2015 Media Placements The Abbi Agency
Offerpop Table Of Contents
Date
Publication
4.7.2015
Entrepreneur
2.3.2015
Digital Information World
1.7.2015
Direct Marketing News
1.1.2015
Resource Magazine
Title Let's Get Social: Craft A Strategy To Create Powerful Brand Advocates The Digital Gridiron - XLIX: Brand Engagement Stats From Super Bowl Ads #infographic Hyatt Regency Maui Says 'I Do' To Social Marketing Look At Your Business From Outside Your Own Perspective
Let's Get Social: Craft a Strategy to Create Powerful Brand Advocates April 7, 2015
It’s with good reason that 93 percent of marketers use social media for business -- with more than 1.15 billion registered Facebook users and more than 550 million registered Twitter users (and many, many more users across other networks), it just makes sense to reach people through the medium. However, just because marketers are on social media doesn’t necessarily mean they’re using it correctly. The best brands craft social strategies to build powerful customer relationships. Why? Because wellcrafted and well-implemented social strategies keep brands relevant, generate social chatter and create gold for marketers: strong brand advocates. Oftentimes however, brands fall into the trap of pushing content instead of pulling people to the conversation. It’s a costly error: In doing so, brands miss out on real-time conversation and disengage their audiences in the process. But perhaps worst of all, they miss out on creating and engaging those
coveted brand advocates -- loyal fans who speak highly of the brand and are eager to support, promote and defend it on a long-term basis. So how should brands keep brand advocates at the forefront of their social strategies? We’ll get to that. Before anything else, a distinction should be made clear: brand advocates differ from influencers. Influencers are typically pundits, professional bloggers or celebrities. They’re defined by the size of their audience and are typically motivated by growing their audience. On the other hand, brand advocates are typically highly-satisfied customers. They’re defined by how likely they are to recommend the brand and are motivated by helping friends in their networks find a “good deal” or the “best fit.” Here’s the catch: Only 18 percent of people trust influencers, whereas92 percent of people trust brand advocates. With that, here’s a simple, four-step process to guide your crafting of a stellar social strategy to create powerful brand advocates. Happy influencing. Related: How to Rock Social Media Like Gary Vaynerchuk 1. Identify potential advocates Segment your audiences to identify regular fans from super fans, and then keep track of them. How? Create private lists on Twitter, keep a living list of your 100 greatest brand advocates and treat them like you do your friends on your personal social media networks -- know what they’re up to and use that knowledge to create meaningful conversation. 2. Converse with potential advocates People rarely become brand advocates unless they’ve had -- and continue to have -- positive interactions with brands through social media or other digital mediums. After all, the foundation of any lasting relationship is conversation.
So converse with your audience: Respond to their questions and comments. Make every interaction valuable, and be authentic to the brand when speaking for the brand -- you’re not a robot, so sound like a human being. 3. Convert potential advocates Take conversation with your audience a step further and thank them for sticking around. Do simple things, like retweet them, like their photos and comments and voice your appreciation for their support. Tell them you love them. More than anything however, don’t use a system. If you like every single photo and every single comment, the brand’s “political capital” is lessened in a way. Be strategic, be spontaneous and be genuine. Related: How Wanting 'Likes' on Social Media Is Killing Our Capacity for Actual Joy (Infographic) 4. Leverage advocate-generated content One of the easiest -- and most effective -- ways to create brand advocates is to use their content while giving them a shoutout. Social media land is narcissistic by nature -- play into that by generating exposure for your audience. It’s a win-win. You use their content and make them feel special, and it leads back to your product or service. 5. Finally, keep track of and optimize your results We live in the age of information, which allows us the immense opportunity to track our results and optimize accordingly. If your content isn’t generating conversation, change it. The brand’s voice is important, but that doesn’t mean it should remain static. Use feedback from your advocates to guide your social strategy, and operate in real-time at least 30 to 40 percent of the time. Remember, converting and retaining advocates is about giving them a reason to stay. Focus on growing your relationship with advocates and building trust, and soon you’ll have an army of brand advocates to spread your message. Use responsibly.
