Archive for category: Community Management

The time to get cheery and bright is coming up! No matter what you or your audience are celebrating this year, your brand cannot go wrong with a catered holiday campaign! In fact, some of the greatest and most essential times of the year to capitalize on seasonal marketing tactics are the winter holiday months, where gift giving is a must, and consumers are more active than ever. Taking advantage of this natural increase in retail sales and engagements can not only be beneficial to growth but is essential in order to keep up with the growing demands of audiences. 

Influx of Messages in Winter Months

It is no secret that during the holiday months of November and December, brand social media accounts can expect to receive an increase in messages, as holiday gifting and campaigns are on the rise. With this change, it is essential for these teams to develop a working plan for how they will respond to this influx in messages in a timely manner, in order to reap the greatest benefits, whether that is sales, followers, or engagements, from these interactions. Further, responses can heavily benefit consumer care satisfaction, so being thorough and careful in responding to messages can boost this impression in a positive direction which is always good for a brand’s representation and future retention. For more information on crafting teams that engage in timely and effective responses, click here!

Grow Holiday Sales

The winter season is also a great time to utilize holiday campaigns to increase sales! Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, and Hannukah are all important holidays of the colder months; and with the season of gift giving, comes the season of consumerism! In fact, in 2021, overall holiday retail sales were up by 14% compared to the previous year. In addition, with the forecasted growth in sales, the holiday season creates fiercer competition amongst retailers and requires brands to be on their A-game at all times. Digital sales are therefore another area in which brands can focus and improve upon in order to capitalize to the max. Take a look here at how one of our clients utilized their own seasonal marketing on Instagram to boost sales. Ultimately, brands must keep up with the changing seasons and begin prepping their holiday campaigns early in order to get ahead. Brands can do this by anticipating site traffic prior to the start of the season, as well as by crafting enticing ads or graphics for their campaigns in order to get followers excited! All of this should be done while also keeping track of competing campaigns in order to remain a top player this holiday season, while also giving customers the best experience possible!

Opportunity for Social Commerce

With the increase in sales, the holiday season is a great time to utilize social commerce. The landscape for social commerce has been widening and has many tools to offer modern day brands and retailers. For instance, Twitter and Instagram shops, easily shoppable content, clickable link buttons, and more offer a convenient way for online shoppers to purchase from their favorite retailers. Here is a great example from one of our clients of these clickable links that direct users to the purchasable content. Using your own holiday campaigns to promote these convenient features can result in a generally more successful holiday season for your company. So, in order to remain profitable and not to miss out on these opportunities for additional sales in the winter months, be sure to utilize these resources for your brand!

How To Best Capitalize?

With all of these notes to keep in mind, you may be wondering how your brand can best use these tips and tricks to capitalize on the growing demands of the holiday months. There are a couple of ways that brands can utilize holiday campaigns in order to benefit to the greatest degree. First off, we’d recommend brands to play on the emotions that come with the traditions  of the holiday season! Here is an example of one of our clients who took the feelings of the season to their advantage as they catered their services to the holiday months! Don’t hesitate to incorporate mood and pleasant associations in your holiday campaign this year, and for further advice on seasonal marketing you can click here! It may also be worthwhile tapping into the feeling of nostalgia that many people associate with the holiday months. You can click here for further information on how to implement and capitalize on seasonal nostalgia. In addition, to maximize your reach and encourage engagements, a combination of paid and organic social strategies may be the best course of action. Further, hiring someone to conduct social listening for your brand is a great way to explore how to cater your holiday campaign to your specific customer base. Give your followers the gift of a convenient, and joyous shopping experience this holiday season with these tips!

In the digital age, social media is no longer an escape from reality; it is now an extension of it for professionals and consumers alike. Social media is deeply ingrained in how we interact, engage, and consume. The widespread use of technology and digital communication has expanded the power of social media in ways that marketers cannot ignore. Social media enhances commerce by fostering authentic conversations, and its ability to transform brands and businesses is rooted in the impact that it has on consumer behavior. 

