Apr 18 New Study Shows Influencer Content Drives Sales 11x Better than Banner Ads | Social You Should Know

Another hectic week in the social media world, in no small part because Facebook decided to hold their mostly-annual f8 developer conference. And, a new study from Nielsen Catalina and TapInfluence found that influencer content marketing had a remarkably strong impact on product sales, in this week’s Social You Should Know.

Influencer Marketing Drives Sales 11x Better than Banner Ads

A new study commissioned by TapInfluence and performed by Nielsen Catalina found shockingly good results for influencer marketing in terms of driving product sales of Silk, the soy milk produced by WhiteWave. In fact, Nielsen Catalina (which does shopper marketing studies constantly) found that the TapInfluence campaign performed 16x better than the average digital marketing program they measure and 11x better than banner ads. For every 1000 people exposed to blog posts featuring the products, Nielsen found that WhiteWave generated $285 of incremental sales over the group that had not seen the posts. And that includes only the blog posts. Social syndication wasn’t tested because of test/control complications. Our Carusele method reaches far more than just the initial blog post readers. Let us know if we can help you get similar results.

The Chat Bots are Coming!

During the Facebook f8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg placed a big bet that social customer service will be done by smart bots instead of human beings. You can already get a ride this way from Uber or Lyft and send money, but now companies will be able to build their own Chatbots. Danny Sullivan of MarketingLand used it to send flowers to Mark Zuckerberg. Despite the obvious jokes we can make about Microsoft’s failed “Clippy” bot coming back to life, and the general loss of all humanity, the flowers were indeed ordered. Facebook Live also launched a new API meaning real content producers can stream in quality programming to Facebook Live, not just selfies. Facebook’s also continuing to bet on 360-video, virtual reality and other immersive content experiences.

Twitter Pushing Conversion Lift Reports for Their Ads

Twitter says that users who saw ads on both mobile and desktop were 52% more likely to make purchases than those who only saw ads on desktop. Figuring that kind of data will be compelling for marketers (and keep the spend coming), Twitter updated their conversion lift reports so they are updated daily and available directly from the Twitter Ads dashboard.

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