YouTube is the OG of the video content world. Launched back in 2005 (on Valentine’s Day), YouTube now has over 1 billion unique users every month. To put that in perspective, half the people on the entire internet are using YouTube. That is A LOT of people.

Eighty percent of YouTubers are outside the U.S. So, it’s no big surprise that YouTube is the second most visited website in existence AND the second largest search engine in the world after parent company Google.

Side note: Baidu search numbers were unverified, so we’re excluding China’s biggest search engine from our little rankings pool. But just know that YouTube receives more search queries per month than Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL combined.

Using YouTube as a Mid-Funnel Sales Tool

The range of content across YouTube is phenomenal, namely because it’s all user-generated content. About 400 hours of content are uploaded every single minute, so you can find videos teaching on a crazy range of topics from…

…. Learning how to boil an egg,

…. To getting a behind-the-scenes look at your favorite movie

… Or listening to someone whisper softly into a microphone (it’s called ASMR, you’ll either love it or hate it, but you have to watch some, trust me).

Basically, there’s something for everyone on YouTube, and that’s what makes it such a powerful resource to leverage in your marketing campaigns.

Despite its accessibility, ease of use, and super-sophisticated targeting tools, just nine percent of small businesses are using YouTube for business. And, before you start screaming at me that your audience isn’t even on YouTube – think again.

A whopping eight in ten people 18-49 years old use the platform, as well as about half of all internet users over the age of 75. This is important because people are three times more likely to pay attention to online video ads over television ads. They are twice as likely to give their attention to a YouTube video ad, even over Instagram and Facebook video ads. No doubt that has a lot to do with the platform’s targeting capabilities.

Ninety percent of YouTubers say they discover new brands or products on YouTube, and 40 percent of the shoppers around the globe say they have purchased something they discovered on YouTube.

Still think your audience isn’t on YouTube?

YouTube can add a touch of mid-funnel magic for the sales cycles of marketers and brands. The platform allows for creative, high-impact storytelling that your team can personalize (YouTube has a video ad sequencing tool) AND scale.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has fallen into a “suggested video”-fueled rabbit hole and lost (or invested depending on how you look at it) HOURS to a random, yet interesting, parade of YouTube videos. People are watching more than one billion hours of YouTube videos every day. That’s more than Netflix and Facebook combined.

And, we’re not just watching it on our computers anymore.

People are watching YouTube on their TVs twice as much as they used to, and we’re spending more than 40 minutes each session watching content on our mobile devices, too. The platform is steadily spreading throughout our lives to become one of our main sources of video content.

Video Content & Social Media Marketing

I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve seen a marketer acting like video is the only strategy out there. Still, many companies – especially smaller businesses – are slow to roll out full-on video marketing campaigns. I get it, it can be super scary to record yourself talking straight to a camera, or directing a promotional video – but my gosh is it worth it.

The first time I did a live video on Instagram, I was, in a word, terrified. It’s scary to put yourself out there like that. But, I did it. A grand total of six people tuned in, I talked, they listened, and then it was over. From those six people, two reached out to me to say how much they enjoyed it and to discuss what I’d talked about more in-depth. In that one video, I was able to give something of value, and transform my audience (of six) into my very own brand advocates. All in just three minutes of live video. So, just think what your brand could do if you harnessed the power of video content for your next big campaign.

Of course, YouTube is probably what comes to mind when video marketing is mentioned, but it isn’t the only video platform out there by any stretch of the imagination. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and LinkedIn are all embracing video content more, and it may be that your brand and audience are better-suited to one of those platforms. That’s why we’re going to use the next post to cover video content and social media marketing as a whole. Today, we handle YouTube user stats.

The YouTube Habits of Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z

I already mentioned just how many users are tuning into YouTube videos day after day, but that’s just one platform. Add to that the number of people on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, and anywhere else you can find videos online, and you’ve got one heck of an audience.

Let’s break this down into easy-to-understand demographics, generation by generation.

Baby Boomers: 55 – 73 years old

Many marketers seem sort of bent on getting young Millennial eyes on their products, but brands can reap huge rewards by targeting the mega-spending generation known as Baby Boomers. Baby Boomers should be a BIG DEAL to brands and marketers. They spend more time online than Millennials, and they have greater spending power.

Be honest. Boomers are probably the folks you expect would spend the LEAST amount of time watching YouTube videos. But in reality, the cool kids who make up the 55 and up crowd account for 24 percent of YouTube viewers – that’s like 31 million people.

How Boomers consume YouTube content

With an estimated 10,000 Boomers retiring every day, you would think this generation had oodles of time on their hands. But, according to a survey run by Google, one of the big reasons Boomers love YouTube is because it helps them save time. YouTube is a GREAT place for Boomers (and every non-tech person) to go to get a better understanding of tech, gadgets, new software… that sort of thing. It’s sort of a mid-funnel buying guide they can easily use without having to go to a store, spend hours on with tech support, or call in a younger (know-it-all) relative.

That said… Baby Boomers are far more likely to respond positively to data-driven product reviews (think “here is the product, here are the specs”) than opinion-based product reviews of another YouTuber’s experience with a brand or product. Boomers often skipp programmed TV in favor of bite-sized chunks of short-form video content. Like the rest of us.

Video content serves as a vehicle by which Boomers can learn new skills – something a lot of Boomers are really into post- empty nest. So, whether they want to learn how to play guitar, pick up a new language, or even become a social media influencer themselves, they’re turning to video to learn how to do it.

Type of video content Baby Boomers prefer:

• How-to videos for learning new skills

• Entertainment roundups to keep up to date

• Online tutorials that can save them time

Generation X: 39 – 54 years old

Born into a world that drastically changed around them as they grew up, Gen X is probably the most adaptable generation. When the older Gen Xers were the youngest people in the world, having a TV in the home was juuuuust becoming the norm. Now, programmed TV is becoming obsolete as people spend more time consuming content online than watching live TV (and TV manufacturers were smart to make televisions essentially 50-inch computer screens for watching YouTube and Netflix – that definitely kept electronics companies in the game).

How Gen Xers consume YouTube content

Gen Xers spend A LOT of time watching video, and especially old school content – stuff from their teen and adolescent years. In fact, 75 percent of Gen Xers use YouTube to get access to nostalgic videos. While this generation is all about the nostalgia effect, they’re still spending more time watching video content on their computers and smartphones than they are on traditional TV. Gen Xers account for over 1.5 billion views on YouTube every day, so the incentive to engage with them is definitely there.

Gen Xers aren’t just spending time on YouTube though. While it is an important platform, Gen Xers share content – especially video – more readily to Facebook than any other site. This is closely followed by YouTube and Twitter, showing that in order to reach this generation (well, any generation really), you’ll need to develop an omnichannel approach.

Type of video content Gen Xers prefer:

• Nostalgia-driven video to take them back to their childhood

• DIY videos they can follow along

• Current news and trending events

Millennials: 22 – 38 years old

YouTube’s mobile viewers reach more 18 to 34 year-olds than any other TV network. That’s mobile! Browser views aren’t included in that number. Millennials are constantly checking in on social media (for many of us it’s every hour), short-form content wins hands down as we don’t really have the time to watch lengthy content throughout the day, and we prefer to watch a video over reading an article.

AND Despite Instagram and Facebook Live being thrown in the mix, YouTube is still the video platform of choice for most Millennials. We marketing folks often look at YouTube as another social network because it’s SO socially-driven and people enjoy consuming YouTube content together. Technically, YouTube isn’t a social media network, but if it were, YouTube would be the third most popular social platform out there.

How Millennials consume YouTube content

Millennials are avid YouTubers. Fifty-four percent of Millennials check YouTube daily. Cool, right? Well, this is even cooler: While about 1 in 10 Millennials use ad blockers, and more than half only watch YouTube ads to the Skip Ad point, 29 percent of Millennials actually watch YouTube ads all the way through. And don’t forget our earlier stat about the 90 percent of people are using YouTube for product discovery. YouTube’s video ads are very well-targeted these days.

Contrary to popular beliefs about how Millennials relate to brands, many Millennials (especially Millennial women and moms) want and expect to see sponsored content (we talked about that a bit in the What Makes They Buy post), AS LONG AS it’s the right ad targeting the right person on the right platform at the right time. And many Millennials are actually kinda sweet on well-targeted video ads.

Thirty-seven percent of Millennials admit to binge-watching a block of something every day, and upwards of 65 percent of Millennials binge-watch at least once a week. So, it’s definitely good news to marketers that 62 percent of Millennials actually take action after seeing an ad.

Type of video content Millennials prefer:

• News and human interest stories to keep us up to date

• Unboxing and product review videos to influence our spending

• Quick and fun entertainment content

Generation Z: 4 – 21 years old

Enter Gen Z, the largest and most diverse generation in history. These social media natives are growing up in a world of selfies, influencers, and hashtags. They know how to navigate the online world better than anyone else, and their video consumption habits reflect this.

Their most used platform is YouTube closely followed by Instagram – so video is clearly a priority for them. How they’re consuming this video content is even more important for marketers.

How Gen Zers consume YouTube content

Fifty-nine percent of Gen Z video consumption is through social media, where they spend twice as much time as they do on streaming services, and five times as much as on traditional media. What are they watching, though? Here’s a hint: It’s not music videos.

That’s right 80s and 90s babies! While it may seem like MTV just sold its platform to YouTube, unlike teenagers back in the day, kids today aren’t using the world’s largest video platform to watch music videos. In fact, only four percent of Gen Zers name YouTube as their preferred music platform. Spotify and Apple Music are the top music streaming services, with 60 percent and 26 percent (respectively) of teens using those platforms as their go-to.

As a brand, YouTube has more influence over this generation than big names like Oreo, McDonalds, and even Lego. So, it’s safe to say that if you’re targeting Gen Z, you need to be targeting them through video.

Type of video content Gen Zers prefer:

• Humor – They love videos that make them laugh

• Short and snappy content to compete with their busy lives and busy minds

• Unboxing and product reviews to keep on top of trends

Conclusion

When you’re talking about online video, you should always begin with the powerhouse – YouTube. YouTube has blazed a trail that other platforms have tried to follow. The major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn notoriously give preference to video, eventually introducing well-trafficked video platforms of their own like Facebook Watch and IGTV. Still, no other platform comes close to the reach and impact of YouTube or its AMAZING search capabilities and predictive algorithms. #Facts

An Epic, By-the-Numbers Post on America’s Favorite Unofficial Winter Holiday – The Super Bowl

This morning, all any of the sports shows can talk about is the Rams-Saints game last night. A no-call on a pass interference in that crucial game has effectively sent the Rams on to face the Patriots in Super Bowl LIII in two weeks. It’s a match that will be preceded by and surrounded with controversy… like any other Super Bowl.

