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SUMMARY: A
platform – quite literally – is the foundation for everything else that is
going on. Think of a platform at a train station. A viewing platform. Or the
inaugural platform. We
marketers have of course co-opted the word, but in this article we go back to
its roots to explore a company that used Facebook Groups as its discovery
platform, YouTube as a lead gen platform, and (because all marketing isn’t
external) consolidated on an internal creative management platform to gather
data to lobby internally for resources. Read
on for examples from Woolworths Group, a software company, and an online
education company. |
by Daniel Burstein, Senior
Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute
This article was originally published in
the MarketingSherpa
email newsletter.
The
platform. A catchall term to describe the technological underpinnings of our
marketing programs.
The
capabilities they provide are vital to our marketing success. Here’s a perfect
example. The information collected by data platforms is so vital, that in Data Pattern Analysis: Learn from a coaching session with
Flint McGlaughlin the MECLABS Institute team recommends you
have a backup data platform in case there are any issues with your main
platform (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).
So in
this article, we bring you examples from your peers to spark your own thinking
– two businesses that generated revenue from organic social media platforms to
drive revenue and a company using an internal platform to track and execute
marketing campaigns.
Quick Case Study #1: Software for office
managers uses Facebook Groups to learn about customers’ needs
“A
great way to generate more leads and sales is to utilize Facebook Groups to
spend time with your ideal customers. There are over 600 million Facebook Groups
online today,” said Roman Peysakhovich, CEO, Onedesk.
If you can find groups specific to your niche, you can get in front of an
audience of potential customers.
Office
managers use Onedesk to book services. “Our marketing team found hundreds of
Facebook Groups dedicated strictly to office managers and the decision-makers
in the office who contract our services,” he said.
They
began by joining the groups and using the search functions to find threads
about their particular service and seeing what types of requests were discussed
by office managers.
The
team observed a pattern in requests – with many posts about a few common
challenges. They were shocked to discover that some of the groups with over
50,000 members had all complained about the same five to ten issues repeatedly.
They saw this as an excellent opportunity to adjust the platform to offer a
quick solution for these issues.
“Joining
Facebook groups has been a massive contributor to the growth of our sales and
leads,” Peysakhovich said. They started being active in these groups just six
months ago and have built relationships with members that make up 20% of total
customers.
Monthly
recurring revenue increased from about $2,000 per month in July 2020 to
$140,000 in December 2020. Peysakhovich attributes that huge growth to the fact
that offices that had been closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic began
reopening mid-summer, but did note that as far as total leads contacted and
quotes sent, about two-thirds came from the Facebook Groups.
Quick Case Study #2: Online education company
responds to YouTube comments to generate leads
“In a
world where cold emails and social ads have become the norm, it can be hard to
find new lead gen tactics. One approach we have discovered for uncovering new
leads that has proved pretty successful is through the comments section on
YouTube,” said John Ross, CEO, Test Prep Insight, an
online education company with 10 employees.
Ross
explained his approach – if you don’t already have a YouTube channel, create
one, and start producing videos. Whatever industry you are in, there are videos
you can produce to address your ideal customers’ challenges and add value to
their lives. Lean into your expertise and create some helpful videos that
target your customer base.
Then,
in the video, call for viewers to leave a comment. Do this two or three times
throughout the course of the video. Then once comments start rolling in, you
can respond directly to viewers in the comment section or track them down
through their profile and get their contact info as a lead.
“It
is a pretty expensive and labor-intensive process with granular work to
identify individual leads, but we have found it to be highly effective. In our
experience, roughly 13% of these leads ultimately end up driving a sale,” Ross
said.
Quick Case Study #3: Creative operations
manager at beverage maker uses internal platform to gather data, lobby for
resources
Leanne
Thompson is a creative that knows her numbers. The creative operations manager
at Endeavor Drinks calculated that in 2020 her team completed 980 (internal)
client requests, completing 1,429 creative projects, which collectively were
reviewed 11,110 times and accrued 27,451 comments from reviewers.
Those
creative projects span a wide variety tasks – from digital, video and animation
to websites, print and point-of-sale displays. Her team even supported events
like wine tastings and photoshoots at vineyards. Each project required, on
average, 3.9 days in review and evolved through an average of 1.7 versions.
The
numbers are important because they demonstrate the value the creative team is
delivering to the company. That is key when lobbying for resources inside a
large company like hers, which runs nine brands of alcoholic beverages as part
of the Woolworths Group, a publicly-traded Australian
company.
Moreover,
gathering such quantitative benchmarks would have been virtually impossible the
year prior. Each of the nine drink brands had their own creative team, each
with a different process for managing creative work. There was no single system
of record. Some teams used generic project management tools – others used
email, chat and spreadsheets.
Managing
30,000 comments from reviewers sounds like a lot of work, but that was just the
tail end of the challenges. Processes were prone to go sideways even at the
very beginning of the creative process – with creative briefs.
“There
was no place for requesters to properly submit a brief – they would email or
chat the designers directly and it was often extremely difficult to decipher
what was actually needed without a clear guided brief,” said Thompson, Studio
& Creative Operations Manager, Endeavor Drinks.
Thompson’s
mandate was to merge as many of the separate beverage company teams together
into a single centralized in-house “Creative Studio.” The team would
consolidate the management of creative projects into a single system – from
creative brief to review and approval.
Over
four months, she and her team evaluated 17 different technology platforms to
support this initiative. That may sound like a lot of tools to review, but she
quickly eliminated those tools that were generic.
As
she puts it, “A lot of the project management tools out there are obviously not
targeted towards creative workflow. As a creative team, our needs and our work
environment are very unique.”
The
company settled on a creative marketing and resource management platform called
inMotionNow. It’s here the team collaborates and orchestrates the work of 30
creatives serving more than 250 stakeholders across the business – producing
the volume of projects noted above.
It’s
made the team more efficient too – there are 89 reports she produces with a
click or two. For example, Leanne has tabulated that requesters spend 40% less
time going back and forth (over email) with designers on creative briefs and
project requests and traffic managers spend 78% less time reviewing and
accepting briefs.
Less
time spent on admin duties like these gives the creative team more time and
space to do what they were hired to do – be creative.
The
team will need this efficiency and ability to execute to feed the content
beast. Endeavor Drinks is expecting a 140% increase in creative projects over
the next 12 months and expects to grow its footprint in content creation
substantially.
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