Have you ever looked at Apple and wondered just how do they nail every product launch marketing strategy?
Or how do they keep up with the ever-increasing competition in their market?
This article is for you.
Apple Inc. is not just a world-renowned name in innovation and breakthrough in the consumer electronics and computer industry, but is also known to be one of the greatest marketers of all time.
Despite their exponential growth and market capture, Apple continues to reign the domain with its exceptional marketing strategies – one product after another.
Let’s take a look at why they are still winning on social media!
Lessons on marketing from Apple Inc.
1. Keep it simple and straightforward
In a world that’s getting noisier by the day, Apple has always focused on creating content and marketing campaigns that are simple and distraction-free.
If you take a look at any of their social media campaigns or posts, you as their target audience know exactly what they’re talking about. There is no ambiguity when it comes to what Apple wants you to perceive of their brand, their products or the next steps they’d like you to take – all without sounding too salesy or pushy.
Here’s a simple example of a campaign they ran to promote their new iPhone’s macro camera feature:
You will never find Apple fighting the pricing battles – no matter how much competition they have in the market as of today.
The one thing they do play on, is their value proposition.
From day one, Apple has been focused on conveying its value proposition more than price comparisons.
In an industry that puts price first, they have been focused on keeping what’s unique about their products, the little details that make them a better choice without having to say so, always first.
Take a look at their website homepage banners for instance; instead of the pricing, they focus on the visual aspect of the product and promote the tag line that defines the little detail that makes an iPad better than the tablets available.
3. Know your audience and speak their language
Apple products are built by those we call ‘tech geniuses’.
Now typically, that might translate into describing products with words that show they’re on top of the technology game.
But the truth is, no matter where you choose to engage with the brand, you will always see them speaking a language that is common to all.
They have a well-defined target audience and have created various consumer segments over a period of time, based on product performance and the features they have to offer.
For instance, for those who are looking at purchasing a good phone, that is durable and yet easy to use, their language matches the same:
Notice how they have ditched the typical ‘gorilla glass’ and similar phrases that other brands tend to use, and opted for simple ‘exceptional durability’.
On the other hand, they do know that they have an increasing consumer segment of professional photographers and videographers. To cater to their interests, they do use a few industry trends and jargons to describe what their product is capable of:
But at the same time, they do keep it simple on social media so that other segments can also make the most of the feature by creating simple and actionable content:
4. Leverage storytelling in marketing
If you have ever attended an Apple event – physically or virtually, you know they never just come on stage and announce a new product.
They have a gradual build up, sharing insights from what they have learned so far, stories from their customers and what their team has been researching on.
Apple is known as one of the brands that has mastered the art of storytelling.
According to a research by Headstream, if people love a brand story, they become 55% more likely to buy the product in the future. The same research also found that about 44% of these people would proactively share the story and around 15% of them will buy the product immediately.
So now you know why year after year, Apple has only been improving its storytelling skills, keeping its customers at the center of it all.
Studies have shown that customers who have an emotional connection with a brand, have a 306% higher lifetime value. They are also more likely to recommend the brand at a whopping 71% rate, instead of the average 45% that most businesses see.
Think about the last time you spoke to a friend using an Apple device, seeking a recommendation for a new phone. They don’t skip a beat before telling you all about the ‘positive experience’ that Apple devices can offer.
Apple has always focused on creating campaigns that tap into consumer emotions – from product launch to post-launch strategies and customer engagement.
Whenever they create a campaign, you don’t see them talking about their features or technical aspects. They sell their products by making them aspirational to own, associating consumer feelings with owning an Apple device.
Here’s an example of their campaign around the Apple pencil and iPad Air:
Here’s how consumer emotions impact marketing campaigns and hence the overall ROI that brands generate from every strategy that they put in place – organic or paid:
6. Strategic partnerships and collaborations with creators/ influencers
Right from the point when they’re about to launch a new product to after, Apple has always been focused on letting their customers speak for them.
This has helped them use social proof at scale in the marketing strategies – but they do so in a smart way too.
They introduce their products to a wider audience by establishing strategic partnerships and collaborations with creators/ influencers across different industries. This helps them position their product use in different ways, reaching a much wider audience with a more authentic messaging.
For example, their campaign around the Black History Month. They didn’t just bring forward stories and experiences in a series of posts from influential black people, but shot the pictures and videos with their products – call it a subtle, yet smart plug.
Positive emotions and experiences with Apple products has led to the brand establishing a full-fledged community of loyal customers and brand advocates.
What started out as a simple way to share pictures people shot on their iPhones using the hashtag #Shotoniphone, slowly turned into a movement of sorts. It has helped people not just share their experiences with the product, but also connect with one another.
Instagram alone has these many posts (and increasing) using the hashtag:
Instead of just creating a branded hashtag for such massive use, Apple has also strategically made user-generated content a part of its marketing strategy.
Remember how we said they let their customers do the marketing and selling for them?
If you take a look at their Instagram feed, you will see a lot of featured content from their customers – mind you, these are not collaborations.
Studies have found that brands using user generated content see a 28% higher customer engagement rate than those who don’t.
Now considering the scale at which Apple uses user generated content, you can see why people are so driven towards the brand and the content they create – take a look at their average likes, comments and shares – all without promoting their posts.
9. Keep your focus on the right channel
Over time, Apple has identified that the primary channels for reaching their target audience include Instagram and YouTube.
So contrary to the others in the same industry, the brand keeps their efforts extremely streamlined towards the channels that work for them.
Although they do have a presence – or profiles – on other channels like Twitter and Facebook, you can see that they do not use them.
This is a lesson for marketers to focus on channels where your target audience is present, instead of spreading ourselves too thin.
10. Design a good customer experience
Another thing that all Apple customers and ‘fanatics’ vouch for, is the experience that Apple offers.
From positive comments to negative experiences, Apple is one brand that stays on top of the game to deliver exceptional customer support and service.
Using social listening and social monitoring, Apple has all grounds covered to keep a close watch on what their target market has to say about the brand as well as its products. This has helped them smartly mitigate negative PR, manage crises and rumors better, and turn them into positive campaigns.
