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Diet Coke is set to launch a new Facebook application to coincide with the upcoming Love It Light advertising campaign, according to an article published by New Media Age.
Entitled ‘Get Glam’, the app is aimed at women and will provide fashion and beauty tips, as well as video chat tools and has been described as the “perfect accompaniment for getting ready with the girls.”
As well as this social media marketing initiative, the Love It Light campaign will be run across various media platforms, including TV and VOD (video on demand).
The campaign has been designed to be part of a three-year strategy to link Diet Coke’s advertising and marketing initiatives with fashion.
Commenting on the Love It Light campaign, market activation director for Coca-Cola Great Britain, Zoe Howorth, said: “The Love it Light campaign returns for the fourth time in 2012 featuring the distinctive Diet Coke puppets.
“The campaign demonstrates the brand’s light-hearted attitude and appeals to young fun-loving women,” she added.
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Facebook’s UK sales director has stated his belief that the site – a popular social media marketing platform – is “equal” to traditional advertising platforms, according to an article published by Marketing Week.
Stephen Haines stated: “We are now at the table right at the start of campaigns, with the client, media agency and creative agency, before the creative has even been decided on. This wasn’t happening two years ago; we were at the back of the (line) then.
“But now we’re at the front with TV,” he added.
Haines has attributed the level of attention paid by marketers towards Facebook to the insights that newly available data can provide.
The social media site has received plaudits from British Airways, who have chosen to launch their campaigns via Facebook on a number of occasions.
Managing director of brand and customer service for the airline, Frank van der Post, spoke of the importance of Facebook for marketing campaigns.
He stated: “Facebook gave us the forum to interact daily with our customers and for a real conversation to take place about the brand.
“This wouldn’t have been possible had we ignored the power of social media and only followed the traditional approach to advertising,” he continued.
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Despite being a hugely popular platform for social media marketing initiatives, Forrester Research has suggested that businesses aren’t a priority for Facebook, and marketers using the platform are indecisive, according to an article published by New Media Age.
Whilst 96 of America’s top 100 brands operate a presence on the social media site, Forrester has stated that marketers lack an understanding of how to get a good ROI (return on investment) on the site.
In their report which has been published today, the company has also stated that Facebook has made it increasingly difficult for businesses – changing content management options and providing a limited amount of data for analysis.
VP principal analyst at the company and the report’s author, Nate Elliot, launched an attack on the approach taken by marketers on Facebook.
He said: “Marketers are all over the shop because they didn’t know why they decided to use Facebook in the first place. They rushed to be there without understanding what they are doing there.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
There seems to be a fear, not just in major brands but also in SMEs, about mobile marketing. We all relate to the subject based on how we feel about our mobile phones. Just ask around the office right now, or your family, how they feel about marketing messages on their mobiles, and you will see where this fear could stem from. For the vast majority of people, receiving a marketing message on your mobile is a no-no.
However, mobile marketing is not just about sending a text/SMS to a willing (or unwilling) recipient. Mobile marketing needs to be thought of as a far broader church. Once you understand what a mobile phone is capable of, and how your potential audience are most likely to use theirs, then you can target your actions appropriately.
For instance, SMEs, retail outlets and rural businesses should all be at the least listed on Foursquare. This is one of those discrete and gentle touches with mobile marketing and geolocation. A simple sticker in your window, register your venue/outlet/premises on the Foursquare site, and offer a Mayoral prize each week to attract customers to check in.
You can take this further by organising flash mobs at your venue or shop and offering a special FourSquare badge or similar to those who attend. Tie this in with a Tweet-up and people will hang around that much longer. And spend, remember, talk, tweet about the event etc. Don’t forget a good hashtag for Twitter….
Apps are of course the big thing and generally these fall into three main courts – iPhone, Blackberry and Android. Whatever you do with mobile marketing should try to reach all the bodies of smartphone users, or risk alienating those who are left out.