2018’s Super Bowl LII was also one for the books! Controversy was once again the name of the game. Justin Timberlake sparked controversy when he agreed to perform during the halftime show.  CURE Auto Insurance shocked everyone in a commercial that stated: “You know what’s weird? If you cheat on your car insurance, you can get arrested. But if you cheat at football, you can sleep with a supermodel.” A CLEAR shot a Tom Brady and his wife Gisele Bundchen amid the football deflating scandal.

On the day of “The Big Game” social media was flooded with die-hard fans’, casual fans’, and party goers’ Super Bowl celebrations. The day after the Super Bowl, people created memes, ranted about the close calls, and and shamelessly stuck by their teams no matter what.  One thing I think we all can agree on is that the Super Bowl ads are the one part of the show that never disappoint!

All of this is what makes the Super Bowl worth the $5M the American Marketing Association says advertisers were paying for 30-second commercial spots.

It’s difficult to find any demographic that has no participation in Super Bowl Sunday. Whether they watch football regularly or not, families are watching, friends are watching, organizations are throwing Super Bowl-related events, fans are tuned in for everything from the pre-game to the post-game show. Partiers are making sure they don’t run low on any snacks or beverages, and socialites are posting their entire day!

The Super Bowl is an EVENT where people are actively doing things,  buying things, and talking about things on social media. And that’s an ideal environment for smart marketing.

Why the Super Bowl is Such a Big Deal

The Super Bowl is huge! Like 76 percent of Americans who watch the game. It’s not just the most watched event on American television every year. It is also THE competitive event of the year. Two teams battle it out in a single game – no playoffs, no ‘we’ll get ‘em next times’, no do-overs.

One. And. Done.  I can’t think of a better way to summarize the way the last Big Game ended.

In 2017, that “one-and-done” meant the Patriots made history by closing a 28-3 lead by the Falcons in the first ever Super Bowl game to go into overtime. The Patriots won the game 34 to 28 after trailing behind the Falcons in the first three quarters of the game. It was an unbelievable match (because the Patriots closed a 25-point gap in the fourth quarter, and because the Falcons let them)!

A year later in Super Bowl LII, one quick-witted defensive end, one overconfident, predictable quarterback, one well-timed sack, one historical fumble recovery. And done! The Philadelphia Eagles secure their first Super Bowl victory.

In total there are about 48 million of us who watch the game every year hoping to see magical. breath-taking moments like this. Moments that we can relive, and share with others for years to come.The other 63.4 million of us can’t be bothered with the turnout of the game.  We already have enough on our plates- what with food, commercials, and the sure-to-be-epic halftime show.

No matter why we watch the game, and without regard to the fact that we spend our days habitually checking our mobile devices(about 80 times per day), we do still crave and treasure shared experiences. The Super Bowl is a time when people can get together in a festive, party atmosphere (whether or not your team is playing or winning for that matter) and hang out enjoying good ol’ human interaction.

No matter the outcome- win or lose, So, win or lose, you can bet that when Super Bowl Sunday rolls around on February 3rd, Americans will be watching football, expecting something amazing to happen. It’s a gathering where everyone is emitting positive energy and waiting with great expectation. That’s what makes it a fun, memorable, irreplaceable staple in American culture.. That’s what makes the Super Bowl the event of the year.

The Economics of the Super Bowl

We’ve already established that the Super Bowl is the ultimate entertainment event. It’s not a concert where it only has meaning to the folks who go, or an awards show that only seems to have meaning if you saw the movies or know the artists who are being honored.

It’s much different than that. It transcends age, economic, and cultural barriers. For people who stopped paying attention to music  a decade ago (like me), or whose cinematic repertoire is now limited to the works of Pixar and Marvel Studios, the Super Bowl is sort of like the be all end all. It’s a mind-blowing experience for both the 70,000 fan in attendance, as well as for the 111 million Americans who don’t get to go to the game.

Here’s What We Spend Celebrating the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is only a half-century old. The first game was played in 1967 between the Green Bay Packers and then notorious rival the Kansas City Chiefs. Back then, you could get nosebleed seats for about $8 (or $60 in today’s money). Atlanta has promised to keep concession prices very low, but it you’re feeling fancy, $8 is how much you would pay for an ATL spicy chicken sausage at this year’s venue, The Mercedes-Benz Stadium.If you’re feeling really fancy, spend 11 bucks and get yourself a souvenir soda and a Mitchell Street Donut Dog.  Yep. You read it right. Donut dog. Long John donut, bacon, jam, swiss cheese sauce. The works!

Ticket prices fluctuate depending on which teams are playing, when the tickets were purchased, and other variables such as how close game day is, and what the weather conditions are. This year, the average no-frill seat at the Big Game, is going to cost somewhere around $3,600 if you buy your tickets blindly, before you know who will be playing. Prices can change daily, but Stubhub. com and SeatGeek. com confirm that number. After the playing teams are announced, however, that price can go up by as much as 50%. According to TickPick. com, the average price for a 2019 Super Bowl 53 ticket is $7,300. Another way to secure tickets is to be a season-ticket holder, and win a completely random raffle.  As a winner, you have the opportunity to purchse Super Bowl LIII tickets at face value at these price points:

• $950 for upper level end zone seats

• $1,250 for upper level corner sections

• $2,700 for 2nd tier club seats

• $5,000 for the Delta Sky360 Club seats

Food

45 million celebrators will host Super Bowl Parties this year, and 69 million will be attendees. . Forbes. com positions the Super Bowl as a sort of Christmas for the food industry. Couldn’t have said it better myself. The Super Bowl is the second biggest food consumption day of the year, second only to Thanksgiving Day.

Food makes up 79.5 percent of planned Super Bowl purchases, according to the National Retail Federation. The top sellers are the party staples – pizza, chicken wings, beer, soda, chips, salsa, guacamole.

To celebrate the Super Bowl, Americans spend, on average:

$1.3 billion on beer, flavored malt beverages, and cider

$594 million on wine

$503 million on spirits (whiskey, Vodka, rum, Tequila, gin)

$330 million on pizza, the most popular food of the game, eaten by about 46 percent of Super Bowl fans eating pizza at some point during the evening

$277 million on potato chips

$224 million  on tortilla chips

$99 million on meat snacks

$89 million on popcorn

$82 million on chicken wings (Historically high consumption of 1.35 billion wings is expected)

$80 million on deli salads

$71 million on cheese snacks

$58 million on deli sandwiches

$42 million on salty snack dips

$23 million on deli platters

$13 million on veggie trays

$10 million on deli dips

$2.3 million on soda

We love our food. Of the top-mentioned brands on Twitter during Super Bowl LII last February, five of them – Mountain Dew, Doritos, M&Ms, Skittles, and Pringles.

Interestingly enough, in spite of all of the anticipated marketing campaigns, another one of the top brands, Avocados from Mexico. avocados and guac may be scarce, or even impossible to find come game day due to fuel shortages in Mexico that threaten to prevent shipments from entering the US.

Team Apparel

The next big category for Super Bowl spending is team apparel. This makes sense, of course!  Who doesn’t want to rock their team gear? Of those polled, 11 percent of Super Bowl fans planned to buy team apparel and/or accessories to show support of their favorite teams and players. Buying team apparel makes up 10.7 percent of total Super Bowl spending, according to the National Retail Federation.

Decorations

This one actually surprised me. I always pictured a couch, a TV, and a table to hold snack bowls as the go-to Super Bowl party plan. I didn’t take into account that going to a Super Bowl party means you actually have to throw an epic Super Bowl party.

Fifteen percent  of Super Bowl fans polled listed hanging out with friends as the most important part of the evening, according to the National Retail Federation. Spending on decorations for these parties accounts for 8 percent of planned Super Bowl purchases.

Source: National Retail Federation

Of those polled, 27.2 percent planned to attend a Super Bowl party. Eighteen percent of celebrants were planning a party themselves. Five percent of viewers planned to watch the game from a bar or restaurant.

Companies like Party City and OrientalTrading.com have actual Super Bowl party supply sections on their sites. Pinterest and Instagram posts from DIYers, crafts divas, mommy bloggers, food photographers, and chefs provide plenty of ideas for party decorating in the days before the game.

Televisions

Believe it or not, people actually buy new televisions for the Big Game. Super Bowl season is the best time of the year to buy a large-screen, high-definition, name brand TV, according to Kiplinger. Televisions also account for 7.7 percent of planned Super Bowl purchases. Shoppers can expect to get anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent off the regular price of a state-of-the-art TV right around Super Bowl Sunday. .

Side note: I feel really technologically inept referring to a television as “state of the art” but I thought it was a better word choice than referring to it as a “fancy pants TV.”

Furniture

Finally, new furniture purchases account for $465 million, or 3.3 percent, of total consumer spending for the Super Bowl. January through mid-February is one of the best times of the year to get a good price on new furniture. This is one of two times in the year furniture retailers are liquidating their old inventory to make room for new models.

Can Influencer Marketing Help You Reach Your Audience?

So, a Super Bowl influencer marketing campaign is absolutely doable if you can find a way to market beyond the typical product placement post. Check out this post: 10 Social Media Strategies for Super Bowl Marketing. These are 10 ways we’ve seen on social that brands used to help improve visibility and engagement during before and immediately after the Super Bowl. that can get attention for your brand, even when your audience is temporarily obsessed with partying.

For this post, I looked at a few timely Super Bowl-related ideas that are wide open for a great influencer marketing campaign. The goal here is to give you ideas on how you can leverage the Super Bowl conversations that are already happening across social, and especially on Instagram, and use them as the springboard for your campaign.

#Snackstadium

If you don’t know what these are, snack stadiums are snack stations organized to look like football stadiums. Our latest search of the term reveals more than 2,900 Instagram posts tagged #snackstadium across Instagram.

This one below was actually a Pinterest pin cross-posted to Instagram by Margie Romney-Aslett (@justagirl). A year ago, with the exception of Amazon’s post about Alec Baldwin’s snack stadium (it got 28.9K views and more than 2600 Likes), Margie’s snack stadium post is one of just a handful using the #snackstadium hashtag that got over 500 likes.

This year, there are lots more contenders for most popular #snackstadium post. This one below was actually a Pinterest pin cross-posted to Instagram by @pinterest_diys_and_more.

The beauty of the snack stadium is the possibilities inherent in designing one. Designers have flexibility in the foods they include as part of the stadium, as well as the materials they use to build the stadium.

So, for instance, food manufacturers, nutrition brands, or health and fitness experts can target influencers to build a vegetarian stadium, or a low-carb keto stadium, or a stadium of salty snacks or sweet snacks. The options are endless.

Lindsay (@cococakeland) posted a snack stadium (pictured below) that looks like it was built using the same foam poster board my daughter uses for school projects. Another stadium I found had 12-oz soda cans for exterior walls.

Austria’s Faser.stoff actually manufactures corrugated cardboard that is perfect for building snack stadiums. Yet another Instagrammer posted a picture of a snack stadium made of paperboard magazine holders, the kind you can grab at Ikea or an office supply store.

