Tag: social media

[Case Study]: GoWireless Partners with Mindstream, Boosts In-store Sales with Facebook Offers

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

Mindstream Media Group used Facebook Offer Ads to drive in-store sales over the holiday season for one of the top national wireless retailers, resulting in a 65 percent lower cost per in-store sale compared to link ads.

OVERVIEW

With more than 700 stores across the U.S., our client, GoWireless, is a Verizon Wireless authorized retailer, selling smartphones and other mobile devices, like tablet computers and wireless headphones, as well as pay-as-you-go and monthly service plans from the leading wireless network.

For its holiday campaign, GoWireless partnered with our team of experts to develop two campaigns: one that encouraged people to download a coupon from a branded landing page, and another to encourage people to purchase a new phone or wireless service plan using offer ads.

WHY ADVERTISING ON FACEBOOK IS SO IMPORTANT

2.4 billion people use Facebook every month

Related article: 3 Sure-Fire Reasons Why Multi-Unit Brands Need Facebook Advertising

OBJECTIVES

  • Generate new leads at an improved CPA
  • Multiply in-store wireless sales
  • Increase sales for leading national network provider devices and service plans
  • Encourage people to claim a Facebook offer from the retailer over the holiday season

APPROACH

We worked diligently to create a connected experience across platforms and social networks. In addition to recommending platforms that had a strong brand presence, we also identified which platforms the audience cared about and was already active on to inform our strategies. Refined audience awareness and dynamic audience engagement were used to tap into existing conversations and shape new ones.

Facebook Offers for GoWireless

Facebook offer ads reach audiences through multiple touchpoints and create a more seamless mobile experience for the user, allowing them to claim promotions with the click of a button to:

  • Bookmark the offer on Facebook
  • Receive an email copy of the offer
  • Get notified when they’re near a GoWireless store or when the offer is about to expire

Analyzing and delivering against measurable KPIs allowed us to leverage audience insights to increase campaign efficiency and performance. Best-in-class specifications and methods to boost the potential for awareness and retention were also implemented to deliver ads in the most advantageous format possible.

RESULTS

The dynamic retargeting capabilities of the social platform allowed us to capitalize on audiences who were already engaged and willing to take action. Focusing on the real metrics that make a difference, we expanded our client’s audience to include like-minded users while certifying viewability of ads across all devices. This resulted in ads that connected with consumers in a meaningful way and made a real impact for the client. 

The advanced targeting capabilities and engagement features of Facebook Offer Ads proved to be a great way to drive in-store traffic during the holiday season and promote mobile deals.

“We saw tremendous improvements this holiday quarter, especially for our Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year’s initiatives. The quality of traffic from holiday in-store sales proved to be much higher than any other digital media partner’s performance that we’ve worked with before, and as a result, we saw our holiday Q4 efforts producing significant ROI.”

The campaign was a huge success – more than 45,000 offers were claimed during the two-month campaign and our client reduced their cost per in-store sale by 65 percent compared to link ads.

45000 offers claimed; 10x more offer claims

 

Want to learn more about how paid social media advertising can help boost sales for your business? Contact us today.

 

Midwest Digital Marketing Conference – Day One Recap

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

Mindstream Media Group’s Maggie Durnien and Chelsea Weidauer are checking out the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference (MDMC) in St. Louis this week. The two-day event will cover all things digital marketing and feature speakers from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Microsoft, Salesforce, Pinterest, Adobe, Pandora and more! Our digital marketing product specialists will be providing daily recaps of the most interesting sessions they attend. Their Day One recaps are below. Be sure to check out Day Two coverage as well. 

Session: Exclusive Chat with Facebook and Instagram

Speakers:

John Patton | Client Partner | Facebook

Derek Scott | Creative Strategist | Instagram

Recap by:

Maggie Durnien | Associate Product Specialist | Mindstream Media Group

During this session, attendees were given the valuable opportunity to ask questions on all things Facebook and Instagram to company insiders. With a majority of the audience coming from the agency side, the conversation and questions posed provided great insights into how to best use these platforms in an agency environment.

The conversation became fixated on the recent rollouts of Instagram Live and Facebook Live, along with Instagram Stories. When asked how to best use these features, Patton and Scott discussed how they are seeing these features play out successfully within the platforms.

According to the company representatives, here are some tips on how agencies can best use Instagram/Facebook Live and Instagram Stories:

  • First, define your brand’s purpose. To do this, decide what makes your brand different from your competition, then celebrate that element on social.
  • Make posts to Stories relevant and local to your audience.
  • Be candid and show what’s going on behind the scenes. This helps viewers understand your culture.
  • Focus on quality over quantity and avoid spamming users’ feeds.
  • Use creative animations that encourage viewers to swipe up for more information.
  • Promote a sense of community that urges viewers to engage with your brand and come back for more.

