One of the few reality shows I've ever gotten hooked on was the Beekman Boys. Sadly, it's been off the air for two or three years. I was enchanted by the two guys from NYC who bought a farm in Vermont, bonded with their neighbors and animals (goats, pigs and a runaway llama) and struggled successfully to create a sustainable business. Episodes of the show are posted online; just Google them.
Brent is a physician with an MBA who worked for Martha Stewart Omnimedia and Josh is a former executive at the JWT agency, so maybe it should be no surprise that they have a sophisticated marketing strategy that uses various media channels. I was delighted to reconnect with them on HSN.
http://bit.ly/2EE961B
Earlier this month I saw a link to their 24-hour marathon (!!) on Facebook. I watched a little of it and it was a delight. This video would be a good launch for a class discussion of how to engage with your customers!
They also have a charming website, a retail store (featured on the site) and a Facebook page with 191 thousand followers in addition to their frequent appearances on HSN. A true omnichannel strategy!
There's lots of opportunity for discussion here, especially about the ways in which they integrate the various channels. It would make a great mini-case if someone had the energy to write it up and share it with the rest of us!
In the world of social media the popularity of platforms rises and falls. Last year the social media darling was Snapchat. In 2018 Instagram, and especially Instagram Stories, has become a marketing force.
Why is Instagram a Marketing Powerhouse?
Instagram has become indispensable to many marketers for the usual reasons--it's large and it's effective in reaching and motivating attractive target audiences. Some 2018 statistics to back that up:
It has 1 billion active monthly users as of mid-2018. Yes, that's billion with a b!
Its growth is expected to continue, as compared to Facebook, Twitter and even Snapchat, all of whose growth in number of accounts has plateaued.
Instagram users spend an average of 53 minutes each day on the Android version of the app.
Of primary importance to marketers, it is the platform of choice of 18 - 34 year-old consumers worldwide, a notoriously hard to reach demographic.
40% of US mobile female users are on it. Note that worldwide slightly more men than women are on the platform,
Their usage is formidable:
22% of users log in to Instagram at least once each day.
38% check their account multiple times each day.
63% of US teenagers use Instagram daily.
34% of US Millennials use the platform daily.
72% of users have purchased a product they saw on Instagram.
Instagram is a Proven Business Platform
As users have flocked to Instagram, brands have followed them there. The platform works equally well for global brands and small local businesses. And it does work. According to Hootsuite's aggregation of stats:
16.71% of businesses use Instagram; there are 17.25 million business profiles on the platform.
It has 18.2 million monthly advertisers.
19.8% of users follow at least one business.
60% of users discover products there.
75% of users take some kind of action like visiting a product's website.
In a single month 1/3 of Instagram users purchased a product using a mobile device making them 70% more likely to purchase from a mobile device than non-users.
Instagram has a 2.2% interaction rate, higher than competing platforms.
If Instagram is a marketing powerhouse Instagram Stories is the feature that is propelling its current growth. Instagram Stories is a feature that allows users to post photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. Snapchat was the first to introduce Stories in 2013 and now Facebook offers the feature also. Instagram quickly outstripped the popularity of both Facebook and Snapchat stories among the key young adult demographics.
Once the Stories feature has been activated on the app, all the content posted during a 24-hour period is shown in chronological order. Content from the user's camera roll can be included. The story appears on a bar at the top of the creator's page. Stories can be shared with other users but there are no likes or comments. Stories also offers a number of engagement features--stickers, locations, hashtags and polls appear to be the most popular. In order to access these features the user must convert to a business profile. If you are converting a personal profile to a business profile, you may need to change some of your settings to activate all the new features. Once you have Stories operational, you can create your first Story.
Because of the ephemeral nature of Stories, sharing options are limited. Instagram posts can be shared to a user's Story by using the paper plane icon. Stories can be reposted by accounts but only if they are tagged in another account's Stories. Reposting is useful for brands that use influencer marketing because they can include the influencer's post in their own highlights.
Business that have over 10,000 followers can add links to their Stories, thereby driving viewers to their websites.
The Highlights feature allows businesses to add a set of clips to their profile. Highlights do not disappear after 24 hours; they remain visible underneath the profile picture until the brand deletes them.
Instagram Stickers can be customized to increase engagement and add a call to action. See examples here.
