SOCIAL MEDIA AND INFLUENCER MARKETING

SOCIAL MEDIA AND INFLUENCER MARKETING  RESEARCH 

• https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/social-media-adspend-outstrips-press-become-third-largest-ad-channel/1661557

- social media is the 3rd largest ad-channel 

- advertisers are now spending more on it than press for the first time ever 

- social media will be up 20% to £68.3bn whereas press will fall 9%

- social media commands a 13% share of global adorned, after TV at 29% and paid search at 17%

- Matt James, Zenith's global brand president said "social media advertising gives brands the opportunity to drive growth by using automated tools to optimise their campaigns for key business objectives" 

• https://yougov.co.uk/topics/resources/articles-reports/2019/01/30/global-digital-2019-reports-show-social-media-usag

- more than 3/4 of the worlds internet users are on social media (total number is up 9% from last year)

- data from Hootsuite and We Are Social shows 3.48 pillion people use social media for an average of 2 hours 17 minutes a day 

- this highlights a major opportunity for New Look to grow if they utilised social media better 

• https://blog.hootsuite.com/simon-kemp-social-media/

- people spend 1/7 of their waking lives on social media 

- there are 2.48 billion social media users in 2019, which is up 9% year-on-year 

- 45% of the world use social media 

- 53% of Western Europe use social media 

- people now spend 40 minutes and 40% longer each day on social media compared to this time in 2014

- interestingly, most social media users are around the age of 30

- more women use social media than men 

- facebook is the top social media site in 2019 

• https://yougov.co.uk/topics/resources/articles-reports/2019/10/07/social-media-account-16-global-adspend-2021

- social media will account for 16% of global and-send by 2021 ($640 bn)

- social media spend is predicted to jump 20% to $84 billion at the end of 2019 whereas press is expected to decline by 6% to reach $69 billion

• https://econsultancy.com/retail-newsletter-personalisation/

- retail newsletters (a tactic that New Look use in order to showcase latest styles, offers and promotions to customers) is outdated 

- this method cannot be personalised for individual customers 

- 46% of consumers think that most retailers who email them don't understand their needs and tastes 

- customers get overloaded with emails which makes them less likely to read them 

- 70% of 18-24 year olds said that companies who fail to personalise their marketing will lose them as customers 

• primary research on New Look's Instagram:

- they have multiple accounts, one for each shop. This allows for customers who live in that particular area to follow their local New Look and feel an element of personalisation and more intimate posts of the shop, their current offers and displays (as their main New Look does not achieve this)

- they also have separate accounts for main and women (women being their main account), however evidently their mens account is quite outdated and no where near as popular as all of their mens stores and in-store sections have been closed 

- they have 2.4m followers 

- their posts include are very frequent and include; reposted photos of influencers wearing their clothes, latest offers and promotions and pictures of their products laid to in an aesthetically pleasing way. They also like to stick to a seasonal theme, for example currently their posts reflect quite a christmassy aesthetic 

- they use the Instagram stories and highlights feature very frequently  which give direct links to products that are currently on trend or on offer/ promotion. They also have blog posts featured on their website and offer links to these too, encouraging uses to 'swipe up', such as '7 jumpsuits to try this season'

• primary research on their Facebook:

- Facebook is New Look's biggest platform, having 3.3 million likes

- they post similar posts to their instagram however they post more limited-time offers and promotions to entice consumers to visit their website such as 'free standard delivery on orders over £19.99 plus 25% off everything using code... ends Monday night'

- they also post direct link-to-shop items 

- they post very frequently (multiple times a day) 

- they have an 'about' action (whicH they do not on instagram) which allows consumers to learn more about the brand by visiting they social media page as opposed to purely just looking at pictures and videos. This is called 'our story' 

- it is interesting to note that this is their largest platform as their biggest consumer group is women between 16-24, who typically don't use Facebook as much as they use Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. Therefore this suggest that New Look does have quite a large middle aged consumer base 

• primary research on New Look's Twitter:

- they have 3 different accounts; @newlook, @newlook_men and @newlookhelp

- @newlook is used to post generally the same pictures and promotions that they also post on their instagram and facebook 

- it has 366.8K followers (which is a considerably lower following than its Facebook and Instagram), however it is notable that generally consumers use Twitter to follow their friends and celebrities, and it is not so much used to gain style inspiration and to see promotions 

- however, they post more 'competitions' on their twitter which they don't on other social media platform. This is likely to keep up with competitors such as Pretty Little Thing who are constantly posting competitions on their Twitter page that enable consumers to win vouchers, items etc which in turn generates a great buzz about the brand and consequently encourages more people to visit the website and purchase items 

- they encourage you to use the #ThisIsNewLook to tweet and share photos of you in New Look items, however arguably they are not using it to its best ability as generally users of twitter do not use it to post photos of themselves 

- they do not receive many likes or retweets on their tweets which also suggest that they are not utilising the app to its best ability 

