Social Media, Social Media ROI, social media trends

Running winning influencer campaigns

Influencer marketing has gotten bigger than ever, with an estimated value of around $5 billion worldwide as well as gaining a fundamental role in defining the power of social media, especially in terms of conversion and PPC.

Brands and companies of any size are choosing to invest more and more budget towards influencer campaigns, as they recognise the quality of the customers they attract and the actual results in terms of ROI. Research indicates that around 54% of marketers plan on spending more than $250,000 per year on influencer marketing – astounding figures that show huge growth and huge potential.

With its rapid and constant growth, influencer marketing is an opportunity you can’t miss; however it can be extremely daunting to navigate. Here’s our list of factors to consider before implementing a successful campaign.

Fix your objectives 

It is important to set your campaign objectives prior to starting. Influencer campaigns can seem very promising but they’re not always the right strategy for a brand, as they depend on what product is being promoted and what audience you are planning to reach.

First, have a discussion with your client to set realistic goals and see what can be achieved. Involve them in the project and pay attention to what they are looking for. This will help you not only define the limits of the campaign itself (and to understand what’s in your power) but also understand what type of content you are looking for, from the influencers and the platforms that are best for your campaign.

 

Don’t compromise authenticity over complete control

It’s true, paid partnerships with high-quality influencers can guarantee control over influencers’ content as well as gain higher reach and engagement but…reaching larger communities doesn’t necessarily mean that they will all be interested in your products.

Micro-influencers are a great alternative if you are aiming for high levels of engagement and if you want to connect with users that could turn into buyers. Their communities are smaller but tend to have similar interests to your buyers, so there’s a higher chance that the message you are trying to get across will be received by more people.

Micro-influencers generally are considered to be more genuine and authentic, and brands should embrace their great potential for a real edge over the competition.

 

Verify the audience

Fake followers are one of the biggest issues for an influencer campaign, because they lead to poor results and bad ROI. Before starting your collaboration with influencers, analyse their audience. At the same time, you will get many essential insights about engagement rate, their audience age range and locations (useful if your campaigns are location-sensitive), and are more likely to avoid poor results.

Purchased followers is another big problem to look out for: they present themselves as normal followers and generate just as much engagement as the real ones, with the main problem being they don’t actually convert into buyers.

Influencers use fake or purchased followers to increase their communities and therefore obtain more paid collaborations, but this vicious circle can be stopped using the right influencer platforms that help you analyse their audiences and find the best fit for your campaigns.

 

Follow the rules

Remember that a paid partnership still needs to be considered as a type of advertisement and therefore is ruled by specific requirements that can differ depending on the country. Make sure you build disclosure guidelines into your agreements with the influencers and obtain legal advice for your agreements.

 

Our winning influencer campaigns

Here at agency:2 we’re influencer marketing enthusiasts! Our collaborations with  Moroccanoil for example, and many other global brands have helped us build customised workflow processes that start with research and analysis and end with great results!

Our influencer campaigns are paired with our award-winning ATOM technology, which collects engaged audiences and maximises further drive impact and ROI via a second phase media activation.

If you’re interested in our influencer marketing services or you want to know more about our campaigns

Winner at Performance Marketing Awards 2018

We are so proud of our social ad team, Mighty Social , and our disruptive technology which leads the way in innovation. Our AI powered campaign for Showcase Cinemas delivered impressive ROI using our unique audience insight technology.

Through our commitment and agility in managing the campaign, we were able to sell out four different films exclusively on Facebook. Not only did we exceed ROI targets by 70% but we drove over 51,000 link clicks to booking sites.

What a fabulous achievement to add to our awards list.

More awards: agency2 is a finalist at the CIM Excellence Awards 2017!

What a brilliant start to the year. We were thrilled to receive the news earlier this week that our Thomas & Friends ‘The Great Race Cinema Launch’ Facebook marketing campaign was selected as a finalist for the ‘Best Use of Social Media’ CIM Excellence Awards.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the world’s biggest professional marketing body, with over 50,000 individual members across the globe. The prestigious CIM Excellence Awards identify and celebrate outstanding marketing by organisations, individuals and teams. Now in its eighth year, these awards continue to recognise that high standards of quality and integrity are vital to the success of marketing. The awards recognise and celebrate the innovation delivered by marketers across the UK who are at the cutting edge of their profession.

