There has been a steady increase in the number of ads placed and the platforms supported over the last year. Facebook is looking at improvements to its ads space as a serious income generator and as the results show they are now starting to achieve impressive results.

What do these improvements mean and what options for Ads are available to page administrators and advertisers.

There are currently various Ad placements available, although some are limited to Facebook IO, Facebook Ads API, or Power Editor.

• Homepage
• All Facebook
• News Feed (desktop, mobile)
• Typeahead
• Logout Page (available only through Facebook IO)

Do you find any of the shortcuts helpful and would you use them ?

 How does your page performance compare to others?

With more and more brands coming into the marketplace there is an increasing requirement for them to stand out and offer a unique experience to consumers, to do this they have go above and beyond their customers expectations and become influencing brands that motivate their customers into being ambassadors not just a consumer of their product.

Ipsos MORI has revealed five key elements that can define and drive a brands influence with consumers. Brands, which can achieve these successfully, are more likely to be seen to be influential. The five factors in order of importance are;

Trust: This is a vital element in a brands relationship with consumers, Brands that achieve a high level of trust are considered more influential as they inspire recommendations to others from consumers/ambassadors of their products.

Engagement: This is linked with trust above, brands that are engaged with their consumers are more likely to be trusted, although two way engagement is hard to achieve fully as it requires both the brand and the consumer to be equally engaged.

Leading Edge: Innovative brands that are seen as cutting edge shape consumer behaviour and opinions, other brands will emulate them and in doing so will create new markets.

Corporate Citizenship: CSR is a key consideration with today’s consumers, brands need to be ethical throughout the whole of their business and their CSR policy needs to reflect that out to consumers.

Presence: This is linked to all of the above points, a brands presence within the market exerts its influence to consumers businesses that have a larger market presence have greater influence over that market.

All of the points above show that brands need to take an overarching approach to make them influential and brands that can achieve all the factors would be the most influential.

Is there anything you can add to the list above? Get back to us if you think there are any missing elements.

The study revealed that 40% of consumers would pay a premium price to brands that gave them a unique experience.

Australians were overall the most skeptical of brands with the Chinese being the most willing (93.8%) to trust brands that gave them good experiences.

Josh McCall, Chairman & CEO of Jack Morton said that “We found that no matter their geographic or cultural differences – when it comes to brand choice, consumers around the world are placing increased importance on experience,”

Over 95% of 25-34 year olds in China were more likely to consider a brand if it offered a great experience, while 88% in the UK were more likely to recommend a brand that offered them a great experience.

One cautionary note to make from the report is that there appeared to be a gap between expectations and actual performance. The report used the example of car brands and customer service. Two thirds of respondents thought it was important for car brands to provide excellent customer service, but less than one third agreed that car brands were delivering on this.

Do you agree that brands need to deliver services that meet or exceed their customers expectations ?

The study found that 14.5% of European retailers have implemented the login with Facebook button, which is more than double that of US retailers. This indicates that European retailers are more willing to integrate social sharing to create more opportunities for personalisation of their products with consumers.

Facebook sharing buttons were the most prevalent with 83% of retailers implementing some form of social sharing such as Like, Share and Send. Retailers that had implemented the most social sharing buttons included ASOS, New Look and Superdrug.

To read the report in full, click here

FMCG brands have shown a marked improvement in their response rates from under 20% in Q2 2012 to over 50% in Q1 2013.  It seems to be the trend across all industries as brands learn to interact more socially with their fans on Facebook. The rise could be attributed to consumers growing use of brands Facebook pages for customer services as they shy away from traditional call centers.

The downside to the increased volume of questions is that brands are now taking longer to reply to the questions, not surprising but brands will need to look at increasing their response time to give fans the service they are coming to expect or risk losing them to competitors.

During Q1 the average response time for companies answering fans questions was 22.6 hours! Do you think that this is reasonable given the immediacy of social media?

]]> http://betapond.com/facebook/report-facebook-questions-from-fans-show-a-sharp-increase-in-q1/feed/ 0 http://betapond.com/facebook/report-facebook-questions-from-fans-show-a-sharp-increase-in-q1/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/betapond/IyBA/~3/cCb5rnedJAo/ http://betapond.com/behaviour/uk-consumers-are-the-most-connected-in-europe/#comments Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:36:46 +0000 Tina http://betapond.com/?p=3382 ]]> UK consumers are the most connected in Europe, according to research. This means the challenge for brands to create marketing that can attract consumers across a range of digital platforms and devices is more urgent than anywhere else.

In a recent study by Forrester Research, 83% of respondents based in the the UK were accessing the internet on a regular basis. This doesn’t come as a surprise when 58% of those surveyed own two or more devices (tablets, smartphones and laptops).

The survey polled more than 22,000 people across Europe and revealed that nearly three quarters of the respondents said that being online was now a regular feature of their daily lives.

In the UK 59% of people had a Facebook account with Twitter only accounting for 18%. Mobile is playing a much greater part of our daily lives, with more than 10% accessing the internet from their cars.

Reineke Reitsma, Forrester’s Research Director, commented on the findings:

“Consumers in Europe are more connected today than ever before. Our analysis shows that while European consumers in each country heavily incorporate technology in their lives, there are major differences between countries in the level of Internet adoption, technology usage, and sophistication.”

Brands need to remember that whilst Europe is one economic entity, countries have kept their own individual personalities. They need to bear in mind that what works in one country might not work in another. The challenge is how to integrate them all together.

Do you agree with the report finding? Let us know what you think.

The figures highlight the increase in social media engagement and tie into our earlier blog post on brand engagement in social media.

In order for brands to gain a presence and engage with fans they have to develop creative captivating content that stands out from their competitors.

To cut through the noise and clutter that brands are increasing facing they need to analyse what times of the day and days of the week that their fans are online and target their posts for the most effective posting times, use engaging content thats visually appealing and while it’s good to stand out from the competition, always remember to keep an eye on what they are doing, they might have some good ideas!

Are your news feeds noisy? Are there other ways of cutting through the noise? Let us know what you think.

Figures from Social Bakers

In terms of the most socially devoted companies that interact with their fans, Argos came out top with mobile companies unsurprisingly taking 2nd and 3rd place.

In March we wrote ‘reasons why fans unlike a brand‘ and gave tips on how to continuously engage with fans on Facebook. As mentioned, post engagement figures from the top five show that more work needs doing on continuously re-engaging fans once they have liked your page.

Are these results what you would have expected? What brands would you like to see in the top 10?