11. Addressing consumer concerns
A lot of first-time Apple device buyers or want to be owners, tend to consider the ‘shift’ as a difficult task to complete.
For years, competitors have been cashing in on the fact that Apple devices require a certain amount of ‘set up’ and how their products are better for ‘fast use’.
Picking up on the trend, Apple has finally put the rumors and false information to rest with a clear marketing campaign presented on their website – Switch to iPhone.
On this page, they do not speak negatively about their competing products. Instead, they use the space to educate their audience about how they can move to Apple devices ‘easily’. They have used a mix of visuals and textual instructions to guide buyers, making the process look less overwhelming.
Conclusion
Come to think of it, Apple actually has the most straightforward marketing campaigns for its products.
They don’t feel the need to catch up with ongoing trends, but they keep their focus on the experience that their customers have with their wide range of products.
The brand is also known to keep a close watch on their competitors, that often try to take a stab at their features, and battle it out with them using their simplistic approach to marketing – none of their campaigns have ever been too pushy or aggressive in nature, letting them take a more ‘aspirational brand’ stand in a competitive market.
Ready to create campaigns that your target audience really responds to?
The only list of TikTok marketing tools you need for better marketing and advertising.
TikTok has disrupted the traditional audio and video marketing industry. The power of its global audience base cannot be underestimated now. TikTok once used to be a place where you’d find procrastinating teenagers – but not anymore.
Let’s put some numbers into context to understand how TikTok is becoming one of the biggest online marketing channels.
In Q1 2020, this application set a record of the maximum number of downloads in a single quarter, i.e., 315 million installations. It has more than one billion active users across the globe, which, by the way, takes it ahead of LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat. Guaranteeing so many potential eyeballs, TikTok is a happening spot for businesses to market themselves.
When millions of potential customers are involved, you can’t base your marketing game on guesses. You need to be informed about all the marketing decisions and strategies. Moreover, being successful on this platform demands consistency. You also need to keep up with the trends to attract new audiences.
Now doing it all manually is quite challenging. But fortunately, there are some tools out there to help you manage the TikTok presence of your business. They can help you analyze your audience, your marketing strategies, create competitive content, and much more. Without further ado, let’s jump into it.
TikTok marketing tools you absolutely need
The tools that we have mentioned below make things convenient for marketing teams or even individual marketers. These tools can help you grow your following, reach, and engagement without asking for a lot of time. Here’s all that you need:
Radarr
Before you even start investing your time in TikTok marketing, you have to ensure that your target audience is present there in huge numbers. So the first step for marketing on TikTok or any social media platform is to invest in social listening.
When you invest in TikTok listening, you get to know more about your audience, what they like, what they despise, why they are on the platform and a lot more details. You can identify your competitors and non-competitors in the same domain and pick some tricks from their strategies.
Radarr is a social listening tool that helps you monitor TikTok accounts and your audience activities, which you can’t do manually. This tool is powered by artificial intelligence enabling you to tune into conversations related to your business and industry. Radarr also ensures that you get to identify the active trends to capture more attention. It doesn’t only inform you about ongoing trends, but also the trends that are in their trough phase and moving towards a peak.
With Radarr, you can keep a tab on users who are mentioning your competitors and form a strategy to bring them closer to you. Moreover, on a platform like TikTok, influencer marketing can generate the best output. This social listening tool can also help you in finding the right set of influencers for you. Radarr, on its own, has the potential to take your TikTok marketing game to the next level.
Upfluence
With their extensive database of 4+ million TikTok users, Upfluence has simplified the influencer marketing process. You don’t have to reach out to someone who’s a complete stranger to your brand. Instead, you can find someone who’s your existing customer or subscriber. These existing customers can even turn into long-term brand ambassadors for your business.
The TikTok influencers that it helps you find always align with your target audience and campaign goals. Upfluence also provides all-in-one campaign management, enabling you to create campaign briefs, contact Youtubers at scale, and set up the appropriate budget. It allows you to run multiple campaigns at once and bring collaborators to improve productivity.
It provides you with individual tracking links so that it’s easy to analyze which influencer brings the maximum number of views to your website or any other post. You can access and download a clear overview of metrics like total clicks, views, and CTR calculations. Moreover, it has data for you calculated ROI, total media value earned, impressions, audience reached, and the summary of all media engagements. The stats provided by Upfluence are real-time, making the tool more effective.
TikTok Money Calculator
TikTok Money Calculator is a tool that allows you to calculate the estimated earnings of a TikTok account. It can be beneficial for businesses who are tapping into the influencer’s marketing campaign for the first time. They can easily calculate the potential engagement an influencer can bring and what should be the ideal price to rope them in.
Negotiation plays a major part in every influencer marketing campaign. As a business, you can’t overspend on influencers and hurt your ROI. And if you are an influencer trying to market yourself, you should have an idea about the fair value to be charged for endorsing a product or service.
It is, however, essential to know that this tool only provides users with an estimation that varies from niche, audience, location, and client’s valuation. But as everyone knows, it’s always better to have a little knowledge than none.
CapCut (Viamaker)
CapCut is a free, easy-to-use, all-in-one video editing app for TikTok. What more do you need? Previously known as Viamaker, the tool was originally created by Shenzhen Lianmeng Technology Co. Ltd. This company was acquired by Bytedance in 2018 for $300 million. Bytedance is the parent company of TikTok, so you can rest assured that this tool will go well with the video-sharing platform.
Slide and adjust– that’s how easy it is to use this app. It allows you to trim and reverse the video, change the speed and add special effects. You can select a filter that aligns well with your brand colors. CapCut also allows you to create Picture-in-Picture (PiP) effects. You’ll be able to resize, move, crop, adjust, transform, blend, and do every other thing that you want to do with your video.
You can download this app for free from Google Play Store (for androids) and App Store (for iOS).
TikTok Analytics
For its Pro accounts (similar to Instagram creators account), TikTok launched a native analytics tool in 2019. This analytics tool has all the insights related to your audience base and the performance of the content you publish. However, if you want to access this, first, you’ll have to switch to the Pro account. You can open the profile setting and go to the Manage My Account option. On the next screen, tap on Switch to Pro Account. Then proceed with selecting the category of your account. And lastly, you’ll have to confirm your identity by verifying with the OTP.
