marketing

Looking for marketing tips from the executives at Facebook Snapchat, Twitter and Pandora?

Then you are in luck because recently the dynamic quartet spoke out at the ZenithOptimedia Group’s Mobile Day Conference in New York, about their top four marketing insights, particularly when it comes to millennials.

Here are the four golden nuggets they shared:

1. Go Local

Director of operations and strategy at Snapchat, Steve Hwang believes that brands should go local and find a way to authentically reach their audience through something they really care about and through something that is relevant to them.

“Authenticity is really important, and I don’t mean in terms of pretending to be someone’s Facebook friend. There is a ton of opportunity for brands to be involved on a more local level in the real world”, said Hwang.

Snapchat has also been working to move their advertising to a more local level by implementing ‘Live Story Feature’, which aims to advertise local services and events to users. By keeping things local, Snapchat are also able to keep things relevant, which stops users from feeling that they are being advertised to.

One of the biggest issues with millennials according to Hawg, is that they hate being marketed to, so by advertising local events, users will be more likely to share the images and streams among their friends and spread the message that way.

2. Autoplay Video

Chances are you would have seen those silent autoplay videos pop up on your Facebook feed and believe it or not, they have been very successful for the social media giant.

Director of Facebook’s global agency team, Trevor Johnson is a big believer in autoplay videos as they help to engage users who want information quickly and easily.

“You have maybe the first three seconds to stop people in their feeds to get them with a piece of content. After that they can either watch for five seconds or 10 minutes,” commented Johnson.

Facebook have had a lot of success with their autoplay videos and believe the strategy is to create four, eight and ten second videos that grab people’s attention. Once users are engaged by the video, they are able to access sound and a longer version of the clip.

Video marketing is definitely a great way to reach millennials who often want information fast and with minimal effort. Although some autoplay videos can be invasive, having a short clip without sound is definitely a way to peak users curiosity.

3. Social Media Celebrities

Stephanie Prager, agency development lead at Twitter believes that social media stars are hotter than most celebrities, especially for millennials.

“We see these influencers with followers and a social graph that is far bigger than any celebrity out there,” stated Prager.

She also continued to say that brands stand to learn a lot from influencers and the way they market to their own audience.

Finding strong social media influencers is a great way to get your product out there and is a lot cheaper and more discreet than going after A-list celebrities. In many instances it can also be more effective because followers tend to feel more connected to social media influencers and trust their opinions more.

A new social agency called Niche also opened up earlier this year catering to social influencers who have many followers and want to be sponsored by a brand.  This of course is only a sign of things to come as more and more influencers and brands choose this type of strategy.

4. Statistics Meet Creativity

One of the biggest successes that Pandora’s Senior Vice President of Consumer Packaged Goods Sales and Strategy, Tamara Bedrosian has had is tailoring specific ads for mobile or desktop performance.

“We don’t go out with mobile-first or mobile-only strategies. Tailor your creative message to the environment and mindset,” Bedrosian commented.

This was discovered by Pandora when they realized that people liked to listen to different things on their mobile compared to their desktop.

One example of this that Bedrosian gave was that women aged 18 to 34, love to listen to YouTube violinist, Lindsey Stirling but 80% of users listen to her through the app only.

Bedrosian believes that information like this can help to shape a campaign and determine what platform it should run on. She also believes that by looking at the statistics, marketers can come up with creative ways to manipulate them into sales.

One thing that all four of these digital-platform heavy weights had in common when it comes to their marketing strategies is to create the illusion of ‘non-marketing’.

No one likes to feel that they are being sold to, so finding creative ways to implement marketing into daily operations is definitely a better strategy and seems to have worked for all four of them.

Did you find these golden nuggets from Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter helpful to your business?