Eight Secrets To Getting Off To A Great Start With Social Media Promotions!

An eBook by Leonard Scales

Social Media Marketing – Online Engagement

I’ve been asked by brand marketers, what are you finding to be the most effective online tools and channels for engaging customers, potential customers, and partners? Their questions range from the use of intelligent ad units, to email campaigns, widget strategies, customer referral programs, e-commerce extensions, viral strategies, social network creation, social media promotions, social collaboration tools, SEO, user generated (UGC) online promotions, eLoyalty programs, Partner Relationship Management (PRM), the use of Twitter and Text messaging for brand building, reaching the Facebook crowd and users of other social sites… Obviously there’s no one answer that addresses all of these questions, and one size fits all marketing and partner programs are probably not the best way to invest your marketing dollars.

For the past several years, I’ve worked hands-on with large and not so large brands to develop go-to-market social media marketing programs. In this summary, I share some key insights about what I’ve learned. I’ll discuss one social media marketing approach that actually works to engage users online and, and at the same time, has genuine revenue building elements.  Hopefully, these insights will support your decision-making about implementing social media marketing programs for your brand.

There’s a good starting point for social media marketing programs, and this approach fits both B2C and B2B. Believe me, there are social media marketing programs that can deliver measurable ROI’s. Really! Not perfect measures in all cases but good enough for marketers I know to return again and again to these programs and add them to their marketing calendars!

Marketing Basics – A Simple Reminder

Before we dig-in, let’s review a few marketing and sales fundamentals. It’s important to keep these concepts in mind for any marketing program that’s designed to produce positive sales results. Remember, engaging consumers and business partners with your brand and sales conversions are the very reasons marketing investments are made in the first place. When consumers feel a bond with a brand, they’re more likely to make repeated purchases and tell their family and friends. Loyal consumers will sometimes vigorously defend a brand when adversity strikes. And, with all things being equal, distribution partners who feel a close bond with a brand will often prepare themselves to more vigorously sell that brand as opposed to competitive offering in their portfolio.

 

Six Spokes Of Marketing

Marketers know about the “Six Spokes of Marketing”: Market Research, Advertising, Promotions, Public Relations, Sales, and Customer Service. Social media provides very broad “channels” for enabling online engagement with users around all Six Spokes of the marketing wheel. It’s not surprising to me that many PR firms are becoming very active with social media marketing programs on behalf of their client brands.

So What’s Working?

Here are my observations about a type of user engagement program that actually works to produce excellent buzz and returns for brands. This type of engagement, when properly executed, will support just about all Six Spokes of the marketing wheel. There are other methods, but here is an excellent starting point.

So what is working? I’ve found user-generated promotions, i.e., video, photo, essays, music, blog… contests, sweepstakes, and promotions to be a creative and effective engagement method online. User-generated promotions (includes contests and sweepstakes) can produce a two-way engagement between users and brands, not just a push of messages and sales pitches to users by brands. Using promotions can actually be an organic way to build a viable and highly interactive long-term brand specific social commerce network.

In this “eBook”  I’ll explore Eight Secrets for getting off to a great start with social media promotions. I’ll share promotion planning ideas and some essential elements needed to help assure a positive experience for users and brands. From my experience, having a genuine and relevant call to action, coupled with a solid promotion deployment plan, will very likely deliver outstanding results!

IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE

If you deliver an online promotion where someone wins an opportunity to produce a television commercial or some other high value prize, let people know what happened to the winner well after the promotion is over. Allow the promotion’s participants to continue interacting with the program,  the winner’s progress, and your brand. Actually I suggest creating a new online promotion per quarter. It’s fun, creative, cost-effective, and can be designed to deliver measurable sales results.

