Tiktok is one of the fastest-growing apps in history. It’s currently valued at $50 billion and has over 1 billion users each month.
TikTok is a video-sharing platform that allows content creators to create short videos and share them with the world. The company has recently surpassed YouTube in terms of monthly active users, and it’s been growing at a rapid rate. Owing to this popularity and large user base, today, TikTok is becoming an important platform for various businesses to reach their target audience.
But as everyone starts to realize this, there is a lot of competition in it. That’s why you don’t just need to be present on TikTok, but also have a growth strategy in place.
We at Radarr want to help you grow your TikTok account. So we’ve put together a handy guide for our top tips on how to create the perfect TikTok growth strategy.
Everything you need to know about TikTok growth strategy
We have broken down the following sections as per the most pressing questions marketers have around TikTok.
What do we know about the TikTok algorithm?
The app has been around for five years now and its algorithm has undergone many changes. It’s not very well understood by marketers because there’s no official documentation about it, but we do have access to some information that can be used to create strategies for our videos.
The goal of any algorithm is to predict what users want, or at least what they might want so that they can deliver that content whenever it becomes available. The TikTok algorithm is a complex system designed to serve users content based on what it believes to be of high interest.
TikTok uses a combination of machine learning algorithms and human curation to determine what should be shown within its ecosystem. Machine learning algorithms can be taught to recognize trends, which can then be used to suggest similar content for users. Human curation comes into play when humans determine what content is appropriate for certain age groups or geographic locations – or any other criteria determined by management.
Furthermore, there are also ads within TikTok that are served up according to user preferences and interests based upon their activity within the app. The more often someone taps on a given ad, the more likely they will see more ads like it in the future – creating a feedback loop where ads become increasingly relevant over time as they are matched with users who are likely to engage with them repeatedly
In this article, we will examine how TikTok’s algorithm works and discuss how it can be optimized for better results.
How does the TikTok algorithm work?
The TikTok algorithm is one of the most complex systems in the world. It’s made up of various factors that influence how your content is served to users and can be difficult to understand.
But if you’re hoping to improve your standing on the app, it’s important to understand how it works. Here are a few things you should know about the TikTok algorithm:
User Activity
If multiple people like or share your video, this will increase its visibility within TikTok’s search results. This is why it’s important to build up your audience as much as possible before posting new content – so they can share it as soon as it goes live!
Subject Matter (Video Information)
The subject matter of your videos matters more than you think! If you upload a video with a lot of specific tags, such as “dog” or “puppy,” it’ll likely rank higher in searches for those terms compared with general tags like “animals” or “funny.” That means that if you want to get more views on TikTok, you should try adding these more specific tags whenever possible.
Location and Language
The location of your device and language settings also influence what content is served up to you. If you’re watching videos in English, but live in Brazil, TikTok may serve up Brazilian videos instead of American ones if there are more available at any given time.
Audio
Audio is one of the main ways users discover content on TikTok. The more unique or original your audio sounds, the more likely it is that it will be served to users with similar interests.
Instant feedback from users
If you’ve ever used YouTube’s suggestion feature, you’ll know that it works by tracking what videos you watch, and what videos you skip and then using this information to recommend other videos that might interest you.
The same principle applies to TikTok’s suggestions feature – but with audio instead of video. For example, if your followers leave a lot of negative feedback on one particular song, then they’re unlikely to want to hear it again and again; so this would reduce its chances of being suggested to them in the future – thus limiting its exposure within the app.
How to create a growth strategy for TikTok?
Define your audience
Every brand has a target audience, including yours. In order to create a growth strategy for TikTok, you have to start by defining your audience. There are also so many different groups of people who use TikTok, so it’s important to know who you’re trying to reach.
For instance, if you were a quirky streetwear brand, your target audience would ideally be users of the age group 16-30 years. Drafting and executing your TikTok strategy becomes so much easier and more efficient when you know who exactly you are reaching out to. It helps you tailor your content according to their interests.
See what they are interested in
If you’re looking to create a growth strategy for TikTok, it’s important to know what your audience is interested in.
That’s why we recommend using a social listening tool like Radarr to monitor TikTok’s activity on social media. It’ll help you see what people are talking about and get a sense of what the next big trends will be – which you can then capitalize on.
Before you start posting videos on your TikTok account, take some time to think about what kind of content will resonate best with your audience. To get a better understanding of this consider brainstorming about –
What kind of videos do you want to make?
What type of content will appeal to the audience you want to appeal to?
Once you’ve got that figured out, it’s time to start putting together strategies for executing this. Over time, when you post videos consistently related to a particular niche, the TikTok algorithm will recognize your expertise and recommend your content to the right target audience.
Identify trends and audio
Tiktok isn’t just about visual content – there’s also plenty of audio content being created on the platform. This means that there’s lots of room for brands to create new types of content specifically for Tiktok.
However, It can be difficult to come up with ideas for this type of content though so it’s important that you identify trends early on so you can produce relevant content quickly when needed.
You can read more about Tips to Create Viral Videos for TikTok here.
Take note of popular transitions
TikTok is all about making short videos with special effects and music tracks, which makes it very different from other social media apps such as Facebook. The sudden transition from one video to another is what makes TikTok so unique, which also leads to the popularity of TikTok among its users.
This is where the viral factor comes in, and the more you can create that, the better. Understand that TikTok is a fast-growing content platform. So, content that works today may not work even a week from now. This means you need to stay on top of your game and updated about what’s currently trending.
Experiment with new features
Experimenting with new features is a great way to get traction in your niche. Try out different things and see what works best.
And even if a new feature doesn’t work for you and your target audience, it’s no big deal because you’re not making any big commitments or putting all your resources into it. You can always stop if the results aren’t what you hoped for.
Use relevant hashtags
It’s not enough to just post content and hope it goes viral. You need to know what people are looking for on TikTok so you can give them exactly that. That means using relevant hashtags in your posts, like #TikTokbeauty if you were a beauty brand for instance.
It also means being aware of which hashtags get the most viewing time.
Powerful AI tools like Radarr can help find the right hashtags that help your business account grow with minimal effort.
