After reading through an article on Econsultancy blog with regards to multichannel marketing pertaining to social media, my first thoughts for a great integrated social campaign would definitely be one that is highly adaptable and versatile in all areas within the social media landscape. Every channel of social media has it’s own distinct capabilities and target group. Of course, some of them do overlap, which then provides us another scenario to leverage on if you see this as an advantage. The key challenge is to strategize the best method of promoting your brand or product through this battlefield in all different possible aspects. Before we start off with the possible strategies, it is vital we understand what are the pros and cons as well as characteristics of the social media channels we have now.
Integrated Social Media Campaign
In short, when we define Integrated, it is normally the use of several different social platforms to attain your desired marketing goal. Hence, it is absolutely important that you understand the characteristics of these social media channel. Here is Pew Research Center’s recent social media survey, we see the following trends:
image taken from Econsultancy blog
I shall not go into specific details of the different social channels but rather I would recommend important planning before taking off your marketing campaign deciding which channel to go with. As mentioned, it is crucial to know your target audience before deciding which channel to take on. However, proper planning include a timeline of events to happen, how it will happen, when should it happen and which channel should go first at the same time aligning the activities together with the business operations. A lot of internal and external coordination is involved. It is not a simple task. The key to take note here is – Understand, Plan ahead and Conquer.
Measurement of goals and objectives
Have you reached your goal yet? You have heard a lot of campaigns reaching a certain amount of impressions, likes or conversion. How many of them truly defines what the business need? Having a thousand impressions is great but does all these results convert into acquisition for the company? Providing hype and crowds is one thing, but giving the brand it’s desired sales is another. Advertising dollars spent should always be well invested in the right tools for acquiring the desired results. It is therefore vital to define your success metrics before you start off any social promotions.
There are some results that marketers would like to acheieve. They could be
Referral Traffic
Getting an increase on traffic to your campaign site through programs that incentivize your consumers from their peers. Putting more incentives for the ones who referred their peers will also encourage these consumers to continue doing so and build a ‘habit’ subconsciously.
Conversions
Converting your consumers from your rivals is not going to be easy if you do not understand your consumers and their behaviors well. It takes a lot more than just plain convincing. You need to monitor, predict and seed into the network. With more research and understanding, it is much easier to tackle the right audience by using the right channel with the right programs. Of course, the end objective is to align with the mother campaign and still garner the desired marketing objectives.
Engagement
As I have mentioned, one of the most important yet highly difficult task is attaining acquisitions. And believe it or not, social engagement is one of the primary goal that should be set out very early in the planning stage. It is through this interaction that you learn about your consumers. You can also talk to them and gain their confidence by providing fast responsive and helpful feedbacks. There really isn’t a point in getting loads of impressions, visits or likes when there isn’t any communications or feedbacks or interactions between the brand and it’s desired audience. Building rapport is highly successful in sales acquisitions.
Data sourcing
Social campaigns when done correctly will effectively document the results you need. Using the right tools to track and analyze data, we can determine our next marketing strategy. Google Analytics makes it easy to see referral traffic as well as data like keywords which would assist marketers to further understand the effectivity of their social campaigns.
The right method
I believe there are a few main objectives marketers set out to achieve in all their campaigns. They are mainly:
Driving Traffic – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. These social media has great tools that would provide you with brand reputation to drive more traffic to your site.
Brand awareness – Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and Blogs gives your brand a higher chance of getting read or seen on the digital landscape.
Search Engine Optimization – Google search is the number 1 preferred choice amongst consumers. Survey concludes that many potential buyers turn to online search as their first step towards actual purchasing.
Consumer interaction and engagement – Without further explanation, it has got to be Facebook and Twitter. These two platforms have an extremely large database of users and if you would be successful in engaging the community on them, it is without a doubt your campaign would be very effective.
A highly successful social campaign is one which requires knowledge of understanding the different channels, great marketing planning and a long term strategy. Lastly, always remember to track and analyze your end results.
Zack Chia 