Social Media Weekly Roundup #4

Welcome to our social media roundup where we keep you updated on the latest news and trends in the dynamic world of social media. In this week’s edition, we will be delving into Meta’s AI release, exploring Thread’s new ‘Liked Posts’ feature,  and looking further into X’s improved search functionalities, and TikTok’s EU privacy updates.

Meta Announces AI-Gen Audio Tools

Meta just announced the release of AudioCraft, a suite of generative AI tools that enable users to transform simple text prompts into compelling, high-fidelity quality music and sounds. This development is poised to revolutionize music creation through the use of digital tools, making it more accessible and exciting than ever before. This news follows Meta’s recent move of opening the Llama 2 AI model to the world, proving its commitment towards promoting greater transparency, trust, and a culture of continuous innovation.

Threads Launches A 'Liked Posts' Feature

Meta is making strides in enhancing Threads to compete effectively with other social platforms as well as bolster user engagement. Over the past weekend, the platform introduced its ‘Liked Posts’ feature, similar to a functionality already available on X. As we look ahead, expect additional features to be released in the coming weeks, potentially propelling Threads into a more competitive and captivating realm.

Improved Search Is Coming Soon to X

Elon Musk delivered an update Sunday night, shedding light on a tweet he posted back in February. In that tweet, he hinted at the transformation of search advertisements into semantic keyword-based formats, a strategic move aimed at amplifying X’s contextual relevance. This step is set to propel X into the realm of eCommerce as contextually relevant search outcomes are vital to guiding customers seamlessly toward their desired products.

TikTok Adds Option For EU Users to Disable Personalization

Last Friday, TikTok delivered a significant update, revealing that it will soon provide EU users with the option to disable personalized feeds and ads in compliance with the Digital Services Act. This strategic move aims to improve compliance while also potentially changing how EU users experience and engage with the platform. If many EU users decide to disable personalization, this might lead to brands relying more heavily on influencers for marketing and engagement.

Keep Up With Digital Marketing Industry News

Keeping up with the latest in the digital marketing landscape is key to staying competitive and amplifying the success of your marketing operations. Get your news and updates you need from The Snow Agency to step up your marketing game. If your brand is in need of a digital marketing tune-up, reach out to us today. See first-hand how a customized strategy can be game-changing for your growth and performance.

Take the first step and contact us for a consultation today.

Why IG Shops Push Notifications Should Be On Your Radar

By now, chances are you’re already familiar with how brands leverage push notifications — the short, real time messages that Shopify stores can send directly to a user’s device. Push notifications help keep your customer community engaged and ready to convert on your latest offers and product drops.

When it comes to the most popular social media networks like Instagram, Meta, and Twitter, push notifications are more commonly used for post updates, likes, comments, and more. However, in recent months Meta has leveraged push notifications as part of its strategy to increase engagement on Shops, Instagram’s in-app e-commerce store. This once overlooked feature of Instagram has now emerged as a powerful tool with the potential to drive substantial revenue for your brand.

Why You May Have Overlooked Push Notifications On Shops

Push notifications on Shops have existed for some time, but most brands would likely admit they never paid much attention to it. Here’s why:

  1. No ad placement- Push notifications are neither controlled by nor billed to the advertiser.
  2. No Meta Attribution- Push notifications on Shops do not have the same tracking capabilities as other tools, making it harder for brands to understand their impact.
  3. No copy/trigger control- Push notifications on Shops are fully automated, meaning your brand can neither customize the copy nor the triggers for your shop’s push notifications.

What’s In It For Meta?

With no ad investment opportunities, you may be curious why Meta even includes push notifications on Shops.

While Shops may not generate revenue directly from push notifications, they do monetize seller fees and processing fees. It is thus in Meta’s best interest to provide a seamless and enjoyable user shopping experience so Instagram Shops becomes an increasingly popular e-commerce platform.

How Push Notifications Work On Shops

Push notifications on Shops are predicated on three overarching triggers:

  1. User Browsing And Shopping History– Notifications are sent out based on previous shopping and engagement data.
  2.  User Preferences– Notifications are sent out based on a user’s shopping interests or preferences.
  3. Availability Of New/Relevant Products– Notifications are sent out when new products within a user’s interest become available, or to notify users of products that fall within their preferences.

