Author: venky

CSR refers to the awareness of a brand about social and environmental issues to build a brand identity that connects with the masses. A random user could be impressed by the vision of the brand and can be a potential customer.

At the same time, this brand value can be a point of conversion for a potential lead to a customer. This brand image or brand value is not something that you can implement with payable methods, marketers can’t buy it overnight – it must be earned. The consumer base that consists of environmental activists and socially aware people is constantly willing to be a part of any social reform that leads to the betterment of our surroundings.

 These users are greatly moved by such campaigns and once you as a brand, earn their trust and loyalty, they’ll always set their best foot forward to not just be a consistent customers with you, but also as a promoter of your brand. Now let’s see in what ways can CSR be implemented.

Ethical Approach

An ethical approach to CSR demands equal treatment for employees and customers of all races, gender, age, or ethnicity. A synchronous treatment of people from various backgrounds is the gist of corporate social responsibility.

A fair opportunity for job openings at a marketing firm to aspirants regardless of their personal differences and similar open-mindedness in opting vendors for distribution or sales of the product can be shown to enhance the positivity of the brand message.

Environmental Approach

Moving forward, thinking of the ecological sustainability of your firm is a clear indicator of the brand’s wisdom. Ecology refers to the study of all the biological creatures and the environment they live in as a whole, termed ecosystem.

A company should always take into consideration and plan the management of the carbon footprint they leave, the resources they exploit, and the wastes they produce. This has proved beneficial for brands multiple times and has emerged as one of the key approaches to successful CSR implementation.

Philanthropic Approach

The philanthropic approach of an organization mainly refers to the good deeds they get involved in. Apart from making profits and creating employment, an organization can play a key role in making the society we live in, a better place. These could be donations, fundraiser events, or even free or discounted services to the needful.

Brands should understand that while people connect with the ecological and ethical influence the brand has, they also keep their eyes on the occasional acts of kindness towards humanity. Not just with the customers, an organization is also expected to show the same kindness to their employees at times.

Financial Approach 

While all the other approaches are centered on getting the attention of the user or employee, the financial approach lets the organization focus on planning the sustainability of funds involved in implementing CSR effectively.

Costs involved in the research and development of strategies that directly affect the sales and productivity of the organization while constantly targeting the crosshair of CSR.

Takeaways 

While we are on it, let’s take a quick look at the takeaways or benefits of complying with a planned CSR strategy:

1. Engaging Employees

As we just saw, the benefits of CSR to an employee are far greater than a financial bonus that wraps up with the month-end. It creates a long-term impression in the employee’s minds and lives on with them as the legacy of the organization.

2. Lower Risks

Unawareness of employee rights or user sentiments may give rise to disagreements and have a higher chance to convert into lawsuits. These acts further lead to the decline of the brand’s reputation in the market.

3. Brand Identity

Apart from reinstalling the positive brand message into the existing customer base, CSR naturally increases the reach of the organization and highlights the kind and more human side of it.

4. Investor’s trust

Companies that have an edge in environmental and social issues are observed to have a higher valuation by investors. Moreover, participation in CSRs shows the growth and awareness of the organization.

10 Brands heading the right way:

Now that you know the types and benefits of CSR, let’s see which brands have been using it for years and have earned the current reputation in the market:

1. Google

The first name that comes up when thinking of effective CSR practices is none other than Google. The company has an ever-growing list of loyal customers, not just because of their user-friendliness but also from the incredible communication they’ve established through their CEO. Google has also pledged to dedicate over a billion dollars for renewable energy projects and is already working on many as their data centers reportedly consume roughly half the power as compared to all data centers across the globe.

2. Tesla

With the incredible CEO and unstoppable engineers, this brand is overflowing with talent while not failing to build a brand reputation bigger than any other motor company of the century. With the sole purpose to make all-electric cars and reduce the overall carbon footprint of their brand, they’re not just selling cars, they’re selling the exact same satisfaction to every happy customer. Undoubtedly Elon Musk will be counted among the most successful entrepreneur of the century.

