Case Study: Social Media & Reputation Management

The Client & Situation

The client is a manufacturer and distributor of professional products through a network of franchisees.  At the time of engagement with Intrapromote, they were pouring resources into social media marketing, but not able to see substantiated results from their efforts.  The client engaged Intrapromote via a customized Social Media Marketing Campaign to leverage their existing social media profiles and enhance them to become viable marketing channels.

The Challenge(s)

The client was facing an urgent Reputation Management issue with a handful of vocal ex-distributors posting negative feedback daily to their Facebook Fan Page, YouTube channels, Twitter account, as well as harassing fans of their brand.  The issue was large enough for the company to discontinue using their own Twitter account to avoid the negative publicity.

The client’s largest competitor held a large share of the social media market by 2:1.

Their social outlets were being overrun by unanswered customer service issues amidst various other user complaints.

The Goals

Create viable marketing channels out of the existing social profiles that will:

• Lead to substantial audience growth
• Foster an engaged community surrounding the client
• Increase conversions in sales, franchise recruitment, and specific consumer programs

Gain substantial market share from largest competitor in social channels

Extinguish brand reputation issues on social channels by managing customer service requests and complaints and by growing brand advocacy to allow the community to police itself

Campaign Methodology

Reach – introduce client to social users
Growth – convert social users to audience members
Engagement – create consumers from audience members
Feedback – allow the audience to curate the content and strategy

The Strategy

Intrapromote hit the ground running with the existing user base and began to grow the channel into a destination for their customers base.  Alongside growth and conversions, Intrapromote focused on sedating the vocal negative community members and grow brand advocacy online.  The different facets of the strategy included the following items:

Community Management

• Engage with all posts on the Facebook Page wall and tweets on Twitter that mentioned the company and/or brand
• Address negative feedback transparently
• Interface with the client’s customer service professionals to expedite interactivity with customer issues, questions and comments

Brand Advocacy Push

• Develop “personal” relationships between the brand and the active constituents on Facebook and Twitter
• Encourage and allow Facebook and Twitter users to defend the brand when drawn out in a negative fashion on either platform
• Reach out to the “silent” Facebook fans and Twitter users and develop interactivity with the bulk of the users on each respective platform

Content Strategy

• Provide daily updates to constituents on Facebook and Twitter regarding the client’s offerings, new tools, events and other activity to engage the community
• Encourage user participation and crowdsourcing content through weekly promotional initiatives, i.e.- “Workshop Wednesday”, “Maintenance Monday”, “Featured Fans”, etc.
• Push marketing content focused on several company marketing initiatives:  Tech Ed program and Franchisee recruitment

Facebook Ads

• Create and manage promotion-specific Facebook Ads for the marketing initiatives mentioned above
• Perform A/B testing for Ad groups to reduce cost and increase CTR
• Research and Target Ads effectively and appropriately
• Grow and funnel larger Facebook user base and reduce cost

Support Existing Marketing Calendar & Events

• Product promotions including quarterly newsletter support; announcing new products virtually
• Distributor conference
• Various sponsorships (both industry related and non)

The Results

The client saw an 81% increase in social audience with 36% organic from January to June 2012 which is up 16% from August to December 2011:

The client saw a 141% organic increase in their social audience (new audience members not coming from advertising sources):

There was a 354% increase in viral impressions (the number of  of impressions of a Facebook “story” published by a friend about the client’s Page):

The client saw a 126% increase in average engaged users/month (any user that clicks or creates a Facebook “story” about the client’s Page.

The client saw a 115% increase in traffic to their site from social channels:

The client saw a 170% increase in social traffic revenue and a 62% increase in social traffic/visit value:

The client saw a 278% increase in clicks from social networks on focus promotional assets (all content from client’s student program, franchise recruitment and special marketing initiatives):

Major brand reputation issues within social networks have decreased significantly:

Substantial market share was gained from competitors – 1.6% of client’s total fans are engaged daily vs. 0.3% of competition and 81% of client’s new fans are engaged daily vs. 30% of competition.