Tips, and tricks to connect with your customers

We often don’t think twice when accepting terms and conditions without even reading them - wanting only to get to the convenience that that app we’ve just downloaded can offer us. The same goes for privacy policies. In our fast-paced digital lives, most of us rush to click “accept” with a tinge of annoyance when a message pops up about cookies. Some of us are more patient, but that optimism is quickly drained when confronted with line upon pesky line of policy.

‍

What are cookies anyway? In this case, they are sadly not the delicious baked confectionery I know we’re all thinking about. In terms of online privacy, cookies (specifically, HTTP cookies) are text files with small pieces of data that are used to identify you and your computer. Ultimately, cookies are used to enhance your browsing experience by knowing which information to serve specifically to you. There are pros and cons when it comes to allowing cookies. A pro; an easy and personalised browsing experience. A con, they are vulnerable to cybercriminals.

‍

In GWI’s latest Connecting The Dots report, they speak about our relationship with online privacy as “digital citizens” and how that relationship has and still is evolving in an article called Data For Good. Good news: it’s not all negative. GWI covers the advantages that come with sharing your personal data along with key insights into how people feel about personal data sharing. Still, a relationship is maintained by two sides, and industries that work with consumers’ sensitive information should use it in a way that benefits both parties. Let’s take a look at how the world feels about this.

‍

The World On Online Privacy

‍

Ads are what make the virtual world go-'round but rising concerns around data privacy may just threaten them. In early 2020, Google announced its plan to block 3rd-party cookies (also known as trackers or tracking cookies - created by parties other than the website the user is visiting) from Chrome by 2022. This does not mean the end of tracking though, as it just forces companies like Facebook for example to work around it and instead use 1st-party cookies to do the job.

‍

‍

Interestingly, since the pandemic started there has been an overall decline in concern around data privacy. This could be because individuals are more concerned about how trackers can help the situation. Several apps have been developed that use tracking technology to assist in COVID-19 contact tracing through the use of your phone’s Bluetooth. Many countries have created national apps with this purpose; the South African version being the app called Covid Alert SA.

‍

‍

GWI calls this a “mindset shift” and notes that “declining privacy concerns are most evident in countries that suffered through the pandemic early on” - these being predominantly China and Europe. Sweden’s decline in concern about the internet eroding personal privacy is most notable at -12% since Q4 2019, followed by Switzerland at -9%. This could be due to these countries being “accustomed to stronger protection of their data.”

‍

‍

It seems that consumers deem it more “worth it” to share their data if there is a personal benefit to them - although this benefit has to be free to be worth it. According to GWI, “41% of global consumers prefer to exchange their personal data for free services rather than pay for those services to safeguard their data.”

The World Of Digital Citizens

‍

Now that we’re online more often than not, online privacy has become more important than ever. As we become more informed, we get to know how to be better and better “digital citizens.” Whether the pandemic comes to an end or not, the issue of less online privacy will remain. Whether that should be deemed as an issue or something we can benefit from depends on how we move forward; the right steps involve mindful browsing for consumers and mindful use of digital add-ons such as cookies for businesses.

‍

Interested in online privacy? Check out our episode of The Unfair Advantage Sessions, YOUKNOW’s Kelvin Jonk speaks to Brandwatch founder and CEO, Giles Palmer about his views on the topic.

GWI has recently released a localised, South African report containing insights for one of the top drivers of the world’s economy: Food Shoppers. Food Shoppers are defined by GWI as “Cooking enthusiasts who are the main food shopper in their household.”

‍

No matter your industry, your audience is bound to include Food Shoppers; cooking is a passion point for many people, regardless of lifestyle. Especially since the start of COVID-19, 7 in 10 South Africans are now interested in cooking - which is a rather large portion of the population to put it lightly. With many maintaining the intention to further explore cooking as an interest once the pandemic is (finally) over, this audience is sure to be one to keep on your watch list.

‍

Where Are South Africans Shopping?

‍

‍

The ultimate battle of the brands took place on the pages of this GWI report. Huge names such as Pick n Pay, Woolworths and Checkers went head to head to see who fared best in the world of grocery shopping. Unsurprisingly, Pick n Pay came out on top as the supermarket of choice.

‍

Who Are South African Food Shoppers?

‍

‍

“Food shoppers are more likely than average to be female, family-oriented and full-time workers” which makes them “time-poor consumers.” They’re price conscious and manage their money well since they have families to support. Efficiency and ease-of-use are therefore of paramount importance when it comes to their shopping experience.

‍

What Media Do Food Shoppers Consume The Most?

