Content Marketing

Are you tired of sending out generic marketing campaigns that fail to engage your target audience? Well, it’s time to say goodbye to mediocre results and hello to an exciting new way of enhancing your inbound marketing strategy – audience segmentation!

In this blog post, we’ll be exploring the power of audience segmentation in enhancing your inbound marketing efforts. So, grab a coffee, get comfortable, and let’s dive into the world of audience segmentation together!

Definition of Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation is the process of dividing your target audience into smaller, more defined groups based on common characteristics such as age, gender, behavior, and interests. By doing so, you can tailor your marketing messages to each segment, making them more relevant and effective.

Importance of Audience Segmentation in Inbound Marketing

Audience segmentation is a crucial component of inbound marketing, and here’s why:

Improves Relevance and Effectiveness of Marketing Messages: By dividing your audience into smaller, more defined groups, you can tailor your marketing messages to the specific needs and preferences of each segment. This leads to higher engagement and conversions as the messages are more relevant to the audience.
Increases Personalization: Personalization is a key aspect of inbound marketing, and audience segmentation helps you achieve it. By understanding the unique characteristics of each segment, you can craft personalized messages that resonate with each group.
Increases Efficiency: Audience segmentation enables you to focus your marketing efforts on the segments that are most likely to convert. This saves time and resources and helps you get the most out of your inbound marketing campaigns.
Enhances Customer Experience: By providing relevant and targeted content to each segment, you improve the overall customer experience. This leads to increased brand loyalty and advocacy, which can help you attract new customers and drive growth.

Improves Data Insights: By analyzing the performance of each segment, you can gain valuable insights into the behavior and preferences of your target audience. This information can help you make data-driven decisions about your marketing strategy and refine your audience segments over time.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Collecting and Analyzing Data on Your Target Audience

To effectively segment your audience, you need to understand your target audience. The first step in this process is collecting and analyzing data on your audience. There are a variety of methods you can use to gather this information, including:

Surveys: You can use surveys to gather data on the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your target audience. You can use this information to create segments based on common characteristics.
Analytics: Analyzing website and social media analytics can give you a wealth of information about your target audience. For example, you can see which pages and content are most popular among your audience, which can help you determine their interests and preferences.
Customer Feedback: Asking for customer feedback can provide valuable insights into the needs and preferences of your target audience. This information can help you create segments and tailor your marketing messages accordingly.

Determining Common Characteristics Among Audience Segments

Once you have collected data on your target audience, the next step is to determine common characteristics among your audience segments. You might want to think about the following characteristics:

Demographics: Age, gender, location, and income are all demographic characteristics that can be used to create audience segments.
Interests and Behaviors: Understanding the interests and behaviors of your target audience can help you create segments based on common activities, hobbies, and habits.
Pain Points: Identifying the pain points and challenges that your target audience faces can help you create segments based on the solutions they are seeking.
Customer Journey: Understanding the customer journey can help you create segments based on the stage of the journey that each customer is in. For example, you might have a segment for customers who are just starting to consider your product, and another segment for customers who are ready to make a purchase.

How to Use Data to Create Audience Personas

Once you have identified the common characteristics among your audience segments, the next step is to use the data to create audience personas. An audience persona is a fictional representation of a specific segment of your target audience. It includes demographic information, interests, behaviors, pain points, and goals.

Creating audience personas allows you to understand your target audience on a deeper level and helps you create marketing messages that resonate with each segment. By using data to create audience personas, you can ensure that your marketing messages are relevant, targeted, and effective.

Creating Segments

Types of Audience Segments

There are many different types of audience segments, but here are a few of the most common:

Demographic Segments: Demographic segments are based on demographic data such as age, gender, location, and income.
Behavioral Segments: Behavioral segments are based on behaviors and actions, such as the pages a customer visits on your website or the products they have purchased in the past.
Psychographic Segments: Psychographic segments are based on personality, values, and lifestyle.
Firmographic Segments: Firmographic segments are based on firmographic data such as size of the company, industry, and location.

How to Create Meaningful and Relevant Segments

Once you have considered the key factors and determined the types of segments you want to create, the next step is to create meaningful and relevant segments. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Start Small: It can be tempting to create many different segments, but it’s better to start small and focus on a few well-defined segments.
Focus on Relevance: Make sure your segments are relevant to your target audience and their needs. This will ensure that your marketing messages resonate with each segment.
Refine Your Segments Over Time: Your target audience and their needs may change over time, so it’s important to regularly review your segments and refine them as needed.

Tailoring Your Marketing Messages

Crafting Targeted Messages for Each Segment

Once you have a good understanding of the needs and preferences of each segment, the next step is to craft targeted messages for each segment. Here are a few tips to help you create effective targeted messages:

Personalize Your Messages: Personalizing your messages can help you create messages that resonate with each segment. This can be as simple as addressing each segment by name, or as complex as creating custom messages for each segment.
Focus on Benefits: When creating your messages, focus on the benefits that your product or service provides to each segment. This will help you create messages that resonate with each segment and motivate them to take action.
Use Data: Use data to support your messaging decisions. This will help you ensure that your messages are relevant and effective.

How to Measure the Success of Targeted Messages

Once you have created your targeted messages, the next step is to measure the success of your messages. Here are a few metrics that you can use to measure the success of your messages:

Conversion Rates: Conversion rates are a good way to measure the success of your targeted messages. You can track conversion rates for each segment and compare them to see which messages are most effective.
Engagement Rates: Engagement rates are another way to measure the success of your targeted messages. You can track engagement rates for each segment and compare them to see which messages are resonating with your target audience.
Customer Feedback: Customer feedback can be a valuable tool for measuring the success of your targeted messages. You can ask customers for feedback on your messages, and use this information to refine your messages and make them more effective.

Best Practices for Audience Segmentation

Importance of Regular Analysis and Adjustment

Audience segmentation is not a one-time effort, but rather a continuous process. Regular analysis and adjustment of your segments is important to ensure that your inbound marketing efforts remain effective over time. Here are a few reasons why regular analysis and adjustment is important:

Changing Needs and Preferences: The needs and preferences of your target audience can change over time. Regular analysis and adjustment of your segments can help you stay up-to-date with the changing needs and preferences of your target audience.
Improved Segmentation: Regular analysis and adjustment can help you refine your segments, making them more meaningful and relevant. This will help you create targeted messages that resonate better with your target audience.

How to Test and Refine Your Segments

Testing and refining your segments is an important part of the audience segmentation process. Here are 2 ways to test and refine your segments:

A/B Testing: A/B testing is a powerful tool for testing and refining your segments. You can use A/B testing to compare the performance of different segments and make informed decisions about which segments to keep and which to eliminate.
Analytics: Analytics can help you test and refine your segments by providing data on the performance of each segment. You can use this information to make informed decisions about which segments to keep and which to eliminate.

Conclusion

Audience segmentation is a powerful tool that can significantly enhance your inbound marketing efforts. By providing relevant and targeted content to each segment, you can improve the customer experience, increase conversions, and drive growth for your business.

Take your business to the next level with elfo’s Email Marketing Management Services and Social Media Management Services. Our team of experts will help you connect with your audience and achieve your marketing goals through customized strategies and advanced technology.

Today, most consumers don’t buy a product or service at first glance. They take time to consider the product features and even make cross-comparisons with other brands.

