Social Media Campaign

Introduction

This essay will discuss the vegan home bakery business Smith Home Bakes, from Austin, Texas, and analyze how the business could benefit from a social media campaign. The essay will then develop the marketing campaign, in terms of specific campaign objectives, target audience, social media marketing activities, campaign success metrics and campaign timeline.

Social media marketing campaign benefits

In a study of 18 specialist social media marketing agency professionals, Keegan & Rowley (2017) found that businesses should set evaluation objectives, key performance indicators, performance metrics and data collection strategies in order to ensure the effectiveness of their social media marketing strategy (Keegan & Rowley, 2017). The authors noted that these steps would allow business owners to incrementally adjust their social media marketing strategy in response to the optimal content and channels to deploy in such a strategy (Keegan & Rowley, 2017).

Specific campaign objectives

In developing an effective social media marketing strategy, the bakery should listen to its target audience, pilot and test communications with them, engage them effectively and collaborate with them to produce relevant content and social offers that connect well with the target audience.

Specific campaign objectives should include:

1. Engagement of local followers in the Austin, Texas area, with strong engagement metrics in terms of likes, shares, comments and customer reviews to develop a robust community presence.
2. Build community awareness of the bakery’s product offerings, with a target of 10,000 page views and 20,000 paid media impressions per month.
3. Generate and convert leads into sales for the bakery through a social media commerce channel, with a target of 10 sales lead conversions (bakery orders) via the bakery’s social media channels per month.
4. Provide strong and timely customer service via the Facebook chat app on social media, with a target of servicing up to 20 queries per day.

Target audience

The target audience of this bakery, and by extension, the bakery’s social media campaigns should be aimed at millennials and Generation Z consumers who are either in college or who have just started work. This is because studies such as Hartman (2016) demonstrate the strong willingness to purchase and consumer power of millennials and Generation Z consumers toward sustainable and vegan products, with a survey showing that 58% of millennials were willing to actively try vegan and vegetarian products. Furthermore, this demographic of consumers is more actively engaged on social media, making it an appropriate channel to reach out to such consumers (Hendricks, 2014).

Social media marketing activities

Social media marketing activities should be conducted primarily on Facebook and Instagram, given their reach, relevance to the target audience, cost effectiveness and visual appeal. The social media marketing activities used should include content marketing posts on a weekly basis, social media contests on a monthly basis, and sales promotions on a monthly basis. Foremost, the company should publish pages on Facebook and Instagram and populate the page with posts showcasing their products, alongside content relevant to their target audience such as vegan recipes and articles on how to become a vegan (Roberts & Zahay, 2013). Secondly, social media contests and sales promotions should be organized on a monthly basis to drive strong user engagement on the social media channels (Keegan & Rowley, 2017).

Metrics to judge campaign success

The key metrics to judge campaign success should include reach and engagement metrics. Reach metrics would include page views, impressions and paid media reach (if applicable). Engagement metrics should include page likes, shares and comments, as well as individual post likes, shares and comments, alongside direct enquiries to the social media channels. Further down the sales funnel, campaign success should be measured by confirmed orders brought in via sales channels such as Facebook and Instagram. From a cost basis, the cost per click (CPC), cost per engagement (CPE) and cost per mille (CPM) should be calculated and benchmarked to industry standards for comparison.

Campaign timeline

The campaign timeline should be conducted over a year, with quarterly performance reviews to adjust the content and strategy of the social media marketing campaign in order to optimise performance.

Conclusion

This social media campaign strategy would ensure that Smith Home Bakes would be able to drive strong local engagement, community awareness, lead generation and sales conversion on its social media platforms.

References

Hartman, L. R. (2016). Developing foods for millennials. Amass, 21(2), 38.

Hendricks, D. (2014, April 3). How to convert leads with social media. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhendricks/2014/04/03/how-to-convert-leads-with-social-media/

Keegan, B. J., & Rowley, J. (2017). Evaluation and decision making in social media marketing. Management Decision. Retrieved from https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/MD-10-2015-0450/full/html

Roberts, M. L. & Zahay, D. (2013). Internet marketing: Integrating online and offline strategies (3rd ed.). Retrieved from https://redshelf.com

Vinerean, S. (2017). Importance of strategic social media marketing. Expert journal of marketing, 5(1).