How much should you spend on social media marketing?

Courtesy of Farmhouse Creative

Next week we are responsible for submitting a digital paper reflecting the engagement performance of our blogs on different social media channels. This weeks readings were designed to assist us with examining our performance.  60 Second Marketer posted a blog titled “An In-Depth Guide on How to Calculate the ROI [return on investment] of a Social Media Campaign” and the goal is to get the reader to understand how to use a “customer lifetime value as the foundation for calculating the ROI of a social media campaign” (Turner, 2013).  The blog states that while most people understand that ROI is important, only 10% of businesses can tell if their social media campaigns had a positive ROI. In this blog we are given a simple definition of CLV [customer lifetime value] “the amount of revenue a typical customer will generate for your company during the customer’s engagement with your brand” (Turner, 2013). 

This week’s blog post is going to contextualize the ROI calculation process, as it is something we should all have an understanding of. Below is our hypothetical scenario [similar one found on the blog].

You work for MAC Cosmetics. Your average customer spends $150 per month on cosmetics [a girl can dream] and shops with you for 5 years. We must first calculate the CLV:

$150/ month x 12 months x 5 years = $9,000 CLV [this is insane but go with it].

So now that we know that the average new customer is worth $9,000- we need to determine how much money we should spend to acquire each new customer. 60 Second Marketer says this number is called the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and the general rule of thumb is that the CAC should be 10% of your CLV.

10% of $9,000 = $900.

We should look to spend no more than $900 acquiring each new customer [while 10% is a good rule-of-thumb/ place to start, you obviously want to bump that number down as much as possible].

Now we need to look at our total marketing and social media budgets. I’m going to pick easy numbers for the sake of simplicity.

Marketing budget: $9million ($9 million / $900 acquisition = $10,000 acquisitions)

Social media budget: $900,000 [ideally 10% of the marketing budget]

SO- if your social media budget is 10% of your marketing budget, you need for your social media sites to bring in 10% of business.

If your total marketing spend is $9 million dollars,  you should have 10,000 acquisitions. If your total social media spend is $900,000 [10% of budget] you should have 1,000 acquisitions from social media sites [10% of total acquisitions].

60 Second Marketer uses an average of 1% conversion rate. Meaning, of every 100 people who make it to MAC Cosmetics’ landing page from a social media site, 1 person will convert.

See hub- and- spoke wheel below.

Courtesy of 60 Second Marketer 

If we can expect 1 out of every 100 customers to convert, we will need 100,000 people to visit the landing page from social media sites, in order to get 1,000 new customers, in order to justify the money spent trying to acquire said customers through social media sites.

To review we already know our CLV ($9,000) and we want our CAC to be 10% of that- $900.

This means we can spend $900,000 to get 100,000 people to our landing page through social media sites. If we do that, and 1% of them convert (1,000) then our CAC is $900.

Once you have your math figured out, the rest is monitoring activity through social media sites.

Action items are to:

• Review the math above- perhaps run through it with your own scenarios to make sure you understand it.
• Review the sections in 60 Second Marketer’s blog titled “How to Identify Social Media Leads” and “Increasing Customer Lifetime Value
• Provide some recommendations that you would give to a company who wants to increase their CLV
• Speak to any social media monitoring tools you’ve used and provide some insight to the group
• Scott (2015) talks about search engine marketing (SEO) – how can utilizing SEO help increase ROI / boost overall social media marketing & send more people to the landing page?

Thanks everyone!

Turner, J. (2013). An In-Depth Guide on Calculating the ROI of a Social Media Campaign. Retrieved February 28, 2016, from http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2013/11/17/in-depth-guide-calculating-social-media-roi/

Are you socially secure?

Image courtesy of http://smbp.uwaterloo.ca

 

Social media has been pretty predominant in much of my life. In middle school and part of high school, Myspace was very popular. In late high school into early college, Facebook became really popular. In mid college Twitter and Instagram became popular. In a way I feel like social media has evolved with much of my generation, and I can see this as a blessing and a curse.

What this means is that many of us have been on social media for a long time, throughout many phases of our lives. Things that are important to us and spark our interest in middle school, high school, college, graduate school, and in our adult lives vary greatly.  Just think about the app Timehop, or the “On This Day” button on Facebook- these things show you what you posted on a given day since your social media accounts started. I know that I cannot speak for everyone, but I am sure there is a post or two from your past that make you think “ehh maybe I should delete that.”