However, each day, consumers are bombarded with promotional emails, ads, and sales calls from companies that all promise to fix their problems. Your customers’ consideration stage gets disrupted by all this noise, affecting your genuine communication efforts.

Building an effective customer engagement strategy is what you need to cut through all the noise and close that sale. This article will explain why is customer engagement important and how to harness its benefits for your company.

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement is the process of interacting with customers and building a relationship with them. This can be accomplished through multiple platforms via marketing campaigns, new content posted on websites, and social media outreach, among other methods.

Why is Customer Engagement Important?

Fostering a positive relationship with your customers helps promote your brand, generate more sales, and provide a memorable experience for your customer on a more personal level.

While the primary incentive of building a relationship with your customers will be to make money initially, having customers who trust your business will keep them around for the long term, making them repeat customers.

Another great outcome is that loyal customers spread the word to other people. When customers feel that they are treated positively, it makes it much more likely they will go out of their way to help promote your business socially through word-of-mouth or on third-party websites and forums.

Your sales team can also reap benefits from proactive customer engagement because more customer interactions mean more opportunities to develop and refine customer insights. Those customer insights can inform marketing decisions and sales processes.

How to Improve Customer Engagement

There are several different ways to create customer engagement. These are some of the common areas that companies invest their efforts into:

Customer services
Buying experience (online and offline)
Website navigation
Social media outreach

Nurture Your Customers At Every Step

When it comes to improving your communications with your customers, your customer engagement strategy should heavily consider what existing and potential customers need throughout their purchase journey.

Clearly define your target audience’s purchase journey and add relevant touchpoints for customer engagement. Each touchpoint should provide helpful, personalized information that supports customers’ evolving needs throughout the funnel.

Maintain Customer Interest

While you should know your own company’s brand, mission, and values, you must also be aware of the overall goals and motivating factors of your customer base. By always keeping your customer’s needs and priorities in mind, you can ensure that your engagement strategy does not go astray.

Create content that is relevant, as well as resourceful, by gathering data and qualitative customer feedback. You’ll be able to more accurately understand the customer’s perspective and curate personalized customer experiences that keep them coming back for more.

Get Creative with Customer Engagement

Think carefully and strategically about the marketing content and the outreach channels you’ll use because it may affect how your customer interactions are perceived. You need to create a positive brand perception and boost engagement across all channels.

Nowadays, almost everybody has access to some kind of social media platform to interact with the world. Consider expanding your outreach and marketing campaigns to newer platforms, especially if you’re trying to appeal to a younger demographic.

However, be mindful of the type of messages you write on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook because this can make or break customer loyalty and trust fast.

Build Customer Trust

Arguably, the greatest challenge of customer engagement is continuously providing and maintaining a high level of expertise, transparency, quality, and customer satisfaction. Customers who connect with your brand will treat each product or service advertisement as a promise.

Your customer’s trust must be earned, so helping to solve their complaints and issues is the fastest way to instill confidence that your company has their best interests in mind. This makes it much easier to sell to them in the future.

Your engagement strategy may include collecting regular feedback from customers on their experience with your products and services. When receiving such feedback, respond thoughtfully, publicly post that feedback, and offer resources for support.

Boost Sales Success with Customer Engagement

Building trust between your sales team and customers is also important. As you strive to improve connections, customer engagement must always remain an essential component when moving through the sales funnel.

Remember that sales interactions shouldn’t feel forced. No matter which outreach channel your team chooses, you should maintain a friendly and helpful persona when interacting with customers.

More and more marketers are seeing better results from delivering timely, personalized content that creates qualified leads. The sales team should also aim to continue to nurture and engage buyers to establish long-term business relationships and increase close rates.

With insights gathered from customer interactions, your sales teams should develop thoughtful messaging and choose content that supports customers in narrowing down their options.

Conclusion

Don’t underestimate the power of good customer engagement! By regularly engaging with and nurturing your customers, your brand will remain top-of-mind and further strengthen the customers’ connection to your company.

Benefits of creating and improving customer engagement:

Boosts brand experience
Increases customer loyalty and trust
Provides valuable customer feedback and insight
Improves customer experience
Increases sales funnel velocity

Get in touch with our experts at elfo. Offering versatile tools like elfoMAP, we aim to simplify marketing challenges and improve the overall customer experience for our clients.

In B2C companies, marketers use various social media channels to reach consumers and influence their purchase decisions. B2B companies are also adopting the same practice in an increasingly digital-driven market.

However, this requires a slightly different approach. Since B2B marketers are targeting business owners and decision-makers, they have to think more strategically. This article will show you how to do B2B social media marketing to meet your target audience’s expectations.

What is B2B Social Media Marketing?

B2B social media marketing uses social media channels to market products or services to business clients and prospects. This means establishing and nurturing relationships via social media and leading them to make the final purchase.

Since today’s consumers are only increasing their active time on social media to get knowledge and entertainment, it means that all social media channels can be leveraged for B2B marketing. However, the type of content you create for a B2B social media plan may look different than a consumer-focused one.

4 Stats to Consider for Your B2B Social Media Strategy

Let’s look at some key numbers that express why B2B marketers are actively relying on social media to engage their audience.

More than half of marketers expect increased spending on video, events (digital, in-person, hybrid), owned-media assets, and paid media.
58% of marketers agreed that virtual events/webinars/online courses produced the best content marketing results in the last 12 months.
In a post-vaccination world, 52% of marketers expect in-person event investment to increase.
Brand awareness remains the top goal for companies. 80% of marketers report success in achieving brand awareness in their content marketing campaigns.

How to Do B2B Social Media Marketing in 6 Steps

No matter if it’s for short-term gains or long-term growth, you’ll need a solid B2B social media marketing plan. Most importantly, you need to be able to calculate your results.

Here are 5 steps to create a B2B social media marketing strategy for your business.

Align Your Goals with Business Objectives

First, you must address these 2 crucial questions:

What are the company’s business objectives?
How will B2B social media marketing help achieve them?

B2B and B2C marketers use social media platforms for different purposes. While B2C social media campaigns drive sales, B2B ones are more “top of the funnel.” Successful B2B marketers use content marketing to nurture subscribers, audiences, or leads.

Social media goals for B2B marketers should focus on longer-term business objectives. In fact, the top 3 overall goals for B2B content marketers are:

Create brand awareness
Build trust and credibility
Educate audiences

Create Your Buyer Personas

Next, you need to ask questions about your customers and determine what are their needs. Being aware of your buyer personas from the beginning allows you to plan out personalized social media content better.

What information would your customers find helpful that you can provide? Social listening is an excellent way to learn what’s happening across social networks within your industry. Keep in mind that people are much more interested in themselves and their problems than your company and its products.

Which social media platforms do your customers tend to use? Gain a presence on those social media networks where your ideal customers already gather to enable reach potential.

Do your customers use any of the major social media platforms or perhaps a niche site targeted at people in the same industry or with a similar interest? You may not need to be on as many social media platforms as you may initially think.

Why do your customers use the social media platforms that they do use? Your audience may be spending time on a particular platform for either business and/or pleasure. Familiarize yourself with the type(s) of content they tend to consume and share.

Put the Right Content on the Right Platform

As a general rule, you should be where your customers are. Keep in mind, however, that separate channels are relevant for different verticals, products, and markets.

Most importantly, make sure you’re delivering the information your audience wants in the right place and at the right time. No matter how great your content is, it’s only meaningful within the context of where it appears.