Add clear CTAs to your TikTok content
If you have a product or service you want to promote, add clear CTAs to your TikTok content. Make sure they stand out so viewers can easily click on them when they’re ready to make a purchase decision.
Engage with other accounts
This helps increase your brand awareness and attract new followers. It all comes down to building relationships with others in the community, as well as creating a presence for yourself on the platform itself.
Find the best time to post
The best time to post depends on your audience and what they’re interested in. If you have a lot of followers who are likely to be active at a specific time, then posting during that time will increase your visibility and get more eyes on your post.
You will have to keep tracking your engagement insights to get a better idea of what works best for your brand.
Monitor and optimize
You need to know what works and what doesn’t. This means that if you’re going to create a TikTok account for your brand, you have to keep track of the content that performs well and the content that doesn’t perform well.
If there’s something that isn’t working, don’t delete it! Just make sure you keep track of it so that when you go back and look at it later, you can figure out why it didn’t work.
Add a layer of sentiment analysis to see if your TikTok content is fuelling how your brand wants to be known in the market and optimize your strategy.
Once you’ve established what’s working and what isn’t working for your brand on TikTok, it’s time to optimize! In order for this process to work best for your brand, think about how your brand wants to be known in its category or industry. Is it edgy? Fun? Serious? Create some guidelines around how your brand wants people to see themselves—and then use this information as a guide when creating content on TikTok.
And it’s not enough just to create one piece of content and expect huge results; instead, think about creating multiple pieces of content with different themes and so on.
Looking for inspiration to get you started on your TikTok growth strategy? Check out some great tips and examples here.
Get your TikTok growth strategy ready!
Today, content is king, it’s as simple as that. If you are creating content that people want to watch, they will keep coming back for more, and your business will grow.
But to use and grow on a social media platform like TikTok to grow your brand or business, you need to know what your audience is thinking about and what trends are going on. This includes trends, transitions, and types of content that your audience is interested in.
Here are some resources to help you nail your TikTok marketing strategy –
If you want to get ahead on social media, Radarr will help you grow your TikTok audience, build a more stable and loyal base, and keep your finger on the pulse of new and effective TikTok marketing strategies.
Whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 500 company, it’s important to have a good online reputation. Your customers are going to Google your business, and they’re going to find your website. They’ll check out what people are saying about you on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, among many others.
If you want to gather website traffic and also keep previous store visitors coming back for more, it’s important that you manage your brand’s online reputation.
Today, reputation management has become an essential part of every business. A good online reputation can help you in attracting more customers, while a bad one can have the opposite effect.
What is online reputation management?
Online Reputation Management, or ORM, is a multidimensional concept that focuses on building better public awareness and perception of a brand, company, and/or person.
ORM encompasses building and regularly monitoring reputation, tackling any and all content that could possibly tarnish the brand image. It deals with strategizing and execution to achieve the desired results.
Why is online reputation management important?
Your online reputation is the foundation of establishing trust with customers. Because first impressions last, a positive one can also drive loyalty and referrals. Especially when 97% of customers trust online reviews before making a purchase, they are indispensable to your brand. Therefore, you don’t have a choice but to take charge of your digital presence with Online Reputation Management to generate a loyal customer base and improve your bottom line.
1. It impacts buying decisions
Customers are more easily influenced than we realize. And your online reputation is going to play a major role in buying decisions.
53% of shoppers claim they do research before purchasing anything. And over 81% of consumers do online research before making big purchases.
Only and only if shoppers find your brand reliable enough will they consider making a purchase from your store. And hence, your online reputation plays a major role in determining your conversions.
2. It is the online version of word-of-mouth
88% of consumers trust user reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Now, while your potential customers are out there reading reviews, testimonials, and other social media posts about your company, you should be able to make a good impression. This will help you improve your chances of persuading them to buy from you.
3. You cannot really delete negative reviews
Once on the internet, always on the internet.
This means that if ever a negative about your company gets posted online, it is going to be there for many more potential customers to turn away from you. While you obviously cannot simply delete these reviews to improve your odds, you can still offer to assist the displeased customer and make amends. This is a great online reputation management strategy.
Great customer service directly impacts long-term revenue. In fact, according to a study, 70% of unhappy consumers who received a satisfying response from the brand will come back and make purchases again.
4. You can gather valuable feedback
When you manage your online reputation well, you’ll be able to tell what people think of what you’ve done in the past and how they feel about working with you in the future. This will help guide your decisions moving forward so that everything goes smoothly!
How does ORM work?
Online reputation management in digital marketing is like your digital PR agent. It is tirelessly working behind the scenes to deliver more customers for you passively. It starts with keeping tabs on online conversations, which includes tracking social media conversations, reviews, and news articles.
You can use Online Reputation Management tools like Radarr to do sentiment analysis that can help you gauge how the public perceives your brand. You can then engage with your audience, address concerns, and thus improve your brand’s digital presence.
When there is an influx of negative conversations about your brand, you can infuse public relations, digital marketing, and SEO to help fix your online reputation.
How to manage your brand’s online reputation?
You need to develop a comprehensive reputation management strategy to manage your brand’s online reputation online. Start with an audit of social conversations to see what people say on social media and search engine results. Use online reputation management tools like Radarr to monitor mentions and analyze sentiments. Then, develop a plan to address negative content and turn it into a positive experience.
1. Perform an audit of your online reputation
Performing an audit of your online reputation is a great first step in managing your brand’s online reputation. An audit is basically just a way to measure what people are saying about you, and how much it matters. You can do this by monitoring your brand’s name on social media and search engines, or by using an external Online Reputation Management tool like Radarr to monitor your brand’s mentions and sentiment.
This gives you a starting point for developing strategies to manage your online reputation so that it reflects what you want it to be!
If you see anything that isn’t accurate or fair, contact the site owner and ask them to remove it. Be sure to follow up with an email confirming that they have taken down the content. If necessary, file a complaint with Google or other search engines.
2. Establish an online reputation management strategy
Stay on top of the latest industry trends and build a content strategy based on real-time insights. Never miss a beat when it comes to creating campaigns that resonate with consumer sentiments!
This involves creating a plan for how you will respond when negative content comes up in search results. You should also include steps to take if you want to create positive content that will be displayed in search results instead of negative content.