‍

‍

Food Shoppers have a heavy online presence, mainly on mobile and social media - which they are more likely to use for research purposes or engagement when wanting to find out more about a brand. They will adopt the tech that will make their day-to-day lives easier since they have so little time as is.

‍

The Social Platforms That South African Food Shoppers Use The Most:

‍

‍

With its in-depth reviews and tutorials, YouTube is the go-to platform for Food Shoppers. Facebook follows close behind by a mere 3%, emphasising that word-of-mouth (or in this case, posts) has a huge influence on the products Food Shoppers decide to purchase.

‍

Interest in online shopping has skyrocketed since the start of the pandemic. Although online grocery shopping is still to see the same incline, there is still an “upwards trend” says GWI. Perhaps this will be dependent on whether more grocery stores adapt to the more convenient door-to-door delivery as an alternative to in-store pickup.

‍

How Do South African Food Shoppers Discover Brands?

‍

‍

The top mode of discovery is emails and mailshots from brands, which is great since this is one of the more cost-effective marketing tools. Ensuring to create personalised mailers, include great imagery and an appropriate call to action could be the key to your marketing success. According to GWI, consumer review sites also play a significant role in brand discovery, which shows that Food Shoppers are heavily influenced by the opinions of others.

‍

Your key takeaway order is on its way!

‍

Overall, there has been a steady increase in appetite for online shopping. As we’re currently stuck at home and constantly on our devices, we’re exposed to more and more online brand media as opposed to traditional media and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

‍

To learn more about this audience, take a look at GWI’s report: Exploring Food Shoppers in South Africa.

YOUKNOW Digital, the official reseller of technology solutions for leading brands and agencies in Africa announces collaboration with Mscsports to drive additional value in their business using the GWI platform and audience insights.

‍

Survey data continues to play an increasingly important role in how agencies strategise for current clients and pitch for new business, it allows them to back ideas with data and helps them to stay at the forefront of their industry.

‍

“At Mscsports we obsess about creating measurable impact for brands and rights holders by creating fame, growing & engaging audiences and ultimately generating revenue from their sponsorship investments. We call this Impact Marketing. The starting point for any of our Impact Marketing strategies is the collection and analysis of audience, category and brand data, which is used to arrive at unique and informed insights for our clients.

‍

Our partnership with GWI provides us with access to reliable data and insights into attitudes, interests and perceptions of local and international audiences, relevant to any brand, competitor or segment within our industry and beyond. Where research and data collection could take weeks or months to complete, we now have instant access to an up-to-date global database within seconds. This allows us to spend more time on the creative elements of the strategic process, as well as adjust our strategies in real-time to continuously deliver maximum impact and performance.

‍

As sponsorship budgets are increasingly placed under pressure, accessing audiences by understanding them, connecting with them and ultimately engaging authentically is the most direct route to delivering growth in performance, measurable ROI and impact. We are excited to have GWI on board as a partner to help us deliver this for all of our clients.” says Grant McEwan, head of strategic communication at MscSports.

‍

GWI has provided leading audience insights to global agencies and brands. While their technology is leading with its data solutions, GWI maintains the agility, energy and spirit of a startup. GWI has introduced several innovations to the world of market research, from its ease-of-use, a lightning-fast platform to our globally consistent, but locally relevant data.

‍

The Unified Core Survey is completed by over 800,000 respondents in over 46 markets globally by digitally active people, this gives you access to immediate insights to over 2 Billion connected consumers.

‍

“We are very excited to be working with Mscsports. We love GWI and have worked closely with the Mscsports team to get to this point. We truly believe that they will benefit from the GWI insights and platform, by helping compete at the highest levels by providing their clients and strategy teams with this world-class insights platform” says Ryan Brunyee, GWI product lead at YOUKNOW.

‍

YOUKNOW, whose clients include Standard Bank, MTN, Multichoice and Wesbank has been in the Marketing Technology industry since 2013 and is known for its support and local implementation of global marketing technologies such as Brandwatch, Khoros, Hootsuite, GWI & Audiense.

‍

For more information about YOUKNOW Digital, visit our website at www.youknow.co.za

‍

About YOUKNOW Digital

‍

YOUKNOW is dedicated to helping brands utilise the right technology to enhance their Media Strategy, Consumer Insights, and Social Customer Care. We offer the best global intelligence technology solutions for curious companies with local, African expertise. Our products include Brandwatch, Hootsuite, Khoros, GWI & Audiense.