3. Johnson & Johnson

The brand that normalized baby care products and brought the most affordable versions of the same into the market, has successfully built a castle of trust in the market for the last three decades. Their aim to provide safe drinking water to poor communities across the world as well as the initiative to reduce their carbon footprint has resulted in never-ending trust and loyalty among businesses and customers too while also enriching the existing consumer base of the brand.

4. Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola stands out as a brand that never was expected to announce something as reforming as reducing its carbon footprint by 25% in the coming eight years. They have the surprising aim to recycle every Coca-Cola bottle on earth and thus make their packaging 100% recyclable. They’ve also promised to return all the water back to the environment that is used in making their world-famous drinks.

5. Netflix

The world-famous OTT platform Netflix provides a lesser-known scheme to their employees. They aid the upcoming child of their employees by offering them a 52-week paid leave. Usually, big organizations offer a regular 18-week parental leave but Netflix took a step forward to keep its employees happy and loyal. Netflix has also never thought twice to spread awareness about social issues through its content.

6. Toms

Toms footwear had pledged to donate a pair of footwear for every single unit sold. And they sure stood for the claim donating more than 100 million pairs of footwear to date and spreading double the smiles. They went further to donate eyeglasses for the visually impaired and provide safe drinking water to the masses. Later the company discontinued the mentioned kind of practices due to NGO backlashes. They now continue to donate a third of their total profits to social campaigns.

7. Disney

No one saw this giant stepping forward to step back from its carbon footprint. They are putting an equal foot forward towards improving the lives of their employees and customers. Even during the pandemic, Disney donated over $27 million towards food donations and PPE distribution. They’ve also committed to reducing their water wastage by a significant number.

8. LEGO

Lego heading towards sustainability has pledged to donate over $400 million following a period of the next 3 years. Their goal is currently their biggest challenge, which is to remove the single-use plastic from their products completely and make their packaging sustainable too. This is a huge and admirable step from a brand based completely on single-use plastic, it seems that it will be worth the wait to see the brand emerge as an even greater legacy in the coming years.

9. GE

General motors with their EV production line, made a comeback in the market they largely dominated for decades. SUV lovers are not new to the name of Hummer and the fan base that beast had. With GE launching Hummer EV, the dream of owning a military-grade road dominator became the reality for many fans. Along with the lighter carbon footprint of electric vehicles, GE also conducted a campaign rewarding $500,000 to people who innovated ideas capable of saving our environment.

10. Starbucks 

Last but not the least, call it your favorite café or the coolest remote workplace – Starbucks along with their excellent warmth and services, decided to pay respect to veterans who served the nation by providing them and their spouses with over 25,000 job openings. And in no time, they were already there, now employing over 5,000 veterans every year. This in itself is one peak respect to the devotion of soldiers and makes the bond between Starbucks, Armed Forces, and the civilians even stronger.

These were some of the many known examples of brands adopting CSR effectively and with the aid of humanity and the ecosystem. Brands of all sizes and sectors have a lot to learn from these pioneers of success and kindness.

We surely missed some other examples, feel free to add them in the comments down below. If you liked the article, consider subscribing to our newsletter for future notifications. Find us on social media and we can have your queries solved there.

The Advertisement industry witnessed an enormous boom in its growth over these past few years. The reason behind this is quite trivial considering the fact that this industry is very closely related to the e-commerce industry which itself had its uprisal in this past decade. Social media platforms became the new central pillar of media and television commercials evolved into Social media advertisements as the whole community dwells and roams much more often on this platform. Organic ads on social media like Facebook were a great opportunity for several commercial brands as they came free of cost and was having a good reach and conversion rate. However, realising this enormous potential of such ads Facebook itself reduced the reach of organic ads to promote their paid ads services which kind of forced several brands to actually settle for a paid ads setup.

