marketing – Tonic Consultancy

An image representing AI - there is a dome consisting of wire/neurone-like connections linking computer parts to look like a cityscape

9th April 20240

AI in Marketing

How Can Artificial Intelligence Help Boost Your Marketing?

Advances in technology mean that the world is changing at a dizzying pace, and it is set to have a tremendous impact on marketing. With tools such as ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) is assuming a much larger role and helping to create a wealth of opportunities for marketers to be able to do even more with what they already do best.

By combining AI technologies with customer and brand data, marketers can gain access to highly precise insights into marketing trends and the customer experience. AI technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and others can help guide marketers’ decision-making, helping to stay ahead of the competition as well as helping to prepare for the challenges faced in a dynamic marketplace.

Let’s have a closer look at how AI can benefit marketers and how it can be leveraged successfully.

AI in marketing

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, AI-based marketing looks set to drive 45 per cent of the total economy by 2030. This will happen in a variety of ways, including data-driven product enhancements, personalised services, and influencing consumer demand. Let’s look at how this will be achieved.

Social media listening

With AI-powered social media, your efficiency will be significantly increased as social media listening is taken to a new level. AI tools will help to provide a range of suggested terms to include in your social media tracking to help marketers reveal essential audience insights far faster.

AI algorithms will help to identify and extract the relevant details from social media listing data that can span millions of data points in real-time. This will help marketers see the wood for the trees to gain a better understanding of the customer’s thoughts via social media sentiment analysis. Marketers can then anticipate their customers’ next move, and make strategic decisions and actions.

Content generation

AI social management tools can help analyse the voice of customer (VoC) data in social media posts to help inform marketers of the content that is of most interest to the target audience.

The same tools can also help to identify keywords and triggers so that marketers can devise and develop compelling posts, respond better to customer comments, and inspire better and more impactful product descriptions for websites and e-commerce. All of this will add marketing efforts towards brand engagement for an increase in market share and better earnings.

AI can also help generate ideas that can nurture and make campaigns more successful, as well as help create more compelling communications that will reinforce relationships with potential customers at all stages of the sales funnel.

AI prompts can help devise email subject lines that will achieve a better open rate, develop personalised content that can be adapted to buyer personas, and drive conversations based on intent, engaging with each customer/client on an individual basis, ultimately leading to stronger connections and loyalty that will stimulate sales.

Automation

By leveraging AI-driven smart automation, social media managers and customer service teams are empowered to improve operational efficiency via lexical and statistical-based triggers that can help drive intelligent workflows.

This can help marketers achieve their business goals better by removing the guesswork out of tasks such as scheduling posts at the optimal times for improved impact and better engagement, or by categorising incoming messages.

It can also help unify the brand voice in customer communications and reduce response times by half.

Audience segmentation and personalisation

Omnichannel business strategies based on market segmentation can be driven by AI marketing, helping to align campaigns with customers are are more likely to be interested and buy your product or services.

Programmatic advertising can be leveraged to help streamline the process of selecting and setting up digital advertising for the best return on investment (ROI), enabling more personalised marketing strategies and tactics to grow brand loyalty and develop powerful brand awareness campaigns.

Data analysis for customer insights

AI and machine learning can provide critical customer insights on a variety of aspects to help marketers make better informed strategic marketing decisions, with deeper insights into audience sentiments concerning your brand, full audits of customer care team performance, and social media engagement metrics.

This means marketers can quickly adapt to changing marketing trends, prioritise budgets based on what aspects require the most investment, and improve customer relationships.

Reputation management

When considering brand reputation, there will always be certain elements within the control, of marketers, while there will be some aspects that are not. Brands are subject to more scrutiny than ever in the social media age but with AI-based brand reputation management, potential threats can be averted before that can become a much larger issue.

With real-time monitoring of customer sentiments, using the right influencers and brand ambassadors, and providing proactive customer care, this can all be achieved easily.

Competitive intelligence

AI can help marketers identify opportunities that can help improve products and services and help fill in gaps in the market. It can help discern competitors’ share of voice and help find intelligent ways to become more agile in the competitive market. AI can also compare your social media performance to that of competitors via competitive benchmarking, enabling marketers to adjust strategies accordingly.

Multilingual advantage

A global marketplace means marketers need to take into account any cross-cultural aspects, as well as provide prompt and efficient customer care. With AI marketing tools, marketers can extract essential customer insights from multilingual data with ease, providing data that can inform strategies for particular regions.

It can also help ensure that target audiences are easily able to find social media posts, responses, and advertisements that they find relatable and adhere to their cultural standards.

Which AI technologies enable marketing?

Intelligent social media platforms will combine powerful AI technologies to provide marketers with the insights they need to succeed. With capabilities such as semantic classification, named entity recognition and aspect-based sentiment analysis, marketers can gain specific insights into their niche, while social media content can be optimised and customer engagement can be improved with the help of natural language processing, which all leads to a greater competitive edge.

Build impactful business strategies with AI

Marketing insights provided by AI are helping to empower brands to build a stronger foundation for growth and success by exploring new marketing, product and customer engagement opportunities.

AI tech such as sentiment analysis, NLP, virtual agents, chatbots and more are helping to determine how efficiently business goals can be achieved, in everything from revenue optimisation to navigating unpredictable market scenarios.

With access to targeted AI-driven insights, marketers can develop more proactive social media marketing tactics to help drive customer engagement, loyalty and retention, and ultimately market growth.

If you’re looking for help with AI marketing, brand growth, and social media marketing, come and talk to us at Tonic today.

Audience research, Blogs

18th September 20230

Broadcast TV Audiences Decline – What Does This Mean For Advertising?

According to a new report from Ofcom, the number of people watching broadcast TV each week has had the sharpest fall since records first began. With streaming services growing in popularity daily, public service broadcasters have seen the number of viewers each week decline from 83 percent in 2021 to 79 per cent in 2022, according to the UK’s communications regulatory body.

Ofcom’s Media Nations 2023 report also revealed that the average time spent watching broadcast TV per person per day fell from 2 hours 59 minutes in 2021 to 2 hours 38 minutes in 2022.

Public service broadcasters (PSBs) such as BBC One and ITV1 remained dominant in the most-watched list, with the research suggesting that the public recognises these channels deliver ‘broadcast events that bring the nation together for a shared viewing experience’, with England’s quarter-final match in the FIFA World Cup, the State Funeral of the Queen and the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee being the most watched programmes in the UK in 2022.

The broadcast TV watchdog’s report also noted a major shift in the broadcast TV landscape, with the decline in the number of TV programmes that attract mass audiences, and the number of shows that gained over four million viewers has more than halved in the last decade, demonstrating that there are far fewer people watching early and late evening TV news bulletins, as well as a decline in viewer figures for the UK’s most popular soaps.

According to the report, a mere 48 programmes managed to find an average audience of over four million on streaming platforms in 2022, with Netflix having the vast majority of those.

Yih-Choung Teh, group director of strategy and research at Ofcom, said: “Today’s viewers and listeners have an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet of broadcasting and online content to choose from, and there’s more competition for our attention than ever.”

Teh said that the UK’s traditional broadcasters have had steep declines in viewing numbers for their scheduled live programmes, particularly among what were typically loyal older audiences but he added that despite this, PSBs are still unrivalled in bringing the nation together during important cultural and sporting events.

