teachthe4ps.com » Social media

Does Facebook advertising work?

Joe Cannon — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:21:35 +0000

With Facebook going public this week, there is a lot of talk about whether its advertising works. Since the social network’s valuation is based on an uncertain business model, that is a good question. But we are not here to evaluate the worthiness of the investment in the stock — instead let’s look at whether Facebook ads make sense for marketing managers.

GM offers one answer to that question in “GM Says Facebook Ads Don’t Pay Off” (Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2012, non-subscribers click here). A case study reported by NPR found equally dubious results – “Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How’d It Do?” (Planet Money Blog, May 16, 2012).

Any in-class discussion should distinguish between the various ways brands can use Facebook. Marketers can create a Facebook fan page and invite customers to “like” the page. After liking the page, posts to that page appear in that person’s news feed. The cost to the marketer is to create the page and keep it up — but there is no media cost. There is also no revenue to Facebook, so the firm has developed other types of advertising. In theory and probably some time in the future, Facebook knows so much about users (through elaborate analysis of likes, posts, photos, the user’s network, etc.) that it can target customers.

Ask students if they ever click on Facebook ads? Ask if they have “Liked” any brands — and if they read the brands’ posts in their news feed? What messages appeal to them? Why? What can Facebook offer advertisers? The articles I posted above tend to discount the role of advertising in brand building. These questions are also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Getting back to the question in the headline: well, the jury is still out. Certainly a lot of investors buying Facebook stock are hoping that the company finds a formula to make it work.

Comparing Social Media Strategies at Fender and Gibson Guitars

Joe Cannon — Sun, 06 May 2012 19:53:11 +0000

In “Battle of the Digital Brands: Fender vs. Gibson” Digiday (May 1, 2012) compares the social media activity of two American icons — Fender and Gibson Guitars. The two brands are pretty heavily invested in social media.

You could assign this reading to your students and then ask them: 1) Which brand is doing a better job with its digital strategy? 2) Who is (are) the target market(s) for each brand’s social media? 3) What else would you suggest to improve each brand’s social media blend? We have asked those questions over at Learn the 4 Ps.

The Updated “CMO’s Guide to the Social Media Landscape” – posted and now interactive

Joe Cannon — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:20:13 +0000

The CMO’s Guide to the Social Landscape is a great tool for understanding how to pair social media tools with different types of promotion objectives. The guide includes 14 social media tools — from Twitter and Facebook, to Pinterest, Instagram, Slideshare and more. The chart evaluates each tool on four promotion objectives: 1) customer communication, 2) brand exposure, 3) traffic to your site, and 4) search engine optimization. This year’s guide is interactive –when you click on each objective, the list resorts to bring the most effective tools to the top of the graphic.

Social media is a fast-changing landscape — and with everything else we cover in our marketing classes it can be a challenge to keep up. This graphic will give you a quick tour of the various tools if you only need to understand the basics. It might work well when you cover promotion objectives to provide a tool to discuss how a few of the tools work to achieve each objective.

Business Blogging Slows

Joe Cannon — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:26:18 +0000

In our books we classify social media tools like blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter as forms of publicity. Inc. magazine regularly surveys members of the Inc 500 (fastest growing businesses — so generally small businesses). A recent survey found a decline from 2010 to 2011 in the number of firms using business blogs – falling from 50% of respondents to 37% of respondents. The decline appears to be because new firms to the list are not using blogs and not because firms are dropping blogs — among those blogging 92% reported the platform was a success. This short article, “Where Have All the Bloggers Gone? Business blogging on the decline” (Inc., April 3, 2012) also includes data on Facebook and Twitter.

This article might be useful to provide some current data on social media usage when you cover that in class and/or if you like to give special attention to entrepreneurship or small business.

Latest findings from Nielsen’s Global Consumer Trust Study

Joe Cannon — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:11:36 +0000

In our text books (see chapter 15 in Essentials and 16 in Basic Marketing), we use the results of Nielsen’s 2009 “Global Trust in Advertising Study” to demonstrate the importance of public relations and social media in the promotion blend. Now the results of the 2011 “Global Trust in Advertising Study” has been released. This survey of 28,000 people from around the world shows that consumesr trust recommendations from friends and online reviews much more than various sources of advertising. The results provide a nice segue to social media and help explain why marketers are increasingly moving communications budgets in this direction. The latest results (released just last week, but collected during 2011 ) don’t differ significantly from the 2009 study. But you might want to present more updated results to your students.

Facebook apps gather user data

Joe Cannon — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 19:02:39 +0000

I recently gave a talk at Colorado State University’s Future Visions program titled, “Marketing and Social Media: Creepy or Cool.” As I prepared for my presentation, I was surprised to see that some marketing practices I thought were years away — are being practiced now.