This strategy will help you decide what to monitor and how to respond. You’ll want to determine what information should be monitored by your employees and what should be outsourced to a third party – and then set up the systems to make that happen.
Your strategy should ideally include –
Identifying potential issues that could affect your brand’s reputation (and working to prevent them)
Defining the goals of your reputation management strategy
Determining how you want to respond to negative reviews or comments about your product or service
Creating goals for how many positive comments or reviews you want to receive and set aside time every week for monitoring these comments/reviews and responding if necessary
3. Monitor brand mentions efficiently
Actively monitoring your conversations gives you an in-depth insight into your online presence. Turn online conversations about you into an opportunity to understand your brand’s standing among consumers.
Radarr is a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that helps you in social listening, monitoring, and tracking online mentions about your brand. You can get in-depth data and actionables to optimize ongoing efforts with better targeting and messaging to drive successful outcomes.
4. Dominate SERPs for brand searches
Let’s say you run a company that provides cell phone accessories, like charging cables, cases, and other accessories. You want to get your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings up so that people who search for things like “charging cable” or “case” see your website first when they look for things like that.
The first step is to make sure that you’re on Google My Business with all of the information about your business (like an address, hours of operation, etc.). Then start optimizing for keywords related to what you sell (like “charging cable,” “case,” or “Apple charger”). The more keywords you can rank for on Google and Bing, the better off you’ll be!
5. Encourage positive reviews online
Online reviews impact your business and conversions. This includes both negative and positive reviews.
Customer reviews also affect your SEO. So, being bad to your customers is bad for business as well. Google has an excellent sentiment analysis system that ensures that web pages that have negative comments against them do not rank up effectively on Google search results so that users can enjoy a great Google-ing experience.
So, your safest bet is to try to collect as many positive reviews as possible so your SEO gets boosted as well. With Radarr’s ability to analyze sentiments you can reach out to people who speak positively about you and drive them toward giving you positive reviews.
Online reviews are an important part of your brand’s reputation. They can be used to research products and services, help you find new customers, and keep you top of mind with existing customers. But, what do you do when your brand receives negative online reviews?
Negative online reviews can be a huge headache for brands. If you don’t address a customer’s issues, they might never come back to your business. It can feel like there’s nothing you can do to stop the negative comments from coming in, but there are definitely steps you can take to manage your brand’s online reputation.
Here are our top tips for managing negative online reviews:
Respond quickly and thoughtfully. You could use Radarr to quickly find negative conversations, comments, and remarks and reach out to those users.
Be honest
Apologize where needed and make it right if you can
Follow up with customers who left positive reviews about the same product in order to find out if their experience was different from the negative review and why, so you can make adjustments where needed.
7. Create content that is always on-brand
If you want to manage your brand’s online reputation, then you’re going to need to create content that is always on-brand.
You don’t want people to think of your company as fun when they visit your website, but boring when they read your blog. You don’t want people to think of your company as professional when they visit your social media page, but as casual and unprofessional when they read your email newsletters.
You want people to see the same thing in every piece of content that you produce. That way, they’ll have a consistent experience with your brand no matter where they encounter it online!
This can be in the form of images, articles, or even videos. You want people to know exactly what kind of products/services you offer and what your company is about when they see your name pop up on their screen.
8. Choose your influencers wisely
If you want to manage your brand’s online reputation, you need to make sure that the influencers you work with are trustworthy and reliable.
It’s important when choosing influencers that you take into consideration not only the size of their following but also how engaged their audience is with them. If someone has a big following but most of those followers aren’t engaging with their posts, then it may not be worth having them as an influencer for your brand.
When looking for an influencer to represent your brand, make sure you understand what kind of content they typically post and if it aligns with what you want from them as an influencer. For example, if you’re trying to promote your new sneakers collection and want people to share images of themselves using the products, then a fashion blogger may be better suited than someone who shares food recipes every day.
Ensure that any influencer you work with has a good track record of working with other brands and delivering results. You should also check out whether they have any complaints against them on social media or review sites like Trustpilot, TrustRadius, and others. Radarr can help with identifying prominent names and influencers and how they sentimentally impact your audience.
Example of the impact of online reputation management
There are many leading brands on social media focusing on online reputation management. Let’s take a look at some of them:
Companies with successful online reputation management
Nike
One excellent example of streamlining customer service is Nike’s launch of the @NikeSupport Twitter handle. They guarantee prompt responses and demonstrate a dedication to client satisfaction by designating a distinct handle for handling consumer inquiries.
Whole Foods
Despite the odd controversy, Whole Foods has a solid internet image. Utilizing a wide network of regional staff members to handle Facebook and Twitter profiles gives them a more individualized touch and enables them to target particular markets successfully.
Zappos
Zappos prioritizes developing a rapport with consumers over just increasing sales. During difficult moments, their customer service representatives go above and beyond by delivering handwritten messages and flowers. Customer loyalty and a strong social media reputation are enhanced by offering a generous 365-day return policy.
Companies that have struggled with online reputation management
United Airlines
After a viral video surfaced online showing a passenger being dragged off an overbooked flight, United Airlines was forced to deal with a severe ORM crisis. Because of this incident, there was a notable decline in market value, underscoring the importance of crisis management in ORM.
Nestlé
When Greenpeace accused Nestlé of damaging environmental practices, Nestlé’s reputation management failed. Rather than confronting the problem head-on, Nestlé made matters worse by asking Greenpeace’s video to be taken down from YouTube. A modified KitKat logo that read “Killer” and negative comments prompted Nestlé to take down its public page briefly.
British Petroleum
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil leak put BP in a difficult ORM situation. Subtle reactions and an apparent absence of clarity caused significant harm to BP’s standing. This instance highlights the lasting effects of a reputation crisis and emphasizes the need for proactive and honest reputation management throughout a crisis.
Online reputation management for enterprise
Online reputation management is crucial for enterprises and impacts whether you will be sought out as an industry leader. Let’s understand the difficulties you could encounter and how to navigate them.
Brand perception: Online Reputation Management tools can help create a favorable impression of your company in various digital environments. They can help monitor brand mentions closely, responding positively to issues and emphasizing the positive.