More specified triggers on Shops include:

  1. Browse Abandoned: If a user views a product but doesn’t make a purchase, they may receive retargeting notifications to encourage them to revisit the product or explore similar ones.
  2. Similar Products: If a user views a product, they may receive notifications about similar products that are available in the same or different shops (YES… Meta can now prospect for you, FOR FREE)
  3. Price Drops: If a user views a product and its price drops, they may receive a notification alerting them of the change.
  4. New Arrivals: If a user views a product from a specific shop, they may receive notifications when new products become available in that shop.
  5. Sales and Discounts: If a user views a product during a sale or discount period, they may receive notifications about other products with similar discounts or promotions.
  6. Recommendations: Based on a user’s browsing and shopping history, Instagram Shops may send personalized recommendations for products that they might be interested in.
  7. Wishlist: If a user saves a product to their wishlist, they may receive notifications when the product becomes available or goes on sale.

How Your Brand Can Make The Most Of Shops

Meta’s leveraging of push notifications on Shops is another example of their continued investment in promoting Instagram as a social media app AND e-commerce platform.

As more buyers and sellers flood to Instagram Shops, it’s imperative your brand maintains a presence and stays up to date on the latest improvements on the constantly evolving platform. Otherwise, you could miss out on HUGE amounts of added revenue and new customers.

Want to ensure your brand is ahead of the game? Schedule a free consultation with The Snow Agency today. Our experts will work side by side with you to put together a customized digital marketing strategy and scale your brand with our latest insights on Shops and plenty more.

Social Media Weekly Roundup #3

Welcome to this week’s social media roundup, where we bring you the latest developments and trends in the ever-evolving realm of social media. This week’s spotlight is on Meta’s groundbreaking research in partnership with academic journals, focusing on the impact of social media on political attitudes and behaviors during the 2020 US Presidential election. Additionally, we’ll cover Instagram’s exciting expansion of their subscriptions tool for creators worldwide and provide updates on Meta’s Threads platform and their ambitious venture into the Metaverse.

Academic Journals Release a Political Study on Meta

Meta has announced a groundbreaking research partnership with external academics, aimed at studying the influence of social media on political attitudes and behaviors during the 2020 US Presidential election. The partnership seeks to address questions about social media’s role in society and its effects on political polarization, information exposure, and attitudes towards government and democracy.

The first set of studies, with more planned in the future, has been published. The findings challenge common beliefs about social media’s power to fuel political polarization. Surprisingly, one study revealed that removing reshared content on Facebook actually decreased news knowledge among participants but had no significant impact on political polarization or attitudes. Similarly, claims suggesting that algorithmic ranking and virality contribute to division were also questioned, as participants tended to engage more with like-minded content despite reduced exposure.

What sets this research partnership apart is Meta’s transparent collaboration with external researchers, granting them full independence and access to data without any financial influence. The researchers collected data during the election cycle and obtained explicit, informed consent from participants, ensuring high ethical standards. The findings are published in open-access academic journals, and the pre-registration process ensures the researchers’ commitments are released upon publication, maintaining transparency.

Meta hopes that this research will contribute to society’s understanding of social media’s impact on democracy, providing valuable insights to policymakers as they shape regulations for the internet, ultimately benefiting democracy and society as a whole.

Instagram Brings Subscriptions Tool to More Creators

Source: Instagram 

 

Last year, Instagram introduced the subscriptions tool, enabling creators to set a monthly price of their choice, add a “subscribe” button on their profiles, and offer exclusive benefits to paying subscribers, including:

  • Exclusive Content: Creators can share subscriber-only posts, stories, reels, and live sessions, offering unique content and interactive features to paying subscribers.
  • Subscriber Highlights: Exclusive stories are automatically saved to a highlight visible only to subscribers, ensuring they never miss any content.
  • Subscriber Channels: Creators can offer subscriber-only channels to provide special access or information to their paying audience.
  • Subscriber Badges: To prioritize interactions with certain members of their community, creators can easily identify subscribers through badges next to their comments and messages.

After testing out this tool in the US, Instagram has decided to expand subscriptions to creators worldwide. Eligible countries now include Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom!

