In it to win it: Choosing the platform that is right for you

It isn’t always the best strategy to sprinkle a little bit of your brand into every single social media platform available immediately. Instead, a company should only adopt one platform as its main/primary channel and then consider which other platforms, if any, would be acceptable for that brand. After setting a foundation, strategies need to incorporate a mix of social media touch points for maximum impact. This is especially true for smaller companies who may not have a well-established and fully dedicated social media team.  Instead of having sub-par representation in a lot of places; brands should focus on doing well on a few of them.

By effective social media marketing, a brand is able to build its popularity by increasing its website presence and growing the number of its followers using social media (Bowden, 2014).  However, the tools and functionality a brand will require will depend upon the brand’s line of business, its objectives and its strategy.

Facebook has billions of users each day, making it a viable channels to promote a brand (Bowden, 2014). It also has advertising service that allow advertisers to distinguish its exact target audience instead of possibly wasting advertising dollars on an audience other than its demographic. These include Facebook Ads and Sponsored Posts. Facebook requires a long-term commitment and consistent relationship building from brands, although there is some immediacy as you can reply directly to people’s comments of questions (Levy, 2013). Many brands choose to use Facebook thanks to its size alone, thanks to its broad network and opportunity to build a community presence (Levy, 2013).

Twitter offers a platform that brands are able to interact with humans through commenting and promoting trending topics (Bowden, 2014). Companies leverage Twitter in responding to customers in a timely manner while featuring the latest news and headlines about an upcoming event and product releases that keeps followers engaged with the brands (Bowden, 2014). Twitter is most useful for the business that has something to say frequently and prefers to reach people directly (Levy, 2013).

Pinterest is billed as a content-sharing service that allows members to pin or post photos, videos and other images to their boards (Levy, 2013). The site has a predominantly female audience and is ideal for businesses which visual imagery is a main feature or selling point (Levy, 2013).

LinkedIn, generally used for B2B marketing, helps professionals connect socially. When reaching out to generate conversation with other professionals, posting links to a brand’s articles or blogs help people learn exactly what that brand is and how that brand can help them.

The visually driven platform, YouTube, has become synonymous with homemade or company-made videos. By featuring products or services with visual selling points, brands can generate conversation with their audience. Videos might include teaching consumers how to do something, demonstrate a product or service or introduce a new or unusual product to the market (Levy, 2013).

Like YouTube and Pinterest, Instagram is for the brand that needs to include a visual aspect into its communication mix. Instagram has proved to have a specific appeal to certain ethnic segments and popularity among urbanites, making it a good choice for certain markets (Manafy, 2014).

As search is a very important piece of marketing, Google AdWords stands as one of the most powerful tools for marketers. By using its sophisticated, highly refined ecosystem, Google AdWords helps to make sure that ads are relevant to users directly impacting click-through rates and therefore providing a successful strategy option to advertisers.

By eventually incorporating a mix of social media touch points, a brand can create specific content creation for each platform in order to communicate with each audience best.  It is about quality, not quantity. Doing two or three channels well with consistent, highly engaging content that is reaching and interacting with your target audience is what will lead to conversion and customers (Clark, n.d.).

When attempting to decide which platforms to choose, it is important to decide where your target buyer is, where is your competition, if there is an untapped opportunity, how many channels can your brand handle well and consistently, and are there any geographic differences that a brand needs to take into consideration (Clark, n.d.). For instance, if a brand is competing against a much bigger company, that brand should pick the channels where it can have the most impact and engagement and invest to win (Clark, n.d.). Understanding how customers discover content, consume content and what motivates them to take action in a social media context can help marketers plan for effective social media marketing efforts (Odden, 2014).  By taking these insights and leveraging them into social media content planning, a brand can choose platforms and then provide information that is more relevant and useful to buyers as well as content that influencers can use to advance their own objectives (Odden, 2014).

It’s imperative that a brand consider content versus conversation. Content simply puts human interaction at the forefront noting that content is something to talk about (Novak, 2010). Content without conversation is just broadcasting or advertising. In order for content to be effective in social media, there has to be a conversation starter in the message (Novak, 2010).

Social media marketing is continuous and is an investment of time, and when appropriate, should include monetary resources as marketing budgets allow. Brands should be realistic about what it is willing to invest in terms of interaction. Social media is a two-way channel therefore consistent participation in conversations that make sense for your consumers and business is necessary. Social media also needs to be consistently monitored in order to analyze how social media users respond to a specific brand marketing strategy and obtain feedback to improve the campaign. The actual analysis of social media channels remains the most important piece, as it can help a brand determine where to invest more or less time in order to reach its specific social media goals.

By establishing a market, planning content, being consistent and keeping an eye on the competition, a brand is able to choose the most effective social media platforms. Choosing a few social media channels that align with the audience will help accelerate a brand into a social media success story.

References

Bowden, J. (2014, September 7). How the top brands use social media for marketing. Retrieved January 21, 2015, from http://www.business2community.com/social-media/top-brands-use-social-media-marketing-0995357

Clark, J. (n.d.). Convince and convert: Social media strategy and content marketing strategy. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research/how-to-choose-the-right-social-channels-to-reach-your-customers/

Levy, S. (2013, December 2). How to choose the best social media platform for your business. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230020

Manafy, M. (2014, July 9). How to choose the best social media site for your business. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.inc.com/michelle-manafy/how-to-choose-the-best-social-media-sites-to-market-your-business.html

Novak, C. (2010, July 27). Why conversation, not content, is king. Retrieved January 21, 2015, from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/why-conversation-not-content-king

Odden, L. (2014, October 21). Three ways to optimize your brand’s social media marketing success. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://www.toprankblog.com/2014/10/optimize-social-media-marketing/

Landing Pages

Creating a top notch page view intended to identify the beginning of the user experience resulting from a defined marketing effort can either make a lasting impression or ruin it.  Specific landing pages tailored to different offers are essential for providing a quality experience for visitors and driving conversions with a targeted message that matches each user’s need. Landing pages could encourage visitors to buy something, sign up for something or visit a physical location among other actions (Lowery, 2014). The most effective landing pages convert people that come to it. While landing pages can have several purposes there are generally two types of landing pages: lead generation and click-through landing pages (Lowery, 2014).

