Unit 308 - Principles of Social Media Advertising and Promotion

Unit 308 - Principles of Social Media Advertising and Promotion

Be able to plan how to use digital vouchers for marketing purposes

• 1.1 Define the term digital vouchers

Digital voucher are vouchers that are available online for orders and sometimes to print to use in shops. They are available on company websites, social media outlets, texts, and if your subscribed to mailing lists. Websites such as Groupon are specialised in selling digital vouchers and codes. For example, I received a email from Snowdome with a code to get money off an activity. 

• 1.2 Explain the potential uses of digital vouchers.

Digital vouchers could be used to promote a product but offering money off. 

They can also be used to promote deals of the day. This is a good way to promote different products.

Also you could use tickets or discounted gift certificates by delivered through web or via email. Digital vouchers are a good way to increase brand awareness. RetailMeNot said that ‘on average, consumers will spend 2 hours a week dedicated to hunting for deals online.’ 

You could also encourage social sharing of vouchers. This could be like a student discount code. By sharing these vouchers this could encourage more people use your products or services. RetailMeNot said that ‘40% of consumers will share an email offer with their friend and 28% of consumers will share deals via social media platforms’.

• 1.3 Research the current disadvantages of digital vouchers.

One disadvantage could be that you might not make any money by using digital vouchers as a promotional method but it would still cost the company money. Ultimately resulting in a loss or no profit. So you would have to consider the cost of using vouchers as a way of advertising vs. a low profit margin. 

Another disadvantage would be negative impact on brand image. By this I mean it could make your company look cheap.

Also Customers may get used to waiting for deals, rather than paying full price. So if they see something they like they might wait until theres a deal rather than buying it there and then.

By using vouchers many customers might only use your company because of the voucher rather than because of the products you offer. This would result in a lack of customer retention.

Another disadvantage would be that coupons that are intended for specific market, parents, young people or professionals, can leak more broadly therefore not reaching your target market. 

• 1.4 Explain how to overcome the barriers of using digital vouchers for acquisition and retention of customers.

Process for customer retention. According to the Harvard Business School, increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by 25 percent to 95 percent. I think a good way for customer retention is communication, this could be email updates with new stock or promotions. The next point in the process is selling. 

If customers had a good buying process with you, for example when I brought a new car the company gave me constant updates via email and phone and all the staff were really friendly and helpful, customers will most likely will use your company or products again. Also by offering good customer service, this could attract new customers via the word of mouth.

I think the next point of customer retention is support. This could be by answering customer queries or complaints quickly and effectively. 

Another way to overcome the barriers would be by offering your customers incentives. For example, you could run competitions on your social media pages to encourage engagement and gain more brand awareness as well as getting customers involved. Another incentive could be using photos or reviews from your customers, you could do this by post asking customers to post pictures of them using your product and that your company can then share. A further example would be giveaways. You could run a giveaway campaign by using your social media accounts as a way to enter. 

You can offer brand special exclusive deals. For example, Dominos post a variety of discounts and vouchers to local areas to encourage people to buy their products. Another example would be loyalty cards. Big companies such as Starbucks, Costa, Subway and Morrisons offer there customers points cards so after a certain amount of purchases they get a reward. According to RetailMeNot ’91% of coupon redeemers have said they will purchase from a retailer again’.

• 1.5 Plan a SMART digital voucher campaign for a business

Specific - My digital voucher campaign is going to be for DCAS. We could run a voucher code on our social media accounts that if people bring a new person to a session they can redeem and get one free art or music session.

Measurable - To gain at least 10 new customers. 

Achievable - As many of the people to attend the session currently don’t come with friends from school, I think this is a very achievable goal. 

Relevant - This is a good goal to gain more customers eventually resulting in a profit.

Timely - This campaign will run throughout the month of July and will end on the 31st July.

• 1.6 Explain methods of managing a digital voucher system

You could manage digital vouchers by using online numbered coupon allocations. For example when sending the vouchers out they have different codes so they an’t be used more than once.