How Brands Use Instagram Stories
Brands use Instagram Stories to promote their products and services in many ways, as shown in this chart from marketing services firm Launch. Their report says that Instagram is the best platform for creating viewer engagement and that brands value engagement even more than they do product awareness. Makes sense--engagement has a good chance of leading to viewer action.
Brandwatch posted an infographic with compelling reasons to use Stories and links to 30 interesting case histories. Unfortunately it's just too long to post, but here's the link. Some of their statistics are already outdated. I've been careful to use the most recent ones I could find for this post. Here are some capsules of brands who are using Stories well.
Selena Gomez. Not a brand, you say? To my mind anyone who has 144 million followers on Instagram is a brand, whether she intended it or not. And I assume this former girlfriend of Justin Bieber did intend it. I've read the Vanity Fair article on how she became the top Instagram celebrity and I still don't understand it. But that's ok because I'm not part of her target audience. She does Stories, of course; this is simply her profile picture.
Nike. Always a powerhouse in digital, there are literally dozens of Nike Instagram accounts. Some are corporate accounts, some are retailer accounts and some may even be individual fans. This is from #Nike, which features user-generated content. I captured this shot from the Black Friday story because it has an interactive feature, a question sticker, I think. It turns out to be a post from Turkey's largest retailer of sportswear. What fun! [accessed November 23, 2018]
Monterrey Bay Aquarium. National Geographic is far and away the leader in this space with 94.3 million Instagram followers as I write this. It has been an internet and social media giant from the beginning with its captivating photos. The Monterrey Bay Aquarium, with 'only' 253 thousand followers, shows much smaller non-profit using Stories well. Any account that can host a #SeaSlugDay has my vote. It also has my vote for having an Instagram account just for teens to post their own content for other teens. That's a great fit with their mission "to inspire conservation of the ocean" and their program "to inspire the next wave of ocean leaders" by focusing on education and development programs for children, teens and teachers. [accessed November 23, 2018]
Mailchimp. When you search the best B2B Instagram marketers email marketing firm Mailchimp invariably shows up. These three screens from their Small Business Saturday Story gives a good idea of why. Interactive features promote engagement and the answer, of course, is a promo for Mailchimp's services. They have 87.7 thousand followers, which is not too shabby for a marketing services firm unknown outside the email industry. They have one service that is especially relevant--the ability to create an Instagram (also Facebook) ad directly from their platform. The process is explained thoroughly without the viewer having to create a Mailchimp account. The third resource page Create Instagram Ads in Mailchimp has a 2-minute video that would work well in the classroom. Wow! [accessed November 24, 2018]
This is more than enough to give you the idea! A word of warning, however. It's difficult to do justice to ephemeral content in a static context. Instagram Stories beg to be shown in class. You can find good sources in the Brandwatch infographic post or a more recent article in Forbes. You can also ask your students to suggest a story. Having had some embarrassing experiences with that--both intentional and unintentional, I think--I always suggest that you have a backup ready. Or do both. Your students will give you some entertaining examples; you can add the digital strategy aspects. However you choose to present Instagram Stories, I think both you and your students will enjoy it!
Mozilla just released its 2018 'Privacy Not Included' Report and I made a post about it on my data privacy blog. It's a good resource for you and for your students.
It has a tie-in with another subject that could make for a good class discussion--the subject of brands that are sustainable because of their sense of purpose and social responsibility. Here's one good reference with some useful links.
Is social sustainability just a fad or is it the wave of the future? It is a subject that is important to younger consumers and a classroom discussion that specifically includes the concept should be interesting.
There seems to be little doubt that the security and privacy of their personal data is important to Americans, and it is becoming more so every day (or maybe every data breach!). This has been an important subject in the textbook from the beginning and these are important findings that look forward to the future of the topic and build on content in Chapter 17.
Is Data Privacy the Top Concern?
Americans' concern about privacy has been tracked from the early days of the internet. EPIC has a page Public Opinion on Privacy that chronicles studies back as far as 1990 and has links to the most important ones from the present back to 2011. It's a tremendous resource. But what is the status of the concern at present?
http://bit.ly/2AYwZyg
The Harris Poll has conducted two surveys recently, the first for IBM and the second with Finn Partners. The April 2018 study found a big gap between what customers want from the firms they do business with and what those firms actually provide as shown in the graphic. Specifically, the respondents replied as follows:
75 percent will not buy a product from a company – no matter how
great the products are – if they don't trust the company to protect
their data;
73 percent think businesses are focused on profits over addressing consumers' security needs;
73 percent indicated it is extremely important that companies quickly take proper actions to stop a data breach; and
60 percent are more concerned about cybersecurity than a potential war.
