The proliferation of digital technology gives businesses a diverse new set of tools to reach, engage, monitor, and respond to consumers to an unprecedented degree. The aggregated and voluminous digital data can also be leveraged to better target specific consumer segments. Following the Digital Marketing Channels: The Landscape, this course aims to give you a deeper understanding of core processes of planning a digital marketing campaign and the role of various digital channels in an integrated marketing communication.
Interview: Steve Raquel, President at IOVMedia & Adjunct Lecturer
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From the course by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Digital Media and Marketing Strategies
970 ratings
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
970 ratings
Course 5 of 7 in the Specialization Digital Marketing
From the lesson
Social and Email Marketing
In this module, you will learn the best ways to engage with audiences on social channels, social media strategy creation and execution, how to plan and execute an email campaign, and effective campaign measurement.
Meet the Instructors
Mike YaoAssociate Professor of Digital Media
Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising
Raquel: I own my own digital shop,
social media shop called IOV media,
up in Chicagoland area.
We work with large and small businesses to use social media wisely.
I'm also adjunct lecturer here down the University of Illinois,
teaching a wide gambit of
classes both in the college of media and the college of business.
I've been doing this for 10 years,
and social media continues to evolve.
The platforms evolve, what we used to
really depend on Facebook as being the
primary still is but now there are things that are emerging,
it continues to evolve.
Every time I talk to a client,
it's always important to understand where they're going to be strong in.
And so, some B2B,
they may not want to be on Facebook;
some B2C, may not want to be on Snapchat.
Every client has a different reason for being.
And so, it's always important to sit down, understand their why,
understand their brand and then understand kind of what are they trying to do?
Some of them are lead generators.
I have number of moving companies or lead generators.
They may be getting people into their stores.
Some of them are just awareness.
And so, each one of them has to be matched up correctly in
terms of how best to get their story out there and define their audience.
And so, some have no audience,
so it's very much start from scratch.
So, from have an okay audience,
but haven't really done a very good job in tapping them.
So, for me, a lot of it is there's a lot of front end work that needs to be done,
to understand the brand,
understand where they are and then understand what platforms that make the most sense.
But before I do any typical tactical things,
to get the word out on them,
what I always try to do is I always try to do what's called a baseline.
And baseline is just saying,
"Where are we right now?"
It's always important to go in this day and age,
"What does your brand look like on social media?
What's your website look like?
Is it effective?
What's your reputation online?
How many followers on Facebook?
Where you're getting the most engagement?
And what are people saying out there?"
When you get all those things,
you have something that you can work with.
And sometimes with some of my clients,
it's, "You know what?
Did you even know yet a Yelp account?"
And realize that you haven't done anything with your Yelp account in years.
A great example is I worked with an ophthalmologist who
had 10 different locations as the Chicagoland area,
and he called me, and he said, "You know what?
I'm not getting a lot of business."
And so, we looked at everything and I went to his Yelp account and realized
that he had some negative reviews from 11 years prior,
he'd never responded to.
And so, he said,
"I never even knew I had a Yelp account."
And so, we got control of them,
started to respond back, and try to resolve some of the older ones,
and all of a sudden, he started getting uptick in terms of business because finally,
when we did that, we didn't do any other advertising,
we didn't do anything else we just fixed what
was already there and started moving forward.
So, once we got the best baseline,
then we start with the content strategy.
We start to go, "What do we want to talk about?
Who are you as a brand?
What are you trying to achieve?
What are different ways we're going to do this?
Is it going to be a blog?
Is it going to be sharing information?"
I always talk to my clients,
whether they're brand personalities or they're businesses,
is that there's two ways to go on social media: you're either going to be
a distributor of information or you're going to be a creator of information.
So, a creator of information is somebody
who makes original content and shares it out there.
They are the ones that start the conversation and is owned by them.
Those are the Perez Hiltons of the world,
those are the Jen Hatmakers of the world.
There's all these different type of people out there,
who when they start the conversation,
everybody goes out and responds back to that person.
They're the kind of the authority.
The other one is they're the distributor of information.
Those are the people who, let's say,
you are interested in 17th century art,
but you don't have the time to go read all of
the different things out in the world about 17th century art,
but there is one person who acts as that for you.
They're the person whose passion point is to read all the things that you do,
that you like, but then they interpret
that world for you in a way that you go, "You know what?
Out of anybody, I'm going to talk to this person or I'm going to
follow this person because this person is that person."
But that person is, they're not only creating
content but they're also finding stuff and sharing it.
They're very much like a yahoo.com or a Huffington
Post where they don't necessarily create the information,
but they find what's important to their audience and they
become the funnel which the audience receives.
So, with the content strategy,
there are all different ways of doing that.
Once we have that piece out,
then I work with them on a process of really working on how to respond to
the people who are starting to see stuff and then are asking questions back to them.
