Building a Social Media Marketing Campaign

It’s the New Year and you have a new marketing budget to work with. Your boss has been catching up on his business reading over the holiday and is all excited about something called Social Media Marketing and MySpace. He or she will come bounding into your office this week (if they have not already been in) and tell you that you should be doing some advertising on this social media thing. So where do you begin?

What is the goal of the campaign?
The first question to ask is what is the goal of the social media marketing campaign or to put it another way, how will you boss measure the success of the campaign? Some typical social media marketing goals are:

• Increase Brand awareness
• Increase customer loyalty
• Increase newsletter sign-ups or increase number of email addresses collected
• Increase traffic to web site

Who is the Target Audience?
The second question to ask is who is the target audience that you are trying to reach as that determines what social networks you will be targeting? Different social sites attract different demographics, so you can increase the likelihood of success by correctly identifying the correct social networks to target.

For example if you are targeting the over 50 market then you will be much more successful on MySpace than on a younger site than Xanga.com. The reason is that there are almost as many over 55 year olds using MySpace as there are teenagers (11.9% to 11%)!

If you target audience is the Bubble Generation then Facebook (or MySpace) is a good choice. The bubble generation being that very desired group of consumers between the age of 15 and 29.

For the African American audience then Black Planet would be the primary social network to focus on, and if your target demographic is female between the ages of 20-40 then Kaboodle is the site for you.

How long will the campaign last?
How long will your social media campaign run? The answer to this is obviously dependant on resources (money, time, personnel, etc), but the length on the campaign will have a direct impact on the type of social medial tools that you will use. The most successful campaigns are those campaigns that have a distinct length and end point, with measurable milestones along the way. Open-ended campaigns with no end date, or campaigns that end when the money runs our are rarely successful.

How will you engage your audience?
The final question is how will you engage your target audience? What tools will you reach your audience? Some typical social media tools are blogs, MySpace or profile Pages, YouTube videos, advertising/sponsorship, etc. There are pros and cons to all of these tools, and they each can be successful with the right campaign. You just have to make sure that the goal and the tactics aligned to meet that goal are feasible.

For example if your goal is to increase brand awareness and traffic to your web site from social sites over the next 30 days, then engaging your customers one-on-one in forums is probably not the best tactic to use. Sponsorship or online advertising is much more suited for that sort of high-impact, short campaign.