by Population Science | Feb 7, 2022 | Digital Marketing
Social media allows organizations to tell their story and connect with their audience. With a strong social media strategy and the ability to create engaging content, you can engage supporters and increase brand awareness, leading to overall success.
Social media is a vital component of overall marketing efforts. But where do you start? Understanding current and relevant social media statistics can help shape your social strategy and define and set goals. Here are 10 social media stats to consider when crafting a strong social media strategy.
1) 57.6% of the world’s population uses social media. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 27 minutes (October 2021).
Meet your audience where they are already spending their time- on social media. With the majority of the world spending time online every single day, implementing a social strategy with a strong foundation presents a huge opportunity to reach a variety of supporters.
2) 84 percent of US adults aged from 18 to 29 are active social media users (Pew Research Center, 2021).
This number falls slightly to 81 percent for the 30- to 49-year-old age group and further to 73 percent for those aged from 50 to 64. US adults who are 65 years old and above use social media the least.
Understanding your target demographic and which platforms they use most will allow you to deliver the most effective strategy. The best way to find your target audience is by first thinking about the specific needs your organization fulfills. Start by defining your audiences’ questions, concerns, and problems and build your strategy from there.
Facebook continues to be a social media leader. No matter your industry, you should be able to find your desired audience on Facebook. From ad formats, targeting options, and measurement capabilities, Facebook is a great place to start with any marketing strategy.
4) When asked what type of content they like to engage with, 68% of consumers preferred images, 50% preferred videos and 30% enjoyed text-based posts.
Your strategy should include a mix of text, image and video to keep your content interesting and your audience engaged. Experiment with what form of content performs best on your page and use that information to decipher what your audience wants to see.
5) 85% of marketers rate short-form videos as the most effective type of social media content.
Video marketing should be a critical aspect in your social media efforts. Video marketing allows you to share a great deal of information with your audience in a quick and captivating manner.
Your social media should reflect your brands voice. Your social media should cover your organizations basics, be engaging and informational, and inspire your audience to act.
First impressions matter. Your social media will often be the first impression a prospect has of you. When consumers have a positive experience with you it builds trust leading to brand loyalty and affinity and generates sales.
8) In a 2021 HubSpot Blog poll of 1,000+ global marketing professionals, 79% of marketers report buying paid advertising on social media. (HubSpot)
Paid advertising presents an opportunity for reach that isn’t always able to be accomplished organically. Social media advertisement allows you to find, target, and reach your desired audience that can fit any budget you have.
9) 83% of marketers believe the quality of social media posts is more important than the quantity. (HubSpot)
Quality and consistency are key to social media success. The more often you can share quality content, the better. Start by researching the specific social platforms you use and determine the amount of content that performs best for each platform.
With most social media users using mobile devices, accessibility is key. It is crucial your social media content and layout are optimized for mobile.
Social media marketing presents a huge opportunity to reach and engage your audience. Use these 10 social media stats to help shape your social media strategy by gaining better insights into the world of social media, and how to maximize your results using these resources.
by Population Science | Jun 22, 2020 | Digital Marketing
With uncertainty around whether or not any traditional ground game will be feasible this cycle it is imperative that candidates build a cohesive digital ground game. Population Science is actively working with clients to deploy paid, owned, and earned media strategies to compensate. While there is no one size fits all strategy for political campaigns, there are two tactics that we feel can be universally deployed:
Geofencing
Go neighborhood, by neighborhood with targeted, digital messages across various channels. The information you can get back from short-run, micro-location targeted campaigns can be invaluable. You can measure engagement rates as signs that certain locations might be more interested in your campaign.
Campaigns can take learnings and apply them to wider targeted campaigns. For example, did you notice neighborhoods with a median age of 36 responded better than a median age of 51? Maybe you should be investing more of your digital budget in a younger voter across all of your campaigns.
Influencer Recruitment
Take your endorsement game to the grassroots level. Anyone who reaches an audience of potential voters via social media can easily sway small numbers of voters your direction. Community activists, neighborhood leaders… really anybody that can reach an audience of tuned-in voters. This is especially important in local elections.
You need to create content that is shareable and has the ability to go viral. Here are some ideas:
2020 might be the most bizarre campaign cycle in modern history. Get ahead of the game by lining up your digital ground game today!
by Population Science | May 7, 2020 | Digital Marketing, Programmatic
As I talk with clients and prospects about adapting to changing media consumption, one theme seems to be emerging: nobody is interested in talking about their retargeting strategy.
