The Basics of Measuring Conversion Rates

A Stratified Approach to Social Media Marketing

 and the consideration of Content and Conversations

How to approach Social Media participation

As the social media sector of the internet continues to grow and becomes more complex each year, it becomes increasingly important for marketers to devote time and dollars to social media platforms that will affect the bottom-line and position the brand in the most favorable light (Wordstream, 2018). 

To determine what social media platforms to incorporate, it is important for any organization to develop a Social Media Strategy.  The strategy must be clear and accomplish the organization’s goals, purpose, and what it’s trying to achieve using social media.  Obviously one of the purposes is to create awareness of the Brand.  Additionally, reasons to incorporate social media may include increasing web traffic or sales.  Other areas of focus could be relating to building customer loyalty.  It is wise to focus on one or two of these types of goals.

It is important to set clear measurable objectives for using social media sites based on the organization’s goals.  For example, an auto dealership may want to increase online leads by 50 per week or increase mentions on social media by 50 percent in a given period of time.  In the case of brand awareness, the dealership may want to increase the number of times it is mentioned on social media in a month.  And it’s important to note that whatever the objective, it should be measurable (Foster, 2015).

Because it is important to reach a target audience with the right messages, it is imparative to understand their demographics, psychographics, and sociographics relating to their preferred social media platforms.

To effectively reach the target audience, it will be wise to host the brand on several social media platforms.  For example, in the case of an auto dealership, it would want to focus on social media platforms that would give the brand optimum exposure against its competitors.  For commercial B2B leasing, it would want to consider LinkedIn.  The dealership would also want to consider demographics based on the various models of automobiles it sells. Facebook would be a choice for a variety of models and age-groups.  Pinterest, would be considered for targeting the fashion-conscious automobile enthusiast.  YouTube would also be a site to consider for a variety of demographic, sociographic, and psychographic groups.

Once the organization identifies its high-potential social media platforms, it must begin testing, analyzing and measuring the results.  Experimentation and tweaking are also a key component of being successful.  In the case of a company wanting to build awareness of the Brand, the following graphic demonstrates the various social media channels that should be considered to accomplish that objective (Christy, 2014).

As a company considers what social media sites it should be hosted on, content and conversation must be considered.  Content focuses on increasing demand within the website.  Good quality content will bring prospects to the site as well as return visitors.  It can also be instrumental in building a relationship with prospects and convert them into customers.  As companies become more adept at creating quality content, they become successful at building audience loyalty.  Additionally, brands that engage customers with good content have a better opportunity to drive them down the marketing funnel to conversion (Murdock, 2012).

At American Greetings, my department supports and provides content for ag.com.  We produce how-to videos that are designed to entice consumers to view videos that show them how to use our products to create a variety of gifts and crafts.  We also produce entertaining videos designed to entice children and their parents to interact with our exclusive characters like Care Bears and Mad Balls.  The objective behind this content is to increase sales for not only greeting cards and related products, but also for AG’s character merchandise.

Our most recent video incorporates 360-degree interactivity for children.  It allows the children to interact with the video, as Care Bears sing and dance around them.  The content is written and produced by my team.  We also author the music too.  This type of content has shown a lift in our sales of the specific merchandise being promoted.  Each month we are seeing more visitors come to our websites to view the how-to-videos and the character videos.  The YouTube channel is used to promote the Care Bears and Mad Balls merchandise.  The ag.com site is used on a monthly basis to promote holiday crafts and seasonal product.

At American Greetings we are also creating conversations with our made-for-website marketing videos.  Over the past several years, our group has used Mullen Advertising to create conversations on our website to earn national media attention.  This has resulted in building the AG brand on Social Media.  You may be familiar with one of our videos entitled ‘World’s Toughest Job’ for Mother’s Day.  This particular video went viral creating conversations around the globe.  Visitors shared personal stories about motherhood and all the work surrounding it. 

 American Greetings has strong evidence to support the position that both content and conversation are important integrations into the social media platforms.  Other ways AG is capturing attention through conversations is at places like SxSW, a national conference focused on convergence, interactive, film, and the music industries.  A terrific conversation at SxSW was started on social media sites with American Greetings showing up promoting greeting cards under the banner of ‘Analog.’  The story-line was created highlighting the fact that in a world of technology, ‘Analog’ is alive and still has a place in our society.  In other words, the greeting card is still pertinent to contemporary society (Monllos,2016).

Another conversation AG started was with ‘Thank List’ launched in New York several years ago.  This conversation started on our website facilitating conversations about important people in our lives we want to ‘Thank!’  

The conversation was picked up by the news media and made a significant impact on the AG brand.  A special website was developed to allow visitors to thank the special people in their lives.  The site is still up and running today.  The purpose of these three independent conversations are designed around AG’s mission to make the world a more thoughtful and caring place.

It’s the content and conversations like the ones I’ve described above that continues to build brand awareness and slowly drives consumers down the marketing funnel.

References

Wordstream. (2018). Social Media Marketing for Businesses. Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/social-media-marketing

Foster, J. (2015, May 12). How to Build a Social-Media Strategy That Works. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246085

McEashran, F. (2018). UNDERSTANDING SOCIOGRAPHICS IN MARKET RESEARCH. Retrieved from http://www.fionamceachran.com/understanding-sociographics-in-market-research/

Advantagemarketing. (2017, August 1). Archive for the ‘Social media marketing’ Category. Retrieved from https://advantage-marketingblog.com/category/social-media-marketing/

Christy. (2014, December 14). How To Build A Successful Social Media Marketing Funnel. Retrieved from https://www.techwyse.com/blog/social-media-marketing/how-to-build-successful-social-media-marketing-funnel/

Murdock, T. (2012, February 27). Content Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: What’s the Difference? Retrieved from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/02/content-marketing-vs-social-media-marketing/

American Greetings. (2018). Thank List. Retrieved from http://www.thanklist.com/about

Monllos, K. (2016, March 14). Why American Greetings Disrupted SXSW’s Digital Spirit With an Analog Activation. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/why-american-greetings-disrupted-sxsws-digital-spirit-analog-activation-video-170178/

Locker, M. (2014, April 15). No Salary, No Benefits, No Sleep: This Is The World's Toughest Job. Retrieved from http://time.com/63299/no-salary-no-benefits-no-sleep-this-is-the-worlds-toughest-job/

Ford. (2012, October 13). Win a 2012 Ford Fiesta and your own 3D printed Fiesta model. Retrieved from https://www.3ders.org/articles/20121013-win-a-2012-ford-fiesta-and-your-own-3d-printed-fiesta-model.html