Once you switch to the Pro Account, TikTok starts recording and analyzing your engagement data. And it’ll take around seven days to gather enough data to show accurate and insightful stats. During this seven day data collection period, publish consistently. The TikTok analytics dashboard is segmented into three main sections: Profile overview, Content insights, and Follower insights.
From the overview tab, you can monitor the views on your videos, profile views, and follower count graph. Follower insights provide you with audience demographics. And in the content section, you get the in-depth analytics of your content, like the number of likes, comments, shares, playtime, average watch time, and much more.
TokUpgrade
Have you ever thought of increasing your profile views via organic engagement? If yes, then the fully-managed service of TokUpgrade is what you need. Getting started with this tool is quite easy. You just have to sign-up and choose either their regular or the pro plan. Once you are done with the registration process, you’ll have to complete the setup. For this, you’ll have to answer some of the questions of your dedicated account manager.
TokUpgrade makes way for you towards your target audience by liking and following the posts and accounts of similar interest on your behalf. You just have to be responsible for creating and publishing content consistently. It works on your profile and optimizes it consistently so that your followers increase at a brisk rate. Moreover, it also filters out the account that you don’t share a common interest with.
The advanced targeting feature of TokUpgrade allows you to target an audience based on your ideal demographics and hashtags too. You can import the list of all the accounts that you don’t want to be unfollowed and put them in the whitelist. Doing this will make the tool ignore those accounts even if they are not engaging enough.
TikLog is a comparatively new tool in the market that gained popularity because of its impressive design and valuable features. The user interface is divided into five segments: Accounts, Analytics, Tends, Hashtags, and Comparison. In the accounts tab, you can add TikTok accounts and analyze them immediately for followers, likes, views, and more data for any time period.
The Analytics section gives you deeper insights into a particular account. You can determine the type of videos that work best for you. This section also provides you with detailed stats about reactions- the number of likes, comments, and shares. You can download the complete analysis in a CSV file.
In the Trends section, you can filter out the trends based on countries or even find out based on views across the globe. You can enter a description and get the topics that can potentially become trends. The Hashtags section helps you analyze all your favorite hashtags and can generate a list of best working hashtags for you.
And lastly, the comparison tab. It allows you to compare TikTok accounts for over 30 criteria. You can determine which account performs better. This is a really valuable feature for brands that are looking for an influencer with a high-performance capacity.
AutoTokker
AutoTokker has been in this market for a long time now. Their experience and the positive reviews of the existing clients proves that this is a helpful tool for TikTok marketing. With experience, they have understood quite well that you will want to gain as much control of the marketing journey as you can, which is why they came up with a dashboard that can be easily downloaded on your PC.
What AutoTokker does is identify high-quality followers for your TikTok account. High-quality followers ensure that you are not wasting your content on people who don’t find your business relevant. You just have to select a few big accounts from your industry or niche, and AutoTokker will target them for you. They use methods to align your account with the algorithm.
This service-based tool can help you beyond engagement. You just have to sign-up, and with their top-class follow/unfollow game, they’ll make a huge difference in the number of people visiting your account. More often than not, these users will follow your account because of their natural interest in your business.
Radarr Sentiment Analysis
Knowing your audience is extremely important, as we have already discussed. And once you are aware of the trending content and your competitors’ account, it’s best to conduct a sentiment analysis too. The insights from sentiment analysis will tell you what type of content and trends create a positive sentiment in your target audience and which of those become a negative catalyst for your marketing campaigns on TikTok.
We are mentioning this tool again because not every trend and content on TikTok needs your attention. The Sentiment Analysis Tool by Radarr will categorize the TikTok trends and content into positive, negative, and neutral sections for you. With the help of this tool, you’ll be able to make better strategies to keep your target audience happy.
With this tool, you can see sentiment beyond videos and comments. This also lets you know what a person mentioning your brand feels about it. These insights can help you create better and more engaging ways for your TikTok audience.
Just like all the other platforms, your marketing strategy on TikTok should also adapt to changing audience behavior and trends. Just keeping an eye on trends won’t be enough. You should jump on these trends at the right time to make the most of them.
Your marketing strategy should always start with knowing all about your target audience, their sentiments, likes, and dislikes. Your audience decides whether your campaign will taste success or will fail miserably. Prioritize them with a social listening tool.
The data we measure today is increasing – while there’s no shortage of information to gather and review, it can be hard to prioritize which metrics are important. The very number of performance data available is enough to burden marketers who have to consolidate this avalanche of data that either isn’t highly relevant or isn’t time-sensitive. Now the question arises— which metrics should you be looking at?
The share of voice (SOV) metric is a good place to start when evaluating your social media presence because it can put into context any other metrics like impressions, reach, engagements and so on. This way you will know whether or not your brand’s voice is relevant to the search queries that people are putting in.
In this blog, we will explore what share of voice is, its importance and how to measure it.
What is share of voice?
Share of voice is a metric of market ownership that your brand enjoys compared to other brands in the industry. It gauges brand awareness, customer engagement and helps in competitor analysis to show you how your brand stacks up against others.
In its simplest terms, share of voice defines how prominent your media expenditure is in comparison to your competitors.
Today, it comprises several different aspects including mentions on social media and search engine visibility coupled with advertising. The share of voice definition now includes several parts of digital marketing that can have a huge impact on how potential customers perceive your business and what can make you truly stand out.
Calculating your share of voice is a great way to get a clear picture of how many people are aware of your brand. By taking into consideration the various places where you have marketing hype– such as social media, advertising or organic search engine indexing, you can use this data to find areas that need improvement.
For example, if you are doing well on social media channels but your share of voice is not as strong when it comes to organic traffic, it may mean that you need a stronger content marketing strategy, or it could just be that you need more relevant messaging to better connect with search users.
Maintaining a high share of voice is beneficial in terms of having a higher market share and generating more revenue.
Marketers describe this relationship as coming from the fact that if you are dominating conversations online, customers and potential customers will naturally have a tendency to listen to your messages more and place their trust in your brand.
Why do you need to measure the share of voice?
