Mobilize Mail Opinion

There’s a lot of talk about using online social media platforms to grow your business by connecting directly with consumers. But should we be using these tools for B2B (Business to Business) marketing?

Recent statistics out of the USA show that the annual spend on B2B social media marketing is expected to increase from $11 million in 2009 to $54 million in 2014 in the US alone.

Here are some useful tips when using social media for B2B marketing:

• Use Twitter: It’s one of the largest social media platforms available with 105,779,710 registered users and an average of 300,000 new users signing up per day. That translates into around 180 million (yes, 180 million!) visitors per month and an average of 55 million tweets per day!
• Take advantage of other online social marketing tools: LinkedIn is a great platform for both businesses and clients to connect with each other. You never know who could be a potential customer. And then there’s Facebook,
• Use a BLOG to keep your business and brand top of mind: Just like us! It’s a great way to share current, hot-off-the-press market information; answer specific questions from customers or other businesses; share top tips and keep your customers up to speed on the best way to use your products. Just remember to be consistent. If you have a BLOG, use it regularly.
• Get your tone right: Social media marketing language should be just that – ‘social’. Using a personal tone of voice humanises your business and shows the reader that you are just as passionate about them as you are about your business.
• Don’t be shy: If someone has posed a question or tweeted you, they’re obviously keen to engage with you. Follow them up at a later stage to see if there’s anything else you can help you with. It shows you care and goes a long way towards strengthening your business relationship.
• Use statistics to inform your content: Check out your website analytics to see what people are interested in reading on your website, tweets etc. This is a great way to ensure you are telling them what they want to hear.
• Offer incentives: It’s a big world out there in social media. If you want to be seen, think about offering giveaways or promotions to get people’s attention.
• Keep an eye on what’s happening out there: Google Alerts is a fantastic tool which allows you to you keep an eye on what’s happening online with regards to your business, your industry and your competitors. If you don’t already have this set up, do it now!
• Target key influencers: You will already be aware that B2B social media marketing is all about building strong business relationships. Find out whose ‘ear’ you need to get into and follow them on Twitter, Facebook or through their BLOG. When you have something to share that they might be interested in, share it.

There’s plenty to consider when launching your online social media B2B marketing. But how do you physically do it?

Mobilize Mail have the expertise, tools and technology to get you started on your B2B social media campaign – check out our social media website and to get you started with an automated social media marketing solution – read more

The words “drive them to your website” may soon become obsolete as social media online marketing platforms and interactive websites continue to increase in popularity.

Remember when having your own URL was the key focus of your marketing plan? And building a huge website with all the bells and whistles was how you communicated with your clients and increase your customer base.

Nowadays, more and more businesses are choosing to use social media and interactive platforms like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. And we think these savvy businesses are onto a good thing.

In the current online marketing space, we are finding more often than not, consumers’ first contact with businesses or brands is often through online marketing platforms and interactive sites.

For example, with over one million New Zealanders signed up to Facebook you’d be silly not to utilize this online audience. Recent statistics show that it’s the second most visited website in the country behind Google.

Just as an aside, do you remember that 80s Faberge Organic Hair Shampoo advert where they said ‘they’ll tell two friends and so on and so on and so on?’ Well, we think Facebook works a bit like that. Check out the ad just for old times sake

But we digress…
At Mobilize Mail, we believe marketing your brand and products on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter is the way to go to reach out to prospects and customers alike.

In answer to the question: “Are websites about to become obsolete?” We say ‘no’ – they won’t fade away forever however they will change from their static status to a dynamic status with regularly updated content and the ability to interact with the people who visit.

Our social media marketing solutions not only transform your static website to a dynamic site they also provide an automated management system for communicating your business on Facebook and Twitter. More information can be found by visiting our social media marketing team – campaignhub.co.nz

The Promotion

Giapo, in support of World Malaria Day decided to donate all revenue earned between 3pm and 4pm on the 25th of April 2010 to UNICEF NZ.

In order to encourage as many people as possible to purchase a gelato within that hour Giapo provided a prize draw where the main prize was a month of free gelatos.

To enter the prize draw an entrant had to complete the online entry form and purchase a gelato between 3pm and 4pm on the 25th April. The competition provided an incentive for people to come to the store and buy a gelato within the charity hour.

To maximize exposure of the prize draw within Facebook and Twitter Giapo utilized CampaignHub’s Event Management feature.

Promote And They Will Come

CampaignHub’s Event Management feature provided Giapo the tools to easily create the prize draw competition and have the competition details promoted on a number of Facebook Pages and Twitter Profiles (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Prize draw displayed within Facebook.

