Strategies to Develop and Execute a Campaign
Brand Personality
You must determine all facets of your brand’s personality very early on in the developmental stage. However our research doesn’t delve into branding; we focus purely on the marketing processes. Having said this, Hall does suggest four different types of brand personalities: individual personality (Oprah), corporate standalone (most brands with no personality or representative), corporate personality (most celebrities and musicians), product standalone (many automotive brands). Page 55 of The Social Wave (2011) has a fantastic brand personality questionnaire to help companies determine this.
The Hook
In terms starting your digital marketing campaign, you must have a pre-existing well-developed brand, product and a very good understanding of who your customer is. Your online campaign will need to have a story or some sort of linear progression, but most importantly it will need to have a hook. Some of the kinds of hooks Hall suggests are; “Something new or never been seen…A fresh angle on an old story… Localization of a national news story… Anticipated trends… Controversy… Celebrity.” (Hall, 2011, p.151-152). Once the hook is established, you need to make your audience an irresistible offer to join your campaign they cannot refuse. There needs to be something in it for your customer. Once these fundamentals are thawed out, then a concrete base is formed, you can proceed to start working on your social media marketing strategies. “Online social sites (will function) as customer service portals for you brand.” (Hall, 2011, p.102).
Setting-Up: Hall’s Way
Hall talks about three key areas that need to be set up: policies and procedures (contracts, terms & conditions), follow-through system (contact management & leads), assessment system (analytics system for improvement). (Hall, 2011, p.71).
Policies and procedures also involves, quite simply; a damage control plan. Follow-through system needs to involve information management systems; including email, social networking, website feedback, website usage systems etc. There are many email management programs, but fundamentally one needs to employ sufficient staff if the project is successful. This then moves into ‘behavioral marketing‘ when additional information of users interests is gathered from these platforms. “For example, if you send a link out with tips on how your contacts (users) can save money using your service and another link on how they can save time, you can tell what they are interested in.” (Hall, 2011, p.84). One needs to utilize employees and programs to manage this on a large scale if necessary.
Next, setting up analytics systems is incredibly crucial. Google analytics is a good free resource; “you can copy and paste its analytics code into the back end of your site so you can check out how many web visitors you get daily,” (Hall, 2011, p.85-86). It will also provide information about users’ keywords, and the period of time users spend on your site. Alternatively LivePerson is a successful paid “real-time analytics service.” (Hall, 2011, p.86). From this an assessment system is employed to provide information about users’ keywords, and the period of time users spend on your site etc. so you can adapt and modify your digital campaign based on this feedback.
Setting-Up: Customization & Immediacy
In the early building stages when the setting-up the layout of your pages, sites etc. one needs to consider customization: “Customization is extremely important for not only your company brand image but for consistency when marketing online.” (Hall, 2011, p.262). In regards to this; Hall emphasizes the importance of immediacy when users generate content. There needs to be a fundamental here and now appeal to the generators otherwise they will get distracted and you will find you have no user-generated content. The most incredible tool for immediacy in user accessibility is mobile devices.
In a study; “conducted by 15miles, an SEO and Internet marketing company, in partnership with comScore, a digital data survey company. They observed online behavior through a survey of more than 4,000 local business owners. More than 70 percent said they go online first for local business information. The study also reported that 69 percent of consumers are more likely to buy from a local business if its information is available on a social network.” (Hall, 2011, p. 99). iPhone Apps, websites, social networking Apps and pages that allow the user to personalize their interests and location are extremely successful because they are actualizing these applications into the physical space in a way that is very personal. They are the best immediacy and locational devices you can employ.
Setting-Up: Prototypes
When building your ‘foundation,’ you need to sort through all practical elements: is it (your website etc.) consistent with all browsers? This includes mobile browsers, which means you need to sort out any technical errors to make sure it works for all these facets. From here you need to test this prototype on a sample audience, Hall suggests, “Survey Monkey and Zoomerang are two popular survey-generating sites.” (Hall, 2011, p.68).
Setting-Up: Financing
When it comes down to financing your online campaign, if you chose to use MVAs (marketing virtual assistants) Hall suggests a few guidelines to ensure you have the best service (see pp.89-92 in ‘The Social Wave’).
Customer Turned Volunteer Brand Advocates
Social media campaigns tend explode, then disappear; a truly successful campaign is one that has longevity. McCluskey discusses; “customers-turned-volunteer ‘brand advocates’”, (McCluskey, 2012, p.1) and their effect on digital marketing campaigns in this article. McCluskey uses a study called; “‘Advocacy Over the Long Term: Brand Advocates Give Brand Long-Term Benefits,’ from the social media marketing agency BzzAgent, Inc.,” (McCluskey, 2012, p.1) and in this study they found that 91% of those who immediately were compelled by the campaign, were likely to recommend the product one year later. StumbleUpon is a great content recommendation engine that can assist a company in gaining respect and thus, followers and potential customers. This can increase your page rank, exposing your site in search engines. There is no greater marketing tool then word of mouth, which is exactly what StumbleUpon provides. Digg functions similarly although it is primarily a content “discovery” and “delivery”. The advantage to using both these engines is that the kinds of users of both StumbleUpon and Digg are more likely to content produce (as they producing doing already) also if they discover your campaign on one of these engines they are more likely to trust the quality.
StumbleUpon & Digg are good starting points for sourcing your TMCs or target market connections as potential brand advocates. Also Hall suggests sourcing HLNs or high-level networkers, who already have a large audience of loyal followers. These will be your networkers who will expand your consumer base. To make this relationship happen; Hall suggests trying to relate to your customers as much as possible by mimicking their networking; like what they like, follow what they follow etc. The phenomenon of profiling means this information is accessible. Regardless of whether a profile reflects a customer’s true self or desired self, it still provides invaluable information about their wants and interests that you can relate to.