Harris conducted a second study with Finn Partners in conjunction with the introduction of their Societal ROI Index. That's an interesting subject that should resonate with students; more about the Index later.
http://bit.ly/2SXhsWy
The global study extracted the American data to confirm that data privacy was once again the most important societal concern for the US respondents, as the graphic shows. However, privacy ranked only 6th on the list of concern on which businesses are having a positive impact.
Access to healthcare was second on the list of concerns. Respondents ranked healthcare 4th on the list of positive business impact.
They ranked job creation first in terms of where business was having a positive societal impact. Job creation was 5th on their list of concerns.
Are Businesses Losing the Battle for Trust?
The third graphic doesn't answer that question directly, but the data on 2017 data breaches provide a strong implication. If data privacy is most important to customers and the war on data breaches is being lost, the trend is clearly in the wrong direction. Consider the number and growing magnitude of these data breaches in 2017.
The survey confirmed that there is a
rising national sentiment of anxiety as relatively few consumers trust
that their data is secured by the organizations that manage it.
Specifically, the survey revealed that 78 percent of U.S. respondents
say a company’s ability to keep their data private is extremely
important but only 20 percent completely trust organizations they
interact with to maintain the privacy of their data.
The online survey of 10,000 global consumers also found that:
69 percent said it is extremely important that companies are accessible in the wake of a data breach;
73 percent indicated it is extremely important companies quickly take proper actions to stop a data breach;
75 percent
will not buy a product from a company – no matter how great the
products are – if they don’t trust the company to protect their data;
73 percent think businesses are focused on profits over addressing consumers’ security needs
The Freedom House report on the status of internet freedom in 2018 has a great deal more important data and I'll also return to that later.
The Important Take-Aways
There are many important things going on here, but these are the two top takeaways:
The tsunami of data breaches goes on and, in spite of corporate efforts, it hasn't yet shown any evidence of abating. The breached data leads to identity theft. Even more broadly, it leads to fear of identity theft among the general public. If brands are letting their identities be stolen, how can customers trust them?
Another issue with great potential long-term impact is emerging--the
expectation held by many consumers, especially younger ones, that
corporations will act in the best interests of society, not just in their own best interests.
According to USA Today: Americans believe that companies should have a mission that goes beyond the money—one that has a positive impact on world hunger, job creation and education, according to the latest Harris Poll data. . . "When it comes down to it, people want companies to address the issues
that they struggle with every day like safety, security and health,"
said Amy Terpeluk, a senior partner at Finn Partners. "Companies that
address these needs can build their reputation and in turn strengthen
their business." These are profound shifts in the business landscape and students need to think about the ways in which they will prepare to deal with them. Related Updates
Changes in privacy expectations, US and UK
I just completed a busy month writing a post every day in October for National Cyber Security Awareness Week. It was fun and, of course, I learned a lot. This is an annual event and it generates a lot of good content. Watch for it next year!
The theme of Week 1 was to stop and think before you connect and I posted some good tips and links to safety resources. Week 2 focused on young people and jobs and had some popular posts on the number and kinds of jobs available, as well as the skills needed. Week 3 was about workplace cyber safety and I posted about small businesses, who need to ensure cyber security also. Week 4 was about protecting our cyber infrastructure. That's a super-important topic but not really relevant for my target audience of non-technical internet users. So I set myself the subject of fake news and found it fascinating. I'd especially draw the attention of you and your students to the post on identifying fake news on social media, but it's all useful.
One of the few light moments in that series of posts is this video showing how dance moves can be superimposed on even the klutziest of us.
It's a great example of what AI can do in a context that students will enjoy. It's less about fake news than it is about how to deceive with video in general. There's a link to a paper by the authors explaining how they made the video. It would cover two important issues in the classroom--burgeoning uses of AI and deceptive videos that are almost impossible to detect without sophisticated tools, some of which are described in the post.
We all know that Facebook announced last week that it had suffered a breach of 50 million accounts. There's no information yet on who and why, but one thing is clear. This is a good time for all of us to tighten the security around our Facebook accounts.