For each social media platform, it’s best to present your message in the context that your chosen platform permits. This is done via the customizations allowed on the platform itself.

Here are the examples from some of the major social media networks:

Twitter

The trick with Twitter is keeping your “tweets” short, engaging, and easily relatable for maximum shareability. While the current upper limit is 140 characters per tweet, your message should be kept under 115-120 characters.

Pro tip #1: Use hashtags to connect with an audience or tap into relevant trends.

Pro tip #2: Where applicable, add a visual to your tweets. Tweets with pictures have 50% higher clickthrough rates.

Pro tip #3: Don’t start the post with an @ symbol because it will only be seen by mutual followers of the sender and receiver, thus diminishing your reach.

Facebook

Facebook visitors generally want to have fun and be entertained on the platform. This is not the place for serious content. Put out more personal and/or lighthearted content.

Unlike Twitter, Facebook has no limit on the number of characters you can type in a post. But you should aim to keep your posts under 250 characters.

Use as many visuals as possible. However, make sure they are properly sized for Facebook, as the wrong dimensions will mean parts of the image get cut off in the final presentation.

This is the social media network for business professionals to interact with one another. Almost all B2B content marketers (96%) use LinkedIn.

On LinkedIn, people are actively searching and ready to learn. You want to provide more in-depth content here. Always keep the context in mind and don’t put out any unnecessary content or product placements.

You can post content to your company page and relevant LinkedIn groups. But when posting to groups, it’s best to listen first to the questions and conversations before jumping in.

Find the Right Angle for B2B Content

Social media for B2B brands is aimed at starting conversations and building relationships that lead to sales in the long term. Followers aren’t going to stick around if your content doesn’t interest them.

From time to time, it might be appropriate to share technical information and new product specifications. But do not make this the primary focus of your social media channels or else it gets boring real fast.

You should be aiming to make your followers’ lives easier or more enjoyable. Be smart and strategic with the content you create and deliver. Provide helpful content and resources such as how-to guides, industry news, trends, tips, strategy, and so on.

Another great idea for content is to get your employees involved. Real people make your social media presence and brand voice appear more human and boost your recruiting efforts. So, tell their stories and highlight their achievements.

Be sure to incorporate video content as much as possible – it drives 5 times higher engagement than other content.

Optimize Your Profiles

Think of each social media site as a marketplace in real life and your profile as a physical storefront. You want to represent your store (i.e., profile) to the fullest and clearest extent possible.

Pro tip #1: Include your company’s logo and ensure that the related graphics and dimensions are correct for each platform.

Pro tip #2: Just like with your main website, use keywords to get your social media profile found via search engines.

Pro tip #3: Don’t forget to include a link back to your main website to make it easier for visitors to find out more about you.

Refine Your Next Campaigns with Analytical Data

All successful B2B content marketers measure their content performance. This makes sense. How can you know how well your social media content performs if you don’t measure with clear metrics and KPIs?

Setting benchmarks and achievable goals is important. Be realistic about what efforts you’ll have hard numbers for and which will be trickier to quantify. At the very least, you need to find out if your content and social media strategy is on the right track.

Depending on your business goals and campaign objectives, you might choose to focus on impressions, engagement rate, conversions, sales, etc. The following are some good metrics to track in general:

How shareable is your content?
Which posts are getting the most clicks?
Which posts are generating the most interactions (i.e., comments)?

As you continue to post new content and track their results, you will begin to realize a few key things if you want to sustain the longevity of your B2B social media marketing campaigns. Specifically, the level of engagement you receive across your posts is going to be more important than the number of social media followers you are gaining.

Conclusion

So, did you learn anything useful? How will your social media content change? What do you see for the future of content marketing in your company?

We hope this article was helpful for developing your B2B content marketing strategy. Take advantage of social media and unleash a powerful and authentic form of marketing and promotion for your brands and businesses.

Get in touch with our experts at elfo. We’re here for all your social media marketing needs!

Content is king. But which is the best marketing strategy for your business to use: content marketing or social media marketing? Is there a difference between these two marketing strategies?

There are some overlapping characteristics, but these are two distinct marketing strategies with fundamentally different focal points, goals, and types of content.

To settle the discourse of ‘content marketing vs social media marketing’ for businesses and decide on the best strategy forward, let’s take a look at the major differences between the two marketing strategies.

The Differences Between Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing

Nowadays, it’s expected of most businesses to try and build relationships with their target audience and turn them into leads. The way this is achieved is by building consumer trust over time.

Content marketing and social media marketing serve this purpose, but the former does it through knowledge sharing, while the latter builds it through interaction. The extent to which these strategies is employed are dependent on the business angle and the online avenues the company wishes to explore.

Focal Point

The first major difference between content marketing and social media marketing is the focal point. In other words, the online space where your business reaches out to its target audience.

With social media marketing, the focal point is the social media platforms themselves. You’re going to the internet’s ‘town centers’ where people hang out to interact directly with them, tailoring your content for each platform. Depending on its ‘culture’, you may have to adapt to changes as the platform evolves.

With content marketing, the focal point is your business website. Unlike social media platforms, it’s your piece of internet ‘real estate’. With full control over the site, it serves as a hub for all your content and the main place you want to drive prospective customers to.

Goals of Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant, and consistent content to establish credibility, trust, and loyalty among customers. A content marketing strategy aims to generate leads for your business through search and content distribution tactics, which also include social media.

Aimed at a clearly defined audience, content marketing is a method for companies to educate, inform, and sometimes entertain existing and potential customers. By sharing useful, high-quality information, it drives a behavioral change among customers and shapes their perception of a product or service.

To nurture the leads and build trust over time, marketers can create content that targets the different stages of the buyer journey. By tailoring content to synergize with your sales processes, you can move leads through your pipeline and convert them to customers.

Hence, the 3 main objectives of content marketing are:

Generating leads
Nurturing leads and building trust
Converting leads to customers

Typically, companies will publish such content on their websites. They can also integrate content marketing with social media marketing.

Goals of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a kind of direct and indirect marketing that promotes a particular business on social media platforms. A company’s social media strategy aims to increase awareness of the brand through sharing posts and encouraging participation and interaction amongst followers.

By generating discussion around brands on social media, companies can build communities over time. Through these communities, companies can reach new customers directly to answer their questions and deal with issues.

Increasing brand engagement through coordinated organic and targeted campaigns helps the company push toward its ultimate goal of converting community members to leads.

Hence, the main objectives of social media marketing are:

Increasing brand awareness
Building a community
Communicating with current/prospective customers
Increasing customer retention
Converting community members to leads

When appropriate, a company should fully utilize social media to increase customer retention and customer satisfaction. In other words, social media marketing is a way of marketing that extends the reach of content marketing through multiple social media platforms.

Type/Style of Content

The type and style of content are one of the biggest differences between content marketing and social media marketing.

For social media, short-form content that has a mix of text and rich media is the name of the game. Since social media is great for listening and gathering insights for your business, as well as finding and engaging with prospects and customers, it works best when integrated with other marketing tactics.

To maximize brand engagement and meet your business objectives, your content will need to capitalize on the unique features of each platform. For example, Twitter focuses on text-led content of about 240 characters long, whereas Instagram is an image and video-sharing platform.

Content marketing generally focuses on long-form content, like blog posts, web pages, and videos. It is a way of marketing that helps companies to educate and entertain their target audiences by creating and distributing valuable content.

