Estimated reading time: 5 minutes, 6 seconds

How PowerBar's Brand Gets Its Power

As Social and Digital Marketing Lead for the PowerBar and Premier Protein sport nutrition brands, Jennifer Hirst has to combine strategy with vision to achieve digital marketing objectives.

Like many other marketers, she’s managing the challenge of how to reap ROI from immediate initiatives in social space while building long-term customer loyalty. She spoke with CMO Tech News about these challenges, trends, and the necessity of staying up-to-date with changing platforms and customer behavior (not to mention keeping senior leadership just as informed).

CMO Tech News: How do you define marketing? And how has digital marketing changed the way you reach consumers?

Hirst: Digital and social marketing is all about relevancy and authenticity. It’s about spreading a message that adds value to the consumer and showing that the product aligns with the consumer’s personal brand. In order to do this, you first need to understand how people consume information in the digital space.

In the past, ad buying on digital was mostly about getting the most impressions with target consumers on the web. The creative options were primarily video or image, and changing the dimensions on your banner ads.

Now, the space is much more complicated. You need to know who you’re speaking to and the mindset they’re in. On platforms like Facebook, consumers can now opt out of seeing a brand’s ad. In order to remain seen, brands have to make their content interesting and relevant to their audience.

Brands utilize techniques such as geo-targeted ads to help cater to the audiences’ unique experiences. Consumers have also become more weary of Big Brands messaging to them. With an increase in the availability of knowledge due to the online space, consumers have turned to trusted members of their online community to influence their buying decisions. Influencer marketing has played a huge role as online communities have flourished.

CMO Tech News: What tech resource or innovation has the greatest impact on how you perform your job?

Hirst: Accessibility to social media ads and analytics on native platforms. This development has proved to be a very powerful tool. These days, you can’t separate social media content with paid media. They are one and the same.

In the past, for example, Facebook ads that were accessible in-house were limited to tiny thumbnails on the right hand rail. Now, you can serve larger, dynamic ads that are in people's desktop and mobile feeds. Also, the targeting and reporting functionality is incredibly robust. For our brands, accessibility to ad buying on native social media platforms has been a game changer, enabling us to reach consumers with relevant messaging in real time.

CMO Tech News: What is the greatest challenge that technology presents to your work?

Hirst: It is the rate at which technology and user behavior changes. You can never get too comfortable, and you are never an expert. We are constantly adjusting strategy and work flow to accommodate the fluid landscape. YouTube is the new Television, Snapchat is the new YouTube, Instagram is the new Facebook, and VSCO is the new Instagram. Social media platforms act as agencies, brands act as publishers, and paid media is now content. Roles and platforms change quickly as online consumer behavior evolves and their consumption of digital content becomes more sophisticated.

CMO Tech News: In a very competitive sports nutrition market, what factors play a role in how you strategize digital campaigns for products that may have different target audiences?

Hirst: Although both PowerBar and Premier Protein sell nutrition products, they have very different target demographics. We reach our different consumer groups through differentiated interest targeting through paid media, geo-targeting based on distribution, and differentiating priority social media platforms.

CMO Tech News: What do you want consumers to think of when they hear PowerBar or Premier Protein?

Hirst: For Premier Protein, we want people to see themselves. Our website, ads, and social channels reflect real users and their love for Premier Protein products. It's a community of positive, healthy, real people that want to get the most out of life. For PowerBar, we want people to rally around celebrating sports, particularly the comradery and community that surrounds it. We want people to get inspired to get out there and play more. For both brands, we want consumers to identify with their respective communities, and next time they are in the store, purchase our product since it aligns with their personal brand.

CMO Tech News: How do you evaluate digital strategy?

Hirst: First, you have to evaluate your goal--is it awareness, trial, or reconsideration? Then it’s about pushing out the right message to the right locations. Different platforms cater to different demographics and display content in unique ways.

Ads should not feel out of place and should make sense in the native environment while having a hook that is impactful and memorable (attention spans are getting shorter!). Lastly, you want to make sure the journey doesn’t end, and that it extends beyond the original message.

There should be a way for consumers to stay in touch with the brand’s evergreen content whether it’s through email newsletters or social channels. Like everything else on digital, benchmarks are continually changing. For Facebook, it used to be all about community size, then it was about engagement, and now it’s getting to be more about exposure. At the end of the day, it’s all about sales lift and continuing to increase the volume of conversation around your product online.

CMO Tech News: Your thoughts about the future of digital marketing?

Hirst: First, digital marketing will no longer be separated from mainstream marketing. The lines between TV, digital, publications, and social will be blurred. People will become even more sophisticated in how they consume digital content.

Technologies such as AR will become more accessible, ads and analytics will become more robust, and we’ll have more information on consumers than ever before. I think we’re headed into a really exciting time in digital marketing, where brands will have to up their game in creativity, authenticity and relevancy to connect with consumers.

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