Posts Tagged ‘study’

The Social Media Gender Gap

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

We’ve known for a long time that men and women communicate differently, just ask Dr Phil, but did you know just how different we can be when it comes to social media?

Burst Media recently discovered that one of the genders are more active than the other in social. Guess who’s leading the revolution? The women, of course. (Yeah, you might have guessed it: I’m a woman. No bias here whatsoever though…) We’re serving you the facts fresh out of the research oven.

Women in the US are moving faster to digital than men. In fact, 24% of American women say they socialize more with friends online than in-person. Only 13% of men say the same.
19% of Americans overall are socializing more online than in-person.
American respondents with higher education are more likely to spend time socializing online than “in the real world”.
Contrary to the US, Europeans are actually the least likely to be spending their time online. Only 14% say that they socialize more online vs. in-person.

Research from comScore also shows that women engage more in social, and spend 30% more time on social networking sites than men. But what can explain that women are savvier in social than men? According to Mashable, one suggestion is that the intrinsic difference between men and women also reflects their behavior in social. Women use social media to interact, share, and build relationships and communities. Their online presence is simply more powerful and has more impact on their peers. Men, on the other hand, view social media more as a tool for gathering information or access entertainment.

This is important information for marketers because the women are the ones that are making key household decisions. Women make a whopping 85% of all the financial household decisions on everything from food to autos. As we all know, marketers need to be where their customers are. Chances are extremely high that the majority of your customers will be women, and these are embracing social media at high speed.

Here at BzzAgent, we happen to know a thing or two about these social savvy women. A lot of our amazing BzzAgents are in fact women. They are social, and they are highly influential. They love sharing recommendations and opinions, and they do it because they are genuinely interested in helping others make better purchase decisions. The lesson for marketers is therefore: Keep up and get your social bzz on. Your female customers are ready.

Tags: gender gap, study
Posted in Making BzzAgent Work | 2 Comments »

Loyal Customers Are More Effective Advocates in Social Marketing

Thursday, June 21st, 2012

Our friend Matt Keylock at dunnhumby posted a summary of our latest research on the sales benefit of targeting known customers in advocacy marketing over at RetailWire. Matt asks readers “As social media continues to transform how brands and retailers engage with their customers, do you see advocacy becoming a more solid component of the marketing mix?” and “What programs or activities have been effective at driving high-quality, meaningful advocacy in social media?” An interesting conversation is starting in the comments. Check it out and chime in.

Here’s his post.

The more authentic the endorsement, the more effective it is in increasing sales for your brand. New research I presented with our social marketing group, BzzAgent, at this year’s ARF Audience Measurement 7.0 Conference shows how important loyal customers are to the success of advocacy marketing programs. Our study found that targeting people based on their purchase behaviors — along with social influence scores and demographic profiles — drives higher levels of in-store sales than using social scoring or demographics alone. In fact, advocacy programs focusing on loyal customers increased sales by an average of eight percent. This is 19 percent higher than previous studies using demographic targeting.

But it appears the benefits don’t end there. These advocates have a more authentic and personal connection to the brand so it’s likely they will keep talking long after their involvement in a program ends. The shopper-targeted campaigns in our study saw sales lifts continue at levels averaging 50 percent of their peak as long as six months later.

Today, advocacy marketing is big business. While trust in traditional media has plummeted, trust in earned media has risen 18 percent since 2007. According to Nielsen, 92 percent of people today trust earned media, including recommendations of their friends and family, more than traditional media. One national retailer estimates that improving advocacy among their customers can be a $5.3 billion opportunity.

It seems obvious to focus on loyal customers for advocacy marketing, but most marketers are not doing so. Many don’t even know which of their customers are active in social networks. Their customers are anonymous online and the conversations they have about the brand aren’t connected to in-store purchase activities. Those with the potential to be persuasive advocates are not recognized or engaged in a personal way.

Instead, many marketers target based on demographic profiles (collected by surveys), the brand’s Facebook/Twitters followers or by scores measuring their social influence. These consumers may be social-savvy, but they don’t have a strong connection to the brand. Their advocacy can lack in-depth personal experience and be short-lived, limiting their influence on sales of the product.

Our study indicates strongly that targeting customers based on their purchase histories (collected by retailer loyalty card programs), makes a big difference in the quality of the advocacy created and, thereby, the impact it has at the cash register. It’s the difference between asking them what they like to buy and seeing what they’ve actually bought. The ultimate goal is finding those customers in the right demographic target, with a relevant purchasing history, who have active social media followings.

Tags: advocacy, dunnhumby, study
Posted in Making BzzAgent Work | 1 Comment »

Behavioral Targeting is the Secret Sauce of Social Marketing

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

If you want your advocacy marketing program to cook up the sales, there’s one special ingredient you can’t leave out. It’s your current customers.

