Principles of social media advertising and promotion

What are Digital Vouchers?

		Explain the potential uses of digital vouchers Vouchers usually include offers such as 2 for 1: 2 for £10 or 50% off. Vouchers are issued by the retailer and redeemed at that retailer only. Vouchers are self liquidating; the value of the voucher is built into the retailer’s product margin. A voucher is something that gets sent to you through the post or something that you have collected points for. It’s something that you get given A voucher is actually like cash, a coupon is just money off A voucher is money that you go and spend, a coupon you have to buy something to get money off. Digital shopper marketing initiatives can be categorised in the same way as traditional shopper marketing initiatives. Digital vouchers and coupons are therefore just one category of digital shopper marketing initiative. •At the simplest level digital shopper marketing initiatives share the same characteristics as traditional shopper marketing initiatives, and this aspect can be separated from the way in which the initiative is targeted at the shopper. Initiatives range from coupons, special offers and loyalty rewards to enhanced product information, recipe suggestions and even initiatives that seek to improve the shoppers experience (for example by making their grocery shopping easier). •Digital coupons and offers are among the best established digital shopper marketing initiatives in the market that are widely available and  largely accepted by shoppers. Delivered by e-mail, SMS, websites, smartphone apps and digital kiosks in-store, digital coupons enable marketers to target shoppers with highly personalised content, in turn influencing the shopper’s decision making process. •Also marketers may benefit from integration of digital coupons and vouchers with other digital shopper marketing  initiatives. For example, with the advent of digital media it is possible  to link redemption of digital coupons with loyalty schemes, or even directly with digital shopping lists or online baskets.
		Research the current disadvantages of digital vouchers Data security: Shoppers may still feel reluctant to give their personal details or don’t feel like they benefit enough from the trade off. Signing up with a voucher site or registration on a retailer site may not seem worth the effort. Internet connection required: Network coverage issues are possible when internet connection is required for redemption of digital vouchers. Awareness: Shoppers aren’t necessarily aware of vouchers being also digitally redeemable even if they have the technology, i.e. a smartphone required. Technology: Approximately half of shoppers still don’t have smartphones which means that using digital coupons alone isn’t profitable for a retailer. Know-how: Lack of knowledge of how to redeem digital vouchers Technical issues: Problems in scanning vouchers can cause delays and frustration
		Explain how to overcome the barriers of using digital vouchers for acquisition and retention of customers •Just over half (53.1%) of food and grocery shoppers say the security of payments made with a mobile phone concerns them. This, however may change as mobile phone payments, especially ones using NFC (near field communications) technology, become more common. •Almost half of shoppers (48.3%) also mention being concerned about sharing personal information with a coupon provider even if meant getting more relevant offers. Many coupon and voucher providers require some personal information such as email address a phone number and sometimes even home address when signing up with their service offering. •Only approximately a quarter of shoppers are concerned about sharing their location with a coupon provider  in order to get location-based offers. Location-based offers are becoming more popular and popular providers are Foursquare and Google Offers (in the United States).  Research and analysis helps clients develop targeted shopper marketing initiatives designed to influence shoppers at the point of purchase.
		Plan a SMART digital voucher campaign for a business SMART Specific measurable attainable relevant timely
		Explain methods of managing a digital voucher system Methods Online numbered coupon allocation published code and URL number to book online database of allocation maintained by vendor
Explain how to measure the effectiveness of a digital voucher campaign. If you’re running a social media campaign you are probably not doing it for fun – you are most likely looking for results. In most cases, the intended outcome of a social media campaign is to strengthen and increase awareness of your brand. In the past, traditional marketing efforts in this arena were difficult to evaluate due to the complications of determining the link between a campaign and brand awareness. One of the appeals of social media marketing is the fact that, as a digital campaign, it is possible to measure various metrics and so evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign. Use these five methods to measure the success and effectiveness of your social media campaign. 1. Brand Reach & Exposure “Mentions” Unfortunately, measuring your brand reach or potential viewers of your social media campaign is not quite as rudimentary as tracking the total number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers you have. In order to better account for duplicate users you should focus not on your raw numbers but on your percentage growth rate. Remember to compare like with like by measuring metrics over a defined period of time i.e. monthly or quarterly. For example, with Twitter your total potential reach over the course of a month is made up of your followers and the followers of those that re-tweet your message. Comparing each of these figures with their previous monthly totals allows you to focus in on growth areas. For Facebook tracking you want to record the number of fans you have for your page. In addition, record the number of friends that each user who has: Become a fan during the month Commented on your post during the month and Liked your post during the month. On YouTube: Track your channel’s views, subscriber numbers and your video bounce rates over the month. On Your blog: look at the number of visitors to related posts over the month. Don’t forget to look at metrics that are not directly tied to social media. Website traffic and searches that are related to your brand also indicate increased brand awareness. Useful Tools:TweetReach, Facebook Insights 2. Engagement By measuring how many users engage and interact with your message you can evaluate the appeal and interest of your marketing efforts. The more engagement you see the more effective and valuable your campaign. Facebook – Number of clicks your links received. Number of times your messages were commented on. Number of times your messages were liked. Twitter – Number of times your hashtag was included in tweets. Number of retweets. Number of clicks your link received. Total number of Twitter users involved in activity. Blog – Number of new subscribers. Amount of sharing of the posts. Amount of comments. Youtube – Amount of new subscribers. Amount and type of ratings (positive or negative) Number of comments. 3. Share of Voice and Sentiment (marketplace competition) Share of voice is a valuable metric for evaluating your brand’s penetration in comparison to your competitors. However, leaving your analysis at simply finding out where you stand on pure mentions would be a mistake. You also need to qualitatively analyse how your brand is being talked about, thereby finding out what sentiments your base has towards your brand. After all a 75% share of mentions, most of which are positive is a very different beast from a 75% share of mentions, most of which are negative. Calculating your share of voice requires a bit of data processing. You first need to collect data on the number of times your brand is mentioned over a specific time period. You must also record mentions of your competitors’ brands. You need to assign each mention a category of positive, negative or neutral. Finally you need to weight each of those categories in order to evaluate both your share of voice and the sentiment towards your brand. Useful Tools: Trackur, Radian6, Social Mention, Google Trends, Google Insights 4. Influence When you have a high level of influence, you are more likely to inspire your followers to take some kind of action such as engaging with your message or making a purchase. Metrics you can use to evaluate your influence include: The number of links to your message and content. How often your twitter messages are retweeted. How often your Facebook posts are liked, commented on and shared. The influence of your followers and those who engaged with you should also be tracked here. Useful Tools:PostRank, TwentyFeet, Twylah (a manual check is, however, the best tool here). 5. Finally…Measure Conversions It might be tempting to jump straight into the measurement of conversions and return on investment. However, without analysing the previous metrics you are missing out on important data that tells you not just what your ROI is, but why it is so. There are a number of methods of tracking conversions from your social media marketing campaign: Track social media traffic to your website in its own category – use segments in Google Analytics. Advertise a coupon or deal on social media to properly assign conversions to your campaign, even if the traffic itself does not come from social media. Don’t make the mistake of only tracking direct sales or ad-clicks. Time spent on a particular page, viewing of various products and other such actions can also give you valuable data. Useful Tools:Google Analytics Return on Investment (ROI) is the benefit to an investor resulting from an investment of some resource. A high ROI means the investment gains compare favourably to investment cost. As a performance measure, ROI is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.[1] In purely economic terms, it is one way of considering profits in relation to capital invested.