A recent article on marketing budgets posted in Marketing Charts revealed two interesting insights. The first is that marketers are continuing to devote larger portions of their budgets to digital media with growth slated at 11.5%. The second is the move by these same professionals to invest 8.2% more in marketing research. Activating real-time, automated social media sharing for guests at events delivers on both of these objectives.
Yesterday's blog talked about how this real-world social media approach can unlock access to audiences hundreds of times larger than event attendees alone. In essence, each guest's social network becomes an extended audience for your brand messaging. Access to audiences beyond attendees is one of the most important innovations in event marketing today. However, reaching more eyeballs and driving more engagements in social networks is only the beginning. Audiences also represent a bucket of consumer data.
Social Connectivity Delivers Engagement AND Data
Many marketers are unaware of the consumer insight data available from participants who connect automatically to their social networks. Enabling your guests to connect to their social networks at events provides them with a tangible benefit and also enables access to rich demographic and psychographic data. For example, a recent dwinQ event for a top consumer brand produced this demographic breakdown:
If we look at engagements generated by social audiences exposed to posts from another event we can see additional behavioral data.
To take this even further, we can aggregate data on what participants at an event have "Liked" on Facebook in the past. For example, we can determine that 25.3% of participants at one particular event have "Liked" an auto brand page. We can then take it further and list which brands have the most "Likes," and which have the most engagements (comments, Likes, shares) around their brands. You can imagine this is valuable feedback for brands to determine what is working online and how they are doing compared to their competitors.
This data can be specific to an industry sector or can be derived overall. Data from another recent event showed the top two brands liked by participants were Starbucks and In-N-Out Burger. At another event we were able to show the top twenty consumer brands overall and where snack foods and candy came out against peers and compared to other goods.
Connecting your Events to Social Media Provides Insight
These results are only the tip of the iceberg. You can mine further for word pairs such as how often people like Starbucks and Wine or Cabernet Sauvignon and a particular auto brand. Be as specific as you like. The possibilities are endless. The question for you is what consumer insight are you looking to unearth.
The other question is how do you unlock these insights? You need to connect current or prospective customers to your event activation through their social media accounts. By providing fun and engaging activities that enhance the onsite experience, people will connect precisely because they want to share with their friends in real-time. Of course motivating participation is about more than just setting up photospots, games, check-ins, Likes and shares. To find out how dwinQ does it, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].
How much have you attempted to leverage consumer insights that can be harvested from social media connections to your guests? Comment below.