Many small business owners know that social media can connect them with customers and prospects. Unfortunately, many of us tend to forget the “marketing” in social media marketing, spending the majority of our time accruing “likes” and followers without any real goals for converting those stats into something more meaningful.
If you are one of these small business owners, it’s time to start thinking of social media differently. Integrating your email newsletter with a social campaign is one way to get started.
What is a Social Campaign?
In terms of a marketing strategy, a social campaign is a method for melding inbound marketing and social media into one powerful business tool.
Where most small business owners only use social media marketing for publishing blog posts and other links, social campaigns seek to get more from fans and followers than click-through site traffic.
How to Run a Social Campaign
Running an e-newsletter social campaign is easy when paired with a third party e-mail marketing service like Constant Contact’s Social Campaigns product. (MailChimp, AWeber, and other services also offer social media integration, but our example campaigns integrated Social Campaigns with Facebook.)
Once the product is installed on Facebook, you can publish an offer designed to get your fans to take action — you can ask them to buy, donate, download, print, watch, register, or whatever.
Track and measure the campaign’s results to determine the success of your promotion and compare it to future promotions. This is how you will determine which types of campaigns are the best for your business. Ask these questions: How many new fans did you gain? How many of your fans completed the task? How much revenue was generated as a result of the campaign?
Case Studies
Sugarbush Resort in Warren, Vermont added nearly 3,000 new fans and over 1,800 email subscribers in less than a month. Their social campaign offered fans a chance to win over $15,000 in prizes for providing an email address. They launched their campaign with an email blast to existing subscribers and also posted links to the campaign across Facebook and Twitter.
BellaSoleil.com, an online retail store for Italian pottery and Tuscan Home Decor, offered fans a 10% discount on any item it sold for “liking” its page. As a result, they added 75 new fans within two hours of sending out an email promotion. They saw a 60% increase in fans overall. But even better—they saw $10,000 in revenue over the first 48 hours of the campaign launch.
Blue Orchid Handbags in Cleveland used a Social Campaigns event template to promote their last event of 2011. In just four days, they gained 20 new fans, which was more than they received in the previous two weeks combined. But the real story for Blue Orchid is that several people came to the event and mentioned they’d just become Facebook fans. They wanted to see the handbags in person.
Each of these is an example of how social media can lead to real profits for small businesses. Have you run a social campaign or participated in a successful campaign? Share your success story with us in the comments!