But what does this mean for advertisers?

Declining viewing figures might sound more like a reason to start thinking about advertising elsewhere, and getting your advert aired during peak viewing times seems like an impossible task, never mind an expensive investment.

But with the average viewer watching over 2 and a half hours of commercial broadcast TV every day, broadcast TV accounts for 84 per cent of all video advertising, dominating the audio-visual market, and TV advertising is by far and away the most trusted medium, with 35 per cent of UK survey respondents placing it at the top, followed by newspaper advertising with 19 per cent.

Brands looking to advertise regionally can also leverage SkySmart to help target audiences in different locations, different ages, lifestyles, and many other demographics, by using marketing data to advertise to smaller, targeted audiences in cities, towns, or even specific postcodes.

Platforms such as Sky and Channel 4 even provide a bespoke service that can allow smaller brands to gain access to premium viewing environments, and not only broadcast television but video-on-demand (VoD) services too.

Broadcast TV adverts can’t be skipped, they run full screen, aren’t fighting for attention on a busy webpage, and aren’t subject to internet ad-blockers. TV advertising has been creating viral sensations since long before the internet age coined the term viral video and still creates discussion among people as we ask each other if we’ve seen the latest advert for a particular brand or product.

TV advertising can deliver a huge advantage to your brand, driving market share, building trust, and providing scale and reach. Brands can buy the exact number of ratings/viewers they need, and target specific audiences, whether it’s Love Island fans, or families gathered around the TV to watch Saturday evening entertainment.

The advantages of TV advertising

Reach – No other kind of media is able to provide the same reach with a single advertisement. TV advertising can reach huge audiences frequently and quickly, as much as 70 per cent of the UK population in one day. While there is a growth in people watching TV and film via tablets, computers and smartphones, none are as ubiquitous as the living room TV, and with many UK households owning more than one TV, that reach increases.
Influence – Television, compared to other video marketing platforms, has one of the highest engagement rates. According to data from the websites of organisations that use TV advertising, TV ads contribute to around 35 per cent of all visits to the number of all website visitors. TV advertising has retained an air of prestige and quality that other channels are unable to meet.
Audience targeting – Targeting a specific audience has been utilised by TV advertising for a long time. TV ads are shown at certain times of day, on certain channels, and during certain shows to ensure they are being shown to the right audience. This has become even more sophisticated with the advent of Sky AdSmart and targeted advertising has become even more integral to TV advertising.
Captive Audiences – While there is a certain amount of ad-skipping in VoD and recorded TV, and viewers are free to get up and pop the kettle on or visit the bathroom during ad breaks, the majority will stay in their seats, and even if only passively, they will be exposed to your adverts. In the case of recorded TV, if adverts are skipped, the brand will not be charged. Many VoD platforms are now including adverts before the show or film they want to watch, and some have now implanted unskippable ads that have to be watched in order to view the on-demand content.
Building trust and Legitimacy – It can take time, effort, and cost to develop a TV advert that is suitable for a wide audience, but the engagement and trust inferred by TV over other platforms provide a great ROI. TV also can establish a greater sense of legitimacy, trust, and recognition of your brand than other platforms.

Are you convinced about the power of TV advertising yet?

When it comes to video advertising, TV is the most widely viewed medium and has become home to many small and medium-sized brands, who are easily able to find a place among the traditional TV advertisers and larger brands.

If you’re looking to take advantage of TV advertising to promote your brand, product, or services, and looking for expert advice and help, talk to Tonic today!

Self care habits (journalling and coffee)

Blogs, Marketing Plan

24th July 20230

Three Steps To Help Create Consumer Buying Habits

Whether you’re trying to get fit or learn a new skill, forming new habits doesn’t happen overnight, and the same goes for forming buying habits. However, they can be developed through a systematic application of prompts, rewards, and repeat behaviour.

Our modern lives can be hectic, with so many choices and decisions to make every day, from trivial matters such as what to have for lunch or which shoes to put on in the morning, to deeply profound matters that can have lasting consequences. But if we agonised over every single decision we had to make in our day-to-day lives, we’d never get anything done.

When it comes to the more trivial choices we face, such as what to buy, we are more likely to rely on the habits we have formed, and simply do what we did last time when in the same situation. Do you tend to grab the same sandwich from the shop every lunchtime, stick to the same brand of coffee at the supermarket, or make other trivial purchases simply out of habit?

The Importance Of Habits

In 2002, psychologist Wendy Wood, the author of Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science Of Making Positive Changes That Stick, conducted a study that involved 209 participants who were promoted by an alarm every hour to write down what they were doing, where they were, and what they were thinking about.

The study found that if people were repeating the same action in the same place while thinking about something different, then their behaviour was characterised as habitual, and by that criteria, 43 per cent of behaviour was habitual.

Marketing And Forming Habits

With habits accounting for a significant proportion of consumer behaviour, marketers need to know how to leverage this, as well as how to successfully create buying habits.

Most psychologists concur that to form successful habits, there are three basic elements required: a cue, prompt, or trigger, a reward, and repetition.

These three elements are often used to help form habits in other areas too, such as prompts to exercise or workout to help build up streaks, for example, on the Peloton app, or the infamous slightly threatening aura of the Duolingo Owl, reminding you to keep up with your Spanish lessons.

However, passive-aggressive multi-lingual birds aside, let’s have a look at the three aforementioned elements for successful habit forming.

The Trigger

To develop habitual behaviour, motivation alone will not be sufficient, and successful habit forming needs a prompt or cue, whether that’s a place, mood, or time that will trigger the behaviour.

In a study at the University of Bath in 2002, psychologist Sarah Milne recruited 248 volunteers, who were then divided into three groups. A control group were instructed to record their levels of exercise over a two-week period, of which 35 per cent recorded 20 minutes of activity at least once a week.

The second group were also asked to record their levels of exercise in the same period but to also read a motivational leaflet about the benefits of exercise. Only 38 per cent exercised at least once a week, despite the leaflet providing motivation, barely changing their behaviour.

To demonstrate the importance of triggers in habitual behaviour, the third group had the same conditions set as the second group but were also asked to state when and where they would exercise. This was termed by Milne as an implementation-intention, a trigger to remind them to exercise.

The third group received the same levels of motivation as the second, but their behaviour was significantly changed, with 91 per cent recording exercise at least once a week.

To develop habitual buying behaviours in consumers, there needs to be more focus than solely on providing motivation, with a trigger that will prompt the desired behaviour.

An excellent example of this is when Claude Hopkins, the creative ad genius behind Pepsodent toothpaste, encouraged better dental hygiene in the US in the early 1900s, instead of suggesting brushing your teeth twice a day, his adverts recommended brushing in the morning after breakfast, and again before going to bed, creating one of the most successful public health campaigns in over 100 years.

The Reward

Following the trigger is the reward, which of the three elements in forming habitual behaviour is the broadest. Here we will look at the most relevant area, the power of uncertain rewards.

In 2014, an experiment by Luxi Shen asked if a reward of an uncertain magnitude can be more motivating than a reward of a certain magnitude. Shen recruited 87 volunteers, who were then set a challenge. Some of the participants were incentivised with a reward of $2 – a certain condition – while the others were offered a 50:50 chance of winning either $1 or $2 – an uncertain condition.

