Create a relevant advertising strategy as technologies ramp up consumer privacy controls

With new changes sweeping the martech industry, it’s no wonder brands are struggling to understand what it means for their future marketing strategy. 

First, it was Google. Now it’s Apple. 

Brands are announcing significant changes to their end-user experience. These are changes that will limit advertisers who are retargeting ads or collecting consumer data to manage their digital marketing campaigns.

The Fate Of Digital Advertising

While the fate of some common advertising tactics remain unclear, there are still many avenues that can drive strong returns for savvy digital  marketers.  

Hear what Jason Klein, co-founder of ListenFirst, had to say on the topic. In Jason’s LinkedIn post, he shares a few tips to help brands reach their ideal audience today and in the future.

Discover Jason’s tips.

Watch this webinar to learn how to measure Share of Voice (SOV), a cornerstone metric that helps you understand your brand’s health and awareness in the market as it relates to your competition.

SOV gives you the overall positioning of your brand at a high level and, when done well, it also provides the details at an individual campaign, product, or release level – across all social channels. This insight is invaluable when determining performance and strategy going forward.

Just like with the expression “you can attract more bees with honey than with vinegar”, the disappearance of third-party cookies from browsers is actually an opportunity for brands. Third-party cookies were never popular with consumers and now that they’ll be going away as a retargeting tool, marketers can focus on connecting with digital audiences using content they do want. 

Let social media marketing extend your reach

Social media is a far more welcoming context for the audience to interact with brand content. For example, on social media the audience actually opts into following their favorite brands. With third-party cookies, companies are doing the following, and behind people’s backs.   

Plus, with the right analytics, you can build a strong marketing strategy that extends beyond the audience you reach with third-party cookies. Below are three ways you can use social media to more effectively target your marketing to the right audience, and with the right content. 

#1 Understand what content is actually moving the needle and engaging users.

Third-party cookies track what users have viewed online, which is valuable in terms of retargeting but provides a narrow understanding of your audience. Gain extensive insights into your owned and competitive audience demographics to craft the most tailored content strategies possible. This will help you make informed decisions before spending your limited marketing dollars. 

#2 Expand your reach by partnering with the right influencers

Let’s face it, some people just have it. There are personalities across social media that have a loyal community of followers that are always eager to engage with their latest post. These influencers often attract very niche audiences. When their audience looks a lot like your target customer, there’s incredible opportunities for everyone. Check out a recent webinar from ListenFirst on Measuring the Impact of Influencers to understand how this strategy can work for you. 

#3 Review marketing content from your competitors and see how it performed

Combine historical campaign performance with competitor intel and a clear understanding of trending topics and you have the elements you need to build a successful campaign. When you have access to this data on an ongoing basis, team creativity flourishes. Watch our webinar on Using Competitive Information to Plan Seasonal Campaigns to learn more. 

As you beef up your social media strategy, you’ll notice it’s more effective and not so intimidating. Plus, a data-driven social strategy will be more engaging, and your audience will appreciate that you catered to their interests without infringing on their privacy.

Ready to see how ListenFirst can help you leverage social media to its full potential? Request a demo today.

You’ve probably heard at least some conversation around Google’s plan to block third-party cookies. Did you flag it as something to investigate at a later time? If a significant portion of your digital marketing strategy is reliant on retargeted online advertising, now is the time to get up-to-speed.

The Basic Facts About Cookies

Cookies, in general, are files placed on a user’s computer to remember website configurations such as language preferences and login information. They also power web analytics and a more personalized web-browsing experience. There are mainly two types of cookies, first-party and third-party cookies. 

• First-party cookies are usually in place to improve the user experience. They are created by the visited website.
• Third-party cookies are usually used for cross-site tracking and ultimately retargeted advertising. With third-party cookies, a domain outside of the current website creates the cookies. 

So, What’s The Fuss About?

In early 2020 Google announced they will phase out third-party cookies within Chrome in 2022. Safari and Firefox did away with third-party cookies in 2013, but because Chrome accounts for over half of the browser market, Google’s announcement has received more attention. Marketers that lean heavily on retargeted ads are nervous about what this will mean for their future marketing strategy. 

First-party cookies are not impacted by this change. However, that makes your job of clearly communicating the value of your site upfront more crucial so that your visitor consents to your first-party cookies.

Targeted Online Marketing Is Not Going Away 

No need to fret. With cross-site tracking no longer at your disposal, there are still very effective ways to get in front of your ideal audience. 

