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On social, content is the unchallenged king. Users abhor ads in their feeds. Instead, sponsored content on Facebook has become an instant hit for brands.
This past year, we've seen the importance of visual content emphasized by the changes that occurred across almost every major social network, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. At the same time, both video and infographics have become powerful tools for brands looking to communicate more easily with their readers.
To help you keep pace with these trends, let's take a look at some statistics that demonstrate the impact visual content has on reach, engagement, and sales....
Although content has proven itself to be a critically important component of successful marketing in today’s online world, all too often companies are sacrificing the quality of their content for quantity. As we’ve seen, most of the 340 companies we reviewed as part of our initial look at global content quality are producing content that doesn’t measure up.
We believe those companies, and the countless others just like them, will be handicapped if they don’t start paying more attention to their content quality....
To get a clearer view, we examined the purchase decisions of 20,000 European consumers, across 30 product areas and more than 100 brands, in 2013 and 2014. Respondents were asked how significantly social media influenced their decision journeys and about instances when they themselves recommended products. We found that the impact of social media on buying decisions is greater than previously estimated and growing fast, but that its influence varies significantly across product categories. Moreover, only a small slice of social influencers are creating the buzz.
A growing importance
Social recommendations induced an average of 26 percent of purchases across all product categories, according to our data. That’s substantially higher than the 10 to 15 percent others have estimated. For the 30 product categories we studied, roughly two-thirds of the impact was direct; that is, recommendations played a critical role at the point of purchase. The remaining third was indirect: social media had an effect at earlier decision-journey touch points—for example, when a recommendation created initial awareness of a product or interactions with friends or other influencers helped consumers to compare product attributes or to evaluate higher-value features. We found that in 2014, consumers made 10 percent more purchases on the back of social-media recommendations than they had in 2013....
Industry expert ShareThis – creator of the widget that allows for sharing on 120 social channels — released an eye-opening study that showed Facebook now makes up 84% of all internet sharing. Twitter is next at about 6%, with Blogger at 5% and Pinterest at 3%. Email makes up less than 1% of all sharing, even though many emails include buttons like ShareThis.
Despite Facebook’s domination of all sharing, the study found that it’s actually Pinterest that boasts the most sharing in a number of categories: food & drink, beauty & fitness, home & garden, and shopping. Twitter does best with sports (the games are perfect for live-tweeting) and even beats Facebook in the news category.
So if your organization is in any of the Pinterest-leaning fields, or if you have visual content like photos, cartoons, or infographics, you should post them on both Facebook and Pinterest for a one-two punch....
According to the “Customer Experience Optimization Report” by Econsultancy and Ensighten, 96% of company marketers and agency respondents (including vendors and consultancies) consider customer experience optimization somewhat important or critical.
Marketers who take pride in their customers' experiences can leave a major (paw) print on their organizations. In fact, 94% of marketers and 79% of agency respondents say that higher engagement and conversion rates are among the many benefits of customer experience optimization. Better brand perception and loyalty (66%, 47%); renewal, cross-sell, and upsell (50%, 41%), and increased average order value (22%, 29%) are also benefits for marketers and agency professionals, respectively....
Each year we publish a series of core research reports that highlights the state of content marketing: - B2B marketers in North America
- B2C marketers in North America
- Nonprofit marketers in North America
- For-profit marketers in Australia
- For-profit marketers in the United Kingdom
While you can read the individual findings at the links above, it’s useful to look at the trends and differences across each of these markets....
Forrester scored companies according to various factors, including the appeal of their website content and use of video. The companies had the potential to score a perfect 30, or obtain a passing score of 20 or above. Only four companies successfully passed Forrester’s test; the average score was 12.8. Forrester did not reveal the names of the four companies that passed its test.
“The biggest problem is that the majority of content talks about the company, what its products and services do and how many awards they’ve won, but doesn’t speak to the issues their prospective buyers are trying to solve,” said Laura Ramos, Forrester analyst, according to Ad Age.
Telling stories, writing in narrative and shooting video were identified as key ways that companies can help their messages stand out among the rest....
