I've had a few requests to share the presentation deck from my talk at the DMX Dublin 2015 conference this morning. It's linked below, for those who would like to download a copy. Unfortunately, much of the content was verbal, so some of it may not be completely clear to a reader who wasn't present. In some cases, my slides asked questions just so that I could present an alternate view.
As a guide for those who didn't make it, the key points are discussed below.
[for those who attended – download the presentation]
What we learned from a year without organic reach.
Over the last year, we've helped our clients adapt to the fact that for brands, organic reach is getting close to zero on Facebook. Worse, Twitter may follow in their steps in 2015. In reality, though, that's a good thing. It forces clients to stop asking how they can grow their communities in social and start asking how they can grow their brands.
From that perspective, zero organic hasn't held us back. It's set us free.
So, how do we create growth in social? By using paid support to reach outside our communities – reaching more people more often in ways that make them like us. For most brands, we know that growth comes from increasing the number of people who buy, not by increasing the loyalty of our close fans. That should be our focus.
What does that look like in social?
First, we get the audience we pay for. That may mean we have to pay, but it also means we reach exactly the people who need to hear from us. It also reminds us to stop hitting the same community with high-frequency messages and start targeting bigger audiences fewer times.
Second, we know that we can't get the best reach for money through traditional channels alone. Even in television, once we've reached heavy viewers, it becomes increasingly expensive to reach more people. Worse, we're seeing that second-screening is reducing television ad recall. According to a study from Nielsen/AOL, recall rates drop from 83% to 23% for those who pick up a device while watching. For 53% of people, the content they check on the second screen is social. Why not meet them there?
Third, social is becoming a mobile-first experience for people. Mobile gets us closer to the times and places when they're making purchase decisions, helping us stay top of mind.
Fourth and finally, brands need to know their role. When we look at stats around who younger people follow in social, brands are as frequently followed as family members. Put another way, we are as welcome in their news feeds as their parents. If we aren't creating content that offers real value, we will lose them.
Having to pay doesn't make social a pure advertising channel.
Fans, likes, and shares still matter. Not for the reasons many think, though. Fans make much better potential advocates than sales targets. We know that information is most trusted when it comes from people our audience knows and people who are like them. So, when we make content for fans, the first question we should ask is if they will share it.
Ultimately, it's still a social medium.
In both #nomakeupselfie and #icebucketchallenge we've seen campaigns become extremely pervasive in 2014 by leveraging the social attributes of the medium. What can we learn from these campaigns?
- You don't have to invent the game, just invite people to play. Both campaigns took something that people were already doing and found ways to give them rules and turn them into real action. Without monitoring the existing conversation, neither campaign could have happened.
- Give people an invitation to show off their personality. Often, people want to share something of themselves, but they need to be given permission or an invitation so that they don't feel like show-offs.
- Make the barrier to entry low. Marketing people are used to shaping messages and communicating publicly, and we often forget that finding the right way to contribute to an ongoing public conversation is difficult. Do the hard work for them.
- Stand for something. Yes these are non-profits, but even as businesses, we have the ability to stand for something, if we are sincere. Dove and Chipotle (both Edelman clients) have solidly proven this.
- Make the call to action clear. Cancer Research UK raised £8 million in one week of pledges to its SMS code. The ALS Association raised $101 million, which is 35 times their usual rate of donation at that time of year.
Can we apply this to brands?
Absolutely, so long as what we're doing is firmly grounded in insights about our audience that are built on good monitoring practices. These are real people we're talking to. As a thought experiment, ask yourself whether a social idea would work in a real social situation. For example, think about the ground rules for being a good guest at a party:
- Ask people about themselves.
- Have a sense of humour.
- Have a game ready if conversation dies down.
So, to recap:
- Growing our brand in social means wise investment in paid media budgets to reach everyone in the target, not just in our community.
- When social is included in the blend of media channels, we can reach more people affordably and with better proximity to purchase
- Our core fans are more valuable as advocates than as targets for sales messages, if we approach them correctly.
Thanks.
Thanks to those who made it out to the talk and had questions. It was really nice talking with everyone. Obviously, the ideas here owe a lot to Dave Jackson, Phil Trippenbach, and the rest of the planning team at Edelman Digital. For more on the ideas around reach and brand growth discussed in the presentation, the work of Byron Sharp, Karen Nelson-Field, and others associated with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute are highly recommended.