‍

About Idea Mscsports

‍

At Mscsports we deliver on our brand promise of creating IMPACT by consistently following our results-driven process of research, strategy, implementation, and measurement. We believe in using the power of sport and entertainment sponsorships to deliver impact – and for more than 20 years we have consistently done so for sponsors, rights holders, and athletes through our brands, rights, and talent teams.

‍

Media contact: Lebogang Kunene Marketing Manager, YOUKNOW Digital lebo@youknow.co.za

To claim that 2020 was a tough year for marketers is an understatement of note, to say the least. This year was hallmarked by significant trials and tribulations, a flux of trends and new behaviours that made it difficult for anybody to pinpoint exactly what was going on.

‍

On the flip side, this was also the year where the spirit of Ubuntu took global centre stage - as world leaders, organisations plus ordinary people came together and helped make the world a better place collectively. One thing is for sure, most people became ‘woke’ and started asking some really important questions. Therefore, if 2020 was the year of important questions, I will stick my neck out and claim that 2021 will be the year of ‘important answers’.

‍

‍

The socio-professional dynamics inspired us at Digital Fanta to also play our part and continue making the marketing world a better place with data. To further this agenda, we fine-combed the industry, in search of the right partner who could help our network access useful insights and shed light during these dark times.

‍

Hence, we were overjoyed when our path serendipitously led us to YOUKNOW (an exciting company that is deeply entrenched in world-leading consumer insights platforms, such as GWI, Brandwatch and Audiense). Moreover, the tech capabilities of their research platforms are ideal for the insights needs of marketers wishing to leapfrog their competition in 2021.

‍

Together, we are proud to announce our partnership and commitment to giving marketers the ‘unfair advantage’ by sharing useful consumer insights by global research experts that are relevant to our dynamic local markets. It is key for us at Digital Fanta to enhance our network of thousands of marketing professionals across the continent, and kit them up for the rebuild that awaits all in 2021 and beyond. To kickstart this exciting venture, we will be distributing weekly doses of data as part of our #DigitalFantaNowYouKnow series that is aimed at keeping our network in the know.

‍

To make sure that you don’t miss out, please subscribe to our mailer and download your free copy of our debut GWI Insight: Exploring Food Shoppers in South Africa report.

‍

For more info and a free consultation on how data can help your business breakthrough, please send an email to nowyouknow@digitalfanta.co.za

Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. It usually kickstarts the festive-season-spending with consumers making large purchases and retailers making large profits in one day.

‍

Things took a different turn this year with the pandemic. In-store sales took a hard knock as customers preferred staying home and shopping online rather than physically visiting the stores. Others could not participate due to economic reasons as retrenchments affected a lot of people this year.

‍

The regular queuing outside brick-and-mortar stores from midnight to early morning hours was much less in 2020 compared to previous years. Even though retailers assured customers that they were going to follow all COVID-19 rules and regulations according to lockdown restrictions, shoppers still did not budge. This uncertainty led to lower in-store sales even though retailers had month-long Black Friday deals.

‍

Looking at online conversations using Brandwatch Consumer Research, the volume of conversation was not as much this year compared to last year. In 2019, the conversation had more mentions than 2020 even though it only gained momentum on the day of the event and dropped dismally the day after, for both events.

‍

‍

2020 has put a lot of things into perspective and forced retailers to stumble under pressure and publicly address issues that they had never put too much focus on. Retailers will have to take steps to bridge the gap between online and offline consumers by finding new ways of communicating with them in a way that will resonate with both of them to avoid future shortcomings.

‍

The key takeaway from Black Friday 2020 is that South African customers were financially stretched this year due to the pandemic that led to a change in their spending behaviour. This led to the economic reality that hit home and forced consumers to think twice before spending their money.

‍

Download the Black Friday 2020 Highlights Report Here

The success of any business lies in the ability to improve experience at every step of the customer journey. Measuring customer satisfaction helps brands to identify if they are aligned with the ongoing efforts of the organisation to continue delivering value to customers. This also provides valuable insights about the quality of their customer care.

‍

Metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) , Customer Effort Score (CES), and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) are the most commonly used Customer Success Measures . Each has a calculation method that gives a numerical value that can be used as a benchmark and leading indicator when making improvements to customer service operations or when reconsidering your brand’s customer journey.

‍

What’s The Difference Between NPS, CES, And CSAT?

‍

CSAT, NPS, and CES scores are all used to quantify how happy the customer is with the service received. Each metric has its own use and limitations. Businesses can use these metrics jointly to identify where to improve their customer care, including interactions, productivity, and technology.

‍

CSAT

‍

CSAT surveys are ideally sent when you want to see how happy customers are with an action your business took, or certain aspects of your products and/or services. CSAT survey scales range from poor to excellent, 1 – 5, or even angry face to happy face.