A lot of brands have trouble understanding how they compare to their rivals out there. After all, it can be a bit hard sometimes to get an accurate view of your company’s marketing performance.
You could look at your click-through rates and conversion rates, for example, but those metrics don’t really give you any context for what you’re doing right or wrong on the market. It’s not particularly useful if you haven’t got anything to measure yourself against– at least if you want some kind of context.
That’s where share of voice comes in handy.
Calculating your share of voice gives context to your performance data since it informs you about the following:
Audience insights
Share of voice metrics is created from stitched together social media understandings to align with actionable best practices. They reveal how people are responding when they talk about a certain brand or topic and how that information can ultimately be used by social media managers to determine consumer opinions, preferences and online conversations surrounding it.
With a tool like Radarr, marketing managers can gain audience insights from real-time and relevant data.
Share of voice statistics can help you see why customers are choosing your brand over your competitors.
For example, maybe your brand offers pocket-friendly products and top-notch customer service. Your brand probably also provides seamless website navigation or an online platform with more shipping options. If the people have spoken, it’s these tidbits that will allow you to learn who is winning the race by metrics that really matter.
In addition, one may be able to identify new market segments to target for their brand. For example, if you own a makeup line, there are a growing number of audience members who are looking to use makeup but would prefer a cruelty-free and vegan version of them. This is potentially a great opportunity to tap into a newer audience and create a cruelty-free, vegan product line.
Competitor research
To stand out among your competition, you have to know exactly what they’re doing. Scanning their sites and media can help you develop strategic ways to compete with them. Put this information along with other research data, into a spreadsheet that sums up important details like message mentions and other ratings.
You’ll want to find out where your brand is coming up in discussions with fans and followers, as well as how much reach other companies have over the discussion of your industry on social media. These are all fantastic ways to gauge a competitor’s strengths and weaknesses that give you more time to formulate a plan of attack.
Knowing which brand has conquered the conversations and how your share of voice stacks up against theirs will help you better your marketing plans which, in turn, will set your brand at the forefront of the discussion.
Brand management
The number of mentions your brand receives and the sentiment it evokes will help you gauge your brand’s share of voice. Use this valuable data to determine how your brand, product or service is being viewed by the audience in the marketplace and evaluate it against your competitors.
When it comes to your business, you should know the ins and outs of what makes it go. When you’re putting together a new campaign, many moving parts come together to make it all happen– but there is one cornerstone of each campaign which is keeping track of change.
By tracking the above data and noticing significant changes, you can see how the audience is reacting before a situation escalates into something uncomfortable that jeopardizes your brand reputation. Accordingly, you can tweak your strategy and prevent the brand from being negatively affected.
How do you measure the share of voice?
You can easily measure share of voice using the formula given below-
Share of voice (SOV) = Brand metrics / Total market metrics
This share of voice formula can be used across channels with slight deviations for certain metrics. For example, brand mentions in discussions are tracked for social SOV, website clicks can be used to gauge organic search SOV. It is much easier to track these metrics when you use tools that can do the work for you as opposed to spending hours doing calculations that would otherwise complicate the process.
Here are the 4 major areas you should be targeting to get a finer idea of your brand’s share of voice-
Social media
Get visible on social media. Social media is now a great way to get your brand in front of potential customers, improve brand awareness and increase your social media share of voice. This allows you to inform and sometimes get feedback from consumers that are interested in what you’re selling.
Certain social metrics enable brands to gauge their share of voice or the scale at which they’re being discussed on digital media. Metrics like the number of times a brand or product has been mentioned online and its engagement rate are both important measures of a brand or product’s share of voice.
Comparing your brand measures against those of the competition can provide valuable insights into how well (or not) you’re already doing when it comes to gaining traction on social media, thereby allowing for comparison tracking with brands over time for an accurate representation of your current position concerning various key performance indicators such as awareness, engagement and reputation management.
Pay-per-click or PPC
Your share of voice lets you know the number of times your PPC ad was shown relative to how many times it could have been shown. This is sometimes referred to as Impression Share and can be measured by Google’s AdWords program, which compares the potential number of times an ad could’ve shown up vs. the actual number of times it showed up.
The data you receive from your PPC share of voice will be a more definite barometer of the effectiveness of your ongoing campaigns. Based on this analysis, you can refine your ad budget.
Search engine optimisation or SEO
When it comes to organic search visibility, calculating share of voice comes with its nuances. It can be tough, but fortunately, there are online resources that can assist marketing managers in coming up with an accurate number.
The SEO rank tracker tool from Ahrefs can help you objectively compare your brand’s results on search engines like Google and Bing against those of competitors in your industry. To get an analysis done, simply copy the keywords relevant to your specific industry into their free SEO rank-tracker tool, then paste in the site URLs from competing companies.
Then, scroll through the “Competitors” tab to see where everyone ranks in terms of organic search.
Media and advertising
Here, share of voice basically measures the volume of press mentions across news and blog sites. This helps you to understand which publications are writing about your brand or sharing your content. It also lets you see what type of coverage they’re providing and how many articles are dedicated to your brand as opposed to your competitors so that you can shape your PR/outreach efforts accordingly.
Radarr is a great tool for media listening and can help you analyze your media SOV.
How to boost your share of voice?
Social media is a great way for any brand to influence and drive their share of voice which is the number of times people read or hear about your brand. When one actively drives SOV through social media channels, they can get immediate results which can be tracked and then adjusted as needed to ensure success.
It may take time to measure the ROI of your SEM and PR initiatives, but social media provides a lot more succinct data that’s easier to act on.
Let’s look at the top ways to boost your social share of voice–
Remain active on your social media handles
Posting once a week or even once a day simply isn’t enough if you want to make an impact. If you’re looking to grab the attention of customers and prospects, your voice needs to be loud! It’s not enough to just yell into the abyss– your brand has to act quickly, speak regularly and participate in relevant conversations happening online.
Make a social media calendar and post as often as required to actively remain a part of the conversation.
Engage with your audience
Don’t just use social media like any other content distribution channel. Rather, think of it as a place to create communities and engage with your audience. The key is to post regularly, but you must also take part in these conversations. Respond to their posts and messages – whether it’s to answer questions or respond to complaints or even support them when they need help.