Reward Your Volunteer Brand Advocates
“A company’s number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers is not as important as how well the company motivates those fans and followers to remain good customers.” (Hall, 2011, p.9). Both Where Does The Good Will Go (2011) and The Social Wave (2011) discuss the importance of rewarding your dedicated users or volunteer brand advocates. Make sure you employ people to manage your social networks so if customers receive feedback they are guaranteed a personal human answer. “Performing intentional acts of kindness is another way that a brand can add a more human persona to its image.” (p.119). Award dedicated users. Hall uses this example; “Did someone just Tweet that they enjoy coffee? Send him a Starbucks gift card.” It lets the customers know your listening, and again actualizes the virtual to the physical.
Hall suggests holding contests to promote the sharing of information, photos, videos etc. including prizes. He suggests that companies need to invest money into these prizes in order to motivate an audience. Furthermore, encouraging customers to ‘tag’ themselves, ‘like,’ ‘retweet’ etc. by the concept of an award: the more linking the stronger foothold your campaign will have within the Internet sphere.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is essential in your strategic marketing plan. You need both an email marketing program & analytics system for best results on a large scale. In terms of monitoring your users Hall suggests; “You can set up what are called “streams,” or “columns,” using keywords.” (Hall, 2011, p.58). Another form of monitoring is in ego searches; “they are a great way to monitor mentions of a competing product.” (Hall, 2011, p.59). You can program these ego searches using RSS (real simple syndication) feed so you can be automatically notified. Also employing ‘behavioral marketing‘: additional information of users interests is gathered from these platforms, is helpful when dealing with a large number of email customers. Email marketing is now far more advanced and can; “collect specific data on the behavior of their ideal clients so they can send them more targeted emails that will yield greater results.” (Hall, 2011, p.213). The top products for email marketing are: “constantcontact.com, Aweber, Mail Chimp, 1ShoppingCart, Exact Target.” (Hall, 2011, p.214).
Blogging Marketing
In terms of blogging, Hall suggests the role of the blog is in positioning yourself as an expert and your brand as superior. It fundamentally needs to be of the highest quality to be successful. Another; “benefit of blogging is partnering with other top bloggers. Doing so helps take you into their markets as well as increase your followers and fans.” (Hall, 2011, p.124). Like other social networking platforms, blogging requires consistent, continual marketing in order to gain attention. Once your blog has credibility Hall suggests advertisements, selling merchandise, industry reviews, and a donation button to monetize your blog. (Hall, 2011, p.133).
Video Marketing
“Video (YouTube) is widely becoming known as a great tool to use to do reputation repair, as well as to do question-and-answer quick clips or respond to consumer complaints.” (p.234). YouTube is an exposure outlet, and its success lines in the appeal of video to three learning styles; audio, visual and text.
Hall has a method of approach for video creation and marketing which she calls the ‘octopus approach.’ It involves: “Offer value, Call to action, Tag, Objections, Pick focus (FAQ & SAQ), Upload, Short.” (Hall, 2011, p.139). Hall also suggests to start, make two ‘frequently asked questions’ videos, and two ‘should be asked questions’ videos.
Marketing Tips: To Maintain the Quality of Your Campaign
Hall’s top maintenance tips: power up the keywords in your profile, connect to friends and family, find target market, post daily, engage more, give valuable top tips, post back to site, call to action, and meet the needs of your users. (see Hall, 2011, p.196-199). Hall talks extensively about the importance and details of having a Call-to-Action on your webpage. (Hall, 2011, p.215-219). She then talks about ‘triggers’ like Amazon’s ‘Today’s Recommendations for You,’ that promote ‘clicking.’ These triggers need to be for them, what they want; they are a good place to start for feedback across your social media platforms.
Hall also suggests to: “Have multiple domain names…List your company URL with search engine directories…Create articles and publish them to enzine sites…Avoid Flash on your site…Link your site through quality sites…Check your server for blacklisting…Have a call to action.” (Hall, 2011, p.256-258). If your campaign is reasonably successful, Hall suggests you can consider establishing a PR campaign and research broadcast medias. Hall has a number of good tips, (see Hall, 2011, p.202-203). Contact potentials through LinkedIn as it is; “a hidden media gold mine.”
Monitoring Your Competitors
“MarketLeap is a great site to monitor the search engine activity of your competitors.” By using this you can take a look at your competitors meta tags (html tags): “text inserted into the source code of a web page…for search engine optimization.” (Hall, 2011, p.59). If you want to monitor your competitors’ websites to find out when they’ve made changes you can use CodeMonitor (updates you with any html changes). Squidoo is a community website that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. You can create power to your social status by creating one of these ‘lenses’ which will include and all resources related to your top interests. “If you link to their (Squidoo’s) pages a few times, you’ll boost the chance that page will rank in their top ten.” (Hall, 2011, p.245). It is good publicity: “they have search engine power with Google as well, and their pages rank very easily on top.” (Hall, 2011, p.245).
To optimize your search engine ranking Hall has “The Short Tail and Long Tail of Keywords,” (Hall, 2011, p.253), approach. He emphasizes the need for patience in trying and testing keywords to see the response. Hall also suggests to: “Have multiple domain names…List your company URL with search engine directories…Create articles and publish them to enzine sites…Avoid Flash on your site…Link your site through quality sites…Check your server for blacklisting…Have a call to action.” (Hall, 2011, p.256-258).