Meta’s Threads Loses Half of Its Users While It Ventures into the Metaverse

Meta’s new social media platform, Threads, initially gained remarkable traction with over 100 million users within just five days of its launch. However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that the platform has experienced a significant drop in users since then. He acknowledged that such fluctuations are common and remains optimistic that user retention will improve as new features are added to the app. In response to user feedback about limited functionality, Meta has already introduced new features, including separate feeds for “following” and “for you” content, as well as enhanced language translation capabilities.

Zuckerberg also provided an update on Meta’s ambitious venture into the Metaverse, a virtual world driven by augmented reality and virtual reality technologies.. While progress is on track, he anticipates that the Metaverse won’t reach the mainstream until the next decade. Despite concerns about investment in the Metaverse causing multi-billion dollar losses in the Reality Labs division, Meta as a whole remains financially strong, reporting a profit of $7.79 billion in the last quarter.

As for the highly-publicized proposed cage fight between Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, Zuckerberg was uncertain about whether it would come to fruition.

Keep Up With Digital Marketing Industry News

Keeping up with the latest in the digital marketing landscape is key to staying competitive and amplifying the success of your marketing operations. Get your news and updates you need from The Snow Agency to step up your marketing game.. If your brand is in need of a digital marketing tune-up, reach out to us today. See first-hand how a customized strategy can be game-changing for your growth and performance.

Take the first step and contact us for a consultation today.

Social Media Weekly Roundup #2

We’re back with another edition of our social media weekly roundup. This is where we bring you the latest key social media platform news and updates to supercharge your social media marketing operations.

Let’s get started! Here are this week’s key social media product updates and announcements to pay attention to in the digital landscape.

Meta & Microsoft Bring Llama 2 to the World

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Meta has teamed up with Microsoft to offer Llama 2, the next generation of Meta’s open-source large language model. Through this partnership, Meta becomes the preferred partner for Llama 2. Meta believes in an open approach to AI development, promoting greater transparency, scrutiny, and trust in emerging technologies.

By making AI models like Llama 2 openly available, it can fuel further technological innovations in exciting ways. The model is currently available for free in both research and commercial applications. Its capabilities include enhancing natural language processing for chatbots or virtual assistants, generating personalized content and providing product recommendations. Furthermore, Llama 2 opens up powerful opportunities for further advancements in the realm of social media marketing.

Facebook: Direct Destination for All Video

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Facebook recently announced that its video tab has become the primary destination for all types of videos on the platform, such as reels, long-form videos, and live content. This update aims to enhance the user experience by offering a central location for users to discover and engage with content spanning a wide variety of popular topics and trends.

Additionally, editing tools previously available only for reels have now been expanded to be directly accessible within the Facebook feed. This means that users can now create the same type of engaging and dynamic videos directly on the main Facebook platform rather than only through reels, making content creation and sharing more enjoyable and seamless for Facebook users.

Zuckerberg Stays Optimistic On Threads

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After Threads’ initial huge success upon the first week of launch, there have since been reports of a significant decrease in user engagement and retention. However, Mark Zuckerberg remains optimistic and addressed concerns about the decline. He mentioned potential future solutions to increase retention and engagement, including introducing a desktop version, implementing a feed of followed accounts, and adding an edit button.

Keep Up With Digital Marketing Industry News

Keeping up with the latest in the digital marketing landscape is key to staying competitive and amplifying the success of your marketing operations. Get your news and updates you need from The Snow Agency to step up your marketing game.. If your brand is in need of a digital marketing tune-up, reach out to us today. See first-hand how a customized strategy can be game-changing for your growth and performance.

Take the first step and contact us for a consultation today.

The Future Of Marketing Data Attribution

In digital marketing, making informed decisions based on data attribution is everything to the success of your campaigns and your business. Knowing which channels drive the most conversions and revenue can help you determine how to allocate your marketing budget to maximize ad performance.

Traditionally, marketers have depended on sourcing data from prospective customers through third-party tracking. However, with Apple’s recent iOS 14 security updates that protect consumer privacy, it has become more and more difficult for marketers to collect third-party data. It is also harder to accurately see how your campaigns are performing, making attribution harder to measure than ever before.

0-party data attribution is now on the rise. To make the most informed decisions about your marketing campaigns, you must take advantage of this crucial data. But remember, you should never look at any attribution model in a silo. This is why we feel strongly that a combination of zero, first, and third-party attribution will be the future of conversion tracking.

What Does 0-Party Data Mean To The Future of Attribution?

