Tag Archives: marketing

Spring Shopping

As winter turns into to spring, people start to pack away coats, return patio furniture to the backyard, and shake off their winter shut-in mentality. They also start to shop. A lot.

Of course, consumers stock up on essentials such as garden equipment, spring-cleaning supplies, and warm weather clothing. They also spend lots of money on items that may surprise you!

Bazaarvoice, a software tech company, conducted an analysis of shopper’s behaviors using data from their 5,700+ brand & retail clients and interesting statistics took shape. In 2021, people spent $5.4 billion on St Patrick’s day. That’s an average of $40.71 per consumer.

Website traffic for dresses rose 16% higher in spring over summer. Traffic increased even more in late April as high school students began to prep for graduation parties and proms.

Lawn and garden traffic grew by 61% during the week of spring break.

Christmas spending generates around $800 billion in sales, and $9 billion of it is from Black Friday. Spring holidays generate around $55 billion in sales:

$ 5.4 billion    St Patrick’s Day
$21.6 billion    Easter
$28.0 billion    Mother’s Day
$55.0 billion    Total

Let us not forget April 15th – Tax Day. The IRS issued 128 million refunds for the 2021 tax filing season (2020 tax year), which totaled $355 billion. What’s more, nearly 8 out of 10 people who receive a refund will spend it rather than put in into savings.

Reviews from your customers are essential. The Bazaarvoice analysis showed that 75% of online vacuum-cleaner shoppers read a review before making a purchase. Similar numbers were found in lawn care (69%), tools (61%), and dresses (60%) categories.

When outlining your spring retail strategy, be sure to plan for seasonal behavior surges. Plot the timing of when to offer the right products and services so you can be ahead of your competitors and create incentives for your satisfied customers to review your business.

YouTube Use up 11% for 65+

The Pew Research Center surveyed 1,502 US adults between January 25 and February 28 and found that 81% use the social media platform, YouTube. YouTube and Reddit were the only 2 social sites that measured statistically significant growth since 2019, (Up 10% in just 2 years).

YouTube saw increases across the board on all age levels, but the 50+ crowd grew double digits.

50-64 year olds were up 13% and 65+ rose by 11%.

Lifting the Mask. It is Time to Engage Again

As our personal and business lives slowly begin to ease up on the unprecedented restrictions we have been living with for over a year now, it is time to “lift the mask” and engage again.  Your existing customers need to hear from you, and it is time to start the search for new clients too.

We are all in uncharted territory, trying to find footing on something that, at least resembles, solid ground. The best way to do that is to reach out and reconnect with your clients.

Marketing your business is essential, and it is not expensive. There are so many channels in which to converse with existing and potential clients today, make sure your business is using them and reaping the rewards.

We are BEB (Business Extension Bureau). Take a tour of website and see the many marketing services we offer. We hope that you will consider using us to “lift the mask and engage” through marketing in the coming year.

 

 

 

Why is Instagram Hiding Likes?

Last November, Instagram began a test to hide “likes” for U.S. users, and announced that it will be rolling out the change everywhere in the world.

This upset some (really) big influencers including Nicki Minaj who tweeted that she was going to stop posting on the platform because of the decision. She hasn’t posted on her Instagram account since then either.

Based on a survey of 502 consumers poled from The Mainfest, more than half (55%) said they don’t have an opinion regarding Instagram’s decision. About 20% of people supported the decision to hide likes, while 25% oppose the decision.

Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri  says the move to hide likes is to reduce stress and anxiety on users. They want to try and depressurize the platform and make it less of a competition by giving people more space to focus on connecting with people they love and things that inspire them. Creators will still be able to see like counts on their own posts, but Instagram will not display those publicly.

Interesting that Instagram that is continuing to make follower counts public which is arguably an even more important metric for gauging popularity and traction.

Some believe that Instagram is hiding likes because user engagement has been waning and that the change stems from core business reasons.

Some believe that by hiding likes, Instagram will help alleviate the negative backlash that comes from declining organic engagement on a platform over time as well as protect their reputation as Facebook’s more engaging social media platform. In addition, by making likes private, Instagram will control the flow of that data.

Facebook IQ, What Is It?

Facebook IQ is a culmination of a year’s worth of research and insights. The team explored thousands of topics from January 2018 to June 2019 on Facebook. Where patterns emerged, they looked to third-party research and media sources to inform and validate their findings.
New in 2020, they reported trends beyond the US to 13 new countries in four regions:
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the
Philippines, Sweden, Thailand and the UK.
For each topic of conversation, they relied on aggregated, anonymized, country-specific data from January 2018 to June 2019 for people ages 18 and older who use Facebook. All topics chosen to be featured grew from June 2018 through June 2019. The topics are presented in the original language as they appeared in their data set.
The analysis covers trends across six categories: Art and Design, Beauty and
Fashion, Entertainment, Food and Drink, Mind and Body and Travel /Leisure.

Facebook IQ 2020 Annual Topics Report delivers insights to understand consumer
behavior, drive more effective marketing and transform the way your business
reaches people. Learning from the billions of people on their platforms and
the millions of businesses that advertise with Facebook, the report provides insights into
behaviors across generations, markets, devices and time.  Click here to read the report.