New research presented by BzzAgent and dunnhumby at the ARF Audience Measurement 7.0 Conference shows just how important customers are to advocacy marketing success.

Targeting people for brand advocacy programs based on their purchase behaviors, along with social influence scores and demographic profiles drives higher levels of in-store sales than using social scoring or demographics alone. In fact, advocacy programs focusing on shopper behaviors have increased sales by an average of 8%. But it doesn’t end there. These advocates have a deeper connection to the brand so they keep talking long after their involvement in a program ends. Their continued discussion influence sales that sustain 50% of that sales lift six months later.

For many marketers, customers are anonymous online. Social media is the most trusted and the most influential media, but a brand’s loyal customers see the same Facebook posts, tweets and blog posts as everyone else. Word of mouth generated by these customers is not connected to their purchases or to the purchases made by anyone they may have influenced.

Marketers often turn to their Facebook fans and demographic profiles of consumers collected by surveys. But Facebook fans aren’t necessarily your best customers. Many are there for free products and special discounts and demographic surveys represent what people say, not what they actually do. Social influence scoring is insufficient because the best advocates aren’t always the ones with the most followers on Twitter. Social media celebrities don’t usually have a deep connection to a brand or the personal motivation to help others make better purchase decisions.

The answer is your customers. They have experience in the product category, loyalty to your brand and they want to help others make better purchase decisions. This research highlights the improved effectiveness shopping behavior data can bring to social marketing. Check out the details of the research in the ARF report. Download it here .

Tags: advocacy, ARF, loyalty, study
Posted in Making BzzAgent Work | 2 Comments »

Making Facebook More Social

Friday, June 8th, 2012

An interesting new study from Admap looks at the level of engagement fans have on the Facebook pages of 200 brands. It’s not that much. An average of only 0.50% of fans interacted with the brands on Facebook in a given week. Admap used Facebook’s “talking about this” stat to determine these engagement benchmarks. (This metric shows the number of people interacting with the brand as a percentage of their total fans)

You may thinking that this is an average and a handful of companies are weighing it down. It’s not really the case. Few do much better. 10% of the brands had engagement levels of 1% or more, and only one company out of the 200 in the study had engagement levels over 2%.

Product categories didn’t make much of a difference. On the high end, car brands had engagement rates of 0.98%, followed by alcohol brands at 0.85%. The categories with the lowest engagement were finance/insurance at 0.17% and retailers at 0.20%.

There wasn’t much difference in what the researchers considered to be passion brands. 11 passion brands were identified form the sample and only 6 of them averaged higher engagement. Tiffany & Co. led the group with 1.14% . Luis Vuitton and Ferrari were in the 0.95% range. Even the brand most people think of first when discussing passion brands, Harley Davidson, fell below the industry average.

We’ve always said that “Likes” are not a measure of social media marketing success. This is part of the reason why. They aren’t a reflection on sales and they don’t represent high levels of engagement either. Many marketers put their Facebook URL in their TV ads and driving Likes is the primary focus of their social media strategy. But they aren’t doing enough to activate conversations, especially the meaningful ones that inspire others to get involved. These are the conversations that attract others, spread across the web and influence the opinions and purchases actions of many others. If there isn’t much meaningful social participation on your brand’s Facebook page, it isn’t much more than another brand website.

For a great example of Facebook fan engagement, take a look at what BzzAgent Jono is doing on our Facebook page. This page currently averages a 6-7% overall engagement week over week – 12 times the industry average. Individual posts often hit 20% to 25% levels. That’s how to get your bzz on.

Tags: facebook, Jono, study
Posted in Making BzzAgent Work | 14 Comments »

How Trust in Earned Media Has Changed

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

While it might not be a surprise to anyone that almost all of us trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising, it may be eye-opening to see how much that’s changed over the past couple years.

New data from Nielsen’s “Global Trust in Advertising Survey” finds that the number of people trusting earned media most has risen 18% since 2007. That puts it way up at 92% now. Looking specifically at consumer reviews shared online, the study shows that trust in these posts have jumped 15% in that time. Not too shabby.

Guess where this growth came from? Since 2009, confidence in TV has fallen 24%, magazines have dropped 20%, and newspapers are down 25%. Considering they were dropping pretty fast back then, we are in very low territory. Nielsen says the continued proliferation of media messages is having a negative impact on how well they are resonating. Randall Beard, global head of Advertiser Solutions at Nielsen said “successful brand advertisers will seek ways to better connect with consumers and leverage their goodwill in the form of consumer feedback and experiences.”

And that’s coming from the guy in charge of selling advertising products.

