Unicorn frappuccino anyone? Back in 2017, Starbucks leveraged both the quirks of its millennial audience and the visual prowess of Instagram. The result – a call-to-action that drove traffic and sales at its stores. This mix of online and offline is particularly efficient. It also mirrors, in theory, a recent digital promotion that ACM executed for a client. The key takeaway here is using your online media to achieve SMART goals. Relying on that, and not simply vanity metrics, is a strong measure of short and long-term growth.
So, what does it take to create and carry out such a promotion? Enticing your audience to take specific actions on behalf of your brand is sometimes easier said than done. More so when you’re cultivating new online behaviors that your audience isn’t familiar with. While this is by no means exhaustive, you can use the following guide as a checklist when considering a digital promotion’s workflow:
Client/Provider Transparency
What is the campaign’s KPIs? What are the overall expectations? How will this impact future activities? Between advertising, communication, content creation, and real-time optimization, digital can be intensive. Always put documentation in place that outlines the strategy, mechanics, and individual responsibilities of all parties involved. This leaves minimal room for confusion and gives a level of autonomy to the digital team for the duration of the promotion.
Communication Plan
Your digital touchpoints should all be utilized in distinctive ways. Whether you’re taking a leaf out of Starbucks’ book with its Instagrammable drink. Or you’re guiding your audience to submit entries via a website (like we did for our client). Posting the same message across your social media, for example, ignores the underlying opportunities of each platform. More importantly, it sidelines your audience. Be mindful of them because they can tell when you’re being disingenuous. Use your past and current data to speak with them, and build engaging conversations.
Content Plan
Content is king. Period. Using it in creative and streamlined ways can give you an edge in reaching your desired audience and encouraging action. Its quality over quantity, and planning ahead for campaigns will ensure that your content is tailored to each touchpoint. It will also draw on your audience data and offer them visuals that are, ultimately, what they want (and not what you think they want). Whether it be videos, gifs, blogs or otherwise, all content should be geared towards your audience’s behaviors, tastes, and their preferred way for consuming content. Read my blog on content creation here.
Monitoring Your Promotion
The beauty of digital is that changes can be made on the fly. Real-time analytics gives you a quick view of what’s working and what isn’t. Your community management can also reveal what your audience is thinking on a day-to-day basis. Use that data to optimize your digital promotion. For example, during our promotion, we noticed our audience was more receptive to images of the grand prize. This led to creative tweaks and general discussions about what people would do with the said prize. The result was an influx of interest in entering the promotion and an increase in submissions.
Would you like to know more about the promotion we ran for our client? Our Anchor Cheese Paste Case Study is now available for FREE. Click this link to access it now!
Stay connected with ACM for exclusive industry insights and upcoming events by joining our mailing list here.
Comments