 

California Consumer Privacy Act

Over the past two years, there are two regulations that have had a major impact on digital marketers – GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). As you probably recall, the EU law went into effect in May 2018 to ensure data protection and privacy for all individuals citizens of the European Union (EU) and the European
Economic Area (EEA) and companies doing business in those areas.
This year, we’re all gearing up for the CCPA. The Act came into effect January 1, 2020, and is reported to be among the most stringent data protection privacy laws in the U.S.
Focusing on the privacy rights of individuals, CCPA regulates the way marketers handle personal
information of California residents. If a business has over $25M in annual revenue, processes (buys, sells, receives, or shares) 50,000 or more California consumer records each year, or earns 50 percent or more of its annual revenue from selling personal information of California residents, it must comply with CCPA. CCPA also applies to companies that share common branding (name, service mark or trademark) with a business that meets the criteria. This includes marketing agencies, online payment processing vendors, and digital marketing
technology companies, for example. If your business doesn’t fall within the criteria outlined above but is a service provider to a company that does fit the criteria, you should still be
knowledgeable about CCPA requirements.
While GDPR’s roots are European and CCPA’s are in California, both regulations have had a ripple effect on businesses around the globe, forcing businesses to provide greater transparency and institute more stringent business processes around customer data.
It’s no wonder when you look at the fines. The fines for failing to comply with GDPR range from 10 million euros to four percent of the company’s annual global turnover, which could add up to billions for some companies. Businesses that don’t comply with CCPA can face a maximum fine of $750 per consumer or violation. For example, if a business collects data from 1,000
California residents without complying with CCPA, they can face fines of up to $750,000. Also, if a business doesn’t meet certain data security requirements, consumers can demand that it be fixed within 30 days or the business risks legal action. Some might think it’s easy to just suppress California contacts from a campaign list but that’s short sighted. Let’s not forget that with a population of 39.5 million, California is the world’s sixth largest economy according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Both GDPR and CCPA have driven digital marketers to update back-end systems, review privacy
statements, update third party contracts, audit contact lists, and confirm subscribers. While these actions can be time consuming and costly, they create opportunities for digital marketers to elevate their presence in customers’ inboxes.
CCPA is the latest example of the rising demand for transparency of collection and management of customer data. We can likely expect other states to follow suit with CCPA and institute even more strict regulations and fines to protect consumers.
Maryland, Mississippi, New York and North Dakota have similar legislation in the works. Though a majority of the new laws copy the structure of the CCPA, there are some notable places where they diverge, which will complicate prospective compliance efforts. The most critical area is
enforcement. CCPA provides a private right of action only for the unauthorized disclosure of
unencrypted, sensitive data.  Massachusetts would extend the private right of action to any violation of its privacy law. Three of the state laws (Mississippi, New Mexico, and Rhode Island) extend a private right of action to any unauthorized disclosure of personal information, regardless of sensitivity of the data and potential risk to consumer.
Similarly, while all these new state laws try to protect consumer privacy, the degree of specificity and format requirements vary, which will likely increase criticisms that privacy policies are written in legalese and too difficult to understand.
The result is that businesses may have to implement multiple layers of protection in privacy policies for consumers in different states, even when the underlying data practices are the same nationally.
The Consumer Bankruptcy database we compile is considered public information which is gathered by the courts and is not subject to the CCPA. The BK data is regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act and we are not Credit Reporting Agency.
We will keep you abreast of the ever changing data collection landscape as it continues to unfold.

List Your Close Friends of FB

Facebook says that the goal of News Feed is to connect people with the posts they find most relevant. It’s not about the amount of time someone spends on social site, but rather the quality of time spent. That means Facebook must predict what users want to see.

To do this, they study to understand what people are doing on Facebook — what they like, comment on and share. They also use surveys to get more context about the posts people want to see and who they want to see them from. In May, FB announced two ranking updates based on surveys: one gives priority to friends someone might want to hear from most and the other prioritizes links a person might consider most worthwhile.

Historically FB has predicted who people might want to hear from based on signals like how often they interact with a given friend, how many mutual friends they have and whether they mark someone as a close friend.

Now, in addition to tracking these signals, Facebook is asking users to to list the friends they are closest to.  Once patterns emerge from the results they will use them to inform the News Feed algorithm with the goal to better predict which friends people may want to hear from most.

This doesn’t mean News Feed will be limited to posts from only certain people and it doesn’t mean you will necessarily see more friend content.

They also know that individuals that are considered close friends today may not be in a year, or even a few months later. The prediction models will continuously update based on the interactions people have with their friends on the app as well as continue to survey people.

 

Solar Eclipse is Tomorrow

Tomorrow is also the total eclipse of the sun. It starts at 11:46am, maximum coverage for us to see will be at 1:15pm, and it will be complete by 2:45pm.
The next solar eclipse that can be seen from the US will be in 2024!
Don’t forget to wear protective eye wear if you want to watch it.
Check out this cool video giving you the scoop on why it’s a big deal!
https://youtu.be/7DZ4NrjBGfw