‍

‍

The CSAT score is an average based on the results of the survey. Generally, expressed in a percentage from 0% to 100% NPS

‍

Net promoter scores (NPS) is a growth indicator. It calculates how satisfied consumers are with your products/services and how loyal they are to your brand. To measure NPS, customers are asked how likely they are to recommend a company or product to a family member, friend, or colleague on a scale of 1 – 10.

‍

Customers are scored into three categories, based on their responses:

‍

Promoters — Customers who responded with a score of 9 or 10. These are your most loyal and enthusiastic customers. Passives — Customers who responded with a score of 7 or 8. These customers are satisfied with your business, but not as likely to recommend it as promoters. Detractors — Customers who responded with a score of 0-6. These customers are unsatisfied and may discourage friends and colleagues from engaging with your business.

‍

To calculate NPS, you’ll need to calculate the percentage of respondents who are promoters and the percentage who are detractors. To get your final score, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. You will end up with a number between 0 and 100. The higher your number, the better your NPS score.

‍

CES

‍

Customer effort scores (CES) measure how easy it is to engage and interact with your brand. While this doesn’t measure satisfaction directly, it can be an excellent indicator of customers’ experiences when they’re looking for information, making purchases, asking questions, or looking for support. To measure CES, customers are typically asked to rank their experience with a business from one (very easy) to five (very difficult).

‍

CES surveys are most commonly used:

‍

• After a customer touchpoint that has led to a purchase
• Immediately after a customer service interaction
• To track the overall customer experience with your product or brand.

‍

To calculate CES, divide the sum of all scores by the number of respondents. The lower the score, the better.

‍

How To Improve NPS, CES, And CSAT Scores

‍

We have established that it’s important to track these scores, but once you know what your brand’s customer satisfaction scores are, how can you improve them?

Here are four ways to get started.

‍

1. Speed Up Customer Service Interactions

‍

A recent Khoros survey revealed that around 50% of respondents said that they had interacted with brands on social media. From those customers who do interact with brands on social media, 65% expect brands to respond to their message and around 30% said they would stop giving a brand their business if the brand did not meet the customer’s time frame expectations for a response. Speeding up customer service interactions can help improve customer satisfaction and make customers willing to spend more.

‍

The best way to achieve this is to modernize your contact center. More modern contact center's deflect calls to digital channels and automate repetitive and predictable tasks with chatbots, which streamlines workflows and resolves customer needs more quickly.

‍

An online community is also a great resource for any enterprise looking to reduce customer resolution time. Instead of relying on a phone or chat agent to help with an issue, online communities give customers the resources they need to solve their own problems. Online communities can scale organically as a business grows, as they often rely on user-generated content (UGC) to resolve issues and answer questions. HP, for example, reduced first response time by 37% and resolution time by 41% with a Khoros-powered community.

‍

2. Boost Customer Service Interactions

‍

Sometimes a customer’s problem can’t be resolved with a single interaction. Should an interaction need to span sessions or transfer between agents or chatbots, make sure that the customer’s conversation transcript and interaction history transfers with it.

‍

If agents aren’t able to refer back to conversation history and notes, customers have to repeat themselves. This causes frustration and ultimately lowers customer satisfaction. In Salesforce's State of the Connect Customer report, 68% of customers say that it is “absolutely critical” for customer service agents to know their service history so they don’t have to spend time explaining it to them.

‍

3. Be Where Customers Need You

‍

Be easily accessible. Offer people the ability to contact you through web chat, SMS, social, messaging, review sites, and peer-to-peer communities. This will allow customers to reach you on the digital channel of their choice, saving them time of seeking you out (and we already know that saving customers’ time is a good thing).

‍

4. Increase The Number Of Customers Who Participate In Customer Satisfaction Surveys

‍

Customer satisfaction surveys can give you a better understanding of how your customers feel, but if the total number of survey respondents isn’t large enough to represent your customer base as a whole, you might not be getting the most accurate data. The more consumers who participate in customer satisfaction surveys, the better your data will be.

‍

You can improve your survey’s response rate through personalisation. According to research by Linkdex, 79% of customers expect brands to get to know them on a deeper level and provide tailored offers and experiences, including customer communication experiences. To personalise your survey notifications you can A/B test email subject lines and body content, include the customers name, send the survey in the customer’s preferred language, and more.

‍

See how Khoros helped increase Midco’s CSAT survey completion rate by 460% in our case study.