Crisis management: Complex problems are a common occurrence for large corporations. Whether it’s a PR crisis or negative media attention, ORM provides the tools to weather these storms elegantly.
Data protection: Enterprises deal with customer data on a large scale. Online Reputation Management tools can help monitor any signs of data leak conversations, and you can then take proactive measures to implement damage control mechanisms.
Employee engagement: Your team is a vital component of your brand. Employee mentoring on presenting your brand’s best online face is crucial to the Online Reputation Management strategy.
Transparency and Trust: Any business is built on trust. You can achieve these goals using reputation management by encouraging openness, honestly addressing consumer problems, and showcasing your dedication to corporate social responsibility.
Online reputation management for executives
There are different types of Online Reputation Management methods when it comes to handling the reputation of executives. Unlike traditional brand reputation management, online reputation management for CEOs is critical for the individual, their career, and the company. If their reputation is tainted online, the company’s revenue can be affected.
Executives have a special responsibility for their online persona since they represent their companies to the public. Executive reputation management necessitates a more customized approach than standard brand reputation management. It entails carefully examining the public perception of specific CEOs and attempting to mold it.
A few common strategies are keeping an active and professional presence on social media platforms, actively creating content through blogs and social media to establish thought leadership, conducting routine online searches to assess current perceptions, and responding to criticism promptly and professionally.
How to build, maintain, and repair your brand
Building, maintaining, and restoring your band’s reputation is a continuous effort. It involves updating, establishing a strong online presence, actively managing content, and promptly addressing customer feedback.
In times of crisis, it is essential to have a crisis management plan as a part of your online reputation management strategy to know how to take swift actions, communicate effectively, and carry out public relations that will mend your brand’s image.
Remember, monitoring and adapting your reputation management strategy for consistent improvement is the key to long-term success.
And you can do this with the help of a solution like Radarr.
Conclusion
Having a good online reputation is incredibly important and can help you find new customers, get more leads, and get people to trust you.
Owing to the ever-increasing digital landscape, maintaining an online reputation is getting tougher by the day. You need to know where your target audience is having conversations about you, your campaigns, or their experiences with you across the internet.
But what if you don’t know how to get started with ORM or don’t have a good online reputation? What if your business has a lot of negative reviews? Or what if your competitors are talking trash about you on social media?
That’s where Radarr comes in! With Radarr, you will always know what others are saying about you. Gather actionable insights about their audience response, interests, and market trends in a fuss-free way; in real-time.
Book a demo today to improve and manage your brand’s online reputation with real-time social listening, monitoring and analysis!
Struggling to understand if social media really works? Introducing attribution model.
When using social media platforms for marketing, businesses are often not able to attribute a specific channel to their business objectives, goals, or conversions. This often leads to either them feeling that social media doesn’t work well for them or a point where they create social media strategies based on assumptions.
Does your business want to understand the customer conversion journey better? Or even draw insights from their marketing efforts? Are you also looking for ways to track your social media conversion?
That is where an attribution model comes into play.
An attribution model is used by businesses to understand how customers arrived at their website and what actions they took once there. They help you determine how many people convert from each source, how much revenue each source generated, and how much revenue each source contributed to your overall revenue.
An attribution model helps you answer a key question: “Which sources brought the most value?”
What is an attribution model?
The attribution model is a way of calculating the value of your social media marketing. It’s helpful when deciding on which platforms are worth investing time into.
The attribution model is a method of measuring the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. The idea behind the attribution model is to determine which channels are driving conversions and sales and how much value each channel adds to your business.
It’s important to understand the attribution model because it helps you determine how much of your sales come from different sources, such as online ads or word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family.
For example, let’s say you run a campaign on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You want to know which channels are driving the most revenue to prioritize your efforts in those channels. The attribution model allows you to do just that.
With an attribution model, you look at the buyer’s journey in reverse. You then assign value to the interaction points. These are those points that motivate your customers to buy the product.
How did the customer hear about you, and what did they see or do before buying the product? By using attribution models, marketers give credit to certain touchpoints. These are the interaction points that the customers had with the brand.
Why is an attribution model important?
If you’re a marketer, you know that attribution modeling is important for social media marketing. Here’s why:
Social media is a channel where the consumer journey can be tracked. It’s one thing to follow your customers’ journeys through different channels and see how they interact with your brand across the entire conversion process. But it’s another thing entirely to track their social media behavior and see what influences them most when they decide who to buy from.
By knowing which factors influence your audience, you can optimize your campaigns to drive more conversions by tailoring content to appeal to those factors. The more personalized your ads are, the more likely they will resonate with potential customers who are already familiar with your brand.
Social media attribution models also provide insight into brand equity because it allows marketers to measure how positively their audience perceives their brand overall—and how much that perception has changed over time due to specific campaigns or events (as well as positive or negative word-of-mouth).
What are the different types of attribution models?
Social media marketing is a powerful way to reach your audience and drive sales. But, if it’s not done right, it can be an expensive waste of time. That’s why you must understand the different types of attribution models in social media marketing and how they work.
Let’s take a look at six types of attribution models and figure which works best for your brand:
This model attributes credit to the first touchpoint where a customer interacts with your brand. This could be an email, ad, or social media post that was seen by a prospect before they made a purchase.
For example, if a customer first sees your brand through a Facebook ad and then later buys from you on Amazon, Facebook is attributed with the sale because they were the first platform to interact with that customer.
This attribution model is not perfect because it doesn’t consider other factors like consumer behavior or competitive products in play at any given time. Moreover, this model does not fit B2B organizations as there are a lot of touchpoints before a lead converts. But it’s useful for estimating how well an individual campaign or ad set has performed relative to its competitors over time!
Pros
Easy to set up and track
There’s not a lot of analysis or calculation involved
The focus is more on the demand distribution rather than weight distribution
Cons
This model has a higher margin for errors
Emphasis is only on the beginning of the customer journey
Difficult to optimize the marketing process since you don’t know what motivated the customer to buy
Many touchpoints that led to conversions aren’t credited even though they make an impact
When to use this model?
This model measures the effectiveness of top-of-the-funnel marketing campaigns and nothing apart from that. But, it does help you optimize your lead generation process.