Snack food niche influencer (@hellthyjunkfood) posted a picture of a snack stadium made of sandwiches. No fancy construction materials, and zero waste.

Just as there is an infinite number of snack combinations you can include in the snack stadium, there’s an infinite number of materials you can use to build one – construction paper to make the triangular flags, self-sticking letters to make the scoreboard, wood blocks to make the stands, coffee stirrers for goalposts, glue, staples, aluminum foil, you name it. DIY projects like building a snack stadium presents an opportunity for food brands, craft brands, office supply brands, and a thousand other brands to get in on the action in a way that’s timely and relevant.

Food Network host Sunny Anderson (@sunnyanderson), creator of the Infladium (@infladium) reposted this adorable snack stadium filled with little football player shaped cookies. Jessica Burleson (@jacqueline_j115), the creative mind behind this design is an artsy lady who likes to have fun. The Infladium is available at Party City.

Specialty Recipes

Recipes are a dime a dozen, but specialty recipes always win. If you can tell me how I can live on Flaming Hot Cheetos like a college co-ed and stay on my low-carb diet, I will like your post, watch your video, and buy your magic potion.

Diets never go out of style. Somewhere, someone is always cutting something out of their diet or adding something to their diet. Last week I made an avocado chocolate mousse. Coincidentally, I bought 32 ounces of frozen Welch’s avocados to create the high-fat, low-carb dessert.  Why? I saw a post on Instagram one day and sort of stored that idea in the back of my mind for a rainy day. People do it all the time.

If you can provide people with enough time to get the ingredients they need to make low-carb, vegan, vegetarian, diabetic, cholesterol-free, gallbladder diet, or whatever other specialty dishes they want to try for the Super Bowl, go for it.

The Halftime Show

There were thousands of posts about Beyoncé after her halftime performance at Super Bowl 50, and thousands of Lady Gaga posts in the days following her halftime performance at Super Bowl LI. And how can we forget all the #JusticeForJanet posts after Justin Timberlake’s performance at Super Bowl LII?

The Super Bowl halftime show has long-lasting impact. Before the show, performers are posting pictures of their arrival and the rehearsal. During the show, people are tuning in to watch.While just couple of years ago, Lady Gaga’s performance was the second most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance in history (second to Katy Perry’s 2015 performance), and it boosted total Super Bowl LI viewership numbers from 111.3 million to 117.5 million within 15 minutes.

This year, things are drastically different.  After some backlash from Atlanta natives it’s been announced that in addition to Maroon 5, Big Boi (half of the duo OutKast, will also be performing at the halftime show. This year’s halftime show was particularly hard to book. Rihanna, Cardi B, and Pink all turned down the gig.  While Pink cited problems in negotiations, Rihanna and Cardi B made it clear that they stand in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL quarterback who says he’s been blacklisted by the NFL for kneeling in protest to police brutality. Rapper Travis Scott also agreed to perform under one condition.  Billboard reported that Scott would only perform if condition that the NFL agreed to donate half a million dollar to social activism group, Dream Corp.

Even in the midst of all the halftime show woes, reviews will undoubtedly begin to pour in Instagram – of the performance, of the outfit, of the hair, of the makeup. And that’s where marketers can capitalize.

For the 6.2 million folks who appeared and disappeared with Lady Gaga, they are a demographic that can be courted by brands in the days leading up to the big performance.

For instance, a beauty company could partner with several expert makeup artists who have the skill to recreate celebrities’ looks with whatever tools they already have in their studios and live stream the transformation immediately following the performance.  The influencer who comes the closest wins something cool.

Brands may instead decide to give prizes to followers whose self-makeover  is the most creative, or most dramatic transformation from the way they normally look. A contest like this could just as easily be sponsored by a skin care company as it can by a makeup brand or a wig company.

Instagram user (@miarandria) posted a fun, flirty makeup tutorial for Super Bowl Sunday.

Again, the point is the make the best use of the conversation already happening on social.

Snacks for the Long Game

Branding your product well is just as important as selling. When you’re marketing products like snacks and perfumes on social media, great branding makes the difference in whether you eventually get the sale.

The thing with snacks is that it’s hard to move people to buy them immediately. As much as I love popcorn, I’m not going on a “popcorn run” anytime soon. Popcorn goes on my shopping list, and most times, I buy the same brand week after week. But…

I can be swayed.

The sponsored post above from Jessica (@dessertswithbenefits) was one of nine I found for Boomchickapop during the days leading up to Super Bowl 50. All the sponsored posts for Boomchickapop were exciting and brightly colored. They were all product shots using the #BringtheBOOM hashtag. I clicked on all of them, actually hoping each post generated enough engagement to be included in this article. Just because the product packaging is so pretty.

Posts featuring just a product generate notoriously low engagement. They usually look like ads and Instagrammers don’t respond well to posts that look like ads. So, you have two options:

1. Use product posts like this one for Boomchickapop to build brand awareness, that way you don’t have to worry so much about converting Likes to sales. You still want to make sure to use influencers who can keep your engagement numbers above 1%.

2. Your second option is to get more creative about your product placements. By that, I mean you can make your products utilitarian and steer the focus of your post to the actual influencer or a finished product (like a low-fat popcorn-only snack stadium filled with different Boomchickapop flavors. Or you can make your product presentation spectacular so your product looks like art. Compartes Gourmet Chocolates is a master at this technique. I’m going to talk more about their strategy in the next post.

 The post below from Karen (@thefoodchalatan) displayed a lovely dish that is based on Frito’s bean dip.  This post was made in preparation for Super Bowl 53.

Posts like this have the ability to convert to sales, and not to mention, this particular type of product ‘packaging’ is so pretty.

The Wrap Up

The Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year. It gets more television views than any other programming and moves more than $14 billion. There are nearly as many women watching the Super Bowl as there are men (43 percent and 57 percent, respectively). And companies that buy TV ad spots during the Super Bowl are spending millions of dollars on ad spend, celebrity appearances, development, production, and promoting the spot before it airs on the big day.

There is plenty of money to be spent, and plenty of money to be made if you have the right Influencer Marketing strategy. If you need help crafting a winning strategy that is just creative and interesting enough to be great, let us know. We have built thousands of successful influencer campaigns, and we’d love for you to become one of our many success stories.

Stats, Facts and the Tips for Reaching Your K-12 and College Shoppers

Welcome to the 2018 Back-to-School shopping season!

Since publishing our first back-to-school post just two years ago, a lot has changed.  The strategies are essentially the same, but the numbers have changed, which means the strategies you used in 2016 are gonna need a little tweaking.

That said, this post is structured the same way Lauren structured the original post back in 2016.

If you’ve been to your local discount store or big box retailer, you already know back-to-school season has arrived. (I’ll do you one better – I saw a bunch of ceramic pumpkins lined up in front of my local grocery store yesterday.) It’s the time of year when most kids are technically still on summer vacation, but they get to go shopping for whatever is hip and happening in the world of school supplies, clothing, shoes and gadgets.

Technically, back-to-school is being renamed Back-to-Class season since the stats actually include both k-12 spending as well as college spending. But for SEO purposes, we’re still going to sprinkle in the term “back-to-school” until the world decides yea or nay on “back-to-class”.

This post is packed with every statistic out there that you’ll need to know as a brand or marketer if you plan to take full advantage of back-to-school spending.

Just How Big of An Opportunity Is It?

So, for the last few weeks, we’ve been sort of harping on Back-to-Class season being the 2nd largest retail holiday in the US. This year, total spending for back-to-school (which specifically refers to k-12 spending) and back-to-college (or back-to-campus) is expected to reach $82.8 billion, falling just a little bit shy of last year’s expected $83.6 billion in sales. That drop is easy to explain – there are actually fewer households with school-aged kids this year than last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

Still, if you’re anything like me, you may be wondering how backpacks and mechanical pencils generate nearly $83 billion in sales every year. But check out how it breaks down in the chart below:

• 29 million households participate in k-12 back-to-school shopping
• 54 million school-aged children
• B2S shopping season accounts for half of all school-related spending throughout the year
• Estimates there will be $27.6 billion spent on k-12 back-to-school shopping

Source: Deloitte

Take a look at the chart below. If you notice, college spending is expected to increase to $55.3 billion from last year’s $54.1 billion. This includes spending by parents who are sending their kids off to college, as well as parents and adults going back to college or pursuing advanced degrees. K-12 spending is expected to drop from last year’s $29.5 billion to around $27.5 billion for the 2018-2019 season.

Source: National Retail Federation

Just  in case you’re still scratching your head about that $82.8 billion, I came across numbers that make this claim a little more digestible.

In the fall of 2017, about 50.7 million students attended public elementary and secondary schools. Of these, 35.6 million were in prekindergarten through grade 8, and 15.1 million were in grades 9 through 12. An additional 4.9 million students were expected to attend private schools.

Which is a lot of kids…

During the 2017 back-to-school season, the average k-12 household spent $688 on clothes, electronics, shoes and supplies for the new school year, with the most money ($237) being allocated to clothing and accessories, followed by electronics ($187).  This year, the k-12 crowd is expected to spend about the same amount ($685) while college spending on supplies, clothes, electronics, and dorm furnishings is expected to total around $942 for the school year.

Spending also differs by the age of the student. Six in 10 college freshmen expect to spend the most money on new electronics like laptops, phones and computers. By comparison, the largest chunk of spending for high school students is on clothes, and for middle schoolers and junior high students it’s shoes, according to NRF’s Director of Industry and Consumer Insights, Katherine Cullen.

So even though Back-to-Class time isn’t the most obvious of contenders for that #2 slot, if you look at the numbers, it becomes crystal clear that it is a massive retail event.  Nearly 70 percent of third quarter retail sales are school-related, and more than 17 percent of a retailer’s total sales for the year come from Back-to-Class purchases.

Timing Matters

Kids go back to school in JULY, folks!

It’s the end of July, and the kids in my neighborhood – a small town just east of Atlanta – have already gone back to school. We’re outliers though. Most of the kids in this state didn’t start this week. They will start next week.

If you happen to be rolling out a Back-to-Class campaign, you’ve already missed me. We’ve got French Toast uniforms, some  and composition notebooks. We have burgundy Vans (went to four stores to find those) and rainbow Chacos (searched high and low for those before a friend stepped in a recommended a cool mom-and-pop shop a few miles away that specializes in unflattering high-end sandals – didn’t know there was such a thing). The scientific calculator is safely tucked away. All that’s left are the few items teachers tell me to pick up once class starts.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t go big box retailer this year. We did the malls, but left empty-handed. Instead we shopped local businesses that had competitive prices and fantastic selections. Lucky me – I ended up spending about half what I thought I would for my preschooler.  But more important, I found a new store to shop that is awesome.

My point here is not to brag about being done. It’s to alert you that it’s July and I’M DONE with my school shopping! That’s because many of the kids in this part of the country start school at the end of July through the first week in August. So, the retailers with whom I spent my Back-to-Class dollars probably got my attention (or my daughter’s attention) around Fourth of July.