But now the question was since we are already paying which platform would be the best to invest in? A study showed that there was a 0.1% increase in the paid ads services by facebook compared to Organic ads. Even though it’s kind of mim\nimal to an entrepreneur it still is a decent catch. However, the same study pointed out that Twitter paid ads to have double the conversion rates of organic tweets. Now, this is the real buzz of the business. The Twitter ads also provide a good range of services making them an exceptional option to invest in. Being in-stream unlike other platforms where the ads get pushed to the side, Twitter ads can guarantee you a much higher engagement rate and this is exactly what you want while getting in touch with your customer audience. Twitter also provides very simple ad formats including Promoted tweets, Promoted accounts and Promoted trends making it quite user-friendly for a brand.

With less than 140 characters here are the services you could use from Twitter ads to shoot up your conversion rate:

Lead Generation Cards

One of twitter’s most fantastic features and innovation-led generation cards are such a privilege for lead marketers. They assist you in collecting and understanding leads from within the tweet keeping the process hassle-free and neat for you and the consumer. A simple click on your call-to-action does the job and this simply makes the job extremely easy for you. With all the technical aspects of it covered and followed exactly as mentioned in a super simple step-by-step guide by Hubspot making these alluring cards will be a piece of cake for you.

This is one of the sole reasons we consider twitter ads to be such a blessing for a lead marketer. Being comparably cheaper and performing based on Twitter ads are going to aid you in growing a successful business.

Call-to-Actions

A study by Convertro pointed out that around 87% of the responses to social content were made in a split second or that the amount of time a consumer would actually devote is quite lower than what you might expect.

So the idea is to come up with keyword-oriented, SEO content that would be tempting enough for your consumer. It needs to be catchy, appealing and most of all simple. It’s also quite sensible to use it along with your leading cards option because then you will have the liberty to choose whether you should have text or display the CTA button.

Some of the important things to keep in mind while creating your call to action are to make it responsive by asking a question or demanding action. It could be asking for a download, retweet or a reply. The idea is to have more personal interaction with the user so that you can indulge them and their thought process in your ad.

Custom Targeting

Yet another incredible service provided by Twitter is the targeting options they provide. Even if you have the right content in place it doesn’t reach the right audience then all your work and effort will be in vain. By using the option of custom targeting you can make sure to direct your ads to the kind of customer base you want to approach. 

Twitter allows you to do this targeting through keywords, interests, gender, location, language and specific mobile or desktop devices. However, none of these is the most appealing feature. Twitter also helps you to target users who are similar to your pre-existing customers hence increasing the chance of lead conversion, This tool can play a pivotal role in boosting your conversion rate and make your whole content strategy get applied more efficiently. 

There is also the option of Tailored audiences. It significantly aids you to direct your content to the right group of people by letting you create groups of existing and potential customers from email addresses from your customer relationship management database. Existing customers who probably already like and trust you are the best group to be targeted as you can expect a fruitful response from them.

With the rapid decline in the reach of organic ads as time passes and the slow increase in the pricing of competitive platforms like Facebook and Adwords Twitter is indeed the right option for futurist entrepreneurs. Even though Twitter has fewer users compared to the other competitors it was found by a study that around 34%  of twitter’s users are more active and log in more than once a day. Hence logically speaking the consumer crowd on Twitter is more to approach. By leveraging your Twitter lists you could really organize your followers and maximise your engagement. Twitter provides you with a beautiful opportunity to grow your business. The services provided are clearly oriented in a way so that the ad creator would reap the most benefits out of it.

In 2022, when social media is as diverse as it has ever been, the contender that’s the world’s 4^th most used social media platform is Instagram, with over 1.5 billion daily users and over 2 billion total active users.

It’s no secret that mobile technologies have evolved exponentially over the decade, with over 77% of the world’s population having a phone now. These numbers are never facing down and they indeed prove a point that m-Commerce is becoming a bigger chunk of e-Commerce.

Now that you know the number of people roaming the social world of Instagram and taking a huge part in the business world, let’s explore the opportunities that will help you’re your business break its personal records!

Who’s the target audience?

Before knowing how to get started, let’s first introduce you to the audience that you’re expecting to reach. Over 60% of users on Instagram are from the age group 18–34, while you might question the significance of that, this is the same age group that accounts for over 60% of total online shoppers. 