It was found that 70 per cent of the participants completed the challenge in the uncertain condition, while a mere 43 per cent completed the task in the certain condition scenario.

The participants in the uncertain condition reward scenario were motivated by the excitement of the uncertainty, which had a higher value than the actual reward of the money.

Marketers can learn from this when seeking to shape consumer behaviour by harnessing uncertainty. For example, if your brand has a loyalty scheme, instead of offering every customer that same incentive, try adding a random element.

This can be seen in action at the coffee and sandwich chain Pret-a-Manger, which doesn’t have a requirement for its customers to collect stamps to earn a free coffee, instead, allowing baristas to randomly award customers with a free drink at random.

The Routine

As stated at the very beginning of this article, habits are not formed overnight, whether that’s going to the gym or placating the Duolingo owl by practising your Japanese every day. To truly embed habitual behaviour, it needs repetition.

How long it takes to form a habit is a widely discussed and studied area of psychology, with 21 days being a commonly quoted figure, and others saying much longer.

According to a study by Philippa Lally at University College London, it takes 66 days to form a habit. In 2009 she recruited 82 participants, who were tasked to form a simple new habit, for example, drinking a glass of water every day with their lunch or doing a press-up after they brushed their teeth.

The results demonstrated that it took 66 days until these new behaviours were completed without needing to be thought about, Lally’s definition of a habit. However, there was a significant variation, with 95 per cent of participants forming the new habit somewhere between 18 and 254 days.

To reshape human behaviour and develop lasting habits, there is more needed than short bursts of activity, and sustained repetition is required.

In Conclusion

Marketers can find a lot of help and evidence-based advice from behavioural science, especially when it comes to developing consumer buying habits. To successfully alter your customer’s buying habits, do not forget the three essential key ingredients – a trigger, a reward, and sustained repetition.

If you’re looking for help developing new consumer habits with your marketing, then get in touch with Tonic today.

Blogs, Digital

7th June 20230

Why You Should Consider Advertising On TikTok

It might be more well-known as the procrastination tool of teens, taking up viral dancing and lip-synching challenges, but if you’re considering leveraging the exceptionally popular video creation and sharing app TikTok for your business or organisation, you’re certainly not alone!

Since the launch of TikTok in 2016, the app has been downloaded 3.5 billion times worldwide, and was the most downloaded app of 2021, beating rivals Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

We have a look at why you should be taking a closer look at the TikTok revolution, which has made a profound impact on culture in the modern world, and why savvy businesses are looking to get a piece of the action! But first…

What is TikTok Marketing?

TikTok marketing is a form of social media marketing that uses the popular app to promote your brand, product or service, incorporating a variety of tactics, for example, influencer marketing, TikTok advertising, and creating organic viral content.

TikTok marketing can help build brand awareness, develop and build engaged communities, advertise and sell your products and/or services to targeted audiences, and generate feedback from audiences and customers.

Let’s have a closer look at the three main types of marketing used by brands on TikTok.

TikTok Influencer Marketing

TikTok influencer marketing has become a major part of the app, with mega-stars such as former competitive dancer Charli D’Amelio and her viral dance videos, actress and social media personality Addison Rae , and Zach King with his videos of magic tricks, all making a huge impact on the success of businesses with their tens of millions of viewers.

However, you don’t need a high-profile and highly-paid influencer for a successful marketing campaign. There are always rising stars and influencers who better fit your niche.

Some of the biggest viral successes have been accidental, such as when TikTok user Nathan Apodaca aka @420doggface208 posted a video of himself riding his longboard, sipping Ocean Spray cran-raspberry juice to a soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, kick-starting the #Dreamschallenge hashtag, and significantly boosting sales of Ocean Spray and streams of Fleetwood Mac.

Creating Your Own TikToks

Creating your own TikTok videos can give you the most freedom. Simply create your own Business TikTok account and profile, and start creating and posting your own organic content, whether it’s demonstrating your products, day-to-day life in the office, or taking up the many dance challenges.

You can always find a wealth of inspiration on the app by browsing the For You section. Just remember you’re supposed to be working and looking for inspiration, not getting lost in procrastination! Well, maybe a little, for research!

TikTok Advertising

TikTok advertising is typically promoted, full-screen video content that a brand pays to show to a targeted audience. TikTok ads are another form of social media marketing used to help increase awareness about the advertiser, or to help sell a product or service.
TikTok advertising can potentially put your brand, service, or product in front of almost 900 million people over the age of 18, a whopping 18 per cent of all adult internet users.

The average TikTok user spends around 20 hours per month browsing the app, opening it an average of 19 times per day, and 64.4 per cent of users are aged between 20 and 49, according to the latest TikTok user demographics and statistics.

It can be an incredibly lucrative platform to leverage, particularly if you are marketing to females, who make up 57 per cent of all users.

TikTok for Business

The app launched its TikTok for Business hub in 2020, and business users can add more information to their profiles and access real-time metrics and audience insights.

Once you have created an account, it can be switched to a business account in the settings (Settings and Privacy > Manage Account > Account Control > Switch To Business Account), then choose the category that best describes your business, and then add your website and business email address to your profile.

Advertising on TikTok

Paying for advertising on TikTok is a great way to get your brand, product or service in front of a growing audience, without taking any risks with an influencer that may or may not provide a good ROI.

There are various types of ads available on the app:
In-feed ads: Adverts created by the user, including image ads, video ads, and spark ads, which boost the content you already have. There are also pangle ads and carousel ads, which are only available through the app’s Audience Network and News Feed Apps respectively.
Ads for managed brands: similar to in-feed ads, but with additional formatting after consulting with a TikTok sales representative.
Top View ads: unskippable ads that appear when the app is opened, similar to YouTube.
Branded Hashtag Challenges: actionable hashtags connected to your brand.
Branded effects: stickers and filters connected to your brand.

If you plan on advertising on TikTok, you will need an ad account for TikTok Ads Manager by visiting ads.tiktok.com and clicking Create Now and filling in the necessary information.

Top Tips for TikTok Marketing

Trends on TikTok can often appear random, with some never taking off at all, while others seem to run and run. Sadly, there’s no guaranteed marketing strategy to aim for, but there are some legitimate tips that can help your brand make an impact on the app.

Familiarise yourself with TikTok

TikTok is a different social network with unique trends, behaviours and features than Instagram or Facebook, so it would be wrong to approach marking on the platform as you would with others.

Do allow yourself to fall down the rabbit hole of TikTok videos to help explore all the different features available, make note of the currently trending filters, effects, and songs, and keep an eye out for the Branded hashtag Challenges, usually involving a song, a dance, or a task that users are challenged to recreate.

Study up on the TikTok algorithm, as understanding how the app ranks and displays videos can help inform your content, hashtag, and engagement strategies. You can learn all about this and more at the TikTok Business Learning Center.

Define your target audience

Before you begin creating and posting content, you need to determine who you are hoping to reach. Take some time to research the TikTok demographics to help to identify who would be interested in learning more about your brand.

The app is very popular with teens, but it’s far from a teens-only app, as they only make up a quarter of all users. The 20-29 age group are not far behind them, and the 30-39 and 40-49 age groups make up a significant percentage of users too.