Here at Bright Age, we want to help your business develop a social strategy that increases consumer engagement: here are a few ways that social media influences consumer behavior and how we integrate these strategies to help our clients.

Consumers Are Swayed By Influencers and Creators

Influencers, content creators, and brand ambassadors quite literally “influence” consumers into engaging with and buying new products. They allow brands to increase visibility, engagement, and sales. At Bright Age, we have talked about the way that brands and creators interact, and it is just as important to consider the way that creators and influencers impact consumer behavior. Golden Girls’ marketing approach uses influencers to bring the brand to life and connect audiences to new faces. Their Instagram page features live interviews hosted by creators who bring this off-air show into the current conversation. Through influencer marketing, Golden Girls expands their reach to younger audiences, and consumers are drawn to the charismatic creators whom they see on their screens. Social media presents authenticity in a way that traditional advertising cannot, and by featuring influencers, brands can leverage authentic voices to increase consumer engagement and interaction.

Consumers Feel Connected To Interactive Brands

Similarly, brands can use their socials to connect with consumers by providing stellar customer care and showcasing positive consumer experiences. Brands can use social media to enhance customer service, and in doing so, they form relationships with their consumers that develop customer loyalty and satisfaction. Consumers are more likely to engage with brands that interact with them meaningfully and social media allows brands to showcase their values while catering to individual consumers. 

Furthermore, consumers are swayed by social proof: when people see that your product or service worked for others, they want to try it out themselves. Galaxy Theatres influences guests to visit their various locations by displaying positive reviews alongside ways to reach customer service on their Yelp pages. On the Yelp page for the Galaxy Theatres Green Valley, customers can see positive reviews, along with FAQs answered by friendly Galaxy customer service representatives. These consumers feel cared for, heard, and are influenced to buy tickets to Galaxy showings.

Consumers Turn To Social Media To Discover New Products

Approximately 1 in 3 consumers take to social media to learn about new businesses and brands, and often, people buy products directly from social media. With apps like Instagram and Facebook, it is easy to explore hashtags and pages to find new products and services that fulfill any given need. For instance, LaHabra Stucco uses social media marketing and hashtags on their Instagram to reach new audiences looking for stucco services. Through social media marketing, they can reach customers they never would have otherwise reached and ultimately grow their business.

Genuine engagement and authenticity will help your brand stand out and influence consumers to choose you over your competitors. It is necessary for your brand to use social media to display your values, listen to your customers, discuss their needs, and fulfill the promises you make. 

These values guide our approach to digital marketing. At Bright Age, we understand that building relationships between brands and influencing consumer behavior means understanding that consumers are people first and customers second, with meaningful values and wants. Our values enable us to provide excellent client services: contact Bright Age today to hear what we can do for you!

Online trends are constantly changing, so businesses need to stay up to date about how their brand is being perceived on social media platforms. One way to do this is to work with a social media company that can provide social listening reports. Consumers often use social media to communicate their feelings and opinions about the products and services they use. Social listening reports are vital to the success of brands with an online presence, because they allow media management professionals to receive these insights on customer experience and go forward with designing and implementing marketing strategies to improve, or simply change, a business’s digital reputation.

What are social listening reports?

Social listening reports use information from key terms related to your brand found across social media platforms to gauge the “mood” of both current and potential customers towards your business. Hashtags, location tags, and account mentions all factor into these reports and provide a comprehensive look into the conversations your audience is having about your brand. This kind of tool helps a social media company determine if their campaigns and tactics are working, or if they need to go back to the drawing board. Not only is social listening valuable in creating marketing strategies, but it also provides the opportunity to foster connections between your brand and your consumers, such as responding to positive feedback or correcting problems.

How are social listening reports used?

A major benefit to getting your brand involved on social media is it gives you an opportunity to connect with your key demographics and start a conversation. It’s never been easier to engage directly with consumers to learn about what they want out of the brands they support (or don’t support), and tools like social listening reports are the reason why. Being able to gather data about your own audience is important, but social listening can also provide more information about your industry and competitors, open the door to collaboration, and even improve on existing products based on consumer feedback.

