaded user/brand content (video, text and images), flagged content review as well as promoting community guideline enforcement are of high importance to grow digital communities while still following brand standards. Brands that pull all of these digital skills together to monitor all social channels, brand sites, and third-party sites can see the benefits when measuring customer experience through social engagements can set themselves apart from competitive brands. 

As the omnichannel approach continues to rule customer experience strategies, having the best tools to measure interactions and implement company KPIs is of the utmost importance to ensuring a successful brand experience while boosting consumer loyalty.  

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Roger Huff is Vice President, Digital Engagement Solutions at ResultsCX. His experience in the business process outsourcing industry spans 13 years, with 10 years of experience concentrated on social media customer experience management. Roger leads solution development and sales of social media and digital CX solutions that span social CX, digital reputation management, and content & community moderation services. He has worked extensively with digital, e-commerce, insurance, healthcare, and retail companies to deliver specialized solutions that elevate brand reputations.  

Sources:
1: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/pwc-consumer-intelligence-series-customer-experience.pd
2 : https://www.customercaremc.com/insights/national-customer-rage-study/2020-national-customer-rage-study/  

social media

How Social Media Can Change The Whole Game For A New Business

To become a successful entrepreneur, the new business owner must find ways to reach customers. Social media can make that job easier.

The rise of social media as a marketing tool has had a major impact on businesses, particularly startups. Studies have shown that more people follow brands on social media than follow celebrities.

But while social media marketing can put a new business on the map, missteps can be made that are costly to the bottom line (and one’s reputation), says Deni Sciano (www.ScoreGameDayBag.com), an entrepreneur who founded Score! Designs, LLC, a women-owned designer handbag company based in San Antonio, Texas.

“There’s good and bad social media marketing,” says Sciano. “As an entrepreneur, few of us are good at it. We can play around with it and learn about it, or throw a little money at it here and there.

“Now that social media marketing is such a big business, you really have to find the right marketing company that fits you. Either way, through a company that focuses on it or doing your social media marketing in-house, it’s imperative to learn what to do, and what not to do, if you want social media to be an effective tool to attract and retain customers.”

Sciano suggests five ways to make social media work for your new business:

Know who and where your customers are. “Adopting social media tools must be a well-planned and researched step,” Sciano says. “It starts with determining who your target audience is – who would have a need for your product? – and their demographics. Then it’s vital to find out which platforms your potential customers are on before devising an appropriate strategy for each.”

Know what your message is. “This has to be specific,” Sciano says. “You need various angles in order to pull them into core message. There’s too much clutter and competition out there in social media for you to be general and bland about your product’s value. If you want to build more customers, you need to give them what they want and message it in a way they can relate to.”

Set goals on customer engagement. “The whole idea is creating curiosity in your product,” Sciano says. “How many responses should you expect in the early weeks, the third month, and so on? Is your message working or does it require tweaking? Setting a goal for number of responses is a metric you need to have.”

Find the right marketing company.  Social media marketing can be of utmost importance to entrepreneurs who do it themselves because they don’t have the large marketing budgets that more established companies have. But Sciano says those entrepreneurs who do hire social media marketing companies shouldn’t get aligned with a firm that has too many accounts to spend significant time with them. “Finding the right marketing team is easier said than done,” Sciano says. “They need to understand you and your message completely. They need to see your passion for the business and you must see their passion for getting your message out there effectively. The right marketing company becomes an integral member of your team, not just a vendor.”

Learn from failure. “This is often the best teacher,” Sciano says. “I fail every day but my company has come a long, long way. From losses come victories, creative solutions, more curiosity and optimism. All of that drives you and your company forward on various social media platforms.”

“Social media is a great way to create a buzz about your business,” Sciano says. “But it takes time, patience, flexibility and perseverance. And for many entrepreneurs, it’s become a daily part of their business model that they can’t do without.”

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Deni Sciano (www.ScoreGameDayBag.com) is the founder of Score! Designs, LLC, a women-owned designer handbag company based in San Antonio, Texas. A former teacher and marketing director, Sciano created her company and products with today’s heightened security issues at sports stadiums and arenas chiefly in mind. Her clear bags are sold in all 50 states.