Why Visual Listening is the Next Big Thing for Marketing

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1 Why Visual Listening is the Next Big Thing for Marketing

2 How Can Marketers Analyze Visual Data And Not Just Text? Data from social networks and online media has changed the game for marketers in every industry. The need to track the performance of online marketing campaigns, earned and owned media mentions and online sentiment is readily apparent and social listening platforms have helped marketers get the most from this data. But the immense growth of image-based social networks and the sheer volume of photos being posted online is posing a new problem: how can marketers analyze visual data and not just text? Every day photos and images that include brand logos are being posted but marketers are unable to truly understand the impact of this avalanche of visual content unless they can analyze the content of images and photos. ENTER VISUAL LISTENING. This is the ability to monitor, analyze and act upon visual content online and on social networks by combining image recognition technology with in-depth social intelligence. The following report will look at the incredible expansion of visual content, its power as a way to attract the attention of an audience and why visual listening is the key to understanding its impact. KEY TAKEAWAYS Visual content is dominating online and social media. Brands need a way to harness its power. Brands are missing a vital element of their online brand presence with text-only social listening. It is only by combining text-based social listening and visual listening that marketers can get a complete view of their brand.

3 The Visual Avalanche: Are You Ready? With almost a third of the world population now owning a smartphone and almost all smartphones having a camera, posting photos on social networks and online is easier than ever before. From celebrities to your little brother, selfies have taken over the world and everyone is taking photos of their friends, their favorite products, pets literally anything you can think of and posting them online. The impact of this on visual content online has been enormous. 1.8 billion photos were uploaded to social networks every day in 2014 and on Instagram alone, 80 million new images are being uploaded every 24 hours. User generated visual content is giving marketers new ways to forge connections with customers and image-based social networks are only growing in power. 3

4 This marriage proposal (in the form of the usergenerated content) posted by a Facebook user quickly went viral on the Coca-Cola Facebook page Instagram and Snapchat are perhaps the two biggest social media success stories of recent years but even more established networks like Facebook and Twitter are becoming increasingly visual. A whopping 66% of all social media posts are or includes images. More than half of all Internet users have posted original video content or reposted visual content writes Neil Patel in a post for the Content Marketing Institute. This avalanche of visual content holds untold insights for marketers to use but before we get to exactly know how this can be done a key question needs to be answered: Why is visual content so appealing and why is it so important for marketers? 4

5 Seeing is Believing: The Persuasive Power of Visual Visual content has always been a key part of marketing with the photos and images used in billboards and commercials often determining a campaign s success. Well before Instagram, Pinterest or even the internet existed, brands have long understood the impact that powerful images could have on the public and used them to shock, move and inspire. As more and more content is published on social networks and online, the idea of content shock has also become more prevalent. With so many companies, media organizations and even individuals producing content, only the most impactful posts and articles will actually help brands cut through this fog of information. This is where visual content comes into its own as a way to reach audiences faster. According to a study commissioned by 3M with the University of Minnesota, visual information is processed 60,000 times faster than text. The study also suggests that presenters using visual aids are 43% more effective in persuading audiences to take a course of action. The power and scale of visual content is clear but finding good data about visuals has not always been easy. Twitter posts that include a photo receive 35% more shares than those that don t Twitter Data 5

6 What You Miss Without Visual Listening For many larger agencies and brands, the value of analyzing text mentions of brands and keywords through social listening is understood. Using advanced social listening platforms brands find insights on everything from crisis management to customer feedback. But with the increasing importance of visual content, it is becoming clear that marketers need to analyze not only text but the content of the images themselves. Example of images uncovered using visual listening Until recently, the only way that a major brand like Starbucks for example, could really understand the images being associated with their brand was through a Google Image search. This is no doubt useful but the level of information such a search provides is very limited. For one it doesn t really track social networks and secondly you aren t really able to analyze what you ve found. This is where visual listening can help. 6

7 Visual listening uses image recognition technology to detect elements of images (e.g. brand logos) posted online and on social networks. The importance of being able to track logos in particular becomes clear when we examine the number of brand mentions that would be missed without this technology: Starbucks would miss over 30,000 online posts about their brand every week without visual listening Data from March 14-21, 2016 By looking at just text based social listening Starbucks would have missed over 30,000 images of their brand every week or almost 2 million brand images over one year. At a time when visual content is so pervasive and can have so much impact, brand managers, marketers and PR professionals cannot afford to miss such a large quantity of visual content. 7

8 Getting the Full Picture of a Brand Online For marketers that need to get a complete view of the way their brand is being discussed, used and represented online, visual listening in combination with text listening is now a necessity. Starbucks related post that would have been missed without visual listening The use cases are extensive. From a social marketing perspective, the above Instagram post alone could have been a great example of user generated content for Starbucks which would have generated thousands of likes. Using analytics tailored for each platform makes this process simple. From a crisis perspective, brands will be able to pick up on any potentially damaging post, even if it doesn t explicitly mention their brand name in text. Sponsors can track every appearance of their brand logo on social and online to get a clearer picture of sponsorship ROI. 8

9 In every case the key problem for marketers is that without visual listening their view is incomplete and with incomplete data you re always likely to miss posts that could help campaigns or discover a damaging post after it s already caught fire. The vast majority of brand mentions are still taking place in text format, but by having both methods of monitoring at their disposal, brands can ensure they don t miss out. Conclusion The momentum of online visual content isn t slowing down with image-based social networks like Instagram and Pinterest continuing to grow. E-commerce in particular is seen as having greater potential on image based networks, opening up a vast opportunity for brands to finally optimize the business potential of social media. Visual listening gives marketers an unprecedented opportunity to discover new user generated content, find hidden influencers and prevent a crisis from spiralling out of control. But most importantly, it makes sure brands are getting a complete view of their company online and with a more comprehensive understanding of your company s online presence, you can make better business decisions. Cover Photo Credit : Flick/Yann Caradec (changes were made) 9

10 About us Talkwalker is one of the world s leading social data intelligence companies. Its 1500 servers process 500 million posts from 150 million websites every day. Talkwalker s state of the art social data intelligence platform monitors and analyses online conversations on social networks, news websites, blogs, forums and more, in over 187 languages. Talkwalker s cutting edge technology enhances the speed and accuracy of decision-making through real-time social media listening and multi-faceted social media analytics. Auxipress is specialized in media intelligence and helps communication, marketing and PR professionals to master their media visibility through all media. Minute by minute, 24/7, 365 days per year, we analyse newspapers, magazines, press releases, radio and tv broadcast content, websites and social media. With the right mix of technology and human interpretation, we evaluate our customers media visibility in order to enhance their communication strategy. We deliver strategic brand intelligence based on accurate content media analysis and measure brands media exposure, behaviour and perception. Auxipress: Media and Data Expertise to outperform strategic decisions.