Companies are pouring billions of dollars a year into social media and influencer marketing campaigns, many of which target consumers on Facebook-owned Instagram, in an effort to parlay social engagement into sales.
In certain product categories, such as fashion and beauty, consumers are increasingly discovering new products through social platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest.
To capitalize on this, these platforms have been rolling out so-called “shoppable experiences.” Instagram’s shoppable posts format, for instance, allows retailers to tag products in their Instagram posts and link them to their websites.
With up to two billion active users it’s clear that platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp simply cannot be ignored when it comes to doing business in the 21st century.
With access to such a vast customer base it’s hardly surprising that businesses have gravitated to social media to cultivate their online persona. Increased brand awareness has been the result, but it’s less clear, perhaps, how this has translated into tangible benefits to businesses’ bottom lines.
Influencer marketing is hardly something new.
From Mark Twain’s name and image being featured on two different brands of cigars in the nineteenth century to Kellogg’s partnering with Michael Jordan throughout the nineties, we’ve all got examples in mind of brands using celebrities to promote their products.
This article was inspired by two recent events.
Firstly, I was involved in a Hootsuite panel session looking at how marketers can better tie their social media activity back to business goals and prove commercial value. Reading around the topic confirmed to me that social attribution remains a huge problem for a lot of marketers.
When running a quick search for the #SocialSelling hashtag through any social media listening tool, the amount of data you get in return is quite overwhelming.
According to TweetReach, during the three hours before I wrote this article, #SocialSelling gathered more than 800,000 impressions on Twitter.
When employees share company’s news with all their connections, brands reach a much broader audience than what they’d otherwise do.
With news in the tech, marketing and startup world dominated by Twitter’s impending IPO, many commentators and potential investors are asking themselves whether they should jump in feet first or wait to see if we have another Facebook IPO on our hands.
Up until recently, there were pretty much two common expressions to illustrate the idea of something that doesn’t exist: hen’s teeth and unicorns.
In 2013 we can now also add ‘advertisers that acquire new customers from Facebook’ to this list.
The drumbeat of big data’s promise is quickening and becoming louder. The role of the CMO is increasingly coming under pressure to techno-fy, automate and focus on bridging the gap between marketing and sales teams.
Facebook, blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn? Inbound marketing, content marketing? “Oh yeah. We’re on it.”
That’s entirely the problem. Businesses are “just doing it.” Growth is slowing. The love affair with social media marketing is nearly over. Everyone’s all gaa-gaa over big data. So if social media and content marketing managers are to survive the meteoric rise of ‘Big Data’ they’ll need to become social selling experts – pronto.