Natural oral care product firms are finding a strong platform on Instagram for engaging with their target market, but the jury still is out on whether generating social media interaction helps drive sales growth.

Natural toothpaste firm Hello Products LLC has the strongest Instagram following, 15,500, in the overall oral care category, according to Aug. 20 data on the site. While Procter & Gamble Co.’s mainstream Crest brand has about 5,200 followers, Colgate-Palmolive Co.’s Tom’s of Maine natural brand has 2,426 followers and has hired an online analytics firm to help grow its following on the site.

Hello CEO Craig Dubitsky said the firm has a social media executive but does not use a third-party advisor or a fine-tuned marketing strategy for social media.

“We just started posting, and people started following,” he said. ”It’s a very grassroots and passionate effort and I think people can tell the difference.”

Hello Products markets natural toothpastes and has the strongest Instagram following, 15,500, in the overall oral care category.

Image courtesy of Hello Products LLC

Instagram users capture and share photos and videos immediately with others who track their postings. The site, which has 300 million registered users, provides photo tools to change brightness, contrast and saturation on photos.

Hello’s Instagram site features some 500 photographs of day-to-day events at the firm, employees, mint fields cultivated for the brand’s products and photos shared by Hello followers.

Hello, Again

Hello recently extended its line with products for children, and Dubitsky says the firm has a number of “sexy” new formulas to add to its core line.

Hello’s products, which are free of stannous fluoride and triclosan, are marketed in simple packaging bearing the name “hello!” and the tagline “Naturally Friendly.” The fluoride-containing formulas are approved by the American Dental Association and include pink grapefruit mint, super mint, mojito mint and peach mango mint flavors.

Hello products are available in major retailers and online. Investors in the firm, which included Tenth Avenue Holdings, said they expect the brand’s unique and simplified positioning to transform the oral care aisle Also see "Tenth Avenue Leads Investors Introducing Hello Line To Oral Care Market" - Pink Sheet, 1 April, 2013..

“Someone will send us a picture of their child holding the product and we’ll post it,” Dubitsky said. “It’s less about having a decisive clear social media strategy.”

He says the simplicity and beauty of the images the Montclair, N.J., firm posts appeal to customers’ desire for ad messaging in the category that is not defined by claims about whitening, sensitivity, gingivitis, or warnings about ingredients in many competitor products.

“Things have emotional hooks to them, and the emotional hooks in this category are about fear. Most things in the category prey on fear and shame as their driver and influence. For example, if you’re not whitening, you’re frightening. But that’s not what we’re about,” Dubitsky said.

“People are hungry for things that are new and beautiful,” he added.

Hello has posted YouTube videos featuring its executives discussing their approach to work and love of the brand. Its Facebook page has more than 38,000 likes and its Twitter page has 2,603 followers.

The company also employs a personal approach in correspondence with consumers, with its website inviting visitors to email or Skype messages to Dubitsky.

Social Media Analytics In Play

Kennebunk, Maine-based Tom’s of Maine is pursuing a more strategically coordinated Instagram strategy.

Social media analytics and marketing platform firm Mavrck recently announced it is working with Tom’s of Maine to help increase its engagement with loyal consumers. The Boston consultancy’s work includes analyzing Instagram posts to help brands determine and activate influential fans to create branded content.

Bridget Burns, Tom’s of Maine’s social media strategist, says the brand conducted research that revealed many of its target consumers post to Instagram daily and already interact with brands.

“This knowledge influenced our strategy to increase our own Instagram presence in 2015. Knowing that Mavrck can now help us to identify channel influencers to present our brand in a visually appealing way is a big win for us,” Burns said in a release.

Mavrck says its algorithm-driven engine “lets brands identify users, followers and customers on Instagram by age, gender, reach, location, topics of influence and recent life events, and further ranks by average engagement per post to determine peer influence.”

The program, which also analyzes Facebook posts, enables brands to “activate” influencers by initiating them to like/comment on brand post or “amplify” an existing Instagram post, tag their friends via a comment on a brand’s or influencer’s post or post an existing piece of branded content. Finally, the program will track for brands the number of engagements that are generated by the influencer’s Instagram content.

Instagram ROI In Question

Branding expert Robert Passikoff is doubtful that social media numbers equal a return on investment.

Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys Inc., a New York-based brand and customer loyalty and engagement consultancy, says companies across multiple industries have not shown hard data that illustrate a real return on investment in social media marketing.

“So many brands out there, they’re saying, ‘hey, they shared this, and they tweeted that,’ and I say ‘did they buy it?’ They say, ‘well, no, but they liked it,” said Passikoff, who writes his own blog on branding issues and also has written for Forbes.com.

“As they really don’t know how to measure the ROI they are willing to throw anything up against the wall if they can,” he said.

Passikoff added that consumers have “more and varied ways of outreach and information gathering and communication and brands are just desperately flailing around to be able to find something that they can pin their growth and consumer behavior on.”

Interaction in the form of likes, tweets, shares and photo posts related to brands have become a “behavioral norm” on social networks and are perhaps more indicative of entertainment and fun than of what people are purchasing.

“I don’t think they are thinking of those ads when they go to store shelves,” Passikoff said.

Generating direct links to product purchases, however, is not the only way to measure ROI from social media, Dubitsky said. “I don’t think it’s about a straight ROI, but rather a return on engagement. The more you can build a meaningful dialogue with people, the better off you’ll be,” he said.

Oral Care Brands’ Social Media Fame Is Fuzzy Picture Of Sales Growth

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