As brands continue to experiment with these features, it has been interesting to see all the creative ways they are used. From the immediate popularity of “going live” and posting stories, it is evident that the Millennial language is a visual one and Facebook and Instagram have definitely taken notice.

 

Session: LinkedIn – A Journey from Technology to Reality

Speaker:

Ben Zuckerman | Financial Advisor | Edward Jones

Recap by:

Chelsea Weidauer | Associate Product Specialist | Mindstream Media Group

Even though LinkedIn just underwent a full-on Beverly Hills makeover, the professional social media platform has always been more about function than appearance. This session focused on one of LinkedIn’s most useful functions: creating and fostering relationships to turn social connections into actual clients.

Here are four steps from Zuckerman, a financial advisor at Edward Jones, to help you do just that:

#1) Build a foundation
  • Starting from the base, the best practice to creating a LinkedIn page is to start connecting with those people you already know. This includes current clients, coworkers and potential prospects.
  • The goal for LinkedIn users should be to get over 500 connections. Therefore, the best place to start is with the people you know.
#2) Create your brand
  • Once you have started to acquire connections, the next phase is to focus your message and show your knowledge. Figure out what you want to educate the LinkedIn community about and become the expert on that topic to develop your brand identity.
  • Content is the most important aspect of creating a brand. Post different content throughout the day at different times to see when your targeted community is most influenced by it. This will help find the ideal connections.
#3) Identify ideal connections
  • To find connections in your targeted community, use the search bar at the top of the LinkedIn page starting with who you know. From there, search by occupation, location and unique queries (such as hobbies) to find prospects within the community.
#4) Technology to reality
  • Once your LinkedIn page is seamless and you have your ideal connections in mind, the final step is to reach into reality. Start by reaching out to the prospective client and asking them to connect.
  • Once the prospect accepts, reach back out and explain why you want to connect with the person.
  • After reaching out, write and mail a physical thank you letter to the prospect. This ensures he or she receives the thank you while grasping their attention.
  • Call the client later and talk about their interests based on their LinkedIn profile. This builds a relationship with the client and increases the potential for a business appointment.

Reaching out to prospective clients happens frequently in the digital world. LinkedIn is a great tool to reach out and connect with other business professionals. However, using the influence of technology and bringing it into reality will help you familiarize with a client and garner more customers.

[APRIL 2017] What the Latest LinkedIn Changes Mean for Marketers and Business Owners

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

If it’s been a while since you’ve checked your LinkedIn account, you may notice some drastic changes the next time you log in. After being acquired by Microsoft last year, the social media platform for professionals decided to continue to shake things up in 2017 by unveiling the most dramatic redesign in the platform’s decade-and-a-half history.

LinkedIn doesn’t have the best user engagement stats compared to other social media sites. Only 23 percent of LinkedIn’s 467 million users visit the site each month according to the company’s 2016 third quarter fiscal report. This latest redesign is their effort to give those numbers a boost.

But the redesign was more than just a cosmetic change, the company made significant upgrades on the front and back end of the site, changing the way a number of features operate. In this post, we’ll take a look at the changes that will affect marketers and business owners the most.

Search

LinkedIn added a convenient search feature during the redesign – you can now complete a search for your keyword or phrase and toggle between pages to see different categories like People, Jobs and Posts.

However, they also hid one on us – you now need to purchase the “Sales Navigator” level of LinkedIn Premium to access the Advanced Search filters that were previously available to everyone. Those missing filters include “years of experience,” “function” and “seniority level.” In our opinion, this will only be of note to those using LinkedIn primarily for recruitment purposes.

Blogging

This section is going to be relevant to anyone that published articles or long-form posts on LinkedIn. The update makes it so you can post right from the main site rather than having to click off to LinkedIn Pulse to write a blog.

For companies without a stand-alone blog site or companies that like to post original content to their different social sites, this feature could be extremely helpful. It could also help to boost LinkedIn’s use as a platform in general if this feature becomes widely used by companies and content creators.

Other Items

A few other items have changed, but won’t be quite as relevant from a business point of view.

  • Messaging is now available in chat format (rather than the previous look which had more of an email look to it).
  • The homepage feed has a cleaner look and additional information available to users.
  • Profile layouts have been updated and rearranged.
  • You can find more information and settings under your account info than with the previously format.

These will help to make the site more user-friendly and hopefully boost traffic to more than monthly visits for users.

