BIA/Kelsey’s US Local Media Annual Forecast expects social advertising revenues to reach $8.3 billion in 2015, up from an estimated $2.1 billion in 2010. Also, the fact that among the top social media related questions marketers most want answered is, “how do I sell with social media?” (Social Media Examiner) means brands are likely to be more aggressive in their social marketing efforts in the future.

Considering this, it will be safe to assume that brands will increase focus on two aspects of social media marketing:

• Improving revenues.
• Launching more creative, engaging campaigns on multiple channels.

However, getting there greatly depends on how well these campaigns are planned. The planning stage sets the foundation for some great campaigns and decides how well they will perform.

Canon’s Project Imagin8ion (powered by Thismoment’s DEC platform), for instance, gathered an extraordinary 1.4 million YouTube views in less than two months. The secret to the campaign’s success was its meticulous planning. Besides targeting the right audience, the engagement strategy was well thought-out.

The Social Campaign Checklist

The planning stage is highly crucial and sets the groundwork for campaigns. Therefore, it’s important to create a checklist for this stage.

• Set Your Goals: For a campaign to generate the desired results, it’s important to figure out what you want to achieve from it. Do you wish to create buzz around a product, generate traffic or simply build brand awareness?


E.g.: Created on Thismoment’s DEC platform, the objective of P&G’s Thank You Mom Olympics campaign was to generate brand awareness. With this as a primary goal, P&G built a highly successful social media campaign around it.

• Identify & Understand Target Audience: The most successful campaigns are the ones that are aimed at the right audience. This makes identifying and understanding the target market an important part of the pre-launch stage. Brands can do this by using social media monitoring tools. The target audience identification stage helps brands study the target market in detail and understand who they are, what communities they hang out in etc. Armed with this valuable information, marketers can then proceed to customize their campaigns according to the audience-type.
• Plan Your Engagement Strategy: A great campaign has been created and launched across multiple platforms. What next? How are you going engage with customers? How will you respond to their queries, complaints etc.? It’s crucial to know the answers to these questions and plan your engagement strategy before proceeding to launch campaigns. While planning their engagement strategy, brands need to figure out:
• If they want to engage via UGC contests.
• Feature polls and/or a quiz.
• Include social conversation modules.
• Overcoming Barriers to Social Campaign Success: Social media, being an unfettered space, doesn’t always allow brands to predict challenges. What makes brands like Coca-Cola and P&G (to name a few) winners is the fact that they are prepared for these barriers. Thismoment’s research unearthed some common barriers to a campaign’s success:
• Launching and managing campaigns across multiple social platforms.
• Overcoming the language barrier while marketing to global audiences.
• Optimizing content for mobile viewing.
• Inconsistent brand experience due to too many social channels.


Why are over 150 leading global brands launching campaigns using Thismoment’s Distributed Engagement Channel (DEC)?

DEC is a content management system that allows brands to publish content, engage with users, and manage campaigns across multiple channels including mobile. With DEC, brands can also have a global channel with local translations and local content, besides controlling visibility of campaign videos, content etc. according to regions. Check out the Coke TV DEC (Facebook, YouTube, brand site and Mobile) to know more.

Conclusion

As far as social campaign creation is concerned, the smart thing to do is to adopt a step-by-step approach, starting with the planning stage. What distinguishes the winners from the others is the former’s attention to detail during the pre-launch stage. Setting goals, identifying the target audience, planning the engagement strategy and preparing for challenges, in our opinion, are crucial aspects of the campaign creation blueprint. Once this foundation is set, the rest of the stages will smoothly follow.

- Shama Ahmed
Thismoment

Andrew Sielen

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