Beyond that, there’s an opportunity for brands to respond positively to customers. Social media handlers can also look for opportunities to bring up the brand during a discussion in their niche; this brings attention to the company and an interested consumer may end up choosing you over another competitor who is not active.
With over 9 million followers on Twitter, Nike actively responds to customer queries, complaints and compliments.
Create valuable and shareable content
One of the most effective ways to get the word out about your brand is to create content that inspires and informs your audience. Ideally, you’ll have a mix of all three types of shareable content at any given point and time: informational content for the readers who are trying to learn about something new; inspirational content for those who need a pick-me-up; and entertaining content for readers who want to take a quick breather from their busy lives.
It can be difficult to come up with good material consistently, but if you focus on producing even one type of shareable material, your SOV will drastically improve.
Drive conversations to social media
When your customers are leaving comments across multiple channels, consider pushing them to your social media accounts. Doing this drives more engagement on your brand’s socials. This becomes even more effective for brands who have great content– like blogs or press releases that offer unique value to any given audience.
Go above and beyond
Like we stated earlier, social media isn’t the only way to up your game. Target other channels to boost your brand’s share of voice. These could include-
Guest posting blogs on bigger websites or getting influencers to post on yours
Using high-quality and long-tailed keywords that can accelerate SEO efforts
Running paid ads on social media and search engines to gain visibility
Frequently measure sentiment behind the share of voice
When analyzing your share of voice results, you should frequently measure the sentiment behind your efforts. By doing so, you can figure out the emotion and intent of your efforts in a deeper manner.
Using tools that capture the emotions will give an added dimension to your strategy and can help you optimize your approach.
Takeaway
Calculating share of voice is a complex process that goes way beyond looking at what your brand is doing in comparison to its competitors. When you segment data from various sources on your entire digital marketing plan and then collate it with competitor performance data, you get a glimpse into the current workings of your company as well as the state of the market at large.
Using this knowledge, you can inform strategic decisions related to your products and how you market them.
Also, by periodically tracking changes in your share of voice over time and comparing them with trends in other companies in your industry, you can easily see how effective those strategic decisions have been.
With over 2.91 billion monthly active users, it’s only obvious that Facebook is still an integral part of business marketing strategies. But with an increase in the number of businesses trying to leverage the platform and its ever-expanding user base, there’s also a lot of competition to tackle.
To keep up with paid and organic marketing strategies, the fast changing trends and increasing competition, you need the right set of Facebook marketing tools by your side.
Facebook marketing tools you absolutely need this year
When it comes to Facebook marketing tools, there’s a plethora of options available to digital marketers. To help you choose the best out of thousands of digital marketing tools, we’ve curated a list to get you started.
Radarr
The number of posts made on Facebook is increasing by the day and when you start to explore the conversations around topics relevant to you, you will soon realize it is too much to tap into and way too many formats to look into. From personal Facebook profiles, to groups and communities, competitor pages, the comments section and more, there’s activity everywhere.
To be able to really understand what your audience is engaging with on Facebook, the first thing you need is a Facebook social listening tool like Radarr. It collates all the conversations on and around the topic relevant to you, your brand and your competitors and brings it onto one dashboard. This makes it easy for you to identify popular topics, trends and also chime into conversations that could lead to reaching your customers.
Sentiment analysis by Radarr
Once you have identified the topics that interest your audience on Facebook, the very next step is to understand the sentiment behind them. You don’t want to go in blindfolded, creating content and campaigns around things that are a negative stimulus to the people you want thinking positively about your brand. Now you can’t understand the sentiment of every conversation or reach out to the person manually; but you can use a sentiment analysis tool.
Sentiment analysis API by Radarr is powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence to be able to pick up signs from conversations. It helps you categorize conversations and hence topics into positive, negative and neutral, letting you identify the right theme for your campaigns. This helps plan campaigns that are emotion-driven, increasing the response on the content you add to the platform.
Comment Guard
What if there was a tool that could generate leads for you from the comment section of your posts? Things would’ve been so much easier for your marketing team, right?
Comment guard is yet another astonishing tool by MobileMonkey that enables you to add new contacts to your existing list whenever they comment on your Facebook post.
Whenever you post something on Facebook – especially if it is of their interest – people comment. Most of these individuals are someone who can relate to your content or are interested in your business. So whenever a new user comments on your post, Comment Guard adds an automated reply from your side. They are then added to the contact list when they engage with your message.
Facebook Page Barometer
There are many digital marketers out there who have no idea about what’s working for their Facebook page and what’s not. Facebook Page Barometer by Agorapulse is a godsend for these marketers. This tool determines the number of fans a Facebook page has and then compares it with thousands of pages of similar industries and comparable scales.
The comparison results that you get from Facebook Page Barometer gives you insights into the last 50 posts of the page. The result shows Facebook page metrics that are not available publicly– like reach, engagement, and click-through rates. No need to worry if you are not into numbers. All the metrics are organized and simplified using color schemes for simplifying the interpretation process.
By turning on email notifications, you can receive weekly stats showing how your posts are performing on Facebook. When you have an idea regarding where your Facebook page engagement stands in comparison to your competitors, you are better equipped to make a sound Facebook marketing strategy.
Pagemodo
Pagemodo is a tool that provides you with almost everything you need for a robust presence on Facebook. It has a satisfied user base of more than 3 million professionals. After connecting to it, you can create customized Facebook tabs, run contests, design posts, design cover images for the page, and even schedule posts.
Optimizing Facebook ads and designing contact forms are some of the other features of this tool. Moving on to its design tool, it somewhat looks similar to Canva. Here Pagemodo gives you dimensions for the posts, and all you have to do is fill images and arrange them.
Designing visual posts for Facebook is no different. You just have to select the template of your choice and completely customize the content for your page. Once your design is ready, you can post it directly from within the Pagemodo tool.
Buffer
Buffer is a social media management tool that makes the process of managing and sharing social media content quite seamless across various platforms. Prominently, Buffer works as a scheduling tool. However, you can use it to post content at a time when the majority of your target audience is sitting online on a particular platform.