Actually, I don't use Facebook much. There are a couple of closed groups I enjoy, but public Facebook just got to be too much for me. I decided to change my password on principle and the results were interesting. I wrote a post yesterday that describes who was affected (I wasn't) and tells about my experience in changing my Facebook password.
It also explains why my banking password was related to my Facebook password (doesn't that sound dumb, just on the face of it???) and my experience in trying to change that.
Today I updated it with a post about Facebook's use of our mobile numbers (what we were led to believe when we provided them?) and good ways to use 2-factor authentication to protect a Facebook account.
P.S. Today starts National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and I have committed to trying to post on the subject every day in October. Drop by and find some good tips and resources! Then look for #CyberAware wherever you go in October!
I remember a student who was assigned to write a SWOT analysis on Coke Classic. He came to my office quite concerned because he couldn't find any information to write the paper. Knowing there was plenty out there, I asked him to show me how he was searching. He simply entered Coke Classic in the search bar and was annoyed that he was only getting back the Coke websites. We started searching for strategy topics related to Coke Classic and he walked away with a big smile on his face!
Fast forward a few years and I imagine most of our students do better than that. Are they getting the most they could out of searches, though? In my experience, most people don't.
So I wrote a post on how to search effectively on my Protecting Yourself in Cyberspace blog. It's target audience is unskilled computer users like the lovely retired folks I often make presentations to in my current life.
This post works for both audiences, however. It includes an update I wrote when I realized that Google Alerts was a good additional piece of knowledge. The update contains a good link to uses of Google Alerts which suggests an alert on your own name, which every one of us should do. Your students should start one now as part of their personal brand creation on the web. I use mine to find out who's trying to sell our books illegally. What people will do to attract clicks is amazing and I occasionally find something that the Cengage legal team finds actionable.
I'd be delighted if you referred your students to the post 👏 And I'd be even more delighted in you worked up a challenging search exercise and shared it with all of us 👏👏
This blog post outlines changes to the paid search environment and to the Google Online Marketing Challenge in teaching marketing using Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies in a Digital Environment. This material supplements the information on paid search with Google in Chapter 11 and the Appendix on the Google Online Marketing Challenge.
Farewell AdWords, Hello Ads
Google made a number of changes over the summer to its ad formats and is rebranding AdWords to Google Ads. Most of the functions are still in beta and some of the online material has yet to be updated to reflect the rebranding. The new formats and changes take advantage of machine learning and automation and are outlined in an excellent blog post from Search Engine Land. Google wants to focus less on finding keywords and text ads and more on encouraging advertisers to use different ad formats and let automation do much of the work. Certainly, paid advertising is one of the first places where artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation will have the biggest impact.
The announced changes will allow advertisers to automatically run ad campaigns based on the latest responses from consumers, which is a good thing. We also see a potential danger in more automation in terms of monitoring budgets. We wonder if only the largest advertisers will be able to use these changes or if they will truly benefit small businesses, as Google claims. The following list is a summary of the changes announced this past summer.
a. Responsive ad types: These ads can run in rotation and take the place of manual A/B testing. Automation will try to match the ad closest to the user’s query and the ad formats allow for more characters. The responsive search ads allow for three headlines and up to two 90-character descriptions vs. 80 characters, so the format allows students more leeway in writing ads. For simplicity for teaching purposes, it might be better to start out with plain text ads and branch out after students master that format.
b. Local campaigns: This result is a new ad type targeted for retailers and aimed at increasing store visits. This local campaign is similar to Smart Campaigns, which is the new default for new advertisers. So if you are running a Google Ads project in class and want the students to be able to select their own keywords and make manual changes to track the results, they have to switch platforms to do so.
c. Smart Shopping: In a similar way, Shopping campaigns can now be automated and structured to achieve the advertiser’s conversation goals, now including store visits or new customers as well as revenue or return on ad spend (ROAS).
d. You Tu be Ads: With continued growth in conversions, advertisers will continue to look to YouTube for ad conversions and there will be an automated bidding strategy for YouTube, Maximize Lift to target users most likely to consider a brand purchase after viewing a video ad.
e. Hotel Ads: These will be integrated in to the Google Ads platform and also be able to take advantage of automated campaign features.
f. Google Analytics: It looks like there will be more integration with Google Analytics allowing for cross-device reporting and the ability to build cross-device remarketing audiences for use in Google Ads. This type of sophistication is not typically taught in the introductory internet/digital marketing courses but the topic might come up in conversation.
