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Why Are CMOs Increasing Their Social Media Investments?

According to the CMO Survey report 2019 (see footnote), CMOs are increasing the social media marketing spends.
This, as per the survey, is inspite of a relatively modest contribution of social media to enterprise performance.

So Why are CMOs Doubling their Social Media Investments now?Following reasons have been identified for this trend in 2019:
1. Social media can provide powerful insights about the consumers. Beyond the engagement, social media help in sentiment analysis,measuring online behaviour of consumers and brand engagement.
2. Social media is made for mobile and mobile is the future of consumer engagement.
 Visual content and short updates are apt for social media and consumers
 interact with this bite-size chunks throughout the day using their 
mobile devices. That not only helps in building consumer profile but 
also amp up the marketers’ reach though post likes, shares and comments.
 Esp. the latter part is not possible with digital advertising.
3. Social media engagement and ad reinforcement is more memorable
 than the extremely costly digital advertising. As consumers are exposed
 to so many ads per day, it’s unlikely for individual interactions to 
realise returns.
4. Social media as a platform can be controlled and is relatively low-cost to operate. Companies can continually test campaigns on their platform, get immediate results, and scale successful outcomes.
Note: According to this survey, outside social media agencies
 continue to play an important role in guiding social media activities 
in companies, with this survey recording the highest level of engagement
 in several years.
The CMO Survey is sponsored by the American Marketing Association, Deloitte and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Did you know that 77% of customers would recommend a brand to a friend after having a single positive experience [1]

And if you care for good customer experience, then you cannot afford to undermine the importance of customer service. According to a study by Hubspot[2], 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies who offer excellent customer service.

The Visibility Factor

Customer service is always going to be a crucial aspect of customer experience. But in the digital age, it is also lot more visible to everyone.

Consumers have started taking their customer service inquiries online, including offline retail customers. For someone who made a purchase through an online channel, chances of her engaging online for post-purchase sales are high. For retail store customers, social media is a quicker way, although it’s likely that they might do it publicly.

Hence from online reviews to customer complaints and issues, everything is easier to find on social media than ever before.

And this customer experience feedback is not sitting isolated on social platforms. Everyone is so connected on social media. That makes a perfect case for brands to use social media as a customer service tool. In fact, many brands have developed significantly more active social accounts, all for the sake of interacting with the massive user base spread across social media channels.

The Impact of using Social Media for Customer Service

One of the common social media mistakes which businesses overlook is that they ignore comments. Even brands with dedicated resources sometimes overlook such an important aspect of brand experience.

Offering customer service on social media offers an easy way to speak directly to the customer.

Answering a customer complaint can increase customer advocacy by as much as 25%, meaning that responding to complaints can help create loyal customers [3].

Using social media for customer service helps in building good reputation by highlighting positive reviews and customer experience stories. It also allows dealing with negative reviews or bad experience quickly

It gives an opportunity to collect all the data and identify trends, common customer pain points or requests for new features/products.

If you believe that good customer experience leads to better brand advocacy and improved sales, then do not ignore the customer service opportunity on social media platform. For professional assistance, work with a professional social media agency.

OH! Design Studio is an integrated branding and social media agency in Mumbai. The firm has provided social media services to various B2B & B2C clients like software, F&B, SaS, electronics, fashion, etc.

References:

[1] https://experiencematters.blog/2017/02/23/customer-experience-leads-to-recommendations-charts-for-20-industries/

[2] https://blog.hubspot.com/news-trends/customer-acquisition-study

[3] https://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research/5-social-media-customer-service-stats-you-must-know/

Why An In-House Social Media Team Almost Got Fired

I once sat in a meeting where the company’s in-house digital marketing executive reported on social performance and was delighted that they get N likes on an average for their posts on Instagram. The team decided this was a success as they were achieving their goal of ‘building brand awareness’.

However, on closer inspection, the e-commerce website had hardly seen any traffic increase from these sources.Unfortunately, the business was unable to justify the role of their in-house digital team as they could not see any social media RoI.