The Buffer button that appears on the browser after installation helps you in sharing content instantly. You can either share the link across all the social media platforms, or you can schedule the posts in the queue. Buffer can easily be integrated with Chrome, WordPress, and many other essential tools. Some of the features of Buffer are Profile management, Business Planning, Analytics and insights, Detailed social analytics, Social profile sharing, Team management, iOS and Android support, etc.
This tool is quite easy to use, so you’ll get all the above features in a structured layout which makes this tool suitable for small businesses and new entrants too. You can avail free trial or can use the free version available for individuals. It is one tool that you must have in your social media marketing toolkit.
Canva
This tool needs no introduction– the design giant, Canva, is an easy to use design platform that allows you to create designs for all your business needs. There’s no better tool available in the market to create marketing images. It offers everything from the cover image of your Facebook page, to ad images, to flyers and brochures for your marketing campaigns.
Let’s say you want to create a cover image for your page on Facebook. You can just find a template for it, which is of accurate dimension and customize it to fit your brand needs. Canva has a template for almost all your Facebook marketing needs. And because of its drag and drop editing feature, it takes very little time to create excellent designs.
There are people out there who don’t like working on templates. They can click on “create a design” and start creating from scratch. Once you start using Canva Pro, there’s no going back. You’ll be able to post your images to your social media directly from this tool.
Facebook Ads manager
As the name suggests, Facebook Ads Manager is a tool that helps you create and manage Facebook ads. Using this tool, you get access to insights about the performance of your Facebook campaigns, ad sets, and ads. This tool helps you create ad campaigns, manage multiple ads, and analyze how the ad is performing.
You won’t find the challenging task of creating ads challenging with this tool. It has a step-by-step process. You can choose the aim of the ad, the people who might be interested in it, the places you want to target, and the format in which you want your ad to appear.
You can go to Facebook Ads Manager and then click on create to get started with the ad management journey. Select Account overview to manage your assets or view your results in fully customizable columns. You can download the app for both Android and iOS devices. However, it is essential to note that not all features are available on mobile devices.
Meet Edgar
This social media management tool, MeetEdgar, is quite unique from its competitors and does all the scheduling for you. It pulls engaging posts from your content library and puts them on repeat automatically. When you use MeetEdgar, you can rest assured that your queue will be filled with your evergreen posts to be reshared.
MeetEdgar not only works with Facebook but also supports Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. This tool has prioritized mainly one feature, automated social media posting, which makes it a great choice for you if you want to put your posting on auto-pilot.
With MeetEdgar, if you run out of new content, you can sit tight and let the tool refill your queue with older posts. Some of its other useful features are: Category-based scheduling, Suggested social posts, and Social media analytics and reporting.
Post Planner
Reach and engagement are two of the most crucial pillars of Facebook marketing. And these are the aspects where Post Planner can come in handy. It is a social media management and engagement solution for businesses of all sizes, especially small and mid-sized. Other than Facebook, you can manage your Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest profiles.
Post Planner can be more beneficial for small businesses for building brand awareness on social media. Some of the features that help small businesses achieve their brand-building goals are posting calendar, top-performing posts discovery, evergreen content recycling, RSS feeds, social media streams, real-time brands mentions, and much more.
Use all these features in your Facebook marketing strategy, and you’ll be able to, as their tagline says, Triple Your Engagement in 10 Minutes a Day.
Invideo
If you have always wanted to create and use eye-catching video ads for your Facebook marketing campaigns, you need not look any further. InVideo is where your quest for a tool to help you with video ads ends. This tool helps you create thumb-stopping video ads to drive engagement to your brand.
Creating videos is perceived as a challenging task, but InVideo has made this process convenient and seamless even for beginners. They have a handcrafted library of templates where you can just drag and drop media, text, and creative elements to start your video ad making journey.
With InVideo, you can customize every element in every frame of the video and align all of it with your brand colors. InVideo is a one-stop solution for all your Facebook marketing video needs.
Adespresso
As we mentioned above too, managing Facebook is quite a challenging task. Adespresso is a third-party replacement for Facebook Ads Manager, helping you create and manage your campaigns on Facebook. It automates all the routine processes for you, making it easier to manage the ads.
You can easily analyze and optimize your Facebook ads for better performance. What’s more, you can create strict, complex, and specific rules for the execution of your strategies in the campaigns.
This tool stands out with its A/B testing feature. It helps you create hundreds and thousands of variants of Facebook ads. You can select the one that passes more metrics than others. Adespresso allows you to pinpoint your ideal client easily.
Coschedule Headline Analyser
A magnetic heading is something that keeps the reader hooked to the caption and content of your Facebook post. It is the point from where you enter the mind of readers, which is why it is also a determining factor conversion rate. There’s a stat by CopyBlogger that says only 20% of the audience reads the entire content, and the majority decides the worth of the content through its headings only.
The CoSchedule Headline Analyzer has understood how essential headlines are and why you need to ace them to perfection. Using it is quite simple. Just open the tool and paste the heading you want to analyze. Once you have pasted it, the analyzer will do its job and suggest the right words to use. Moreover, you get to know how you can optimize the length of the title and make it engaging for the audience. As far as optimization is concerned, CoSchedule ensures that your headline aligns well with the sentiments of your customers, word choices, word count, clarity, and much more.
If these wonderful insights were not enough for you, CoSchedule has more to offer with its pricing. All you have to do is sign up, and you can use it for free. All your analyzed data is saved in their cloud database, which helps you understand how you have evolved with time when it comes to writing hooking headlines for your Facebook content and captions.
ShortStack is a comprehensive Facebook campaign tool. You can add a flabbergasting number of options to any campaign on your page. They have tons of templates from where you can start building your campaign. If you don’t like the limited creativity a template brings, you can always use their intuitive visual editor to start building a campaign from scratch.
It is a platform where you can run contests and analyze how your audience is engaging with them. You can publish all the campaigns you create here as a Facebook app, a landing page, or you can even embed it on your website.
The campaigns you create can be pushed live in merely a few minutes. Moreover, with the paid plan of ShortStack, you can remove its branding and enable more advanced options.