With our Social Insight Engine technology, we deliver game-changing social media campaigns for the world’s leading brands. We love to showcase our innovative campaigns and were excited to submit our awards entry back in December. This year’s judging panel consists of senior marketing professionals from brands such as Avon, 3M, Google, LinkedIn, Universal, IBM, Prudential, JLL and Mondelez International to name but a few, so we were honoured to be considered for this award in this highly relevant category.

The awards ceremony will take place on 27 April 2017 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane London. We will be joining 700 of the UK’s best marketers to mark the occasion. Watch this space and wish us luck!

We had a fantastic year of growth in 2016 including being ranked the 3^rd fasted growing tech company in the UK out of 45,000 media companies at the 2016 Deloitte UK Technology 50 Awards. With such a great start to 2017, it looks like we are well placed to push boundaries in our ever-changing industry throughout the year.

We are a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA Winner!

 

agency:2 is thrilled to be ranked the 144^th fastest growing tech companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). We would like to thank our amazing clients and hard-working team for helping us to achieve this fantastic recognition by Deloitte.

The Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ EMEA award is a prestigious acknowledgement of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech companies across EMEA.

“Innovation is more than technological advancement; it’s also a state of mind,” said Paul Sallomi, vice chairman at Deloitte LLP and global technology, media and telecommunications industry leader. “The winners of the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 program in EMEA recognize that this new type of thinking is essential for business success. We look forward to your continued leadership in introducing new tools that can enhance the personal lives of consumers, and drive growth for companies worldwide.”

Joel Davis co-founder of agency:2 commented on another great achievement. “We’re excited to be placed alongside the most innovative and fastest growing companies in EMEA as it’s a real compliment to our team. To also be recognised as the 3^rd fastest growing company in the UK media sector is an incredible testament to our ability to deliver game-changing results for our clients and a recognition of our drive for achieving innovation in social media marketing. I’m immensely proud of everyone at agency:2.”

About agency:2

agency:2 is an award-winning social media agency powered by audience insight technology. Our leading social media advertising technologies and expertise enable us to deliver results that far exceed expectations. As innovators for the social ad industry, we work with world leading brands such as Barbie, Worldpay and Sony to deliver the best social media results.

 

 

Additional resources

Learn more about agency:2 here: www.agency2.co.uk

Learn more about our Social Insight Engine technology: www.socialinsightengine.com

Contact Joel Davis: 00 44 (0)203 567 1381

Christmas comes early on Facebook: How will you maximise your #smm?

Christmas comes early on Facebook: How will you maximise social media during this busy period?

The countdown to Christmas is now officially on…only 39 more days. Can you believe it? Each year consumers say the same thing: the build up to Christmas gets earlier and earlier. Audiences are surely switching off from the Christmas messaging….or are they?

 

During the run-up to Christmas, new research released by Facebook actually shows that consumers are more interested in consumer products and messaging in this busy pre-Christmas period. (Source: Facebook)

 

As a social media marketer, you may be asking yourself:

• Did our Christmas campaigns hit the mark last year?
• How can I beat my competitors during this Christmas period?
• Is my agency doing the best possible job with my Christmas budget?

 

So, before we look into how to improve social media marketing in the busy pre-Christmas period, let’s have a look at what Facebook had to say:

1. Christmas conversation begins on Facebook on October 24 (yes, October!).

2. Black Friday, November 25, is the biggest shopping day of the year for women on Facebook.

3. Last year Cyber Monday, November 28, online spend totalled £968m in the UK.

4. The build up to Christmas and last minute shopping takes place within the period from 8-31 December.

5. Boxing Day is topical on Facebook throughout all of December with an amazing 21.6m interactions related to it.

6. The first two weeks in January can offer some of the best value CPMs seen all year on Facebook.

 

How can we use this information and insight in our social marketing to enhance our Christmas campaigns and capitalise on the increased spend?