Since you have control over your website, you have the freedom to create in-depth content that fully answers any problems, challenges, or solutions relevant to your business.

Useful tip: Any long piece of content on your website can also be broken down and repurposed into other formats to suit different channels, including social media.

Content Marketing vs Social Media Marketing: Which is More Effective?

To summarize, content marketing is useful and valuable content you present to potential customers, while social media is where you interact with customers directly.

Ultimately, it’s highly recommended that your business employs both marketing strategies. Both are strong strategies on their own, but you should use one or the other for varying degrees depending on your business goals. Combine both strategies into one and observe the results.

You need a good social media strategy to deliver your content to your audience directly and build engagement. If you are a B2B company especially, your social media strategy will also need to be backed up by long-form content that influences people into buying from you.

If your company wants to build a base of loyal customers, strongly consider the strengths of both marketing strategies. Don’t know where to start? Then get in touch with our experts at elfo. We’re here for all your digital marketing needs!

When a brand launches a product or a service, marketers have to create content that helps complement what it is the brand offers. This is where content pillars are helpful for marketers to stay focused on meeting the expectations and interests of their buyer personas.

Whether it is to explain an idea, solve a problem or help your target audience overcome a challenge they’re facing, you must be very clear what your content pillars should be, especially for social media.

Here’s a helpful guide with tips on how craft the right content pillars for social media.

What Are Content Pillars?

Content pillars can be defined as themes or a subset of topics for discussion related to a brand’s product or service. Segments of your target audience may be interested in different elements of a topic and content pillars are used to represent all of these.

Content creation for each pillar depends on the type of content and the right platform to share it on. Having your content pillars planned out early will make it much easier to formulate your content strategy and when to retarget previously-created content or images for social media.

How to Plan Your Social Media Content Pillars

The content you create should always address the needs of your target audience and support the values of your brand. The more relevant your content is to your target audience, the higher chance it will resonate with them and build up your brand’s social media following.

1. Identify the Core Themes of Your Topic

When creating content pillars, the most important thing is to have at least 3-5 core themes to work with and be able to regularly produce content on.

For example, if your main topic is about women’s beauty, your subset of smaller topics could be on Makeup Tips, Fitness, Dieting, etc.

2. Decide on the Tone of Your Content

There should always be an underlying tone to every piece of content you produce. If it’s ideal, you can try to further categorise your content pillars. Here are some categories you can use for your social media content pillars:

Inspirational

Inspires your audience and lifts up their mood, encouraging them to engage with your content.
Presents your brand values in a highly relatable way to make connections with the community.

Promotional

Explains the benefits of your product/service briefly.
Presents your offer in a short, concise way that’s easily understood.
Uses strong CTAs for quick response.

Educational

Shares your knowledge and expertise on a particular topic of interest.
Simplifies a process or activity through “life hacks”.
Provide sequential tutorials or lessons to give people a reason to follow you.

3. Use the Most Appropriate Content Format

To make your work as a content marketer much easier to manage in the long term, iterate your workflow and keep the material in your content pillars consistently engaging. Use the type of content that’s suitable for your purposes.

Bedrock/Long-Form Content

Blog posts, podcast episodes, and videos are long-form content that introduces many relevant concepts about your topic. Also known as bedrock content, this supports your overall social media marketing strategy by sharing more substantial information with your target audience.

Short-Form Content

Short-form content is built from long-form content. This is content you create to maximise long-form content by intentionally repurposing it as often as possible. This is mainly done via social media posts such as infographics, quotes, carousel posts, or 30-60 second videos.

Curated Content

Curated content can be repurposed content from your newsletter that helps you nurture your audience on social media and establishes your brand’s account as a trusted source for information.

Promotional Content

When it’s appropriate, incorporate offers that’s related to your products and services between your other posts. If it’s within the content itself, be sure to weave in your offers in a relevant manner.

4. Follow A Content Calendar

The next step is to create a social media content calendar and record the day, time, platform, hashtags, and any relevant notes for each post before going out. This minimises the chance for any last-minute slip-ups in your posting schedule.

Ideally, your content should be planned out at least 2 weeks in advance. Don’t forget to record any significant dates within your content calendar, such as product launches or promotions

5. Review and Adjust Your Social Media Content Pillars

Once you’ve settled on the content format and decided the timings to post, it’s important to review your content pillars occasionally to ensure they’re still strategic and relevant to your target audience’s tastes.

The best way to do this is by using the following methods to adjust and refine your content strategy:

Look at user-generated content

Checking out what your followers post about your brand will inform you about how they engage with it, what they love about it, and what they don’t like so much. These accumulated opinions affect your brand image so modify your content pillars to solve problems, entertain, and inform your audience accordingly.

Look at your data analytics

From the technical perspective, your brand’s social metrics will show you which content performs best in terms of format, style, and aesthetic choices. Evaluate this data and determine the next steps to take for your content creation.

Look at relevant hashtags

To ensure that your content continues to resonate with your target audience, take note of captions and hashtags that are receiving attention as references for future content creation. Look at how other brands are using them. Examine related terms and include more niche hashtags for a more granular level of understanding.

Conclusion: Take Care of Your Social Media Content Pillars

When crafted well, content pillars can help keep your social media strategy organized, consistent and on-brand. Listening to the feedback from your target audience will ensure that your content is always created for their value in mind.

Don’t know where to start to create the right content pillars for your brand? Then get in touch with our experts at elfo. We’re here to help elevate your marketing strategy and grow your business!

If your business is not on TikTok yet, what’s stopping you? Everybody and their pet animals are literally on it! With over 800 million active monthly users worldwide, TikTok’s popularity has skyrocketed since its humble beginnings back in 2016.

With its short, simple, and easily digestible media format, the type of content uploaded onto TikTok appeals to Gen Z and some segments of millennials. Two of the largest consumer groups now and in the future spend a lot of time on the platform producing or consuming content.

For businesses, this means that TikTok should seriously be considered for your next digital marketing campaign. To implement it, however, you need to know what TikTok strategies to use to get the most clicks and also, hopefully, the conversions your business wants.

In an earlier article, we posted on how brands could use TikTok to their advantage. Here’s another helpful guide full of TikTok strategies to get more likes, views, and followers in 2021.

Best TikTok Strategies for 2021

To attract a million views with your TikTok videos, there are several key considerations to keep in mind.

1. Identify Your Target Audience’s Preferences

Understanding demographics, locations, and niches is a huge part of any effective TikTok marketing strategy. This is one of the most important steps but is often overlooked by many TikTok creators for the sake of only getting tons of views without any expected returns.

Before you start creating a TikTok video, determine what your target audience likes to watch on the platform. Once you’ve nailed that down, you’ll be able to create content specifically for that audience.

If you want to get followers, i.e., the ones interested in your brand and your products/services, you need to do a little research. Besides entertainment, you should approach part of your content creation with the intent of educating your target audience to establish real connections.

2. Decide What Type of Content Works Best for Your Business

Even though TikTok is widely known for its viral dancing videos, your business can’t always use TikTok trends to push your marketing message. It may not be appropriate or even related to your brand in certain cases.

To strike a balance between purposeful and entertaining videos then, we recommend your TikTok content strategy has a mix of 70% trends and 30% evergreen. For videos following a trend, make sure you publish them while that trend is still hot. For the more informational videos, you can batch-record and post them throughout the week.