You could publish a code or URL online so anyone who follows your social media platforms or shop online can get access to the code. They can share this with friends which could result in more sales.

You could use a online database of allocation maintained by vendor. This way each customer will receive a individual voucher tailored for them.

• 1.7 Explain how to measure the effectiveness of a digital voucher campaign

You could measure the effectiveness by looking at statistics of how many people used the voucher to buy your product or service compared to how many you sold without the voucher offer. 

If they were promoted via social media you could look at the engagements on the posts and comments. You could look at the sales to see if there was an increase.

Be able to plan the implementation of Social Networking site advertising campaigns for Marketing purposes

• 2.1 Explain the factors to consider when creating Social Networking site adverts

The first point you need to consider is who is your targeted to audience. Who are you advertising to. For example, this could be young people, parents, specialists or groups. You need to use a appropriate social networking site. For example if you were trying to promote something to young people you probably wouldn't want to advertise it on LinkedIn. You need to create appropriate call to actions. These are good to get peoples attention. You will also need to consider your time constraint. For example if you were advertising a event, you don’t want to keep advertising it after the event has happened. You will need to come up with a design for the adverts you are going to post. You need to know what content you are actually going to post, such as details, images and contact information. You will need to consider your budget for advertising and look at the available advertising methods and what are the best ways to spend your money on. Finally you will need to consider multi- channel campaign targeting and analytics. This means how you will get in contact with people via websites, retail stores, direct mail, email, mobile etc and how you will track it. It is important to use analytics so you can see if your campaign is working and who it is appealing to. 

• 2.2 Justify the use of Social Networking site advertising campaigns.

Social networking site campaigns are a easy and free way to raise awareness of your product or service. You can interact with people through social media and it is easy to share and get the word out about your company and product.  

Social media is a good way to gain new customers as you can reach new audiences and interact with people all over the world. 

It is a good way to keep your current customers as you can keep them up to date with news and offers through social media platforms. You can also respond to any questions or complaints through social media.

You can gain a lot more traffic to your website as you can post about a new offer or item and people will click the link because its fast and easy. This will increase your click through to website. 

You can change your company perception through social media through your branding and the content you post. For example, when DCAS first opened it was seen as a music centre and a recording studio whereas now we post more content than music related posts, such as art, photography and film.

It’s also good for social media amplification. A advertising campaign will help you gain more interactions as people will want to share the new product or find out more. People will follow, like or share your posts to keep up to date or just because they like it and wasn't to share it to others.

• 2.3 Explain the importance of identifying the required outcomes from the Social Networking advertising campaigns

By identifying the required outcomes you will know what you need to aim for. For example, if you want to gain a new audience, once you identify the audience, you can plan your campaign around the audience. Such as if it was aimed at young people, the best time to post on social media would be between 7-9 am and 4-8pm. It will also help you tailor your campaign to the correct target audience. By identifying what you want to achieve from the campaigns, such as increase of sales, more interactions etc, you can tailor your campaign to achieve these goals. For example if your main goal was to achieve more sales of a specific product you would post frequently about it or run a special deal to appeal to more people.

• 2.4 Explain the advantages of creating more than one advertising campaign running in parallel on the same social networking site.

A advantage of creating more than one social media campaign is that it gives your social media feeds a variety of posts rather than every post is from same campaign. This will stop people getting bored of seeing the same posts over and over again and not unfollowing your social media pages.

By running more than one campaign at a time this will motivate consumers to connect with your company in more than one way and motivates valuable engagement. It could also increase sales as your company could be promoting more than one product or service at a time.

You could run two campaigns on the same site that are target at two different audiences, this way you will reach more audiences and your content will still be relevant.

• 2.5 Explain why a Social Networking advertising campaign might fail

When you are promoting a product or service through a social media campaign, you will be posting the same link every time. Most people who see the tweet will probably click the link once from all the posts they see. This will result in less click throughs if users see the advert too often.