Keep the people aspect of your program as the central focus. I was listening to NPR recently and the interviewer was speaking to two women about their thoughts concerning a very popular social network they’ve grown-up with. They both commented that the site once feature people, now it features products and ads and things that were not as relevant to them

Besides a two-way dialog and active engagement with your users, social media promotions offer real-time research opportunities. In real-time you can learn user demographics, how users feel about your brand, their buying preferences, what’s important to them, collect webographics, and sometimes, how they feel about each other! What marketer wouldn’t want real-time research information about a user’s buying preferences and interest in their brand, and perhaps, competitive brands? And to top all of this off, social media promotions can be very affordable, even for small brands and small business owners.

One guiding principle! Be certain your promotion isn’t a sales pitch! The look and feel of your promotion must be as impressive as the look and feel of your brand. And please, be certain the prize or prizes awarded to winners are things they really want. For instance, the winner of a video promotion could have their video featured in your new advertising campaign and on your website. This prize could include airline tickets to your corporate headquarters and accommodations. The winner of a financial services essay promotion could win a $1000.00 scholarship and so on. There are many approaches that will attract the users you want! Your only limits are your imagination and budget!

Here are per-launch strategies that will help keep you on track.  Just like your advertising and campaigns, social media promotions  require planning.

Eight Secrets To Getting Off To A Great Start!!

Plan Your Social Media Promotion

1.  Identify Business Objectives – Any marketing program, including a social media promotion, needs clear objectives for what’s to be achieved. In-store promotions, for instance, may have a coupon redemption rate objective. TV broadcast advertising often has a number of eyeballs they want to reach during the ad campaign. Promotions for new movie releases have the goal of butts in seats. Social media promotions are no different. A vague notion of “reaching the Facebook crowd” could be an objective, but be certain you define the purpose for doing this, how you’ll achieve this goal, and why you think this goal is important for your brand.

I suggest brands have an internal promotion owner or a “team”.  This person or team needs to have visibility to overall brand strategies. If it is a large brand with many moving parts, the owner needs access to the advertising calendar, interactive strategies, brand programs, PR initiatives, and access to creative assets.  Integrating social media with other aspects of the marketing calendar can strengthen all of the programs.  Additional reasons for integrating your social media programs with all of your marketing and selling initiatives can be found at, http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/integrate-social-media-across-all-marketing-initiatives/.

Defining your objectives needs to be specific and the creative aspects of your program are only limited by your imagination! Here are some real life examples:

• Increase consumer awareness and purchases during specific periods like “Back to School”, or Christmas, or School Vacations…
• Increase consumer awareness in the North East USA for a beverage launch there – a regional focus only
• Create new menu items for a restaurant chain – nation, regional or local
• Increase floor traffic in car dealerships – region by region and for a specific model
• Find our next 30 second Super Bowl or NASCAR commercial
• Find our next “talk show” host – audition tape promotion – regional/national
• Find our next celebrity spokesperson
• Tell why you need a vacation! – hospitality promotion
• Tell why our staff is the best! – internal hospitality promotion across all properties
• Find my next co-author – short form eBook creation
• Reward our loyal customers – a coupon package based on user preference
• Create video promotion for my distribution partners where the winner gets a special incentive, corporate recognition, and a celebration of a lifetime. Yes, social media marketing can be very important for the B2B marketplace
• Provide opt in data collection promotion with user rewards
• Increase participation at a cultural event – national appeal for local event
• Introduce new creative talent in music, the arts, fashion…
• Win a vehicle – create new tagline and brand lifestyle appeal
• Using your CPG brands as a focal point for finding baby/child/adult models
• Twitter promotion where participants have minutes to respond to be entered to win sweepstake prizes
• Blog promotion where the winner brings insights into behind the scenes action to fans such as up and coming talent interviews (video), sponsor interviews, veteran participant interviews… This can include moment by moment branded Tweets to huge numbers of followers.
•  …

Thinking of your brand(s) I’m certain you have dozens of creative ideas about engaging users – all relevant, all engaging!