Starting with the simplest type of engagement, you can encourage people to take photos either of your venue, products or for a themed competition. Add a little creativity, such as encouraging instant uploads with Instagram, or composing them into Photograms, and almost anyone with a camera phone and an app can enter.
Perhaps this is where many people fall down in the definition of ‘marketing’. It is no longer simply push marketing that is required, but now, especially with social networks, pull marketing with heavy consumer engagement is equally as important.
So, it is no longer about billboards and TV adverts that force feed the information about a product to the consumer, but very much more about dialogue, engagement and consumer interaction.
What else can you do with mobile marketing? What are you doing with mobile marketing that you feel others couldn/should be doing too?
Mobile Commerce
Google Wallet, a tap and pay mechanism for smartphones, has been in testing for a while but rumours are circulating on Twitter that the official launch date may be September 19th.
At present, Google Wallet only works on the Nexus Android smartphone which is only available in the USA, but if Google wish to corner the pay-by-phone mobile commerce market, then it is likely that it will soon be available across more Android models. Mastercard are involved in the Google Wallet project and so the endeavour is likely to seek global adoption.
What does this mean for businesses? If you have been focusing more on social media than what is happening with mobile marketing, it may be time to begin to look at the opportunities which mobile marketing presents, and more importantly, what is up and coming with M-Commerce.
Whilst many retail locations have got in on the Foursquare and Gowalla geolocation marketing, there is still a level of trepidation and uncertainty surrounding more direct mobile marketing. Obviously, the major concern is that it could be all too easy to slip up and be accused of spamming mobile users and/or targeting the wrong market by not fully understanding the process.
However, understanding mobile marketing is one thing, but grasping how to best engage with your potential customers once you have attracted them to your shop or website is of at least equal importance. Whether it is making it simple to add products to a shopping list using a mobile app barcode scanner, or making it really easy to pay using a smartphone, e.g. by incorporating a Google Wallet type idea into the shopping experience, generating sales has to be on the radar!
Although it will take time for smartphone payment apps and M-Commerce to reach mass market, the probably imminent launch of Google Wallet means that you should start looking at how this will affect your business, and how you can maximise sales potential from mobile marketing and payments by keeping an eye on forthcoming product launches such as Google Wallet and other M-Commerce solutions.
Opening up a new opportunity for paid social media marketing, micro-blogging site Twitter is set to launch its UK target adverts – provided by brand partners – in October, according to an article published by Marketing Magazine.
A number of high profile brands are said to have been in talks with Twitter, including O2, Vodafone and Sony, to target users with advertising based on their own followers and the users that they follow in the Twitter-sphere.
Though the plan is currently in place to target users via adverts specific to country, an agency source told Marketing Magazine that Twitter was considering allowing adverts that targeted on a regional basis in the future.
As a strategy set to boost Twitter’s income from marketing initiatives, another source has reportedly revealed that they are looking for a fee of up to six-figures to promote brand accounts and tweets.
The scheme is somewhat behind schedule. It was originally announced that the initiative would be implemented at the beginning of this year. However, the lack of a sales office in the UK hampered this ambition – leading to the date being put back until now.
While the specific brands involved in the initial launch of this new feature haven’t yet been revealed, the scheme is expected to provide a boost for brands looking to make strides forward in social media marketing.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
Thought Facebook Places might be a serious contender to Foursquare and Gowalla for location marketing? Think again.
Whilst it ought to have stood a chance in the geolocation marketing stakes, Facebook rolled out Places as an afterthought, a feature with no thinking behind it. And now it has gone. In the hullabaloo of yet more privacy changes on Facebook to affect all users, Places has been consigned to the pile of tried and failed apps.
It would be interesting to look at why certain features ‘fit’ in a social network, and why users prefer other features to remain in a dedicated space. For instance, it is unlikely that everyone will start making voice calls within Facebook rather than using already established solutions such as mobile, Skype or the good old landline. Even Ebay has not really resolved that one although it was a logical fit to allow buyers and sellers to communicate via Skype.
