Chapter 5

Experimenting with the Share Economy

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Identifying opportunities to leverage the share economy

Bullet Creating a communications strategy around sharing

Bullet Building campaigns with a share economy focus

Millennials are patient. That statement may seem ironic to anyone who sees the on-demand nature of the web as proof that Millennials embrace immediacy. But, the truth is that while immediacy and short-term gain are favored by Millennials, the share economy highlights the patience that Millennials possess. For example, the explosive growth of services like Airbnb and Uber demonstrate that sharing has trumped the importance of ownership. Millennials would rather share a car than buy one they can’t afford.

This chapter highlights the importance of the share economy and presents strategies you can use to participate in the sharing of goods, services, or even content. Leveraging the share economy is a great way to drive familiarity with your brand and build lasting relationships with these new consumers.

Positioning Your Brand Around Sharing

Leveraging the share economy isn’t going to be a strategy that suits every brand. For some, there simply isn’t going to be a way to organically integrate a sharing component into a product or marketing strategy. To effectively leverage the share economy, you can run through a checklist that will help you determine whether your brand is capable of utilizing the strategy. See how many of the following items you can check off:

  • You have an active community forum.
  • You have a peer-to-peer opportunity.
  • You can afford short-term opportunity costs.
  • Your product or service has an online component.

Tip If you find that your brand, product, or service meets these criteria, then you’re in a great position to take advantage of the share economy by capitalizing on the Millennial’s desire for access over ownership.

The following sections look at each item in turn.

You have an active community forum

You need to have a community focus if you want to participate in the share economy. If your customer experience doesn’t include engaging with a larger community about your brand, product, or even your industry, then taking full advantage of the share economy may be difficult.

A community forum can take different shapes. It can be owned by your brand, where the majority of participants are either customers or hot prospects, or it can be industry-based. If you manufacture power tools, for example, the community forum may include a topic like home improvement with an audience made up of general contractors or builders. The key is to have an online discussion that engages your specific audience.

You have a peer-to-peer opportunity

The ability to share content has been a pain point for many industries that rely on individual consumption, as opposed to community use of a limitless, digital product, such as software accessed via a cloud service. As brands have recognized that fighting market demand has no value, they have made adjustments. Instead of adjusting to this demand, your aim should be to create supply for it. Your digital content should be shareable and possess certain qualities that actually encourage users to share your information with one another.

You can afford short-term opportunity costs

Being able to afford short-term opportunity costs is likely going to be the hardest point to check off on your share economy campaign checklist. Service-based organizations that provide a platform for sharing, such as Uber or Airbnb, don’t have the same opportunity cost as other brands because they own their platform.

Leveraging the share economy may mean providing your product for free or for a single fee to several users. In the past, you may have individually charged each user. The benefit of this kind of sharing with Millennials produces short-term brand exposure and long-term loyalty.

Tip The question most marketers or business owners need to ask themselves is whether these benefits outweigh the opportunity costs involved in this strategy.

Your product or service has an online component

The online component serves two purposes. For brands that have online content or logins, an online component makes sharing simpler and can lead to a rapid rise in adoption. For all brands, both those with an online product or service and those that operate offline, the online discussion serves to heighten awareness of the campaign and mitigate the short-term opportunity cost.

Establishing a Voice

Your involvement in the share economy doesn’t mean you need to change the way your business operates. The share economy, like any strategic tool, is something that you apply to a particular segment of your audience. Creating a voice for these users is an important part of your strategy.

Creating your brand’s voice specifically for the share economy means focusing on two priorities:

  • Mapping out your target audience: Target a very specific segment of your audience with the content you create.
  • Creating a content strategy: Focus on the sharing element of your business.

Mapping your target audience

The first step to launching a campaign that leverages the share economy is the identification of a viable audience. This audience may consist of existing customers, or it may be an audience affiliated with your industry. Regardless of where the audience comes from, you need to identify certain traits to ensure that the audience you target with your offers is a viable one.

As you put together a targeted campaign, you’ll find that the majority of the audience identification process will take place on your new media ad platforms. The most valuable of these platforms related to narrowing the audience will undoubtedly be Facebook. The following steps help you narrow your audience:

  1. Select a general audience of Millennials that is either saved or segmented based on a particular age range.

    Start with a broad focus and then narrow it. In this particular case, you should either begin with your general Millennial audience, or select an age range, as shown in Figure 5-1.

  2. Start targeting a specific set of share-based interests.

    Figure 5-2 shows a few examples of share-based interests, but you should expand on these interests so that they include any share economy-associated interests.

  3. Target interests and behaviors affiliated with your brand or industry.

    After you complete the general share economy targeting, you should include interest categories associated with your brand or industry.

  4. Select specific placements to develop segmented content strategies.

    Remember Content will vary from one medium to the next. Segment your efforts to reach users with your share economy campaign on all current media.

Screenshot of choosing a broad audience of Millennial users in Facebook.

FIGURE 5-1: Begin by choosing a broad audience of Millennial users on Facebook.