Once you have found your potential audience, it’s time to research what content they are more likely to engage with and start developing content ideas for your brand.

Check out the competition

Whether or not you have competitors on TikTok, seek out four or five similar brands to see what they are up to. Learn from what works and what doesn’t work for them, and it might be helpful to use the SWOT framework to determine their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Keep in mind that TikTok is first and foremost a creator-led platform, so don’t forget to include the app’s stars and influencers in this exercise, especially any who fit your niche.

Set goals

It’s perfectly fine to create content for TikTok that’s purely for fun, but it would be beneficial to set goals that can be aligned with your overall business objectives. This could include reaching a new audience, boosting brand or product awareness, and developing stronger bonds with customers.

It may be helpful to use the SMART goal framework, and set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. You can access the analytics on TikTok via the Creator Tools to find the metrics to help measure your goals and track your progress.

Post regularly

Develop a content posting calendar and stick to it for a successful social media marketing strategy.

Feel free to experiment

There’s no magic formula for creating content that will go viral, but make sure you have space to have fun, go with the flow and be experimental with your creativity.

If something doesn’t work, learn from it and move on to the next, but if something goes viral by accident, whether you’re riding a skateboard, singing, and enjoying a refreshing beverage or not, roll with it, get in on the joke, and make the most of it.

TikTok is not a platform to take yourself seriously, so have fun!

Looking for help with TikTok marketing?

If you’re looking for help with your social media marketing, content creation, or strategy, then reach out to Tonic today for help, advice, and tips!

home office set up with a laptop and phone

Blogs, Company, News from Tonic

17th May 20230

Why Big Businesses Are Using Micro Agencies

It’s fairly logical to think that it’s the big-name marketing agencies that secure all the big contracts with the famous big brands. With offices around the country, if not around the world, procurement teams ready to impress household name clients, and a portfolio of global marketing, surely they’re the go-to for big brands and businesses?

However, all is not as cut and dry as it may seem, as more and more brands are taking their business to smaller, micro-agencies, less bloated by bureaucracy and huge departments.

Some brands have been actively searching for these leaner micro agencies, small collectives of marketing experts and creatives, and disparate and diverse remote-working colleagues who are looking to disrupt the normal order of things by providing something quite different.

Small, But Scrappy!

These micro agencies are unconventional in their organisational hierarchy and how they operate, which gives them the freedom to seek out new ways of working, explore different approaches and processes, and with a smaller core team, faster and more efficiently.

A micro-agency is typically a small group of leaders, veterans of the larger national/multinational agencies, with all the right connections to freelancers and contractors of all the necessary disciplines – a little black book of the go-to people with the right skills and experience to get the job done fast.

Whatever it is you need – copy, graphic design, photography, marketing strategies and campaigns, advertising, digital or print – they’ll know the right person for the job, someone they trust to get it done right, on time and budget. Most of the time, these contacts would not be available via the larger agencies; it’s about making the right connections for the job in hand, not keeping everything in-house.

There’s little complacency in a small agency, not only do they want your work, they’ll fight hard for it, they’ll stake their reputation on it, and they know you’ll be back for their services again.

Pandemic Positives

Pre-pandemic, brands wanted to see the big agencies, with their football and pool tables, beers on a Friday afternoon in the open plan, brightly coloured office, with bean bags, quiz nights, and the trendy office ‘culture’ fostered by all the big name agencies, eager to stand apart from the rest while doing just the same as the next big agency down the road.

In the post-Covid landscape, the industry has changed and adapted. Clients are not as impressed by all the fancy office culture culture, or even the need to have to travel for meetings when it could be easily done on Zoom, and there is far less importance on how or where you work.

This became a huge levelling-up moment for the smaller brands, placing them on the same playing field as the big names.

The micro-agencies are still happy to see global brands go to the full-service big global agencies, with an army of corporate copywriters and campaign planners. Many of the smaller agencies provide a scaled-back service, narrowing down their specialisms and positioning themselves as experts in their particular niche, giving themselves an edge over the bigger firms.

Work With The People Who DO The Work

With a smaller agency, brands find they are working directly with the people who do the work, not a senior partner in the firm who essentially acts as a go-between. It makes it easier for micro-agencies to become involved deeper with the brand, with enhanced access and agility.
While many big agencies are still trying to navigate the post-pandemic world and remote and hybrid work, micro-agencies are already up to speed, already conjuring ideas and strategies on the fly, their inherent stripped-down hierarchy giving them speed and agility while some big brands are still trying to find their place in the ‘new normal’.

It all leads to a greater level of collaboration between brands and micro-agencies, more meaningful communication, and stronger relationships, instead of confusion and lack of context as the message gets passed from the client to client services to managers to the drones that do the work.

The brand gains access to the senior leadership of the agency and the people who perform the job at hand in one swoop; they’re not simply talking to the senior team who gets the credit for the hard work done by unseen juniors, and it’s this transparency that can be highly appealing to big brands.

An agency could have 200+ people working for it, and the brand communicates with up to 10 directors, sales personnel, and client services, but there’s only a small handful of unseen people who are actually working on the project.

With a micro-agency, there might be a core leadership of three or four people, but they’re also the ones with their hands on the controls. A simple project could take weeks with a large agency, as the gears of bureaucracy grind ever slowly, whereas your project is given directly to those who will get on the job ASAP with a micro-agency.

More Committed To Their Clients

A micro-agency will above and beyond with their clients, regardless of their size, while big agencies can often concentrate on their bigger clients, sometimes unfairly treating small to medium businesses as mere options.

Micro-agencies are always passionate about helping their clients succeed and providing a level of dedication and immediacy that can be lacking from larger agencies which are handling hundreds of accounts, all fighting for attention.

A micro may have as little as four or five clients that they work with consistently to produce fantastic results. Your success actually matters to a micro-agency on a personal level, not just on a business level.

Reasonable Costs

A big agency has more staff, more payroll, overheads, resources, and office costs, which inevitably leads to charging higher prices for everything. But there’s little, if any, added value to that; you’re not getting any additional focus, any more specialised expertise, if anything, you’re paying for the prestige of working with a named, branded agency.

With a micro-agency, you know who is working on your project, and they will be more upfront and transparent about their pricing. This transparency and familiarity can provide confidence about the work being done and the knowledge you’re not simply paying over the odds for a fancy office and the ‘culture’ employee perks.

Is It Time You Looked At A Micro-Agency?

Looking for a fresh approach to your marketing needs? A micro-agency could prove to be a leaner, meaner, and more efficient way of handling your projects and campaigns, with increased collaboration, and a personal and bespoke approach designed to meet any business’s needs.

If you’d like to know more about how a smaller agency could be of greater benefit than becoming tangled in the machinations of a large agency, then come and talk to us at Tonic today!

Blogs, Digital, Technology

11th April 20230

Rise Of The Machines! Will AI Replace Human Marketers?

There has been a lot of buzz around the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing recently and in many other industries. There’s talk about how AI bots such as ChatGPT will revolutionise marketing and sales, and even how AI could replace digital marketers.

But while the use of AI in marketing has been increasing, there is not a lot of information or data about how it could impact digital marketing in the coming years, as well as tech industry leaders calling for a slowing down in the development of AI.