Find Google Ads certification on Academy for Ads
Google replaced the Google Partners site with the Academy for Ads early in 2018. It is still possible to become a Google Partner but not necessary to do so to get certified in Google Ads. The Academy for Ads allows individuals to get certified for free. Previously, students were signing up as Partners to get free certification. This is a welcome change to the process and an acknowledgement that more professors are teaching paid search in their programs.
A New Form of the Google Online Marketing Challenge
Find the new form of the Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC) as the Google Ad Grants Online Marketing Challenge or OMC: Students will register and request a nonprofit partner and be matched with one by Google. The budget is up to $10,000 a month. It will be interesting to see how this form of the challenge progresses. There are always issues working with a real life company in terms of communication and student teams sometimes
have issues as well in terms of organization and commitment. However, not having to find a partner is a big bonus for instructors. We agree with the program’s insisting on the Google Fundamentals exam before beginning the challenge as that basic knowledge really helps in terms of project execution. There is a program similar to the old GOMC for Bing advertisements but none of the students in Dr. Zahay’s class last Spring wanted to use Bing ads. They know Google is the source of most search traffic.
A couple of other notes for teaching this material
Project structure and coaching tips for the student teams and professors found in the text in the Appendix and instructor Power Points can be applied to any paid search project. It is possible to replicate the old GOMC by getting companies to sponsor student teams. We found that having the companies buy $250 prepaid Visa cards worked great and relieved client worries about going over budget. Also, if as an instructor you find a company with multiple product lines to promote via paid search, client communication is easier than working with multiple clients.
In summary, there are a number of changes in the Google Ad world and the online marketing challenge, but the material in the text robust enough to rise to the challenge. We recommend using the Search Engine Land or similar blog post to update the class on ad formats. Also, consider the new Academy for Ads for certification and the new form of the Online Marketing Challenge.
It's always fun to discuss ads in class, but too often it winds up being a "he said/she said" type of discussion. Everyone has his or her own preferences, but in the absence of knowing what actually worked the discussion can reach no conclusion and be frustrating.
It's also not a good representation of good marketing on the web. Everything can be tested, often without a lot of extra effort or any additional expenditure. Amazon, Facebook and Google all offer A/B split testing and both Facebook and Google have multivariate testing as part of their advertising platforms. There are also a number of companies that offer tools for testing digital ads. Every digital marketing activity offers an opportunity for testing. Too few marketers take full advantage of that.
Google's Unskippable Labs created and tested 33 ads for a fake brand of pizza and cheesecake. They were interested in testing the impact of sensory cues and testing conventional ad wisdom like "you cannot have someone chewing and looking directly at the camera." Here's a link to the 15 that are still on YouTube. Its interesting to look at the variations shown on the YouTube page. Some of the 33 ad variations were small--sound vs. no sound, for example, but the total effort produced interesting and useful findings.
Immersive, multi-sensory experiences have more impact than single sensory ones
Separate visual input from text
Give explicit instruction to imagine
Food ads with edge-to-edge (close-up) shots perform better
Portray food experience in different ways
Younger people reacted better to personal point-of-view ads than did older people.
Dr. Ryan Elder of Brigham Young University collaborated with Google on this project. His research interests center on sensory experiences and visual cues. Dr. Elder says, "This collaboration with Google created a unique environment where
creative development in advertising could be informed by academic
theory, tested in the real world, and immediately disseminated to
companies to use."
However you use them, this is the type of large-scale ad experiment that should provide students a lot of food for thought
Our two digital textbooks have only one mention of the deep web--a brief mention of "dark social" in Chapter 10 of Social Media Marketing. While the deep web is not a priority topic for most marketers, instructors and students should be aware of its existence. Instructors should have a definition handy if anyone asks. My guess is that students are more likely to be aware of the concept than most instructors. They are also likely to be badly informed and susceptible to the many dangers that lurk there.
This post has the limited goal of making the instructor aware and providing correct definitions. If the reader in interested in more information on the subject, please read the corresponding post on my new blog, Protecting Yourself in Cyberspace. The target audience of that blog is the layperson who uses the web, not professionals. It probably is not going to contain much information that is useful in the marketing classroom. However, you might like to follow it as an individual, maybe even as a researcher, and you might want to recommend that your students follow it for their own safety.