A campaign could also fail if it results in a high cost because your adverts aren’t targeted appropriately at the right audience. A key point is planning who your target audience are and how you are going to target your posts appropriately.

It could also result in less customer loyalty if campaign is not designed for retention.

Also depending on market conditions. If there are similar products or services being sold at the same time you are trying to promote your product, it’s going to be hard to compete with other companies.

Another reason a campaign could fail is legal conditions such as copyright infringement,  misleading conduct or advertising standards. For example when you post any professional advertising the Advertising Standard Bureau basically determines what content can be an advertising or marketing communication. They have codes and guidelines you have to keep in line with. For example they govern the use of strong language, the portrayal of sex, nudity, violence or any content that could offend.

• 2.6 Plan parallel Social Networking site advertising campaigns for a business

The best two social media platforms for DCAS are FaceBook and Twitter. 

The first step to planning a advertising campaign is to create social media objectives and goals. The objectives and goals mentioned in 1.5. 

Next you should choose what networks best meet your social media goals, get social media inspiration from industry leaders, competitors or clients, Create a content plan, Test, finally evaluate and adjust your social media marketing plan.

Facebook and Twitter

• 2.7 Explain methods of monitoring Social Networking site advertising campaigns

You can monitor your campaigns by keeping a record of the daily/weekly analytics such as how many likes/retweets your posts got and have many followers you gained or lost. 

You can also see on Facebook analytics the  number of clicks your links received.

You can track your hashtags and see who used the hashtag and how many people used it. By tracking the use of the hashtag you can judge campaign popularity. 

• 2.8 Identify changes that might be required for a Social Networking advertising campaign based on monitoring results.

By monitoring the results you could identify changes such as the times you post, your target audience and content. For example if your posts  were aimed a other organisations you most likely want to post between 9am-12pm and 1pm-5pm as these are typical office hours whereas if it was targeted at young people you would post 7am-9pm, 12pm-1pm and 6-9pm when they aren't at school, college etc. You will be able to see changes in the amount of interactions you campaign attracts depending on if your are posting the correct content at a reasonable time.

Understand the use of promotional campaigns on social networking sites

• 3.1 Define promotional campaigns on social networking sites.

There are many different types of campaigns that are designed to have specific outcomes such as to raise awareness, to target existing customers, new customers or just to send their content viral.

The first type of campaign could be discount coupons. These are good to gain new customers and for returning customers.

Special offer codes are codes that customers can enter into a promotional box on a website to get a discount on their purchase. This could be a percentage off purchase, free shipping etc.
Another promotional campaign can be running competitions. This is good to gain more interactions and likes etc on your social media platforms. A competition could be a if someone likes and shares your post they could be picked at random to win one of your products or services.

• 3.2 Compare different types of promotional campaigns on social networking sites

A competition campaign is a great way to improve interactions, followers and shares of your posts because everyone likes free things. The people sharing your campaign might not know what your company does but because they want to win the competition they will like your page anyway. Whereas a coupon campaign might not increase social media followers but could result in a rise of sales. People who see a coupon post might tag a friend to share the discount with but not necessarily like the page. They will just use the coupon to purchase your product or service.

• 3.3 Explain why to use promotional campaigns on social networking sites

Promotional campaigns are a great way to increase sales, increase social media interactions and followers and to raise brand awareness. Also social media is a free and easy way to reach new audiences. Millions of people around the world use social media every day so it’s easy to get your product or service out there if you market it right. Promotional campaigns are a good way to push a specific product or service and there are a variety of different and creative ways to do it. 

• 3.4 Explain the limitations imposed by social networking sites on promotional campaigns

There are many limitations of using social networking sites for promotional campaigns. For example one of the most frustrating limitations to anyone who uses twitter is the word count limitation of 140 characters. This is roughly a sentence and if you include a image, video or if you tag someone that character count gets even more limited.