3. Get Content Inspiration from Popular Creators

If you’re really stuck for ideas, then you may check out and adapt what influencers, your followers, or even your competitors are posting on TikTok. Their videos could give you clip ideas that are shareable and perhaps already getting attention from your target audience.

4. Use Hashtags Strategically

Like many other social platforms, TikTok users rely heavily on hashtags to search for content by subject. While a lot of hashtags may look like random words slapped together, there’s actually a point to having relevant ones included in your videos. It amplifies the reach of your content in certain circles, getting you closer to potential followers.

When users click on the magnifying glass icon titled “Discover” at the bottom of the screen, they’ll see a list of videos sorted by trending hashtags. Pro tip: AVOID using the most popular generic hashtags.

Why? Unless your brand is promoted by TikTok influencers, your videos are likely to get lost in the sea of content. For all your marketing efforts, you should always aim to reach people most relevant to your campaign. So, it’s better to have your videos stand out with more specific, niche hashtags.

5. Use TikTok Influencers to Promote Your Campaign

If you’re a regular consumer of content on social platforms like TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube, you’ll have noticed that certain people are influencers with massive followings. The quality of the content they create or share doesn’t really matter; it’s the high number of viewers and subscribers they accumulate naturally.

Therefore, it’s becoming more common for businesses to approach these influencers and build productive working relationships with the people who already have a good reputation with their target audience. Nowadays, the digital generation of influencers has far more clout with today’s youth than paid professionals in traditional advertising.

6. Improve the Quality of Your TikTok Videos

While going viral on TikTok does not necessarily depend on your videos’ production quality, it does impact how well they are received by viewers to some extent. Fortunately, this is quite easy to fix.

Here are some quick tips you can implement (no editing skills required!):

Always follow the KISS rule – keep it short & simple. TikTok videos can be 15-60 seconds long. If you can keep it brief without losing the message, you’ll have higher viewer rates.
TikTok videos are designed to be viewed on a smartphone, so it’s best to film vertically. Since the nature of these recordings is usually casual and homemade, the format feels more authentic.
Don’t forget to add music! This element sets the tone for the content and enhances the viewer’s experience. However, don’t just pick any song. Do a little research and choose from the best trending tunes out there.
Unlike Instagram, there is no option to post videos on TikTok without audio. If your video has a narrative (i.e., a tutorial video), add captions to improve your content’s accessibility. The reason being that some viewers may watch your videos without sound.
At the end of your video, you should add a clear CTA informing the viewer what steps they should take next, whether it’s checking out the link in your bio or subscribing to get updates on your content.

7. Post Content Regularly

Contrary to what you see on the trending page, most videos that people post don’t go viral overnight. You or the person in charge of your business’ TikTok content creation MUST upload new videos regularly to establish a solid presence on the platform.

TikTok is one of those social platforms that reward frequent posting. The more times you post, the higher chance it will be for people to discover your account and follow you.

8. Comment or Respond to People’s Comments Regularly on Your Posts

Building relationships with your potential customers is an almost guaranteed way to win conversions. In fact, TikTok’s algorithm supports frequent user engagement. It ranks comments by the number of likes they receive.

So, next time take a minute to meaningfully reply to people’s comments and avoid simply leaving a boring “nice video” type comment that does not encourage a response back.

9. Create Educational Videos That Are Simple to Understand

“Lifehack” type videos often get really high reshares on TikTok. If you want to introduce your product or service to spread brand awareness, it’s advisable to present it engagingly and educationally, providing value to your audience. Avoid being salesy; the video’s purpose should be to share information that can make your followers’ lives easier.

10. Set a Hashtag Challenge

Hashtag challenges do very well and produce tons of user-generated content (UGC) for businesses on TikTok. Not only is it FREE marketing, but this is one of the best TikTok strategies to increase engagement and spread brand awareness via user interaction.

You just have to set up some kind of fun and/or moderately tough challenge for users who will attempt it. Naturally, they will then share videos of themselves doing it with their friends and family. When done right, this can encourage mentions about your brand offline and on other social sites.

11. Cross-Promote Your Videos All the Time

And finally, don’t just grow followers or get views on TikTok alone! Post the same content across other social media platforms too. A good multichannel digital marketing strategy has to include platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and perhaps even Pinterest or Reddit.

For increased visibility, share your videos wherever your target audience spends their time online. By doing cross-promotion, which is a relatively easy method, you can generate more followers, subscribers, and buyers in no time!

Related topic: Best Social Media Campaign Examples of 2020

Be Bold & Unique with Your TikTok Strategies

Businesses shouldn’t discount the online attention they can receive on TikTok. The social media platform continues to grow every day in leaps and bound. If you don’t take this opportunity now or very soon to promote your brand on it, your competitors just might beat you to it with some of these TikTok strategies.

Don’t know where to start with your TikTok or influencer marketing strategy? Then get in touch with our experts at elfo. We’ll help you make 2021 your most successful year yet.

We’ve all witnessed traditional brands take up the challenge and transform digitally. Over the past two years, we’ve experienced unprecedented changes that carry along equal challenges and opportunities.

It was a period of change like no other, from mom-and-pop shops selling household items through social media, traditional stalls conducting business (as usual) through e-wallet payments over cash, to traditional B2B businesses across Asia acknowledging over 28% of business losses due to an inconsistent and broken customer experience. There is no doubt that the rise of digitization has only accompanied the increased adoption of e-wallet payments in people’s daily lives.

Some may argue that cash is still king, but digital is now surpassing every action we take, offering an easier, sometimes safer, and more inclusive approach to do things faster in today’s world.

That has also brought about the shift in the role consumers play besides just being brand end-users. Now, customers hold more power. They can either make or break a brand.

Customers want better experiences when they buy from a brand. In a recent study by Qualtrics, over 65% of customers said that their experience on a website or app is at least a “very important” factor in their willingness to recommend the brand to others.

As customers shift to the online interfaces to purchase, digital-first customer experiences must take precedent in a business’s complete digital transformation. It is no longer a nice-to-have feature. Instead, it has become a necessity for those looking to break through the clustered market.

It is now clear – customer experience is driving the conversation for profits in 2021

Here’s why.

In 2021 alone, over 2,500 global decision-makers in large corporations pinned down “customer experience” as a vital feature contributing to their daily sales. 96% of the decision-makers said that digitizing customer engagement has positively impacted their businesses, with over 95% looking to double up investments in digital customer engagement, even in a post-pandemic world. Brands need to keep up with this race, as just being digital doesn’t guarantee them success.

It’s time to go digital-first, digital-fast.

As the world catches up, so should your business. Time will pass by, but critical keys in mastering digital customer experience stand true even in the face of time.

Here’s what your business should strive towards:

Ease of access – Are your target customers easily able to get a hold of your products? How fast can the products be in their hands?
Personalization – Is your customer’s buying experience tailored to meet their needs and preferences?
Guidance – Are you educating your customers to make the right choices and offering them the support they may need?
Quick dispute resolution – How soon can you address any negative experiences? Are you prepared to remedy any grievances with high-quality after-sales service?

Although it is difficult to define and measure the intangible nature of customer experience, businesses that do, and do it well, tend to reap its many benefits. First, it’s important to note the trends that will shape customer experience in 2021 and the near future.