What is the Deep Web?
The web is generally stratified into three levels as shown in the graphic. The top two levels are:
The Surface Web. The surface web is the portion of the web that is indexed in search engines. It includes platforms large and small and is easily accessible to the user. Students should be aware of the dangers that are present even on the surface web when they have completed Chapter 17, the social and regulatory chapter. That chapter is, as it should be, devoted to the discussion of issues that affect the safety of business data on the web and resultant brand trust on the part of customers. The thoughtful student should realize that many of these same issues affect individual users, but I have always found that students can benefit from frequent reminders about the safety of their own personal data.
Sources indicate that there are currently about 4.49 billion indexed pages on the web. You often see the estimate that only 1% of the pages on the web are actually indexed.
The Deep Web. It's easy to guess, then, that the deep web is the portion of the web than cannot be indexed by search engines.It is huge; perhaps 400 to 500 times the size of the surface web. Again, that's a figure you see often.
The deep web consists of content that has intentionally been hidden. That includes things like our social media profiles, employee websites, email--anything that requires a password for access. That means that most of the content on the deep web is innocuous. It's just things we want to keep private.
How is the Dark Web Different from the Deep Web?
The dark web is the portion of the deep web where the bad guys hang out. Sites on the dark web are encrypted and cannot be accessed by search engines. It requires a special browser to access the dark web. The Tor browser is the most famous. The browser itself is not dangerous. It was initially funded by the US government and is used by people like whistle blowers to mask their identities. The dark web is however, full of stolen passwords and illegal drugs. It is also said to be full of malware that will follow a visitor back to his normal haunts.
I have scoured the web to make sure these definitions are correct, and they are. What I have found in the process is that many people who, according to their credentials, should know better are careless. Beware!
Should Marketers Care About the Dark Web?
While they probably shouldn't loose sleep over it, marketers should be aware. They should keep an eye on it to see if there's anything that could affect their brand reputation. There is not much authoritative content specifically for marketers, but this publication on the AMA website is good. Unfortunately it doesn't have a publication date, but it could be 2016. That's not terribly recent, but in this case of this type of content it's ok.
Should Users Care About the Deep Web and the Dark Web?
We use the deep web all the time, and it is not a problem. We should care about the dark web, although, since everything is encrypted, it is pretty difficult to stumble onto it. I just suggest that it's useful for students to be warned about the potential dangers, especially malware, of intentionally venturing onto the dark web.
There's an interesting and useful way to demonstrate what can go on there and still stay safe. This site lets the user look to see if her passwords are for sale on the dark web. I've searched it occasionally over the past year or so and see passwords from three sites that were hacked some time ago. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret that, although I have been more careful lately. And yes, I have changed the stolen passwords.
The "word" pwned means to totally obliterate an opponent, as in a video game. Wonder how many of your students know that.
This makes for a good classroom exercise. I usually use my own email address for something like this, having first tested it at home. One warning is that it's a free site and you may find yourself closed out if you use it often. You could ask for a brave student to volunteer theirs--and hope it won't turn up something embarrassing!
Recently Snapchat announced a new developer platform called Snap Kit. Why is this a big deal?
Primarily it’s a big deal because so many teenagers use Snapchat and consider it their favorite platform. Statista quotes 2018 data showing that 72% of female teens and 67% of male teens use the platform. 77% of black teens use Snapchat, followed by 72% of white teens and 64% of Hispanic teens. The chart shows Shapchat as the favorite platform among teens, pretty much leveling off after quarters of meteoric growth. Instagram is second with Twitter and Facebook falling further behind in third and fourth place, respectively. In spite of its second place finish marketers shouldn’t write off Instagram for reaching teens. According to Piper Jaffray’s annual survey teens consider Instagram the best channel for reaching them with new products and promotions.
What, Really, Is Snapchat?
Let’s back off for a minute and--for those of us who long ago left the 18-24 demographic-- understand the Snapchat platform and why using it has been problematic for marketers. The essence of Shapchat is that messages go away after a few seconds—the time determined by user settings. The message stays in the recipient’s inbox until opened, then disappears in the allotted time. The user can send a photo, video or text message to a friends list or only to selected people from it. The platform also offers Stories, a collection of snaps and videos that lasts for 24 hours. Videos are easily filmed and shared. The minimum age for Snapchat users is 13.