- their @newlookhelp account is used for customer service enquires and to let c customers know of any technical issues with the website etc 

- it has 26.8k followers

- this is arguably quite a helpful way of contacting a brand if you have a problem, as it is generally much quicker than emailing them or contacting them via their website 

- their @newlook_men account has 57.9k followers and is used to promote current menswear styles as well as promotional sales 

• Primary research on their Youtube:

- NL have 19.6k subscribers to their YouTube channel 

- their posts are quite irregular, for example their last 3 videos were a year ago, 6 months ago and 3 weeks ago. Therefore they are very inconsistent 

- they use YouTube to post their latest adverts and campaigns 

- looking through their videos, it is clear to see that they used to be much more frequent with their posting a few years ago. Therefore YouTube is probably not a social media site that they are investing heavily into currently, probably because they have realised that other sites are more effective (such as Instagram), and users generally don't go on YouTube to look at ads. They go on it to watch sloggers ect who are personally more interested in 

How their channel appears when you click on it 

Their videos 

• New Look's use of YouTube to collaborate with vloggers:

- NL involve the use of fashion vloggers to send them items which are then shown as 'hauls', whereby consumers get to see how the products look on a person as well as hear their feedback whilst they are trying them on (which is inevitably positive as they are being paid to say that). Affiliate links are also used, whereby the YouTuber puts the links to the direct products that they tried on in the video and if a consumer purchases the product via the link then the YouTuber will receive commission from this. The same goes for using a discount code in the name of the Youtuber

- in addition, using these YouTubers is an effective ad-strategy as New Look are bale to directly target their target market, which are 16-24 year olds (who generally are the consumers who watch these videos and who watch YouTube in general), as opposed to older generations or middle aged  

- moreover, this use of vloggers also works hand in hand with Instagram. This is due to the fact that YouTube vloggers are usually also Instagram influencers and consequently have a large following on Instagram. Therefore when they post a video to their YouTube, they will advertise this on Instagram and in turn generate more publicity to the brand 

- for example; Charlotte Beer and Em Sheldon 

Charlotte Beer; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnN8sdC0ck0&t=104s

Em Sheldon; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JnKmHm8dmg&t=39s

• https://craft.co/new-look/competitors

- New Look have a weaker social media presence in comparison to some of their online competitors. This includes ASOS, Missguided and PLT

- New Look have an average of 7.1 likes per tweet in the past 30 days whereas ASOS have 132.2 and Missguided have 440.4

- New Look percentage of tweets that have had engagement in the past 30 days is 42.38%. ASOS' is 91.71% and Missguided's is 100%

• https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/professional/the-new-rules-of-influencer-marketing

- global ad spend on influencers is produced by Business Insider Intelligence to reach between $5 billion and $10 billion by 2022

- Instagram remains the most powerful of all the social platforms for fashion influence partnerships (accounting for 86% of the total earned media value for the top 30 fashion brands in 2018 according to Tribe Dynamics)

- working with an influencer who has something to add to the conversation is a great marketing opportunity, according to BoF and McKinsey's 2019 State of Fashion report

- young consumers increasingly back their beliefs with their shopping habits, favouring brands that align with their values and avoiding those that don't 

- "influencer to me is a marketing term that was invented by people in a room that needed to put a name on the girls who have this talent to be able to showcase products, places and ideas to an audience" Charriere said (brand consultant and journalist). 'It is credibility and and creativity that defines a persons ability to influence consumers' 

- influencers don't just influence 

• https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-bites/influencer-marketing-lessons-from-fashion-nova-and-zara

- in the first 5 months of the year, the top 20 brands created $659,882,860 of earned media value on Instragn with 11,000 paid influencers generating content about these brands 

- Cardi B's posts for fashion nova earns $128,198 each

- fashion nova's total earned media value was over $125 million from both paid and organic mentions 

- Zara earns $59 million through organic mentions (mentioned by the highest number of influencers)

- for very dollar fashion nova spend, they make more than one dollar of margin, and thats why they keep scaling and investing in influencer marketing 

• https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/professional/social-media-advertising-rising-costs-instagram-facebook

- some brands are now re-thinking their approach to social media advertising, they want to build a community on social media without having to buy their way into it 

- for example; beauty entrepreneur Charlotte Cho launched skincare company 'Then I Met You' and decided she was going to spend $0 on social media aadvetising 

- she thinks this will be more authentic 

- companies that have pulled back on digital marketing include Lush 

- "social media has gone from a fantastic way to connect to being a business that sucks all of the money out of a brands wallet and is still ineffective"

- average costs of digital ads is now 12% more than 2 years ago 

• https://data.mintel.com/databook/919600/#Q20

- this graph suggests that not many people actually do look towards social media influencers for inspiration as only 11% of participants in the survey said that this is something they do

- however it is important to note that sometimes social media influencers influence the buying decisions of consumers without consumers being aware of this. For  like the outfit that they and unintentionally look for similar things when browsing through fashion websites