Although psychology has been an integral part of marketing for many years, in recent years we have seen it become an even bigger component as more and more consumers turn to the Internet for information. In its most basic definition, psychology is the science of behavior and the mind. As online marketing develops and grows out of consumer demand, so does psychology and an understanding of how consumers think and behave as they use the Internet for purchasing decisions.
How does psychology work in the process of lead conversion? First, let’s gain a better understanding of lead conversion in online marketing, specifically inbound marketing. As you may know, call-to-actions (CTAs) and landing pages are an integral part of lead conversion and inbound marketing.
We all know a picture speaks thousand words and for that reason infographics are being more popular due to its amazing information displayed in the form of images. It has the capability to capture everyone’s eye and tell them a story with engaging content and images. It’s an all in one package with text, images and creative design that come all along. It holds a great marketing potential that has the ability to attract customers. Many people click on infographics as it is more appealing and hence your web traffic is increased which is beneficial aspect for SEO.
Here we have the collection of 10 interesting infographics about social media. Let’s have a look at them below.
Facebook's dialing-down of organic brand content has been a hot topic for months. And according to recent research, paid ads on social networks do have better conversion rates than organic content.
For the most part, though, social media is not the last or only touch for consumers on the path to purchase. According to Convertro’s figures, 87% of interactions with social content were a middle touch, while just over one interaction in 10 was either the last or only touchpoint.
Still, some social venues are more geared toward conversion than others. YouTube stood out in Convertro and AOL’s research as the most likely social media property by far to turn a prospect immediately into a customer—likely because video content like that hosted on YouTube can provide 100% of the information an online shopper needs to make a purchase decision.
The distance between a social touchpoint and a conversion also depended on the type of product being purchased. The research found that more impulsive purchases—such as subscriptions to services like Birchbox or Dollar Shave Club, personal care items and local services—were more likely to appear as social ads and lead immediately to a conversion, as the last or only touchpoint on a consumer’s journey....
Twitter’s 230 million monthly active users post more than 500 million Tweets per day. This is the draw of the network, for both users and advertisers alike.
In this comprehensive study, we took a look at the world’s top brands and some of the fastest-growing companies, and examined the tactics they’re using on the network — and what marketers can learn to help build their own strategy....
A recent study from Exact Target reveals some surprising stats on what consumers expect from B2B and B2C brands on Twitter.
A mere 13% of Canadians consider themselves Twitter followers, according to a new study released by Exact Target called “Subscribers, Fans and Followers: The Digital North.” The study defines a “follower” as a person with a Twitter account who follows at least one company or brand.
Conducted in March 2013, the study explored how Canadians behave online with a focus on email, Facebook and Twitter. It reveals a number of interesting findings including: When and how Canadians use email, Facebook and Twitter. How consumers are motivated in the three channels. What Canadian marketers should do to communicate more effectively...
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Both the younger and older groups were considerably more likely to say they were spending more time streaming full-length TV shows and movies, and similar percentages said they were spending more time with short online video. But the amplified video viewing didn’t necessarily mean they were watching less TV. Among the younger group, 40% said they were watching the same amount of TV as last year, while 35% said they were watching at least a bit less and 25% were watching at least a bit more. The older users (ages 18 to 34) were more likely to say they were watching more TV. The study found that younger internet users are shifting away from text-based types like blogs and publisher sites....
Accenture Interactive’s Acquity Group’s 2015 Next Generation of Commerce Study takes a look at the social habits of multiple demographics.
The results are intriguing: millennials rush to buy a product they see plastered all over their social media feeds, but the older generation tends not to buy into the hype.
We also found out that Facebook is the most trusted social media channel for branded content.
“Our study looks at the way digital technologies such as social media are shaping customer preferences,”said Accenture Interactive managing director Jay Dettling. “Marketing is witnessing a huge shift in what consumers expect from brands during their buying journey. The insights and data points provided in our report will help marketers better understand how consumers want to digitally engage with products and services and help them create updated experiences that resonate.”...
Automation anxiety reached new heights in 2013, when Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, researchers at the Oxford Martin School, published a paper estimating that 47% of all U.S. jobs were “at risk” of being computerized over the next two decades. Although the jury is still out about robots stealing jobs, the pace at which AI and deep learning technologies have been advancing isn’t ebbing concerns over a future of disappearing work. As machines increasingly perform complex tasks once thought to be safely reserved for humans, the question has become harder to shrug off: What jobs will be left for people?