In order to reach as many people as possible promotional messages were also scheduled to be automatically published to Facebook walls and Twitter profiles during the prize draw entry period (Figure 2-3-4).

Figure 2: A scheduled promotional message automatically published to a Twitter profile.

Figure 3: A scheduled promotional message automatically published to another Twitter profile.

Figure 4: A promotional message published to a Facebook Page wall.

The Online Entry Form

The prize draw’s entry form was created within CampaignHub using the form wizard. The form wizard provides a huge amount of configuration options including eligibility requirements for the prize draw. For this prize draw an age restriction and country of residence was applied (Figure 5).

Figure 5: CampaignHub provides a competition eligibility section.

The entry form provided details of the competition, input fields and a “Like” Facebook Fan widget so entrants could become a fan of the Giapo Fan page with one click of the mouse (Figure 6).

Figure 6: The prize draw entry form (note the “Like” Facebook button).

Spread The Word!

Once the entrant submitted the prize draw entry form CampaignHub displayed the “Invite Fields” web page which encouraged entrants to tell their Twitter and Facebook friends about the prize draw using the simple-to-use widgets (Figure 7-8).

Figure 7: “Invite Friends” web page with the Twitter widget.

Figure 8: The Facebook widget provided within the “Invite Friends” tab.

To encourage an entrant to contact as many of their friends as possible CampaignHub provides an incentive tool. The incentive tool works by recording the number of referrals an entrant generates. If an entrant reaches a pre-set number of referrals (in this case 10 referrals) the entrant wins another prize (Figure 9).

Figure 9: An entrant is sent an email once they have referred 10 entrants to the prize draw.

As part of the prize draw entry process each entrant received a HTML branded email containing the entrants details. The entrant was required to bring a print-out of the email to the Giapo store and hand the print-out to a Giapo staff member so they could be added to the prize draw bucket (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Sending of the HTML emails was managed automatically by Mobilize Mail which connects directly with CampaignHub.

The Result!

The prize draw campaign helped Giapo spread the word about the charity event within Facebook and Twitter using not only their own social media profiles but leveraging off other profiles owned by CampaignHub and other businesses.

Once the prize draw was setup within CampaignHub Giapo could forget the prize draw and focus on other things. CampaignHub would automatically open and close the prize draw, manage the promotional messages and entry submissions.

The Promotion:

Rodney Wayne’s Downstage Promotion was part of an ongoing promotional program in conjunction with Downstage Theatre. The March 2010 promotion offered a give-away of a complimentary cut and blow-wave at Rodney Wayne Cuba Mall, two tickets to the opening night of Biography of my Skin starring Miranda Harcourt and a voucher for food and beverages to the value of $200 at the Hippopotamus restaurant at The Museum Hotel.

Details of the promotion were sent out to Rodney Wayne’s Cuba Mall and Queensgate customers via Mobilize Mail’s email marketing system as a special HTML email promotion.

In order to maximize the number of entrants for the promotion Rodney Wayne utilized CampaignHub’s Campaign Event Management feature to spread the word about the promotion via Facebook and Twitter.

Rodney Wayne’s Promotion gets all over Social Media:

Using CampaignHub’s Campaign Event Management feature the promotion was displayed within several Facebook “Fan” pages (Figure 1) whereby any visitor to the “Fan” pages could see details about the promotion and click the “Sign-Up” link to enter into the promotion using a custom-made online entry form (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Promotion displayed within Facebook.

Messages were also automatically published on personal and “Fan” page walls during the promotion.

Figure 2: Promotions entry web page.

Promotion Messages (“Tweets”) were also setup on a schedule to be automatically published to a number of Twitter profiles during the promotion (Figure 3). The link provided within the message went straight to the promotions entry form.

Figure 3: Messages about the promotion automatically published to Twitter.

Empowering entrants to promote your brand to their friends:

Once a person entered the promotion via the promotion’s entry form the entrant was encouraged to invite their friends within Facebook and Twitter using simple widgets provided within the entry form page Figure 4-5.

The widgets, when used by the entrant, send custom messages to their friends and followers within Facebook and Twitter thus reaching people Rodney Wayne never knew prior to this promotion using third-party endorsement!

Figure 4: Easy to use widget for entrant to alert their friends on Twitter.

Figure 5: Easy to use widget for entrant to alert their friends on Facebook.

By inviting their friends to the promotion the entrants were causing a viral event to occur within Facebook and Twitter! Once their friends entered the promotion they were also encouraged to alert their own friends using the same widgets that alerted them in the first place. By encouraging each round of entrants to alert their own network of friends the promotion spread like wildfire.