Other considerations about your user-generated promotion:

• Is selling critical to my program?
• Is building brand awareness an important goal?
• Is integration with my marketing calendar important? This might dictate the timing of your social media promotions.
• Is this a rewards program for consumers or my business partners?
• Is research important? If so, what information is critical to gather?
• How will I promote this program? Just creating a promotion is no guarantee users will come! Just putting it on Facebook will not necessarily attract a single participant
• Can promoting the program be integrated with my other marketing activities?
• How will we monitor user-generated content in a way that ensures a positive experience for my brand and users?
• Who will create and enforce promotion rules?
• How will user information remain confidential?
• What are the viral components? How can I maximize viral uplift?
• How do I encourage outrageous word of mouth spread?!
• What will I invest to promote the program?
• Is this a local, regional, national, or international program?
• Do I need to deliver my promotion in multiple languages?
• Are the cultural queues used valid and appropriate?
• Do I have access to the creative assets needed?

I’ve probably only scratched the surface of your brand specific considerations!

 2.  A Solid Promotion – The Activation Idea - Develop a unique and compelling promotional theme that’s relevant to your brand and users. Excite your users to interacting with your brand. Be creative! It’s not just about pushing sales messages and information to your target audience. You are actually inviting users to participate. Their participation can lead to a significant selling opportunity. It’s all about active engagement, relevance,  and a two-way and perhaps three-way dialogs. Yes! If monitored allowing promotion participants to communicate with each other can produce useful insights.

You will not lose control! A well conceived promotion will included administrative tools for monitoring all user-generated content. You are not obliged to instantly upload any content. Your promotion rules can state, “user generated content will appear in about 24-72 hours.”  But a warning here! Monitoring and removing all negative comments can be viewed as inauthentic by your users. Strike a balance. Assure a positive experience for your brand and users.

Using this strategy will allow your brand to learn more about its target users and how they perceive your brand. A brand can gain valuable insights about what matters to their target audience when they are actively engaged. Again, the activation idea should be compelling – designed to encourage participation and viral spread.

The wonderful thing about online promotions is how quickly they can become viral! Providing easily shared widgets with friends, family, and colleagues using email accounts is vital.  This must be accomplished in just a couple of clicks.

Creating a Facebook application or promoting your program on your Facebook page, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo, Myspace, your website, your blog and other blogs, and other social sites can be a powerful tool! If it’s possible to integrate the promotion with other marketing activities such as FSIs, online and off-line ads, coupons, in-store displays, emails, website, and signage, on and off premise programs… all the better! One restaurant chain had special napkins printed featuring their online promotion.

 

3.  Target Your Users Where They Are – It’s vitally important to promote your social media promotion. I will parrot, “Building it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll come!” Using opt-in email databases you already have, and other user contact resources can be an excellent way to kick-off interest in your promotion and begin the word-of-mouth spread. Promoting programs can also include online and offline media buys that are a part of your regular media buying cycles. There are services available that will guarantee a per-agreed upon number of users with the demographic and psycho-graphic profiles you want to engage. If you do not already have a database of contacts to help your launch your promotion, this type of service could be a good starting point.

Once the methods for promoting your program to your target audience are defined, i.e., email blasts, online ads, offline ads, radio mentions, your website, your Facebook page, your blogs, your Tweets, napkins, etc., here is another important consideration. Since most program awareness building will likely be done online, it’s important to reach users where they travel online, and to do so in unobtrusive ways. When presented with information about your program, while visiting their favorite online destinations, be certain the user’s experience regarding your promotion is easy, fun, and non obtrusive.

“Intelligent ad units”, allow users to interact with your promotion without disrupting their browsing experience.  Often the user can register, view entries, and upload their promotion entry all within the ad unit. If the user is at their favorite site, they remain there while getting involved in your program. Create a non disruptive, permissive experience with your brand. “Intelligent ad units” can help with this. “Intelligent ad units” are portable promotions, allowing your audience to interact with your promotion anywhere the units are encountered online.

