Last Updated on December 15, 2020

Article 12 already? The assumption for this piece is that you’ve already received your first review. If you aren’t quite there yet, I recommend starting at the beginning. What we’re going to be focusing on in this article is trying to get the best ROI possible from those existing reviews. Compulsion marketing concepts work synergistically, so the sum of their parts ends up having a greater total impact that measuring those individual pieces separately — that’s the thesis behind our attempts to take that existing review and making it more special.

Compulsion Marketing

First presented at Unggaged, the concept is always undergoing evolution as more data becomes available, but sufficed to say the entire point is to look into the psychological triggers used by marketers and attempt to order in such a way that mirrors a buying funnel, to guide a new user from awareness to sales.

Without getting into the specific psychological drivers associated with different influencer types, we’ll focus instead on some of the marketing concepts that are utilized. As a refresher these include: aspirational influencers, authoritative influencer, peer influencers, retargeting + social CPM/PPC, mega content campaigns, and email.

The best way I learn is through example, so rather than lecture, let’s try to build out two real world case studies — note, Intellifluence does not have relations with either company (yet?) so we aren’t aware how much of what we propose might already be planed.

Case Study 1 — Bose

Presumably this would be for Timothy Johnson of Bose, whose headphones campaign caught my eye when I found this review:

Bose headphones is in the middle of a campaign with many if not all NFL Twitter channels. It’s pretty neat, just based on reach alone, since each NFL channel is hosting a mini review of the product. Clearly there’s a lot going on, so how would I go about trying to turn this into something more?

  1. Twitter’s specialty ad formats are the first thing that comes to mind. Ads that appear to be organically sourced vs forced have much higher engagement rates, so one of the first moves would be for Bose to schedule regular promoted tweets on the various NFL accounts, to continually appeal to those audiences.
  2. The other ad option worth discussing with regards to Twitter is the lookalike audiences; promoting to lookalike followers of specific NFL teams, fenced geographically to prevent fan base overlap, Bose can expand its awareness footprint further and collect the cookies for a future part of the campaign.
  3. Contact Dennis Goedegebuure of Fanatics about creating a co-branded NFL ultimate super fan apparel and audiophile experience. UGC videos and blog posts with giveaways and contents galore, with requests to reference the original NFL review tweets for amplification.
  4. Contact Kelly Dunne at CBS Sports to creatively retarget both the initial NFL promotion, lookalike promotion, and Fanatics co-branded super fan experience across their sports site portfolio, specifically amplifying the personal stories (which will in turn end up amplifying the original reviews).
  5. Create audience network ads in Facebook and Instagram for the various campaigns; since Instagram now supports it, integrate the buy button and adopt a direct sales approach on these ads.
  6. Worth further with CBS to syndicate the ads out to the broader network.
  7. Drip email to anyone that entered the flow moving from celebrity player reviews -> NFL team reviews -> super fan reviews; near the end of the drip campaign, offer a sizeable coupon if the buyer engages on social about why they want Bose headphones to complete their NFL experience.

Case Study 2 — Ulta Beauty

Presumably this would be for Eric Messerschmidt of Ulta Beauty, who is already doing some of the Twitter amplification strategies I’d recommend. The tweet below is actually an example of Ulta promoting an existing review; kudos.

  1. The next step I would recommend is to aggressively backfill with peer reviews. Rather than having the peer reviewers post their own reviews, instead provide product and existing review URLs and ask to retweet that URL, including their own 140 character review of the product with it. This would allow Ulta to skip directly to the wealth drivers phase and unity psychological triggers; the impression becomes that of a pack mentality, where everyone seems to be using the product.
  2. Given this is beauty, which is obviously visual, let’s include the right social networks, Instagram and Pinterest. Using the same techniques used on Twitter, use a handful of authoritative influencers and then backfill with peer reviewers to amplify those initial reviews with repinning and sharing.
  3. For all the distinct campaigns, create Facebook audience network campaigns designed to target the desired buyer persona. Use dark posts first to determine which variations are the most successful and expanding on the winning ads once that is determined.
  4. Similar to Bose, a moderated UGC promotion campaign tied to the influencer campaign would create a deep series of review content can be used to deep link into product pages, flowing social traffic and some link equity.
  5. Contact Dave Snyder at CopyPress to build out interactives on the best ways to use different cosmetics for skin type/hair type, sourcing sales data and UGC reviews for guidance, shuttling link equity once again from the entry point of the interactives into the most important product pages.
  6. Kick off an outreach campaign to mommybloggers with the intend of earning embeds on the interactive pieces created. At the end of the interactive flow, include a displayed coupon code that can be tied back to each mommyblogger for future affiliate relationships. Using a coupon code at the end of the interactive allows Ulta to treat these embeds like engaged display advertising.

These are just two sample campaigns that could be conceptualized using compulsion marketing concepts and carried out to maximize the exposure of the initial product reviews; any brand is capable of receiving this type of attention with the right amount of budget. For the more budget conscious, something is always better than nothing, and we’re obviously big fans of saving money — in such a case, consider using peer reviewers to carry out amplification tasks for you, and what better place to get them than at Intellifluence!