The customer is in the driver’s seat, and your brand should direct them to your store

Some say that digitization accompanies the decline of depersonalization. That argument is a futile one, as our world gets more and more interconnected and dependent on the strengths of others to compete for the best markets and resources. Digitization can even lead to highly personalized experiences for your customers.

Personalization does not mean being intrusive of your customer’s privacy. For example, there are times when we might be talking about a topic with a friend in real life, only to find it served to us as ads on our phones. Brands should be aware of ads fatigue and the unwanted feeling it gives customers. Instead, brands should command the car customers are in and use intelligent data to offer them what they desire through products that help solve their needs and services to get them there.

The future is a hybrid world, and digital will only complement analog

The future will be the best of both worlds, with a hybrid of digital systems complementing traditional touchpoints. As the world transitions into post-pandemic, it is imperative to be conscious of the footprint businesses leave on the environment, the people and the planet.

Businesses should take care of modern buying factors that influence a customer’s decision to purchase and push those messages forward.

Staying still is not an option, even for heavily regulated industries

One thing is evident, trends will continue to evolve, and the world must work towards meeting those trends at its time. Businesses, on the other hand, can no longer afford to stay still. Gone are the days when operating from a standard template is good enough.

The reality of today’s world shows how evolved customers are, as technologies deepen the relationships between seller and buyer. Customers are getting sharper, more observant and increasingly digital-savvy. Digitalization is not only for innovative mavericks, but traditional and heavily regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare have also understood the message. Going digital is more than just being on social media. It is a way to reach people effectively in today’s world.

Through all these changes, brands should continuously ask themselves, “How can we use customer data and insights to help serve our customers even better today?” Or better yet, let us help you find the answer to that question and many others you might have. Talk to our Digital Marketing Team today!

2020 has been a remarkable year. Challenging, especially so for marketers.

The world in which we live today is a vastly different landscape than it was, two years back pre- COVID. As customers shut themselves indoors, we’ve seen the collapse of traditional marketing methods as the danger grows rampant with every unnecessary trip outdoors.

Essentially, a great number of major physical events have shifted to the digital realm to meet consumers where they are – in their homes, or more accurately (in front of their phones!). Let’s take a quick look at some of the key trends we see shaping 2020.

Oversaturated Digital Channels Led to Ad-Bombing

While it’s understandable that the cancellation of physical live events has pushed us all to the digital space to take the pie’s share of consumers, that in itself shapes the issue – everybody is doing the same.

The consequence? Consumers are being bombarded by countless ads the moment they log online, which doesn’t necessarily mean they would be interested to purchase your product.

So, how does one walk the thin line when it comes to optimizing a customer’s ad experience?

Over-Optimization Has Divided Audiences

In 2019, about 32 percent of the world’s population of 7.7 billion were represented by Generation Z. Surpassing millennials and Baby Boomers, this group of 2.47 billion shopped frequently online, commanding over $44 billion in buying power.

As more paid ads are optimized to appear on targeted consumers’ social channels, the already-oversaturated channels now lead to alienation due to many brands losing the touch of marketing on carefully thought-out messaging and narratives.

Think of it like walking through a busy night market.

All vendors are open, selling different products, with all of them shouting “Buy now!” or “Sale!” or “Save up to 20% Now” without sharing as much as the story, the purpose, the benefit, and attributes, or even the rationale of purchasing said item.

A smarter crowd being born from the rise of the digital age is here and they’re hungry to know what your brand stands for. In a world full of injustice, that is a huge responsibility.

The Platform Itself Can Be Flawed

Using digital channels to reach your audience can sometimes backfire. The 2020 #StopHateForProfit boycott on Facebook saw to that.

In 2020, over 99% of Facebook’s 70 billion were made through advertising spends. Following the countless allegations of Facebook’s role in spreading misinformation, and not actively policing hate speech, racial and discriminatory propaganda, corporate America’s celebrities and major brand heavyweights took to boycotting paid Facebook ads in July 2020.

Unilever, Coca-Cola, Levi’s, HP, and even Adidas joined the boycott, prompting global attention to the cause and further highlighting the flaw of such digital channels.

Infographic Source: Statista

If left unmonitored, brands could potentially be highlighted for not doing their part which could have levels of detrimental effects, not just on the brand’s reputation.

Experiential Marketing: Is It Important?

Brands are like humans. Similar in the sense that they have memories, attributes, characteristics, and relationships with key audiences. These relationships are dependent on a customer’s experience with a brand.

Was there a connection between person and brand?
Was there a reason for advocacy?
Did the brand impact the consumer beyond sales of a product or service?

Enter experiential marketing – where relationships are built on long-lasting meaningful connections based on mutual wants and needs. The role of emotion in establishing these connections is paramount.

Why Experiential Marketing Impacts Your Customers Now More Than Ever

Outdoor events, retail-based interaction, and in-house experiences have been on the back-burner since the pandemic and we’ve witnessed how virtual experiential marketing has since saved brands from shutting down.

Paying close attention to these methods allows brands to give consumers what lacked in 2020: in-person experiences, making connections that have an impact, and the comeback of the great outdoors.

In-Person Experiences

From 2020 to as recent as the present day, there is a shift from “URL” or online user engagements to “IRL” or in-real-life experiences for brands to actively engage consumers beyond a digital screen.

As vaccination is heavily rolled out worldwide, we will be seeing a resurgence of conventional ways of engaging consumers, albeit done in a slightly different manner. This could translate into pop-up stores, experiential fun zones, exhibitions, and even art installations, unleashing a brand’s creativity in making their stories come to life.

To bring back a holiday that has a special meaning, Dunkin Donuts celebrated love this Valentine’s by asking donut lovers to renew their vows at drive-through locations, as most prayer buildings remain shut during the pandemic.

It was a beautiful way to reconnect and spread intangible joy and happiness – one that was not paired with selling a product. Yet it made the most noise.

Meaningful and Impactful Connections

Emotion plays a huge role in building meaningful relationships with customers alike. Brands that stand for something, who advocate for a cause, usually tend to get more airtime or media attention than those that do not.

2020 brought about a huge shift from the pandemic. Simultaneously the world went through multiple racial injustices and political turmoil, notwithstanding a country’s geo boundaries.

The #BLM movement was hugely perceived as a turning point for brands to speak out on the racial discrimination faced by the African-American community worldwide. Although it was one fraught of risk, the brands who took a stand and became an ambassador for those rallying managed to break through the noise.

Even the most neutral and well-established brands were not excluded in this movement. Social feeds were packed with impactful and influential social media campaigns with brand ambassadors championing the movement. Staying on Switzerland’s borders is not an option for brands anymore; you snooze, you lose.

Despite the dangers and risks of brand activism, brands will increasingly get more comfortable in remaining authentic to the causes they support, similar to what Netflix has done in the #BLM movement – curating black-owned content to promote fair reach and views worldwide.

The Great Outdoors

Out-of-home ads significantly bore the brunt of the advertising burn. Billboards, ads living on subway walls, and bus shelters were almost a thing of the past but are expected to make a significant comeback as we closely approach the vaccine rollout dates.

Brands should take advantage of the creative medium as a chance to reconnect and engage with customers in 2021 beyond just playing on the digital field. As foot traffic picks up again, streets and public places will be flooded at once, giving you ample opportunity to catch their interests.

With that being said, it is interesting to witness how “old-school” methods will now be used to re-energize brands again. If you’re interested in seeing how you can be a top player in this game, you can talk to us today to find out what Digital Marketing Strategies best suit your brand today.