The U.S. is one of the few countries that doesn’t have a standardized start date (according to Wikipedia), so it’s not just my neighborhood that’s ending summer vacation early. Kids in Arizona and Indiana have been back to school a week already.  And by mid-August, most kids in the U.S. will be back in school.

That means if you’re doing localized marketing campaigns, you will need to know when the kids in that market head back to class.

Back-to-Class shopping goes in waves

Seventy-seven percent of k-12 back-to-school shoppers plan to start shopping at least three weeks before school starts. The same is true for college shoppers.

But… starting and finishing are two different things. So… 89 percent of shoppers – even early shoppers – still have shopping to do when classes start at the end of July. In fact, folks are picking up supplies through early fall.

My point: Back-to-class shopping goes in waves. Even if you miss the first one, you still have time to catch the second one.

Most shoppers continue buying stuff even after school has started because inevitably, there will be a million little random items missed on the first go-round.

…. blue erasers instead of red

…. 1.5-inch D-ring binders, instead of the three 1-inch O-ring binders you already bought

…. Papermate blue or Bic blue? There’s a difference.

If kids don’t get this info emailed to them over the summer, parents have to head back to the stores during the first few weeks of school to buy missing supplies for each class.

Shoppers buy different supplies at different times

Which brings me to my next point: Different types of Back-to-Class supplies are purchased at different times. For instance, clothing and school supplies see significant action in July and August while food & snacks see their peak in August. This is super important when you’re vying for attention. You want to put your brand in front of shoppers at the right point in the Back-to-School shopping cycle.

Let’s look for a moment at what’s being bought. Here’s a breakdown of how money is being spent on Back-To-School products. It’s no surprise apparel, footwear, and backpacks are leading the pack… kids like to look cool.

The Role Pricing Plays

One huge factor that affects purchase decisions is the shopper’s unyielding desire to find the best price. Shoppers are now – and always have been –  deal-hunting machines, online and offline.

It’s interesting to note that shoppers are picky when it comes to finding deals. By that I mean, they’re more neurotic about price when it comes to clothes and shoes, but prefer to pay a premium for quality when it comes to school supplies and snacks.

Forty-six percent of shoppers say price is one of their top deciding factors when it comes to Back-to-Class purchases. Sixty-two percent of Back-to-Class shoppers expect to spend less this year than they did last year.

Brand managers would be smart to remain mindful of these stats when planning their marketing strategies.

Now, if price is this big of a deal, you can bet couponing (though not extreme couponing like the people on The Learning Channel) is not far behind. In this hurried generation of two-family incomes, play dates, and successive extra curricular activities, I will let you venture one good guess on how couponing is done today.

If you guessed mobile, you guessed right.

People search for coupons not only on their mobile devices, but they are searching for coupons while they shop! A recent study of online coupon-searches found that 59 percent of the searches performed online containing the word “coupon” were made using a mobile device. When the search query included a top-brand name, they had an even larger percentage that came from a mobile device.

For instance, of the shoppers online hunting for Hobby Lobby coupons, 88 percent of those searches came from a mobile device. For J.C. Penney, 87 percent of customers’ coupon queries were performed using a mobile device. You can bet a fair number of those searches were performed in the store, maybe even in the checkout line.

Online Retail is Super-Important for Back-to-School

The wisdom of the Digital Age says online marketing is absolutely non-negotiable for most brands. But “online” is a pretty sizable place, so the best thing any of us can do as marketers is to figure out where the eyes are.

First things first: Online shopping

E-commerce is a big part of the Back-to-Class season. While I still have a hard time believing e-commerce makes up less than 10 percent of total retail sales in the U.S. (I’ve actually seen reports that put e-comm anywhere from 8 to 13 percent of total U.S. retail sales),  I think the bright spot here is when we originally published this post in 2016, only 7.9 percent of shopping was done online. In the last two years, e-commerce has grown by about 15 percent. In the UK, the number is as high as 17 percent.

That said, about half of back-to-school shoppers (55 percent) and back-to-college shoppers (49 percent) plan to go online for at least a portion of their shopping. In all, Deloitte reports that upwards of 20 percent of that $27 billion in back-to-school spending may happen online.

Both the k-12 group and the college-bound group give preference to department stores, online retailers, and discount stores. But college shoppers actually rank online retailers over brick-and-mortar stores.

The number of purchases that are happening online is not nearly as important as how the online experience influences a consumer’s Path-To-Purchase.

Back in the day, the Path-To-Purchase used to be a very clear map of the journey consumers took on their way to making a purchase. And here’s what it used to look like.

Back then, the journey was a simple one because it excluded the messiness that the digital world introduced.

This is what it looks like now.

Much less like a path, right? Looks like a timed maze.

Consumers bounce around, across various channels, mixing in-store experiences with the chaos of the online world without any sort of discernible pattern. And because of this chaos, brands need to get a firm grasp on Omni-Channel Shopping, which is the idea that buyers need to be presented with a seamless experience across all channels, allowing discovery, research, consideration, and eventual purchase to happen with fluidity between the digital and “real world” experiences.

Wordtracker posted a really cool infographic a few years ago that runs through how this type of experience affects holiday marketing.

And for a slightly different take on this concept, HubSpot published a post earlier this year that explains how multi-channel experiences should focus on nurturing existing customers… keeping them in the loop, engaging with them. Plus, cool examples of how brands like  Disney and Bank of America are doing just that. Brands should seek to be their customer’s go-to option. Instead of just some random store a customer shops by happenstance on a given day.

Back-To-Class usage patterns for mobile devices drive home the point that online sales is not necessarily your end goal. Sales are happening offline, but the online world is a huge part of those offline purchases

Okay. We have the stats. Let’s see how we can turn stats into store traffic.

How to Harness the Power of Omni Channel Marketing

Figure out who’s really making the purchase, and segment

Most brands target the most obvious demographic while ignoring the ones that actually matter. When it comes to Back-to-Class shopping, Moms might be the ones whipping out their credit cards, but the kids are calling the shots. In our 2018 Summer-Fall Influencer Marketing Guide, we did a pretty good job of sussing out the key players.

For back-to-school season, you’re mostly going to be dealing with Millennial Moms and Alpha kids, which we talked about in Part One of the Summer-Fall Guide.

For high school and back-to-campus marketing, you’re talking Gen X Moms and their Gen Z kids, which you can learn more about in Part Two of the Summer-Fall Guide.

Here’s why you need to target both: Deloitte estimates children influence $21 billion out of more than $27 billion in k-12 back-to-school spending. That’s 76 percent!  Yet brands are still targeting mainly moms.

Why would a marketer assume the most effective method for marketing to tech-savvy kids who are perpetually online is through their moms? That’s just crazy!

You know who else gets overlooked? Men.

On average, dads will spend 37% more money shopping than moms. Why? Because saving money requires research and time many dads just aren’t willing to invest. College-bound men spend about $115 more on back-to-college supplies than their co-ed classmates.

I would bet most dads just want to get in, win, and get out. And still, despite dads being big spenders and kids being a huge motivating factor as well, most brands target women exclusively when dreaming up their back-to-school marketing campaigns.

Step up your game, marketers!

Find them online to get their attention

So we’ve talked about how the omni-channel style of shopping has forever altered the journey that buyers take when making a purchase. But what does that mean to you as a marketer?

Well,  it means you’ve got your work cut out for you. It means you need to figure out what your customers are up to online while making purchase decisions, and you need to set up your presence and marketing gameplan around the digital hot spots that affect meaningful portions of YOUR specific target demographic.

In 2016, more than 11 million people in the U.S. saved almost 45 million back-to-school-related ideas on Pinterest. Take a gander at a few other important stats:

• Mondays. Those are the high-traffic days with regard to website pageviews of back-to-school items.
• Mobile makes up 50 percent of pageviews for back-to-school products.
• 27 percent of shoppers plan to organize their shopping lists via Pinboards.
• 25 percent say that they will be using Pinterest for lunch and snack ideas.
• Facebook is the most influential platform when it comes to guiding parents’ fashion purchase decisions. A Rakuten Marketing study conducted in the UK showed that nearly one in four parents consult Facebook when looking for inspiration to fill their children’s closets.
• Blogs and social media are now generating as many purchases as the traditional methods like television and magazines.
• User-generated content accounts for 25% of search results.

There are many routes you can take to get your product in front of the right audience –  banner ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads… Each platform can commandeer a notable portion of a brand’s marketing budget to help products get traction during seasonal pushes. You may say, “Simple. I’ll buy up a bunch of online ads” without taking into account that almost 25% of mobile users AND almost 200 million people are using ad blockers around the world. The inconvenient truth is online ads aren’t getting quite the mileage that they used to get.

My advice would be to tap into the audiences of influential bloggers and social media creators within your space, à la influencer marketing.

If you’re not sold on the notion of influencer marketing, I will direct you to this awesome post we wrote a little while ago describing influencer marketing and why you need it. NOW.

If you’re already sold on it, we’ve got some fun ideas that you can incorporate into your last-minute back-to-school campaigns.

So, listen. Since Back-To-School has already started, it’s going to be hard (not impossible) to slap together your influencer marketing campaigns in time. But we’re the experts over here at The Shelf. And the campaigns we run are beautiful!

Seriously.

So get in touch with Sabrina (sales@theshelf.com) if you want to talk shop. We can help you take advantage of the 2nd LARGEST retail holiday by launching your epic back to school campaigns!

111 Influencer Marketing Statistics That Actually Mean Something For Your Brand

Three years ago, the two big questions on every marketer’s mind were “What is influencer marketing?” and “Does it really work?”

Today, 67% of marketers say not only does influencer marketing work, but it helps them to reach a more targeted audience. Influencer marketing allows brands to get in front of large groups of niched-down segments of their target audience by forming alliances with the most influential people in those segments. So, finding a way to get in front of green Millennial moms who are also vegan (#veganmom, #veganmoms, #veganmommy), or Millennials from the Bluegrass State who support local businesses (#shoplocalky) gets simpler with influencer marketing.

This is our stats post to end all stats post – more than 100  facts and stats that marketers can really use to manage effective influencer marketing campaigns.

We’ve broken down this post to give you the stats in seven specific areas of influencer marketing: The Overall State of Influencer Marketing, Ongoing Challenges, Social Media Platforms, Proof of Success, and User-Generated Content.

Let’s get to it.

The State of Influencer Marketing

Even creeping past the $2 billion mark, influencer marketing is still in its infancy. Instagram reports there are more than 25 million business accounts on the platform. But only two percent of brands are meaningfully engaging with users on social media. So, we’re far from the tipping point for influencer marketing.

1. Nearly half the world’s population (that’s 3.8 billion people) actively use social media, according the Global Digital Snapshot Q3 2017, a report compiled by We Are Social and Hootsuite.

2. Mobile is key. One in five Americans are accessing the web strictly at work and via smartphone. They don’t have a broadband connection at home.