ContentStudio
To win at any social media platform, you’ll have to leverage the power of content marketing. There’s no other way. ContentStudio is an effective content curation and marketing aid for you. With its help, you can discover, plan, publish and analyze your content that’s going to go online on social media platforms.
ContentStudio, unlike most of the content curation tools, comes with hashtag suggestions and an in-built SEO optimization toolbox. Some of its more features are unified social inbox, team collaboration, old content recycling, bulk scheduling, customized reporting, etc.
You can easily connect ContentStudio to all the major social media platforms and many blogging sites like WordPress and Medium. This tool offers easy promotion of content, which is a vital feature for social media marketers and publishers.
Wrapping Up
No matter what your aims are with your Facebook marketing campaigns, there’s definitely a tool out there to help you out. The above-mentioned tools can help you reach your target audience and prospective customers more efficiently. You get to know them better, which improves the rate of conversion.
Moreover, knowing your customers not only helps you in creating better social media strategies but also helps in improving your product/services. For creating a successful social media strategy, it would be best to start with social listening. And then form strategies based on the insights you get from here.
Planning your TikTok marketing campaigns? Here are some TikTok marketing tips from experts.
Standing at a whopping 1 Billion active users, TikTok has become a happening spot for brands to be seen and heard.
It is no more a platform with frivolous dance videos and has unlocked a full-fledged opportunity for growth.
Given how vast TikTok is – it is crucial to know what’s exactly happening on the platform, especially for your brand’s growth.
When you understand the ins and outs of TikTok content, its relation with virality, and consumer behavior, you can create a solid plan for your brand.
Seems too much to do as compared to copying trends? Don’t fret.
Here are some TikTok marketing campaign strategies and examples you can follow to get ahead of your competition.
TikTok marketing strategies and examples to win on the platform
1. Start with TikTok listening
The number one strategy to win on TikTok is to invest in social listening on the platform. This is important to identify whether your target audience is even present on the channel to start with!
TikTok listening will help you learn more about the audience you get to target on the platform, discover accounts (competitor and non-competitor) in a similar domain and identify topics that your target segment is swooning over.
With over 1 million videos viewed every day on TikTok, it’s practically impossible to monitor accounts and what your audience is doing. This is where a TikTok social listening tool like Radarr comes into play.
Powered by artificial intelligence, Radarr lets you tune into millions of conversations happening in and around your business, or the topics you’re interested in. It also lets you actively identify trends your audience is engaging with, accounts they follow and the sentiment behind the content created.
While jumping on TikTok trends is one way to go viral, carving out your own niche is another.
The Internet is too noisy, and to stand out, you need a niche and own it. Figuring out your niche and perfecting your content will attract more engagement from like-minded audiences.
Users love discovering creators that are quirky and have realized their true niche.
The moment you have grabbed their attention, they know where to land (your profile) when they are craving some quality content.
TikTok has an audience for all niches, whether it’s basic fashion tips, home styling, or weird face wax videos.
If you are hesitant about starting out, try to tinker with a few different categories to unleash your strengths. The moment your profile starts to gain traction simply narrow down your focus to the videos that maintain decent engagement, and double down on creating more of such videos. Don’t forget to check out what your competitors are up to, that will give you more insights into what works and what doesn’t.
In 2022, the following TikTok niches are popular – funny dances, easy dinner, dark comedy, realistic drawing, fitness fashion, funny memes, couple goals, street style, home fitness, and beauty tips. But the platform is not restricted to only these!
850 minutes. That’s the average amount of time a TikTok user spends on the app.
Do you know what users love the most on TikTok? Trending content.
But here is a catch – the TikTok trend landscape shifts in the blink of an eye. What’s trending today could be replaced by something else tomorrow. Trends are often connected with current events, however, sometimes can be completely random.
Since most of the time users love watching videos under the trending hashtags, that actually becomes a good spot to generate your own ideas.
Top TikTok influencers recommend that ‘speed’ is the golden rule to virality. The moment you explore a trend, record your version of that trend and post on the same day.
No matter how it seems – finding trends and recording your version of them isn’t tedious or time-consuming, because you don’t really have to find fresh new ideas every day. You just need some inspiration. Pick a trend in your niche, induce your personality in it, sprinkle some trending hashtags, and upload.
Example: The ring light “Infinity” trend caught crazy traction on TikTok. However, it’s fascinating to know that some of the videos that went viral under it, didn’t even have a ring light in the frame!
If you have used TikTok even for a few minutes, you have come across videos that have silky-smooth and oh-so-satisfying transitions. And you don’t even realize how time flies by.
As a TikTok marketer, learning such transitions is crucial to master storytelling. You need to prepare and practice transition hacks prior to uploading videos. Doing so will give you an edge over your competitors. Youtube has a plethora of tutorials to master the intricate transitions and teach how to create flawless TikTok videos.
Once you are aware of your niche, trending content, and accounts creating similar content, make sure you also conduct thorough sentiment analysis.
This will help you identify which of those topics and trends generate a positive sentiment in your target audience, and which may become a negative stimulus for your TikTok marketing campaigns and should be avoided.
TikTok social listening tools like Radarr come with a sentiment analysis tool that lets you categorize social content into positive, negative and neutral sentiments. This helps you further strategize how you want to use TikTok trends to achieve your business objectives.
Storytelling lies at the crux of all social media platforms.
Strategic use of text overlays is a stellar way to capture your audience’s attention. The first step here is to identify a problem or find a way to get attention, and then try to find ways to address your audience’s concerns straight away. Finally, reveal a solution to those problems and concerns.
Text on a video provides clarity and enhances audience engagement. In fact, it is beneficial for people with hearing impairments.
If you are selling a brand, product or service, here are 4 frameworks to master storytelling on TikTok:
Tell your story: What is the story behind your brand? What inspired you? What values do you bring to the table? Answering such questions will build a heart to heart connection.
Work backwards: Users want to know what they should expect from your brand. Talk about how you got to where you are, like an adventure story with a thrilling climax. Show them behind the scenes, and explain what it takes to create a solid brand.
Refine your elevator pitch: Convey your value proposition in a crisp manner. Focus on what you are selling and how it is relevant to the viewers.
