Selling via Instagram

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Social media is great but the platforms have to find some way of generating revenue.  The primary mechanism has been advertising revenue but those platforms are always on the lookout for additional opportunities.  According to USA Today article, “Picture this, entrepreneurs: Selling via Instagram“, Instagram has been experimenting with a sales platform.  This new feature allows followers of a company to buy a product if they see it in a company’s feed.  The article states that 200 million users visit at least one business profile each day so there’s a lot of potential traffic to capitalize on.

A class exercise could be to ask your students to read this article before coming to class and then in class have them develop an Instagram plan for their favorite retailer.  They could choose a clothing boutique, a bike shop, an electronics store, etc.

Social Media’s Fight for Younger Members

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Facebook started as a platform for college students and quickly became popular with teenagers as well.  As the platform went through the adoption curve it started to pick up older users.  As the Facebook demographic shifted, so too did it’s appeal to the younger audience that helped establish its dominance.  This USA Today article, “Facebook losing young users even faster to Snapchat, eMarketer says“, talks about some of the challenges currently facing Facebook and how Snapchat is now growing its user base faster than Facebook.  Better privacy control, faster viewing, and limited permanence are some of the factors that are driving 12-17 teenagers toward Snapchat and away from Facebook.  6 years ago Facebook recognized the threat and acquired Instagram as a means of continued access to teenagers but Snapchat is now getting new users even faster than Instagram.

The consequences of this change can be significant for Facebook.  Their business model relies on advertising and if they can capture users early in life it is much easier (and cheaper) to retain those users rather than trying to switch users off of competing platforms.  Should Facebook modify their platform to cater to younger viewers?  What would they have to do?  Could they be successful with a redesign or is their present brand identity too strong for younger viewers to consider using them?  Can they succeed if they stay focused on an older demographic?

Popularity is For Sale

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The measure of your impact in social media is often the number of followers or views that you have.  The theory being that better, more interesting, or more popular individuals and content will naturally draw a larger follower base than those of lesser interest.  However, it seems that everywhere you turn there are individuals willing to venture into ethical grey areas to get ahead.  The New York Times wrote this lengthy but fascinating article titled The Follower Factory.

The article covers a number of topics including social identity theft and the practice of buying Likes, followers, YouTube views, and more.  The article states that nearly 15% of Twitter’s reported active users are actually automated accounts designed to simulate real people.  Facebook disclosed that they have up to 60 million automated accounts.  The range of people buying these fake accounts is staggering.  Professional athletes, politicians, entertainers, TED speakers, and church pastors are just a small sampling of the customers knowingly buying fake followers to boost their social media status.  These accounts are also used to support overseas governments, promote products and services, and promote pornography.  Some of these accounts are auto-generated but many of them are duplicates of actual people making it look like those individuals are the ones promoting those views, products, or services.

The article also discusses the incentives many companies put in place that unintentionally encourage people to participate in this activity.  Overall it is a very interesting article and could lead to a rich class discussion.

Technology Enabling the Future of Marketing

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Marketing has always relied on creativity.  Creativity in promotion design, product definition, copy, and more.  Today, more and more we’re seeing opportunity for technology advancements to augment marketing strategy.  The 16th (soon to be published) edition of our book, Essentials of Marketing, focuses on the impact of artificial intelligence and technology on marketing.  You don’t have to look far to see examples of that impact today.  Big data has been talked about (and utilized successfully) for years but AI, virtual reality, and other advancements are finding their way into marketing as well.

This Fast Company article discusses how an ad agency created a technology-focused division and how that division is delivering some amazing results with high-profile companies including Nike, Samsung, and KFC.

Amazon’s Grocery Vision

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This week Amazon opened their prototype grocery store to the public.  What’s so different about it?  It’s entirely self-serve with no checkout process.  Hundreds of cameras and sensors identify what a customer puts in his/her cart and automatically charges their account when they walk out of the store.  More details can be found in this USA Today article.  While the concept may not seem revolutionary, the experience is fairly disruptive as compared to the current grocery shopping paradigm.  Not only does it require use of a specialized smartphone app, it also challenges decades of ingrained behavior – the checkout counter is the last step of the retail shopping experience.

Amazon frequently pushes the envelope with new technologies and concepts.  Some are a tremendous hit and others are spectacular failures.  Which do you and your students think this will be?  If you were responsible for a national rollout, how would you build your marketing plan?  This concept will clearly appeal more to Innovators and Early Adopters and receive resistance from Laggards and the Late Majority.  Can you effectively use that information to target a marketing campaign or is it impractical in this scenario?