Having a clear understanding of your key customer profiles, their influencers and their affinities will give you plenty to work with. Find target customers where they are on any of their social channels and you’ll notice you can reach a larger audience than you could with retargeted ads. All it takes is thoughtful content and key social insights. 

Learn More

Check out 3 Ways To Optimize Your Digital Marketing Without Third-Party Cookies to learn how to gather those key insights and be more strategic with your social media marketing. You can also request a ListenFirst demo, for a more personalized look at how social media analytics can help shape your marketing strategy.

The combination of your historical campaign performance, competitor intel, and what consumers are saying can provide 360-degree insight into what elements of a social campaign have been successes and failures in the past.

Collecting these insights allows your campaign to be data-backed and sets you up for success in the following areas:

Measuring your own successes/failures from prior years
The industry leaders from prior years – what worked/didn’t
What general consumers are talking about
Potential influencer partnerships

The following is a guest post by Miranda McWeeney, the SVP of Client Success at ListenFirst.

Back at the beginning of the week, when very few of us knew that “stonks” was internet slang for stocks, there was generally very little recognition of Reddit being a key market indicator around individual stocks. 

What a difference a week makes; Reddit users have been promoting a number of stocks, hoping to squeeze short sellers that have been betting against them and they’re succeeding. Their best-known bets to date are GameStop (GME), AMC (AMC) and BlackBerry (BB). The top targets have had their trading occasionally halted for volatility, but one question remains: will we see it coming next time?

Here are the 4 social media facts you need to know about Reddit and the Stock Market. 

Fact #1. There’s Been Long Term Interest By Reddit Users In The Stock Market 

It’s not like amatuer investerors flocking to Reddit for financial advice is something new, for instance, the influential subreddit of r/wallstreetbets has been around since January 2012. “Stock” is mentioned an average of 1.3M times on Reddit each quarter, with a steady rise in interest over the past year. 

Fact #2. It’s Been A Record-Breaking January 

Throughout January to date, the term “stock” has been used on Reddit at record-breaking levels. There have been 635K mentions to date with a steep climb in the final week of the month. 

Fact #3. There’s A High Correlation Between Brand Mentions And Rising Stock Price  

Early Reddit buzz about GameStop and BlackBerry was the catalyst for the user base taking a greater interest in the stock market in general. The volume of conversation on Reddit related to GameStop and Blackberry started to rise on 1/11/21 and has remained above each brand’s average through the close of the month. AMC saw the same trend beginning on 1/15/21. All brands show a relationship between the daily volume of Reddit mentions and their closing stock price. 

Fact #4. Social Listening On Reddit Can Help Identify The Next “GameStop”  

This event has raised the notion that Reddit mentions are potentially more intentful and/or high-value than a mention on another social media platform. On Twitter, for example, “stock” has been mentioned 5M times this year, while Reddit saw only 635K mentions, looking between January 1 -27, 2021. The general public was able to dominate the conversation on Reddit, seemingly quietly, and organize action. This was not an event where a high volume of social activity flew under the radar. It was an event where there was a continuous build in social activity for a select few brands, at a level that most would historically discredit as not notable. 

Also worth noting is the importance of using social listening to identify high upvoted posts on Reddit. For example, on January 13, a r/WallStreetBets post that received a high Reddit post score of 801 (meaning upvotes – downvotes), talking about how targeted hedge fund Melvin Capital was only half out of GameStop, and that the stock could continued to be squeezed for days. Amatuer investors were largely influenced by this post and saw it as a green light to become even more aggressive in buying GameStop. The stock price in GameStop jumped to $31.40 on January 13 from being $19.95 on January 12;  and continued to skyrock from there; as of January 28, closing at $193.60.

Reddit posts can go in far more depth than the character limited Twitter; meaning individual Reddit posts can have an outsized influence on moving the need around publicly traded companies. Along those same lines, after ensuring you’re tracking Reddit mentions in ListenFirst for all brands, topics and people of interest, it is recommended to focus your analysis on changes in volume over time, rather than the total volume itself. This will provide insight on when the general public is more/less interested, and when there may be a momentum shift worth digging into further. 

This doesn’t mean that brands have to spend hours surfing Reddit looking for breadcrumbs of an emerging trend. By integrating social listening with such external data as stock prices through an open API, these patterns can be identified and reacted to faster and more effectively. 

Want more insights how Reddit is driving audience behavior? Request a ListenFirst demo today!