Instagram selfies, Facebook ads to play a big part in holiday shopping season

Retailers are coming around to the power of Facebook's targeted advertising. Facebook Marketing Partner Offerpop feels that with innovations such as the Buy button and more ways to drive direct commerce, Facebook will be a major factor in Q4, when many companies ramp up advertising for the holidays. Offerpop is also bullish about Instagram, where brands will tap into user-generated content. Mairead Ridge, Offerpop's Senior Marketing Manager, talk with Inside Facebook about how the sentiments about Facebook's ability to deliver ROI are changing in time for the holiday shopping season: Recently, there's been a sense from marketers that Facebook is on the decline. It's tougher than ever to get organic reach. We've heard a lot of brands and marketers react to that. But what we're seeing is that there's still ROI out there for brands that are using Facebook's ad platform and organic tactics out there to drive reach and site traffic and sales. I think everybody that experimented with the platform for a long time is starting to see better and better results from their efforts. According to a recent Offerpop survey, 92 percent of marketers polled planned to spend most of their social budget on Facebook. One of Facebook's properties, Instagram, is also expected to play a huge part in brands' strategies for the next few months. Marketers in the aforementioned survey pointed to Instagram as the breakout social network of 2014, beating out Vine and Snapchat. What do brands want from Instagram? Your selfies, Ridge explained: We're seeing a lot of retailers take advantage of Instagram. It's really the ideal channel for retail brands because when retailers are selling a variety of items, there's all this great context that exists out there. Customers are purchasing the items and then, particularly for fashion retailers, taking selfies with the times and sharing them across Instagram. You can see brands taking advantage of this by running campaigns with branded hashtags. It then occurs to the users to take photos and the brands can take advantage of all that content and be able to pull it in to a branded experience on their website or Facebook or wherever they want to pull in those selfies. Ridge also said that video will be vital for retailers this holiday shopping season, not only on Facebook, but Instagram too. She noted that 9 of 10 Instagram video shares also happen on Facebook, giving brands the incentive to truly be cross-channel with their marketing campaigns this season. Ridge noted some brands that really connected well with customers last shopping season: Sak's Fifth Avenue, through Offerpop's Deals app, incentivized fans for sharing coupons by offering Black Friday discounts. Aerosoles held a photo contest, inviting fans and customers to share photos of themselves in Aerosoles shoes for the chance to win a $500 shopping spree. Keurig posted exclusive Cyber Monday deals to Facebook, specifying one-day offers. Banana Republic asked fans and customers to take photos of themselves wearing Banana Republic clothing, hashtagging the photos #ThisIsGlam and #Selfie across Facebook and Instagram. Any photos using both hashtags were entered into a contest for a $500 shopping spree. Readers: Do you think Instagram will play a major part this holiday shopping season? Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Instagram selfies, Facebook ads to play a big part in holiday shopping season

Justin Lafferty

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