That's the other issue I find with social media with a lot of my clients
that people ask a lot of questions just like the person I told you about,
but they don't realize, "You know what?
Someone just sent a message on Facebook. I didn't even realize it there."
But we try to make sure all of those things if we create it,
there's a process in order
to make sure that there is a response mechanism or a reporting mechanism, so we know.
Once that's all done,
we really work on kind of the analytics and the reporting and just saying, "Okay.
We were at the baseline, now we're here.
How well did we do?"
And then that helps us to get,
that's the new baseline.
And then we move forward.
Now, that could happen- when I first worked with my clients,
those baselines change regularly;
but as they start to get into good groove,
then we move them out,
3 months, 6 months, to a year.
Once they start to understand how the whole process goes,
then things start to work really well.
For a company, whether a B2B or B2C,
the first thing they should do is be involved in LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the natural connector into their professional workplace.
And so, I would not always say, "Go to Facebook."
Even though Facebook is where the majority of the world is,
it's where you need to connect with the people that make the most sense for you.
And LinkedIn is where professionals connect.
And LinkedIn should be the place that a company should
start with a company page and then make
sure that all of their employees are
connected to that company page through their profiles.
That way, at a minimum,
there's some legitimacy and how that company will look in search,
natural search, organic search.
And we're really moving into what we would call the social recommendation stage,
in that when you and I grew up,
if let's say, I need to move,
I know my neighbor moved, and so I'd go down to my neighbor and say, "Hey Chuck.
Who'd you move with?" "Oh, I move with ABC Mover."
"Great." And then all of a sudden, I'd pick up the phone,
call ABC Mover or I'd go into the Yellow Pages and see the biggest ad,
that's how the majority of those most companies
would get their businesses is through the biggest add.
And so, back when we were growing up before the Internet,
we had what we would call limited trusted relationships.
And so, limited trust relationships meant, "You know what?
I'm going to trust those
closest to me that I know and that's how I'm going to make decision."
Today, with social, it's flipped completely.
We trust people we don't know.
We'll go to Amazon reviews.
We'll go to Yelp reviews.
We'll go anywhere to find the information we want,
and we'll go and do all this research before we even contact that company,
but the company should be legitimate;
but a lot of it happens, contacting a company,
there's a lot of work that happens beforehand through social.
So, let me give you an example,
I am looking for a new pest control company in my neighbor.
Just cancelled the first one.
And you know what?
There's tons of them out there.
And so, I could go on the Internet,
but there's going to be 2 million examples or 2 million results.
I don't want to go through all that.
I'm not going to go through the first one. So, what did I do,
I went to my friends on Facebook and I said,
"Hey, I need a new pest control.
Who can give me an example or who can give me a recommendation?"
All of a sudden, I'm going through getting recommendations,
getting the same one, 2 or 3 times,
then I go to the company.
Now, the company has a bad website,
I'm going to the next website.
If the website doesn't load very well,
I'm still going to go to the next one.
If there has to have,
once I have made my decision,
that company has to have some sort of legitimacy for me to
take that next step.
One of the things I think is really important is
that in social media we've talked about the 90,
10 rule, probably 95,
5 rule, and that is,
when your business on social media, I would say about 90,
95 percent of the conversations you have should be non-sales related,
unless there is a consumable that people you'll know we'll come back for it,
but as a company you don't want to go out there and
the first thing you say is "Hey, buy my stuff."
All of a sudden people feel like are you here do is to sell.
So, in a lot of ways you're building the trust in that relationship,
and let's say you've done that, now,
we want to do a coordinated campaign,
you really have to look at your overall brand objectives,
and then you have to look at what platforms makes sense,
and then you have to have
similar executions but related to the platforms that you're on.
So, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram or probably a little bit more video-based,
you can have a little bit more engagement on Facebook,
Twitter can be informational, and it can be multiple times a day.
All these different strategies,
there's different times of the day that you can
post that make the most sense to get the most engagement.
So, we can spend a lot of time like going into the nitty-gritty, but at the end
of the day the one thing out of all of this that I always try to tell my clients is,
however you are trying to do the campaign,
you have to have the similar, what I would call, flagpole.
Where is everybody going back to?
To some it could be the website,
it could be go to the Facebook page,
it could be fill out a form.
Whatever that is, all the campaigns need to be coordinated in
the same way to make sure everything gets driven back to the same point.
But, you know what? That video that you're doing,
for example, for Facebook could be 2 minutes long,
it could easily 2 minutes long.
However, on Instagram you have to cut that down and less than a minute,
on Snapchat it has to be less than 10 seconds.
So, you have to look at
slightly different approach strategies, but you can still use the same type of content,
you just have to package it in different ways.
I would probably unfortunately say there is no golden nugget on that one.
It is one that I've always had the long game involved.
The long game is really your building and engagement model that is
long-term that over time creates not only engagement,
but a sense of loyalty to the brand.