I changed my name on Facebook and increased my privacy settings in college, with equal motives of protecting my identity and ensuring professionalism upon entering the “real world.” My generation is huge on taking photos and posting status updates with location check-ins, which can be pretty dangerous in terms of security. It is so easy to gather pertinent information about people these days. As time has passed, Facebook has really become more of a way to keep tabs on my family members and some people that I don’t get to see very often. I would currently consider myself lightly active on Facebook- and more heavily active on Instagram. I don’t post much personal information on either site so I do not have concerns about personal information being leaked.  

For a new person starting out on social media, I would encourage heavy privacy settings at least in the beginning while they’re figuring out how maneuver the internet. I think adults who are entering the world of social media would approach it a little more responsibly. Social media safety assemblies and presentations should be mandatory for students to warn them of the dangers of social media – both to their safety and to their professionalism down the road.  

As we know, there is a thin line between posting enough information to create your personal brand and putting yourself at risk for security threats. I think in terms of brand it is important to post content related to your brand- articles, etc. But I think its possible to post information about yourself and authentically show who you are without giving too much away. One way to ensure your privacy and safety is to make sure you have very secure passwords on all accounts – social media or not.

Puppymonkeybaby

 #Puppymonkeybaby

Mountain Dew’s Kickstart commercial that aired during the Super Bowl sparked a lot of attention on social media. The commercial shows a fictional character called ”Puppymonkeybaby” interacting with a group of guys repeating the words “puppy monkey baby” over and over while encouraging them to consume Kickstart. It can be found here.

Mountain Dew tweeted “Mtn Dew #Kickstart is three awesome things combined: Dew. Juice. Caffeine. Create your own trifecta of awesome now (Twitter.com). They combined three things to make Kickstart, so they combined three things to create Puppymonkeybaby, the star of the commercial.        

Kerpin says “in order to win your customers mindshare now, your marketing cant be solely about your brand, or products, or features and benefits anymore. More than anything, you have to get your customers talking” (Kerpin, 2015 pg. 46).

Mountain Dew seemed to take this concept pretty literally. The commercial itself didn’t focus much on the product, more so on a concept that combines three things that people love seeing in a Super Bowl commercial: puppies, monkeys and babies.

Mountain Dew took to Twitter and Facebook immediately with the hashtag “#Puppymonkeybaby” and interacted with consumers throughout the entire Super Bowl. Mountain Dew is continuing to interact with consumers on social media and seems to be personally replying to comments and tweets. They seem to be prolonging the campaign by responding to comments asking consumers to “send us a DM for a surprise” (Facebook.com).  Since they don’t tell us what the surprise is, one may be inclined to direct message them to find out. They have also recreated the Puppymonkey doing different things and have even made a video showing the typical reaction to the weekend being over, making Puppymonkeybaby more than a character in a Super Bowl commercial. 

It seems like they are trying to keep Puppymonkeybaby alive for as long as possible, and while some people might like that, others can’t stand it. An article on the Washington Post by Maura Judkis says that while Mountain Dew is not the first company to “riff on the fact that the best Super Bowl commercials contain either a puppy, a monkey or a baby,” they are the first to put them to create the “horrifying monster called Puppymonkeybaby” (Judkis, 2016). Kerpin says “will the recipients of this message truly find it of value, or will they find it annoying and disruptive?” (Kerpin, 2015 pg. 41). This commercial seemed to get split reviews- those who like it really like it and those who don’t, hate it.

References

Judkis, M. (2016, February 7). Mountain Dew’s puppymonkeybaby Super Bowl commercial will haunt your dreams. Retrieved February 08, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/02/07/mountain-dews-puppymonkeybaby-super-bowl-commercial-will-haunt-your-dreams/

Kerpen, D. (2015). Likeable social media (2nd ed.). New York : McGraw Hill Education

Super Bowl Commercials. (2016). #Hashtags Matter- Top Social Media Campaigns of SB 2015. 

