Can Social Media Campaigns Drive Sales?

Hi everyone

It’s a question we’re all faced with now. And it can be a tough one to answer at times.

“How can I get a campaign like ‘Whopper Sacrifice’ that sells?”

And as the bandwagon gathers pace, and social media becomes more central to our digital marketing plans, the right answer will get more important.

Because with more budgets and attention, comes more ROI demands.

But are these sales expectations justified? If you read recent research like this you are left wondering – marketing people saying it’s working, but results saying the opposite.

So what can marketers and agencies do to ensure we are developing social media campaigns that head in the right direction?

Different Ways to Measure Impact

The first step is to remember that social media has evolved by people and for people. It is generally not a direct sales tool, it is a conversation and relationship builder, although there are obvious examples like these that use social media to sell directly.

But in this interesting blog, we see there are a few different social media marketing goals, of which sales is only one:

- Increased Brand Awareness. Content can be created and spread by the social media community and improve public perception of your brand through the social media dialogue

- Reputation Management/ Customer Service. Another goal here is to positively influence the way a potential and existing customer/audience perceives your brand through this participation

- Improved Search Engine Rankings. Used as an SEO tool and creating content for the purpose of obtaining links from the members of the social news websites.

- Increased Relevant Visitor Traffic. Driving visitors or users to your website by investing more time on social communities which have a high topical relevance.

- Improve Sales for a Product or Service. Although hard selling a social media audience through an overtly commercial profile is not advisable because it will come across as marketing spam.

How Successful Social Media Campaigns Sell

So sales can certainly happen, but it’s selling in a different way. Perhaps the best lessons are looking at successful campaigns out there now to see how they are ‘selling different’:

#1. Give people something useful/ fun/ rewarding: Like a lot of digital marketing, utility and enjoyment are vital, because that’s what drives social media conversations and get’s you noticed and talked about or passed on. Look at recent examples like this one from Estee Lauder, offering free makeovers and photo shoots at its department-store cosmetics counters coast-to-coast to produce shots women can use for their online profiles. Similarly we have used social networking in a recent P&G online gaming campaign to help drive awareness and participation among young women in Asia.

#2. Make it sharable in the ‘conversation stream’: Twitter and now much more with Facebook recently, is a constant stream of updates that makes building static ‘fan pages’ and detailed brand material and very difficult sell. Instead, campaigns like this from Whisper (from our colleagues in Singapore) provide tools for women to connect with each other at ‘that time’ through messages of support and encouragement.

#3. Combine all your social media tools: Successful campaigns look at every social media – whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, FlickR, Youtube or Digg – and combines this with other online media channels such as web sites, blogs and online advertising. In this Ford Fiesta Movement campaign, Ford created a grassroots social media campaign to promote the new Fiesta model by placing Fiestas in the hands of 100 social “agents” and having them promote Ford’s new vehicle through Twitter, blogs, video, and events, all without spending a dollar on traditional media.

#4. Make a sale connection a natural part of the conversation: In all of the above campaigns, a sale or sales call is a natural outcome of giving people what they want. For Estee Lauder purchase isn't required, but the promotion does get women to the counter to talk with reps and try makeup. For Ford it raised 50,000 follow up sales contacts. And for Kellogg’s in this campaign, they raised awareness for the US’s largest hunger relief organization, through their Facebook page. Anyone can become a fan and those who donate $5 or more will receive $5 in coupons for Kellogg products. With over 200,000 fans that’s and good cause and good sales result.

So the answer is yes, social media campaigns sell. It may not always be the first or only priority, but done right it can definitely be a key part of the campaign goals.

But always bear this in mind. Do you really want to have a relationship, or even a conversation, with someone who is just trying to sell to you all the time?

Cheers, Rob

Feel free to add comments below, or for further questions or advice contact me at rob.h@th.arcww.com