2. Last-Touch attribution model
Unlike the first-touch attribution model, the last-touch attribution model measures where the lead first came in contact with your business. This model attributes the sale to the latest channel used by the customer before they made their purchase decision.
Even Google Analytics employs the last-touch attribution model as the default attribution model. It ignores what came before the conversion and gives credit to what caused the lead to convert.
This is an easy model because it doesn’t require much data collection or analysis; however, it can lead to inaccurate results if a customer uses multiple channels before making a purchase decision.
For example, if a customer uses Facebook Ads and then purchases on Amazon after reading about your product there instead of directly from you on Facebook itself, this model would still attribute credit for the sale back toward Facebook even though Amazon was responsible for converting them into paying customers!
Pros
Directly showcases which channel led a customer to convert
Suitable for those who prefer conversion-based metrics
Easy to use and no learning curve present
Cons
Discards everything else that led to the conversion
Difficult to analyze every aspect of your funnel like the effectiveness of the ads, and campaigns.
Like the first-touch model, the last-touch model doesn’t give the entire picture of the process
When Should You Use This Model?
You should use it only if you are concerned with conversion rates for your campaign. Plus, it lets you know which part of your messaging works best. So whether it’s the copy on your landing pages or your email newsletters, this model will help determine it.
3. Linear attribution model
The linear model attributes equal importance to all the touchpoints for lead conversion. It starts from the first touchpoint, then to the lead creation, opportunity creation, and customer closing.
Usually, marketing attribution cannot figure out which touchpoints are the most important in a customer’s conversion journey. In the case of the linear attribution model, the answer is to treat all touchpoints equally.
Pros
Comparatively better than the first-touch and last-touch models
Offers a complete view of the entire customer conversion journey
Treats every touchpoint equally
Easy to set up and compare results from other data models
Cons
Optimization of touchpoints is impossible as they all can’t be equally important
No clarity on which touchpoint converted a customer when you give equal credit
When Should You Use This Model?
This model works best when you have a small team and your marketing process involves a long sales cycle. It’s when you know which touchpoints convert a lead without putting a lot of effort. This model fills gaps caused by the first- and last-touch attribution models.
4. Time-Decay Attribution Model
The time-decay attribution model is more concerned with the touchpoints closer to the step when the conversion occurred than the top of the funnel. Like the linear attribution model, this multi-touch model gives credit to the middle and bottom of the funnel. However, time-decay treats them with more significance as they’re the points that led to the conversion.
This attribution model isn’t perfect for measuring the effectiveness of social media campaigns. For example, it doesn’t consider that your lead might’ve interacted with your ad and signed up for your demo and later bought the product because of a link in your blog post. Will this blog post receive more credit than the ad? Highly unlikely.
Pros
Touchpoints closer to the point of conversion gain the most credit
This model optimizes touchpoints that directly converted the lead
Cons
It devalues the first touchpoint
Ignores fact that the first touchpoint played an important role in the conversion
When Should You Use This Model?
If your business has a long sales cycle, the time-decay model is for you. With this model, you can ignore the top of the funnel and focus on the latter stages that led to a conversion. It’ll help you optimize lead generation.
5. U-Shaped Attribution Model
The U-Shaped Attribution Model is a model that focuses on the lifetime value of an account or customer. It considers all of the touchpoints that led to an individual becoming a customer, including social media platforms, organic search results, and paid search results.
The U-shaped (position-based) attribution model credits three main touchpoints. 40% credit to the first and last touchpoint and 20% credit to the middle touchpoint. This weight modeling first emphasizes the first point where the leads come in contact with your business. After that the last touchpoint at which the lead converts. However, unlike the other models, everything else in the middle gets counted in.
Both the first and the last touchpoints are important in marketing. But, do not ignore the middle touchpoints. The middle touchpoints might be having an impact that is necessary for the lead to convert.
Pros
The U-shaped model considers both first and last touchpoints important
This model even optimizes the first point of interaction of a lead with the business
Cons
Sometimes the first can be more important than the last touchpoint. Do analysis in this case
When Should You Use This Model?
This model is not for businesses with long sales cycles or campaigns aimed at lead nurturing. It works more when a lead engages with your content and immediately decides to buy your product.
6. Algorithmic Attribution Model
This model is one of the most accurate ways to measure a user’s journey from lead generation to conversion. It’s an incredibly accurate method for measuring the impact of your marketing efforts on your conversions and sales.
Here’s how it works: You identify all of the touchpoints that drive traffic to your website or landing page, then assign a weight to each one. You do this based on your own data and performance.
For example, if you see that your email marketing drives a lot of traffic and conversions, then you might give it a higher weight than Facebook or Twitter. This takes into account what’s working for your brand and gives you an accurate picture of how much revenue is coming from each channel.
The only downside is that it can be hard to set up this model without the help of someone who understands data analytics well—like a data analyst or marketer with advanced knowledge of statistics and regression analysis techniques.
Pros
Touchpoints that matter most to your business receive credits
Provides the most accurate data from the consumer journey
Cons
Complex process and involves a lot of calculations
Not understood by everyone, requires skills of a data analyst and advanced tools
Smaller businesses cannot afford to use is model because of the expertise needed
When Should You Use This Model?
This model is not for businesses that have a short or simple sales cycle. On the other hand, use this model when you have a complicated sales process that involves marketing qualified lead (MQL) and sales qualified lead (SQL) reporting. This model allows you to do an in-depth study of each stage of the funnel.
How to set up an attribution model for social media marketing?
If you have multiple channels and lots of traffic coming from different sources (like paid ads and organic searches), setting up an attribution model can be a huge challenge.
If that sounds like your situation, we’re here to help! Here are some tips for setting up an attribution model:
1. Decide on your social media goals
Before you even think about setting up an attribution model for your social media campaigns, you need to decide what those campaigns are trying to achieve. Are you trying to build brand awareness? Are you trying to drive sales? Are you trying to get users to take action on one specific site or app?
The answer will determine the metrics by which you measure success. If your goal is brand awareness, then measuring engagement might be more important than sales or other actions. If your goal is sales, then measuring sales might be more important than engagement or other actions.
