Today in Digital Marketing - How I Added 50% TikTok Following Overnight (No, Really.)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, a clever candy promotion ties personalities to playlists. Is the next great marketing opportunity already on your phone? More people buying online means more bricks and mortar businesses failing. And how I increased my TikTok following by 50% literally overnight. Like last night. The method is shockingly simple. It's Friday, February 26th, 2021. Happy Yukon Heritage Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:00:32 The candy brand M&M's is launching a multi-channel marketing campaign tied to Spotify. Each specially marked package has a code inside that when you scan it with a phone, opens a Spotify playlist, which sounds pretty basic until you learn there are 28 different packages, each pointing to their own different playlist. The package marked Slay Girl goes onto a list of female musicians. The one marked Have a Great Day Pretending to Do Work opens up music meant to make you feel like a boss, according to the company. Quoting Marketing Dive, the integration of those messages with a matching playlist on Spotify bridges the physical and digital elements of the effort and adds another dimension to the customer experience that helps to reinforce positive feelings toward the brand,

Starting point is 00:01:22 especially among its target of younger consumers who are early adopters of audio streaming, unquote. The barcodes are Spotify's invention. They came up with them about four years ago. Another interesting use we reported on earlier, an Italian pasta brand that had different playlists tied to the amount of time it would take to cook each package. That M&M's promotion is being called Messages by the brand. That's not a consumer-facing name. That's just what the marketing team internally calls it.

Starting point is 00:01:56 And when I first found out about this promotion this morning, I didn't think they were talking about packs of candy. I thought they meant those sticker packs in Apple's Messages app, the one that you use to text message people. Sticker packs are sets of static or animated images that people use to drop into conversations. I have a pack specifically meant for adult kids talking to their aging parents with lines like, Did you look that up on Google first? I find them hilarious. My 78-year-old mom, less so.

Starting point is 00:02:24 I've never understood why brands haven't taken advantage of that more. It's easy to put sticker packs on the phone of your fans. In fact, if you have an iPhone app, they automatically get them. That's how they're distributed. You don't need to write any extra code. You don't need to pay Apple anything for it. In fact, Apple has a tutorial video on its website showing how to get the stickers out there. the video isn't even five minutes long. If you have an iPhone app, why aren't you dropping stickers into it? It's literally free advertising. The large-scale shift to online purchasing continues to wreak havoc on bricks and mortar chains. The electronics giant Best Buy said yesterday it laid off 5,000 workers this month, and the growing shift to online commerce has forced its hand,

Starting point is 00:03:08 and it's planning to close more bricks-and-mortar stores this year. It says it expects 40% of its sales to be online this year. That number was less than 20% only two years ago. And the Fry's electronics chain this week announced it was closing all of its stores immediately, putting itself out of business. On its website, the company said, After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop shop and online resource for high-tech professionals, Fry's Electronics has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations

Starting point is 00:03:40 and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The social media listening platform Brandwatch has been acquired by Cision for $450 million. Cision used to be mostly known as a media contact database, but this certainly branches their offerings out. Now they're in spaces from PR to digital marketing to online engagement. The deal should close by June and comes with the content discovery tool BuzzSumo, which Brandwatch bought four years ago. All right, so last night I went to bed with about 900 TikTok followers. I woke up pushing 1,400. How did I boost my following by 50%

Starting point is 00:04:25 literally overnight? I'm going to tell you. I told people to follow me. Apparently, that's the secret. At the end of the video, I put up a little animated arrow pointing at the plus sign that people tap to subscribe. And I said, I do a digital marketing secret every single day. Just click the plus sign to get the next one. And that was it. Little arrow is like the smash like and ring the bell of TikTok. And that video, by the way, got a decent amount of views, but it was by no stretch among my most popular. So there you go.

Starting point is 00:04:56 The secret to getting people to follow you? Ask them to. Like I'll do here. Link to follow my TikTok is in this episode's notes. Remember, you can get this podcast as a daily email newsletter too, complete with images, related videos, links to dive deeper, newsletter exclusive content, and premium perks, huge discounts on digital marketing tools.

Starting point is 00:05:17 And there's a free tier as well. You'll get an issue every Friday. The newsletter comes out about an hour before the podcast drops. Just go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter to sign up or tap the link in this episode's notes. That will do it for this week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced on beautiful Vancouver Island by EngageQ Digital. Production support and fact checking by Sarah Guild. Our theme is by Mark Blevis.

Starting point is 00:05:40 Music licensing by Source Audio. I'm Todd Mappin. I'll talk to you on Monday.

Today in Digital Marketing - How I Added 50% TikTok Following Overnight (No, Really.)

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