This post is the fifth and final post in our “From the Bottom of the Freezer to Top of Mind” series that provides a social media case study for a national brand that entered the realm of social media in 2013 with no prior presence. See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
Michelina’s is a nationally-distributed frozen food brand based out of Minneapolis, but had no social media presence before coming to Spyder Trap in late 2012. Through a combination of new responsive website design, paid online advertising and organic social media engagement we were able to not only establish the brand on Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels, but were able to make the brand relevant in a crowded digital space.
Beyond Sentiment: How Social Media Can Impact Your Business
As an agency, we are often asked about the “ROI” of social media marketing. And while much of our social media strategy has focused on tone and changing the public’s perception of the Michelina’s brand, the real impact of our social media marketing efforts is more than just new branding and witty responses to users.
Tone and content are important, but businesses need more than those qualitative upgrades and require actual numbers that influence sales. This is why goal-setting is crucial in the early stages of developing a social media strategy.
Determining what metrics you need to track is the best way to quantitatively judge the success of failure of everything you’re doing online.
Pro tip: Setting trackable goals provides benchmarks to quantify the success of your social media strategy.
Supporting Your Website with Social Media
The trackable goals that are set for your social media strategy have to extend beyond audience size. Sure, having a thousand or a million Facebook fans is great, but what is that user base doing for your company’s bottom line? For most companies, that bottom line begins and ends with their website.
Websites are the hub that connects all of the other digital channels being utilized. They are the source for e-commerce revenue, the primary option for information, and the go-to channel for customer service inquires.
That is why referral traffic is one of the most important metrics that we track to gage the success of our social media strategy.
Tracking website activity and how social media is driving traffic to it is not only helpful in understanding user behavior, but provides concrete numbers that you can measure and benchmark.
Tracking website activity and how social media is driving traffic to it is helpful in understanding user behavior.
For Michelina’s, we saw significant improvement in website traffic. Overall website traffic has more than doubled since the full-scale digital launch of the new website and social media channels. Additionally, the new social media presence has been effective in contributing to this increase in traffic, sending over 2,300 visits and counting between Facebook and Twitter.
Again, this was website traffic that wasn’t being leveraged at all before the creation of the Mama Michelina social media channels.
Don’t Forget About Email Marketing
Another avenue we implemented into our social media strategy was email marketing. And although we’ve discussed email marketing at length, many brands seem to think that it’s no longer an effective digital marketing channel. However, this simply isn’t the case. There is still a large contingent of users that rely on this often overlooked medium. Michelina’s had an existing user base, but hadn’t sent any newsletters in years.
Also, because their email marketing strategy had gone unattended for so long, the database they had was filled with wrong email addresses and users who were no longer interested in receiving emails from Michelina’s. After an extensive cleanup, we were quick to launch email newsletters and re-engage with the audience.
Besides new email engagement, our social media strategy also allowed us to grow that email database with new users who were interested in Michelina’s and wanted to hear from the brand. We started by linking to the newsletter page on the Michelina’s website on both Facebook and Twitter. Also, we launched a paid campaign using Twitter Cards, which allowed us to promote the Michelina’s newsletter and let users submit their email addresses through an embedded signup form.
Even something as simple as linking to the newsletter page is a microcosm of our holistic digital approach. The Facebook and Twitter posts were on social media channels, which then sent users to the website.
From there, users could sign up for the newsletter or click through to other pages of the website, including product pages or the coupon download page. Then, users would receive emails from Michelina’s, which would drive visits and clicks back to the website and Michelina’s social media channels, thus completing the cycle.
Case Study Part Five Recap:
1. Determine trackable metrics to provide quantifiable goals for your social media strategy.
2. Tracking website activity and how social media is driving traffic to it is helpful in understanding user behavior.
3. Email marketing is still a viable medium that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Conclusion
In this From the Bottom of the Freezer to Top of Mind series, we’ve deconstructed how we developed a complete social media strategy. We utilized a holistic digital approach that leveraged a new website design, the creation of social media channels, strong community engagement, and email marketing that allowed every medium to supplement and strengthen each other. This combination of online marketing tactics is how we we’ve been able to take Michelina’s from the bottom of the freezer to top of mind with consumers.
