How Does The Recent Facebook Scandal Affect Marketers?

Undoubtedly, you have heard of  Facebook’s recent scandal. Cambridge Analytica is a political data firm hired by the 2016 Donald Trump election campaign. Their job was to identify personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. The tools offered by the firm accessed the private information of over 50 million Facebook users, including identities, friends, networks, and more. This information was used to target audiences with digital ads to influence the election.

Facebook has seen a 24% decrease in the average time users are spending on their platform. However, even with the call to #DeleteFacebook, most users likely won’t go through with it, at least not permanently. Social Media has become such an integrated part of consumers’ lives that many of them are, quite simply, addicted to it.

So, what is the best way to ensure your Facebook practices don’t fall flat?

You will almost definitely need an ad budget to stay at the top of your marketing game. However, if you have an excellent strategy in place, you could minimize your budget. Many companies realize this and have an ad budget in their marketing plan. In fact, even with the recent scandals, ad spend on Facebook has increased by about 62% in Q1 2018. This shows us that pay-to-play is still an ever-present method of getting your information in front of your audience.

Start A Conversation

The growing interest in messaging apps, such as Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Snapchat, indicate what users are craving more of: conversation. Networks such as Facebook have started to lose their appeal to typical users, whereas messaging apps are steadily increasing their daily usage rates.

Focusing heavily on interaction with followers can help to increase engagement and interest in your company. Chatbots, for example, are becoming widely popular as companies realize the importance of offering timely responses. Utilizing bots and Messenger to connect one-on-one with your audience should be at the top of your marketing strategy.

Likewise, using the proper networks will help minimize time and money spent on misplaced advertising. Rather than creating accounts on every social network, spend time analyzing your target demographic and which platforms they use. Visual companies do great on Instagram, whereas companies aimed at the 50+ crowd are more successful on Facebook.

As far as Facebook is concerned, creating a more personable and engaging experience the way to go for just about any brand. Invite your audience to answer questions, caption behind-the-scenes photos, or share their experiences. Creating a welcoming and engaging page will help to keep your audience coming back for more.

The Takeaway

At the end of the day, marketers must have a well-structured marketing strategy to keep their Facebook engagements up. This strategy should include at least a minimal ad budget. However, despite algorithm changes and scandals, Facebook will likely continue to be a heavy player in the social networking game.

4 Steps to Make Online Video and YouTube Part of Your 2017 B2B Marketing Strategy

What are you watching these days?

Better yet, where are you watching it? I could throw some facts and figures at you about online trends, and I will, but we both know the answer to those questions. Regardless of whether you clicked on a cat video link or a competitor’s ad campaign, if you were watching a video online it was probably on YouTube.

Did you know:

• Youtube reaches more US adults between 18-35 than any cable
• YouTube is the No.2 Search Engine in the
• 6 billion hours of videos are watched on the platform every month. (com)

Five Ways Data Will Change Your Marketing Forever

 Use Data-Driven Marketing to Quickly Increase Performance – Here’s How!

So, what has changed about data that will change the way smart companies approach sales and marketing?  The simple answer is almost everything.  Not only the sheer amount of data, but the relative ease in which we can put it to work for us.

Essentially, if you have a sales and marketing department and aren’t seriously using data to your advantage there are problems on the horizon.  One of the biggest reasons for this is data-driven marketing is not just for the big boys anymore.  Even the smallest companies now have access to data and BI (business intelligence) tools that were once reserved for the Fortune 500.

Let’s take a quick look at the five ways data will change your marketing and then we will break each one down and explain how to put these initiatives to work for your organization.

1. Relevant Content
2. Segmented Messaging
3. Retargeting
4. Optimized ROI
5. Tracking

Your Biggest Competition is No One?

That’s exactly right.  Any seasoned salesperson will agree that they’ve lost more sales to people doing nothing than going with any of their competitors – by a fairly large margin.

Why is that?  

Let’s go back to your family dinner growing up.  My guess is that everyone in your family had “their place” at the table.  If you sat in someone else’s place, things would be uncomfortable.  Do you always sit in the same chair in your conference room?  Your school classroom? Chances are the place you sat for the first time is the same place you sit every time.

There is a powerful “mental shortcut” that explains this behavior. It is called the “status quo bias”. Simply stated, it is the strong tendency to remain in one’s current situation.  

Sure, it’s important to focus on the competition, but if you want to see sales increase quickly, you’ll want to focus on a solution to the “status quo bias”.

So, step one in growing sales is to answer the question –

WHY CHANGE?

The best way to answer this question is to gain commitment with solid logic. Help your buyer truly understand the problems that make change more than a good idea – a necessity. The buyers’ problems are a core element of the sale. If properly communicated, problem solving will become one of their primary buying motivators.

Here are some things you can do to build a case for change…

Find Problems

Sales 101 teaches you to be a problem solver.  In today’s B2B sales environment, being a problem finder is just as important.  If you can genuinely uncover problems for your prospect, you gain the authority to also help them find a solution.

This can be a significant advantage.  Buyers are typically 60% – 70% into the sales process before they ever talk to a sales person.  If you can proactively get in front of this process, you are ahead of the competition. Most importantly, you have an opportunity to answer the question,”Why Change?”.

A proven way to introduce the problem or “pain” is to communicate that many of your existing clients came to you with PROBLEM 1 and PROBLEM 2.  You can then ask questions designed to determine if these are similar to the challenges your prospect is facing.

Find the CAUSE, not just the SYMPTOM

It is typically easier to find the symptom; however, to truly fix the problem you need to determine the cause.  Doing this will give you additional credibility to suggest solutions.

Make the Problems Real

People essentially make decisions for one of two reasons.  Either they want to benefit (greed) or they want to avoid the risk (fear).  A study in Scientific American showed that people feel greater regret for a decision they made that resulted in a negative outcome, than if that same outcome was caused by their indecision.

Position your product or service in such a way that shows prospects that making no decision is risky on their part. In addition, prove to them that the right decision- working with you- will be beneficial to them.

Again, most companies we talk to tend to spend a great deal of their attention figuring out how to beat their competition.  While that is important, overcoming that natural desire to simply do nothing will have a major impact on your sales. MarketSense uses data, marketing, and analytics to predictably grow sales. Understanding the science and behavior that helps buyers get comfortable making solid decisions is built into every engagement.