I think it’s safe to say you don’t have to worry about talk of social media burnout or social media losing its effectiveness. It’s not. Social media’s been around for years and the influence of peer recommendations continues to rise. It’s all in how you tap into it. Focusing on building Facebook “likes” doesn’t get anyone talking about products. The focus has to be on building advocacy. If your audience is losing trust and confidence in advertising, shouldn’t you?

Tags: earned media, study, trust
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Social Marketing Delivers a 6.7% Lift in Sales

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Here’s more proof that social marketing is a big sales driver for CPG brands. You may remember earlier this year we studied the ROI results of our social marketing programs measured with market mix modeling (MMM) analysis. This showed that social returns an average of $1.50 for every $1 spent.

This time around, we partnered with SymphonyIRI to study the lift in sales volume CPGs are seeing with social marketing. We analyzed the results of the social marketing programs we measured using their matched market analysis, and the findings were just as impressive. When social is used to build widespread consumer advocacy, is generates an average sales lift of 6.7% for CPG brands. Results varied slightly by product category. Food products had an average lift of 6.3%, while personal care products jumped an average of 7.2%. (Read the release)

If you are not familiar, match market analysis is proven media measurement practices used by brands to determine the retail sales lift of all types of marketing initiatives.

When applied to social marketing, the principles are the same. Two similar geographic markets are selected, a social marketing program is exposed to people on one of the markets, and SymphonyIRI applies statistical techniques to match store-to-store sales data that isolates the sales impact of the program. Various adjustments are made for variables like price and promotion occurring in the markets at that time. Even though social sharing occurs nationally, our research shows there is a sufficient concentration of people in the individual’s local area to make the results statistically valid.

That means you have sales data you can plan a strategy around. Try building a strategy around a report of “likes” and “re-tweets”.

Check out the press announcement for more details, and read about our approach to measurement in this ebook.

Tags: study, symphonyiri
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Digital Media’s Influence on CPG Sales

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

A new study dunnhumby with Accenture and ComScore shows how important a brand’s online presence is to in-store sales. They found that when consumers visit a brand’s website to learn about products, offers and relevant content, they are much better customers.

Shoppers who have visited a brand’s website spend 37% more money with the brand and 53% more in the category than non-visitors. The following chart shows how website visitors compare against non-visitors in these key shopping behaviors. Non-visitors are represented by an index of 100.

Monthly brand spending – Websites are a very powerful influence. Visitors spend 37% more with the brand in the retail store. The study found that the length of time visitors spend on the site is was the key determinant of their likelihood to purchase the brand in the store. What makes a website effective? The most important factor is fresh content that is updated frequently. Content that provides reasons to buy the brand, product ratings and user generated content are all effective at increasing time spent on the site.

Category spend – Website visitors are educated in the category and likely to make many purchases in the category with multiple brands. These consumers spend 53% more money in the category.

Brand units – Since they spending more money, it makes sense that they are filling their shopping cart with 48% more products.

Category price per unit – It’s interesting to note that these are savvy shoppers. They pay slightly less per unit than non-website visitors. They know where to look for discounts, and the web is a great place to find offers.

There is obviously great untapped potential here.

“The research highlights the significant yet underutilized potential of brand websites and digital communications as key drivers for building customer loyalty and preference for CPG brands.”

“Since website visitors have higher affinity to the brand and the overall product category, there is an opportunity for brand marketers to drive loyalty through personalizing the website experience, catering to the preferences of their best customers.” – John LaRocca, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships at dunnhumbyUSA

While this study isn’t specific to social media, it points to the quality of a brand’s presence across the entire internet.Most brand websites feature their Facebook and Twitter sites prominently. A few of the brand websites, like Skittles.com and Snickers.com, seem to exist just to pull people into their Facebook pages. It’s a great approach. Instead of just linking people to a Wall or offer page, they deliver a high-impact brand experience on the website and give customers reasons to dig deeper into the activities and conversation on Facebook.

The survey was conducted over a 6 month period by dunnhumby, Accenture and ComScore. ComScore tracked the online activities of a million web users in the US (with permission of course) and the data was matched against dunnhumby’s in-store shopping data. Accenture looked at websites of CPG brands to evaluate the common components of the most successful websites.

Get your copy from dunnhumby here.

Tags: CPG, dunnhumby, study
Posted in Making BzzAgent Work | 1 Comment »

Mobile Phones at the Point-of-Purchase

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

New research from Pew Internet show just how important mobile phones are to shoppers when they are in the store about to make a purchase. Not only are consumers using their phones to compare prices at other retailers, they are looking up reviews of the products staring back at them from the shelf.

The report ”The Rise of In-store Mobile Commerce” Pew found that during the last holiday season, 52% of adult cell phone owners used their phone in the store to help make a purchase decisions. If you thought they were standing there banging away on their phones to text their kids in the food court, you might be surprised to see that they were actually conducting some serious point-of-purchase research. The study found:

24% looked up online reviews
25% gathered price comparisons (19% of them went ahead and bought the product online when they were in the store)

These shoppers tend to be younger (age 18-49), live in urban areas and have incomes above $50,000.