Tips For Building Social Media Campaigns That Actually Work

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

It seems, at times, that everyone is on social media every free moment they have. While that may be a bit of an exaggeration, it’s not far off. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults now use at least one social media site, according to the Pew Internet 2016 Media Fact Sheet. Plus, 76 percent of Facebook users, 51 percent of Instagram users and 42 percent of Twitter users visit their respective platforms daily. Snapchat wasn’t included in the Pew study, but they reported 161 million daily users in the fourth quarter of 2016.

As a business manager or a marketer, are you taking advantage of this vast audience?

If you are, great! If not, we have a few tips to get you started and make sure you’re investing your time and money in the right places.

No. 1: Selecting a platform

To select a social media site or sites, you’ll need to look at who your target audience is, and what you want from them.

A bit of research can tell you which platforms your primary audience uses most and when they’re likely to be online. Facebook has high user numbers in all age ranges. LinkedIn skews a bit older, with some of the highest usage rates from those aged 50 to 60 years outside of Facebook. (Hint: Facebook dominates pretty much all numbers outside of brand engagement. The social network has the largest number of users of any social media platform with more than 200 million in the U.S. alone, according to Pew.)

Beyond looking at flat user numbers, you need to decide if you’re looking for people to learn more about your company or if your primary goal is to generate leads.

  • Instagram has the greatest level of engagement between users and companies, according to Track Maven. So, Instagram might be your platform if you’re looking to build brand recognition.
  • LinkedIn is listed as the primary platform for those looking for employment according to the same study, so it’s your place to be for recruitment campaigns.
  • Snapchat is doing great things with sponsored filters and story formats. You’ll want to consider this if you’re putting on a large event or plan to attend an event put on by someone else.

No. 2: Determine your target audience

Once you’ve got a platform selected, you’ll need to identify your target audience(s). Social media platforms are able to collect vast amounts of information on users, which makes it relatively simple to target by gender, income, location or interest. Remember to target those who already follow you and retarget those who have been to your site but haven’t converted yet. These are two audience groups that have already shown interest and are more likely to convert.

No. 3: Set a line in the sand

Based on past campaigns and industry averages, create some KPIs so you can decide if your campaign is going well and providing the outcomes you need. Your goals need to be realistic, but if you don’t have any set you won’t know if your returns are stellar or stagnant.

Some things you’ll want to consider when setting your KPIs:

  • Market size
  • Geographical location
  • Historical sales
  • Sites used
  • Competitors in the same market
  • Additional local marketing efforts

No. 4: Test your choices

Once you’ve decided on a platform and identified your target audience, it’s time to create your ads, filters or stories. Each of those can then be implemented and tested. Social media is fast-paced, but that means you have a greater ability to test your placements.

Action items to keep in mind when testing:

  • Use multiple images in your ads. Run more than one at a time to see which one garners the most clicks or conversions.
  • Write a variety of ad copy options to see which ones deliver the best returns.
  • Change up the time of day you post your ads to test what works best for your vertical and audience. People probably aren’t going to search for a plumber at the same time of day they search for a restaurant for lunch.
  • If you’re running thought leadership or brand building campaigns, try different calls-to-action to see what verbiage delivers the highest engagement levels. 

Just remember that you should only test one variable at a time to ensure you know what the deciding factor was for your potential consumers.

Once you’ve researched, targeted, implemented and tested, keep repeating the process. It will help you refine your campaigns while staying on top of the ever-changing medium that is social media.

Related content: [Webinar Recording] How Social Ads Can Transform Your Brand.

[Webinar] How Social Ads Can Transform Your Brand

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

A social media presence is no longer a complementary piece that’s nice for brands to have, it’s an essential component of a holistic marketing strategy. In 2017, 70 percent of internet users and 60 percent of the population in the United States will be on at least one social media platform, according to eMarketer.

Brands understand there’s a big opportunity to connect with potential customers on social media. According to eMarketer, social media ad spending is expected to reach $20 billion in 2017, a roughly 30 percent increase from 2016, and $30 billion by 2019.

Check out the webinar below to learn how social advertising can become a key component in your brand’s marketing strategy. You’ll hear about the latest trends, tactics and how other brands are using social ads.

 

 

Webinar topics

  • Overcoming challenges in social advertising
  • Selecting the right platform for your target audience
  • Ensuring you’re reaching your target audience at the right moment
  • Understanding key metrics to measure performance
  • How top brands are successfully using social ads

Featured Speakers:

  • Bijan Malaklou – Paid Social Media Manager
  • Bailey Bosson – Director, Paid Media
  • Troy Dowell – VP, Business Development