0-party data attribution is changing the game of attribution. 0-party data is collected directly from the customer during an authentic customer connection as opposed to tracking customers across channels.

One vital thing to note about 0-party data is that it is consent-driven meaning that the customer has opted into offering their information and proactively reported it to the brand. 0-party data provides valuable insights into a customer’s motivations and influences at the time of their purchase. It is also a crucial tool that can inform how to create more meaningful and valuable customer experiences to build trust with customers and strengthen their brand loyalty.

How can you collect this 0-party data? Post-purchase surveys.

Collect 0-Party Data Through Post-Purchase Surveys

After a customer purchases your products, there is a small window of opportunity that offers a goldmine of valuable data to collect about the customer’s experience. Use a post-purchase survey to ask the customer questions such as where they found out about your brand, how they arrived at your site to make a purchase and how long it took them to decide to make a purchase.

With this information, you can then determine how to plan your marketing budgets to put more funds towards certain sales channels that are bringing in more traffic and revenue.

Triple Whale x KnoCommerce Integration

Here at The Snow Agency, we have been leveraging a Triple Whale x KnoCommerce Integration that helps make the most of attribution to maximize ad performance. The synergy between the two platforms is invaluable in how it creates a workaround that bridges the gap in between your website and digital channels as a result of Apple‘s security updates. If you have a Triple Pixel, in order to get a deeper, more comprehensive view of your attribution, you must integrate KnoCommerce into your attribution model. It is able to pick up incremental conversions that Triple Whale is missing and together, the two are a powerful force for more effective attribution and informed decision-making.

Supercharge Attribution To Scale the Growth of Your Business

In e-commerce, knowing where to put your funds to amplify your marketing campaigns is the difference between shutting off and scaling a digital channel. It is more important than ever before to make the most of your data attribution to magnify ad performance. Partner with the digital marketing experts at The Snow Agency and see first-hand how you can supercharge your business to new heights of success.

Reach out for a free consultation today.

Meta’s Latest Ruling in EU And Its Impact On Facebook Ad Performance

In recent months, Meta has taken blow after blow, losing billions of dollars in advertising income. This comes as a result of iOS14 security updates taking a toll on Facebook ad performance and revenues, macroeconomic forces that have impacted consumer spending, as well as new kid on the block, TikTok taking some attention away from Facebook and Instagram. 

And now the latest ruling in Europe concerning data privacy regulations forebodes that even more trouble may be brewing on the horizon. 

These rulings may significantly impact Facebook ad performance in Europe and the overall performance of ecommerce brands there. So, it is crucial to be aware of these changes so you can plan ahead, plan accordingly and navigate them successfully.

The Latest EU Ruling Against Meta’s Ad Targeting

On Dec 6, 2022, the European Union ruled against Meta tracking user data within the app as a means for ad targeting without the user’s consent, dramatically cutting down on the data that the platform could use for selling ads. 

As a result of the ruling, Meta threatened to shut down the use of Facebook and Instagram in Europe.

How Will the Meta EU Ruling Affect Facebook Marketers and Ad Performance?

It is important to note that iOS14 security updates only impacted the tracking of users outside Meta. Meta, therefore, still has access to users’ data from inside the platform to leverage for targeted ads.

But regardless of the data the platform can or can’t collect inside or outside of the platform, these data regulations will force the social media giant to potentially have to reconsider its ad targeting model. The same goes for ecommerce brands who market their products and services using Facebook ads. 

These data security updates have already taken a toll on Facebook ad performance, making for false negatives, unreliable attribution and failed data optimization overall.

How Will This Impact Ecommerce Brands’ Future Ad Targeting Strategy?

The thing is these sorts of privacy updates often cause chain reactions. The U.S. will likely need to weigh in on where it stands regarding data privacy regulations of its Facebook users, next.

In the short term, as the Facebook algorithm no longer has web pixel data from users who opted out of having their data tracked outside of Meta, brands that rely on a broad targeting model will likely have to rethink their Facebook ad targeting strategy. 

The pendulum has already started swinging in the direction of intent-based, owned audiences and it seems they will only grow in importance over time. Meta’s ad revenues and the Facebook ad performance of e-commerce brands on the platform will then depend on importing their own audiences based on data they already own. 

Here at The Snow Agency, we are focusing on Shopify Audiences and Angler AI as valuable tools for building owned audiences based on first-party customer data.