So Why Is AI Looking Attractive To The Marketing Industry?

Marketing can involve collecting and analysing massive amounts of data, and AI can mine this data and better apply it to advertising and marketing. As many organisations gather more specialists in data science, the concept of using AI for marketing automation becomes increasingly appealing.

But will AI replace human marketers? Before any marketers begin throwing their virtual clogs into the machinery of AI like the 15th-century Dutch textile workers fearing automated looms would cost them their jobs, let’s take a closer look.

What Is Marketing Automation?

One of the immediate benefits of using AI is its ability to automate certain tasks, thus streamlining certain processes and more effectively measuring the outcomes faster and with less effort.

AI can identify patterns faster, leading to more accurate predictions to help with marketing strategy planning, better use of marketing staff, and saving time and resources.

But as to whether AI will replace real human marketers? The short answer is no. Certainly not yet, and it maybe never will.

AI certainly will prove to be useful, but marketing will always rely on creativeness, inventiveness, and originality when it comes to finding ways to better connect with audiences and customers.

Digital marketing will always need that human touch. Marketing requires storytelling and emotion, which AI will never be able to master or emulate. But despite a reliance on the human element, it may be a fact that we will all have to accept that roles in digital marketing will change over time, just as marketing roles changed with the digital revolution.

AI will lead to an evolution in marketing roles as we begin to understand it better and how to better utilise it to provide better digital experiences.

What Can AI Currently Do?

AI can be used to enhance and simplify aspects of marketing campaigns, as well as help reduce mistakes and promote productivity. Some of the tasks that AI can currently do include:

Automate routine and repetitive tasks – AI can be used to partially replace humans in some everyday repetitive tasks and processes, such as content curation (not creation), PPC as management, and replying to certain emails.

Compilation and analysis of large data sets – AI can be programmed to learn from experience and then more easily tackle large data sets which is typically a laborious task for humans. AI can recognise patterns quickly across data sets, provide predictions based on detected patterns, provide valuable insights about your customer base, and even predict future customer behaviour.

Create digital assistants – Many websites now use digital assistants, such as chatbots which can help give 24/7 customer service, albeit with limited capabilities.

Save time and increase productivity – The implementation of AI can save marketing departments valuable time and resources, which then leads to higher productivity, as marketers have more time to spend on creative tasks and more difficult tasks that need a human touch.

Allow for experimental pilot schemes – some marketing companies have been experimenting with AI by letting it write advertisement copy, banner ads, and email subject lines, conduct digital ad buying, and create buyer personas.

It shows that there is a lot of potential for AI in digital marketing, as long as it is seen as a beneficial tool and not the T-800 Terminator sent back from the future by Skynet to take your job.

What Can’t AI Currently Do?

However, it will be a relief to know that there is still so much that AI cannot do, particularly when it comes to marketing and the human touch. Let’s have a look at what AI is incapable of doing:

Operate individually – AI is a machine, and it requires programming by humans, as well as needing to be continuously updated, and just like the everyday tech in your office, AI systems will need to be replaced when they become obsolete or the needs of the industry change and evolve.

Be creative – No technology can replace the human capacity for creativity or creative problem-solving. AI will always be limited to the data with which it is provided, and only able to draw conclusions from that data. It can’t properly edit photos, write original music, invent anything, or come up with fresh ideas.

Have emotions – AI cannot perform, show, or transmit emotions, meaning it can’t turn emotions into meaningful content that your customers can relate to along their buyer’s journey.

Make human connections – without emotions, AI cannot form genuine human connections. AI cannot be programmed to show empathy or be able to understand cultural and moral concerns.

Critical thinking – AI can excel in gathering and analysing data, but when it comes to developing strategies, it lacks the critical thinking that all humans possess.

How Can Marketers Evolve With The Introduction Of AI?

There is much that marketers can do to grow and evolve alongside the introduction of AI and make sure they keep one step ahead of the impending robot threat know how to utilise AI to their advantage.

Keep up-to-date with AI news and trends – keeping abreast of the latest development in AI in digital marketing will mean you will best know how to leverage it to your advantage. Knowledge is power, and power is knowledge.

Recognise the replaceable skill sets – Identify the skill sets that could be replaced in the future by AI, such as those routine and repetitive tasks and processes that are inevitably time-consuming and boring.

Determine which skill sets will never be replaced – Recognise which skill sets AI will not take over, such as non-repetitive, creative, and critical thinking skills. If you have experience in these, then turn your focus towards them.

Be prepared to adapt – You won’t be able to stop the impending wave of changes due to AI, but you can determine how they may affect you and how to adapt.

Be versatile – Ensure you keep your skill set up to date, and train on new technology and the latest strategies as they become available to remain versatile.

In Conclusion

AI isn’t coming for your job, but even without AI, industries and jobs evolve and change, and it’s important to remain aware and involved. Ensure you create value in yourself and your marketing skills.

At Tonic, we know the importance of the human element in marketing, so if you’re looking for the personal touch, outstanding client services, and a passion for results, talk to us today.

Blogs, Digital

21st March 20230

What is Content Marketing?

In recent years, you may have heard more and more people talking about Content Marketing, and how it has become a game-changer for marketing for businesses.

But what exactly is content marketing, and how is it different from other tried and tested marketing methods? Let’s have a look at both what content marketing is, and what it isn’t, and how you can leverage it for your business.

What are the benefits of content marketing?

First, let’s have a look at how content marketing can benefit your business.

Attract a new audience and grow your website traffic – helping potential customers find your brand can be a big challenge, but content marketing can help you become more discoverable to search engines, and help attract attention on social media

Create value for your audience – Content provided to your audience is not only useful, it can provide a message to the right people at a time when they need it most, which will make you an authority on that subject and create value for your audience.

Engage with your audience – Content that your audience finds relevant and useful will likely be shared with their friends and followers, and help develop further interactions such as comments and reactions.

Generate positive brand perception – Increased engagement with your content will help boost the awareness and perception of your brand, and people are more likely to make business with a brand they know than one they don’t.

Educate the market about your products and services – People are likely unaware they have a problem that can be solved by your product or service, and content marketing can help show them that such a solution exists and how it works.

Generate new leads – Visitors to your blog may be encouraged to leave some information about themselves, such as an email address, which can be a potential lead. The more you invest in content marketing, the more likely you will generate potential leads, and increase the chances to sell.

Increase the customer’s lifetime value – The lifetime value is the total value spent by your customer on your business. The more they buy and the longer they remain a customer, the bigger their lifetime value. By providing relevant and useful content, you can encourage a customer to remain a loyal customer for longer.

Content marketing is not a strategy

There are two main aspects of content marketing: To provide valuable content, and to persuade your audience to take a certain course of action, determined in advance by the marketer. Of course, there are various ways of measuring whether the content is ‘valuable’, and actions could range from signing up for an email subscription to buying a product or service, or much more.

But content marketing is not in itself a viable strategy. It would impossible to produce effective content marketing without first having a marketing strategy in place. You should only be producing content that is relevant to your business, that will interest your audience, and that you can write about from a position of experience and authority.

This means you need to know what your brand is, its values, who your audience is and what they want. Content marketing is used to further your marketing and business objectives, and is not a strategy.