Retrieved from http://www.superbowlcommercials2016.org/best-commercials/best-social-campaigns-super-bowl-2015/

Marriott on the Move

 Marriott on the Move

David Scott says a blog is “a special kind of website that is maintained by a person who is passionate about the subject and wants the world to know about it” (Scott, 2015, pg. 224).  Who better to run Marriott’s “Marriott on the Move” blog than former CEO and executive chairman/ chairman of the board, Bill Marriott? Mr. Marriott’s blog follows many of the guidelines David Scott set forth in The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The most recent updates and blog posts are at the top of the site, with options to search keywords in the search bar, and listen to audio versions of the blogs. The blog is easily accessible from the Marriott’s homepage by clicking on the “About Marriott” tab in the menu. Marriott’s homepage and hotel search options are also easy to access from Mr. Marriott’s blog. Scott says that “the look and feel of the blog could be complementary to your corporate design guidelines, but not identical” (Scott, 2015, pg. 300). “Marriott on the Move” shares the same color scheme and feel as the corporate website without mimicking the exact layout and corporate feel. It is evident that the branding remains consistent but they are not the exact same site. Bill Marriott really lets his personality show through his blog, another recommendation of Scott’s, and is verbal about his loyalty and dedication to both his employees and his consumers.

Mr. Marriott’s blog posts allow for people to post comments in response to the content. There is a section on his blog titled “Tag Cloud” where keywords are tagged so the reader can jump to blogs surrounding certain topics- which likely also helps with SEO. Scott says “Blogs are terrific way for marketers to tell authentic stories to their buyers” (Scott, 2015, pg 288) and it seems as though Mr. Marriott’s authenticity shows through his blog. In response to Mr. Marriott’s January 4^th blogpost about how he wants to help the world in 2016, Fred Cronk posted “Mr. Marriott, you're blogs rock. They are always meaningful, upbeat, and sincere. Keep on rockin Bill” (Cronk, 2016).  Mr. Marriott’s human interest pieces and inspirational posts really help market the brand in an authentic way. I overall think this blog adheres to Scott’s criteria defined in The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

Employee Run Blogs

“Rather than focus on putting guidelines on blogs…it is better to focus on guiding the way people behave” (Scott, 2015, pg. 95). Adidas is one company who abides by Scott’s recommendation to allow employees to engage in blogs and social media posts on behalf of the company. Adidas calls its blog “The Adidas Group Blog” and its goal is to give the consumer personal insights into its business in sports (Adidas.com). According to Adidas Group’s Chief Corporate Communications Officer Jan Runao, “this blog’s objective is to give you a personal and holistic picture of the company behind the brands” (Runao, blog.adidas-group.com). Runao claims that employees provide personal insights into adidas’s business in sports, but also carefully mentions this disclaimer: “the postings on this site are the author’s own thoughts and do not necessarily represent the position, strategy or opinions of the adidas Group and its brands” (Runau, blog.adidas-group.com).

Adidas advocates an “open communication culture” and encourages consumers to be a part of it (Runao, blog.adidas-group.com). Adidas also posts the Adidas Group Blog guidelines which very clearly dictate important instructions to the bloggers about how to conduct themselves.

I think giving employees the freedom to run a company blog adds a lot of authenticity to the content, and also tells the employees that they are valued and trusted to represent the company. This likely boosts morale. However I also think it can be potentially dangerous. Having multiple people post content can add diversity and flare, but could also make it difficult to maintain consistent messaging and could end up breaching privacy and security policies. I think as long as the employees are properly trained and given guidelines- taught what to do in case of a mistake, taught how to appropriately represent the company, etc.- it could work really well for some companies. It comes down to the individual design and culture of the company.

 

 

References:

 

About Marriott Hotels | Marriott Corporate Business Information. (n.d.). Retrieved February 01, 2016, from http://www.marriott.com/marriott/aboutmarriott.mi

Adidas Group blog guidelines - adidas Group blog. (n.d.). Retrieved February 01, 2016, from http://blog.adidas-group.com/guidelines/

Cronk, F., Jr. (2016, January 05). What's the Big Idea? - Marriott on the Move. Retrieved February 01, 2016, from http://www.blogs.marriott.com/marriott-on-the-move/2016/01/whats-the-big-idea.html

J. W. "Bill" Marriott, Jr. Quotes [Photograph found in Culture, AZ Quotes]. (n.d.). Retrieved February 2, 2016, from http://www.azquotes.com/author/23041-J_W_Bill_Marriott_Jr

Marriott, B., JR. (n.d.). Marriott on the Move. Retrieved February 01, 2016, from http://www.blogs.marriott.com/marriott-on-the-move/

Marriott, B., Jr. (2016, January 04). What's the Big Idea? - Marriott on the Move. Retrieved February 01, 2016, from http://www.blogs.marriott.com/marriott-on-the-move/2016/01/whats-the-big-idea.html

Scott, D.M. (2015). The new rules of marketing and PR. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.