"Snapchat is probably my single most favorite social media platform," . . ."It combines texting, FaceTiming, and the photographic charm of Instagram."
"I consider it digital honesty, which is hard to find in a web of fake profiles and manipulated photos,"
"I spend a lot of time looking at the 'stories' from CNN and Buzzfeed," . . ."It's the best way to easily ingest quick news or pass the time with quizzes and such."
Quoting a study from research firm Goodwater, the Los Angeles Times also pointed out that teens mostly followed the stories of their friends, not those of celebrities. Users under 30 are most likely to use the Stories function but they are not likely to use expensive apps like Spectacles. Likewise, they are not enthusiastic about additional functions like search and long-form videos. "Simpler is better," . . . "Snapchat would lose its uniqueness if it started
implementing features that were already in use," according to one of the teens.
This is evidence of a deeper, and extremely important trend. News site Axios summarizes the trend:
The concept of speaking to your entire friend network at once via social networks helped propel the popularity of sites like Facebook. Now the pendulum is swinging away from speaking to hundreds of people at once, back toward one-to-one communication that people feel is more private, secure and authentic.
Marketers need to consider the implications of that trend.
Why is Snapchat so Great?
Snapchat has provided one solution to more authentic content for many young people. Tech executive and writer Ian Kar, who’s had a Snapchat account since 2013, lists key points about the platform:
• It’s about creating content, not just consuming it
• It works with vertical videos
• It’s private
• It’s relevant, authentic and unfiltered
• It’s fun!
Why Marketers Need Snapchat
Clearly marketers need Snapchat if they want to reach teens on social media. But other demographics use the platform also. In fact, according to eMarketer, growth is being driven by users aged 45 and up. They are not joining for disappearing messages, they are joining for content, especially streaming short TV episodes. Growth among teen users has slowed as many of them find Instagram stories better suited to their needs.
In this context, it is worth noting that Facebook use continues to decline among young users. eMarketer also expects Facebook to loose 2 million users aged 24 and under in 2018. It expects the number of users 12 to 17 to decline 5.6% and 18 to 24 by 5.8% this year. Reports suggest that some young people are turning to Instagram as a substitute for Snapchat, while others may be turning to messaging apps. Each of those is a story for another day.
Today’s story is why marketers should consider using Snapchat. Here are some reasons:
• Reach the younger audience (of course)
• Test ephemeral content
• Take advantage of the high engagement rate and the platform’s reputation for user privacy
• Make use of vertical video using the Snap Spectacles video app
• New opportunity for location-based marketing using the Snap Map
• Use the Snapchat advertising platform including the Audience Match function which allows brands to use their own customer data
• Reach the majority of Snapchat users who shop online.
Some Snapchat Campaigns
With those opportunities dangling in front of them, some marketers have experimented with Snapchat campaigns. Note that I had to travel through time and geography to find these. Reason? Few marketers are yet using Snapchat in 2018. Statista puts the number at 8%; for comparison, 94% of marketers use Facebook. There is a difference in whether the campaign is a one-shot (Taco Bell) or ongoing for a period of time (McDonalds).
The 2016 Taco Bell Cinco de Mayo campaign thrust Snapchat into the marketing world when it garnered 224 million views in a single day. It was expensive, using a Snapchat lens (an animated geofilter) to convert the user into a taco. This campaign was featured in the SMM text in the Mobile Marketing chapter because we thought it wasn’t large enough at that time for detailed coverage in the platforms chapters.
In 2014 the Danish branch of the World Wildlife Fund created The Last Selfie campaign to spotlight endangered species. The message of the video was that their existence was as ephemeral as a snapchat post. The WWF extended the campaign into a second week, stating that it achieved more attention than they expected and was a fundraising success.
The elections in the UK in 2017 inspired the Electoral Commission to create a Find your voice voter registration drive that was available throughout the UK. The filter offered several images for the user’s image and a reminder of the number of days until the election at the bottom. It partnered with Snapchat in the week-long get out the vote campaign,
To the present day, this time in New Zealand. McDonalds has run numerous small scale (or perhaps a better term would be location-specific) campaigns over the past few years including one to recruit new employees. In the current campaign a person can activate the McDonald’s geofilter when she is in a store and create a snap to share.
How Marketers Can Learn to Use Snapchat
A good short explanation of marketer uses of Snapchat makes the point that it updates so often it is useless to give detailed instructions on how to use it. Point well taken, but there are a number of generic ways to reap benefits from the app. This list is divided by organic growth and advertising.