How does content marketing fit in?

Content marketing is an essential component of any business’s marketing efforts, as it is key to maintaining contact with the target audience and generating the right results.

It is typically a set of multi-platform techniques that encompasses blogs, email, social media, and video, and is a key component of digital marketing.

How content marketing is used will vary from business to business. If your company has a focus on B2B, then some social media, for example, Facebook or Instagram, may not be suitable. But for other businesses, it might be where they can find their audience.

There will always be some platforms and channels that are right, and some that are not.

You will also need to consider your objectives. Are you trying to grow your audience, or use your existing audience better? In either case, content marketing can provide the solution, but how it is applied will differ.

Content marketing can make it possible to create an immersive environment in which potential customers can learn all about your brand, its values, your products, your services and how they will help solve their problems.

It can also create a similar environment where you can build your reputation and engage with your existing audience.

While it might not always be the case, content marketing is best suited to the ‘inbound’ approach.

What is content marketing for?

Content marketing is for more than increasing your SEO rankings, attracting new customers, or boosting your conversion rates, it’s also about developing a lasting relationship with an audience who will consume and look forward to your content.

It can be used for a variety of purposes, depending on what would be best for your company and your business objectives, such as building initial awareness and augmenting your brand’s reputation, or for more specific objectives such as driving and growing traffic to your website. What sets content marketing apart from other forms of communication is that it is generally longer- term, multi-channel, and involves two-way communication. It can encourage the reader to submit their contact details, sign up for something, or become more engaged with your brand regularly.

What is it not for?

Content marketing should not be used for sales messages, and it’s important to avoid blogging about special offers and such, as this can destroy the trust you have been fostering with your audience.

It isn’t necessarily about selling content. Most content will be free, while some may be for subscribers only, and some might be paid for. It’s important to know when to utilise each type and how to monetise it if you decide to do so, which will depend on your business model and your current situation in terms of brand awareness and engagement.

It’s not really about SEO and keywords. There is a lot of value in having SEO-friendly digital content, but it’s important to avoid pushing the boundaries. One of the key parts of content marketing is building trust, and you cannot write for robots and expect humans to be excited about it.

Never underestimate your audience, they will know when an article or web page is there simply to game the system.

It’s not for converting every single lead. It might be debated that each sign-up you achieve through your content is a potential lead, and while it is true that they have shown they are interested in your content, it does not necessarily mean they are interested in your other services or products.

If you start trying to close each contact immediately, then your inbound marketing approach becomes outbound, and once again, can erode the trust you have been developing.

Where to start with content marketing?

If you’re looking to develop a well-planned and considered content marketing programme for your business, then talk to the team at Tonic today!

Blogs, Digital, Marketing Plan, Out of home

6th February 20230

A Guide To Marketing Terms For Beginners

Whether you’re getting your start-up venture off the ground or seeking to grow your established company, marketing is an essential part of every business. But if you’re not a marketing professional, there can be an awful lot of acronyms and terms flying around, and trying to keep up can make your head spin!

But don’t worry, if you don’t know your CTA from your CMS or your buyer persona from your brand awareness, we’re here to help! The number of terms and acronyms seems to grow every day, but we have compiled some of the most common terms, abbreviations, and concepts into a handy glossary for you.

Basic marketing terms

Lead

A lead is a potential buyer who has engaged with a brand previously and has a likelihood of making a purchase in the near future.

Content
Content refers to any piece of information that has been created to be seen by an audience, and typically includes blog posts, email newsletters, social media posts, videos, and direct mail.

Infographic

Infographics are a type of content (see above) that presents statistics, data, and other information
in an easy-to-understand and well-designed image.

Analytics

Analytics in marketing is the process of analysing data so that the ROI (return on investment – see below) of a specific marketing activity or campaign can be determined. Marketers also use the term analytics when referring to the dashboard or system they use to track and review this data.

Brand

A brand is how a company is perceived and experienced by an audience and customers. Branding – the elements of a brand – include its logo, design elements, and the tone of voice used when interacting with customers and its target audience.

Buyer persona

A buyer persona is an imaginary customer that marketers target when they are developing ads, campaigns, and content. Buyer personas are not actual people but are built from the data of real customers. Marketers use these buyer personas to help inform the audience, tactics, and tone of the message they are wanting to convey.

CTA (Call To Action)

A CTA is a prompt that aims to encourage website visitors to perform a certain action, whether that’s to subscribe to a newsletter, submit a contact form, or make a purchase. A CTA is typically used to help guide a customer to the next step in the sales funnel (see below).

Customer journey

Rather than it describing the bus ride into town to your retail outlet, in marketing, a customer journey is a phrase used to describe the process from when a customer first shows interest in a product or service to the point at which any interaction is completed.

B2B

B2B is marketing shorthand for business-to-business. A B2B company markets its products or services to other businesses.

B2C

B2C is marketing shorthand for business-to-customer. A B2C company markets its products or services directly to the end consumer.

Engagement

The relationship developed between marketers and customers is referred to as engagement. In digital marketing, engagement can be measured as actions a visitor makes online, for example, clicking on a link or posting a comment on a blog or social media post.

Qualified lead

This is the name given to an individual that marketers have decided is a viable prospect when it comes to marketing a product or service. This is determined when marketing efforts have found that this individual has shown interest in the product or service.

ROI (Return On Investment)

Marketing campaigns require an initial investment of time and/or money, and the ROI is the metric that measures whether marketing efforts have earned enough money to be worth the initial investment.

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel refers to the buying journey that potential customers take before they make a purchase. The sales funnel includes multiple steps, from the initial discovery of a brand right through to becoming a loyal repeat customer.

USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

Your USP refers to what exactly it is that makes your product or service stand out from the competition. This could be a unique feature of your brand or product, its superior quality, pricing, or more.

On-site content

This refers to all of the content that a company has produced and shared on its website. It is designed to provide a potential customer to your website with the best experience possible while visiting your website.

Off-site content

Conversely, off-site content is all the content that is shared away from a company’s home website and designed to be eye-catching and help draw a potential customer to the company’s website, product, or service.

Campaign

A campaign is a set of marketing activities that have been designed to achieve a specific goal, for example, increasing sales for a particular product or increasing awareness of a product or service.

Brand awareness

This refers to the extent to which a potential customer is familiar with your company, and the distinct images and qualities – the branding – that are associated with your company, products, and services.

Types of marketing

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing makes use of content and social media marketing to help attract new customers. This is the opposite of pursuing customers with the ‘hard sell’ or outbound marketing (see below), as inbound marketers develop relationships with an audience by meeting them where they are already in the purchase process, ideally, drawing them in to learn more about the brand.

Outbound marketing

This is the more traditional ‘hard sell’ type of marketing that tries to get the attention of potential customers by interrupting their daily lives with cold calling or direct mail campaigns.

Social media marketing

This is a digital marketing method that leverages various social media channels to help create brand awareness (see above) to help develop a relationship via regular interaction.

Email marketing

Content sent via email to current or potential customers who have subscribed to a marketing email list is email marketing. You’ll likely have received half a dozen of these by the time you’ve finished reading this article!

