February 21, 2022
Crunching the data and turning it into insight is what we’re all about – BUT… you’ll be failing if that’s all you focus on. Proving the value of social back to your organisation can be challenging – we’ve got some ideas about how you can best do this.
“We can’t make ROI from social, can we?”
Particularly for FMCG brands, the customer path to purchase is disrupted, complex and difficult to track – while it IS digital, tracking social success into sales from the shelves cannot always be measured directly from impression, to click, to sale. Instead, consider the measurement in the same way as you may measure TV – what was the reach, how many impressions were served and how many engagements (everything from likes to landing page views) are made. Do not get caught up in vanity data, ensure you have some sanity behind it and remember that social can tell you so much more.
Look for indicators from your social audience – sentiment, response to new products, pricing, issues with stock availability and delve in so you can go beyond the data to behaviour.
“We’re not confident to be daring and reactive as a brand!”
Let’s be realistic – not every brand can allocate endless hours to a huge social team sitting on Twitter being hilarious, and not every brand has an endless budget to allocate to the content creation across channels. But this does not mean you can’t be agile and prove value back to the brand through reactive activity.
Get sophisticated with your data – if you can, dig into your consumer audience and age demographics more deeply. People’s lives change vastly between the age of 25-34! Not all people in a particular age range think or act in the same way!! Trial the response you get to each piece of content through your consumer personas, understand how they react and what their motivations and values are.
“How can we use social commerce as an FMCG brand?”
While there have been big leaps forward in social shopping, it’s not quite the same when you’re shopping for milk as picking out your next cute outfit.
In FMCG, recent innovations on sites like Sainsbury’s are bringing social into their site – searching for cheese may pull Insta posts and visuals through an API, which means you need to be optimising your posts with the right hashtags and keywords – and even more, you need to encourage reviews!
“How do we cut through with our brand and not just promote the category?”
To win on social as a brand you must be memorable. We certainly advocate creating a hero piece, the video jewel in your campaign crown, to lead your campaign – then follow up with multiple pieces of content that serve your many and varied audience segments and moments. Drip feed these into your organic feeds.
We know that UK shoppers are savvy, though. Expecting a super high-quality polished ad to be the only reason they buy your brand is short-sighted – consumers want the real review, the authentically messy home kitchen, the interruption on the IG story by a wayward pet or child, so do not sit on your brand laurels!
Gathering influencer and advocacy content from a diverse set of consumers and presenting it in a “no-frills”, honest way will build trust in your brand. BUT – build long-term replationships with these influencers and advocates –
“What if we’re not sustainable enough?”
Firstly, sustainability is a consumer trend, not a marketing trend. It cannot be something that brands simply “greenwash” about – we’ve already said that we know how savvy our audience is!
Great FMCG brands are on a journey towards better, organisational sustainability. It’s got to go beyond the use of plastic in packaging into your business values – if that’s the case (and we hope it is!), you’ll have some wonderful stories to tell about your journey, and consumers will be happy to come along with you.
“Can’t I hand social over to my junior team?”
NOPE.
There’s simply no excuse anymore, come on, Facebook has been around for over 17 years! If you want to be successful, you need to get serious, and that means immersing yourself in the platforms. Spend time there, treat everything as an experiment and most of all, have some fun!
The more you understand the performance, the better you can interpret the data and prove that all-important value back to the business.
If this is all a little overwhelming, we can help! Contact us now for a no-obligation chat about your challenges.