3. For Americans ages 18 – 29, more than 1 in 4 (28%) are “smartphone only” internet users who have no broadband connection at home.

4. Different generations follow brands on social for different reasons.

5. Thirty percent of Millennials say they engage with brands at least once a month.

6. Sixty percent of Baby Boomers who engage with brands on social are looking for promotions.

7. Gen Xers? They buy. Something like 7 in 10 Gen Xers will buy something from a brand they follow.

        8. BUT only 1 in 10 messages to brands get a response.

9. According to SproutSocial, the sectors that have the highest average response rate are utilities (17%), retail (16%), and travel hospitality (15%). Besides healthcare, the sectors with the lowest response rates are nonprofit (7%), education (7%), government (8%).

10. Professional service providers also rank pretty low (9%) with responsiveness.

11. Positive online interactions with brands drive sales. Seventy-one percent of those polled said they are more likely to buy from a company after a positive interaction.

12. In fact, 37% of consumers use social media as their go-to before making a purchase.

13. This includes C-level and executive-level buyers, 74% of whom use social media to make purchasing decisions. It really is

14. According to the PwC Total Retail Survey 2016, 45% of respondents said that user-generated content like reviews, comments, and customer feedback influences their shopping behavior.

Source: Internet Trends 2017 – Code Conference

The Ongoing Challenges

Influencer marketing isn’t without its challenges. But most of them seem to stem from a single dilemma: Contrary to the way in which many marketers handle their influencer campaigns, influencer marketing is less about sales and more about branding and relationship-building, even when it comes to recruiting an influencer to your cause. Relationships are your bread and butter.

So, directing your company’s resources to influencer marketing means you are effectively shifting from bottom-of-the-funnel [transactional] sales to focusing on your long game – wooing people into your funnel by building and nurturing relationships, cultivating younger users to become lifelong buyers, fortifying your reputation as the go-to source for whatever it is you do or sell. That shift in mindset is tough for many brands to justify, but thinking long-term about your marketing strategy is CRUCIAL to your continued success.

** Remind me to tell you sometime about the time the marketing department for one of the country’s leading symphony orchestras was charged with the responsibility of wooing younger symphony-goers because their core audience was aging up and literally dying-off.

My point: The long game matters, because like it or not, we all have to choose a day to implement that proverbial ten-year strategy. .

15. By and large, marketers name measuring ROI as the most challenging part of social media marketing, with 61% of those surveyed saying it was their top challenge.

16. When asked about influencer marketing in particular, 65% of marketers listed measuring ROI as the top challenge.

17. A full one-third (34%) of marketers said seeing how their social media marketing efforts support their business goals is one of their top challenges.

18. Marketers also struggle with finding the right influencers to promote their products in the first place. Seventy-three percent of respondents named choosing an influencer as the biggest challenge in working with influencers.

In the eMarketer report Measuring Influencer Marketing: A Guide for Marketers, eight aspects of influencer marketing were listed as areas marketers would like to see improved:

19. Eighty percent of marketers want to see improvements measuring ROI

20. Sixty-six percent of marketers want to see improvements in tracking an influencer’s sway.

21. Sixty percent want improvements in the area of finding influencers.

22. Fifty-five percent of marketers want to see improvements  in getting influencers to report back on campaigns.

23. Fifty-five percent of marketers want to see improvements vetting influencers.

24. Forty-six percent of marketers want to see improvements managing lists of influencers

25. Forty-one percent of marketers want to see improvements engaging influencers

26. Twenty-six percent of influencers want to see improvements building and managing influencer relationships

Similarly, a separate survey indicated:

27. 59% of respondents included being able to get the attention of, and engage with, influencers as a major challenge in influencer marketing.

28. 36% of marketers want a better way of readily identifying an influencer’s interests, and

29. 31% of marketers want help getting an influencer’s contact info and an accurate list of his or her endorsement history.

So, if you’ve experienced challenges in any one of these areas, rest assured you are not the anomaly.

There’s a great opportunity here for professional and licensed service providers to strengthen their follower base just by being more responsive on social media.

Social Media Platforms

Don’t assume everything happens on Instagram. In truth, influencers have generated millions of dollars for brands and for themselves across multiple social media platforms. Let’s talk about that in this section.

Source: Pew Research Center

Where is your audience hanging out?

Across the board, the percentage of U.S. adults who are using the major social media platforms – Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Twitter – significantly increased from 2012 to 2018.  As of Q3 of 2017, 79% of the 3.8 billion Internet users around the globe were also active social media users, with 2.78 billion accessing social from their mobile devices. That’s a lot of folks.

The first job for marketers is figuring out where their audience is spending time online, then developing platform-specific strategies to target small segments of that audience.

 YOUTUBE

30. YouTube – On the low end, 56% of adults over 50 use YouTube, while 94% of adults 18 to 24 do.

31. Like Facebook, YouTube attracts users of all ages, including Gen Z (ages 6 to around 17). Social Media Today reports that 75% of Gen Zers want to become YouTubers, creating content for the platform.

32. Seventy percent of the content watched on YouTube is viewed on a mobile device.

33. More than one in three Millennials (37%) ages 18 to 34 binge-watch videos daily on YouTube. Coincidentally, across age groups, YouTube is a preferred platform of binge-watching videos.

34. According to the YouTube blog, users upload about a billion hours of video content a day to YouTube.

35. Versions of the platform are available in 90 countries and 80 different languages.

So, we recently published YouTube User Statistics by Generation to The Shelf blog. For the most up-to-date numbers on how Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers are using YouTube, click here to read that post.

Facebook

36. Facebook – On the low end, 55% of adults over 50 use Facebook, just over 80% of adults 25 to 29 do.

37. Eight-nine percent of women (young and old) who use social media are on Facebook.

38. About 4 in 5 urban dwellers use Facebook. The numbers are identical for rural users.

39. People who use Facebook, really USE Facebook. Most U.S. adults are Facebook users, and the average Facebook user accesses Facebook more frequently than any other platform… eight times a day, actually.

40. Four in ten  Americans over the age of 65 are Facebook users. That’s twice what the number was in 2012 (my octogenarian Uncle Buck -and his sassy wife, Aunt Charlotte – show up in my feed in the sharpest church suits you’ve ever seen).

41. There are a billion folks engaging daily in Facebook groups – that’s half of all Facebook users.

 INSTAGRAM

42. Instagram – On the low end, 16% of adults over 50 use Instagram, while 71% of adults 18 to 24 do.

43. There are a billion monthly active users on Instagram (we updated this stat June 25, 2018, after IG’s announcement verifying 1 billion in MAUs).

44. Eighty percent of the accounts on Instagram follow at least one brand, according to Buffer, and 60% first heard about a product or service on Instagram.

45. Does that exposure help? Yes. According to Instagram’s blog, between February and March of 2017, 120 million Instagrammers visited a website, got directions, called, emailed, or direct messaged to learn about a business.

46. According to Simply Measured, 7 in 10  hashtags on Instagram are branded hashtags.

47. Ad revenue is expected to reach $7 billion in 2018.

Source: Sprout Social

TWITTER

48. Twitter – On the low end, 14% of adults over 50 use Twitter, while 45% of adults 18 to 24 do. The most active Twitter users are Millennials.

49. Twitter has more than 300 million monthly active users, of which 261 million are outside the U.S.

50. Twitter users generate hundreds of millions of tweets daily. accessing the app mostly from their mobile devices .  Nearly 40% of Twitter users are following brands.

51. Most Twitter users are educated. 24% of Americans who have attended college use Twitter, and 28% of Americans who earned their college degree use Twitter.

52. More than 55% of Twitter users earn at least $50,000 a year in income.

53. Twitter is a go-to source for trending news and discovery.

Source: Sprout Social

Side note: When Slack went down in May 2018, I was one of many Slack’s users who learned of the outage when the #Slackdown hashtag started trending on Twitter.

SNAPCHAT

Source: Pew Research Center

54. Snapchat – On the low end, 7% of adults over 50 use Snapchat, while 78% of adults 18 to 24 do.

55. Snapchat is the most popular social media platform for Gen Zers between the ages of 12 and 17. Part of the platform’s charm is its utter reliance on user-generated content (UGC). The app’s entire culture is built on the originality you get when 300 million users create original content about themselves and their lives for their friends.

56. In Q1 of 2018, Snapchat had 191 million daily active users. To put that in perspective, Facebook – the most popular social media platform – has 1.45 billion daily active users. But 71% of 18 to 24 year-olds report using Snapchat multiple times a day.

57. More than 10 billion mobile videos are watched on the platform every day.

58. Activewear (90% of activewear companies surveyed have Snapchat profiles), beauty (78%), fashion (78%), and retail (56%) are the top four verticals with profiles on Snapchat.

Pinterest

59. The 200 million monthly Pinterest users are a 70/30 split between women and men, but the platform is diversifying – half of new signups are male.

60. Speaking of half… Half of Millennials use Pinterest every single month. And half of Pinterest users are outside the U.S.

61. One final half for you. Half of Pinterest users have made a purchase after seeing a Promoted Pin.

62. Over 80% of pins are re-pins compared to 1.4% of tweets retweeted.

63. Pinterest is the inspiration platform. People go to Pinterest to find and curate ideas on everything from home decor and starting a blog, to hairstyles and keto diet meal prep. More than 60% of Pinterest users say the platform helps them find ideas to be their best selves.

64. Forty percent of users have a household income of $100K+

65. Twenty-four percent of Pinterest users say the platform is a great place to “shop the look,” according to KP Internet Trends 2017.

66. Pinterest users are buyers who are ready to buy. They spend 16% more on cosmetics than people not on Pinterest. They spend 29% more on retail than those not on the platform. They spend 27% more on home decor than people not on Pinterest. And they spent 30% more on fashion than people not on the platform.

67. Sixty percent of Pinterest households have children 5 and under.

68. The lionshare of Pinterest users (80%) are accessing the platform from mobile devices.

LINKEDIN

69. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, with more than 562 million users  across 200 countries, including decision makers from every Fortune 500 Company. LinkedIn users span across generations. The 18 to 29 crowd represents nearly a quarter of LinkedIn users, 61% of LinkedIn users are 30 to 64 years old, and 21% of LinkedIn users are over the age of 65.

70. There are more male-identified users (56%) on LikedIn than female users (44%).

71. Half of college-educated adults in the U.S. say they use Linkedin, compared to only nine percent for high school graduates who have no college experience.

72. Three in four LinkedIn users make more than $50,000 a year.

73. While it’s not really set up like other social networks, LinkedIn users are not immune to user-generated content and recommendations from friends. Half of B2B buyers rely on LinkedIn to make their purchasing decisions, and when they do, 76% use recommendations from their professional networks to make those purchases.

74. As you could probably imagine, 70% of LinkedIn users are from countries outside the U.S. The top 5 home countries of LInkedIn users are the United States, India, Brazil, Great Britain, and Canada.