We’ve been digging deep into Shopify Audiences, for more information on Shopify Audiences, read more here:

What is Shopify Audiences? Here’s What You Need to Know

Shopify Audiences Best Practices

Elevate Your Ad Strategy With The Right Agency to Scale Your Business

As owned, intent-based audiences continue to take on more importance in a heightened, fiercely competitive marketplace, you will need a partner on your side that knows what it takes to succeed. Our digital marketing experts here at The Snow Agency will passionately help you take your ecommerce store to the next level, get your brand in front of the right audiences and help make you moves that will mean everything to your bottom line. 

Reach out for a free consultation today.

iOS To Enable Web Push Notifications Starting in 2023

It’s been a challenging year for e-commerce and the world of digital marketing. But recent updates from Apple regarding iOS web push notifications indicate that a promising road lies ahead that can help elevate engagement with your customers to new heights.

Previously, Apple did not support iOS web push notifications. However, in 2023, Apple will begin enabling web push notifications on Safari and other browsers.

What Does This Mean For Direct-to-Consumer Brands?

This new development offers a goldmine of opportunity for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. Besides enhancing engagement with your community of customers, this can dramatically increase CTR, conversion rates, and revenues which will directly impact your bottom line.

And for brands with a web-first model without a mobile app, this is game-changing. Suppose a brand without a mobile app wants to send a customer a message. In that case, it currently has to use other channels to engage with users on iOS mobile phones, such as asking users to opt into SMS or email or send a mobile app push notification. However, the vast majority of brands do not have their own app. 

It is not necessarily cost-effective for companies with a high-performing web-first model to develop a mobile app. Therefore, for these non-app-based brands, being able to target customers through web push notifications is a valuable tool for engagement. With web push notifications enabled, they will no longer need a mobile app or be forced to use alternative channels to communicate with their audience in real time.

Why Are Web Push Notifications A Powerful Channel of Engagement?

While email can be an effective channel for communicating with customers, sources reveal that web push notifications can generate 30 times higher conversion rates than email. They also have a 7x times higher CTR than email and two times higher CTR than SMS. Plus, they are free to send, making them even more cost-effective. 

One of the major benefits of web push notifications is that you can use them to reach customers even if they have already navigated away from your website or never even visited your site! With web push notifications enabled, you can easily tap into a wider section of your audience and initiate or build deeper customer connections through re-engagement. Real-time communication with your audience at timely points in their customer journey means that the impact of your messages can go further and more strongly incentivize customers to take action and convert. 

And the fact that you do not need to use a third-party channel to engage with customers using web push notifications means that they follow the latest privacy regulations. So, it is an ideal tool to market your products or services and communicate with your audience.

How Do Web Push Notifications Work?

Web push notifications appear similarly to mobile push notifications at the the top or right side of the mobile device screen in the user’s web browser.

Once a user clicks on the notification, they will be redirected to whatever URL the brand has assigned to the push notification’s CTA. It is important to note that users need to opt-in to receive web push notifications. Therefore, be mindful not to overdo it by inundating your audience with these notifications. Be strategic and timely with your messages, clearly conveying the value users will enjoy from taking action on your push notifications. Also, be purposeful in asking users to opt-in with a nuanced, more personalized approach that will more deeply resonate with your audience.

Build Strong Customer Connections With The Snow Agency

Effective customer communication is one of the most vital pillars of your marketing strategy and engagement with your community. If you are seeking explosive growth that means everything to your bottom line, partner with the digital marketing experts at The Snow Agency. Our leading marketing teams create powerful, personalized, result-driven content that will help your company accelerate your performance to new heights. 

Get started with a kickoff call today.

The Rise of Social Media Shopping During COVID

Rise of Social Media Shopping During COVID

COVID has us all scrolling more than usual doesn’t it?

Depending on where you are now, there literally might be precious little to do other than browse social media. Our usage stats for Facebook, Instagram, Snap, etc. have been through the roof in these tough times.

And you know who’s noticed that? Facebook, Instagram, Snap, etc.

Given that, we’re now seeing the meteoric rise of social media shopping. It was already a thing before but the pandemic has turbocharged the growth of what’s known as social commerce. At this point, 1 in 4 businesses are selling through Facebook. We’re not talking about running ads, we’re talking literally selling through the platform.