Content marketing

This is a marketing method that is centred on creating interesting, relevant, and consistent content to help attract new leads and convert them into becoming customers. See ‘content’ above for examples of what is used in content marketing.

Omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing is the process of integrating all the different forms of marketing used by a company to make sure that a customer receives a consistent brand experience across all the various channels.

WOM (Word-of-mouth marketing)

Widely considered to be the most effective form of marketing, WOM is the oral or written testimony of a product or service from a satisfied customer to a potential customer.

Digital marketing terms
Landing page

A landing page is is a webpage optimised for lead generation. It is a stand-alone website page that will typically include a strong CTA (see above) or a lead magnet (see below) as part of a marketing campaign, such as offering a discount in return for providing customer information such as an email address.

Chatbot

Chatbots are automated tools now found on more and more websites and are usually used to address common customer questions. By scanning chat messages from customers, chatbots can identify potential keywords (see below) and topics of interest to be able to provide pre-populated messages. If needed, chatbots can escalate enquiries to a human representative.

Keyword

Keywords are words or short phrases that are entered by users into search engines to help find
relevant information. Digital marketers can then incorporate these keywords into web pages and
content to help boost their website’s visibility in search engines – see SEO below.

Bounce rate

This is a metric that shows the percentage of visitors who left the website after viewing only one
page. A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be a sign for marketers to adjust
their websites so that visitors are enticed to stay longer and see more of the site.

CTR (Click-through rate)

The CTR is a metric that measures how many people click on an ad when they see it.

CMS (Content Management System)

A CMS is a type of web publishing tool that is designed to manage the content that marketers have created for their websites.

UX (User Experience)
UX is the design process of making a website or app easier for visitors to understand and navigate.

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is an incentive for potential customers to provide their information, such as a discount code or a free eBook download.

Clickbait

We’ve all seen clickbait on social media, where content creators try to manipulate individuals to get them to click a link. It typically uses provocative titles to pique the interest of viewers. Marketers Use This One Weird Trick That Will Instantly Boost Your Engagement!

Social proof

This is a psychological phenomenon in which people are more likely to trust a brand or make purchases if they have seen positive reviews or news from their peers on social media.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

SEO is the process of using keywords and other strategies to help boost the visibility of a website to search engines and increase the likelihood of a website or specific web page being among the first shown in a list of each engine results.

An ever-growing list

As mentioned, the number of terms and acronyms in marketing continues to grow, and like many trends, some will stick around, while others may simply vanish before they gain any traction. But we hope we have helped clear up some of the most common forms of marketing lingo for you here.

If you’re looking for no-nonsense marketing and don’t want to feel left out of the loop when growing your business, then come and talk to Tonic today!

Audience research, Blogs, Digital, Marketing Plan

4th January 20230

Why You Should Use LinkedIn As A B2B Marketer

When marketers are considering which social media platforms to use for their businesses, many will automatically head for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But when it comes to generating B2B leads, then the most powerful social media platform has to be LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is possibly the most important social network for marketers to be able to reach business buyers and connect with professionals and has become one of the major social media platforms for B2B media and content marketing.

When looking at the Monthly Active Users (MAU) of the popular social networks, LinkedIn, with 310 million MAU may not be the biggest platform available, compared to 330 million MAU on Twitter, one billion MAU on Instagram, or a massive 2.7 billion on Facebook.

But the LinkedIn audience is one of the most lucrative ones for B2B marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can become noisy and crowded, and while LinkedIn was once much quieter, it has become busier. However, unlike Facebook, where people go to connect with friends and family, watch funny videos, or post irreverent content, LinkedIn is the place where people go to network with like-minded people within their industry.
If you are looking to drive qualitative B2B traffic to your website or blog, then LinkedIn is the platform for you. The social network allows users to build relationships, establish thought leadership, generate B2B leads, gain insights, improve a brand’s reputation, conduct market research and help to build online communities.

LinkedIn now has over 875 million members, from 200 countries all around the world, and members can interact with each other, share their views, and boost their professional profiles.

It is a powerful social media platform that allows professionals and businesses to easily connect, boost brand identity, and engage in B2B marketing, and it should be part of any comprehensive social media strategy.

Using LinkedIn for marketing can be an effective way of raising for brand or business’s profile, if it’s done right. Overly ‘salesy’ marketing methods are typically not well received, and businesses that achieve success on the platform tend to leverage their industry expertise and knowledge to set themselves up as thought leaders in their field.

What is LinkedIn marketing?

LinkedIn Marketing is the process of using the social media platform to promote businesses or individuals and draw attention to their profiles. Not only can individuals create their own profiles, but business can also establish their own company pages, and subpages for specific departments or products, on the platform, which they can use to:
Build brand awareness
Drive traffic to websites or blogs by sharing content
Create new connections or continue to develop existing business relationships.

Let’s have a look at six reasons why you should be using LinkedIn in your marketing efforts.

Create awareness and improve reputation

It has been estimated that more than two professionals sign up to LinkedIn every second, meaning that businesses have an increased opportunity to be able to network with an increasing number of diverse interesting contacts. It means that LinkedIn is the ideal platform to help boost your online presence.
By making use of the different personal and group features on the platform, businesses and the people representing them can improve their visibility and credibility.

The status update functionality is an underutilised feature that should not be forgotten about, however, the latest design means that updates are more prominent on the homepage.

Thought leadership and influencer marketing

Several features on LinkedIn allow users to position themselves as thought leaders. As well as providing high-quality content, you can improve your personal profile and participate in LinkedIn communities to answer questions.

The platform is ripe for thought leaders and can lead to businesses and individuals becoming trusted advisors. Leadership and reputation go hand in hand with influence, and with the main purpose of the platform being networking, it can help you to identify and engage with other influencers.

Generating leads

Of all the social networking platforms, LinkedIn is probably the best for lead generation. As well as traditional marketing techniques such as providing content that potential customers can download or driving traffic to blogs and websites, LinkedIn offers personal ways of helping to identify leads, engaging with them, and converting them into customers.

This can be achieved through a combination of listening, analysing, participation, sharing information and content, networking, and responding. Finding potential customers on the platform and networking and marketing to them indirectly through LinkedIn will boost the opportunity to make sales and increase revenue.

Potential and existing customers are likely to post questions and needs. Group-related posts and questions allow B2B marketers to identify new leads, while shared and liked content will give marketers insight into what LinkedIn users find interesting.

By providing answers to questions on the platform, it is possible to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. If your answer to a question is what a potential customer is looking for, then they will likely initiate contact.

Social CRM

In a CRM (customer relations management) context, LinkedIn is ideal; it allows for a better view of prospective customers and other contacts and can be done by using Social CRM applications and other connectors such as Outlook.

While most Social CRM applications provide integration with LinkedIn, you can also set up a basic integration of your contacts as LinkedIn has support for Google Contacts.

The main benefit of using a social CRM tool is that you are then able to see what your contacts are doing on LinkedIn in real-time, which provides valuable insights and information on their behaviour and preferences.

Traffic building

One of LinkedIn’s strengths, which can often be forgotten about, is its power in link building and traffic driving.

Just as with most of the other social networks, LinkedIn has a social sharing button so you are able to share content in your status updates, which are visible on the homepage, and in LinkedIn Groups – the communities of which you are a member.