The Digital Gridiron – XLIX: Brand Engagement Stats From Super Bowl Ads #infographic February 2, 2015
Sunday's Big Game was as much about football as it was about brands. As advertisers battled to be the most memorable, the most eye-catching and the most influential on TV, they simultaneously strategized to be all those things on the web as well. That's why Offerpop created this infographic, demonstrating just how loud and active fans are on digital, which teams and brands won on social media, and why now more than ever it's paramount for brands to have a true cross-channel digital strategy to engage with these conversations.
Let's explore how this year's big game focused primarily on brand engagement and the digital path to purchase.
Hyatt Regency Maui Says 'I Do' to Social Marketing January 7, 2014 The resort proposes its site as a wedding destination to prospective customers through a targeted social sweepstakes.
Sad stories—even succinct narratives—sometimes have happy endings. Just ask the sales team responsible for booking luxury weddings at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa. Even better, ask Josh and Todd. Last October Josh and Todd got hitched in Hawaii on the breathtaking grounds of the Hyatt Regency Maui as part of their reward for winning a Facebook photo contest the resort offered with the help of Offerpop, a digital marketing software-as-a-service platform. From a strategic perspective, the contest was a success: Hyatt Regency Maui created the program to generate wedding-sales leads (80 of them) and to raise brand awareness.
On a personal level, the story was heart-warming. “When I proposed to Todd…this past January, he was so thrilled—and immediately sad,” Josh writes in the entry form. “Living in Arizona, marriage isn't an option for us.” For several years the couple “watched as state after state struck down bans against gay marriage.” Arizona was not among those states, but Hawaii was—thanks to the Aloha State's Marriage Equality Act of 2013, which built on previous allowances of samesex civil unions by granting the legal green light to same-sex marriage. Challenge and choice Hyatt Regency Maui is well-known for its allure as a destination for family vacations, corporate retreats, and romantic getaways. But Marketing Manager Jessica Kapoor and her team wanted to increase awareness of the resort as a destination for large and luxurious weddings. Specifically, she wanted to generate more qualified leads to share with her sales colleagues responsible for booking weddings.
Given Hyatt's loyal Facebook following (where people also enjoy posting pictures of their engagements and weddings) and her desire to reach a broad audience, Kapoor opted for a photo contest. The campaign, which featured two stages, began March 10, 2014 and ran through April 14, 2014. The first facet consisted of submissions: engaged couples throughout the United States were asked to provide a photo and100 words explaining why they wanted to get married in Maui. Seventy-five couples completed submissions. The second facet enabled Facebook users to vote for the winning couple (from April 2 through April 12). More than 1,200 people voted. People could vote once per day and share the contest on their own social media channels. Offerpop Account Manager Ashley Astolfi typically recommends that companies run promotional photo contests for two to four weeks. Since Hyatt's contest featured separate submission and voting periods, Astolfi suggested the longer end of that range “to allow for plenty of time for engagement.” Hyatt Regency Maui promoted the contest with ads to supplement the organic social-media sharing. To do so, the marketing team targeted key demographics in its database (age,
relationship status, etc.) and then used Offerpop's analytics to track the sources and ad campaigns that drove the campaign participation across Hyatt.com, Twitter, and ads from Facebook, The Wedding Channel, and The Knot, among other sources. This integrated, multichannel approach to promotion “was essential to success,” Kapoor reports. “Facebook ads in particular were effective and inexpensive for us to run.”
For each contest entry, Hyatt also collected key information—such as wedding budgets and date options; and opt-in communications for information about weddings, honeymoons, and vacations—for the sales team to use. The marketing team offered a follow-up contest to everyone who voted: a shot at winning a three-night stay at the resort. Additionally, everyone who participated in the campaign (those who submitted entries as well as those who voted) received a 10% vacation discount offer. “This promotion extended the reach of our brand beyond weddings,” Kapoor adds, “and gave us a way to further engage consumers already interacting with us.” Astolfi credits Hyatt Regency Maui's marketing team for having a “clear understanding of crosspromotion.” It helped that Kapoor and her team established a clear promotion schedule and developed a specific budget for the campaign. “This allowed them to reach a very wide audience with a combination of email, Facebook advertising, and on-site promotion,” Astolfi says. Of course, it also helped to enlist the help of outside content-producers, including the storytelling skills of happily couples.