A new NBER working paper suggests it’ll be those that require strong social skills — which it defines as the ability to work with others — something that has proven to be much more difficult to automate. “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market,” shows that nearly all job growth since 1980 has been in occupations that are relatively social skill-intensive — and it argues that high-skilled, hard-to-automate jobs will increasingly demand social adeptness....
Consumers’ top purchase influencers are also their top sources of new product awareness, according to results from a recent Nielsen report [download page].
The study, based on a survey of 30,000 consumers across 60 countries, found that friends and family (56%) and TV ads (52%) are the leading sources of information about new products for consumers. These are also consumers’ top purchase influencers, according to studies by MarketingCharts and by Deloitte....
Over the past few years, content marketing has evolved from being just another trend, to becoming a necessary component of digital marketing. Businesses of all types and sizes are adopting content marketing tactics to meet their marketing needs, which explains why content marketing has become one of the most competitive online marketing tactics to date.
However, there are still tons of businesses and companies not utilizing content marketing in their digital marketing strategies, and if that includes you, then check out these cold, hard facts from the latest content marketing benchmark reports:
Consumers may tune into TV on a regular basis, but they mentally tune out rather fast in favor of the array of "second screen" options.
On average, television holds a consumer’s attention only 39% of the time, a rate that pales in comparison to the attention rates laptops (70%), tablets (76%) and smartphones (77%) command.
That’s according to a new report from Nielsen and YuMe, a digital video ad tech firm, expected to be released Wednesday morning. MediaDailyNews got an early look at the data....
There’s significant momentum for publishers toward increasing the production of video content, on account of both the strength of video as a medium for storytelling and high video CPMs as advertisers begin to move their TV spends online (see the Chicago Tribune’s coverage for one example). An increase in video content across the board, of course, means that it’s all the more important that we have a sense of which parts of our audience we can hope to reach with video. To that end, below is a brief survey of the state of online audiences and their consumption of video.
A new study of marketers in the United Kingdom has rated Twitter as the most effective social media platform for content marketing.
In the third annual Trends report, Axonn Media found that 89 percent of UK marketers used Twitter to distribute content and 75 percent said that they found it to be the most effective channel. This placed Twitter first ahead of LinkedIn which, while in use by 96 percent of marketers, was only cited as effective by 61 percent.
Facebook was given the thumbs up by just 29 percent of respondents.
Overall, social media finished third behind in-person events and blogs for effectiveness....
And although digital is taking an increasing share of marketing budgets, the move to online is paradoxically making some old-school tactics even more valuable.
What do buyers say is the most important signal of vendor credibility? What type of content is most effective? What do marketers rate as the single most valuable SEO tactic? What are the top barriers to adopting social business practices?
Find the answers to these questions and many others in more than 100 social and online marketing stats from 20+ different sources....
L2 conducted a study to assess the digital performance of 382 leading consumer brands in the world, drawing them from eight verticals across 17 platforms and concluded that they are active, on an average, on seven social platforms each.
The researchers also found out that presence across lots of social platforms does not guarantee greater engagement from fans. It was also observed that local networks are capable of delivering better results in areas where they have a strong social presence instead of bigger sites like Facebook and YouTube....
Most consumers (74%) say they generally trust educational material from a business as long as it seems objective and doesn't explicitly try to sell a product/service, according to a recent report from Kentico.
However, trust is extremely fragile: Even just adding a product pitch to the end of an otherwise objective blog post or newsletter brings the credibility level down significantly, with only 45% of consumers saying they trust such content....
We’ve heard it time and time again: according to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) almost 60% of the buyer journey is complete before prospects reach out to vendors.
And according to Harvard Business Review, “Solution Selling is Dead” because talking about our products and our solutions are no longer good enough. It may even hurt us in the buying process.
Why? Because our buyers are too smart. They see right through these self-serving tactics. They are looking for brands that put buyers first.
They are looking for brands that know how to connect on a human and emotional scale. In fact, the Corporate Executive Board’s latest report shows that “emotion beats promotion” by a factor of 2 to 1....
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