Those who use geolocation, for whatever reason, have a preferred tool for the job. Facebook was not it. And never could be without becoming increasingly good at delivering what the dedicated solutions had found to be the big wins – badges, tips, photos, event location, crowdsourced and unique awards, discounts etc.
It will be interesting to note during 2012 how far down the social graph Facebook sinks. Already, it is feeling like it has lost its edge. And for that, you should probably blame Google+. Not that Google+ is going to fill in the space, more the space has moved.
Facebook has suddenly taken on a MySpace tumbleweed type feel, and once sites such as this lose the interest of users, there is rarely a way back up.
Which geolocation tool do you use, and why? Is it to inform friends of your whereabouts? To track down deals? To meet people you share common interests with, or FOAF? (Remember that?!)
Or are you as a marketer far less interested in any time of check ins than you were 12 months ago? In which case, what is piquing your interest right now? Tell us more……
It is well known that pay per click marketing campaigns can be expensive and time-consuming. The ultimate reward of a fantastic ROI (return on investment), however, makes it all worth it.
Writing for American Express Open Forum, Stacey Politi has created a list; featuring ten steps that can be taken to improve pay per click marketing campaigns and, more importantly, ROI.
Here are just a few of the tips provided by Politi:
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
The video chat feature that Facebook have announced in partnership with Skype is being rolled out today for millions of users. This is obviously a rolling program as we cannot yet see it yet, nor can we see the group chat facility that has been promised (more on that later).
However, having been using Google+ Hangouts avidly for the last week, we can already see a flaw in the Facebook offering. Hangouts allow, today, up to 10 people to enter a group video chat. One on one video chat in a Hangout is a simple matter by only inviting that one person!
From a business point of view, the Hangout option of up to 10 people is extremely attractive. Live webinars with 9 invitees, live focus groups with attendees from across the planet, online project collaboration between diverse teams and/or experts/consultants, share a Youtube video to highlight a point or to see what your competitors are putting online in video media, feedback from your customers, tech support through video. IN reality, the uses are endless and Facebook does not offer more than a limited spectrum of uses because of the 1 to 1 only choice.
Yes, we understand that for businesses using Facebook already, the closed space that is currently G+ means that many of your customers are not in there. Yet. But the field trial is not going to remain closed for long. And when your customers start moving to Google +, which undoubtedly they will because it is Google, then you need to be ready to make the most of it.
Google has played the canny marketing game it often does – using scarcity and hence DESIRE as a driver for adoption. However, there is a very practical reason why G+ is closed – much of it is definitely not wrinkle free yet, and whilst much is intuitive, there are features which will flummox your average home user. And those home users = customers for the businesses which generate Google’s billions. So it must work for those people before the doors are fully open.
Focusing on the positives of Facebook’s video chat, it has long been believed that video would be the ‘killer app’ on the Net and not just video content from Hollywood etc. The telephone took off when it stopped being used to transmit content in broadcast mode (songs on a Sunday as I recall was the earliest use!). When users were allowed to make their own content by talking to each other, the telephone became a ‘must have’; so the advent of sufficient bandwidth allowing video chat to be possible, (with broadband becoming more affordable and accessible) has meant that the opening of channels to allow that video content to be created have become possible.
Allowing everyone to be able to talk to anyone who they have friended on Facebook opens a huge raft of possibilities. For businesses, the most obvious use is customer services. Here is a direct line to the company you want to talk to, and you can see the person at the other end. This gives a boost in confidence to the consumer, and businesses should be rapid adopters of the opportunities this presents. Although this does mean that any company will need to have customer support staff who are comfortable using this technology and have the time to attend to video chat requests.