A lead generation landing page allows a marketer to collect data about a site’s visitors including names and email addresses (Lowery, 2014). In order to collect this data, it might be necessary to give the audience something. This could include a newsletter subscription, free trial of a service, an e-book or a contest entry.  The purpose of this type of page is to collect information that will allow a marketer to connect with the prospect at a later time. Therefore, a lead capture page will most likely contain a form along with a description of what a visitor will get in return.

Contently’s landing page is an example of a lead generation landing page. The inbound marketing software company has no distractions on its landing page and gets right to the point. While existing customers can sign in at the top right, the page is focused intently on its message streamlining attention. The background image is understated and comfortable while the companies unique selling proposition stands out. It’s call to action is straightforward but not cliché as it states: “Talk to our sales team about your needs.”

While creating a landing page to sell something is possible, it is unlikely. The visitor will click through the landing page to get to the product page where the transaction will occur. Click-through landing pages are more effective when tied to specific events or dates, such as holidays, particularly because those pages are often a part of an email marketing campaign (Lowery, 2014).  

For this Manpacks landing page, it uses a image paired with a description and product benefit in order to help persuade the visitor to click the call-to-action. Commonly used for ecommerce, click-through pages provide enough information to inform the buyer, making them ready to purchase before pushing them further down the funnel (Gardner, n.d.).

Landing pages live separately from a website and are designed only to receive campaign traffic. Landing pages should also have all navigation and extra links removed so there is only a single call to action to a visitor to take (Gardner, n.d.). This separation allows them to be focused on a single objective and makes analytics, reporting and testing a simpler task for marketers. The main reason for this is to limit the options available to your visitors, helping to guide them toward your intended conversion goal.

Gardner, O. (n.d.). Landing page conversion course. Retrieved January 12, 2015, from http://thelandingpagecourse.com/landing-page-101-intro/

Lowery, M. (2014, August 05). The ultimate guide to creating effective landing pages. Retrieved January 2, 2015, from https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-creating-effective-landing-pages

Bounce

The category of engagement when considering basic web analytics includes page exit ratio, single page visits (bounces), bounce rate and page views per visit. With web analytics, marketers are able to measure success in the same way they would any campaign or project. Metrics such as the bounce rate tell you about the average behavior of a visitor  (Hansen, 2014). Although the number of visitors are still important, the ability to hold the attention of an individual or to induce the individual to participate in some sort of activity is critical.  Websites need to be engaging in order to achieve a purpose and measuring a bounce rate can help analyze that engagement. Ideally, a brand should have a stable and growing audience of engaged visitors.

A bounce rate is the single page view visits divided by entry pages. If a bounce rate is being calculated for a specific page, then it is the number of times that page was a single page view visit divided by the number of times that page was an entry. If bounce rate is calculated for a group of pages, then it is the number of times page in that group was a single page view visit divided by the number of times pages in that group were entry pages. A site-wide bounce rate represents the percentage of total visits that were single page view visits.

Crate & Barrel’s consistently tests its website according to Kohnen (2013). While measuring analytics the company decided to reduce choices on the site. When those choices were reduced, conversions went up and bounce rates dropped (Kohnen, 2013).  By viewing analytics, Crate & Barrel was able to adapt its website better for its audience.

Once a company identifies pages with troubling bounce rates, its important to analyze who exactly is coming to the page, why are they going to the page and what is it that they probably want to do (Quinn, 2011). This takes the bounce rate measurement from quantitative to qualitative. Performing A/B and multi-variant tests when making even minor changes to the site can help lead marketers into the right direction, just like Crate & Barrel (Quinn, 2011).

According to Kusinitz (2014), its important to be realistic on benchmark averages for bounce rates dependent on the type of website. Realistic expectations include:

Content Website: 40 – 60%

Lead Generation: 30 – 50%

Blogs: 70 – 98%

Retail Sites: 20 – 40%

Service Sites: 10 – 30%

Landing Pages: 70 – 90%

Choosing the right keywords to match the website’s content, not attracting the most number of visitors, will also compliment your bounce rate (Kusinitz, 2014). In addition, web developers should create multiple landing pages with unique content and keywords for different buyer personas (Kusinitz, 2014). Bounce rates can also help identify and diagnose issues with a particular website such as usability issues, including unorganized content or unresponsive layouts, page loading time or convoluted messages.

By analyzing the bounce rate of a website, a brand can fine tune its website in order to better serve its purpose.

Hansen, M. (2012, February 21). Measuring engagement with Google Analytics. Retrieved January 2, 2015, from https://megalytic.com/blog/measuring-engagement

Kohnen, C. (2013, February 27). How Crate & Barrel keeps their website looking awesome: Testing. Retrieved January 12, 2015, from http://www.examiner.com/article/how-crate-barrel-keeps-their-website-looking-awesome-testing

Quinn, M. (2011). How to reduce your website's bounce rate. Retrieved January 14, 2015, from http://www.inc.com/guides/2011/01/how-to-reduce-your-website-bounce-rate.html

Kuzinitz, S. (2014, July 7). How to decrease your website's bounce rate. Retrieved January 2, 2015, from http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/decrease-website-bounce-rate-infographic