Mediaboss Marketing

If asked to picture a millennial, you might imagine a young person engaged in any number of stereotypical activitieslet's say,a twentysomething bearded male who's dawdling on hissmartphone while eating avocado toast.

The very termmillennialcan conjurenegative connotations oftechnology-obsessed consumers who crave so-called experiences and will most definitely give you a scathing online review if you fail to give them exactly what they want.

Related: Millennials Are Not as Healthy as Their Gen X Parents Were, New Study Says

Right? Or perhaps it's not so simple.

Marketing, at its best, targets real people, not stereotypes. And while the twentysomething avocado toast guy could be a real persona millennialhe certainly doesn't define the demographic.

He cannot define or limit your fitness business's marketing strategy, either, according to SportsArt's Britt Harris, the presenter of Club Industry's latest free webinar.

In Harris' Nov. 21 webinar, "The Pitfall of Millennial Marketing: How to Avoid It by Focusing on Your Brand Values," she noted that a millennial can be a 38-year-old father who's trying to reclaim his college-era physique. A millennial can also be a 24-year-old woman who recently graduated college and is attempting to balance her new career with her evolving health goals.

Millennials represent 33 percent of all active health club memberships in the United States, and members of this group will spend an average of $112,000 on fitness during their lifetime.

Millennials can drive success or failure at your business for these reasons and more, Harris said. But club operators must be strategic in capturing their attention.

"Doing a very general targeted [ad] campaign to millennials, especially in your area, runs the risk of alienating potential members and not necessarily attracting the demographic you think you're going to attract," Harris said.

Harris discourages club operators from investing in generically targetedsocial media ads and instead suggests they re-evaluatetheir brand values and reconsider their target audience.

Millennials typically assess three aspects of a business, Harris said. First, they gauge its authenticity. Are its branding materials genuine and truthful?

Second, millennials compare first-hand experiences with pre-conceived expectations. In short, did the business properly prime them for the experience they had, whether those experiences be a positive or negative one?

Lastly, they consider the strength of their personal connection to the brand. Do the brand's values match their own?

Millennials are savvy in that they are unlikely to be fooled across these criteria. They'll do their research and get to the bottom of any potential problem.

Harris cited the recent consumer boycotts of the Equinox and SoulCycle brands as an example of what can happen when experiences fail to meet expectations. Many of the brands young, liberal-leaning members were disappointed to learn of the brands owner's support of President Trump. This resulted in a 7.5 percent decline in SoulCycles class attendance in addition to a broader reputation problem whose ramifications are not publicly known.

For more insights from Harris, click here to view the full on-demand webinar.

Additionally, click here to register for Club Industry's Dec. 12 webinar on how to add online training to your existing fitness business. The webinar will be presented by Greg McCoy of [Hidden] Gym.

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Effectively Market to Millennials by Focusing on Brand Values and Avoiding Stereotypes - Club Industry

Facebook has launched an app that will pay people for participating in its surveys, tasks and research aimed at gathering insights from users to improve its apps and others products.

"We'll use these insights to improve products like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Portal and Oculus, and to benefit the broader community," Facebook's Product Manager Erez Naveh said in a statement on Monday.

Called Facebook Viewpoints, the app is currently available to people in the US who have Facebook accounts.

The social networking giant said it was looking forward to providing additional ways for people to register and expanding to more countries next year.

Here's how the app works.

Once you set up a Facebook Viewpoints account, you will be invited to join programmes. Before each programme, Facebook will explain what information will be collected, how it will be used and how many points you will receive for completing the programme.

Facebook will let you know how many points you need in order to receive a payment, and every time you reach that amount of points, you will receive a payment sent directly to your PayPal account.

"When you join Facebook Viewpoints, we'll ask for information like your name, email address, country of residence, date of birth and gender. We may ask you to share additional information, like your location, to qualify you for individual programmes," Naveh said.

"Before you begin any programme, we'll let you know how the information you provide through that programme will be used," Naveh added.

Facebook said it would not sell your information from this app to third parties.

