Back in 2001, Skittles ran a great social media-style ad campaign before social media existed. The candy launched a public vote on its website: choose between keeping the green Skittle’s traditional lime flavor and changing it to green apple.
I bring up Skittles’ shrewd marketing maneuver not to re-live my devastation at green apple’s loss, but to make the point that people talked about this vote. The evidence still exists of the buzz the vote generated.
Skittles’ conversation-starting marketing push offers a great example of how to build brand affinity by sparking customers’ interest. In today’s world of social networking, brands have the perfect environment in which to generate interest, and hold it, with an interactive campaign like a vote—get one person excited, and with one status update they’ve informed their hundreds of friends.
But how do you target the people who will tweet about your product? Visible’s Vice President of Strategic Agency Partnerships, Eric Forst, recently shared on MediaPost four strategic ways social media analytics give ad agencies the insight they need to help their brands better relate to their customers:
1) Knowing your audience: Using social media analytics helps uncover what your brand’s target consumers are talking about and where and why they’re talking.
2) Engaging meaningfully: Does your brand’s social media campaign resonate? Social media analytics help agencies better advise their clients on a campaign’s best direction.
3) Learning customer insights related to purchase path: How does your audience act on its interests and beliefs? Social media analytics explore the path to purchase, decision-making drivers, and pertinent media-lifestyle connections.
4) Using insight for forecasting. With social media analytics, brands can predict the influence messages will have on people’s feelings and actions. These predictions can drive intelligent marketing that speeds the expansion of a brand’s community of loyal followers.
You don’t have to take Eric’s or my word, though. Take a look at The Recording Academy’s “We’re All Fans” campaign or PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew “DEWmocracy” and Facebook-based “Back by Popular DEWmand”. These brands’ successful social campaigns tap into consumers’ passions, engage their interests, and encourage them to interact with others around the brand.
With the right insights into its customer base, any brand can make this crucial customer connection and use it to inform social and traditional ad campaigns. By reaching the right people with the right message, the ad campaign will stick.
