In the course of getting a Social Media strategy up and
running for any brand, a myriad of questions will undoubtedly arise. Many marketers approach the Social Media
channel timidly, for fear of making a mistake.
Other marketers assume that since the cost of developing a
Facebook page lacks a subscription fee, (Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts are free) that the social media channel is a kind
of “throw away” and delegate the responsibility of establishing a social
presence to a relatively junior member of their staff, and then just kind of forget about it.
Needless to say, both of these approaches fail to fully
leverage the power that is inherent in the social media channel. The power of the channel is, of course, the
traffic. With so many consumers spending
so much time in social media, the traffic generated makes a compelling case
that all businesses need to explore the social channel and define how it can
work for them. This isn’t to say that
the answer will be apparent immediately, but, like the early days of the World
Wide Web, there was a huge learning curve on the design and utilization of
websites. There is similarly a learning
curve to leveraging social, and it requires a bit of common sense, and some
ongoing attention.
Probably the most logical way to think about the social
channel, and perhaps the most straightforward way to use it, is to think about
it in the context of other marketing channels that you are using, and design
your social activities to synergize with your other activities. While this approach is logical, companies who
employ a junior member of the marketing team to man the social media
responsibilities alone, will probably not see adequate thought or effort into
making sure each Facebook post, or Tweet has a clear purpose in the context
overall marketing communication.
What follows is a set of commonsense rules to Integrating
Social Media into your Marketing Mix.
Rule 1. Align your Social Media
editorial calendar with your promotional calendar.
Most marketers are aware of the need to have
a promotional calendar to manage key marketing related activities: media buys,
product launches, management of inventory and fulfillment, but many fail to see
that Social Media should be in part informed by these promotional activities as
well. Why? Because the consumer expectation, in the Social
Channel, is that there should be some recognition or knowledge from the channel
that other activities or promotions are occurring. Messaging upcoming events to consumers in
social provides your most loyal consumers with the opportunity to be on the
alert for a key event, and gives them the benefit of knowing about something
ahead of less loyal consumers, thus rewarding their loyalty. The benefit to the marketer is that when the
promotional period does arrive, it will be more successful due to the advance
messaging directly to those loyal fans and followers.
Rule 2. Establish the goals for the promotion and for the Social
Channel.
For each promotion a
marketer typically develops a forecasted outcome of what the promotion will
do. The social channel is really no
different. What is different about
social, is that, depending on how long you have been at it, and what tactics
you have tried, there may be little baseline from which to gauge what a
particular tactic will deliver. Thus a
marketer is in need of careful measurement, both in social, and across the
entire online presence.
Rule 3. Integrate social fully
with all of your other marketing strategies.
This may appear repetitive, but a full integration of social
with other marketing strategies means:
- In each email communication to consumers, Highlight your brand’s presence on Facebook, you give a consumer a chance to “Like” you in the email.
- On the brand’s website remind a consumer to like you on Facebook. If there are sign up pages for coupons or other information, give a consumer a chance to connect with Facebook from your website. Give consumers a chance to follow you on Twitter. Be prepared to engage in a dialogue with them especially if they tweet to your handle directly.
- On your Facebook page and Twitter page, provide your website URL. If a Facebook post or a Tweet mentions an opportunity or offer at the website, include a link to the appropriate page to facilitate the traffic.
- On print and broadcast campaigns indicate your presence in the social channel with the Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest logos.
- Include details about website, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. on includes product packaging if possible.
- Consider the value of a You Tube channel for your brand. Videos provide high engagement and are among the most popular content on the web.
In summary, a consumer will expect that all of the channels
work together, and the messaging, and branding will be consistent no matter
where they encounter your brand. To
encourage engagement with a brand, social media is an excellent way to foster
loyalty among consumers.
Rule 4. Read your results
routinely, methodically, and comprehensively.
Every marketer has Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) that they read to assess the effectiveness of their tactics. Success in social media is more than the
number of “Likes” or the number of re-tweets.
Going back to the goals that you established for social,
think about if over a particular promotional period whether the goal was to get
likes on the Facebook page, or increase sales, or web traffic.
If our goal is to get likes on Facebook, presumably the result
can be read in the social KPIs, but the drive to get likes may have been in an
email campaign. To understand how the
effort worked, we need to look at the email campaign that was facilitating the
drive to Facebook, and the increase in likes coincident with the campaign.
If we are using Twitter to increase sales, we will want to
read the number of web visitors who were referred by our Tweets, and made
purchases. So the appropriate metrics
here would be re-tweets, and the amount of traffic referred by Twitter. In other words, since consumers are moving in
and out of Facebook and Twitter, and between your website and Google, you need
to be more expansive in your view of your KPIs especially when a campaign is in
process. Google Analytics makes it so easy to see these social referrals out of the box as the example report shows below.
Rule 5. Organize results into a
consolidated dashboard.
It is
not productive for every functional area to build a dashboard for the
measurement of their own departmental goals.
Marketing is a team effort in the sense that a website, email campaign,
social media, and offline efforts may all be handled by different groups. It may be the case that not all of these
groups are even organized under the marketing function. If all marketing efforts are to be maximized
then they must work together. It is
difficult for the efforts to synergize if each person only has visibility into
their own component of the marketing communications. That’s why a consolidated dashboard is a
must. A consolidated dashboard is an effective way
for everyone to adopt a common vision for the business. It shows the folks sending out emails how
they influence web traffic, and how Facebook “likes” spike when all of the
messaging is going on at the same time. See the example below for a ficticious marketer of movies.
Rule 6. Synthesize results and
build knowledge.
This seems
really basic, but unfortunately as the new marketing communication strategy,
many organizations are operating under the assumption that Social Media should
be spontaneous, in-the-moment, unplanned, unfettered by other controls that are
put in place for other forms of customer communication. This is simply not true. When you begin aligning all trends in a
common dashboard, and the social media team begins studying the events that led
to last week’s huge spike in likes, shares or retweets, the natural instinct should
be to internalize the technique and try to replicate it. A knowledge base should build to inform
ongoing strategies. This build of the
knowledge base should develop into a process that allows for the social media
manager to build on successes and expand communication strategies cautiously
over time.
Think of attributing each communication so a database can be
built whereby you can assess the time of day, the call to action, the type of
post, etc. So that you can begin to read
what your loyal followers are most responsive to. In addition, begin to understand the cadence
so you aren’t boring your fans with the same kinds of posts all the time.
When you have developed your social media strategies, and
are operating it with the care and discipline that is attendant to all other
marketing communications, you will be in a position to dive deeper into the
consumer relationships and even develop strategies to leverage
influencers. But before you can harness
the influencers, make sure you have your infrastructure set up, a good
dashboard, and a method to track the response based on the attributes of your
communications.
I hope this commonsense approach has been helpful. I am always happy to assist clients in getting their social campaigns on track. Please feel free to contact me in the event I can help you.(Rhonda@drakedirect.com).
Rhonda Knehans Drake & Perry D. Drake
I hope this commonsense approach has been helpful. I am always happy to assist clients in getting their social campaigns on track. Please feel free to contact me in the event I can help you.(Rhonda@drakedirect.com).
Rhonda Knehans Drake & Perry D. Drake