In the past 5 years, social media usage has skyrocketed to become one of the most popular online activities. The amount of social media content produced daily is staggering and only grows steadily as more people create a social media campaign online.

In 2019, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 144 minutes per day, according to Statista.

People access social media for a variety of reasons. Many social media users tend to like finding funny or entertaining content to enjoy or sharing their own photos and videos with friends. In most cases, people generally use social media to connect and stay in touch with their audience.

Why Businesses Must Leverage More Social Media

Social media has a wide-reaching and significant impact on society, with social networking penetration constantly increasing across all regions. In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost 4.41 billion in 2025.

Infographic source: Statista

As lesser developed digital markets catch up with other regions, it’s expected that the global social media usage rate will continue to rise due to infrastructure development and the availability of cheap mobile devices. In fact, most of social media’s global growth is driven by the increasing usage of mobile devices.

Many companies are already leveraging their own social media channels to boost brand awareness and further their digital marketing strategies.

If you don’t plan, execute, and measure your campaign strategically, you can waste a lot of time and money. If you send the wrong message, you could even damage your brand and lose potential customers.

To help you craft better social media campaigns that meet your business goals, we’re going to take a look at 5 of the best social media campaigns in 2020. Let’s dive straight in.

Great Social Media Campaign Examples to Inspire You for 2021

Successful social media marketing campaigns are planned strategically with images and videos, aimed towards a target audience and usually has measurable outcomes. Brands use a variety of social media platforms to run many of their campaigns, such as:

Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
Twitter
LinkedIn
TikTok

For example, here at elfo.com, we love to connect with our followers through Facebook, Instagram, Li n kedIn, YouTube, and Twitter.

World Health Organisation (WHO) – Coronavirus Prevention Tips & Advice

Image source: World Health Organisation on Facebook

Given the far-reaching impact of COVID-19 in 2020, many users’ social media feeds have followed a similar pattern of providing coronavirus coverage and updates.

Social-savvy brands have learnt to adapt their content marketing strategies to this global crisis, but unfortunately, there have been several accounts that have knowingly or unintentionally spread false news and misinformation.

To counter this issue of unqualified information being shared with the public, the World Health Organization (WHO) rose to the challenge. They did not exactly have the control to prevent the spread of misinformation, but they worked to improve the context of ongoing public health efforts by using a digital marketing solution.

In partnership with an analytics company, the WHO leveraged ‘social media listening’ via machine learning to identify trending public health topics and create relevant timely responses.

By initiating real-time social media management, they analyzed 1.6 million pieces of content each week for subject and sentiment, tailoring their own content creation and calendar to address the most frequently discussed coronavirus questions and concerns.

Many of the resulting posts in the WHO’s campaign were colourful and creative infographics conveying a few simple principles at a time.

Like the example seen above, these were designed to be shareable to encourage high levels of engagement amongst a wide-ranging age demographic.

Brands can learn a lot from the WHO’s approach to social media strategy. Even when other accounts may reshare an organization’s posts, a clean and consistent branding across social media ensures that the original organization’s authoritative content is easy to spot.

Netflix – “Wanna Talk About It?” Instagram Stories

Image source: Netflix on Instagram

For an extraordinary year that has had everybody glued to their screens, a lot of social media marketing in 2020 revolved around the coronavirus pandemic that disrupted people’s daily routines and livelihoods.

In a difficult crisis like this, Netflix took to social media to help people by connecting with their audience in a more meaningful way.

In an unexpected but thoughtful move, Netflix launched an Instagram Live series where people could get in touch with mental health experts to ask questions and share their problems.

For any brand aiming to build strong relationships with their customer base, connecting with people in such a personal way is good as it’ll secure loyal customers long after the crisis has ended. This is a brilliant strategy for building goodwill and improving brand image, while also being helpful.

So, initiate meaningful conversations with your audience and foster long-term loyalty by forging stronger customer relationships. There are multiple ways to do this; it could either be a talk show, a live Q&A, or simply a conversation on a social media post.

The key is to connect with your audience and have two-way conversations.

Harvard Business Review (HBR) – Free Access to Business Resources

Image source: Harvard Business Review on LinkedIn

Harvard Business Review (HBR) understood that its main target audience of business leaders and owners was facing difficulties this year and followed a similar marketing strategy to what Netflix did.

They offered free access to resources that can help people deal with the difficult coronavirus situation. They used channels like LinkedIn to push this offer and drive traffic from their social media accounts to their website.

Tailoring your offer to a relevant need is a great way to attract new customers and get them on board with your platform. Once they join, the brand can then encourage these leads to get access to other resources by subscribing to their plans (at a later date).

Using simple and straightforward messaging, HBR did not need to beat around the bush for their promotion to stick. This kind of ‘free-trial’ strategy is normally used by media and publishing brands that offer paid content.

If you’re running a product-based business, you can replicate this strategy by giving freebies to attract customers and then promoting other products to them.

Spotify – #2020Wrapped

Image source: Spotify on Twitter

Before the pandemic, Spotify was already one of the most popular music streaming services in the world. When people were forced to stay at home for more than 3-quarters of this year, the app’s usage increased significantly.

The #2020Wrapped campaign blew up, garnering great attention amongst people for its interesting data insights.

Spotify actually started this campaign back in 2017 when they launched ‘Wrapped’ to share year-end data with its customers. This feature showcased data related to the songs, albums, and podcasts people have been streaming.

Through data visualisation, you could see your listening history throughout the year, covering artists and songs streamed, as well as how many minutes were spent using Spotify this year. It could also tell you how many new artists you discovered and your most listened-to genres.

The personalised data was compelling stuff, but the social media marketing campaign boosted its shareability because people wanted to showcase their tastes and personality.

Arguably, the best aspect of the whole campaign was that Spotify encouraged users to share their data across social media, thus in turn helping to create a flood of user-generated content that got people talking about music and Spotify. Half of Spotify’s marketing efforts were literally done for them!

By enabling a feature that could be personalized and shared on every social platform, Spotify provided a way for their users to relate, connect, and compare with each other.

If you want to boost brand awareness and make more sales by showing people exactly how they’ll benefit from using your service, Spotify’s campaign of showcasing and sharing personalized data is a smart way of doing it.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) – #DistanceDance TikTok Videos

Image source: charlidamelio on TikTok

Back in March 2020 when most of the world started entering lockdown, Procter & Gamble did something unexpected and partnered with American TikTok influencer, Charli D’Amelio, to create a social media campaign called #DistanceDance.

Yes, the huge corporation behind many household brands, including Gillette, Head & Shoulders, and Tide, decided to run a TikTok campaign of dance videos. This sounds like a shot in the dark, but the campaign’s main intent was to promote a good program.

The idea was simple: beyond encouraging user-generated content from quarantined people to video themselves doing a silly dance at home, Procter & Gamble committed to donating to Feeding America and Matthew25 for every single one of the first 3,000,000 video submissions.

The end result of the campaign was a massive success. Procter & Gamble received millions of videos from regular users at home, and even celebrities and sports stars who joined in!

What encouraged such high audience engagement was the fact that there was nothing complicated about the challenge. Users just had to do a simple video recording of themselves dancing as creatively as they wanted on TikTok and use the campaign hashtag when they shared.