Where in some respects,
it's a little bit like advocacy,
and that you don't have to have
the largest fan base but what you really want is you want the people who
are going to go and represent your brand for you
because those are the most inexpensive people in the world.
In my mind in terms of the ROI,
a lot of it is, if you know your brand well,
and you know your message well,
and if you do the right content strategy,
good content, content will still be king at the end of the day.
So, a good content strategy in my mind generates interests that gets people back.
If you just create content and just get it out there,
people will understand that.
But you and I when we're on social media,
we want our natural desire
is to share the things that are important to us with people who we care about.
So, when we see something online,
we want to share that.
So, some of it can be a great sale on an airline.
It could be, I've been doing a lot for my kid who's going to the college and
so I'm sharing information about selecting
colleges and merit money and scholarships and stuff like that.
So, good content shared in
the right way with the right audience will be shared over and over again and grab people.
So, in terms of the ROI once you have them,
you have to be able to figure out okay,
what do we want them to do?
Is great, they've shared it,
they liked it, there's a lot of people liking our page but what do you want them to do?
You kind of have that,
you got them in the door so tell them what to do.
So, for many of them,
where I see the breakdown is their content strategy is
about the information, but it doesn't serve
a purpose to help them drive them somewhere that they need to go.
Unfortunately, I think the people that we kind of
relate to in terms of when we think about influence and marketing are the Kardashians,
people who, they share something everybody buys it, it falls out.
That is the half of 1% of influencers.
There is again, remember when I was talking earlier
about you are either creators or your distributors.
Influencers for many are either one of those two,
but what they've done really well is they've earned the trust of the people they follow.
So, they are in a sense the modern spokespeople and that they represent a point of view,
a particular brand, a particular way of doing
that people that say I can agree with this person,
I can agree with what this person's view is and you know what,
I really like that person and so what he says,
I'm going to follow.
So, to an extent, yeah influencers work.
It has to work in a very natural authentic way.
That's the hard part is that when it's not natural and authentic,
people see that through that very quickly.
But I think there's still need for influencers,
paid influencers versus unpaid,
it kind of depends on what the I guess with how it can work if you pay them,
but it's done in the right way,
sometimes it can work.
If it's unpaid, it's more authentic like okay,
I love Nutter Butters and they're not doing it for anything, that works too.
But I don't think influencers are going away,
I think they're always going to be a part of kind of the way that we market.
What I have seen which has been interesting is
what we consider as an influencer has changed.
So, I'm seeing much more younger influencers,
influencers who have less credibility on a particular area than
something like a viral video or what they were in the right place at the right time.
We've a fixed influencer in a different way.
So, the way my kids look at influencers are different than what you and I do.
So, they're taking advantage of it but it's
not necessarily how I would necessary use them as a company.
There is an investment cost,
there's an investment opportunity and content.
I create content all the time for
my clients but there's a point at which I can't create anymore,
in terms of I'm not the client,
I don't have those assets.
One of the things that we're really trying to work
with is work with each of our clients to create,
not only create their own assets but to utilize the assets they currently have.
So, we've kind of changed it in a way to lessen the cost
and really look at what we call employee advocacy and saying you know what,
for a company has 300 people,
maybe 500 people, hey,
you may have taken video of something that's interesting,
you may have a picture that may be of interest,
you may have known about an award that somebody is in.
So now, we push the responsibility out into and share amongst the employees,
not only to create those assets and to create and
generate the assets so that cost isn't coming to me but also
it engages the employees to then often support
the efforts because it's now "Oh I'm the person who shared that video,
oh I'm the person who won that award or oh my friend is the one that's being considered."
So now, that content strategy is now much more
holistic and now everybody buys into it and so it becomes an easier like,
it becomes an easier share,
it becomes easier to create.
Now I'm not the one holding all the cards, per se, but now
we're sharing that responsibility together and I think
that's what we're going to see is that companies are
not going to always outsource the information,
but they're going to find a way to rely on the employees to create those things.
We're moving from polished social media to much more authentic social media.
Rough, authentic, easy, I am what I am,
and employees can do that where they don't feel like,
"I got to set this up,
I have to do all these things."
When we first look at social,
we saw the power of being able to reach a lot of people just with these platforms.
Now, people are using social
more in community and they're actually breaking into smaller communities,
and they want more authenticity.
So, for companies, companies can't just go in there and
kind of throw things out and hope that people are going to react,
but people want to have that relationship.
So absolutely, I think it's important for companies
to think less about selling and more about being part of that engagement,
being part of that conversation and coming alongside and saying,
"Hey, I know what you're feeling,
or we've dealt with that too," every once in while going,
"By the way our product can help out in that way.
You don't need it right now? That's fine,
let's keep on talking."
Remember, the whole concept of social is
engagement between two people who have something in
common or want to have something in common.
So, moving forward I think that will still be
the case and authenticity will always be a part of that.
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