Staying up to date on the conversations taking place concerning the industry your business is in lets you quickly jump in on trends or steer clear of controversy. In addition to engaging with consumers, social listening allows for you to join conversations with other brands in your industry. This leads to some pretty entertaining interactions for your audience, but also lends insight as to where there could be gaps in the market or where the trends are headed. Social listening gives you the opportunity to take real-time action as things occur.

Online conversations about your product or service can be helpful not only in setting the tone for your brand, but in learning how you can improve. Social listening is great for engaging in fun and positive interactions, but also allows for questions and complaints to be addressed quickly. Consumers will often take to social media to offer product suggestions or point out user experience issues, which is valuable in creating an environment in which consumers feel recognized but not sold to.

These conversations can also lead to collaborations between brands and/or creators that influence how your audience feels towards your business. Social listening helps to connect you with both consumers and other brands, fostering a sense of online community that promotes dialogue.

Why should you work with a social media company that uses social listening?

For businesses without a social listening plan in place, data is often pulled from various departments which leads to an incomplete analysis of the consumer experience. Media professionals rely on a unified team to ensure all the information they need is current and accounted for, otherwise key insights fall through the cracks and lead to ineffective and out of date marketing strategies. This is a benefit to working with a social media company like Bright Age, because agencies like ours emphasize collaboration so that analytic tracking methods such as social listening reports are streamlined and collaborative. Having a single outsourced social media team turns a good tool into a great one through fast and clean content creation that internal media management struggles to match due to limited and slow communication between departments. Social listening reports are a great way to stay engaged and involved with your audience, and Bright Age can help get you started.

Engaging your audience with your brand through social media marketing is important when it comes to growing your business. There is no shortage of creative and innovative ways to do so. One of the most effective and popular methods is to promote your brand by producing social media campaigns that attach you to cultural events like the Super Bowl. Companies from Doritos to Old Spice have found massive success by connecting significant events to their brands through social media.

So why is it important to integrate this kind of campaign to your marketing strategy? 76% of consumers have said they would rather buy from a business they’ve formed a connection with, and 57% are likely to spend more money from said businesses. By associating your brand with major events, you have the opportunity to increase engagement as well as cultural relevance. Using a social media agency to promote your business in connection to events can create a large impact as to how your brand grows.

When has this kind of campaign been successful?

A particularly infamous, but successful, example of this kind of strategy was the Planters Nut and Chocolate campaign for the 2020 Super Bowl, “Baby Nut.” The goal was to freshen the face of the company while promoting their brand by killing their original mascot, Mr. Peanut. His death occurred in a commercial that aired in late January, which was followed by a social media marketing campaign advertising his funeral during the Super Bowl. In a shocking turn of events, Mr. Peanut was revived in the form of Baby Nut leading to a dramatic increase in social media engagement with the brand.

While Baby Nut was met with it’s fair share of criticism and controversy, statistics reveal that the campaign absolutely worked in revitalizing the Planters brand. After the completed narrative, Planters saw a 132% increase in Twitter followers. Viewers were actively engaged over social media, creating conversations between the brand and the consumers.

Plan

How does a social media agency achieve something like this for your business? Attaching a media campaign to an event is an interesting process. This starts by identifying how to approach an event with your specific brand in mind. What story is it you want to tell? What tone are you setting? What do you want this campaign to achieve? What is it your audience wants to see? Having these questions in mind can help develop the best course of action for a successful social media marketing strategy.

When you’re marketing in association with an event, whether it’s an annual sports game or a widely discussed and timely news story, it’s important to know where your brand is going to fit.

Implement

Once you’ve determined a game plan, it’s time to start on content creation and joining the fray. Often the most favorable campaigns have an element of audience interaction, which is one of the reasons Baby Nut made such an impact on Planters. Viewers had a lot to say, and by implementing this kind of flexible narrative, their social media managers were able to keep people continually engaged even after the commercials had aired. By attaching a brand to an event, you can increase viewer interactions which leads to longer cultural relevance. It isn’t necessary to buy a $4 million television advertisement either. This kind of campaign is just as successful if it takes place solely via social media as well.

