Mediaboss Marketing

Influencer marketing is now an integral part of social marketing; it may even become an anchor for marketers trying to navigate around the scourge of ad blocking and bot fraud this year.

However, while influencer marketing has proven to yield excellent return on investment, rising costs have some experts asking how much is too muchto pay for influencer campaigns. Content discovery platform Bloglovin surveyed 100 marketing pros to get a sense of the current state of influencer marketing.

The marketers surveyed by Bloglovin take advantage of influencer marketing for a few main reasonsraising brand awareness, reaching target audiences and the original content created by social media influencers. Fewer than 20 percent of those surveyed said they werent working with influencers yet, but they planned to this year.

Marketers who sponsor influencer content on social have discovered that traditional advertising, such as display ad campaigns, simply cant impact audiences the way influencer campaigns can. The personalized and authentic content created by social influencers encourages audience loyalty. In fact, for 75 percent of marketers surveyed, quality/authenticity was the most important factor in choosing an influencer. 70 percent also selected for audience size, 64 percent for engagement and more than one-half for the influencers aesthetic.

The bottom line is that influencers provide real value to marketers. Aside from the essential boost in brand awareness and new audience reach, more than one-half of survey participants reported that influencers help grow their social following and increased sales, while still nearly one-half reported increases in website traffic.

For more information on the preferred ways to locate influencers, the best social sites for influencer content and investment growth data, download the full report.

Image on homepage courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Influencer Marketing Is Becoming an Essential Business Strategy (Survey) - Adweek

The findings of a survey among 400 Facebook users, conducted by researchers from the University of Edinburgh Business School and the Universities of Bath and Birmingham, suggests that marketers look beyond their social followers and take heed of those followers' own online social network.

Many people on Facebook include older and younger family members in their Friends list, as well as employers, and as a consequence are often reticent to Share posts with risque or potentially offensive content.

A quarter of those surveyed (25%) said they would be extremely worried about their parents or employer seeing them Share or Like a sexually explicit ad for Durex, and three-quarters (75%) said they would be very unlikely to Share or Like the ad on the brand's Facebook Page.

"In the same way they might avoid pictures of them appearing drunk, or posting offensive comments for fear of being embarrassed or judged by their bosses or grans, Facebook users are also less likely to 'like' or 'share' brand content that could cause offence," said Dr. Ben Marder, Lecturer in Marketing at University of Edinburgh Business School.

"Social media provides a novel environment for showing off brand connections. But whereas in real life people carefully select which brand are best to show off their appreciation for and to whom, on social media everyone can see what you 'like' at once".

Tags: engagement, marketing, social media

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Research warns marketers to consider social media followers' diverse network - BizReport

Email marketing is still the highest-grossing marketing channel per dollar spent, but return on investment is impossible without a list of subscribers to send marketing messages to.

Ascend2, a marketing research firm, investigated the most effective email list acquisition tactics in its latest monthly report by polling 255 B2B and B2C marketers on the list growth strategies that result in the greatest benefits with minimum effort.

Social media advertising was the top-ranking email list growth strategy, according to the study-- with 45% of respondents selecting it as an effective tactic. Social media presents an opportunity for marketers to acquire customer data and curate email lists on a channel where consumers spend a large amount of time, and it does so limited effort on the part of the marketer.

Just 37% of marketers selected social media as a channel requiring the most effort to be successful, likely because Facebook has made people-based marketing a straightforward process for marketers that can afford the ad spend.

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Content marketing presents brands with an opportunity to share news and thought leadership, and was selected as the second-most effective list growth strategy according to Ascend2s report. Following closely behind social media, 42% of respondents indicated that content marketing was a fruitful email acquisition tool.

The problem with content marketing, however, is the large amount of resources that need to be funneled into the channel to create fresh content.

Content marketing was actually selected as the email acquisition strategy that required the most effort, according to Ascend2, garnering 50% of respondents selecting it as a resource-draining solution.

Not surprisingly, many marketers are turning to user-generated content (UGC) to bridge the divide between providing consumers with new material with minimal effort. Stackla, a popular UGC marketing platform, recentlylaunched an email plugin to help email marketers curate content created by fan.

Search engine optimization (SEO) was selected by 38% respondents as the third-most effective email acquisition tactic, but 45% of respondents asserted that it required the most effort. Social logins and sign-up forms were a productive strategy for 36% of respondents, while 30% asserted it drained resources.

Contests and giveaways require the least amount of effort, according to Ascend2, but only 34% of respondents believed they were an effective acquisition tactic.

However, contest and giveaways were viewed as more successful than partnerships or paid search/remarketing campaigns while also requiring less effort.

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Social Media, Content Marketing Most Effective For Growing Email Lists - MediaPost Communications

Unified's report, 'The New Age of Transparency', surveyed 100s of digital marketers from Fortune 500 brands and their agencies. It reveals that this year is "the tipping point" and will be the year where "marketers intend to leverage business intelligence to give them the transparency and context they need to confidently unleash the power of their social advertising investments".

But first, it seems, those marketers need to overcome some challenges. The report reveals that half of social marketers refer to their data as "a kludge" - a term attributed to Jackson W. Granholm, who defined the word in a 1962 issue of the magazine Datamation as "an ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole".

Nearly 1 in 4 (38%) of social marketers say they have no capability to "normalize and enrich" social media data to make it usable and 56% have little to no transparency into social advertising performance and ROI.

Furthermore, fragmentation causes challenges and limits social advertisers in reaching their full potential, found the report, with 1 in 3 marketers leveraging 4-10 different buying and/or activation tools for their brand.

Additional findings from the report include:

- 60% have little to no ability to easily share performance analytics with other teams;

- 51% have little to no transparency into which solution is working best;

- 67% of marketers state that "the ability to understand creative and targeting performance at a granular level" is somewhat to extremely important;

- Only 8% of marketers call themselves advanced trailblazers when it comes to business intelligence for social ads - meaning there is a huge opportunity for growth in 2017.

Tags: fragmentation, research, social marketing, transparency

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Social marketers refer to their data as 'kludge' - BizReport

Kristina: Are we in a strong economy for small business growth currently?

David Pachter, Co-Founder, JumpCrew: Yes, the world is quickly changing and preferences are evolving. People are spending more time at home and money on experiences, with most transactions taking place within a 10-mile radius from home. As the big box stores struggle to connect locally, a window of opportunity exists for businesses to fill the community's needs.

Kristina: Social media use isn't new, by any means, but it seems that more small businesses are turning to social media. What is driving this growth?

David: Businesses have long relied on word-of-mouth referrals as their primary way attract new clients, and today this still works. However, these conversations are taking place on social networks, and businesses realize that they need to have a great social presence to convert these conversations into customers.

Kristina: What do SMBs need to know about social media before diving in?

David: That effective social media marketing for a business or brand is a lot different and harder than having a personal Facebook or Twitter. They need to know more about their audience and their interests. They also need to know what they would like to accomplish and have a realistic plan to be successful.

Kristina: What are your top 3 tips for a sound social media strategy?

David: Know your audience and their interests Know when they're online Optimize your blend of content - social media curation vs. self-promotion ratio- 80/20 is a good standard.

Kristina: What does JumpCrew offer to SMB's and how do you differ from your competitors?

David: JumpCrew offers SMB's the ability to afford a great social media program - Our product leverages our own collaboration software to provide a professional team for less cost than employing a person. We leverage big-data insights to create more effective campaigns and technology to streamline communication with our clients. We maximize a busy executive's creative contributions without disrupting their day.

Tags: JumpCrew, small business trends, social marketing, social marketing strategy

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Top 3 tips for a strong SMB social strategy - BizReport