Everybody who’s anybody uses social media. Whether for purposes of keeping up with friends and family or for posting pictures of food and kittens every day, people love social media! What better way to conduct business than to convince your customers to seek you out based on your social media presence while making them think that it was their idea?
Let’s take the Wendy’s Twitter for example. Through socially unacceptable marketing strategies of “roasting” and “burning” their competition, the marketing team at Wendy’s single-handedly drove millions of people across the world to seek out and view their social media content.
Even if their conversion rate remained low, we can assume this led to thousands more people craving Wendy’s meals. The points below will help you understand how Wendy’s does it so that you can apply these techniques to your own business.
Social Media Is More than Just Social Media
We’ve all had at least one friend in our lives who refused to make a Facebook account. Oftentimes, when pressed to explain why, that friend would say something along the lines of “I don’t feel the need to look at pictures of food or kittens.” However, as we all know very well by now, that’s far from the whole of social media.
In fact, the phrase “social media” has grown so large as to cover everything from the obvious social media platforms to less obvious mediums such as event staffing. By hiring an event staffing agency to send out models to various locations, you can push your company into modernity by using the tried and true methods of the 20th century.
“If you want to be famous, go where famous people go.” This old saying couldn’t apply more to the capitalization of event programs by social media marketers, but how exactly does it work?
The answer is shockingly simple: By going where social media icons go, your staffers become exponentially more likely to be featured (accidentally or otherwise) in one of those icons’ social media posts, further driving traffic to your advertisements.
Hire Brand Ambassadors
Brand ambassadors work in a similar manner to event staffers. It is important to take active measures to avoid lumping brand ambassadors in with street sales people. Although they perform a similar function on the surface, the effects of each of these two professions couldn’t possibly be more different from each other.
Whereas a street sales agency might seek solely to make sales, a brand ambassador agency will tend to have the primary goal of showcasing the brand and building its name recognition.
The reason that people tend to confuse these two agency formats is that both brand ambassadors and street sales people can have the surface-level goal of making sales. Brand ambassador agencies simply see that goal as secondary, rather than primary.
Hiring brand ambassadors to work in crowded areas, such as malls or plazas, or social outings, such as fairs or galas, can significantly increase name recognition of your brand, one of the most important aspects of social media marketing.
Cement Your Control of the Younger Markets
By now, you’re probably wondering if any of our social media tips actually have anything to do with direct management of social media. The answer is yes, but there’s a good reason why we didn’t list it first: direct management of social media is only one side of the coin.
If you’re going to boost your social media marketing skills in a way that meaningfully impacts your conversion rates, then you’re going to need to branch out. Focusing solely on social media can result in poor results with older demographics, who make up a large bloc of social media users but who don’t always go to the more popular social locations.
To corner the younger demographics, however, you’re going to need to focus on directly managing your social media account. This is what Wendy’s does on Twitter. In order to capitalize on the younger demographics of social media usage, Wendy’s uses popular references and “roasts” its competition, creating viral tweets in the process.
Keep Close Tabs on the Competition
A more business-minded approach to social media marketing is to “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” One of the downsides of modern social media is the fact that there are very few metrics for determining how well you’re doing, so you’re often left wondering if you’re on the right track.
Carrying out competitive analyses on social media can help you hone your marketing strategies. For example, if you find that your business receives only between ten and twenty likes per social media post but your top competitor receives more than 200, you should consider looking at what they’re doing differently.
It could be that they’re funnier, that they’re posting more often, or that their content is simply more readable. In either case, make sure to write down every difference and discuss it with your marketing team at a weekly meeting in order to decide whether to copy or improve upon what they’re doing.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, social media marketing presents marketing firms with a burgeoning wealth of new resources and opportunities, but only for those who know how to find them.
As long as you remember that social media isn’t just memes and tweets but is also locations and name games, hire brand ambassadors to work key locations, learn how to attract the notorious Millennials, and closely monitor your competition, you should be A-Okay.