Another limitation is the Facebook image size. A lot of companies hire professional photographers and videographers to capture content for their promotional campaigns but just about all images or videos that are uploaded to Facebook lose a lot of the quality because Facebook has its own image compressor.

Another limitation is that you can’t choose who does and doesn't see your posts. For example if you wanted to market something to professionals, the likely hood of only professionals seeing the post is like zero to none. 

Also the twitter video length limit of 20 seconds. Anyone who are using videos as part of a social media campaign have to be short and to the point because they only have 20 seconds.

• 3.5 Explain how to comply with restrictions on promotional campaigns on social networking sites

A competition campaign is one of the most popular campaigns on social media site at the moment. Facebook is a powerful way to get your brand known and increase engagement but Facebook has strict rules for what campaigns you can and cannot administer and promote on their platform.

These rules include that Facebook offers must be available for a limited time, you may only run an offer if you are the merchant for or the manufacturer of the product or service you are promoting. Also you are responsible for ensuring that your offer complies with these terms and all applicable laws, rules and regulations, if you use Facebook to communicate or administer a promotion (ex: a contest or sweepstakes), you are responsible for the lawful operation of that promotion, and acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook and many more rules and regulations you must follow. 

https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php#promotionsguidelines

Twitter also have promotional guidelines such as to discourage the creation of multiple accounts, to discourage posting the same Tweet repeatedly, to ask users to include an @reply to you in their update so you can see all the entries and encourage the use of topics relevant to the contest and other rules they ask you to abide by.

https://support.twitter.com/articles/68877

• 3.6 Explain the factors which could cause negative PR when running a promotional campaign

The first factor which will give your company negative PR is vote rigging and unfair preferences. If you are running a competition you should give all entrees a fair chance of winning. 

Also if your campaign uses incorrect content such as the wrong time, the wrong price or even a false image it would be a breach of the trade description act and someone could sue your company resulting in bad press.

Understand current national and international legal and organisational guidelines for a social networking advertising/promotional campaign

• 4.1 Explain the current national and international legal and organisational guidelines relating to  the use of social networking site adverts.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) regulate all the advertising and promotional material in the UK.  

Current national and international legal and organisational guidelines.

1a) Marketing to minors;

The ASA will ban any advertising material in the UK that could result in a young persons physical, mental or moral harm. Your content must be relevant and age appropriate.

1b) Alcohol;

The ASA’s rules are based upon evidence that points to a link between alcohol advertising and people’s awareness and attitudes to drinking. All alcohol ads must not be directed at people under 18 or have any content that is likely to appeal to young people by reflecting youth culture or by linking alcohol with irresponsible behaviour, social success or sexual attractiveness.

1c) religion;

The ASA’s rules around advertising religion is there aren't any rules that you can’t reference religion but advertisers should avoid using images or symbols central to a faith particularly if it’s to promote something that runs contrary to a belief or practice. This is to avoid any offensive of inappropriate adverts.

1d) decency;

All the rules in place for decency is the avoid causing offence on the grounds of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or disability. All content will be judged on the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards of decency.

This also involves nudity as this can cause serious or widespread offence. The ASA are more tolerant if the nudity is relevant to the advertised product. If a image is not considered explicit, the ASA can ban a advert if nudity and sex had no relevance to the product. 

1e) discrimination;

ASA rules include that advertising must not prejudice respect for human dignity, it must not contain any material likely to incite hatred based on race, sex, religion or nationality, it must not include or promote any discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, nationality, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation, and advertising must not encourage behaviour prejudicial to health or safety.

• 4.2 Explain the importance of following current national and international legal and organisational guidelines for a social networking advertising/promotional campaign. 

It is important to follow current national and international guidelines because if your content breaks any rules of the advertising standards the content will be taken down and your company could be fined. This could result in a loss of money and sales rather than an increase. It can also give your company negative PR.

 

Facts from;

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/how-to-develop-a-successful-digital-coupon-campaign/

https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php#promotionsguidelines

https://support.twitter.com/articles/68877