Summary:

CampaignHub’s Campaign Event Management feature allowed Rodney Wayne’s “Hippopotamus” give-away to go deep into Facebook’s and Twitter’s networks to not only increase the amount of entrants but to increase brand awareness for Rodney Wayne in a manner most acceptable to the social networks communities – endorsement from their own friends.

The give-away was promoted on Facebook “Fan” Pages and promotion messages where automatically published to “Fan” Page and personal Facebook walls.

“Tweets” were also set to be published to Twitter profiles during the promotion.

The promotions entry form was custom-made within CampaignHub allowing for input fields such as First Name, last Name etc… to be created. Entry rules were applied so only people resident within New Zealand and over the age of 18 could enter (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Add entry rules for entrants with ease.

Entrants details and referral information was also presented in real-time so key referrers could be located and encouraged.

Rodney Wayne found that creating their “Hippopotamus” Give-away promotion using CampaignHub’s Campaign Event Management tools made for a quick and simple process while at the same time leveraging off the viral power of Facebook and Twitter.

Please contact Donna for more information on how our social media solution can help your business.

Deals rate highly with social media users but it’s not the only reason they follow businesses on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

A recent survey by MarketingSherpa gave ‘Specials and Deals ‘top billing as the most desired reason for following a brand online. However learning about a brand’s service, new products and features also rated highly in second place. See image below for the results.

The table above illustrates the top motivations of two distinct social media user types following business brands on sites like Facebook and Twitter. In the table we see the ‘max connectors’ (users with more than 500 followers) are more motivated to follow a brand to learn about their business, services, features and new products. The ‘daily users’, on the other hand, are more motivated to follow a brand to learn of new deals and specials.

Essentially the results suggest a brand will see greater results from their social media profiles when they get the ratio of broadcasts matching the results in the table shown above. We suggest a business creates a social media broadcast plan to get the right mix of posts occurring to achieve maximum return from their social media marketing.

Contact Us to set up & manage your social media marketing solution

The success of social media marketing campaigns is often unpredictable, and that’s all down to human behaviour. Humans usually have a balanced approach to their daily lives but now and then we make decisions that don’t quite make sense. So, it can be difficult to know whether your campaign is going to be successful. However, with good planning and integration you’re on the right path to a successful campaign.

Social media is a great tool with many different components that can be used to achieve just about anything. And if you integrate this into all of your marketing tools, you’re onto a winner.

For example, if you produce a regular newsletter or direct mail campaign you already have a database of your clients set up to receive social media campaigns. All you need to do is point them in the direction of your online existence.

Firstly, you should have a good look at all of your online and offline marketing campaigns and how you can integrate them.

The aim is to use offline (printed resources) to drive your clients to your online campaigns and for the online campaigns to compliment your offline resources.

It’s all about building a stronger connection between the two and getting them to work together effectively.

Once you know what you’re working with, you need to make a plan. It doesn’t need to be set in stone and can be built upon as you work through your integration.

Tips for integrating your ‘offline’ marketing

A good way to start this process is to ask the question: “How can I promote my online social media presence through my printed resources (offline)?”

It’s really quite simple.

You will almost certainly have some printed resources you use to promote your business, e.g. business cards, loyalty cards, advertisements, til receipts and shopping bags.

All you need to do is include information about how your clients (or prospective clients) can find you online. Include your twitter, facebook, blog addresses on printed material and you’re half way there. You could also offer an incentive for people to visit your online presence, i.e. free gym membership for a month, free samples of your products, exclusive offers and discounts.

Just wait for the tweets and messages to flood in!

Tips for integrating your ‘online’ marketing

This side of the integration process can often be more complex than offline integration, but don’t be put off, it also offers more possibilities and we are here to help you!

Firstly, have a good look at what online marketing methods you are already using.

Email newsletters: Include a link from your Facebook page and website asking people to sign up to your newsletter via a sign up form. Explain what they will get from the newsletter if they sign up, e.g., up to date information, exclusive offers or discounts.

Pay per click: If you are using pay per click (PPC) as part of your online marketing campaign the most important thing is to ensure your landing pages are up to scratch and up to date. Ensure your landing page includes links to your Facebook, twitter and blogs.

Search Engine Optimization: It’s important to include key words in your website, facebook, twitter and blogs to enable people to find you easily. Promote your online social presence at every possible opportunity.

And remember if in doubt contact us - Mobilize Mail specialises in smart email & social media marketing solutions.