How To Win at Social Media, Step 3: Test Your Marketing Campaigns

This is part 3 of a 4 series on building a winning social media strategy. Step 1 highlighted the newest social media trends. Step 2 looked at tailoring your social media strategy towards the target audience. This step is all about learning from case studies of social media marketing within specific industries. Use these examples to then test your own campaigns.

How to Create Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Successful social media marketing campaigns come from testing strategies and evaluating their outcomes. Social media testing is an assessment that shows how certain content is performing among your target audience. How do you know if your test campaign works for you? Measure its performance against your social media goals. This may vary depending on the platform and your marketing calendar. 

Tests allow you to adapt your goals and thereby your budget. In general, social media testing is key to help your brand learn and achieve its strategic goals.

Social Media Marketing on Facebook

Facebook has multiple features across its channel. To work out what feature will be most engaging to your social media audience, see what others in your sector are doing. In the fashion industry, social media strategy has been implemented by Saks Fifth Avenue. The company’s social media marketing campaign uses live streaming. For their streams, they partner with social media influencers or blogs to extend reach and engagement. 

They have collaborated with Who What Wear, a fashion blog with 1.5 million followers. An influencer live-stream showcasing their Fall collection has resulted in 70,000+ views, this generated 0.57% likes and 0.13% comments.

What This Means For You: Test Live Streaming For Your Industry
Depending on your goals, trying out live-streaming could be beneficial. Integrating relevant and powerful partnerships can boost reach even further. Users can directly ask the host about the product/service offering. This can help reduce risk perception.

A major trend has been the rise in video and live streaming. This means brands can use this trend as part of lower-funnel activities. Live-streaming has been used for building awareness. What makes it interesting now is the use of shopping features within a stream. Therefore, if you have an established user base, showcasing products/services for sale may be effective.

Social Media Marketing Campaigns on Instagram

Brands have been using Instagram’s social media features to meet diverse objectives. For instance, David Yurman, a luxury jeweler, uses the platform to increase its conversion, engagement, and reach.

David Yurman’s social media marketing campaigns incorporate #TapToShop which allows direct, in-app purchases. This is used extensively by the brand. Additionally, the brand also integrates shopping sticker stories. This is where a sticker can be placed in an Instagram story with a shopping bag icon. Users can then tap on it to see additional details about the product. This allows a “more” organic way to promote sales and showcase product details. 

What This Means For You: Shoppable Posts Can Also Work in the Upper Funnel
Functionalities such as shoppable posts or shopping sticker stories can be used to upsurge sales. If your products/ user base is unlikely to sell through Instagram, do not ignore this function. Testing this may benefit your business by bringing users down the funnel from consideration to purchase. Shoppable posts showcase pricing information which helps users make purchase decisions. 

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TikTok Case Study

The social media platform TikTok has grown incredibly fast in the last few years, especially through celebrity and influencer endorsements. Over the past year of using the app, brands have taken notice and many have upped their game. One such example is the brand e.l.f Cosmetics who recently gained 1 billion views on the platform. 

In addition to gaining massive brand awareness, they are gaining trustworthiness through user-generated content (UGC). They have launched a series of influencer-based social media marketing campaigns. Many beauty content makers on TikTok are creating tutorials and reviews of e.l.f Cosmetics. Furthermore, the brand has made an effort to match the tonality of TikTok. For instance, they even created an original song that went viral.

What This Means for You: Dabble in UGC
Two important lessons here are the power of user-generated content and the impact of matching the platform’s voice.

A few years ago, social media marketing was all about expanding your brand’s voice to new platforms. These days platforms have a strong format, voice, and cult following. This means, using popular persons to create content and credibility for you. This may be something to test as a way to speak the language of the platform. 

Using YouTube in Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

The social media marketing world often overlooks YouTube. However, YouTube has already become an important destination for conversion in many ways. The video platform’s 2 billion subscribers watch unboxing videos and product reviews frequently. Now the platform has also introduced a shopping feature.

Furthermore, Chanel, a luxury fashion brand with 1.86 million YouTube followers, hosts a number of insightful videos about its products. Videos featuring new products and make-up tutorials are shared often on YouTube by the brand. It is also this type of content that attracts the most followers among beauty influencers. A great example of that would be “Nikkie Tutorials”. Their video showcasing the N°5 fragrance reached 19 million views and was one of their most popular videos on YouTube.

What This Means for You: Use YouTube to Supplement Manuals
Taking advantage of YouTube’s large audience can improve brand awareness and sales. Did you know, users are 3x as likely to watch a tutorial on YouTube instead of reading a product manual? If your product usually comes with a manual, consider creating video content for YouTube.

In addition, YouTube video results score highly on Google search. For you, this opens up SEO opportunities. A YouTube marketing campaign can make your brand memorable to a large audience. Brand recall is especially useful when users are shopping online.

Social Media Marketing on Snapchat, Pinterest & Twitter

As mentioned in our previous blog, these channels have a lower user base than the Top 4 platforms. However, they still provide interesting opportunities for your social media marketing campaigns.

Snapchat
Original content is what creates success on Snapchat because users cannot find it elsewhere. Thus, using Snapchat’s unique lenses and filters tailored to your brand can engage consumers and capture their attention.

Moreover, AR filters allow brands to create brand-specific experiences for their customers while spending very little money on production.  For instance, H&M’s uses this social media marketing feature. Through their makeup filter, they let you try out different looks before you purchase the product.

Pinterest
Pinterest has multiple features to allow brands to use social media marketing smoothly. For instance, Benefit Cosmetics has grown its audience to 2.3 million monthly viewers. 

Thus, using Pinterest features, by integrating their logo to all their organic pins, directly boots brand recognition. Moreover, they brand every Pin, by having a consistent color palette, logo, and product campaigns.

Twitter
Financial Fitness, for example, organized a group call on Twitter Spaces to introduce new investment opportunities. Therefore, for sectors with complex decision-making processes Spaces could be a good fit.

Spaces makes it easy for people to participate in conversations. Thus, brands can use this social media marketing feature, for strong social interactions. Taking advantage of quick reactions and thus receiving valuable feedback right from the source.

What This Means For You: Don’t Overlook Them
Your social media mix should be based on your goals and your audience. Thus, smaller or niche platforms can also be used for your social media marketing campaigns. 

For example, let’s consider beauty brands and Pinterest. Consistent color schemes and branding can lead to increased recognition. For businesses, looking to gain customer insights and feedback, Twitter Spaces could be a valuable feature to consider. This is beneficial, as it allows brands to “humanize” themselves and create a stronger brand-consumer connection.

How To Build Data-Driven Social Media Marketing Campaigns

All in all, this blog provides a brief overview of case studies of certain brands using social media channel features. These examples can be used as a guide to understanding how your brand can use a specific channel. Since each industry and business is unique, what worked for some brands cited here may not resonate with you. 

However, it is still possible to create data-driven campaigns that are guaranteed to create results. The answer lies in testing and learning. It’s important to assess your brand’s unique selling point, values and goals. The next step is carrying out tests with small budgets and limited resources. What social levers will generate results for you to meet your social media marketing goals? Now it’s your turn to test strategies and to assess the social media marketing campaign’s success! If you are interested in learning about measuring success, stay tuned. Part 4 of this series is all about social media KPIs.

What To Do Next

We hope this overview of best practices will allow you to test and learn strategies on specific social media channels. Follow our How to Win at Social Media series on this blog to build a relevant Social Media strategy. 

Curious about your current social performance? Talk to us: moin@watersky.digital