Marketers can drive organic growth on Snapchat in a number of ways:
• Use a Snapchat Story to create awareness of your brand. For instance, conduct a quick, fun-filled walkthrough of your business operations
• Post some behind the scenes content from your workplaces or about your products
• Be responsive to every message. Thank your viewers. Give them a shout out in your snaps. Share something they’ve snapped.
• Post regularly, at least once a day.
• Above all, be consistent with your brand’s voice and mission.
Once the marketer has become comfortable using Shapchat, she may want to make use of Sapchat ads. Some examples include:
• Use Snap Ads to leverage audio visual content for marketing your brand.
o Use Context Cards to add additional information like product availability locations
• Sponsor a lens; identify how a user would engage with your product, and apply the insights to a lens (for instance, a lens that lets users ‘drink’ your energy drink)
• Use themed geofilters like the in-store McDonalds filters.
There’s an important reason for separating organic growth from advertising on Snapchat. Brands can create their own filters and lenses and can learn a lot by doing that. Snapchat advertising gets expensive pretty quickly. The Taco Bell Cinco de Mayo lens was rumored to cost about $750,000—for one day! The New Zealand McDonalds chain filter is going to be expensive because it’s going to be available for a year and will be changed to reflect other promotional activity. I couldn’t find a cost for The Last Selfie campaign, but you can see the basic costs for sponsored lenses in the chart below. It’s not clear whether the WWF got a price break because it’s a non-profit, but it is clear that Snapchat supported the Find your voice campaign for the UK Election Commission. Otherwise, a spokesman notes that the nation-wide filter would have been “quite pricey.”
It’s always wise to check, but these are recent estimates of ad costs, some verified by several sources, others from one good summary:
Snap Ads. This is a DIY ad format using Snapchat’s Ad Manager. Not surprisingly, it works uch like Facebook ads. Sponsored Lenses. The quoted price varies by day with weekdays being $450,000, $500,000 for Fridays and Saturdays and $700,000+ for holidays and special events. Nationwide Sponsored Geofilters. This is a new product but estimates suggest about $100,000. Discover. These are essentially banner ads that appear at the top of the screen and cost about $50,000 per day. Snap to Unlock. This is also a new ad format in which a link in another site or channel unlocks a Snap filter. Snap to Unlock Codes. This is another new ad format which looks like Snapchat’s version of a QR code. It is estimated to have a price just higher than local geofilters. Sponsored Local Geofilters. The cost for a local geofilter can be as low as $5, per day apparently. One source quotes the cost for an annual contract for a local geofilter at “a few hundred dollars.”
These are basics and some are estimates. Snapchat’s rates are based on CPM but it also offers goal-based bidding, which is a pay-per-action format. If viewers interact with the ad, they become members of a Snap Engagement Group that can be retargeted.
Why is the New App Policy So Important?
The preceding section makes it clear that Snapchat ads are pricey. What may also be obvious is that the platform has kept a tight rein on its advertising options. The new Snap Kits for developers cracks that door open a bit, and that’s why it’s important.
Even so, the opening is limited. The new products allow developers to include Snapchat features like Bitmojis and stickers in their own apps, embed Stories as content on other sites and sign in with their Snapchat identification. The platform says it will share only display names and Bitmoji avatars with developers—no demographic data or friends lists. For the present, all applications will receive human scrutiny prior to approval, which one assumes includes a careful look at adherence to privacy standards.
CEO and co-founder of Snapchat Evan Spiegel likes to goad Facebook about Snapchat’s stronger privacy protection and the fact that it hasn’t been susceptible to Russian interference. He often suggests that Facebook should copy Snapchat privacy standards. Speaking about the developer kits, a member of the legal staff says:
"Under no circumstance do we allow anyone to ask for your friends list or contacts directly," says Katherine Tassi, Snap's deputy general counsel. "[Mobile] platforms do give developers the ability to ask for contacts, but that will be on their own." Tassi added that third-party developers also won't be able to see people's messaging activity—though there is anonymized, aggregated usage data shared between Snap and the developer.
This is still the age of Snapchat experimentation. Brands that have teens or the broader 18-24 demographic in their target market should be experimenting now. As with any platform, there will be a learning curve. Now is the time to jump on!