Procter & Gamble understood what made TikTok 2019’s third most downloaded app: the viral nature of short dance videos and people’s interest in original choreography. They also understood the power of leveraging popular internet influencers to ‘sell’ a social media campaign.

If you can collaborate with a relevant influencer (or even an up-and-coming platform), your next social media campaign could strike gold.

Takeaways for 2021 Planning

Creating high-quality social media campaigns can be a tough process, but the potential of social media is limitless.

In fact, it’s getting harder to pin down what works consistently well because the definition of “high quality” is really subjective. In one context, it might mean gathering and sharing all kinds of user-generated content. In another, it could mean summarizing technical information into a shareable infographic.

In an ever-evolving digital landscape, brands have to figure out how to raise expectations around what their social media campaigns can and should accomplish.

When choosing which social media campaigns to highlight, we decided to feature those that:

Offered a truly distinctive, alternate take on a familiar brand, product, or service
Expressed values and tactfully addressed concerns that matter to their audience
Thoughtfully crafted memorable on-screen experiences

Brands looking to boost their social media results should consider using web and social media analytics to understand the types of content their target audience responds well to. From there, it will become easier to determine where and how your social media marketing campaigns will fit in.

In today’s competitive digital landscape, it’s not enough to just drive tons of traffic to your e-commerce website; you have to know how to write a good landing page copy that sells. The ability to quickly convert visitors into paying customers is what every business online aspires for. But which attributes describe a good landing page experience?

Your website may offer the best product or service found on the Internet, but if your landing page content is off even slightly, visitors will take notice of this and leave. It’s already bad enough that the average person’s attention span is 8 seconds! You don’t want to drive away potential customers to the competition and hurt your brand.

Keeping a person’s attention in a growing online consumer-driven world is a tough job for anybody in acquisition marketing. To get an attractive ROI and enable your sales team to see more conversions, it is advised that whoever writes copy for your website always prioritizes optimizations for an effective landing page.

Key Tips to Consider When Writing Landing Page

In essence, landing pages should be giving Internet users a place to ‘land’ – offering valuable information and relevant insight for people to engage with and convert in ways they had not previously thought of. These are not all hard-and-fast rules, but here are some helpful tips to create appealing landing page content that can enable the desired conversions for your website.

Be Concise with Your Headline and Subheading

When visitors first land on your page, the headline should be the first thing that captures their attention. Depending on what your headline says, it can influence whether your readers stay and engage or navigate away to something more enticing. That’s why it’s critical that you have a clear and concise title.

In a good headline, the wording of your offer should be easy to understand for all viewers. Be transparent and tell visitors what kind of product or service they’re signing up for. The more RELEVANT information you can provide in the headline, the quicker your prospects can get on board and convert.

Ultimately, the main idea of a headline is to get to the point FAST. Here are some examples:

“Sign up for your free account”
“[solution] just got easier. And it’s getting results.”
“Get Started with [product name]”

Do not cram all of your information into the headline. Reserve the rest of the value proposition for the subheading under your main headline. This allows you to provide more vital information about the benefits of your offer.

Here are a few examples of headlines with actionable subheaders:

“[solution] That Work: Why are you still wasting time on [action]?”
“The 10 Steps to [action]: Get Ready to Ensure Your [desired outcome]”
“Launch an Online Business: Ready to take charge of your career by starting a business of your own?”

Focus on Your Target Audience

Do not deviate content from who you’re addressing it to or else you may end up confusing your product or service’s purpose. Ensure what you put into your copy is in line with your target audience’s demographics and characteristics. Research what their habits are, what they want and need, and how they speak.

By being aware of all these important factors from the outset, your copy will stand a better chance of being much more focused, clear, and direct. Plus, when you have one target audience in mind, rather than a largely undefined group, you can gather more accurate insights, such as how well your landing page is performing for a specific campaign.

For example, it’s useful to have a tracking tool that can add scripts onto your landing pages to send and receive data from Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.

Address Your Reader in the Second Person

How do you get someone to pay attention to you in real life? You speak to them directly! It’s the same when you want to write a compelling landing page copy.

To engage your audience straight away, you want to break away from the traditional writing habit of writing in the first or third person. You should be using the second person instead, which means writing in the language to speak directly to the reader. This type of writing usually includes:

Words and phrases such as “you,” “your,” and “yours.”
Direct sentences or call-to-action that tell the reader to do something, such as “Sign up here,” “Take the first step,” “Try this now,” etc.

Include Stats and Facts to Support Your Value Proposition

To differentiate product offerings in a sea of other related items online, some companies would use hard data to drive a harder bargain for their prospects. If you have access to such information, try and include RELEVANT facts, figures, and statistics in your landing pages.

When you can demonstrate the value of your product or service more effectively, these details will help compel your readers to take action with more confidence.

Format Your Landing Page Copy in Easy-to-Skim Bites

While you should ensure your headline and subheader gives a good idea of the value of your offer, those alone may not be enough to convince some readers to fill in their contact information on a form at the end of the page. Consider including a few short sentences or bullet points that clearly state what else the offer includes.

In a brief and clear list, you could outline and answer any questions visitors might have about the offer. What does the visitor stand to gain from the offer? How does your offer teach them various ways to use your product? Are there cost savings? Be sure to break up large blocks of text and use bullet points to draw eyes to key takeaways.

Sometimes, a good landing page copy is dependent on the way words are displayed on the page. Just as important as the phrasing, your copy needs to be formatted in a way that makes it easy for readers to scan and find the information they need in a few seconds. Great landing page copy is usually formatted using a combination of:

Headings and subheadings
Bulleted lists
Short paragraphs and sentences
Font formatting such as bolding and underlining
Standalone quotes from your clients or company representatives (optional)

Use the Words/Language Your Target Audience Is Familiar With

Where it’s appropriate, write in the style that enables you to connect more closely with your readers. Speak to them in the language that they know. Try as much as possible to avoid jargon, industry slang, or any other type of terminology your target audience may not understand or use.

Display Customer Testimonials for Social Proof

Adding customer testimonials in your copy helps your product offering look more accessible and valid. As a form of social proof, they can simplify your readers’ purchasing decision by making it easier for them to imagine how your products will make their job/task/life easier.

Think about it: if you were a customer, wouldn’t you want to know that a service had been satisfactory for other people before you choose to buy or sign up? Real and credible testimonials prove that a service has worked for these people and that it can work for you too. As such, they have the potential to dramatically increase the effectiveness and persuasiveness of your landing pages across the Internet.

The Not-So-Secret Trick of Good Landing Pages

Most businesses would like to think that coming up with landing page content is simple. After all, you can insert pictures and videos to convey product or service information, and any landing page would seem attractive and capable enough to pull prospects in easily. This is a common strategy to deploy in the current media-rich landscape, but it does not guarantee a winning formula.

Truthfully, the real (and lasting) trick to curating great landing page content is to always maintain a single, clear message to sell something of ‘specific value’ to someone who ‘needs’ it. Whether it’s one offer, one promise, or one big idea, your content should have action-oriented copy that capitalizes on your readers’ sensibilities, encouraging them to take the action or next step you want.

Now that you know which attributes describe a good landing page experience, you’re probably wondering what else could you do to improve your website. If you want to create unique-looking landing pages to advertise your products or services, why not sign up for elfoAIM? Save time and effort on building landing pages from scratch with a drag-and-drop toolkit and a library of attractive landing page templates to choose from.