Accessibility: Your audience needs to know how your brand can add value to them. Use step-by-step and detailed processes and convey it to them. Make use of captions, and quirky visuals. Show them how your brand can be built into their routine, and how easy and accessible it is for everyone- no matter where they are.
Here’s a video to help you get started with storytelling in marketing:
7. Post often and maintain consistency
The key to success is not perfection, it is consistency. You can have a million dollar idea in your mind, but if you’re not executing, it will lead to nothing.
TikTok has an amazing organic reach when compared to its counterparts like Instagram. So that gives you an upper hand at testing more ways and ideas to reach your target audience.
Depending on your niche, figure out how many videos you want to post in a day or a week. Studies have found that the best-performing TikTok brands post 3.52 times per week on average.
So when you start, focus on creating quality content and maintaining consistency. Gradually build up your frequency based on your resources and how your audience engages with your TikTok content.
If you are looking for a specific time, the best time to post on TikTok is Tuesday 9 AM, Thursday 12 PM, and Friday 5 AM. While these are just sweet spots, the right time for posting actually depends on your target audience.
8. Experiment and create new trends
While jumping on trends, and focussing on tried and tested methods is a safe way to play the TikTok game, it is important to concept brand new ideas and executes them.
While this might seem scary at first, you never know when you strike the right chord. Getting inspired by scrolling through your FYP is a good way, but you can look for inspiration out of TikTok too.
Maybe you had a sudden epiphany while taking a walk in the park?
Viewers love innovative content. In fact, innovative content is the most successful type of content on TikTok. Be it a completely original idea or a unique way to execute an existing idea, be confident enough to execute.
For example, the #LearnSomethingNew is a trending hashtag right now. TikTok is using it in their videos talking about what new skills they will pick up this year. It’s interesting to see so many different videos.
But we do recommend using social listening to first identify topics your target audience cares about before creating a trend. This is similar to creating branded hashtags for your campaigns.
9. Stay authentic and true to your vision/ mission
Buzzwords like ‘be authentic’, and ‘be you’ are thrown around a lot often, and they are true because nobody can compete with originality. Creativity, inspiration, and uniqueness is the cornerstone of any video that is ‘original’.
Identify what your community loves: Your viewers won’t stick around if you ask them to buy a skincare product, but they will stick around if you give them 5 steps they can add to their routine for healthier skin. Give your audience what they care about.
Get involved with your viewers: Building a relationship with your community is a sure-shot way of increasing your brand’s likability. Do a viewer outreach- take polls, ask them to comment, and tell you what they would like to see more.
Stay true to your values: Staying true to your values is about staying true to your content strategy. If you created a bunch of tutorial videos on TikTok that work but shifted the needle because tutorials aren’t ‘trendy’ then you might lose your audiences’ attention.
A recent TikTok study revealed that 42% of respondents feel that the platform enables them to express themselves in the most authentic way possible, without stressing about what people think.
Remember, sometimes you need to consistently educate your audience to understand the value you have to offer. Make sure you’re not losing touch with your branding and brand values whilst catching up with trends.
10. Create a hashtag strategy
If you desire to make a solid presence on TikTok, having a comprehensive hashtag strategy is essential. TikTok SEO helps you optimize your content so that it’s discovered by people easily when they are using the search feature.
Trending hashtags too, tend to change with trends. So here are a few best practices when choosing hashtags for your TikTok marketing campaigns:
Find the right hashtags: When you are exploring content on TikTok – be it famous creators or competitors, try to figure out what hashtags are they using in their posts. You can also type your niche in a hashtag generator tool to find relevant hashtags.
Mix less competitive and popular hashtags: Being discovered via popular hashtags can be difficult because of extreme competition. It is recommended to mix in less competitive hashtags to get seen by a small pool of audience too. Once you gain popularity amongst less competitive hashtags, you can add more competitive hashtags.
Follow trends: #happyholloween might be an extremely popular hashtag in October, but there’s no point in following it in June. Hashtag trends are subject to volatility, and it’s necessary to ensure that the hashtags you’re using are relevant to the date.
Branded hashtags and challenges: Branded hashtags work great on TikTok as compared to any other platform. Hashtag challenges are a good head start. By harnessing the power of participation, you can create brand awareness.
More, the merrier: Don’t stick to one or two relevant hashtags. Use as many as you can. Practically you can add up to 33 hashtags in a caption. But since TikTok allows 100 characters per caption- make sure it is short and crisp. If required, you can add more hashtags in the comments, but they aren’t as effective.
Another important tip here is to use hashtag analytics available on social listening tools like Radarr. This will help you identify which hashtags tend to help your content reach a wider audience, and which ones may no longer be as actively used on the platform.
11. Collaborate with other TikTok creators
Struggling to build a solid follower list? Collaborate with other creators on the platform. If you are into the beauty niche, you can find similar creators with slightly more followers via hashtags. Once you find a good fit, shoot them a friendly message.
While this can be a numbers game – you can collaborate much more easily once your follower count begins to grow.
12. Leverage influencer marketing
Continuing on similar lines of collaboration comes influencer marketing.
86% of marketers have leveraged influencer marketing to generate brand awareness and increase sales. Influencer marketing is popular because it is the quickest way to grow on a social media platform as a brand. However, finding the right influencers can be a difficult task.
As a solution to this, TikTok has launched a creator marketplace. It lets you find influencers and the metrics associated with them. Data like this helps evaluate which influencer is the right fit for your brand.
Choosing the right influencer will ensure a good ROI too.
Another way to identify the right micro and macro influencers is to use your social listening tool to work. Tools like Radarr help you identify trending accounts around your niche that may have an influence over your target audience.
Additional reads
We’ve been debunking some myths around TikTok marketing lately using our social listening tool, Radarr. Check them out:
Similar to other social media platforms, your marketing strategy on TikTok needs to continually adapt to the changing trends and audience behavior. You shouldn’t just be keeping an eye out for trends, but also proactively predicting them so that you can hop onto them in a timely manner and not get lost in the volume.
With social media listening and analytics tools like Radarr, you get to implement all the above TikTok marketing tips. But in addition to the same, you also get to proactively predict TikTok trends, monitor campaign performance and optimize your strategy on-the-go.
