Social Media and Email Marketing Campaign: Part 1

In one of my previous articles for digital marketing learners, I drew up a basic digital marketing plan. Continuing with the imaginary internet and telecommunications service provider in New Zealand, Company A, as an example, I will build on from one of the objectives that are outlined below, with focus on the brand’s only social media channel - Facebook. This will help someone who is starting out on their digital marketing journey or is transitioning from traditional to digital. I will illustrate how to translate objective statements to key messages and finally create ads for social media and email marketing campaigns. So hang in there...

My previous article here: Getting Started on a Digital Journey: Part 2

Shift in Communication 

Telecommunications industry is at the forefront of a digital transformation, and telecom customers are exposed to omni-channel sales. Customers interact with multiple touchpoints in their buying journey. Each touchpoint coordinates with the other for a seamless experience.

Satisfaction % across traditional and digital customer service channels for telecom customers (Pic: McKinsey&Company)

76% telecom customers favour digital only customer service channels as compared to 57% preferring traditional only channels.

Here are a few ways of using traditional and digital channels for specific communications objectives in telecom.

Objective 1: Awareness about the brand (this is shown as an ad layout below)

Traditional: Newspaper ads, Door-to-door sales channels, Store visit

Digital: Online from brand website and other social media channels, online reviews

Objective 2: Focused marketing with geography-based targeting

Traditional: Locality based flyer distribution highlighting network strength in that area

Digital: Geo-targeted communication in social media channels

Objective 3: Bill Payment

Traditional: Hardcopy bill delivered to an address

Digital: Email version of bill, bill with website login, bill with brand app

Objective 4: Customer feedback and complaint (this is shown in my next article)

Traditional: On SMS, call-in or in-store

Digital: Social media channels of the brand, emails, brand apps, chatbots

So coming back to the example of Company A, let’s begin with a summary of the brand and its positioning, competitive advantage sand their social media audit.

Company A at a glance

Brand Positioning & Overview: Independent operator with full range of telecom offering, a mid-sized telco with a bouquet of products to make a difference. They have not won any competitive awards and their review scores are average.

Target Market: Across New Zealand, broadband residential, landline, calling cards, business to business and wholesale retailing

Social media strategy: Facebook is used to share outage information with about 1200 followers and LinkedIn company page has about 1700 followers, used only for job postings

Strength: Single window product solution, remote areas broadband solution through wireless

Weakness: Low customer satisfaction scores, no strong brand presence

Opportunities: Strengthen social media presence as small company but big support

Threats: Larger brands may buy out, no brand stickiness

Areas of improvement: Customer service, brand personality, presence across social media,

Competitive Advantage: Fairly large product bouquet, strong business customer base

Two campaigns in two separate articles:

• Campaign Goal 1: Lead Generation through Facebook ads
• Campaign Goal 2: Customer Retention through Emails shown in the next article

Campaign Goal 1: Lead Generation from Facebook

Buyer Persona for Lead Generation Campaign

Current online behaviour: Online search for broadband services

Key Message: Surf More. Pay Less.

Call to Action: Sign Up

Ad Type:

1) Lead generation Form on Facebook

2) Google Search and Display Ads

3) Chatbot conversation when the prospective customer lands on the website

4) Email to customers abandoning cart

Setting up a lead generation form on Facebook

Open Facebook Ads Manager and click Create. Select 'Lead Generation' as the campaign objective. After naming the campaign, create an ad set.

Facebook Lead Generation ad creation from Facebook Ads Manager (screen shot 1)

You can also do a split test at this point. Select your audience using the multiple filer options available, such as:

• Location - in this example of Company A, it will be all New Zealand
• Demographics - age, gender, language, education, work among others
• Interest - in the latest Facebook update, many niche interest categories have been removed
• Behaviour - gives an indication of how the prospect may have interacted with your brand before, some categories have been discontinued
• Connections - how the prospect may be connected to the business already, such as responded to an event, downloaded your app

Once the audience is saved, choose your ad placement, or let Facebook optimise it for you through "automatic placements". Once done, set your budget according to your campaign objective, like cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and schedule the ads. Name the ads to recognise and track within your team. Select your ad format for the campaign. It could be a single image, carousel or a video ad that will take the prospect to the lead form.

"When starting out, or with small data, go with automatic ad placements and let Facebook learn and optimise the campaign. As the data and the learning evolve, shift to manual placements"

Moumita Das Roy

Upload your creative assets, like logo, image, ad copy, call to action, mandatory information if any and filter your audience. Select the Form fields you want the information for, some of it may be auto-filled.

Facebook Lead Generation ad creation from Facebook Ads Manager (screen shot)

At this stage, the ad is ready to be published. Let's look at the example of Company A, and how the ad may look like for the objective of generating leads, targeted to the buyer persona shown above.

Ad examples for Company A, for objective and target audience as described above, generated from Ad MockUps.

Check how the campaign objective of customer acquisition, translates to the ad creative. This lead generation campaign aims to collect email ID and street address for prospects who show an interest in buying the broadband service for Company A.

In my next article, I will show an example of the customer retention campaign through email marketing. Stay tuned.

I am publishing a series of articles on my digital learning journey on LinkedIn. Do come back if you want to continue reading.

For more learning check these out:

Social Media and Email Marketing Campaign: Part 2

Getting Started on a Digital Journey: Part 1

Getting Started on a Digital Journey: Part 2

Step by step guide to create Facebook Lead Generation Ads

Create Ad Mock-Ups for practice

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