‍

AI-Powered Digital Customer Service, Made Better By Khoros Care

‍

Modernise your contact center with Khoros Care. Let AI and automation streamline your workflows so you can listen, filter, categorise, and route incoming conversations to the best possible bot, human agent, or self-service resource to resolve the customer’s inquiry (which has been proven to boost customer satisfaction).

‍

Want to learn more about our digital customer care solutions? Request a demo today.

South Africa entered a state of national disaster of the 15th of March 2020 and a week later a national lockdown was imposed.

‍

This meant that South Africans day to day lives would forever be changed. The beginning of an era if we may. Schools were shut, store were closed and travel was banned. South Africans were limited to their homes and only allowed to go to the shops under strict restrictions and with a limited selection of products to purchase from.

‍

The in store shopper experience and overall consumer experience as we knew it doesn't exist anymore. What does this mean for the South Africa consumer focused brands and businesses that rely on the face to face customer interactions to make sales? Essentially it puts your businesses online channel and digital readiness under the spotlight.

‍

This period has seen data connection become the new oxygen. Using Brandwatch's new consumer insights platform we listened in on online conversations amongst South Africans.

‍

The COVID-19 South African Insights report highlights what people have been missing the most during lockdown. In the report we take a look at what people have been missing the most as well as which activities people have been keeping themselves busy with. The data also looks at which fast food chains consumers are missing the most.

‍

‍

What this data provides is insights into what your share of voice is a brand. Digging deeper into the data we can also determine what it is that consumers are missing from each brand. Through these insights we get to understand each brands strengths and weaknesses. Which menu items people enjoyed the most as well as which aspects of your brand people aren't missing.

‍

As a brand or business looking to the future post lockdown it is essential to know where the gaps are within your entity and to include the correction thereof. The South African economy has taken a big knock and consumers will have an even less disposable income. Brands will have to really show up for their consumers.

Sometimes it feels that all we're talking about these days is data, analytics and insights. Even though we're in the industry, it does feel like it's a conversation that has spilled over into the zeitgeist. I believe there's another article required to express my personal views on where the surveillance economy is headed, but I'll leave that for another day.

‍

With the pressure that marketers have these days to rightly base their decisions on actionable insights, we felt it valuable to have a discussion about that.

‍

Data isn't "data". I guess, in a way, it is but I feel like there should be some more distinctions made. Not all types of data can answer all types of questions. For a marketer to make the best of what they have available, or for them to choose the correct technology, strategies and new hires - it's important start by taking a step back and realising that "throwing data at the problem" isn't really enough. It's not efficient. Many a million has been wasted on big data projects and technology and projects by trying to solve a broad data problem.

‍

This is an opinion piece, so it's definitely not definitive, but when I think about data, or when a client speaks to me about their data needs, I like to match it against some of the questions below. The answers to these questions all tend to lead to different strategies and solutions, with varying costs, resources and implementation timeframes.

‍

Questions to ask: 1. Firstly, do I know what my question is? 2. Do the answers to my questions need to be "in-the-moment" and dynamic? 3. Am I interested in user behaviour, consumer preferences or opinion? 4. Could there be a major difference in data originating from different personas? 5. Is this data meant for internal strategic decisions, or for targeting and marketing purposes?

‍

Below are my thoughts on classifying the types of data mentioned in question 3.

‍

User Behaviour

‍

Behaviour is an analytics discussion. In the social media analytics world it's often referred to as "volumetric's", specifically relating to things like engagement, fan page growth and virility.

‍

In other spheres it could relate to understanding:

‍

• Website traffic
• Journey mapping and journey orchestration
• Conversion and click-through-rates
• General SEO metrics, like time-on-page, bounce rates and the like

‍

The point about utilising User Behaviour is that it's not about the individual. Tracking an individual's movements and behaviours in a way that identifies them is actually not ethically acceptable anymore. So it's all about the collective, and it's definitely about the trends.

‍

Consumer Preferences

‍

Consumer preferences can be two-fold:

‍

1. A user deliberately chooses a preference on a platform, or channel, which alters their user experience. This could be something as simple as whether they want to receive your communication with them via text message or email, or which customer service channel they prefer to use with an organisation.
2. A group of consumers have, and hopefully state, a preference to interact with - and associate themselves with - a type of organisation that appeals to their preferences. In this case think about large swathes of consumers moving towards eco-conscious travel options, or electric cars, or vegetarian diets. These are the kinds of consumer preferences that one can easily track and monitor over time.

‍

Opinion

‍

Opinions tend to be the fuzzier of the 3 types of data listed in this article. It's the qualitative option. But it's still quantifiable, if you utilise the right kinds of tools and methodologies to understand them.