Online price comparisons are going to happen. As mobile sites get better and as new apps make price aggregation easier, this behavior is only going to increase. But it’s not always all about price. Pew’s data shows that as many people are looking up product reviews as are checking prices at Amazon or apps like myShopanion. But they’re not looking for ads and company websites. They are checking with friends on social networks and searching for product reviews from other customers to get the info they need to feel confident about a purchase. Building customer advocacy is one area where marketers can influence, and it should be a primary focus.

Filling the web with authentic discussion from customers about quality, efficacy and value is the best way to fight the price war you can’t always control. The story is even stronger when those discussions include photos of the product in use and demonstration videos.A study last fall from Web Liquid found that social media posts with photos had engagement rates higher than any other type of post.

We are encouraging our Agents to use mobile devices as often as possible to share product opinions and experiences. Some of our Agents, like busy moms, use smartphones as their primary connection to the web and their social networks. Having an iPhone app not only enables them to share detailed product experiences as it happens, it’s integration with the iPhone’s high-quality camera make it easier than ever to post the personal videos and photos of the product experience in the store and at home with their families. This is the kind of stuff that will get a product into the shopping cart.

Got the app? If not, try it here: http://www.bzzagent.com/pg/iPhone

Tags: iphone, mobile, study
Posted in Making BzzAgent Work | 1 Comment »

What Gets Clicked on Twitter

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

You think you know a thing or two about using Twitter to promote your product? If you are using Twitter to drive people to product pages, offers, articles and blog posts, then you need to know what gives you the best chance for success.

Dan Zarella of Hubspot studied this and created a great infographic on how to get more clicks out of Twitter. Here a summary of his findings with a little of our own commentary.

Keep tweets between 12 and 130 characters. This makes a lot of sense. You want to say enough to communicate a compelling thought while leaving enough space for the RT and your username. If you want to be re-tweeted, keep your audience in mind and make it as easy as possible for someone to just click RT. The more time they have to spend figuring out ways to cut words and spaces to get it down to 140, the less likely they’ll be to do it. An RT should just take a second.

Place links about 25% of the way through. The highest click rates occurred when the link was a quarter of the way into the message. This was an eye-opener for me. I usually put the link at the end of the tweet so I can use the beginning of the message to build the call to action. But as they say in the newsroom, don’t bury the lead. The chart shows that you don’t want to start with the link, but get it in the message early.

Tweet links a slower pace. Sending only 1 or 2 links per hour will boost your click rate by as much as 300% compared to more frequent posts. You don’t want to appear spammy and sending too much of anything becomes noise. Make your tweets count by sending quality links at a slow, but steady basis.

Choose the right words. Twitter is a conversation so it’s important to recognize the people you are communicating with. Tweets mentioning others using the word “via” and @ had click rates in the 6% range, triple the click rate of tweets not using the terms. “RT” and “please” were also well received. It pays to be polite on Twitter. On the other hand, the use of “@addthis” and “marketing” actually performed worse than tweets without them. Think about that the next time you click the share button. My guess is that many share button tweets prepopulate the language in the post so it becomes a lot less interesting if a lot of people tweeting the same thing the exact same way. My takeaway, be creative.

Experiment using paper.li. If you are not familiar, paper.li is an automated content aggregator on a particular topic. Content is collected daily based on keywords or hashtags and posts are sent daily with the words “daily is out”. This must create a sense of ugency people can’t resist. According to the study, these gets click rates in the 30% range. Sounds like it’s time to set one of these up.

Use action words: more verbs, fewer nouns. Tweets with more adverbs and verbs have a much higher click rate than tweets with mostly nouns and adjectives. This all comes down to being interesting and talking in an active voice. Nouns are passive and boring.

Tweet on the weekends. Tweet click rates jump on Saturday and Sunday. A Sysmos report from 2009 shows that Twitter volume is somewhat lower on the weekend, especially on Sunday. Seems like when activity is lower, your tweet is more likely to get noticed.

Tweet later in the day. Clicks rates are high at 9am before fading as the morning coffee wears off. Lunch must energize people because clicks skyrocket to their highest point in the day at 2pm. Rates fade and jump at 5pm and again between 8 and 10pm. The study doesn’t indicate whether these are east coast times, but I suspect they are. So I’m sure the popularity of afternoon tweets has a lot to do with the addition of our west coast friends when they come online. No matter where you live, avoid 2am to 7am. Nobody’s clicking anything then.

This is interesting stuff. Some of these findings have made me re-think some the ways I approach Twitter for marketing. What about you? Lets talk about it at @bzzagent.

Tags: hubspot, study, twitter
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