When Site Strategics CEO Erin Sparks spoke with special guest Traci Reuter, Founder and CEO of Divine Social, for episode 318 of the award-winning EDGE of the Web podcast, they talked about the what and why of engagement campaigns. Here’s what we learned:
An Example of An Engagement Campaign by the Numbers
To illustrate the power of engagement campaigns, the piece that too many companies overlook because they get as obsessed with conversion or direct response campaigns, Traci provided an example with numbers. The client was going to have a big launch and Divine Social did a significant engagement campaign leading up to it. They were video campaigns that did not ask people to buy anything, they just provided valuable content. When it was time for the launch to happen, then Divine Social then did the conversion campaign but tracked and reported on two different targeted groups. One group tracked included all the “warm” traffic – prospects Divine knew about from various sources such as website visits, email lists, fans, etc. who had not been exposed to the engagement campaign. But the second group tracked were those who had specifically first been reached through the engagement campaign. In other words, Divine separated out the highly-engaged prospects from the rest. Here are the numbers:
For the “warm traffic” group, $3,400 was spent. This resulted in reaching 125,000 of those people and generated 829 leads. So the cost per lead was about $4.10. For the highly engaged group who had first been reached by the engagement campaign, $2,600 was spent. The campaign reached only 26,000 of those people (about a quarter of the warm traffic people reached), but it generated 1,003 leads at a cost of only $2.59/lead. By crafting a good engagement campaign, less money was spent and more leads were generated through fewer people. And the amount spent on the engagement campaign was minimal. Yes, the engagement campaign interrupted social media users, but with value-added content. And they were only retargeted in the next campaign if they showed interest from the engagement campaign. The differences between the two approaches are significant and in favor of the engagement approach.
But then you take it even further. Not all the highly-engaged prospects responded to the offer. So then you craft a post-engagement campaign. Maybe you focus on overcoming objections, but again you back to them with valuable content to re-engage them even more to eventually then make another offer. It’s a very powerful approach that works.
Understand the Client’s Sales Cycle
Keep in mind that in order to make engagement campaigns really work for a client, you have to understand the client’s sales cycle. All too often, the company in question doesn’t get this right. A client might say their sales cycle is six weeks, but when you really dig into the data and put it together, it’s actually eight months! You have to know that in order to craft an engagement campaign that keeps prospects engaged throughout that sales cycle leading up to a conversion.
An eight-month sales cycle, however, can feel really long to a company unless it’s very well-funded. So you can also look at ways to shorten the sales cycle. This can be critical for small or solo companies who won’t be able to survive such a long sales cycle because they simply don’t have to resources on hand to do that. And you be surprised how many “marketers” have no clue to even ask the question to a client, let alone help them figure out what their sales cycle really is.
A Word About Conversions
It used to be so easy to generate impressive ROI figures on social ads. In the current environment, this is getting harder and harder to do. Divine Social trumpets the power of engagement campaigns, but they also always run conversion campaigns right out of the gate as well because if you don’t show some ROI on ad spends to a client in a fairly short order, they won’t be a client for very long! Probably 90% of Facebook advertisers are only running conversion campaigns, and you have to do that as well early on in order to stay in the game, but as you work in the engagement campaigns, then you’re going to start seeing even better results than only running conversion campaigns. Get some early ROI to keep the client happy, then build those engagement campaigns and the client will love the results. It’s not instantaneous but gets better and better as you go and outstrips conversion-only direct response campaigns.
Now, You’ll hear people say things like “You’ll never get conversions from blog traffic.” Not true! Divine Social had a client in the arts and crafts space where for two years (and not every company has the luxury to do this) they spent all their budget on the first two pillars of social advertising – building out audiences and engagement campaigns. Then when they returned to conversion campaigns the results were astounding. They actually get a return on every ad spend. In fact, just sending people to the company blog generates $8-$10!
The challenge is many clients just can’t get over that conceptual hurdle of NOT focusing obsessively on conversion campaigns. It takes a mature client who is willing to listen to and understand and trust the effectiveness of engagement campaigns. Have that conversation with a potential client and you’ll know soon enough if they’re in or out. You just have to make a clear case for the end goal because it’s a win-win for the client and the agency.
Special Landing Page for EDGE Fans on Divine Social
If you enjoyed Episode 318 of the EDGE with special guest Traci Reuter, she has created a special landing page where you can take a deeper dive with Divine Social. Just visit https://divinesocial.com/edge and see what’s there for you!
Connect with Traci Reuter and Divine Social
Twitter: @tracireuter (https://twitter.com/tracireuter)
Facebook: @TraciReuterSocial (https://www.facebook.com/TraciReuterSocial/)
Instagram: @tracireuter (https://www.instagram.com/tracireuter/)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracireuter/
Divine Social website: http://divinesocial.com
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