Source : Pew Research Center

Reciprocity in Social Media

Social media users tend to use more than one platform (called reciprocity), with younger users typically having the most social media accounts. Of the top 7 platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest):

75. Nearly 3 in 4 social media users (73%) use more than one platform.

76. The average American uses three social media platforms.

The old adage for marketers is to never put all of your marketing resources into one platform. It only takes one update to the algorithm to render your hard work null and void. So, it’s important to know not just your audience’s favorite platform, but any reciprocal platforms where users tend to hang out.

In general, having an account with any platform increases the likelihood of also using Facebook and YouTube. Beyond Facebook and YouTube, the most popular combinations of social media reciprocity are:

77. Sixty percent of Instagram users also use Snapchat, but they are less likely to use LinkedIn (41%).

78. Seventy-three percent of Twitter users also use Instagram. They are less likely to use Pinterest (49%).

79. Most Facebook users also use YouTube (87%) and Instagram (47%). They are less likely to use Twitter (32%).

80. Seventy-seven percent of Snapchat users also use Instagram, but they are far less likely to use LinkedIn (37%).

81. Eighty-one percent of YouTubers also use Facebook (81%). They are least likely to use Twitter (31%).

82. Fifty-six percent of Pinterest users also use Instagram. They are least likely to use Twitter (41%).

83. Fifty-seven percent of LinkedIn users also use Instagram. They are less likely to use Snapchat (40%).

When Are They There?

Most social media users check the social feeds on their favorite platforms more than once a day. Which platform is the favorite?

84. Facebook is still the clear favorite across age groups, according to Sprout Social. A little over 65% of Baby Boomers peg Facebook as their favorite social media platform. And 64.7% of Gen Xers say Facebook is their favorite social media platform, compared with 33% of Millennials. One in four younger Millennials (18 to 24 years old) list Instagram as their favorite platform.

85. Half of all Facebook users say they access the platform more than once a day.

User-Generated Content

The content generated by influencers during a campaign is the most valuable asset brands get from influencer marketing. Content is what makes an influencer, and it’s also the tool used to reach and engage followers.

86. When done right, user-generated content can generate nearly 7X higher engagement than brand generated content on Facebook

87. Thirty-seven percent of consumers think quality of the content overrides the fact that it’s a sponsored post. Thirty-four percent of consumers don’t even mind if they’re reading sponsored content, as long as the content is useful.

88. The celebrity endorsement isn’t what it used to be. Pets can outperform celebrities when it comes to influencer marketing. While 3% of people said they would consider buying a product in-store after a celebrity endorsement, 10% of 18 to 24 year-olds said they were likely to buy a product endorsed by a famous pet influencer.

89. According to Kissmetrics, “25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.”

90. 57% of consumers have purchased a holiday gift after reading a product review on social media.

91. 30% of US buyers have made a purchase based on sponsored content.

92. Live streaming is expected to be worth a $70.05 billion by 2021, as video content .

93. 4X as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it.

94. Facebook users spend 3X more time watching live videos than traditional videos.

Source: HubSpot Research

Proof of Success

For all the fuss it’s making in the digital marketing space right now (I’m so over the term “disruptive”) influencer marketing is still being qualified with words like “nascent” and “emerging.” This thing is still pretty new.

Marketers are seeing results, but they do need help finding ways to get the intel they need to make the best marketing decisions, and they need to find ways to refine the collection process so the data is usable. Typical big data issues: How do we get it? And once we have it, what do we do with it?

I’ll raise you one big, fat question… How do we know if we’re winning? And who else is winning at this?

95. 84% of marketers believe influencer marketing is effective.

96. A now-legendary influencer marketing study published by Tomoson found that businesses make $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. That was in 2015. Just this week, Marketing Week published a stat saying beauty influencers are generating a return of $11.74 for each $1 a brand spends on influencer marketing.

97. Similarly, $7.65 is the Average Earned Media value per $1 spent on influencer marketing, according to MarketingProfs.com.

98. Big brands having been successfully leveraging influencer marketing on social for years. Companies like Target, H&M, Adidas, Live Nation (our client), Lord & Taylor, Marvel (did you see their Valentine’s Day campaign promoting the DVD release of Doctor Strange?),  Samsung, American Express, Toyota, Hanes (our client), Fairmont, Famous Footwear (client), Neutrogena, Microsoft, Eos (client), and Ticketmaster (client) are just a handful of the brands partnering with influencers to reach audiences.

99. Authenticity is the one thing that keeps followers engaged on social media. Of 1,752 influencers surveyed, the most popular response for why their followers remain engaged was: “I am myself, honest, funny, open, willing to call it how I see it.”

100. By far, the most common way of measuring success in an influencer marketing campaign is engagement (59%), followed by conversion / revenue (21%), then amplification / brand awareness (15%)

101. Nevertheless, most brands have traditionally (like, over the last 3 years – that kind of tradition) used influencer marketing campaigns specifically to increase brand awareness. This is due in large part to the fact that earned media value (impressions) played a bigger role in measuring ROI than engagement and conversions.

BUT according to this piece published on Forbes.com by the Forbes Agency Council…

102. When measured with loyalty card data, influencer content can drive sales and increase basket size.

103. Influencer marketing directly impacts sales through redemptions for promotional offers.

104. Using point of sale (POS) data, influencer marketing can drive true measurable sales lift.

105. When measured with foot traffic data, influencer marketing increases engagement.

In general…

106. The average Instagram user gets just over 4% engagement per post.

107. But as the number of followers increases, engagement ratio decreases. So, when hiring a macro or mega influencer for your campaign, a good rule of thumb is to ensure the influencer consistently garners around 2% engagement.

108. Social media spend in the US topped $13B in 2017.

Source: Google Trends

109. 39% of marketers planned to increase their influencer marketing budget for 2018, according to Statista.

110. A year ago, the term “influencer marketing” ranked 40 out of 100 for Google search popularity globally, and 56 out of 100 for in the United States. Today, it ranks 72 out of 100 worldwide, and 96 out of 100 in the United States.

111. By the year 2020, global spending on influencer marketing is expected to reach anywhere from $5B to $10B.

The Wrap Up

When Instagram broke the Internet by selling to Facebook for a billion dollars just 18 months after it launched, I don’t think we really pictured that six years later, the app would play host to a two billion-dollar influencer marketing industry (of which Instagram alone is responsible for  $1 billion dollars). But here we are.

In a very short time, influencer marketing has gone from being a fad to being an important part of marketers’ core digital marketing strategies for reaching Gen Xers and Millennials. And brands and marketers have had to learn the influencer marketing game on the fly.

But as the masses continue to move away from relying on TV and radio for entertainment, and replace TV time with online streaming and social media, marketers – as marketers tend to do – are getting better at finding ways get brands in front of buyers, and do so across multiple social media platforms through influencer marketing.

12 Products That Will Get A Big Boost In Sales This Fourth Of July

It’s time for summer’s biggest, baddest holiday – the Fourth of July. Every year, more than 200 million Americans gear up to partake in the nationwide festivities that mark the anniversary of our country’s independence. And every year, a short list of [somewhat] patriotic products (craft beer is patriotic, right?) make their way into the hands of Americans as part of the official holiday celebration.

This year, we thought we’d take a look at some of the products that have, no doubt, already shown up either in your social media feed or as creepily intuitive smart ads following you around the World Wide Web. These are products that generate a significant amount of their annual revenue during the $6.8 billion Fourth of July holiday buying frenzy.

Hot Dogs

Summertime is hot dog season! That’s pretty straightforward right? Ball games, amusement parks, grills, and leisurely walks through the streets of New York all seem to demand we eat more hot dogs.

In 2016, we spent more than $2.4 billion buying 1 billion pounds of hot dogs, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. This doesn’t include the hot dogs we get from street vendors or the dogs we buy when we’re out and about. This is just what we spent on the hot dogs that made it onto our grocery lists.

Americans typically eat around 7 billion hot dogs during the summer months that fall between Memorial Day and Labor Day, 150 million of those hot dogs we eat on the Fourth of July.

Since a full 10% of the year’s annual hot dog revenue is generated in July, it’s no wonder July been designated as National Hot Dog Month.

Fun fact: One-third of the hot dogs produced in the US come from Iowa. Thanks, Iowa!

Barbecue Sauce

Fun fact: Heinz put the first commercial barbecue sauce in stores in 1948 but recipes for barbecue sauces can be found as early the 17th century. Today, there are dozens of barbecue sauces lining the shelves of major grocers.

Statista listed Sweet Baby Ray’s as the top-selling brand with $151.6 million in sales in 2015. Kraft came in a distant second at $69.8 million. This gap likely contributed to Kraft’s decision to release five new sauces ahead of last year’s summer barbecue season. According to Ad Age, the new sauces could also help Kraft stay ahead of smaller barbecue sauce producers.

To get an idea of the significance of Sweet Baby Ray’s sales, consider this: Americans bought $436.7 million in barbecue sauce in 2014 and $448.56 million in 2015. Nielsen reports Americans will consume $42 million in barbecue sauce for the 4th of July.

Barbecue

About two-thirds of celebrants will attend a barbecue, cookout, or picnic for the Fourth of July. The average household spends more than $70 on food they plan to eat on the Fourth of July holiday.

In the weeks before the July 4th holiday, Americans buy 700M pounds of chicken and 190M pounds of beef. Here are some quick stats published by Nielsen. To celebrate Independence Day, Americans will consume:

• $318 million in chips

• $133 million in hamburger and hot dog buns

• $116 million in cherries

• $114 million in deli salads

• $83 million in watermelon

• $37 million in ketchup

• $36 million in corn on the cob

• $28 million in bakery pies

• $27 million in Italian sausage

• $25 million in bratwurst

• $25 million in mustard

Barbecue Grills

Three in every four U.S. adults (not households – but adults) own grills or smokers. This is as true for palatial estates as it is for inner city bungalows. Americana definitely supports the practice of cooking food outside. In fact, one article I came across actually positioned the outdoor kitchen as the next hot amenity.

Of the estimated 181 million grill owners in the US in 2015, 76% planned to fire up their grills for the Fourth of July, and 45% intended to buy a new grill within a year.  The majority of grill owners (62%) own gas grills, followed by charcoal (53%), then electric (12%).

Mosquito Repellent

The big Zika scare of 2016 sent mosquito repellent sales through the roof. Not only were stores selling more product, but the seasonal demand for repellents started earlier in the year in 2016 than it did 2015.

Between February and April 2016, insect repellent sprays were up 323% over what they were for the same period in 2015, jumping from $1.4 million to $5.9 million in that three-month period. More units sold and the average price per unit increased from $10.28 in 2015 to $12.66 in 2016. And that was before Zika ever hit U.S. soil.

In response to the increased demand last year, SC Johnson (manufacturer of Off!) increased production by running factories around the clock.

Earlier this year, Zion Market Research published a press release that estimated the insect repellent market to be valued at $3.2 billion. That number is expected to climb to $5 billion by 2022.