agency:2’s Christmas marketing advice:

a) It’s always important to stand out from the crowd as this is a very busy period on social – 32m pieces of content are posted to Facebook every day over Christmas! Your brand will need to be the best e.g. use video to boost audience reach.

b) You can widen your audience by adding grandparents, uncles and aunties, as they are the true Christmas buying audience for anything over £50.

c) Increase reach further through audience insight tools such as the Social Insight Engine. For example, by using our unique ad serving software we can select parents with siblings in a similar age range, and therefore sell more to the same user. Overall, this will improve return on investment.

d) As it’s such a busy period, clever targeting is important to get your message in front of the right people at the right time. Linking targeting to consumer behaviour and interests is a great way of making an emotional connection, which can lead to strengthening purchasing intent.

e) It is also important to connect social media activity with offline behaviours, PR and other marketing activities.

f) Use Facebook’s unique abilities – for example, friends can tag each other in comments e.g. ‘this is the one I wanted you to get for my daughter’. You can’t do this as easily with other marketing channels so make the most of these features.

g) Make sure your posts are mobile friendly as 86% of Christmas posts are shared on mobile and 88% of all videos are shared on mobile.

Here at agency:2 we have already applied these strategies to our social media marketing for some of the world’s leading brands, achieving fantastic ROI for our clients. Find out how you can take your social offering to the next level. Call us on 0203 567 1380.

Be a Leader in Social Media : A masterclass for #SMW

Leading in Social Media at Social Media Week London 2016

We were thrilled to host the ‘Be a Leader in Social Media’ masterclass as part of Social Media Week’s global event series on 16 September, at our offices in London.

This is the 3^rd year we worked with Social Media Week London. Our event sold out quickly (!) and we welcomed senior marketers from a wide range of sectors and companies, including Virgin, Young’s Pub, Ella’s Kitchen & University of West London to our event.

This year we explored key themes important to social media marketers:

1. Major trends in consumer engagement and their impact on social media marketing
2. Tips for increasing ROI of social media campaigns such as tapping into the emotions and interests of your target market to improve targeting effectiveness
3. Proving social media ROI to senior decision makers with our recommended attribution model

We were delighted to welcome Josh McBain (Head of Innovation, Future Foundation) who shared some key insights from DMA research report ‘The Future of Customer Engagement’.

Joel Davis, agency:2’s co-director, spoke next about applying the trends to make key decisions by:

1. Connecting with consumers’ emotional side
2. Hyper targeting though matrix segmentation
3. Understanding audience motivations and drivers to purchase
4. Engaging with the audience’s wider interests to spark a connection
5. Reporting KPIs that matter most to the board

Our audience was very perceptive and asked many questions, which allowed for the sharing of many practical learning points.

We are already looking forward to next year. If you want to lean more about the discussion on the day, follow the conversation on Twitter using #SMWLeadSocial

 

 

Making social ad performance and social marketing impactful by understanding consumer behaviour

Making social ad performance and social marketing impactful by understanding consumer behaviour

Smartphones are walking billboards

We all know how quickly and comprehensively social media has changed the marketing landscape; traditional marketing is no longer the bread and butter of any given strategy. There are endless ways to reach new customers, with so many new tools presenting fresh challenges to understanding consumer behaviour.

In order to effectively influence consumers,

Content must:

• hit the right buttons emotionally
• be effective at promoting conversions
• encourage engagement
• be delivered at the right time

 

Customers must:

• Trust the brand
• Feel connected to the brand and their messaging
• Be compelled to join the community
• Feel socially connected

 

How do we effectively reach customers when they are being bombarded with information every minute of every day?

1) IDENTIFY WHERE THEY ARE WITHIN THE PURCHASING CYCLE

• Within the purchasing process, there are many stages where different decisions will be made. In order to fully understand consumer decision making, we feel it is essential to know where a consumer is within the buying cycle. Once this is identified, the content channels and the creative can be targeted to reach these various stages.

• As can be seen here, in order to push forward purchasing intent, the emotional brain must be stimulated both at the beginning of the buying cycle as well as at the end, once a purchase has been made. The rationale behind this is to funnel the purchase through the competitive noise, by inspiring brand affinity and purchasing desire. The rational brain comes much more into play once a consumer is already on their purchasing journey.