"We also won't publicly share your Facebook Viewpoints activity on Facebook or on other accounts you've linked without your permission. And you can end your participation at any time," Naveh said.

The first programme that Facebook Viewpoints users will be able to participate in is a well-being survey.

"We want to better understand how the use of social media like Facebook can impact people's well-being, so we're launching the Well-Being Survey," Naveh said.

"Information from this survey will help us build better products that aim to limit the negative impacts of social media and enhance the benefits," he added.

--IANS

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More here:
Facebook to pay you for participating in market research - ETBrandEquity.com

Settle in for this weeks stats roundup, which includes news about social commerce, grocery retailers, Christmas ads, and lots more.

If thats not enough, be sure to check out the Internet Statistics Database too.

Lets get to it.

PayPals Commerce Index which features views from more than 26,000 global consumers and businesses has revealed that the number of UK businesses selling via social media is expected to double during the next six months. This means that shoppers will be able to buy from an additional 600,000 UK retailers on social.

Interestingly, PayPal suggests that the UK still lags behind other countries when it comes to social commerce. Currently, just 24% of British businesses sell via social platforms, while the global average is 35%.

Alongside this, UK consumers still also show higher levels of security concern particularly about having their financial information linked to their social media accounts. 64% of UK consumers show concern over the security of mobile commerce, compared to 58% in the US, and just 28% in Japan.

Todays online shoppers want upfront transparency on fees, control over the delivery process, and a clearly-stated returns policy. This is according to UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper report, which based on a survey of more than 18.000 online shoppers worldwide.

The report suggests that, while respondents like next-day deliveries, they will consider other options such as lower fees or incentives for slower shipping. In fact, 94% of global consumers could be encouraged to choose a slower and cheaper delivery option if they were offered it.

Overall, millennial shoppers are more likely to choose accelerated delivery options than other age groups. In the UK specifically, online shoppers have a very low appetite for shipping costs. This is why 35% will choose click and collect in order to obtain free shipping, 35% will add further items to their cart, and 35% will choose the slowest delivery option.

Brands tend to assume that older audiences are more likely to buy luxury goods, based on the fact that consumers in the second half of their careers tend to have higher incomes.

However, research from Comscore suggests that age is not the only segment worth considering. Taking all factors into account including employment status, household size etc. it found that the audience likely to yield the highest conversion rate for an online luxury retailer is high-income 30 to 34-year-olds, with no more than one child.

Comscore suggests that, as these consumers age, they initially become less likely to buy luxury brands presumably due to the expense of having children. As a result, only as shoppers hit the 55 to 65-year-old age group do conversion rates for high-income shoppers increase again.

Why luxury brands need digital transformation

A study by Forrester Consulting has revealed that 85% of grocery retailers globally lack the capabilities needed to monetise their data and drive customer experience.

As it stands, just 15% of global grocery retailers are classified as leaders, differentiated by data-led customer strategies for growth and improved supplier relationships. The majority are lagging behind.

Meanwhile, 96% of global grocery retailers experience challenges trying to use data to develop customer strategies (in order to drive growth). In the UK, the main concern cited by 40% of respondents is the lack of data management tools or technology. Just over half of UK respondents use mobile app data and only 42% use customer data to make decisions about customers. Even fewer use other sources such as point-of-sale, promotions data, and web metric data.

Despite these apparent barriers, 82% of UK grocery retailers view growing revenues as their top priority in 2020, and 78% plan to do so by improving their use of data insights to develop customer strategies.

A new report by Valitor, based on a survey of 2,000 UK consumers, has revealed that brands are largely failing when it comes to personalisation despite the fact that three-quarters of consumers are happy for their data to be shared.

The report states that a third of consumers view irrelevant retail offers as the biggest marketing mistake made by brands. Meanwhile 48% think when it comes to relationship building, all they generally see are spam emails post-sale.

The good news for brands, however, is that consumers are still happy to provide them with personal data, as long as it is used in the right way. In fact, 75% of consumers are comfortable with the concept of a brand holding personal information about them in order to improve services.