‍

Opinions can change in a single news cycle. While preferences tend to be a little more long-term, opinions can be swayed almost instantaneously. We're in a highly emotive time in our history, and the ability to share and amplify opinions in a second has led - not only - to polarisation in politics, but also the ability for opinions of your brand to swing in a day.

‍

The most recent example that comes to mind is that of Clicks.

‍

At the beginning of September 2020 they're listed as the "Most Loved" brand by Kantar's Brandz Top 30 report, and a few days later they're the most hated brand on the internet with the Economic Freedom Front allegedly burning down stores in reaction to a social media backlash, involving TRESemmé.

‍

‍

Source: https://www.kantar.com/campaigns/brandz/south-africa/

‍

Opinion can be mostly measured in 2 ways these days:

‍

1. Analysing public discourse on social media, forums, television debates and radio talk shows.
2. Targeted surveys asking pointed questions

‍

*Understanding opinions on a topic that is vital to your business is a day-to-day affair. Receiving a brand health report at the end of the week is too late. Set up the correct kinds of alerts and ensure that the right people are mandated to keep abreast of this to ensure your company can roll with the punches.

‍

Now For My Opinion

‍

Once you've asked the right kinds of questions, and worked out the best way to get the answers - create a culture of leveraging those answers. Does your Exco sit on a daily/weekly basis to make strategic decisions based off of the data available? Do the reports that get build and paid for actually get read and digested? It's rare, but a directive from the top, and a habit of interrogating the data is vital to any organisation's agility these days. Go out and prosper. Hope this helps.

‍

*I say this often, but crisis monitoring should NOT BE OUTSOURCED. You should definitely have the best PR agency on hand to handle it, but don't take your eye off the game and hope that someone else will let you know when to pay attention.

Pretoria, South Africa, 3 December 2020 - YOUKNOW Digital today announced its collaboration with Idea Hive, an agency that creates and executes pioneering Brand Storytelling Solutions. The two companies, brought together by Brandwatch, the world’s leading social intelligence company, will work together to deliver powerful AI-driven insights across every part of Idea Hive’s business.

‍

“Data is the foundation of every digital transformation, that’s why we’ve never been more committed to delivering powerful analytics to all our clients. We are thrilled to work with such a forward-thinking company, and we are confident that will exceed their expectations,” said Kelvin Jonck, MD at YOUKNOW.

‍

Idea Hive is an agency that creates and executes pioneering Brand Storytelling Solutions to illuminate brand power. It applies a strategic framework that extracts and aligns all the key components of any brand story.

‍

"We've been telling brand's stories successfully for years. Idea Hive believes that digital and/or social media analytics and insights are key to assisting brands to make more informed decisions on what they should be doing to best add value to their clients. An in-depth analysis will tell it is going to rain, but it won’t carry the umbrella for you, hence, we are extremely excited to partner with Brandwatch to ensure that in the future, we deduce data to gain rich actionable insights, which will ultimately benefit our core business of brand storytelling to achieve enhanced outcomes for our clients," said Yaw Dwomoh, CEO at Idea Hive.

‍

Brandwatch is the only social-listening platform with the most data and the smartest artificial intelligence. It gives marketers access to deep-listening capabilities across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and online news, backed by robust artificial intelligence and real-time alerts.

‍

“With Brandwatch being the world’s leading social intelligence company that builds intelligent software solutions, we will be able to accelerate our mission and help Idea Hive and Africa as a whole more than ever see and understand data,” Tsebanang Tsimba, Head of Customer Success at YOUKNOW.

‍

YOUKNOW, whose clients include NCBA, the Kenyan Tourism Board, MTN, Multichoice and Standard Bank has been in the Marketing Technology industry since 2013 and is known for its support and local implementation of global marketing technologies such as Brandwatch, Khoros (formerly known as Lithium & Spredfast), Hootsuite, GlobalWebIndex & Audiense.

‍

About YOUKNOW Digital YOUKNOW is dedicated to helping brands utilise the right technology to enhance its Media Strategy, Consumer Insights, and Social Customer Care. We offer the best global intelligence technology solutions for curious companies with local, African expertise. Brandwatch, Khoros, Hootsuite, GlobalWebIndex & Audiense.

‍

About Idea Hive At Idea Hive we create and execute pioneering Brand Storytelling Solutions to illuminate your brand’s power. We apply a strategic framework that extracts and aligns all the key components of your brand’s story. We craft and execute heartfelt and character-driven Brand Storytelling campaigns that position brands and organisations to achieve their full market potential.