 

2) IDENTIFY THE LEVEL OF BRAND AFFINITY

This will run along a gradient, from new customer to loyal or repeat customer. It is necessary to figure out where a consumer stands with respect to their ‘feelings’ about a brand.

 

3) IDENTIFY THE MOTIVATION BEHIND THE PURCHASE

• The complexity of the product cannot be forgotten, as this will feature in research around competitiveness and appealing to a consumer’s emotional side.
• For example, let’s look at a parent purchasing a cot mattress vs. a toy storage box. In the first instance, brand trust is a huge component whereas in the latter example, the product benefits and specification will be much more relevant.
• In both examples, trust and product benefit both feature but in differing proportions based on purchasing intent.

Understanding the above consumer behaviours will help shape your social media strategy and drive purchasing through increased engagement and clever influencing of behaviour personalisation. In turn, brand advocacy will be increased without much effort!

#TheDollEvolves

Mattel | Barbie

In January 2016, Mattel revealed the evolution of their iconic doll Barbie with the announcement of  three new body types – tall, curvy and petite. The response has been exceptional, with social media leading the conversation.

Having worked with Mattel for over a year establishing their social media presence on Facebook across seven European countries, agency:2 was responsible for activating the social campaign for the launch of the new range, providing responsive and always-on social advertising, community management and sentiment reporting.

To elevate the campaign, agency:2 promoted content on Facebook across relevant markets, using their proprietary Social Insight Engine ad technology to hyper-target specific audiences and extend reach.

Joel Davis, Director of agency:2 says ”agency:2 prides itself on pushing boundaries and leading the way in social media. My team and I are proud to be part of this momentous moment for the Barbie brand, supporting the next innovative step in the brand’s evolution.”

 

 

 

Facebook’s new call to action for 2015

 

Facebook Pages are giving marketers additional capabilities on their brands’ pages with a set of new call-to-action buttons.

Call-to-action options, including Book Now, Contact Us, Shop Now & Sign Up, will help brands actualise the value of their communities. A welcome move, especially after the challenge of reduced organic reach that Facebook Communities managers have been faced with.

It is an interesting move that Facebook are placing this call-to-action button in such a prominent position (next to the Like button), encouraging marketers to consider Facebook as the social gateway to their other online activity.

Initially the call-to-action buttons will roll out in the States, followed by the rest of the World.

Facebook have followed the success of call-to-action buttons on other assets including Facebook ads.

Marketers should use the opportunity to test and optimise the new functionality with the curiosity, discipline and critical eye of any good eCRM social media professional.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long talked about offering more action orientated options communities. We expect more action-orientated buttons to follow later on in 2015

 

 

B2B Social Media Strategy Developments in 2013

Many B2B brands are still playing catch up to consumer brands with the sophisticated use of social media. Traditionally B2B brands believed that if they were not selling a service directly to consumers social media had little worth. However, it only took a few progressive thinking companies to quickly prove that this was not the case. This initial reluctance of many B2B brands to embrace social media has up to now resulted in the vast majority of B2B brands having an undeveloped social media strategy. However, at agency: 2 we foresee that 2013 will see a rise in the number of B2B companies focusing on enhancing their social media presence.

We believe that social media can provide as much, if not more, benefit to B2B companies. Many B2B companies are already effectively using social media for recruitment purposes and exploiting the benefits of LinkedIn. However, social media has far more potential to reach into all areas of B2B. Social media is all about building relationships and connecting people, a process that is just as important in B2B companies as consumer brands. After all, it is still the people that are the heart of any business and individuals that drive decisions.

Social Media is also a valuable tool for companies wishing to gather and share data. This data could be key market trends, or having a clear insight into what their competitors are doing.  Furthermore, for global B2B companies social media can provide the perfect tool for collaboration across different departments, or markets.

Social media enables companies to establish themselves as clear experts in their fields. Through Twitter, blogs and specialist forums B2B companies can attract new business by ensuring that what differentiates their company from competitors is made clear. In 2013 we will see B2B companies begin to harness the power of social media and at agency: 2 we are excited to be involved in helping B2B brands continually push the boundaries of social media.

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