Now, on to this improved chat. The actual announcement is a nothingness – it’s just group text chat. This has been in existence for such a very long time outside of FB that the announcement falls flat really. Its use for businesses may allow another level of open, two way communication – which businesses really need to come to terms with in this new era of so-me – but it is no ways a ground breaker as Skype conference calls with the added chat facility have been around for sooo long, as well as a zillion other text chat options. This is no ground breaker and in itself simply re-inforces the feeling of fear that this entire press conference communicated.
Overall Summary – the quality of the video chat seems to be better at this time than Google+ Hangouts, but G+ is a trial and Google have not thrown the resources at it yet whilst in test mode. Multi-person video chats are the killer app, not one to one. The group text chat means nothing.
BUT, businesses need to start thinking how they are going to manage the human resources to back up their presence on social media. There are going to be two major social networks now, and whilst G+ looks like it might be the choice of the more techy audience (for now at least), the reality is that in a few short months, any business will need to be on both, whoever your target audience is.
This means that whilst metrics are important, business behaviour will need to be far more pro-active and imaginative about how to engage. Customers already complain regularly about business failure to engage with them using the tools that the customers are using eg Twitter, FB, etc and being in broadcast rather than dialogue mode has the potential to be a reputation killer. We all know what happened to Ratner and understanding how to communicate in and with the public using social media is going to become a core business skill.
Social media is no longer an ignorable sales, marketing and promotion mechanism. The big players are evolving their partnerships ready for one enormous battle for users – Skype + Microsoft + Facebook vs Google + their constant buy-outs of partner technologies, services and apps to give them an ever-extending portfolio. You cannot as a business pick a side, so you will need to learn to work with and on both of them.
Part 2 of the public chat with Empire Avenue’s DUPS on Friday evening (GMT)….To continue…..
As of yesterday the public chats were turned off, with new chats being enabled within the special interest communities – of which there are already hundreds, ranging from geographic regions and cities through to business related forums such as the CEO Club and SEO and Social media communities. And then there are communities of interest such as Tomato Lovers, Daddy Bloggers, Harry Potter and gaming communities.
DUPS and his team are determined to increase the value of the network within Eav, and there will be a strong focus on making the communities increasingly more useful as an integral part of Eav over the coming months. Mention was made of “trending communities” so that people could see which were most active, as well as much more functionality within the chat, such as Thumbs Up, links and photos showing as previews and thumbnails, etc.
There was some discussion of integrating Disqus into the site, which seemed to meet with approval.
The question of spam was covered because obviously a website such as Eav has managed to already attract people for whom ‘netiquette’ is an unknown word. Until the last few days, there was one chat called “Buy Me” in which all shameless promotion and spam was permitted. The general feeling is that there should be at the least a similar ‘overflow’ system to keep these people from harrassing genuine Eavers with their constant “Buy Me” shouts etc. One user has specifically set up a new Buy Me community to try to cater for this problem.
Another question which was asked was when might there be a Blackberry app and this is being looked into by the community now, rather than the developers. Apparently there are some issues to resolve but anyone who wishes to help develop the app should offer help in the communities. Ditto with Android, but this seems to raise less issues.
The user community has already developed a multitude of toolbars and other helpful solutions for shareholders wishing to quickly see ROI, stocks etc and DUPS is encouraging that, as well as the proliferation of Facebook groups such as #TeamZen and #SocialEmpire who help out new users, suggest hot tips, and relieve some of the pressure for support from the developers. There are also an army of volunteer moderators who do a quite superb job at keeping the community in order.
There is an API for anyone wanting to access that so undoubtedly the coming months will see far more exciting new additions from the community itself as well as from the devs.
The chat was fast-paced and it may be that there were other topics discussed which are not mentioned here. If you were one of those in the chat, please do pitch in with any contributions.
The end of the chat was interspersed with some clues about the Secret Awards such as the TOM and the DUPS that can be found if you search hard enough, but for some of us that left it about as clear as mud what we are to do to achieve them! There was also once again mention of a squirrel hunt – some people have been on Eav for a year now and this is obviously an in joke….can anyone clear up what exactly the persecution of squirrels is about, please?!