Black Friday is chaotic with stores jam-packed with customers putting their hands on the best deals. This has taken a turn-around this year, because of the “coronavirus”. The pandemic has changed the rules of shopping. This has forced businesses to adapt to the current times by participating in Black Friday while following lockdown regulations. How do they operate within regulations? Someone might say online shopping, but this can’t be the only option, especially in South Africa.

‍

Online shopping is convenient, in that your package can be delivered at your doorstep or you can schedule your items for collection to avoid long queues, but if we are being realistic the cons outweigh the pros. The cons being security, quality, waiting time, return policies, added delivery fees, and scams. Those are some of the things that give customers anxiety.

‍

Now, with a lot of feelings around Black Friday, we’ve gathered data using Brandwatch Consumer Research to uncover useful insights about Black Friday in the middle of a pandemic as businesses try to meet customers halfway.

‍

Sentiment While analysing the conversation leading up to the 27 November, we noticed that the majority of the sentiment was positive. 80% of the posts were positive especially in discussions around savings and deals, while only 20% of it was negative with customers expressing their fear of scams and catching the virus. While there are negative things expressed about the day, we still see the excitement building across social media in the lead up to the shopping bonanza.

‍

The most positive keywords used were Black Friday as the lead keyword of the conversation, The flame emoji as an expression of “hot deals”, WhatsApp as small businesses advertise their products, Unbeatable in reference to the prices, and Card as customers are warned about giving their details on the web when shopping during this time.

‍

By looking at this data, businesses and brands have to build trust and confidence by communicating how they’ll make stores safer while providing an excellent customer experience at the same time.

‍

Gender Breakdown Now, despite the stereotype about women and shopping, data is proving this to be a myth as we see that more males are engaging in the Black Friday conversation than females. They are hoping to find a great deal on the PS5, which comes as no surprises. Retailers know that this demographic is browsing their sites for discounted prices on devices and cool gadgets.

‍

They’ve heard what their customers want and now they are preparing some exciting, budget-friendly deals. We see this data through social platforms like Twitter as retailers are working tirelessly to ensure their campaigns are engaged.

‍

‍

A whole month has been given to South Africans to do more than a few days of Black Friday shopping (online and in-store shopping). Therefore consumers must be careful when it comes to month-long 'shoppertunities' and should be extra vigilant when making a purchase, especially online.

‍

While online shopping isn’t the only way to shop around during a pandemic, brands have figured it would be easier to start their sales earlier in the month to avoid stampede on Black Friday. Black Friday presents a major opportunity for retailers to improve processes that can sustain them beyond the holiday shopping season and other companies are offering innovative shopping promotions such as shopping online and collecting in-store to avoid queues and paying for shipping fees.

‍

While 2020 has been a year and a half for both customers and businesses, it left many wondering if Black Friday is canceled. Thankfully, the answer is not, because we see businesses and brands announcing sales and deals daily as the date gets closer. This annual shopping event is going to be different as we are in the middle of a pandemic and social distancing is still a thing.

Johannesburg, 18 November - GlobalWebIndex (GWI), the leading target audience company, and Digital Optimisation, New Generation Awards 2020 “Small Agency of the Year", today announce their strategic partnership to drive performance and growth.

‍

Through its flagship study representing 2.6 billion consumers globally, GWI provides consumer insights across 46 markets to the most renowned brands, agencies and media organisations. Digital Optimisation becomes one of the first African independent agencies to be GWI-certified and joins some of the world’s most iconic agencies and brands that have access to its market-leading research and solutions.

‍

Dani Morley, CEO of Digital Optimisation, says the partnership with GWI forms an integral part of Digital Optimisation’s broader business strategy. “As a company, we are obsessed with our client’s performance and growth. To drive this performance, we need to have access to trusted data to make informed audience profiling decisions. GWI enables this. The insights gleaned from GWI data allows us to shape our strategic thinking and delivery on e-commerce, lead generation, digital media and social strategies.”

‍

“At Digital Optimisation, our approach is to combine our local, entrepreneurial, agile Indie DNA with the power of globally-recognised, world-leading, heavy-weight partners, such as GWI.”

‍

“We’re delighted to be partnering with Digital Optimisation at such a crucial period in time”, says Sebastian Hedencrona, Chief Growth Officer at GWI. “As budgets tighten and the pressure on agencies to deliver fast results mounts, it’s never been more important to understand your audiences and how exactly they’re changing – and this is an agency that knows the value in being informed. Since the coronavirus outbreak, consumer behaviours and mindsets have been changing at rates we’ve never seen. Our aim, as always, is to bring that much-needed insight to every agency, big or small, to help them succeed. Our partners play a key role in helping us achieve that – on a global, local, and regional level.”

