If the rise of social media and modern day influencers has taught us anything, it’s that recommendations matter, but are enough marketers tuned into this and are they monitoring the associated engagement metrics?
According to RhythmOne Australia MD Adam Furness – and the company’s latest report on ‘brand tribes’ - the sharing of content is a critical signal that a consumer has moved beyond a mere fan to a brand tribe member.
By tracking content sharing activity across the entire digital ecosystem (including dark social whereby people share content in private messages or email), marketers can connect to consumers who demonstrate interest, intent and passion.
“Marketers can look at how many shares they have across all of their digital media,” Furness says.
“They can track likes, follows and retweets and aggregate these metrics to see if they are growing their total fan-base. Sign-ups, downloads, responses to competitions and promotions, engagement with loyalty channels and newsletters, content shares and click throughs — these are all important metrics.”
Download RhythmOne's Brand Tribes “how to guide" here
Furness says many marketers are actually in the dark about dark social and don’t realise it’s now possible to track these actions across all digital channels.
Lenovo’s APAC digital and social leader Danielle Uskovic argues that while engagement metrics are critical, they are often seen as ‘softer’ measures by senior stakeholders.
“Commitment to growing and nurturing a tribe has to be long-term, so don’t overpromise what a tribe will deliver in terms of short-term ROI and direct connection to sales,” she says.
She says it’s a commitment by the business, but one that if managed well, will have huge upside. “But there’s the challenge - drawing a linear connection between Brand Tribes, affinity growth and sales can be difficult, but thanks to data and technology, it’s not impossible.”
Furness says that by connecting the dots across your paid, earned, shared and owned assets, brands now have access to a truly connected view of their tribal followers.
“Those brands that have had multitouch across various channels should be measuring if they see a greater return on the lifetime value of these consumers versus non-engagers — tracking this over a period of time,” Furness says.
Once marketers bring these potential tribe members together via software, they are then able to put brand content and digital advertising in front of them in real-time to make sure tribe members are exposed to relevant content and brand messages.
Hosted by AdNews online editor Pippa Chambers, AdNews hosted a brand tribes roundtable RhythmOne with included head of consumer marketing at PayPal Liz Lefort; head of digital and social at Lenovo Asia Pacific Danielle Uskovic; founder and CEO at influencer marketing company Social Soup Sharyn Smith; digital strategist at Spark Foundry media agency James Drewe and RhythmOne marketing director Jodie Koning – who also has brand experiences at major brands such as McDonald’s, Smirnoff, Diageo and Blackmores. See here for more.
Want to know more about how to connect a brand with its tribes? Download RhythmOne’s Brand Tribes report here.
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