Screenshot of initially narrowing the user selection by targeting general share economy-associated interests.

FIGURE 5-2: Initially narrow your user selection by targeting general share economy-associated interests.

Creating a content strategy

At this point in the development of your share economy campaign, you hopefully have accomplished three crucial tasks:

  • You identified your brand as having the right characteristics and the potential to leverage the popularity and value of the share economy.
  • You developed a target audience that is likely to engage with your brand in this share-focused campaign.
  • You developed content specifically geared toward the traits that define the share economy.

Remember Several standardized elements of your share economy-focused initiative includes your objectives, target audience, and KPIs. The content is going to be particularly important because its structure, layout, and calls to action are the driving force behind the framing of a share-based campaign.

Consider the following to help you communicate that the focal point of your content is sharing:

  • Create standalone landing pages. Your landing pages should remain separate from your other campaigns. One of the fastest ways to lose your audience’s interest is to bait them with content that highlights some information and then sends them to a landing page that doesn’t feature anything matching that content.
  • Highlight the share aspect. Use keywords like “share,” “participate,” or “join” to encourage users you sent to your landing page to take part in the share-oriented environment you created for them.
  • Integrate a community conversation or activity feature. Your audience may be reluctant to join your community if they don’t have enough information to make a decision. To avoid this issue, highlight topics that are popular right on your landing page. Also, offer prospective participants a glimpse into the community to allow them to see what’s being discussed.

  • Provide detailed instructions. Millennials are intuitive, but you shouldn’t take their tech-savvy abilities for granted. If you provide a platform where people upload information about how to do something better, walk them through the process to display it. The upload or communication process may be straightforward and familiar, but don’t assume that they can figure everything out on their own.

    Remember Your share economy campaign relies on user-generated information and content. You want your audience to participate as much and as frequently as possible. So, if detailed instructions are one way of encouraging participation, make them as detailed as possible, even if you consider it overkill.

  • Highlight the benefits of sharing. You need to demonstrate to your target audience that sharing provides value. You also have to highlight the value of your target audience’s specific participation. Audience members are going to ask why they should spend their time sharing your brand. You have to answer that question before they’ll take the time and effort to engage.
  • Consider an incentive-based initiative. One of the fastest ways to drive participation in any campaign, including a share economy-focused initiative, is to provide your Millennial audience with some sort of incentive or acknowledgment. It doesn’t have to be anything grand, but it should be something that highlights the individual user, like a leaderboard or a Contributor of the Month program.
  • Communicate with your audience as a peer. You want your community to establish a real relationship with your brand. To build the community as quickly as possible, communicate with participants on a peer level. If you hide behind a corporate persona, you can’t encourage real relationships.

Running a Niche Campaign for the Share Economy

Your share economy campaigns leverage unique segments of your Millennial audience, which means that the objectives you create will relate to a particular audience construct (niche) and may not necessarily focus on long-term goals. Your goals can relate to universal objectives, such as driving brand awareness, engagement, or conversions, but they must target a particular segment. If the campaign has the share economy as its focus and your goals relate to the audience that you cultivated for the share economy, then your objectives will work.

Ask yourself the following series of questions to simplify the process of developing your niche goals. They can help you construct readily achievable objectives.

  • What are you going to measure? To create your objectives, you need to determine what you want to measure. For example, if you’re providing a learning exchange where participants are sharing knowledge with one another, are you going to measure the amount of data collected or the size of your growing user base of experts? These are two separate objectives, and while you can aim to achieve both, you need to have a different objective plan for each one.
  • Does the share economy campaign operate in a vacuum? You need to decide just how connected your share economy initiatives will be to your overall objectives. The share economy has some unique aspects to it that may not fit in with the rest of your program, but this isn’t to say that it will be different from your online brand. Branding attributes and your brand persona will be consistent wherever you have a presence, so ask yourself this question: How much of your brand and the brand experience (see Book 4, Chapter 6) will you incorporate into your share economy campaign?
  • What universal elements of your marketing strategy tie into the share economy campaign? You shouldn’t run the risk of conducting an effective share economy campaign only to find that several members of the community aren’t familiar with your brand outside of your share economy platform. For this reason, you need to identify those elements and ensure that they’re present and represent your brand well.
  • Does the campaign end with the share economy, or are secondary actions important? You’re targeting a unique segment of your Millennial audience that is particularly attracted to the concept of sharing. However, you should also include incentives that push your audience to take another step beyond the share economy. It can be a download or an incentive-based signup, such as a discount code that encourages share economy participants to become customers.

Remember Millennials want access over ownership, at least at first. Providing them with an option to participate in the share economy aspect of your business can mean giving them the desired access until a fraction is eventually ready to buy.

Encouraging Audience Participation

After you establish the objectives of your share economy campaign, you’re ready to provide your audience with incentives to participate. For example, you can create a place for your community to share access to online subscription services, such as creative software, instead of requiring them to buy access to each individual product. This incentive can be a very powerful way of pulling users to your brand over a competitor.