It’s big business and it’s something you need to be seriously looking into in order to stay relevant and competitive.

What Is Social Media Shopping?

Social media shopping aka social commerce is as easy to define as this: selling your products on social media platforms.

Very cut and dry.

On Facebook you have Shops while IG calls it Shopping, for example, and if you’re on either app you’ve no doubt seen these new features in your feeds or even in your stories. Yea, it’s possible to sell products in your story. Wild.

But does it work?

Well, yea. According to Big Commerce, “30% of online shoppers say they would be likely to make a purchase from a social media network like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat”. With 72% of American adults using at least one social media platform, you’re talking about a giant population that is already likely to make purchases via social media, which means we’re sort of just at the beginning of the boom.

Social media, at this very moment, is doing heavy lifting with 87% of people saying it helps them make purchase decisions. It’s only logical that these platforms become the point of sale too. Streamline the process and make it as effortless as possible for someone to get the products they need and want.

How COVID Has Affected the Way We Shop

Shopping online was obviously already immensely popular with 1.8 billion people making purchases online in 2018 and it was really a matter of ease and expediency that drove its growth. Convenience for the sake of convenience was the mantra. Like, did people have to shop online? Not necessarily but it was convenient.

With COVID…well that has changed. What was once a convenience has in some ways turned into a necessity. Regulations spurred by the concerns for public safety have led to less than ideal circumstances for traditional brick and mortars. Some stores are flat out closed for shopping, others have limited capacity and all, for the most part, require masks. Not surprisingly, these things have dramatically altered the shopping landscape.

Data from Statista shows that “retail platforms have undergone an unprecedented global traffic increase between January 2019 and June 2020, surpassing even holiday season traffic peaks. Overall, retail websites generated almost 22 billion visits in June 2020, up from 16.07 billion global visits in January 2020”.

As the pandemic rages, people are also spending more carefully than ever before with 1/3rd of Americans reporting a decrease in their household income during this time.

Looking for Digital Marketing? The Snow Agency Got You

With the shift to digital, and the tidal wave to digital in full effect, it’s crucial that your business keeps up and pivots along with the consumer. Both with where they want to buy and the way in which they want to shop. More and more that’s via social commerce.

If you have yet to dip your toes in the social media shopping pool, reach out to us at The Snow Agency and we’d be happy to walk you through what it takes and how it can benefit you.

The History of the TikTok App

history of tik tok

Like a bat outta hell, TikTok is all of a sudden everywhere. Like E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E.

Launching only a handful of years ago in 2016, it’s the textbook definition of what we perceive to be the overnight success story. It literally felt like one day to the next that the collective consciousness outside of China went from not knowing TikTok to being TikTok fanatics.

For the purposes of this post, we’ll go ahead and mostly sidestep the abundant and seemingly unending controversy surrounding the app and just give you a little crash course in its vitals.

What Is TikTok?

Seems important to exactly what this thing does, no?

TikTok is basically an app used for creating videos. You’ll find lots of lip-syncing, dance and music-related content due to the origins of the app that we’ll get to in a second, but content runs the gamut at this point and includes everything under the sun.

It’s intended to be short form. Very short form. Instant gratification is the name of the game with social and TikTok capitalizes on that big time. Videos recorded on the app come in two sizes: 3 seconds up to 15 seconds and 3 seconds up to 60 seconds. You can also post videos longer than a minute if uploaded from outside the app.

It’s sort of the evolution of Vines. Remember Vines?

In fact, once Vines was shuttered by Twitter back in 2016, lots of people moved over to an app called Musical.ly that was launched in 2014.

Also in 2016, the Chinese tech company ByteDance created Douyin which very quickly racked up users. 

In 2018 they bought Musical.ly and rebranded it as TikTok for use outside of China. In essence, TikTok is the combo of Douyin and Musical.ly with Douyin being the version used in China and TikTok everywhere else.

That’s the Tik Tok origin story. Got it? Makes sense?

Why Is It So Popular?

It’s not just popular, it’s absurdly popular.

The app has over 800 million active users and has been downloaded over 2 billion times.

In terms of the United States specifically, TikTok has roughly 100 million monthly active users which is a nearly 800% increase from January of 2018. Eight Hundred Percent!

