The Tree and the iPhone - An Integrated Social Campaign Strategy

This week in class we are learning about paid and organic social which is best when in a integrated social campaign strategy. Both intersect in order to gain new customers and followers through social by promoting quality content and researching a target audience.

Combining paid and organic social means more money, time, knowledge, assets, and more importantly quality posts!

You can do so by automating your efforts and using social media management tools like Hootsuite. There you can plan, publish, manage, and report on all of your social media activity, including ads on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

To make it easier think of a tree as organic social, it is living and comes springing forth new life. The leaves keep growing from the original. Now think of paid social as an iPhone; it is attractive, perfect for all ages to grow contacts, and definitely worth the investment through its multitude of different uses.

So lets learn what makes each part different.

Paid vs organic social media

The foundation of the majority of integrated social media strategies is using organic to serve and delight your existing customers, while attracting new eyes with paid ads on social.

What is paid social media?

Paid social media is advertising brands use on social media by sharing specific content to target new audiences likely to be interested. This could be boosted organic content, or a unique advertisements.

Paid Social is used to:

• Reach a larger audience than organic
• Target new audiences and convert them to customers
• Target ideal customers
• Promote a new deal, content, event, etc.
• to hit your business goals faster

Things to remember:

• Paid social requires a budget, and its own form of expertise
• Ads aren’t always the answer on social.?Only pay for ads when they can actually help you hit your KPIs and ultimately reach your business goals .
• Run Ad Tests to Smaller Audiences. Test your CTA, your copywriting, your visuals, and the ad’s placement, format, the audience targeting, and different audience demographics (age, location, etc.) before you commit to a larger spend.

What is organic social media?

Organic social media refers to the free content (posts, photos, video, memes, Stories, etc.) that all users, including businesses and brands, share with each other on their feeds.

People who see organic content are a percentage of your followers (a.k.a. your ‘organic reach’), your followers’ followers (if people choose to share your post), and people following any hashtags you use.

Organic is used to:

• Establish brand personality, awareness, and voice
• Build relationships by sharing informative, entertaining, and/or inspiring content
• Engage customers at every stage of their buying journey
• Support and retain existing customers with customer service and more brand presence
• Convert new customers by showing them what you’re about

Things to Remember with Organic Social:

• It is slower to reach business goals
• free, but takes a lot of time, experimentation and/or experience to get right
• An organic campaign will be cheaper for you and more memorable, enjoyable and successful ad for your audience
• A more grown organic presence means more data about your ideal audience
• Retargeting campaigns can be highly effective at a relatively low cost, because you’re reaching out to people who already know your business. They may just need a reminder to come back and convert, and the right ad can convince them.
• All the major platforms use ranking algorithms , so only a small percentage of your followers will see your organic posts.

A Guide To Social Advertising Success:

Gathering data before creating ads is just as important as setting up and perfecting the ads themselves. Once you understand the social media landscape and identify your ideal audience, you can create a social ads strategy with realistic goals that complement your SEO and other digital marketing efforts.

Core Audiences:

With Core Audiences, you set the rules for where your ads are delivered. Adjust your target audience to be as broad or well-defined as you like. Define an audience based on location, demographics, interests, behavior, and people who have connected already, for smarter ad targeting.

Custom Audiences:

Custom Audiences allow you to connect with people who have already shown interest in your business . You can create up to 500 custom audiences per ad account for your website, app, customer list and/or engagement.

Lookalike Audiences:

Lookalike audiences are lists of people to target with advertising who are similar to your best customers, but who haven't interacted with your brand yet. Your source audience could be part of your core audience. When you're ready to grow your business, you can use your Custom Audience to create a lookalike audience. To create a lookalike audience use information such as demographics, interests and behaviors from your source audience to find new people who share similar qualities. You can create up to 500 lookalike audiences from a single source audience.

How to Gather Data for Audience Personas:

Audience segmentation includes those who have never heard of you, those who are still learning about you, and those who have expressed interest in buying. This process coincides with prospecting, retargeting, and remarketing campaigns.

Think of more defined segments that you may want to target, often called “audience personas.” To find these:

• Use Analytics - Google analytics - The Audience section is a point for valuable insights for your social advertising strategy. Who is interacting with your website, who is contributing to conversions/transactions (age, gender, location, and more)
• Go to where your audience is and interact
• Researching your competitors - Observe where your competitors are active on social media and how they market their products or services. No missed opportunities.
• Use audience segmentation to define the customer journey stages for your audience

Once you find 2-3 platforms and create different ads for different personas, advertise on each of your platforms to see what works. Then refine your ads, and tweak your audience segmentation, content, time of day posting, and optimize for a best outcome. Then expand your strategy and begin testing to save time and money.

In doing this it is important to set up Ad Campaigns, so let's take a look!

Ad Campaigns in Different Stages of the Customer Journey:

Prospecting (Awareness)

• Audience segment: Those who have never heard of your brand.
• Campaign objective: Reach, awareness.
• Messaging: Focus on the user. What problem are you trying to solve?
• Content types: Educational articles, industry news, research stories.

Retargeting (Consideration)

• Audience segment: Those who have engaged with your brand in the past, but only with your website, social media, or educational resource.
• Campaign objective: Engagement, clicks.
• Messaging: Focus on the benefits of using a product or service to solve the problem.
• Content types: Ebooks, whitepapers, company events.

Remarketing (Decision)

• Audience segment: Those who are ready to buy, which is often shown by having items in a cart or having spoken to someone at your organization.
• Campaign objective: Conversions, purchases.
• Messaging: Focus on why they should choose your solution to solve their problem versus your competitors.
• Content types: Testimonials, reviews, case studies.

Lets jump ship to talk about a big part of social media these days; influencer marketing

What is influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is about product placement or endorsement on social media networks through an influencer (a person with a social following and deemed an expert in a certain area).

For example Kim Kardashian.

Why should I care about people like Kim?

By 2025, there will be over 4 billion social media users globally. The influencer marketing industry is set to grow to approximately $16.4 billion in 2022 with a large portion of these being micro-influencers. Businesses can even earn $5.78 (up to $18) for each dollar spent on influences just like Kim K! It is important to know that micro influencers make up 91% of sponsored post engagements, and it is time to capitalize on this!

You can collaborate with influencers through a multitude of way which include: event coverage, gifting, video, giveaways, takeovers, signal boosting and much more!

Steps to devise an influencer campaign:

• Set your goals and KPIs
• Confirm your budget?
• Choose the right network/platform for your audience, sector and campaign type
• Find your influencer and reach out?
• Establish fees and terms and consider a contract
• Develop your campaign and share with your influencer
• Monitor performance through KPIs and goals on the social platform and website through Google Analytics or your CRM
• Get influencer data on performance

Influencer marketing helps you gain reach in a targeted audience or niche and can drive campaign performance whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads or boosting sales. Working with an influencer can turbo charge your marketing campaign by dramatically increasing the reach of your messaging.

Most Important: Influencer marketing is about picking the right influencer for your company!

Check out this article by Forbes to learn more about why influencers are beneficial and what they could mean for your brand .

As always thank you for putting on your learning caps with me!

#wwudigimark #wwumarketing #paidsocial #organicsocial #socialmediaadvertising #socialmedia #influencermarketing #influencers #microinfluencers