2. Set up UTM tagging
UTM tagging is essential if you want to track the impact of your social media efforts. A UTM (Urchin Tracking Modules) tag lets you track how users found your content—and help you see how specific campaigns perform against one another so that you can more effectively target audiences in the future.
You can even find the type of traffic that comes to your page and whether it’s related to a particular campaign. When there’s UTM tagging in social media, you receive insights like which platforms are good instead of the social media channel as a whole.
3. Shorten links or vanity URLs
Shorten links or vanity URLs with Bitly or Google URL Shortener. This will make it easier for you to track which links are clicked on by users.
Bitly is a link management platform that shortens URL links into a unique one. When you have subscribed to their paid plan, you even get to add a branded one. So, whenever you shorten any of your URL links it can have your brand name in it. Radarr also integrates with Bitly so that all your links are automatically shortened.
4. Use surveys
Surveys are a great way to collect information about what people are clicking on as they browse through your website and what they think about what they see.
For every new customer who seeks out your brand, include a survey question about how they heard about you. The responses will at least hint at the marketing efforts that are working—and following that you can check the type of attribution model that’s been working for you the best.
4. Make use of a social media analytics tool
As you scale the number of campaigns you run on social media channels, it will become more and more important to keep a close watch on your attribution models and key performance indicators, alongside the conversations your content generates.
This is where we recommend having a social media analytics tool in your strategy to foolproof your attribution model. Tools like Radarr help you capture campaign performance in real-time, across all channels, enabling easy and proactive optimizations for better ROI from every campaign.
Wrapping up
The social media space is a constantly-evolving one, and to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape, you need to be able to adapt your strategy accordingly.
One of the most important things you can do is identify what attribution model works best for your brand. This will help you track the success of different social media campaigns and understand which ones result in actual sales.
If you’re looking to improve your social media marketing strategy, you need a tool to see what works and what doesn’t, who your audience is and what kind of content they prefer. This will help you tailor your content to the people who will be most interested in seeing it, ultimately leading to more conversions. In addition, having a social media analytics tool like Radarr comes in handy to understand your audience better and how they choose to interact with you, enabling better attribution.
Want to have a better understanding of your social media analytics?
Just like diamonds are said to be a girl’s best friend, we call marketing analytics a marketer’s best friend.
In times when the competition across all digital platforms, social media, blogs, forums and communities, is increasing by the day, the only way for marketers to keep their efforts streamlined and directed is by making friends with numbers to remove the guesswork out of their strategies.
Let’s tell you all about marketing analytics and why you can’t do without it in this post.
What is marketing analytics?
Marketing analytics refers to the study of gathering data from the various marketing campaigns you’re running, in order to identify patterns in your data. From how your target audience interacts with the campaigns, what contributes to conversions, regional preferences, creative preferences, purchase behavior, to insights that further define your ideal customer persona, marketing analytics includes deep-diving into it all.
The process of using marketing analytics employs statistics, predictive modeling and leveraging machine learning to be able to reveal actionable insights. To be able to market on social media or digital platforms in general, analytics is critical to understanding and predicting target audience behavior to optimize campaign experiences to drive better conversions and sales.
What is the goal of marketing analytics?
Marketing analytics enables organizations to leverage data for better planning, managing and evaluating efforts across multiple marketing and sales channels.
The goal of marketing analytics is to use patterns and findings from consolidated data to optimize future campaigns based on what is proven to work – both in terms of engagement and conversions.
Simply put, the goals of marketing analytics can be stated as the following:
Gauge how well marketing efforts are performing and measure the effectiveness of marketing activity
Determine what you can do differently to get better results across all marketing channels and platforms
The objective of marketing analytics hence can be stated as helping organizations improve the ROI from their marketing and advertising efforts.
Why is marketing analytics important?
Think about the number of channels and platforms your audience is present as well as active on for different purposes. As a business, you’re obviously inclined towards using all the channels possible to meet your potential customers where they are. But this has resulted in organizations spreading their efforts too thin, not being able to attribute success to any one channel or leverage all the opportunities it presents to them.
Marketing analytics is more than mere performance metrics. It is clear indicative of what is working for your business, what isn’t and where you need to improve to grow sustainably in a highly competitive and noisy market.
Here’s taking a look at some of the reasons why marketing analytics is a must-have:
1. Helps you quantify your claims
There are a number of marketing strategies that are hard to quantify but do have a big impact on the overall business objectives and goals. Think about the last time you had to explain the importance of consistent content marketing or social media marketing – especially when it’s about organic marketing; attribution becomes tough and you’re usually struggling to quantify what works and what doesn’t.
With the help of marketing analytics, you’re actually able to measure how each channel contributes to a customer’s buying journey with your brand. Apart from the performance of each campaign, you’re also able to identify ‘why’ a particular campaign gave a better ROI than the previous ones, to use the actionables as insights for future planning.
2. Turn data into actionable insights
Every social media platform comes with its own analytics and reporting dashboard. In addition to that, any marketing tool you make use of, offers its own set of analytics as well to help you measure a campaign’s performance. If you take into account every digital asset you own – right from your website to social media pages, landing pages, marketing tools, CRMs and more, the amount of data available to you is non-quantifiable, and ever-increasing.
According to a survey by Harvard Business Review, most of this data actually ends up remaining stored in individual servers. The few companies that do make use of this data are able to do so only in silos, treating each tool or platform as their source of truth, leading to misinterpretation of the insights that impact the overall marketing performance.
Marketing analytics is focused on collating data from different sources into one platform to ensure it offers a comprehensive view of all the insights. While this includes performance metrics of the various channels being used, marketing analytics also leverages machine learning and predictive modeling to club, categorize, sift through and derive insights from the scattered data. This gives you a complete picture of your marketing performance, letting you make better data-driven decisions.
3. Benchmark your marketing strategies
Owing to its capability to derive insights from scattered data points and platforms, marketing analytics actually helps you benchmark your own strategies against one another. This helps you understand what works for your business the best in terms of achieving certain goals, and what may be better for serving other objectives.
This helps an organization plan their resources in a much strategic way. For instance, they can decide which channels to use to fuel their top of the funnel, which serve better for the middle of the funnel and which get the best of conversions to keep the bottom of the funnel alive!