‍

“We love GlobalWebIndex, and we love Digital Optimisation. It’s a match made in heaven, and we’re excited to help DO compete at the highest levels by providing their customers with up-to-date, useful and relevant consumer insights. YOUKNOW’s goal is to connect local, African organisations with the best global technology companies, ensuring that they do so with local expertise and experience,” says Kelvin Jonck, MD at YOUKNOW.

‍

Morley continues: “Our partnership with GWI gives us the benefit and insight into rich, customised research to identify key consumer trends and opportunities. Not only does GWI provide us with customer journey mapping and targeting validation capabilities, but we are able to tap into a representation of over 2 billion people, in over 40 countries with over 40,000 profiling attributes, making us truly, locally and internationally capable and relevant.

‍

Access to GWI provides us with the ability to find and validate our client’s ideal target segments, with locally relevant insight into attitudes, interests and perceptions in a way that we have not been able to achieve previously. We can then map the behaviours of these segments to identify the touch-points and media moments that matter. Quality customer profiling, quality conversion and quality lead strategies have to start here. Developing a nurturing CRM strategy is only valuable if our customers are the right profile from the beginning and this enables us to deliver loyalty, profit and an advantage over other brands.”

‍

Morley believes that as marketing budgets are tightened, and Chief Marketing Officers are under the baton to produce results, there will be an increasing demand for paid media agencies and performance marketing agencies to deliver high-value ROI and bottom-line impact. She believes that the GWI partnership with Digital Optimization is a critical element in its ability to deliver on high performance and growth for its clients.

‍

About GWI

‍

GlobalWebIndex (GWI) is a target audience company that provides consumer insight across 46 countries to the world’s leading brands, communication agencies and media organisations.

‍

The company runs a global survey representing more than 2 billion connected consumers, which offers up over 40,000 data points on the behaviours and perceptions of internet users around the world. Using the subscription-based platform, clients including Twitter, Google, Spotify, WPP, IPG and Omnicom Group can gather in-depth insights into audience behaviours, attitudes and interests through a combination of survey data and analytics.

‍

About YOUKNOW

‍

YOUKNOW started in 2013 with the understanding that there was a disconnect between local industry professionals and the technology vendors they wanted to work with. Geographically, industry, cultural and language differences meant that getting to excellent took a lot more work on both sides than needed. We were then fortunate enough to get the buy-in from some of the most innovative technology companies in the world to allow us to represent them locally: becoming their experts on the ground, so that we could sit right in front of our local, African peers and help them succeed by seeing the value, and realising the potential that the solutions provided.

‍

YOUKNOW is the authorised distributor and local support partner for GlobalWebIndex.

‍

You can also follow us on Linkedin and also subscribe to our Youtube channel.

It’s coming to that time of the year when we all start daydreaming about 2020 holidays to destinations near and far.

‍

The internet allows consumers to research their holidays in more depth than ever before, opening up travel booking sites to closer scrutiny. Online reputation can be a powerful influence on travel agent take up – both bad and good.

‍

YOUKNOW, using Brandwatch Consumer Research, analysed the South African conversation around nine of the top travel sites in the country over the past year to find out which were faring the best online.

‍

These are: Travelstart, Travelcheck, LekkeSlaap, Cheapflights, Thompsons, Flightsite, Pentravel, STA Travel and Flight Centre.

‍

Of the travel sites we looked at, Flight Centre was mentioned by far the most in the past year, accounting for a 44% share of the conversation. Flight Centre was followed by Travelstart (26%), Lekkeslaap (14%) and STA Travel (8%). Thompsons, Flightsite and Travelcheck accounted for the least share of voice accounting for only 3% of conversation combined.

‍

‍

The conversation about travel sites increased during the Christmas holidays, peaking between the 25th and 29th of December due to discussion about Flight Centre’s competition to win a trip to Mauritius in collaboration with Glamour SA.

‍

‍

Brands with the highest percentage of positive conversation were Pentravel (36%), Travelstart (29%) and Thompsons (27%).

‍

‍

The conversation around Pentravel praised its customer service, especially their expert advice.

‍

‍

The brand with the highest percentage of negative conversation was FlightSite. Much of the negativity surrounding FlightSite regarded the inability to get in touch with customer service. So that’s a snapshot of the online South African travel companies.

‍

*This data was analysed using Brandwatch Consumer Research, with the most volume of conversation coming from Twitter, for the period of January 2019 - January 2020.