Content and Social

Network Marketing
Yijun Chen

BUSI70200 Digital Marketing

June 2024
Module Structure

2
Previous Recap
Direct Response Ads
Direct response ads encourage Instagram’s users to take immediate action to ads through
buttons like “Shop Now” and “Learn More.”
Customer journey is increasingly shortened to a simple impression
The return-on-investment (ROI) of direct response advertising is accurately measurable
Advertisers can spend right up to the level they place on a particular customer or
transaction’s value

4
Machine Learning & the Magic of Direct Response Ad
Input
Historic Audience/content/campaign data
Learning
Pattern recognition: what ad works for
whom, where and when
Output
Each customer impression -> serve the ad
with the highest click through rate
Key ingredients
Consumer data
Ad effectiveness measurement

5
The Importance of Tracking & Ad Effectiveness Measurement

6
Consumer Attitudes towards Ads

7
What about Ad Blockers?

8
Customers Attitudes towards Targeting

9
How should marketers react?
Relationships and Trust

11
Today’s Class

The difference between advertising and content marketing in communicating values and
curating relationships & trust
Content marketing strategy and personas
Social marketing strategy and different social platforms

12
Today at Apple

13
Breaking Two Documentary

14
Nike’s Social Media Content Marketing VS Sponsored Ad

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Nike’s #justdoit User Generated Contents vs Ads

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Content Marketing
Content marketing is the process of creating high-quality, valuable content to attract, inform,
and engage an audience, while also promoting the brand itself
Contents may be delivered via many channels and formats: blogs, newsletters, forums/
discussion boards, social media channels, etc
Content marketing focus on establishing trust between the brand and the consumer
Content marketing’s effectiveness relies on trust between content creators and the audience

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Contents vs Ads
Information
An advertisement contains the information that brands want to convey to help sell their products
and services
Content contains information customers want to use to achieve their own personal objectives
Communication
An advertisement features uni-directional communication, brand talks to consumers
Content features bi-directional communication, a conversation, either between brand and
consumer or among consumer themselves
Relationship
An advertisement focuses on short-term relationship, to convert to purchase
Content features long-term relationship, before, during and after purchase, loyalty and customer
satisfaction
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Recall: Changes in Marketing Concepts

Past Now

Product/Sales Focused Customer Focused

Transaction Marketing Relationship

Production /Product Concept Selling Concept

1920’s 1940’s

Market Concept
1990’s

Here is our great product, how do I sell it? Here is what customers want

Marketing as a value-increasing exchange for both buyer and seller

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Advertising and Content Marketing Workflow

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Personas: The Foundation of Content Marketing
• The Tech-Savvy Millennial
A persona is a semi-fictional character that
represents a segment of a brand's target
audience, crafted based on market research
and real data, including demographic
details, behavior patterns, motivations, and • The Health Enthusiast
goals
Why create personas?
Human-centric approach
Understand what types of contents
(topics, medium, content depth, tone) are
relevant
Align content strategy with the persona
profile

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The Persona of Outdoor Clothing and Gear
The weekend-warrior
Casual outdoor activities
Travel in family and groups
Care more about aesthetics than tech and functionality
…
The pro and hardcore
Small community of pros
Care more about performance than aesthetics
…

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Persona of a Weekend Warrior

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Align Personas with Content Strategy

Community posts
Short Stories

Influencer posts
Tiktok short videos

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Instagram Posts for Weekend Warriors

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User Generated Contents for the Pro

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Content Strategy and Persona

Content strategy is consistent with the persona

Channel: Instagram or Reddit r/outdoors
Format: Photos/texts
Topics: lifestyle/technical specifications
Goal: inspiring/educational

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Group Activity: Personas Creation & Content Strategy
Choose one industry/brand, create the persona profile/profiles
Fitness&Wellness: Exercising Mirror, Strava, Calm, personalized training app…
Food: Hello Fresh, Zapp, Too good to go, Beyond Meat…
Beauty: Glossier, Aesop…
Tech: VR/AR glasses, robot dog, foldable phone …
Your own chosen brand
How should content strategy cater to the each persona profile?
Channel: Twitter/Instagram account, website, reddit community, product review site, news media etc
Format: Image, text, long video, short video, etc
Content goals: entertaining, informative, persuasive, inspiring?
10 minutes team brainstorm, discussion with the class
A persona template: download here

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Trust and Social Media Marketing
Social Network Trends

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Social Networks Trends

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Increasing Ad Spending in Social Networks

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Why do companies spend large on
social networks?
Humans are Social
Social Networks built relationships & trust

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Social Media for Business
Social media plays two major roles for business
Channels for advertising & contents distribution
Channels for relationship management

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Strategies for Self-Media Sites
Sites: Twitter(X), Instagram
These sites are mostly used for self-promotion
Users “follow” to get information about self-promoters if they find them of interest
The relationships are mostly one-sided: only one party knows a lot about the other party
Strategies
Incorporate the products/services into celebrity/influencer life style
Make the “sponsored tweets/posts” more organic

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37
Discussion: Instagram Sponsored Ads vs Organic Posts
Do you trust “Sponsored” Posts of your followed influencers?
If your followed influencer have more and more sponsored posts, do you still trust the influencer?
What types of “Sponsored” Posts harm your trust?
Have you ever suspected that there are “undisclosed” sponsored posts? What are your attitudes
towards them?

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The Importance of Trust
The Effects of Influencer Advertising Disclosure Regulations: Evidence From Instagram
Germany introduced sponsored ads disclosure policy to Instagram but Spain didn’t in 2014
to 2019
Compared with Spain, after the regulation in Germany, the share of disclosed sponsored
content influencers post increases by 7%
But there is still a large number of non-disclosed sponsored posts.
The average number of followers falls
The number of comments increase, but they are mainly driven by negative comments on
“hidden non-disclosed sponsored posts”.

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How to Curate Trust?
Suppose I want to buy a new pair of running shoes, who do
I trust more?
A celebrity posts a sponsored ad on Instagram
A running influencer’s video on running shoe review
The review on the Subreddit r/running that I joined for
a very long time
My runny buddy’s post on Facebook
The more intimate/authentic the relationship, the stronger
the trust

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Community and Interest Sites

Sites: Reddit
The relationships on formed based on common interests
The relationships are more anonymous, two-sided: less hierarchy, more mutual
Strategies
Make your product a relevant solution to a problem
Match your product or service to the content precisely to be relevant
Provide expertise for free
Encourage user-generated contents

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Examples

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Beyond Social Networks
Curate communities directly within the brand
Socially-connected products and services: built-in social components
Benefits
Companies have controls over why/how consumers build relationships
The relationships are not only between company and consumers, but more between
consumers

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The Trend of Brand Communities

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Tesla: Zero Marketing budget but an active community

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Summary

Advertising is different from content marketing, the latter is more aligned with the modern
perspective marketing: value-increasing for both seller and buyer
Content and social media marketing are about inspiring and curating relationships & trust
Personas as cornerstones for content marketing
The social media strategies should be adapted to why/how consumers interact on the
platforms
Brands could move beyond social media networks to curate its own community

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Next Class: Social CRM, the Power of
Networks