4. Stay aligned with objectives and goals
Marketing analytics gives you a comprehensive view of your marketing and advertising campaign performance. But more importantly, it makes it easier to measure how each strategy, channel and platform is adding to your eventual goal with the help of consolidated data and benchmarking.
This also helps align various marketing teams on the goals, to focus on driving one outcome together. For example, aligning the goals of your advertising team with that of your content marketing team can help get better results from your PPC campaigns.
5. Keep your resources well-optimized
Studies have found that the cost of acquisition has increased by 60% for most industries through digital channels. This not only indicates a higher competition for consumer attention, but is also nudging businesses to invest more heavily into digital marketing efforts – both organic and paid.
Marketing analytics is able to attribute marketing channels and platforms more accurately, giving you a comprehensive view of how it adds value to your overall business goals, and its ROI. This helps businesses streamline the resources required to keep that channel running – be it in terms of the team they need to have in place, or simply the budgets they need to set aside for running advertising campaigns.
How to use marketing analytics?
Marketing analytics can see a wide use case across various functions for a business. But let’s look at the ones that drive maximum impact for them:
1. Add more depth to ideal customer personas and create customer segments
Marketing analytics helps you uncover more information about your target audience through their engagement, interaction and purchase behavior. This helps brands go beyond the basic demographics such as age, gender, location and interests, to look into more concrete parameters such as likes, dislikes, purchase motivations, preferred brands and similar. This helps categorize customers into detailed customer segments that can fuel your marketing campaigns.
2. Understand consumer buyer journeys better
Every consumer is different and may take a different route to converting on your marketing or advertising campaigns. Marketing analytics sheds light on how different audience segments in your target market respond to communication, and how they move along the sales funnel. Considering how important it is to personalize buyer journeys, this insight from marketing analytics can make or break your campaign.
3. Leverage attribution to create optimized experiences
Marketing analytics helps businesses see the value each channel or platform brings to a buyer’s journey at different stages. With clear visibility on the path a potential customer takes from awareness to conversion, brands can create optimized experiences to reduce drop-offs; be it in terms of the value proposition they present or the marketing communication they use to keep interested buyers engaged.
4. Create omnichannel experiences for higher engagement and conversions
Studies have found that businesses using omnichannel marketing strategies see 27% higher engagement from their target audience, leading to higher conversions on campaigns. With the help of the right attribution and better segmentation, brands can create tailored marketing campaigns for every stage of the buyer journey for better omnichannel experiences.
This also helps them improve their brand recall leveraging the multiple channels their target audience makes use of on a day to day basis.
5. Identify market opportunities and loopholes
Apart from what’s working for your business growth and what doesn’t add value to your goals and objectives, marketing analytics can also help you uncover new market opportunities and predict pitfalls that may have a negative impact on the business. This is especially important for businesses that want to scale globally, but require concrete data to reach newer markets and audience segments.
In addition to the above, organizations can leverage marketing analytics to identify market trends, consumer preferences, offer better customer support and service, analyze competition better and predict future demand.
Despite the various benefits and use cases of marketing analytics, many organizations are slow to pick up. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest marketing analytics challenges and how you can tackle them head on.
What are the most common marketing analytics challenges?
1. Data quantity
Digitization and big data has led to an increase in the amount of information available to businesses. From social data to demographic and behavioral data, marketers have access to all too much data and are often found grappling when it comes to collating the right metrics. They either end up using the wrong data sets or not being able to tap into as much information that helps them define their target audience better.
2. Data quality
Apart from having access to all too much data, there is also the problem of data quality. According to Forrester, 21% of business budgets have been wasted due to low data quality. Marketers and organizations often struggle to identify or define the right data sources to fuel their marketing and advertising campaigns.
3. Lack of data scientists
Even if organizations figure out the right data quality and quantity, there is a lack of data scientists. These are professionals that are able to read into the data collected and correlate various data sets to derive insights and actionables that can fuel business growth. The lack of data scientists equals not being able to understand data.
4. Attribution models
Most organizations struggle to find the right attribution model for their target market. Since most are making use of multiple channels to reach out to their audience, there is often a struggle in understanding which channel or platform actually adds value towards the business goals and objectives.
5. Correlating data
Most marketers are reading data in silos from different channels, platforms and tools. This results in segmented data sets that hold value in silos but are hard to correlate or tie together for a comprehensive view. The lack of consolidated data is one of the biggest marketing analytics challenges.
How to leverage marketing analytics?
The only way for businesses to tackle the challenges of marketing analytics and make the most of the framework it offers is to leverage business intelligence tools like Radarr.
Radarr is a powerful social listening, monitoring and analytics tool that helps businesses tune into online conversations across the globe, depending on the topics they want to listen to. The tool further adds a layer of audience intelligence on top of social data to equip businesses with concrete information about their market, visualizing information in easy to understand graphs that don’t require data scientists to read.
When you talk about marketing or even establishing a name in the market, the very first thing that experts recommend is defining your target audience. Without knowing who you’re speaking to through the content or the campaigns you create, you’re broadcasting messages into the entire universe hoping to drive engagement and conversions through them.
That’s as good as not targeting anyone at all.
With a plethora of digital platforms and the data they collect, businesses have easy access to information. The individual insights and reporting dashboard provide them with concrete information on their target audience. But when it comes to creating a unified dashboard with audience insights, marketers and organizations lack the effort to do so and the data continues to remain and be read in silos.
This results in incomplete audience insights, leading to half-cooked target segments and definitions of ideal customer personas.
And that’s exactly where the importance of audience intelligence comes in.
What is audience intelligence?
Audience intelligence refers to the practice of collating key and valuable insights about audiences through data from various platforms and sources. This allows you to form a more holistic viewpoint of your target audience and consumer base, enabling you to make better-informed and defined growth strategies based on real-time data.
What does audience intelligence include?
Audience intelligence essentially means looking into your target audience based on their demographics, behavior and other indicators of interaction or interest in what your brand/ business has to offer. It typically answers the following questions:
What are the common attributes of your consumer base?
Where is your target audience the most active on social media?
Who are the influencers and KOLs that capture your audience’s attention?
What type of news and publications does your audience listen to?
What geolocations is your audience located in?
What values, likes, preferences does your audience exhibit?