Four tips for getting the most out of a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Its had a mixed reception overall, but new data from Socialbakers suggests that John Lewis Christmas ad has still dominated social media interactions.

With 8.1m views on YouTube, 209.4k Twitter interactions, 47.1k Instagram interactions, and 126.9k Facebook interactions #ExcitableEdgar has generated the most engagement so far.

Meanwhile, Marks and Spencers twoChristmasadshas generated different results across the channels. The #GoJumpers ad received more interest on Twitter and Youtube, whereas M&SChristmas Food was more well-received on Facebook.

Finally, DebenhamsChristmas ad provoked the most negative comments and the most dislikes on Facebook; 62.3% of total interactions were dislikes. This was followed by the ad #GiftLikeYouGetThem from Boots, which generated 50.3% dislikes from total interactions.

10 of the best ad campaigns from the UKs top supermarkets

More here:
The best digital marketing stats we've seen this week - Econsultancy

A Democratic Super PAC confirmed that they were behind the social media campaign. The influencer marketing site told BuzzFeed News they've since removed the ad.

Last updated on November 26, 2019, at 2:53 p.m. ET

Posted on November 26, 2019, at 1:32 p.m. ET

A political sponsorship opportunity pitched to at least one microblogger on an influencer marketing platform is causing discussions about where influencers should draw the line when it comes to paid promotions.

On Friday, 23-year-old fashion and lifestyle blogger Amanda Johnson was matched with a campaign, that's since been removed, that would pay her to post her support for 2020 presidential candidate Cory Booker.

The offer was first posted to the site AspireIQ, a large database that connects brands with sponsorship opportunities to influencers. To use the platform, the brand posts the requirements of their ad. If the user or influencer is interested in the paid deal, they can submit their rate to the company.

The campaign was removed following the publishing of this story. A rep for AspireIQ told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday that they "reviewed this campaign with [their] campaign team and removed it from the platform."

Johnson, who runs a small but growing blog and Instagram account called Sequins and Sales, told BuzzFeed News she was "intrigued" by the campaign, but something about it also felt "off" and ethically "iffy."

"I was intriguedI didnt know how to feel about it at first," Johnson said. "But it felt off to me originally because it doesnt seem like something politicians maybe should use."

"My thing is there are already a lot of influencers who arent disclosing their partnerships, even though the FTC requires them to. And now they won't be disclosing partnerships [with politicians] and its even more iffy to me."

The campaign, which was titled "United We Win: Keep Cory Booker in the Fight," offered potential collaborators the chance to share a post on various social media channels in exchange for payment. The post asked them to tell their supporters to "keep Cory in the fight with a small donation."

Cory Booker's election team denied that they were directly associated with the social media campaign, as Democratic Super PAC United We Win later confirmed to BuzzFeed News that they created the spon.

"This is nothing to do with our campaign and this isn't a tactic our campaign employs," told BuzzFeed News in a statement on Monday.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Super PAC said this campaign strategy will "engage dedicated grassroots supporters online" and that influencers will be compensated similarly to how individual canvassers are.

"Our organization is committed to using emerging digital tools to independently promote Cory Booker's candidacy because we believe that he is the best choice to beat Donald Trump and unite our country," said spokesperson Philip Swibinski.

"This is simply another way to engage dedicated grassroots supporters online, and those supporters will be compensated for their time in the same way that more traditional campaign efforts like canvassing are also often compensated."

Online, and among blogger and influencer circles, there has been a lot of chatter about the implications of a political endorsement deal like this one.

Johnson provided BuzzFeed News with screenshots of numerous ongoing conversations she's had and observed in private Facebook groups she's in. The members range from private users with small personal accounts to those with growing pages and to micro-celebrities with large followings.

It was a mixed bag of reactions.

Some, like Johnson, immediately were put off by it. They felt politics, like religion, are off-limits for paid ads.

"It comes down to impact," Johnson said. "If someone tries a face cream, its like $20. If they vote for this person and they dont even know what they stand for, and now this person becomes president, and now theyre being elected off of 'Oh, they told me to vote for this person, thats why...' Thats why it doesnt make me feel good."