For example, did you know that Facebook apps are gathering data about users and user’s friends? You can read more about this in “Selling You on Facebook” (Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2012). Looking ahead, you can be sure that Facebook and Google are developing techniques for mining many types of data — everything from your “likes,” gender, and political leanings — to your status posts and photo stream. Facebook wants to be able to anticipate your needs — so that it can help marketers address those needs. Yes, that is the reason the company is worth $100 billion.

The video below is kind of long (7:54) provides an overview you could show to stimulate class discussion. Students may be interested in this topic. I have found that my students are much less concerned about the invasion of privacy than I would have suspected. Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

The article and video might be used when you discuss social media, advertising, targeting, and privacy.

What’s with Pinterest? Where does it fit in the marketing mix?

Joe Cannon — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:28:48 +0000

Pinterest is a social media site where users can organize and share online images. The three year old social network has exploded online — growing from 50,000 unique visitors in May 2011 to 11.7 million in January 2012. The site’s demographics skew female; women currently account for about 68% of users and 85% of content. I first heard about the site from my 20 year old daughter back in December when she told me she loved the site and so did her friends. I asked her today and she said she hasn’t been there in a month. This makes me wonder if Pinterest has legs — on the other hand, don’t make decisions on a sample size of one. We here at Teach the 4 Ps have started our own Pinterest site, where we have pinned visual content that might be of interest to marketing instructors and students. If you are already on Pinterest, start following us.

Many marketers are jumping into Pinterest. Marketing managers need to follow the eyeballs and attention — and when people visit Pinterest they spend a lot of time there. The ROI might be greatest for online retailers, craft sites like Etsy, or travel firms. Where does it fit in the marketing mix? It looks like a Promotion tool to me.

How can you learn more about Pinterest? You might start with Mashable‘s “Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network” (December 26, 2011). You could also check out the Wall Street Journal‘s “An Introduction to Pinterest” which uses an actual Pinterest page to describe it. For a practical guide, see “The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing” (HubSpot Blog, January 31, 2012) and for some good examples of brands using Pinterest see “7 Examples of Brands That Pop on Pinterest” (HubSpot Blog, February 2, 2012) or “Brands on Pinterest: Who, When and How Brands Are Using the Hottest Social Bookmarking Site” (Ignite Social Media Blog, February 22, 2012). We have also posted about Pinterest at Learn the 4 Ps.

This is still an emerging social media trend. What do you think of its use for marketers? How should we teach about it in our classes?

Nike’s new marketing strategy

Joe Cannon — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:21:49 +0000

Every semester I survey my students by asking them to list their three favorite brands on the 4 x 6 card they fill out with personal information. Every year Nike is the most popular brand — typically mentioned 2–3 times more than the second place brand. Can you guess Nike’s prime target market? You got it college age kids.

Over the last five years Nike has significantly changed its marketing strategy – especially in product development and promotion. Following the phenomenal success of Nike+ with its all important (for Nike) target market of runners, the firm has invested in developing more digital products. While many of my generation (I am 51) recall Nike’s great television advertising, the company has moved almost completely away from the big screen, replacing it with small screen options with YouTube virally distributing longer (1 – 3 minute) ads and Facebook building relationships with loyal users. Fortune magazine provides an extended article describing changes at Nike - ”Nike’s new marketing mojo” (February 13). To read more Teach the 4 Ps coverage of Nike, click here. Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

This article might be useful to use when you cover new-product development or advertising and integrated marketing communications. For those of you using one of our books, you know that we use Under Armour (major Nike competitor) as an opener to our Product chapter. It might provide a nice contrast to discuss how Nike’s is creating new products that go beyond the shoe.

Twitter Gets its Act Together

Joe Cannon — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 17:11:28 +0000

Twitter’s efforts to build a viable business model have been inconsistent. Now the micro-blogging service appears to have a formula that is working. Advertisers are starting to get on board. Bloomberg BusinessWeek‘s cover story this week offers a closer look at Twitter, see “Twitter, the Startup That Wouldn’t Die” (March 1, 2012). It seems to me that Twitter needs to figure out how to deliver a more highly targeted audience to advertisers. The company certainly has access to tons of data on who each user follows and where they click. I would bet that many of the new employees they are hiring are figuring out how to turn all that data into targeting gold. A quick overview can be found in the video below. Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

On B2B Social Media

Joe Cannon — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:15:49 +0000

Here at Teach the 4 Ps we are always looking for good B2B stories — and they can be hard to find. We have reported before on B2B and social media — but admittedly not too often. Yet there is growing evidence that B2B marketers are big users of social media. This post at the Hubspot Blog, “9 Common and Costly B2B Social Media Marketing Mistakes” (January 17, 2012) provides some guidelines you might want to offers your students. Hubspot is part of Inbound Marketing, a consulting firm that has impressed me with their book of the same name and from a talk I saw by Brian Halligan. I highly recommend the book.

You might find this article useful when you discuss marketing strategy, B2B, or social media in promotion.