The popularity lies in both its algorithm that keeps people hooked with content they’re craving and in the pursuit of going viral that seems to motivate so many these days.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the app is not so much that it has attained such stratospheric heights of popularity so quickly but rather who it’s popular with.

Gen Z.

Over 60% of TikTok users are Gen Z-ers, i.e. people born after 1996. Wild. From a marketing standpoint, you’re going to want to pay close attention to this next bit. Gen Z is over 70 million people in the US. Globally, Gen Z is already the largest generation, surpassing Millennials and Baby Boomers.

Are you talking to them? If not, depending on your niche, you need to at least start thinking about it.

Take a second.

–

Good?

Now that you realize you need to update and modernize your strategy in order to speak and connect with this massive cohort, the next task is getting it going.

How?

TikTok!

Sure, there’s some controversial stuff surrounding it and it’s largely centered on data collecting and mining. Yes, it’s very important to understand that, what it means, where it goes, etc. and yes all social media companies traffic in the same data collecting but that aside for the time being, TikTok is hugely popular and is a great way to connect with your audience. Capitalize on while you can.

If you’re still unsure of how it can fit into your digital marketing strategy, hit us up at The Snow Agency and we’ll take you deeper into and get you going.

What Is A Digital Marketing Strategy?

digital marketing strategy

You’ve developed a kickass product or service offering. Packaging and delivery are wrapped up with a nice bow. Now you just wait for the sales to pour in.

Right?

That’s how it goes, no?

Well, not really.

If a tree falls in the forest nobody hears it, does it make a sound? How are people going to find out about your groundbreaking products or services if you don’t tell them?

That’s where an effective and well thought out digital marketing strategy comes into play, which is defined by HubSpot as, “a plan that helps your business achieve specific digital goals through carefully selected online marketing channels such as paid, earned, and owned media.”

Marketing strategy is part of what gets you to your goals and skimping on it is a misstep. Worse yet, is taking a throw everything at the wall and seeing what sticks approach. Developing a real, actionable strategy gets you where you want to be quicker.

Digital Marketing Strategy Explained

Marketing without planning or strategy is like a road trip without a map. Will you be moving? Sure. Will you get where you’re trying to go? Maybe? If you’re very lucky. But in most cases, probably not.

Digital marketing strategy starts with research. It’s data driven. A strategy is built out of knowledge and know-how, not guesswork. This is where you develop your targets, customer personas and the general who of it all. As in, who your audience is for your marketing.

Knowing who you’re targeting also helps you hone your unique selling proposition. It’s impossible to get your messaging right if you don’t know who’s going to be receiving. Think about it, what are you going to say to those that find you online if you don’t know them? How do you know it’ll be effective?

Luckily, the digital space is so, so incredibly measurable. Answers to that question and many others about your customer’s online behavior are easy to come by in the days of Google Analytics and other sophisticated software.

After you’ve created those personas, it’s time to create actual goals. The simplest way to do this is by making the goals, S.M.A.R.T. goals. Meaning:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely

By creating goals in this way, particularly with an eye towards measurability, you’ll be able to set key performance indicators aka KPIs for your strategy.

Whether this is the first time you’re putting together a strategy or if it’s old hat for you, taking stock of a campaign or strategy’s effectiveness is imperative. In the face of changing customer tastes and behaviors, with data not aligning exactly with your expectations, you must be ready to shift with anything and everything. Nothing stays static because static gets old fast.

In other words, auditing should always play a part in your strategy formulation because auditing leads to understanding which eventually turns into optimization.

Of course, part of the process is landing on a budget and that’s its own separate ballgame. An important consideration nonetheless though.

At this point, you might be wondering where to put your marketing. That’s something that gets answered along the way. As you understand your audience more and what their online habits are, you can pinpoint methods of delivery and marketing tools that would work best. Will it be SEO, email marketing, content marketing, traditional media, social media, etc.? It’s different for each company and there’s no blanket solution, determining the media mix relates directly to everything that precedes it is the process of creating a digital marketing strategy.

Who Needs Digital Marketing? 

Everyone!

Unfortunately, not all companies are and around 45% are doing digital marketing with no defined strategy.

Strategy can get you where you want to be faster. If it’s something you’ve struggled with or haven’t even thought about, give us a buzz at The Snow Agency and let’s go over what you’re doing, together. Let us help you create a plan that steps you up to the next level.