Coincidently, according to Consumer Reports, if you’re looking for a way to stay bite-free this summer, skip the wearable devices and the candles. Instead, go for a repellent that contains oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE) or deet.

Apparel

Don’t let the jet-setting super models and international fashion runways fool you. The US apparel market is the largest in the world. In 2015, the market was valued at more than $350 billion, according to Statista; the US imported $88 billion in clothes.

In 2016, July accounted for $15.15 billion in apparel sales, up from $14.82 billion in June. The increase in spending can easily be attributed to two factors – Fourth of July spending to beef up vacation and summer wardrobes, and the other side of the coin, which is the start of back-to-school shopping, which typically begins at the end of July (in the South, the kids go back to school the first or second week in August).

Soft Drinks

In 2014, the US non-alcoholic beverage market produced 30.9 billion gallons of drinks. Believe it or not, that’s less than what the industry produced just a few years before. Americans are actually buying fewer sugary drinks.

Four years ago, the average American drank 44 gallons of soft drinks per year. Nineteen years ago, the average American drank 58 gallons of soft drinks a year. Americans spent $65 billion on soft drinks in 2011. About a billion of that ($1.14 billion) we bought just to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Harvard Health reports that US beverage companies spent $3.2 billion just marketing carbonated beverages in 2006, with a significant amount of that budget allocated to marketing to kids ages 2 – 17 years of age.

So, as for the tug-of-war currently taking place between the beverage industry and nutrition-focused watchdog groups, it is true that sugary drinks have been linked to an increase in obesity. On the other hand, the beverage industry employs 240,000 people and creates $166.5 billion in annual revenue.

Hard Drinks

Welcome to the biggest drinking holiday of the year! Americans will drink plenty of beer this Fourth of July. This is particularly true of American men in their 20s and 30s, who make up the largest demographic of beer drinkers.

In 2013, more than 103 million Americans drank beer on the Fourth of July, with 68.3 million cases of beer sold over the course of the weekend. In 2015, Americans spent an estimated $1 billion on beer to celebrate Independence Day.

Just last year, Nielsen expected Americans to consume $1.72 billion in beer, flavored malt beverages, and cider (which is growing in popularity in the US, Canada, and the UK). That includes 60.7 million cases of domestic beer and 10.7 million cases of imported beer. As well, celebrants were expected to spend $568.3 million in wine for the Fourth of July 2016 festivities.

To put these random numbers in perspective, the National Beer Wholesalers Association offers these stats:

In 2015, the U.S. beer industry sold 206.7 million barrels of beer, the equivalent of more than 2.8 billion cases of twenty-four 12-ounce servings. In addition, the industry shipped approximately 2 million barrels of cider, equivalent to more than 28.3 million cases.

That’s a heck of a lot of beer. Most Americans drink domestic. Imported beers – which come from more than 100 different countries – only made up 14% of total beer consumed in 2014.

The popularity of craft beer is also gaining momentum. In 2014, more than 22 million barrels of craft beer were produced for Independence Day, according to the Brewers Association. Craft beer now accounts of 18% of the total beer market and craft beer breweries doubled production of beer from 10.1 million barrels to 22.2 million barrels between 2010 and 2014.

The beer industry is even bigger than the non-alcoholic beverage industry. According to the Beer Institute, the beer industry will add $250 billion to the nation’s economy, generate $48.5 billion in tax revenue, pay $79 billion in wages and benefits, and employ 1.75 million Americans each year.

American Flags

A friend of mine who has been a US citizen for several decades now once told me that one of the reasons he loves America is because Americans love America. My friend marveled at the fact that there is actually a market for Americans to buy the American flag at the local store for personal use. We proudly hang our flags on our front porches. He said where he’s from, the government is so corrupt and the citizens so poor, no one would dream of displaying the country’s flag.

Stateside, however, $4.4 million was spent on imports of U.S flags in 2015. American flags are still big business. Last year’s surge in demand for American flags was fueled by a tight presidential race and a rise in patriotism.

The one irony about the American flag is chances are pretty good that the flag you buy from your local store was actually made in China.

In addition to getting our fireworks from China, it seems we also import nearly 98% of our flags from China. The Defense Department is the only government agency required to use flags that were produced on US soil. The “All-American Flag Act” – which would require the US government to use American-made flags for official business – has failed repeatedly.

The government thinks American-made flags are too expensive.

As Dame Dash would say (out loud), “Pause.”

Nevertheless, of the 48 million Americans US News says will be shopping for decorations, apparel, and party supplies for the Fourth of July, 66% of them will display the American flag in honor of Independence Day.

Fun fact: At the turn of this century, Roadside America listed the late Thomas “Ski” Demski as the owner of the largest American flag. The flag was 505 feet by 225 feet, weighed 3,000 pounds, and it took 500 people to unfurl.

Consumer Fireworks

There’s good news on the pyrotechnics front. This year, the number of states that do not allow consumer fireworks has been whittled down to three tiny states along the eastern seaboard – Delaware, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Residents of the remaining 47 states and Washington, DC can now legally contribute to the $755 million in consumer fireworks USA Today says are purchased by regular Joes like my neighbor (because I’m still recovering from the Great Sparkler Incident of 1988) every single year.

In 2013, the average American planned to spend $28 on personal fireworks. People in the Northwest and East planned to spend about $17, while those in the South and Midwest planned to spend an average of $36 and $35, respectively. And of course, whatever Mom is spending on fireworks, expect Dad to spend twice as much (Visa, Inc. 2013 Fourth of July Spending Survey).

Display Fireworks

Last year, the kids and I skipped the municipal fireworks shows (including the light show at Stone Mountain Park, which is usually pretty awesome) in favor of what I thought would be a low-key, quick-and-dirty, cozy little fireworks display at the nonprofit around the corner.

What we saw was nothing short of amazing. I don’t remember seeing a more dynamic fireworks display in recent history and I didn’t realize “the nonprofit around the corner” could even get their hands on such a varied arsenal fire power.

I don’t even know where they could have been shooting these things off. I always though fireworks that big had to be shot from a barge in the river that separates the US from Canada (I’m from Michigan).

Local government, community organizations, and the fine folks at Macy’s (who shoots off 56,000 effects every Independence Day according to Fox Business) spend $340 million a year on large-scale display fireworks. There are approximately 15,000 fireworks displays across the country to celebrate the July 4th holiday. The U.S. imports 24.6 million pounds of display fireworks annually, most of which come from China.

That sounds big until you find out we import 260.7 million pounds of consumer fireworks every year. Altogether, we spend over a billion dollars a year on pyrotechnic displays.

Travel

Most Americans will choose to celebrate the Fourth from their home base which is understandable. The Fourth of July is one of the most popular times to travel, but it’s also one of the most expensive.

You know the drill: In the days leading up to a major federal holiday, gas prices will start to rise. Airfare usually starts going up in the weeks before the holiday. In 2014, the average price of a plane ticket was $384 one-way for Fourth of July weekend.

Still, Wallethub.com estimates more than 40 million Americans will take a trip of 50+ miles to celebrate Independence Day, and the large majority of travelers (85%) will drive.

So, there’s the skinny – our take on the traditional “Fourth of July by the Numbers” post. Whether your holiday marketing strategy focuses on social media promotions or the world’s most awesome sidewalk sale, this post should provide you with a bit more insight on who’s buying what this Fourth of July holiday season.

The Many Faces of Thanksgiving Influencer Marketing Campaigns –

One of the primary benefits of Thanksgiving marketing is that there’s a considerably wide range of products that can intuitively fit your Thanksgiving Day marketing campaign. Unlike, say… Mother’s Day, where a brand may not find real value in running spots to promote a new power drill (Mother’s Day is usually focused on doing something for Mom, not the other way around), Thanksgiving Day provides marketers with a broad selection of possible marketing angles, from more obvious products like a turkey baster to less obvious products like a dog’s sweater vest (real Thanksgiving promo – read on).

For instance, any one of these products would be great to promote for Thanksgiving:

• Food is an obvious choice, as it’s the main event for most families who celebrate Thanksgiving.

• Cookware and cutlery can help make meal prep seamless and add a little personality to the dinner table.

• Fall-inspired home décor is usually in place by Thanksgiving, so if you’re going to buy that cinnamon broom to scent your house, you’ve probably already done it by the time family shows up for Thanksgiving dinner.

• Home improvement supplies to ready your home for guests, just in case it’s your year to host the big family dinner.

• Winter outerwear to comfortably attend parades in the morning and warmly wait in line in the evening for “Black Thursday” sales.

• VR, game consoles, televisions, or electronic products that help make family time spent together feel less like family time spent together.

• Makeup for a woman meeting her new beau’s family for the first time at Thanksgiving dinner (or in my case, cooking dinner for a house full of strangers a month after you and your new boyfriend start dating).

 That’s what we mean by a wide range of products.

Influencer Marketing During Thanksgiving

For this post, we are looking at influencer campaigns that specifically targeted Thanksgiving Day. For the time being, we’re going to refrain from Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns. And we’ll skip the more obvious “shop this look” posts. Instead, we want to introduce you to a series of marketing campaigns from influencers whose marketing tactics were a little less on-the-nose.

Campaign 1

Influencers Thanksgiving-ize Non-traditional Holiday Foods

Cilantro Lime Sour Cream is probably not at the top of your Thanksgiving dinner shopping list. Mexican food producer, Cacique, Inc. knows that, which is why their 2016 Thanksgiving marketing strategy included influencer marketing. The campaign, which stretched from November 23rd (the day before Thanksgiving) to November 25th of 2016, focused on providing holiday-inspired ways to incorporate their signature products.

For their day-before and day-of campaigns, Cacique tapped micro influencer Carolina Rojas, creator of the popular recipe site, MiDiarioDeCocina.com (My Kitchen Diary). Carolina is no stranger to working with brands. At a quick glance, I noticed her recipe blog has her partnering with Bar-S, Popsugar (for the #MUSTHAVEBOX), Alaska Seafood, and Dole. And that’s just what I saw on the first page.

On Thanksgiving Eve, Carolina published a sponsored recipe post with an image of baked sweet potatoes with pork chorizo and queso blanco. It was somewhat of a “teaser” post because on Thanksgiving Day, Carolina posted a video of that same recipe that showed step-by-step instructions for recreating the dish.

Carolina has more than 5,000 followers on Instagram and usually averages more than 100 Likes per post. This post, though a fantastic idea, lacked a bit in execution, getting only 60 Likes.

Campaign 2

And We’re Most Thankful for Our Kids’… Clothes

This post from healthcare IT consultant, self-professed shopaholic, and mommy & me blogger-influencer Sandy (@sandyalamode) is actually a pretty clever advertisement for OshKosh.

The post features an adorable shot of her kids hugging outside with little evergreen bushes in the backdrop – very autumn, very holiday. You almost don’t notice how cute their clothes are. It would stand to reason a cute shot of cute kids would include cute clothes, right? Sure. And their outfits are coordinated, no doubt.