This can prove particularly useful for business-related content and can lead to viral content status. Business-related content is far more likely to be shared on LinkedIn than on Facebook, for example.

Listening and gaining insights

LinkedIn is the ideal place to listen, ask questions, and gain insights, which is the case for all social media marketing. Take time to engage with your contacts, ask questions as well as answer them, and pay attention to what people are saying, posting, and asking.

Need help with your LinkedIn B2B marketing?

Here at Tonic, we know the ins and outs of marketing on LinkedIn, from helping set up your business profiles to developing engaging and interesting content to helping identify leads and new customers.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help grow your business, then get in touch today.

Child with hands covering his face and question marks around

Blogs

9th November 20220

When Ads Go Wrong And What We Can Learn From Them

Advertising and marketing campaigns have the power to significantly raise the profile of a brand and lead it to success. But what about when ads go viral for the wrong reasons? Companies must be careful about the messages they promote.

We have a look at some of the advertising fails that caused offence, ridicule, and outrage, for a variety of reasons, and what we can learn from these marketing mistakes.

What is an advertising campaign?

Before we get started on our list of marketing disasters, let’s look at the basics. An advertising campaign is a marketing strategy designed to promote a brand, service, or product. They are devised by a team of marketing experts who come up with the advertising concepts and organise them into a marketing document or brief.

This then moves on to the actual creation of the advert, and its effectiveness can be enhanced by creating and distributing it in a variety of formats for different media, such as print, audio, and video, for use on TV, the internet, print media, radio, podcasts and more.
When advertising works, it can create a positive buzz about the product, service, or brand, the Holy Grail of the ‘water cooler moment’ as friends and colleagues discuss the latest advertising campaigns.

Just think of John Lewis’ annual Christmas campaign, Nick Kamen stripping to his undies in a laundrette for Levi’s in the 80s, or even the ‘You’ve Been Tangoed’ soft drink ads from the 90s.

Some ads might be silly, subject to ridicule, or make headlines due to being a little too saucy for some audiences – Wonderbra’s traffic-stopping ‘Hello Boys!’ billboards for instance. But they get people talking and generate huge brand awareness.

But advertising can be hard, especially when you’re trying to make an impact in a sea of sameness. When fighting desperately for customer recognition in an age where ads are everywhere we look, marketers can sometimes use tone-deaf, senseless, and hurtful marketing techniques.

Let’s have a look at three of the biggest advertising disasters:

When ads go wrong

Pepsi

In 2017, global soft drink brand Pepsi debuted an advert that featured Kendall Jenner abandoning a photoshoot in the street to go and join in a passing social justice protest.

However, things take a turn for the worst when Jenner approaches a police officer manning the barricades and hands him a can of Pepsi, effectively ending the protests, socio-economic conflict, racial tension, gender equality, and police brutality, bringing about world peace. Maybe.

The issue

Pepsi used social justice movements as an opportunity to sell soft drinks, massively disrespecting the people who had suffered and sacrificed in the name of protest and change. What made it worse is that the apology that came from Pepsi wasn’t focused on BLM supporters or Women’s Marchers, but on Kendal Jenner herself.

What can we learn?
Helping movements for social change is a good idea, however, using these serious issues to sell a product is insulting, insensitive, and damaging. Pepsi left a bad taste in the mouth of consumers all around the world. Tread carefully when referencing important social issues in marketing.

Peloton

A man buys his wife an expensive Peloton exercise bike for Christmas 2019. She’s depicted as already being a little on the ‘thin’ side, and then the man documents her year-long journey to staying thin.

The issue

The whole advert feels very uncomfortable, bordering on an abusive controlling relationship, and far from promoting a message of keeping fit and staying healthy, appears to be a dystopian nightmare for ‘Grace from Boston’, her expression mirroring a girl on the poster for a horror movie as she starts on her journey.

The narrative of the advert appears that the husband has thrust the peloton upon his wife, as he believes she needs to get fitter, a sinister message that she needs to change for him. Every day she does her spin classes, eventually realising how she’s changed and found true love. It feels like a hostage situation evolving into Stockholm syndrome.

What can we learn?

Peloton, whose stock dropped by 10 per cent after the ad went viral for the wrong reasons, claim that the message was misunderstood, and while promoting healthy living and keeping fit is a positive idea, the message was garbled and easily misinterpreted. Keep messages simple and straightforward to avoid misunderstandings.

Nivea

German skincare brand Nivea launched an advert for a deodorant range in 2017, formulated to ensure that clothing wasn’t discoloured through excessive sweat. However, the Facebook advert campaign, targeted at Middle East consumers, was titled ‘White is Purity’.

The issue

It doesn’t take a genius to link a slogan such as ‘White is Purity’ with white supremacy, and the skincare company was branded as racist by commenters on social media around the world while being praised for the message by white supremacists.

It’s not the first time that Nivea has courted controversy. In 2011, the brand launched an advert for ‘Nivea for Men’ products that depicted a clean-shaven black man holding a disembodied head with an afro, presumably his former self, with the slogan ‘Re-civilize yourself’. A corresponding ad with a white man holding a similar disembodied head omitted the slogan.

What can we learn?

The main takeaway here appears to be a lack of common sense. Nivea has issued statements deeply regretting the adverts and the offence caused. But surely using diverse focus groups to review campaigns could have prevented the ads from ever being run, even if the seemingly blatant harmful and racist messaging had not been noticed by marketing executives.

How can marketers avoid these advertising mistakes?

The above three examples are only a few of some of the terrible, harmful, and offensive adverts that unbelievably make it to print or air, and there is much that can be learned from these mistakes.

Always proof your campaigns

As seen above, common sense is not always as common as it should be. It’s important to make sure there are as many eyes as possible on your content. Ask colleagues, friends, neighbours, and people on the street, or create a diverse focus group to assess your advertising and marketing efforts. Use an editor to proofread your copy before it is published.

Keep in touch

Many of these advertising campaigns fell flat on their faces because they were tone-deaf. Always carefully consider the implications of your messages, and while humour can be a great advertising tool, make sure you check any and all jokes from all angles and perspectives.

Do your research and make sure that your campaigns do not inadvertently cause offence in different regions of the world, and avoid anything that can be considered tasteless or offensive.

Pay attention to current events
Sometimes ads have the misfortune to be released at just the wrong time, and it can be difficult to hold anyone to account if world events throw a different light on your campaign. Your organisation should take a moment to reconsider any imminent launches if a disaster occurs. It will be beneficial to postpone launching a campaign rather than it being deemed misguided.

If your campaign relates to current events, then make sure your brand has a genuine interest in educating your audience about the situation. Your customers are not stupid and can see through any thinly veiled attempt to sell products on the back of important issues.

Marketing and advertising campaigns are planned months in advance, and it can be easy to slip up, so keep up to date with national and international events before you launch your campaign.

In conclusion

Advertising is a powerful medium and should never be taken for granted. Regardless of whether you’re printing a message on promotional items to give away at a trade fair or conference or planning a national billboard and TV ad campaign, you must be always mindful of the word you use and what they might mean.

Your ads send an important message to your audience, so make sure you’re sending the right one!

If you’re looking for help with marketing and advertising, and to ensure you’re sending the right message, then get in touch with Tonic today!

Tag: marketing