Mad Men has painted a romantic picture of the golden age of advertising. Brand messaging was created and signed off over cocktails and cigarettes; a creative tag line was all you needed for success; and TV, print and radio were your only options. It was a bit of a Wild West environment!
But in today’s online marketing world, the Mad Men mystique seems like nothing more than a fairytale. Print is dead, you can’t smoke indoors, you’d be fired if you showed up drunk after lunch, billboards have nothing but a website on them, and online ads are limited by character count and how large of a bid you can afford. The Wild West environment has become more like happy hour at Dave n Busters.
So is the Wild West of Advertising really gone? Not so much.
The spirit Mad Men portrays is not dead at all. In fact, it’s more alive than ever before…specifically in Social Media and SEO.
Social Media and SEO have a bit of the ol’ Mad Men mystique. It’s new, a bit foreign, yet a creative; and blog posts/infographics can do wonders for your bottom line. The Wild West has returned!
But Social Media and SEO strategies still need to be based on actual strategies and tactics that you can plan/measure success around before you even let the Don Draper in you start brainstorming creative concepts. You need to know your audience, your brand, your target market and where your target market hangs out online before you do anything.
If you want to leverage the Mad Men Mystique of Social Media and SEO to help your brand, you can do so to achieve the following goals:
Build/Increase Your Online Presence
Support Existing Marketing/Sales Strategies
Increase Customers/Sales
Building an Online Presence
You existing customers and prospective customers are online in large numbers!
- There are now more than 800 million active Facebook users”
- 190,000,000 tweets are sent on average per day
- Google+ was the fastest social network to reach 10 million users at 16 days
So what are these millions of people doing online?
They’re searching on Google/Bing for “stuff”:
Reviews
News
Entertainment
They spend time on Twitter/Facebook Google+/Pinterest interacting by:
Sharing Reviews
Sharing News
Sharing Entertainment
Social Media and SEO can help you connect with your current and new customers by providing better information that can be found where people search…AND HELPING INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS
Here’s how you can start to be discovered online and connect with your target market using Social Media and SEO:
Create fun, creative and informative content on your website.
Videos
Image galleries
POVs
Create a portal within your site for this information where this content can be found.
Tie in your products/services where possible.
You sell hammers; create an infographic on the various elements of a hammer and link back to specific products within it.
Share this amazing content via relevant social media channels.
If you don’t have a social media presence….get one!
You also need to know where your target market hangs out.
Some social media sites are better for B2B
Some are more skewed male vs. female
Do the research!
Supporting Existing Marketing/Sales Strategies
Social Media and SEO can definitely help you further your offline marketing messages/themes online. Most companies have on-going offline marketing efforts underway. They have TV commercials, radio ads and print ads. Undoubtedly there’s one theme that these ads all have. So, continue this theme online!
Social Media profiles make it easy for you to continue offline imagery, characters, and branding online. You can use the same images, spokesperson, and brand messages. Having a consistent brand image online and offline is important to effectively building your brand and creating the feeling you’re after.
If you are establishing Social Media profiles or your online content doesn’t match the offline brand, here are some steps you can take:
Create branded social media profiles with the same imagery as offline advertising.
Same colors
Same spokesperson
Same messages
Create an editorial calendar that will support the larger theme/topic your brand is encompassing.
If you’re brand is very eco-centric, create content around the environment like:
Infographics about global warming
Articles around how to decrease your carbon footprint
Videos on how to start your own compost
Share this content on your social media channels.
Direct people to your website and Facebook/Twitter pages from your offline marketing so they can like/follow this great content.
Use third party tools to track the effectiveness of your SEO/Social media work.
Track increase in brand mentions online.
Monitor increase in likes/followers.
Track referral traffic from social media channels and related activity.
Increasing Overall Customers/Sales
When venturing into Social Media and SEO, don’t forget your end goal….to make money! Of course there may be micro-goals along the way like increasing likes/followers, traffic to the website and even brand mentions online; but regardless of the goals you lay out, you need to make sure your Social Media and SEO efforts are helping to achieve them. It’s very easy to be too focused on the creative aspect of your Social Media and SEO campaign (i.e. being too Draper-esque). But on the other hand, it’s also very easy to be overly sales oriented (i.e. being too Lane Pryce).
If you’re about to create your first Social Media and SEO campaign, or just want to know how to keep everything in mind, here are some things to consider:
Think before you type.
Don’t be offensive/too over the top.
Keep the persona of the brand in mind.
Plan out your campaign.
Do your research.
What is your target market into?
Are you trying to get return customers or new customers?
What seasonal influence should you consider?
Integrate opportunities with your social content to bring people back to product/service pages.
If it’s popular but there’s no way to get them into a conversion funnel, it won’t contribute to your bottom line.
Offer online specials/promotions
Incentivize people to follow you/sign up for email newsletters/tweet about you.
Track/measure sales along the way.
Don’t just launch and hope for the best…measure!
Don’t be afraid to pull the plug.
If it isn’t working, stop it.
So as you can see, Mad Men 2.0 is alive online. I’m sure plenty of social media campaigns were born over cocktails…just not in the office. Social media is still a bit of the Wild West but can significantly help your brand in ways traditional advertising and marketing have in the past. So if you’re not already out there, start thinking about how Social Media and SEO can help you and your brand.