However, it’s important to create barriers to prevent this kind of service from being abused. Some ways to prevent abuse include

  • Making sure that shared passwords work only with a certain level of subscription
  • Putting a limit on how many documents third parties can save

These methods allow users to access the product until the desire for ownership comes into play, and they move away from simply needing access.

The following sections look at some marketing tactics you can employ to encourage adoption of your newly launched share economy platform.

Reaching out to your existing database

Current customers are the easiest ones to get on the share bandwagon. Your existing database of Millennial customers is sure to include some users that fall into the share economy group.

Go through the same audience development process outlined earlier in this chapter, in the section “Mapping out your target audience,” but focus on existing customers and fans. Encourage them to participate and push them to check out the new offer.

Leveraging native video ads

Mobile is where Millennials spend their time, and the success of share economy mobile applications like Uber and Lyft show that this audience is partial to the mobile platform.

Develop your ads and push them to your selected media on mobile devices. Highlight the benefits of the share concept for your product or industry and provide some incentive to get Millennials to try it.

Targeting ads to the share economy audience

After you segment the audience that fits into the share economy, create content that focuses exclusively on the sharing aspect. Touch on the fact that your audience may have a pain point that this feature addresses — for example, not needing the full service or product or not being able to afford the full option.

Tip The model you should use in the case of these ads and pieces of content is the problem-solution model. This model involves presenting your target audience with a problem they may or may not know they have and then offering them the solution to that problem all within the ad itself.

Developing incentivized adoption schemes

Incentivizing adoption is your best bet to get the ball rolling. Every one of the models you implement should include some sort of incentive. Incentives will generate the fastest adoption by users in all categories.

The incentive can be something simple like a free sample, gift card, or offer redemption. It can also be something more complicated, like a tiered offer based on subscription level, subscription length, or frequency the product is used.

Measuring Results

When you set out to measure the success of your share economy campaign, what you measure depends to a large extent on your objectives. If your goal is to drive brand awareness, then your focus is going to be on the increase of your reach, share of voice, and other brand-affiliated key performance indicators (KPIs). If your goal is to get new customers then the KPIs you analyze will relate to acquisition.

You’ll want to watch for some telltale signs when you determine how to measure your share economy campaign success. Those signs will be evident when you ask yourself a few questions related to measurement:

  • Is the goal to build a new community?
  • Are there secondary goals that extend beyond the share economy?
  • Should you place a timeline on secondary goals, or should you measure those actions in perpetuity?

Tip For more information about analyzing campaign success, see Book 9.

Is the goal to build a new community?

A simple, one-dimensional goal may be to build a new community of share economy–oriented Millennials. You can analyze this community for insights and opportunities and leverage it for growth. Ultimately, however, if your primary goal is to build a new audience, your measurement criteria will relate to the size and engagement of your new audience.

Are there secondary goals that extend beyond the share economy?

If your goal goes beyond simply building a new community, then you need to identify how those goals are measured. You may want to include secondary goals, such as conversions that result from an initial introduction to the customer by way of the share economy. You can measure community participation through either touchpoint attribution measurement, or you can directly link conversions or specific actions to the share economy in their entirety. Whatever the case may be, you need to clearly outline how the share economy will factor into these secondary conversions.

technicalstuff A touchpoint attribution measurement model looks at a specific touchpoint, or point of contact between the brand and customer, in the buying journey and allocates a specific weighted ratio to that touchpoint. For example, if, over the course of the buying process, a customer engages with your brand five times, then a touchpoint attribution measurement model would assign each of those five touchpoints a specific weight regarding its contribution to the final conversion.

Attribution models can vary significantly in terms of the value given to different touchpoints in the buying journey. In some cases, touchpoints are given equal ratios, and in others, some touchpoints can be weighted more heavily. There are also attribution models where attributed contribution ratios can decay over time, whereby a touchpoint that had a high value when it first occurred becomes less and less relevant as time goes by and other touchpoints come into play. In the case of the share economy conversion that might arise, you may want to consider focusing entirely on the engagement within the share economy and then attributing any subsequent engagement to the activity that has taken place within the share economy. This focus ensures that you’ll be able to closely monitor activity within the share economy and with your share economy audience.

Figure 5-3 shows an example of a touchpoint attribution model whereby each touchpoint along the buyer journey is given equal weight, as well as one where touchpoints are given variable weights. In these two examples of Google Analytics models, touchpoints are given a value regarding how much they have contributed to the conversion.

Screenshot of Attribution models that can weigh each touchpoint in Google Analytics.

FIGURE 5-3: Attribution models can weigh each touchpoint in Google Analytics.

To find more detailed information on the use and customization of attribution models in Google Analytics, visit https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/3205717.

Should you place a timeline on secondary goals?

If you plan to measure secondary objectives that extend beyond simply building a new community and watching it grow, placing a cap on the amount of time that you measure these secondary conversions is worthwhile.

For example, if you measure the number of ebooks downloaded during a campaign, you want to know that the activity took place during the campaign and not a year later. Setting a time limit, perhaps no more than about 30 to 90 days, is a good approach.