HOW DO YOU CHOOSE? HEART VS. MIND

When consumers encounter promotions while shopping, they are compelled to act on their visceral impulses. At Sentient Decision Science, we call this compulsion hot-state decision making. Hot-states lead to a reduction in immediate self-control (Loewenstein, 2000), and many marketing campaigns emphasize immediate action with hot phrases like “One day only!” and “Call now!”

Catchy slogans, such as “Hungry? Grab a Snickers’®,” Nike®’s “Just Do It,” and Sprite®’s “Obey Your Thirst,” tap into these visceral states and motivate immediate consumer behavior. As a result, consumers often fail to return to a cold-state, where the rational mind might be able carry greater weight on the decision.

From a marketing perspective, encouraging hot-state decision making has the potential to boost short-term sales since consumers will buy products during hot-states through simple reminders of their visceral depletions (e.g. “I am really thirsty!” or “I forgot how hungry I was!”). However, this may not always be the best strategy for long-term growth since consumers will often regret their decision later. Research continues to show that people are unable to fully comprehend why they acted so impulsively in past hot-states (Loewenstein, 1996), and decision regret can in turn lead to reduced customer loyalty and satisfaction.

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CREATE VIDEO CONTENT THAT ACTUALLY WORKS

Video is taking over the world, with more than 4 billion hours of video viewed each month. In fact, YouTube is now the second most used search engine, right behind Google.

Unfortunately, integrating video into your marketing campaign isn’t as easy as simply creating a video and putting it up on YouTube. Creating a video that is effective, relevant, and successful can offer big rewards, but how do you integrate it successfully?

This TV Spot is part of a comprehensive marketing campaign we made for a Mazda Dealership in Mimi. We created content for radio, TV, Social Media and digital campaigns in different platforms. This campaign won  6 awards!!

The Role Of Music In TV Commercials

Music can often be the leading factor in what elicits an emotional reaction from media viewers. Auditory queues play a significant role in how we interpret an advertisement, much like they do in TV shows and movies. They often set the stage for the scene, giving us an idea of how we should be feeling and what can be expected from the next few moments.

Many of the most successful commercials contain some sort of music, and its applications run the gamut from somber anthems to hilarity-invoking jingles. But if we intend to dissect the music behind the most viral advertisements, there are a number of questions we need to ask.

So, what makes a “successful commercial”?

There are many ways to measure an advertisement’s success, some more complicated than others. But one of the most telling and accessible metrics available is its popularity on social media.

High views on YouTube reflect the commercial’s viral popularity, or how many people were interested enough to spend their time watching it (and in many cases sharing it with their peers afterward). View count is a real-time measurement of a commercial’s exposure and effective reach, giving us valuable insight into the audience it has reached.

Now let’s get down to business. Below are the statistics I’ve gathered after reviewing the 50 most-viewed commercials on YouTube (from a search for the term “commercial”; note that I’m not referring to the sponsored ads that appear before other videos). I narrowed it down to only professionally produced, English language advertising for legitimate products and services.

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WHY SOCIAL MEDIA HAS TO BE PART OF YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY?

The most significant marketing change in the past decade was brought about by social media. Before Facebook or Twitter, brands couldn’t dream of building such close connections with their audiences or having real-time conversations with their customers on a global scale.

In order to leverage your presence on social networks, build a strong brand and effectively manage your social media accounts, you’ll need to do some social listening. Here are 8 good reasons why your marketing team should be monitoring your brand on social media right now.

1. Building a community

Social listening tools are available to businesses of all sizes. They enable you to track conversations and detect buyers, leads and key influencers in your industry. All this knowledge will help you to interact with customers in a way that builds a positive image of your brand and fosters better relationships, which eventually form a tight community of loyal followers or even brand evangelists.

2. Understanding consumer behavior

Brands that pay close attention to their consumer base will easily understand the main problems, motivations and issues customers might have with their products or services. This in turn helps them to come up with more efficient customer service.

Brands can identify common problems and provide specific solutions, create a comprehensive knowledge page based on questions frequently asked by consumers and integrate those insights with CRM to benefit from some cost savings.

3. Powerful marketing analytics

Marketers listening closely to social media will be able to uncover what is being said about a brand, who is saying it, on which platforms, how often and who the main influencers are. Keeping tabs on what’s happening in their audience, marketers will improve their content marketing by leveraging topic insights in such a way as to come up with optimized content, SEO and PPC strategies.

4. Social media management

Most social listening tools feature smart functionalities to help brands take good care of their social channels. Many different tools (Hootsuite, PostPlanner and Buffer to name just a few) allow a business to manage and monitor multiple networks and profiles on a single dashboard, helping their users execute campaigns across various channels and instantly measure their results.

5. Improved agility

When it comes to social media, timing is everything. A recent study from Lithium Technologies showed that 53% of consumers who tweet a brand expect a response within an hour. Things get even more extreme when the tweet in question is a complaint – the figure above rises to 72%!

Time of reaction is also important for building a positive brand image. Finding that smart window of opportunity is a strategy proposed by Jay Baer, who claims most people are in meetings during the day which are usually scheduled on the hour or half-hour. If that’s your audience, you should try to post your content just before or right after this key hour.

6. Developing a better product

By intelligent listening in social media, you can uncover various problems consumers experience when using your product and then address them when releasing a corrected version. Monitoring the reviews of your product, you’ll gain additional input and lots of ideas on how to improve it to better suit the preferences and expectations of your target audience.

7. Boosting sales

Social listening is also important for your sales department – you can uncover conversations that indicate someone’s intent to purchase your product, as well as monitor what your competitors are up to in their social media feeds. Integrating CRM with those insights, you’ll be able to effectively improve your ROI.

8. Social recruiting

Another area of your business that can benefit from insights gained through close monitoring of social media is human resources. Your recruiters can access new talent pools, uncover key experts and influencers, build your employer brand and have their eyes open to problems that might impact employee happiness.

Conclusion

All in all, social listening is an activity that is rich with insights relevant to every area of your business. By keeping tabs on what’s being said about your brand, you can improve your interactions and build a positive image throughout the web.

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