4. Reward All Stakeholders – Reward all participants in your social media marketing promotion, not just winners and runners-up. Give everyone a reason to interact with your promotion regularly, not just the contestants. Give those who vote and make comments an opportunity to be rewarded. Ensure prizes are deemed as high value and relevant. It’s not about the price of the reward.

Rewarding all participants increases the general activity, engagement, and viralness of your program. Having a concurrent “sweepstakes” where several users are randomly selected on an hourly, daily or weekly basis, or including trivia quizzes helps to maintain interest and frequent participation. Connecting to users via Twitter can really push interactions with your promotion! Send Tweets as calls to action and give the responders a chance to win a prize!

Most promotions run for about 30-90 days. 60 days seems just about right. I’ve seen photo promotions with two week duration but the viral spread was not huge. If it is a video promotion, the video length is usually less than a minute. I’ve seen three minute limits on videos where the final product was extremely high quality. Actually the trend seems to be towards higher quality video content.

Be certain to announce your promotion’s winner on the promotion site! Be zealous with this announcement. Use your web site, blog, Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, to announce the winner (s). This is a great PR opportunity for your brand and will extend the life and value of your promotion well beyond the closing date.

Hopefully, you’ve been tracking where users placed widgets and promoted your promotion. If possible, announce the winner(s) on these social sites. When you discuss the winner, really feature the winner. Discuss your brand and why the winner was selected. Genuine communications here will drive interest in the winner and your brand.

5. Measure, Analyze, And Share Results -– The social web offers awesome opportunities for measuring users’ online activities. Your social media promotion can serve as an excellent market research tool. The number of registrations, number of votes, who votes, age variables, zip codes, who participates in trivia quizzes, comments made about your brand, Twitter activities, Facebook posts, total number of participants, and other variables can often be collected. Actually, insights gained from social media marketing programs can serve as justification for creating a brand specific social network. After all, having executed a few social media marketing programs, you will have a substantial opt-in user base, a user base interested in active engagement with you and your brand.

As with the other components of your marketing programs, nothing is done just for the fun of it. You know the hard work and analysis required to successfully run an ad campaign or promotion. And with every marketing program, there needs to be milestones and measures in place to determine the impact of your efforts and investment. For instance, the number of videos entered, widgets dispersed, click-thrus, total traffic, registrations, opt-in future contact list, number of participants, Twitter followers, and sales. Good providers of promotion platforms include program analysis tools that administrators can use to summarize program effectiveness.

6. Online Promotion Technology – Whether you use your own resources or an outsourced promotion software platform, it is important to use proven applications. Good technology integrates the entire promotion feature set we’ve been discussing. Good software will allow for:

• A flexible look and feel – not cookie cutter
• Ability to tailor to specific promotion requirements
• Promotion branding using your creative treatments – attention to branding
• Flexible implementation of the Activation Idea
• An Instructional area for contestants. You can include an instructional video and samples of acceptable content and quality expectations. The creation of a simple environment where users will learn what’s expected. For instance, a sample of a commercial quality video that shows the quality and creative expectations you want for a 30 second Super Bowl spot.
• Inclusion of Promotion Rules
• Photo, video, blog, text, music,…uploads
• Attractive, user-friendly c landing page
• Capacity to handle high volumes of interactions simultaneously
• Allow for the brand to communicate with all users on the site or with individuals using opt-in methods, or promotion real estate reserved for brand communications
• Security for users
• Fraud detection for unusual voting patterns
• Safety – moderation queue for content, photo, and video review before posting
• Capture of all usage data to be owned by the brand – future opportunities for encouraging purchases, couponing, sampling, special events, special member or bundles…
• Perhaps preserve real estate for ads to be served if required. Ads could be of your brands or noncompetitive complementary ads being served from elsewhere
• Flexible voting methods – majority votes, judging panel…
• Engagement tools:
• Viral widgets for word-of-mouth spread of the promotion by users (strongly recommended)
• Intelligent advertising units for promoting the program where targeted users go online without disrupting their experience (optional but recommended)
• Concurrent “sweepstakes” designed to reward all users (strongly suggested)
• Trivia Quizzes designed to drive deeper user engagement (strongly suggested)
• Online audience voting, commenting (mandatory)

Of course, with a user-generated promotion, people vote for winners. You may also want to have a panel of judges who will make the final determination. Voting on the winners keeps your audience actively engaged with you and each other. I suggest you keep your promotion active for at least 30 days after winners are selected. No voting is permitted but comments will continue to be permitted. Valuable insights can be mined from these comments. You can even participate with this chatter if you want.

