Do you ever wonder if you are throwing your limited resources away by using paid social media?

You are betting on the wrong ROI spending money in paid media without a strategy. Paid Social Media KPIs are just part of the goal. Without an integrated Social Media Strategy, it is scattering resources to the wind in hopes that something will “take off”.

Do you know that you are competing in a new market called the market of conversations? You are no longer the owner of your brand, brands are now co-created by the very active and empowered audience? The best way of building your brand has changed – building it in the world your consumer is living in.
In this new world, marketers became creators and facilitators of spaces aimed at bringing people together. Each consumer retains their individuality, looking for digital ecosystems in which to converse with their peers, learn, and meet their needs.

Your brand or company is now just one more voice in a sea of voices, it can be wrapped in humanity: a brand that listens, shares, interacts, accompanies, and acknowledges. A social brand that is engaged enough to co-create the narratives with audiences, a social brand that even ignites oxytocin with individual interactions.

Twitter Headquarters at San Francisco

In this new world of collaborative branding we need to think about a short, medium, and long term strategies for building brands. Just focusing on the immediate click rates, follower counts or buy now! is not the right strategy for truly building brand relationship with consumers.

During the last three years, we have seen organic activity, aka folksonomy, of social media combined with what is another discipline: paid social media. KPIs in social media marketing, such as reach, number of impressions, engagement (mentions, shared content, UGC), number of followers, etc generated by the boost of a particular sponsored post are now the product not only of the natural dynamics of those spaces, but also of clear advertising messages. Balance and proper weighting of these activities, implemented in a single social strategy, are necessary and effective. In some sectors paid media has penetrated the market as the only social media strategy.

Social Media Algorithms

At Ideagoras we have deep experience with how to measure the effectiveness of paid media buys from our founder’s more than 30 years in the advertising business but also understand the new world of social media marketing and branding.

Let me share with you my personal experience. I started my professional career in advertising in the 80´s working for a billboard media company. Shortly after that, I jumped into the multinational advertising agency world working for brands such as Telefonica, Burger King, Alcatel, Mars, Continental Tyres, Repsol, Twix, Mitsubishi Motors, Whiskas, Banesto (now Santander Bank), etc.

 

The mythical Madison Avenue at New York City

Those were times, now seen with a bit of nostalgia (MadMen anyone?), when the way of building strong brands was to make it a process:

  • Establishing a strategy based in the qualitative and quantitative data to understand the target audience gathered from focus groups, in depth interviews, and sales panels like Nielsen.
  • Stating in the creative brief the brand personality to build/reinforce/evolve, the USP (unique selling proposition), the Reason Why (the reason to believe), the Tone of the message. I remember one of the strategy procedures we had at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles called The Belief Dynamics to gather the insights of the consumer.
  • Planning, purchasing and analyzing the proper media to match the goals (GRPs, coverage, OTS, distribution of GRPs and contacts, cost per rating, share of voice, cost per 000, etc.). Our tools for planning? The media consumption data coming from audience monitoring devices on TV’s, and from the EGM (General Media Study) for the rest of the media.

Both the agency and the client always shared a final goal: the power of the brand, the brand equity, brand’s functional and emotional bonds with the consumers.

Sales are always the final goal, of course, P&L rules…but don´t think about building a brand just with that short term criteria on mind. This was, and is, a long journey.  Branding is built through a proper balance of paid media and an outstanding brand behavior is what it makes the difference now…and in the future.

Even when we had to manage advertising to drive a particular promotion leading into short term sales and redemptions, we always took care to not damage the integrity of a brand. We were careful to do it smartly without prostituting the brand. Brand first, brand care, brand love, brand projecting personality, commitment, acknowledgment to their users, etc.

Now…back to 2019. We are now in the very middle of the 4th industrial revolution that brought us technology that pervades consumers’ lives. Branding and advertising is now more directly measurable. We know how to craft a long, medium, and short term branding strategy to make the most of money spent on these new social media platforms and analyze the effectiveness of each paid media campaign.

In addition, our ten years of experience managing social media for large international clients has enabled us to take not only the lessons and customize campaigns for brands that engage us. We provide strategic plans for targeted social media buys based on brand goals- these new skills have been developed over the past decade and are based on best practices from the 30+ years of ad agency roots of Ideagoras. We follow-up each campaign with detailed analysis and reports so our customers know what their social media spend is doing for their business.

Chia Hwu, Managing Director and Partner at Ideagoras Silicon Valley and I will share with you our thoughts, vision, and solutions in the future of branding.
Join us, be part of the conversation!

Ángel González

By Ángel González

Founder & CEO
Ideagoras