We were given the challenge of marketing a start-up company using only social media. It was an exciting adventure because we knew we would get valuable data on the power of social media marketing as a channel to market online businesses. I will not disclose the name of the client due to privacy reasons but I can tell you they are in the fashion industry and sell through an online only store. To give you a bit of background on the overall online strategy for this particular client, we considered other marketing options such as search engine optimisation, paid search, affiliate marketing and such, however the client wanted to see results in a short period of time, ruling out some options as they are a long-term solution and in such a highly competitive industry it will be a huge commitment. Therefore social media seemed like the best strategy for the client along with a strong e-mail marketing strategy and a sound business model.

Our Goal

Our goals for the initial stages of the campaign was to obtain database subscriptions, because the business model was based around re marketing to customers via a regular newsletter, we aimed to gather a list of potential customers.

Promotion

We created an online promotion together with our client that involved giving away a gift voucher to new subscribers. Each new user was sent their unique voucher code via e-mail after signing up.

Channels

We created a series of Facebook ads, an enticing Facebook landing page, and released the offer on various communities and forums online.

Results

Now came the interesting part, a month after the campaign was launched we gathered all the data from the campaign:

• We received 2,758 visits  to the website
• 22,901 page views
• Customer browsed 8.3 pages per visit
• over 75% of these visitors were new visitors
• the bounce rate was 22.84 percent (the average is around 40%)
• The biggest referral category were from forums and communities

Most importantly we received over 830 new e-mail subscribers from the effort. That’s a 40% conversion rate.

What this means?

From the results of the case study, we have proved what we’ve been saying for a long time. Social media sends highly targeted customers to your website, this is shown by:

• A low bounce rate, showing us that users that land on the website are spending more time on the website and not clicking out straight away.
• A high subscription conversion rate, the users that land of the page are interested in the offer and finding out more about future offers.
• The number of pages browsed also shows us that they are “shopping around”
• We confirm the continued interested of the users as 1/4 of them returned to the website within one month of visiting

Although we do not recommend social media to be the only channel you market in, we can see now that it can be a powerful took to drive “targeted” visitors to the website. We ensured that the social media campaign was also complimented by a robust e-mail marketing campaign and strong marketing communication. It was truly a great experience to be involved in a start up company as we were able to provide guidance from the very beginning from logo design to the way the website worked.

So share with us any results you have gotten from your social media campaigns?