This sponsored post is actually a promotion for the kids’ outfits.  They are sporting outerwear like hats, gloves, scarves, and warm sweaters. And their clothes are cute.

The link in the post takes you back to Sandy’s website where users can look through a full photo spread of more than a dozen images of her kids posing and playing in the OshKosh Kids outfits. At the end of the post is a coupon for 25% off any purchase of just $30 or more through December 31, 2016.

With nearly 70,000 followers on Instagram and a healthy 2.4% engagement rate, @sandyalamode focuses on creating eye-catching fashion (for both her and the kids) and lifestyle content.

Campaign 3

The Days and Lives of American Express Users

I came across a couple of ads from micro influencers who are using their American Express ambassadorships (that’s a thing, right?) to do everything from replenish an apartment’s collection of knickknacks to buying the #Friendsgiving turkey.

The #AmExAmbassador posts are typically low-key, day-in-the-life posts – understated, without making a big deal of the fact that these sponsored posts are intended to promote American Express. Most of them are written in a way that puts the focus on the influencer’s activities and not necessarily their method of payment.

In Denny Balmaceda’s Thanksgiving Day post (above), Denny (@Denny623) talks about being thankful for the new apartment into which he, his wife, and his kids are moving. He uses the post as an opportunity to mention his favorite local store (Kanibal & Co) at which he plans to shop. It’s almost coincidental that he’ll be shopping with his American Express card.

Denny is a menswear blogger from New York whose savvy vintage-meets-modern look has helped him grow his Instagram audience to more than 82,000 followers.  Averaging just a few more than two new posts a day, Denny gets more than a 1,100 Likes per post, and posts almost exclusively about fashion.

Another influencer-slash-ambassador who has some cool day-in-the-life sponsored content is Kelly Larkin of KellyintheCity.com. Kelly has more than 64,000 followers on Instagram and gets an average of 1,300+ Likes per post.

The day before Thanksgiving, Kelly (@kellyinthecity) used the post above to tell her followers she was giving them an inside peek at her holiday plans, which included celebrating #Friendsgiving in NYC and using her American Express Blue Cash Everyday card to cover the cost of buying two full Thanksgiving Day meals for her friends (in lieu of cooking them herself).

Again, the post is less about her payment method and instead focuses on what she did to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.

One more example of the mentioned-in-passing style of #AmExAmbassador sponsored posts comes from West Coast social media influencer Melissa Sonico. Melissa (@melissasonico) has more than 80,000 followers and gets an average of 775 Likes per post.

In Melissa’s post, she features a lovely picture of a hearty spiced sweet potato soup for Friendsgiving. But it does get a little hard to tell who is sponsoring the post. She at-mentions both American Express and BuzzFeed sort of in the same breath, and later in the post invites followers to read the recipe on “the blog” AND learn about #BlueCashEveryday rewards.

It’s clearly a sponsored post. But if I hadn’t seen the previous #AmExAmbassador posts ahead of this one, I would be a little confused as to whether the post is sponsored by American Express or BuzzFeed. And just as a matter of principle, I’m not interested in finding out about the official terms of any credit card on a food blog.

That’s just me.

Campaign 4

Some Things Are Just For Dog Lovers

#DogThanking

That’s a thing. But I don’t have a dog (though I am a great dog sitter), so I didn’t know about it until I started to do some digging. Purina launched a campaign to raise money for the Canine Health Foundation using the branded hashtag #DogThanking just ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.  For every branded post, Purina agreed to donate $1 (up to $50,000) to pet research. So, naturally, pet owners began posting.

To spread the word, Purina created an influencer marketing campaign to run alongside the National Dog Show. Influencers posted pictures of their dogs and created posts about how they thank their dogs. Some posts were identified as sponsored posts. Others were not.

Simba the White Schnauzer (@rawrsimba) is actually a micro influencer. With more than 17,000 Instagram followers, Simba was able to get his Thanksgiving Day #DogThanking post in front of at least 600 people. That’s about how many people Liked the post, at least.

The call-to-action is for followers to use the branded hashtag to tell Simba (and Purina) how they do #DogThanking. This approach  appeals to the user’s sense of compassion. By taking a moment to do this simple thing, the Canine Health Foundation gets much-needed funding to help further pet health research.

While I loved the Purina campaign, as well as the messaging, the execution was a little more on the so-so side. Many of the influencers selected for the campaign had obscenely low engagement. Industry standard is 2%. As influencers get larger, that percentage might start to creep down a bit. But Purina worked with primarily micro-influencers, so there’s really no excuse to be working with influencers down in the .05% range of engagement.

Additionally, not to get all critical, while it is my firm belief that almost all dogs are cute, regardless of their physical appearances, certain owners are way better at capturing that cuteness in photos. And the Purina set might not have been high up on that list.

Just my two cents.

Another fun campaign by Petco featured @Hamlin_the_Frenchie, a dog influencer with a staggering 127,000+ followers. On Thanksgiving Day 2016, Hamlin put up a sponsored post that he was searching for his cupcake sweater vest in preparation for an epic time caroling with friends the following day.

The post got 3,681 Likes, which tops Hamlin’s average number of Likes by quite a bit.  Just as impressive is that Hamlin – the dog – gets nearly 40 comments per daily post.

This Petco campaign is a pretty good example of non-Thanksgiving products – which, in this case are sweater vests (one vanilla frosting with chocolate sprinkles and one red velvet one with gold star flakes), lollipop antlers, and red buckle shoes for dogs – being successfully, amusingly marketed during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Wrapping Up

The examples in this post should provide you with a few good Thanksgiving influencer marketing ideas. Better still, it’s proof positive that your Thanksgiving campaign isn’t just limited to posts about turkey dinners and family time.

For help nailing down an effective influencer marketing campaign for your brand, check us out at The Shelf. If you’re concerned that your campaigns might have the issues Purina’s campaign had, get in touch right away! We can get you all fixed up. We have crafted thousands of successful influencer marketing campaigns, and we’d love to help you with your Thanksgiving marketing efforts.

Do you want to work with influencers in 2018?

The Shelf is an influencer marketing company that designs and implements the highest performing campaigns in the lifestyle space (fashion, beauty, mommy, food, travel, home, DIY, health, and fitness). Sign up for a demo to get your custom proposal.

Get Started Today!

Or give us a quick call : (212) 655-9879

 

It’s Halloween and We’re Cashing in on Sales Like Pirates

Trick or treat, friends! It’s that time of year again when everyone launches into a frenzy of costume planning, pumpkin carving, and gooley party decor prepping. If you think Halloween is just reserved for brands that sell costumes and party decor though, think again. Halloween is THE holiday to get creative and everyone is looking for innovative DIY ideas to make their Halloween a hit. Time to cash in on Halloween sales like a pirate!

Your Guide to Halloween Marketing In 2016: Infographic

Did this fun infographic tickle your gooley Halloween fancy? And if so, did it tickle it so much that you feel inclined to share it on your own blog? If so, here’s a handy code-snippet for you to use. Just stick it into an html block on your post, and voila.

</p><br /><div style=”clear:both”><a href=”http://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/halloween-infographic”><img src=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/theshelf-email-marketing-images/blog_graphics/halloween-infographic/halloween-infographic-the-shelf.jpg” title=”Trick Or Treat Your Way Into Halloween Sales Like A Pirate: Infographic” border=”0″ /></a></div><br /><div>Courtesy of: <a style=”text-decoration:underline; color:#11d3c8;” href=”http://www.theshelf.com/the-blog/halloween-infographic”>The Shelf</a></div><br /><p>

And here is a little header image if you need one! It’s sized to fit nicely into social media posts as well. You can drag it to your desktop, or just copy the url of the image.

And last but not least, the references for this lovely set of spooky stats… AND a series of “min-fographics” for you to use in case you don’t want the entire thing.

A lot of money is spent on Halloween. — NRF

$8.4B is going to be spent on Halloween this year.
$1.5B increase in spending over the previous year.
$82.93 is the average expected spend for each US consumer (up from $74.34 last year).
171M Americans are planning to partake in Halloween.

4 Main categories get the largest share of the spend. — NRF

$3.1B is spent on COSTUMES accounting for 67% of shoppers.
$2.5B is spent on CANDY accounting for 94.3% of shoppers.
$2.4B is spent on DECORATIONS accounting for 70% of shoppers.
$390M is spent on GREETING CARDS accounting for 35.4% of shoppers.

Costumes win this contest every year. — NRF

(Chart showing the breakdown of spend for the average consumer.)

People are creatures of habit when it comes to costume decisions. — NRF

Adult Costumes (35+)

1. Witch
2. Pirate
3. Political (Trump, Clinton, etc.)
4. Vampire
5. Batman Character
6. Animal (Cat, Dog, Bunny, etc.)
7. DC Superhero (Superman, Wonder Woman, excl. Batman) / Star Wars Character
8. Ghost / Zombie
9. Scary Costume / Mask
10. Marvel Superhero (Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man, etc.)

Children’s Costumes

1. Action / Superhero
2. Princess
3. Animal (Cat, Dog, Lion, Monkey, etc.)
4. Batman Character
5. Star Wars Character
6. Witch / DC Superhero (excl. Batman)
7. Frozen Character (Anna, Elsa, Olaf)
8. Marvel Superhero (excl. Spider-Man)
9. Zombie
10. Spider-Man

Adult Costumes (18-34)

1. Batman Character (Batman, Harley Quinn, The Joker, etc.)
2. Witch
3. Animal (Cat, Dog, Bunny, etc.)
4. Marvel Superhero (Deadpool, Spider-Man, etc.) / DC Superhero (Wonderwoman, Superman, excl. Batman)
5. Vampire
6. Video Game Character
7. Slasher Movie Villain (Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, etc.)
8. Pirate
9. Star Wars Character
10. Zombie

Pet Costumes

1. Pumpkin
2. Hot Dog
3. Bumble Bee
4. Lion / Star Wars Character
5. Devil
6. Batman Character
7. Witch
8. Superman
9. Action / Superhero
10. Cat

The majority of purchases are made at discount stores. — NRF

(Pie chart of where purchases are happening.)

Grab-bag of tips and Tricks

17% of people use Pinterest to find costume inspiration, up 133% since 2012. — NRF
27M Pinterest users pinned Halloween content last year. — Pinterest
273M ideas were pinned  for Halloween last year. — Pinterest
40% of people on Pinterest plan for Halloween several months in advance. — Pinterest
72% of smartphone shoppers research an item before purchasing it. — Nielsen
40% of people said they’ve purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on Instagram, Twitter, Vine or YouTube. — Annalect
36¢ of every dollar spent in a brick and mortar store is influenced by digital. — Deloitte
86% of women consumers agree with the following statement: “Social media content has become a chief source of online research when I’m thinking about making a purchase.” — Influence Central

(Pie chart breakdown of what people are doing on Halloween.) — NRF
(Hack the Hoodie details) — Today