Using social media in a brand marketing campaign can help make your brand more tangible. The goal is to associate the company with it’s services and offerings. This type of campaign will usually have hooks into the sales channels and marketing materials are often riddled with copy points surrounding what it is, does, or offers and will typically have a CTA (call to action). That CTA will be to get people on to your sales page (and into their sales funnel) or into your store for a killer deal, etc. The end result is financial so ROI is very relevant here and a good metric to judge your effectiveness.

Before you start a Social Media Brand Marketing Campaign

Get your online marketing materials lined up and within easy reach. Testimonials, comparisons, 3rd party verifications, reviews, news stories, etc. You need to be able to solidify who you are, what you do, and the value you provide. People are often weary of materials coming directly from the company so if you have any 3rd party reviews you can link to and share that is ideal.

You’re going to be getting them to your site with the intent to purchase so you need to have your site in line first. Make sure it’s nice and easy for people to make purchases, that your discount codes work, and any materials you have will insert them in the right portion of your marketing / sales funnels. When using social media (or any other tool really) making sure you have your materials at hand and properly setup will make it easier to convince people to buy from you.

Setting up a Social Media Brand Marketing Campaign

Once again we’re going to be addressing the basic 3. If you’re working with niche networks then you’ll have to figure out the rules (spoken and unspoken) for that niche network. No matter what networks and platforms that you engage customers and potential customers you need to first listen, then plan, then engage, then measure, and repeat.

If, after you’ve monitored the network, you decide that you need to create special deals, have new marketing materials (often times landing pages) created or adjusted then do that first. Once you start engaging ask questions and answer any that you can, the soft sell is going to be the most effective here. Get to be known, offer your services and products and always ask for feedback. They will tell you exactly what they want if you let them.

Twitter – Setup your keyword monitoring for Twitter conversations. Follow leaders in your topic and If there are any industry related chats (like #SMchat) then be aware of them and participate. Be ready to listen and act quickly. If you have discount codes, promotions, etc available send them out. Try and make them Twitter exclusive and when people land on the page have some clues that let them know you meant for them specifically to get there. Things like “welcome tweeps” and having your current tweets or tweets about your company going on the page will help with that.

When building offers or even just landing pages make sure that it feels exclusive. “10% off for our Twitter followers” and then back it up on the site when they land there. Don’t have them landing on your home page or on any page other than the exact one they need to be on. This will take some time and will need to be perfected over time. Watch your conversion rates for that page and see how it compares to others used in you other campaigns and the regular site pages.

Facebook – Same thing as Twitter, give exclusive deals for your Facebook fans, customize the landing pages, and make sure it has unique copy and any elements of social proof that people like your product you have. Make them feel like it’s exclusive with the wording on the page and show it’s exclusive by making it a different offer than on Twitter or through any of your other channels. Build the value.

Use FBML tabs to create some awareness about your services and offerings. Each one should have good marketing copy, a call to action on it, and a link to the proper page to order or signup. Facebook can be used to help gather video testimonials and customer photos by allowing your fans to upload their own content and link to reviews of your products. Empower your community to talk to about you and have them build the social proof of your business’s value.

Blog – Here is a great platform for talking about your industry and how you fit in it. Be sure to talk about more than just yourself on it, but also point out any reviews you get, address problems and issues on your blog. Encourage comments so you can engage and then interact with those comments.

When it comes to getting inbound sales from your blog you need to have good, relevant content. When talking about your products features and benefits play to the customers emotions. Tell them and show them how it solves their problem and have a link to buy in your call to action. You can’t do sales pitch blog posts all the time, because it will turn people off. Think about it, if every time you talked to someone all they did was tell you why you needed to buy something they made how long would you keep talking to that person?

Having the constant, relevant content on your site will associate you with your name with the products and services that you offer and give people an insight into your thoughts and views about the industry as a whole. If some big news or problem arises in your industry addressing it on your blog and explaining how your product solves the problem or helps with that issue is immensely valuable in getting people to buy your product because you are solving their problem.

Managing a Social Media Brand Marketing Campaign

Depending on how active your niche and customers are online you might need more than one person working on it. For Twitter you might need to use Co-Tweet or segment your Twitter strategy and have separate accounts for each. You’re going to have to play with it for a while to figure out the flow of where ever you’re participating online. Some places you may only need to visit 1 or 2 times a week, others might need daily attention.

Once you figure out how much time you’re going to need where you will be able to create a schedule for yourself to make your life easier. Some of this knowledge will come from monitoring to see how much time you need to spend and where for maximum efficiency. Also be aware of which ones end up not being worth your time.

Monitoring a Social Media Brand Marketing Campaign

Monitor your inbound traffic, the impact of your conversations, and also the conversion rate on your incoming links. Using specifically made links to specifically made pages will help with this tremendously.

Remember a minute ago when I said make exclusive deals on the platforms and have exclusive landing pages? If you were wondering why that is so important here’s your answer.

Let’s use Twitter as the example in this one. Lets say that you have all of your listening rss feeds setup and you have unique landing pages and links setup for people you send to your site from Twitter. These links can be monitored for how many people click them, and you can use Twitter search to see if they get shared past you. Having that link go to a specific landing page will then help you see what people from Twitter do once they are on your page.

Using an analytics program you can see how much time they spent on the site, links they clicked on and the all important conversion rate. Using your site analytics you can see how many people went from the Twitter landing page to your shopping cart and bought something. You will also be able to see if people are finding your “Twitter only” deals page through other means. Which is a good thing because that means people are spreading it.

Once you know what your conversion rate (and thus your sales numbers) are you can pop the data into the ROI equation and you can figure out how well Twitter is working on the inbound side. Remember Twitter can only get them to your site, once there the site is responsible for making the conversion and so you’ll need to do your A/B testing (or use Google web site testing) to find the winning combination of copy, images, and design that works best for your Twitter followers.

So much of what you will be doing will rely on having your site setup properly and having your site analytics in place that you really need to spend some time making sure all of that stuff is ready and optimized to the fullest extent that you can. Of course the real testing won’t start until you get customers there and see how they react to the site.

Questions? Comments? Additions or ideas? Please put them in the comments below

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

This is post #3 in a 5 part series about the basic types of marketing campaigns and social media’s place in them.
1. Social Media for Lead Generation and Acquisition
2. Using Social Media in an Awareness Campaign

Image by AMagill