Reasons given include:
-
Marketers have simply put retargeting on cruise control using “set it and forget it” programs.
-
With cookies disappearing in two years, what is the point to revisit?
-
Marketers have been focused on new and emerging trends.
It’s easy to fall into a trap of thinking you’re already maximizing your retargeting program. The truth is you probably are not.
Programmatic has changed the game when it comes to retargeting consumers. Emerging channels are being woven into the equation, creating new opportunities to retarget with video, rich media, and voice.
As consumers are using more digital channels to learn about products and services, it is imperative to engage site abandoners with the right message, on the right channel, on the right device, at the right time.
Here are some thoughts on how you can ensure you’re getting the most out of your retargeting program:
-
Audit your pixel placement. It amazes me how few digital marketers have no clue if their retargeting tags are properly deployed across all product/service pages.
-
Reassess your customer journey. Is your website properly guiding potential customers across the finish line?
-
Integrate video to provide site abandoners a compelling reason to return and convert.
-
Negative target audiences that don’t need to be reengaged. For example, you likely don’t want to retarget people looking at your website from your own office. Also, do your clients access a login to use your service via your website? Consider if you should negative target that CRM file.
Retargeting is the highest ROI channel next to email, and it is the foundation of any digital strategy. Once you have implemented a retargeting strategy, or simply given your old strategy a tune-up, you are ready to take retargeting to the next level.
Opportunities abound to optimize your campaign by retargeting visitors to a physical location or past customers in your CRM database… more on those opportunities soon in future blog posts.
If you are ready to review retargeting your strategy or explore implementing a new one, contact Population Science today for a free audit and consultation!
by Population Science | Jan 28, 2020 | Digital Marketing, Industry News
As Google plans to phase out 3rd party cookies in Chrome by 2022, there are a lot of unknowns that need to be sorted out in the next two years. With little in the way of answers for how retargeting, conversion tracking, attribution, and 3rd party data targeting will work (if at all) one thing is certain: paid digital video ads will play a significant role in the post-cookie era.
For starters, video has already been increasing in popularity. Every month 85% of Americans connected to the internet watch streamed video. By 2022 82% of all internet traffic will be from video. This will mark an increase of 15x from 2017. The massive expansion of digital video content has already attracted marketers, but the end of cookie tracking will only increase the rush into paid video for one big reason: log-in data.
Log-in data is the holy grail of personalized ad targeting. This is why Google and Facebook have been able to gain such a large share of digital advertising spend to date. Their properties have massive audiences who are logged in so they can easily track them.
Here are four major opportunities for advertisers to reach large, targeted audiences at scale without requiring cookies:
YouTube
Many people do not realize that YouTube is the second most visited website behind Google.com and ahead of Facebook. Not only does YouTube have more visitors than the world’s largest social network, users spend more than twice the amount of time on the site compared to Facebook. YouTube is incredibly popular with younger generations, but its usage is growing with older people as well.
Connected TV
Connected TV (CTV) has not been around very long, but its rapid adoption has sent cable companies and content producers scrambling to adjust to the brave new world of cord cutting. Every major content company has a streaming app available on Smart TVs and connected devices such as Roku or Apple TV. Further, new streaming services are popping up to bring even more content options to viewers. CTV is attracting large brand dollars due to the ability to target specific viewers rather than broad audiences on traditional TV. It is also providing an opportunity for smaller advertisers to get into TV ads who were previously priced out.
Social Networks
If you spend any time on social networks it is clear that video is becoming more prominent. So much so, that one Facebook executive predicted that Facebook would be all video and no text by 2021 (although TikTok may already be filling this niche). While we cannot forecast which social networks will have the most active users 5+ years from now, two things are certain: social networks are not going anywhere and video will play an increasing role in the content of social networks.
Premium Publisher Content
When people think of digital video they typically think YouTube or Vimeo, much like people think Google or Bing for search. That said, a major difference in the digital video space is there are thousands of other high quality websites and apps with large user bases that are worth advertising on. Large scale independent publishers like the NY Times and content networks like Verizon Media (Yahoo, Huffpost, Rivals, TechCrunch, and many more) are also adding more video content to their ranks. These smaller publishers and networks do not have the scale of YouTube. However, when accessed programmatically their collective reach and scale surpass YouTube.