7. Some Additional Promotion Ideas

• Video promotion for aspiring film makers – winner funding for a short film
• Back to School video promotion – winner get to spend a day with a cherished celebrity
• Sports blog – winner gets to be official blogger for a champion series (any sporting event fits)
• Photo promotion – winner gets a valuable prize
• Essay promotion – winner gets school books paid for
• Artist sketches – winner get to be Co-Creative Director intern for ad campaign
• 30 second commercial – few entries but very high quality for TV and web ads
• New business idea – winner gets seed funding and startup consultation and PR
• Cause related marketing idea – winner creates program and gets corporate backing for social cause
• I want this new menu item! – for a restaurant
• … Brainstorm and write down your ideas!

 8.  Social Media Promotion Checklist

 Features

- Be certain promotion registration is simple but also remember this is a research opportunity – ask for some of the information you want at promotion entry. You will at least need name and email. If a person is competing to win you will need their mailing address, perhaps birth date, and phone number. Offer them the option to complete a full profile that can be made public or kept private

- Be certain to create air-tight promotion rules and eligibility requirements. If you are creating the rules, be certain to have a legal review. There are professional “contesters” who are looking for any edge!

-  Allow for easy uploads content that drives your promotion – photos, videos, blog content, music, votes, comments… Be certain this content is easily viewed and there is plenty of bandwidth

-  Assure you make posting to You Tube and other social sites seamless

-  Assure you support embedded photo and video embeds (You Tube, MySpace…)

-  Brand the promotion and landing page

-  Provide flexible voting formats ( most votes by users, scale of 1-5, thumbs up or down, judging panel, combined options)

Social Media Marketing Aspects Of Your Promotion

-  Allow for video, photo, blog browsing

-  User generated content

-  Users can create and customizable their profile

-  Allow users to quickly invite friends, family, and associates to participate (easy to import contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook…)

-  Allow users to comment on other user profiles and entries

- Allow users to categorize their connections, friends, favorites, top competitors…

-  Allow users to quickly browse entries and user profiles

-  Simple search capabilities

-  Moderation of your community and user generating content assuring a positive brand and user experience.

Viral Distribution For Promotion Uplift

-  Branded promotion widgets for distribution to other social sites

-  Program registration within the widget if possible

-  If budget allows, include “intelligent ad units”. These specialized ad units will allow users who encounter them to enter, vote, and make comments within the unit without leaving their browsing experience

-  Widgets to be easily shared with friend, family, and associates

-  RSS feeds for viewing new entries on an opt in basis – small view

-  Custom email, Twitter capability to send to users – “Two weeks remaining”, “Remember to invite your friends”. “All of today’s participants will be entered into a sweepstakes”…

Administrative Tools

-  Tools available that assist in the validation of entries before posting to promotion (content moderation)

-  Fraud tracking and entry elimination – (detection of frequent votes coming from the same location at or very near the same time)

-  Provision for announcing winners and verifying their eligibility

 Analytics

-  Ability to number registrants

- Ability to number contestants and valid entries

-  Unique visitors to the promotion

-  Number of promotion followers

-  Incorporate Google analytics

-  Count number of votes, comments

- If possible, track widget and link distribution

-  Collection of user data and webographics

OK! This “eBook” summary should give you a good start. Remember, you can develop a full-blown social network by using promotion participation. Really have fun with this. Promotions run twice a year or quarterly can be an extremely effective tool for building online engagements!

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