Why Did this Happen?

Not setting social media goals is one of the biggest social media mistakes marketers make. But setting vague goals which are not relevant for the business would be like setting yourself a trap.

In this case, the digital team and the business both had a common goal i.e to increase brand awareness. But they failed to define it in a meaningful way.

In the absence of well defined social media goals, the team was unable to point to specific actions and steps to be taken to meet their business’ needs. They got distracted by the good-looking reports instead of measuring performance to meet their business’ needs and justify their role.

Key social media goal setting mistakes they made

The goal was not specific.

What does “increase awareness” mean? Does it mean more followers? Or does it mean making more people interested in learning about your product?

Also, how much better do you want to get at it? You want new followers or an increase in traffic on product pages?

The goal did not have any metric

“Increase Facebook followers” or “increase web traffic” is fine, but it needs some kind of a metric and there should be a way to measure it.

So you could say ‘I need 1000 new Facebook followers ….’ or ‘I want a 20% increase in website traffic……’ . Both are measurable, the former one from FB insights and the latter one from Google Analytics.

The goal was not time bound

When goals are not time bound, there is no accountability for progress.

Coming back to your goal, you could say “I want to increase FB followers to 1000 by end of the month’ or ‘I want to increase website traffic by 20% by the end of the quarter’.

The S.M.A.R.T goal framework

The S.M.A.R.T goal framework helps in structuring the growth objectives in a way that’s clear, trackable and helps in planning actions and steps to achieve those goals.

SMART is an acronym that stands for

Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous
Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress towards the accomplishment of the goal
Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
Realistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your larger business objectives.
Timely: With a clearly defined timeline

As a social media marketing strategist, my role was to assess the current situation, set SMART goals and prepare a strategic social media plan for this business. The client’s in-house digital team was then aligned to the updated social media marketing strategy.

The writer works as a social media marketing strategist at the branding agency OH! Design Studio. OH! Design Studio is an integrated creative and digital agency based in Mumbai, India.

Looking for a social media agency? LetsTalk@ohdesignstudio.com

According to a research (1), the main reason marketers use social media platforms is to increase brand awareness. In fact 70% marketers chose this option as the No. 1 reason.

Clearly, social media today is more about deepening the connection with the consumers and less about sales. In that case, it helps to know the reasons for consumers to follow brands on social media. -what they want and more importantly what they don’t want.

Top reasons why consumers follow brands on social media

According to the findings of this survey, 50% of consumers follow brands on social media to learn about their new products and services. If this has inspired you to make more posts related to products/ services, then hold-on and check out the next top reason for consumers for follow brand channels.

48% of the consumers want to be entertained by brands on social media. That’s interesting because it clearly calls out for content which is not salesy.

what content consumers like on brands' social media channels

Balancing these top two reasons pose a creative challenge for social media marketing agencies or creative teams managing the brands’ social media channels.

Social Media For Brand Awareness Case Study: Checkout how an Indian dairy brand pulled it off successfully in promoting their products and at the same time entertaining their followers.

Why do consumers unfollow brands on social media?

To be successful on social media, it’s equally important for brands to understand what is that puts off their audience.

Poor customer service is the number one reason why consumers will unfollow a brand on social media, followed by posting irrelevant content.

what content consumers dislike on brands' social media channels

When it comes to boosting brand awareness, social media is one of the key marketing channels today. But it’s not a platform where brands can succeed by having a one-sided conversation. Social media is all about connecting with the target audience, and for that it’s important to understand what type of content works and what doesn’t.

Looking for social media marketing agency in India?

OH! Design Studio is a fully integrated creative and digital marketing firm based in Mumbai. At OH!, we have successfully delivered social media management services to B2B and B2C organizations. Tell us about your business and we will work with you to plan out an optimum social media strategy mapped to your business and marketing goals.

letstalk@ohdesignstudio.com

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(1) About the survey: Social Sprout surveyed more than 1000 social marketers and more than 1000 consumers for this research. Source of survey and images: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/index/

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