What does your audience feel about ongoing and emerging trends relevant to you?
What are the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your audience?
What does your target audience feel about topics relevant to you?
What are the expectations your audience keeps from you?
Simply put, audience intelligence sheds light on extremely specific attributes of your target audience and consumers. Attributes that impact what they perceive your brand as, how they choose to interact and engage with you, and what makes them actively purchase from you or a competitor.
If you ask us, these are the insights you need to reach your audience at the right time, on the right channel and with the right message.
What is the difference between audience intelligence and social listening?
Social listening refers to proactively monitoring online conversations across social media platforms and digital channels to identify what your target audience is talking about your brand, or topics that are relevant to you. The process is more real-time in nature, enabling companies to respond proactively to their audience expectations and the engagement they generate on campaigns.
On the flip side, audience intelligence is more about pulling in data from the same sources and platforms as that of social listening, bringing it together into one dashboard and creating audience insights out of the same. Instead of real-time, the data displayed here is typically within a defined time range to be able to create audience segments or identify common demographics and characteristics.
Can social listening and audience intelligence be used together?
The answer is YES.
With social listening tools like Radarr, you can actually get access to audience intelligence as well. The tool not just keeps track of all the activity happening around you, but also takes out actionable insights and information from it. This typically includes identifiers of the various segments of your target audience, their sentiments, expectations, the accounts they tend to engage with the most and what can influence their decisions in your favor.
Simply put, it helps you stay up-to-date with what’s happening online, keep up with ongoing conversations relevant to you and also actively identify target segments that add the most value to your business goals and objectives.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for social listening, monitoring and audience intelligence, book a demo of Radarr today.
What are the use cases of audience intelligence?
Audience intelligence finds its use across all business functions – be it marketing, sales, support, branding, competitive positioning or even the overall business strategy. Brands using Radarr are continually finding new ways to use the audience intelligence provided to fuel their business growth and optimize their resources on-the-go. Let’s look into some of the most valuable use cases of audience intelligence:
1. Target audience identification
First things first, it’s becoming increasingly important for brands to identify their target audience. This especially holds true if you sell niche products and services that are tailored to suit specific interests.
Audience intelligence helps uncover valuable insights about an audience, giving businesses the ‘exact’ information they need to reach out to and engage them through campaigns. It even helps in narrowing down the audience based on parameters that are closer to or have a direct impact on business conversions.
2. Audience segmentation
Audience intelligence by default focuses on categorizing people with common traits, demographics and behavior into smaller groups. This helps brands identify the different segments in their target audience and every segment’s individual needs that may impact the performance of their campaigns.
This has enabled brands to create unique value propositions for different segments based on what appeals the most to them, resulting in higher ROI from both organic and paid campaigns.
With the need for personalization increasing by the day, it is becoming important for brands to not just look into basic demographics to segment their audience, but also social demographics – these are parameters that lie beyond age, gender, location, etc to look into the psychographics that connect people within every segment, and one segment to another, to create a culturally relevant picture of who you’re targeting.
This helps gain a deeper understanding of what values your audience segments are driven by, what influences their decisions the most and how you can create positive stimuli through your campaigns to engage them.
Consumers trust people more than what the brands promise to them. That’s why even leading brands are now working with influencers to reach out to their target audiences in authentic and unique ways of presenting their value proposition.
With the help of audience intelligence, you can actually segment out your target audience, identify who they tend to look up to for inspiration, aspiration or have an affinity for. This helps you collaborate with different influencers in different ways to speak to their interests more specifically instead of a generic campaign that speaks to all.
For example, if you’re someone that sells to new mothers as well working professionals, you may actually tap into some common influencers like new mothers pursuing their passion and sharing their stories. Or you may want segregate campaigns of each to speak individually to each segment through different influencers to tap into a more tailored storyline.
5. PR and media planning
Similar to influencer identification, audience intelligence can also help you uncover the varied interests and source of information for different segments. You can then correlate those interests with what your brand has to offer and predict the overall impact it has on your business goals and objectives, leading to better resource allocation – both in terms of media budgets and efforts towards advertising, creating and distributing content.
Your PR and media planning has a big impact on how your target audience perceives your brand. Imagine getting a mention in a magazine that may have a vast subscriber base, but is more known for circulating negative news – this may backfire for some campaigns like promotions or cause marketing.
All in all, if you ask us, social listening and audience intelligence is what can help you run better marketing and advertising campaigns. These are the insights you need to strike a chord with your target audience, stand out from the noise and ensure you’re headed in the right direction in times when one conversation can trigger a million others, impacting how a brand is perceived across the globe.
Do you really need audience intelligence?
Consumer expectations, needs and digital trends are changing all too rapidly. From purchase preferences that would change in months or even years, you see them evolve overnight owing to various reasons – especially global exposure through digital platforms.
So if you ask us, just keeping up with what your audience is talking about, is no longer enough. You need to understand the various characteristics that drive their behavior or play in as purchase motivations, and segment them to narrow down to individual traits.
Surveys have found that brands using audience intelligence have been able to improve their ROI on marketing campaigns and ROAS on advertising efforts by multifolds.
Want to see how you can bring siloed audience insights from channels like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and others onto one dashboard to identify clear segments for better targeting?
Frequently asked questions about audience intelligence
1. What are audience analytics?
Audience analytics is another name for audience intelligence. It is a system that allows brands to gain a deeper understanding of their current and potential customers by uncovering insights into their demographics, social behavior, purchasing habits and other parameters. This enables crans to create better marketing strategies and improve customer experiences across the entire lifecycle.
2. How do you analyze your audience?
To analyze your audience, you need to start with a basic framework that describes a set of people who are likely to find your products/ services valuable. Post which, it looks into deep diving into the segments day-to-day behavior including social media channels they use, type of content they engage with, brands they buy from and even psychographic data. You can do this with the help of social listening tools like Radarr that pull insights from thousands of digital sources.
3. What is audience marketing?
Audience marketing refers to the process of aligning your marketing messages and content with the specific needs of your target audience and the various segments that form it. An audience-first approach to marketing focuses on the consumer more than the brand itself, nudging the business to focus on experiences more than selling. This is possible only with the help of audience intelligence.