"The impact of this is much greater than just a product," she added.

Other content creators worried it would polarize their followers. They said doing so wouldn't be worth losing their audience and engagements.

"I don't post anything political on my Instagram. You could potentially be alienating 50% of your audience," said one user. "I don't think it's worth losing followers (or even brand collabs) because you shared your political views."

Johnson, however, thinks allowing and publishing political endorsements by influencers is entering murky territory.

For one, she said she worries influencers wouldn't disclose that their presidential endorsements were #ads, because she knows influencers who don't properly disclose their ads.

"I personally only work with companies that I'm really excited about, or that I've used their products. Not all influencers are like that," she said. "I feel like even having payments is enticing for people who don't take campaigns that they think are reputable."

However, among these private Facebook groups are those who have no moral quandary about it.

"If you're already vocal about politics and your candidate support then why not do that with your business?" one person asked. "Plus, if you're worried about blogger influence on the election shouldn't that be the energy towards every endorsement ever?"

Nov. 26, 2019, at 19:48 PM

This post has been updated with confirmation that Democratic Super PAC United We Win is behind the campaign.

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Influencers And Bloggers Are Being Offered Money To Post Sponcon In Support Of Cory Booker - BuzzFeed News

Visible, a digital-only phone carrier brand from Verizon, is using experiential marketing to make in-person connections with potential customers. The company has found this increases the likelihood that people will consider switching phone carriers, said Minjae Ormes, its chief marketing officer.

People who were introduced to Visible as a brand [that way] were twice or three times more likely to convert, said Ormes. They would also open and engage with our emails or in conversation with the company for a full 90 days after they had the first experience. Because our consideration cycle is so long, its super important.

Typically, a person considering changing phone carriers can take months to mull that decision over while researching the company. That said, roughly 60 million people switch phone carriers each year, per the companys research, and Visible is looking to tap into that market. By using experiential marketing efforts, including pop-ups and activations at festivals like SXSW, Visible is increasing the likelihood that a person may switch to Visible, according to Ormes.

While experiential marketing represents a small portion of Visibles marketing budget its part of the 10% that it allocates for relationship-building activities the company said that a large driver behind its pop-ups and activations is that it doesnt own any physical storefronts.The other 90% of the budget is allocated to digital media, mostly toward social and video.

For its most recent experiential effort, Visible created an interactive tour of the mobile experience in real life in Denver called #Phonetopia that included a DM slide (where you landed in foam letters of D and M) and a GIF shop. Earlier this year, the company held other pop-ups in Los Angeles, Austin and Denver.

The point of the experiential marketing push is to make people feel like theres a human being behind the brand, said Orme, even if consumers arent able to connect with the brand in person in a physical store. The company is hoping that its focus on building relationships with its consumers through events will help it stand out in the category, which can often be focused on transactions and specific deal promotions in marketing.As previously reported by Digiday, the company has been watching direct-to-consumer brands like Glossier and Casper with the aim of being a lifestyle brand to build out a deeper relationship with its customers.

Weve tried to build a tactile, physical experience in which someone can meet our brand thats tangible, emotional and fun so that ultimately they will give us a chance in considering us in their wireless choices and actually switching, said Orme. Were trying to change the dynamic from being purely transactional, and we believe we can be more than just dollar signs. Were building relationships and serving as an extension of their [customers] communities.

That the company is looking to foster that connection with consumers with in-person experiences makes sense to brand consultant and co-founder of Metaforce Allen Adamson. You can spend a lot of money online and still be invisible, said Adamson. The benefit of mixing a little bit of real experiences in with digital advertising is that they can serve as a catalyst to get people to pay attention to you.

While the company doesnt have a permanent physical brick-and-mortar presence that could serve as the in-person experience of the brand rather than pop-ups, Adamson doesnt see that as necessary as most people dont care about the stores, said Adamson. If you can get [a network] for less, a lot of people will switch.

Excerpt from:
More likely to convert: Why digital-only phone carrier Visible is leaning into experiential marketing - Digiday