While that raises a lot of eyebrows, another fact that might astonish you is that India accounts for the highest number of users on the platform. And if that isn’t enough to flabbergast you then the fact that the number of Indian users is increasing by 64% annually might as well do the job.

Apart from the incredible base of potential customers, Instagram is already on its way to becoming an indirect e-Commerce platform soon. Moving forward, let’s see how you can start with your own ad campaigns on Instagram and start to redirect the traffic to your online store.

How do Instagram ads work?

Instagram is primarily a platform to connect users to their friends, family, and influencers, but it also serves as a platform for creative artists and businesses. It uses the post and stories format, these posts are visible to people who follow you and to others as per your privacy settings.

If you’re a creator on Instagram, your content is more visible & discoverable to people who follow your niche. To advertise your post means to push your post into the more popular section and give it more reach. When you advertise or ‘promote’ as they call it, your post has higher visibility in the explore section of users.

Studies show that posts on Instagram have over 23% more engagement than on Facebook. Brands reportedly have over 4% of their followers engaging with their content, while these numbers are flat at zero on Facebook.

Moreover, you can link your page or catalog to your sponsored post for instant traffic or even conversion. You can also select what age group of audience located in what region views your posts more, giving you more control over your reach.

How to get started?

Now that you have a strong base of understanding of how ads work, let’s see how to get started with your own ads on Instagram. The platform is based on images and videos and almost all the content on the app is just another format of these two things. Talking about formats let’s take a look at them:

1. Photos: Photographs conveying an expression, emotion, message, art, or information are the things that would trend here. Be your photos complex or simplistic, there’s a set audience for everything.

2. Videos: Videos can be shared as posts, stories, or reels on Instagram and have a huge potential to reach users as video is the most popular form of content in the present generation. With the arrival of October 2021, Instagram ditched its original long video format app, IGTV, and merged it into Instagram videos. A while later, Instagram launched Reels in the late July of 2022, entailing the era of short video content which seems to be the most popular form of content right now.

3. Carrousel: This is the format where you can chain multiple photographs, videos, or even links to your own website or catalog. More CTA (Call To Action) buttons or comments can be added as per your choice.

4. Stories: Stories are one way of sneakily advertising your brand easier on Instagram. These are images or videos that have a short lifespan of 24 hours, after which they disappear. Instagram provided marketers with the option to place direct ads on stories, again having the liberty to insert a CTA button.

What’s trending?

Instagram has a lot of examples of advertisers using ads in genius ways to make them trend. Take, for example, the footwear-focused brand Nike, knowing that their primary audience is sport-loving, their posts are mostly of players caught in the moment, wearing their products, obviously.

Reels became the new trend as soon as it was launched. Carrying forward the lineage of short video apps like TikTok, reels featured short and long videos, which quickly took over the predecessor. 

Using visual information at its best is the key to success on Instagram. Optimization of posts to integrate your products, catalogs and website is the first step toward driving traffic to your page.

With new features rolling out every few months, stay updated with the new ways to connect with your target audience. Let’s now see the budget you’ll need to start advertising on Instagram.

What’s the cost of advertising?

Costing on Instagram isn’t fixed for a particular deal, you can carefully tweak your reach and call to action by the user and pay for the same. Simply put, it’s similar to pay per click, you pay for the type of response you demand from the user. 

Taking an average from the year 2021, Instagram’s cost per click clocks up to about $0.40 – $0.70 which includes every type of click, be it a like, comment, or share. Posts with URLs have a CPC of about $0.50 – $0.95 as of 2021. 

Any tips?

While social media translates to Influencers these days, it’s not limited to that. If you know that your target audience is the young or adult age group, then Instagram is a world of possibilities for you. 

You are the one who started your business and so if there’s anyone who knows your business the best, then it’s you. Take decisions on your own but seek advice from the experts or elites in the niche.

With that, we wrap up this short informative blog, subscribe to our newsletter to never miss premium content like this, and hush! You can find us on Instagram too 😉