Create purposeful social marketing campaigns to improve results.
Contributor: Chris Pemberton
While many parents gets caught in the gravitational pull of the Lego catalog, hundreds of thousands of parents willingly take pictures of their kids’ Lego creations and post to Facebook. When Lego wanted to “tell the story about the bricks,” as Lego VP of Marketing Conny Kalcher put it, they didn’t merely run a check-the-box social activity bolted onto a print campaign.
Instead, the company doubled down on the social activity of parents and launched a social-first global campaign, called the Kronkiwongi Project, which celebrated the genius of three year-olds. Parents were encouraged to post photos and videos demonstrating the breadth of their children’s imaginations around the made up word “kronkiwongi.”
37 million people watched the Kronkiwongi videos.
Lego zeroed in on parental engagement on Facebook to tell the story of the bricks in an authentic, credible way. Focused social marketing efforts within the context of specific use cases makes the drive to business goals more focused, resulting in better execution from concept to delivery and measurement, noted Jay Wilson, Research Director, Gartner for Marketing Leaders.
Given the increasing importance of social marketing in driving outcomes all along the customer buying journey (see The Power of Social Marketing in Multichannel Campaigns), social marketers are under increasing pressure to deliver business results and show return on investment. Yet marketers often pursue social marketing activity that is interesting but not always purposeful. By aligning efforts with use cases, social marketers can add efficiency and improve measurement. Here are five use cases to anchor your social marketing strategy:
Engage to build relationships
Marketers use a variety of tactics, often casually, to facilitate engagement such as showcasing user generated content and interacting with followers. But engagement can also be deliberate. Nasdaq discovered this when it used social engagement to educate followers and influencers about lesser known products. Without the relationship and involvement in social channels the company would primarily be known for its flagship exchange technology.
Deliver focused campaigns
Advanced social marketers develop focused, time-bound campaigns that are custom-crafted for social audiences. Lego’s Kronkiwongi Project encouraged parents to post their childrens’ creations on social channels. The campaign delivered a relevant, engaging challenge to a desirable target audience at scale.
Find insights with advanced analytics
When social analyses such as sentiment analysis and natural-language processing are executed in support of well-framed questions, marketers can discern the voice of the customer in ways difficult to replicate through other methods. GE Capital used social mentions of brands, campaigns and competitors to discover that consumers were talking positively about using a credit card for online shopping instead of its intended purpose for leisure travel. This led the company to push its online shopping messaging.
Publish content continuously
Social marketing can play a role in filling the gaps between campaigns with continuous storytelling and a steady stream of content. Through social listening, Starwood Hotels & Resorts identified that a prominent blogger who loved flourless desserts was about to stay at one of its hotels. The hotel chef made her a flourless cake and she promptly shared pictures of the cake with her audience, extending the company’s reach.
Discover new ideas
Social media provides unprecedented, low-cost and quick access to target audiences, competitive activity and ideas for innovation. It also enables customer collaboration at scale. GE Appliance teamed up with Local Motors, a co-creation community, to launch FirstBuild, an online and physical community to design, engineer, build and sell home appliances. FirstBuild brought the Opal nugget ice machine and eight new products to market, pairing the innovation of online communities with GE manufacturing capabilities.
Gartner for Marketing Leaders clients can read more in ”Structure Your Social Marketing Efforts Based on Five Popular Use Cases.”
For more article on Social and Digital Marketing visit Smarter With Gartner website.
