I used to think that demonstrating a clear link to sales from social was a challenge but not impossible, but that was when I was in candy, retail banking is a next level up difficulty.
In FMCG snacking, demonstrating a link between social and sales requires a concerted effort, however the stars are aligned for this to be achieved for a multitude of reasons:
- You’re selling a tangible, easy to buy, affordable product
- Marketing in FMCG works on a clear, singular campaign based approach
- The social channel owners have made tracking retail based brands an easier opportunity
Demonstrating the power of social
A bag of sweets, a chocolate bar, or a pack of biscuits/cookies all have a low cost, the product you’re selling is available from many vendors, most of whom have online stores.
There is a really straight-forward grassroots approach to demonstrating a link between social and sales for almost all snacking brands.
I was working on the launch of an NPD for well-known British brand of Jelly & Liquorice sweets. The brand team had no above-the-line budget to support the launch. This included no TV, radio, out-of-home, or retail in-store displays or promotions. The product had the same price point across all the big 4 UK supermarkets. Out of nervousness of the product going completely under the radar, a request was given to put one promoted post out on social media to drive awareness of the new product. In addition to driving awareness I set my own personal goal to contribute to sales, in order to help the cause of demonstrating the power of social.
Test & learn
As it was test & learn and hadn’t been done before, the whole approach was ‘quick & dirty’. To tick the box of the activity objective, driving mass awareness on social amongst the target market in the most cost effective manner, I promoted on Facebook only.
Facebook has the most users across all demographics, and it’s ad platform is built for reach. The next part, was to encourage click-through to purchase & to measure it. The story was worth telling, it’s a new product from a much loved sweets brand. The execution was a short-form stop motion video. The great thing about videos on Facebook is that you can offer a link to click-through at the end of the video. So if people have stuck around to watch the full 10 seconds, they see a ‘shop now’ button taking them off Facebook and to the retailer to purchase.
I monitored the number of click-throughs by having them go via a bitly link. I was expecting the story here to be success in mass awareness and success in increasing traffic to the product, thus proving an additional stronger engagement without the need for a fancy econometric study or brand survey that only brands with bigger consistent budgets can afford. What I got was a 22% uplift in online sales through that particular supermarket’s online sales in that particular week for that particular product.
Social media can have an immediate effect on sales
We’ve all heard time and time again that social is a great cost effective mass awareness channel, however what this example shows is that social media really does result in sales, especially when you think of the context of the product for sale. The product for sale wasn’t the latest dress on ASOS, it wasn’t a popular item on deal on Amazon, it wasn’t a product that we are accustomed to buying online.
This was an impulse product. People don’t too often pre-plan buying sweets, it’s a quick at point of purchase decision… You’re at a motorway services & need some sweets for the road, you’re in Heathrow about to board your flight and you want something to get you through the journey, you’re in the cinema queuing to buy a ticket, you’re in the supermarket and the sweets catch your eye… Whereas here, social media convinced additional people to buy online. And when you think that we partnered with a specific supermarket, there is the additional barrier of people actually having an account with that supermarket or bothering to go through the effort to create one.
The biggest winner here was the supermarket. They contributed no money to the creation or promotion of the advert. Customers were driven to their site, and the 22% extra that bought the sweets on their online store, didn’t just buy sweets, they would have most likely spent an additional £40+ to qualify for free delivery.
The learning here for FMCG brands is that social media can have an immediate direct effect on sales, and that there is an opportunity for brands and retailers to mutually benefit from the marketing activities.
The additional good news for FMCG is that social heavyweights Facebook & Twitter have tracking studies in place, in partnership with the likes of Nielsen & Millward Brown to track reach, resonance, and reaction of your social content.
What can retail banking learn from FMCG in looking to connect social to sales?
Unlike FMCG, retail banking’s products are not sweet treats available everywhere at convenience, they are financial products, many of which have significant impacts on peoples lives. A first mortgage, a personal loan for a car, an ISA, these are often not quick decisions a person makes and requires careful consideration. The same reach, resonance, and reaction studies available through Facebook & Twitter for FMCG are available for banks, however not all of them are geared up to work as accurately for a bank as they are for FMCG. For example, measuring the impact that social media has on offline sales from a study provided by Facebook and Twitter is yet to be as robust for banking as it is for more accessible consumer products.
The learning for banking is to invest efforts in both the quick & dirty measurement approaches, as well as the hard detailed measurement opportunities that require disrupting the status quo of marketing measurement within banking. Web trends tagging & measuring click-throughs are straight-forward to implement and are an easy win. Measuring the impact your social content is having on your brand health & perception can also be achieved, however as these studies are run through Facebook & Twitter in tandem with a market research agency, you’ll need to be spending significantly on social over a concentrated period in order to qualify for the ‘free’ brand effect study.
And Finally
The longer term measure, which can also be the hardest to implement, is intertwining your social activity with the traditional measurement practices undertaken by the in-house insights team, such as econometrics modelling, which can establish social media’s impact on overall sales.
The journey to effective measurement in banking is hard, and can take a lot longer to implement than in other industries. However, at a time when trust for banks is low, and competition from the new breed of digital challenger banks is increasing, it is ever more important to demonstrate the strong positive impact that social media marketing can have on brand perception and sales.
Jag Sharma heads up social media marketing at one of the UK’s biggest retail banks.