Analyze

After you’ve completed your initial campaign, you can start measuring the overall impact to then plan your next steps in marketing for your business. Multi-day events, like the Olympics, are a great opportunity to experiment with what your consumer demographic is interested in engaging with. In keeping with the Planters example, while the campaign was successful in promoting engagement, many viewers were extremely unhappy with the brand for it’s strange choice to kill their mascot and replace it with Baby Nut. Fortunately for Planters, by analyzing responses to their marketing strategy they were able to correct where they had fallen short while also maintaining elements of their original concept.

Conclusion

Using a social media agency to develop a marketing strategy in conjunction with cultural events is a fun and creative method of expanding your brand. Not only does it provide the opportunity to engage audiences, but it also can help you learn more about what your target demographic wants to see. Creative agencies like Bright Age can assist your business in developing event campaigns for social media so that your brand continues to stay up to date on trends.

A new generation is emerging and growing so rapidly that they have the potential to change the marketing world as we know it. They are called Generation Alpha. For several years now, brands have been targeting two generations: Millennials and Generation Z. Now, the time has come to start thinking about how to market to the youngest and potentially the most influential generation.

Generation Alpha consists of kids born between 2010 and 2025. While they continue to grow in influence, an estimated 2.5 million Alphas are born globally every week. This makes them the largest generation to date. Since they were born into a world surrounded by technology, they are the most technologically savvy generation yet. 

Kids from Generation Alpha guide parental purchases and will soon become buyers, making it essential for brands to persuade and satisfy these young influencers. As a content marketing agency, we understand it can be challenging to develop fresh ideas to appeal to this new generation. Here are some tips on how to market to Generation Alpha and reach a wider audience!

Use Online Video Content

Content that’s most likely to influence Gen Alphas to buy something is online video. With platforms like YouTube and TikTok taking off, video creation and video sharing are at an all-time high. 57% of Generation Alphas have said that seeing products on social media in video format persuades them to buy. Brands should create captivating videos to promote themselves on these platforms to reach this new generation.

Embrace Diversity

According to Neil Patel, founder of an optimization website called Crazy Egg and a messaging design platform called Hello Bar, Generation Alphas will heavily emphasize the importance of diversity. They will follow brands that accept every religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, and culture. Hard evidence predicts that they will stress the importance of companies sharing similar values as them. This makes it very important for companies to reflect those values in their marketing campaigns. Brands should refrain from targeting one demographic and withhold all gender-specific campaigns in order to be more inclusive of all people.

Be Interactive

This generation has grown up with technology their whole lives. Therefore, they are used to interacting with others on the internet and social media. To reach this target audience, brands need to interact with their customers. By doing so, customers will feel more connected to who they are talking to. Thus, companies need to be responsive and social. Generation Alpha is predicted to reject traditional forms of marketing and have more of an interest in messaging and social shopping.

Provide Choice and Personalization

According to a U.S. study by Hotwire, Generation Alphas are very strongly opinionated. Alphas have stayed updated with news through social media and see just as much as the average adult. Since these young kids have formed their own opinions at a very young age, they like to have choices. They are more persuaded by products that can be tailored and personalized to their own liking. Thus, brands should customize their products and provide Alphas with options. 

Hire a Content Marketing Agency

Hiring a content marketing agency can help your company increase sales, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. It can also help you understand how to reach your target audience and increase engagement.

Since learning how to market to this entirely new generation can be challenging, it is important to work with a content marketing agency that knows what they are doing. Bright Age Digital Creative Agency is dedicated to developing brand recognition to reach your target audience. Bright Age has helped numerous clients grow their brands on social media and has delivered significant results.

In summary, Generation Alpha will be the most influential, dominant generation yet. When choosing a marketing strategy to reach this audience, these tips can help your campaign succeed. As a content marketing agency, Bright Age can help you prosper and develop the marketing strategy you need.