Google, Facebook, and Amazon introduced new marketing tools and consumer-facing features that have some real potential for future marketing use by brands. These are features you need to dip yourself into, learn how to make the best use of it for your business and implement right away.
Google’s Personalized Newsfeed
Google’s personalized newsfeed is based on recommendations that are trigged by users behaviour on the internet. The content stream (i.e. newsfeed) will be based on users’ search histories and selected preferences. Users will be able to “follow” search results to ensure similar stories pop up in this feed.
Brands that use content marketing to generate growth and sales should, therefore, update their popular but older posts, as Google is now more likely to send traffic to those older, high-quality articles. Also, these articles can be optimized with links to products and services. This is so readers will have every opportunity to learn about your brand and buy your products and services.
Facebook Groups for Brands
Brands can create groups on Facebook that are all linked to the main brand’s Facebook page. These groups can be created with Facebook pages which mean they no longer need to use personal profiles as to create groups as administrators.
With this feature, you can segment your brand’s existing audience into different interest groups. This is so you can reach the different groups them with hyper-targeted contents. You can also use interest- or hobby-based groups to bring new audiences to your brand. Ultimately, this new marketing tool enables brands to use Facebook more like people and therefore making branded Facebook interactions much more personal.
Amazon’s Social Network
Amazon’s new social network called “Spark” is an e-commerce-meets-social-networking platform. The concept of Spark is similar to that of Instagram’s shoppable photos where it is even easier to shop right in the app. Though anyone can use Spark, for now, only Amazon Prime members can contribute. Spark is part of an update to the existing Amazon app. It can be found under Menu, then “See All Programs,” and then “Spark”.
Though brands can’t post on Spark just yet, influencers can. If your brand uses influencer marketing, then you can leverage Spark for that. However, in the meantime, keep an eye out for improvements on the platform that will be of more benefit to your brand.
Make good use of these new marketing tools but don’t get emotionally attached to them. This is because they are just tools and can be changed and improved upon anytime.
