SUMMARY:
To create a comprehensive social media strategy for the automotive and electronics departments within eBay, Inc. marketplaces.
1. PROBLEM
A loosely formed team of multiple stakeholders and agency partners trying to manage the day-to-day responsibilities with no direction, strategic vision or clear and attributable goals.
2. CONTEXT
During the initial discovery phase, it was learned that the social media presence and management had various stakeholders over the years (2007-2012) for Motors and (2011-2012) for Electronics, all with limited support, documentation, marketing assets and a plan. It was clear that a complete restart of the governance, management structure and ownership was needed in order to develop a new strategic vision that aligned to business goals.
The social media strategy conceived, was designed around setting up direct attribution reporting framework to support business goals using all aspects of the customer decision journey through the marketing funnel beginning with brand engagement, traffic, customer acquisition, retention and revenue.
3. SOLUTION
Developed a comprehensive strategy that supported the business goals for day-to-day social media activity as well as campaigns from discovery, consideration, engagement, conversion to retention.
1. Reporting – Designed a reporting system to provide direct attribution to track new, repeat customers, traffic and revenue at a platform and content level so that return is measured on investments.
2. Platform – Delivered platform reach and engagement performance centered around blog, amplified by Facebook, Twitter, G+, YouTube, Reddit using a technique known as social rinsing.
3. Content – Define on brand content and create a process for creation and curation that drives engagement to support all phases of the customer decision journey in a consistent way to build momentum.
4. Engagement – Articulate the value in real-time discussions with customers on and off branded social media platforms and create a system for brand engagement that elevates
5. Listening – Create a listening system that accounts for brand and industry across multiple platforms that keeps team up to speed on current developments and future trends.
4. TACTICS
First order of business was to lead an analytic and product team to create a first ever social and content marketing dashboard that reported out the impressions, new customers acquired, retained, traffic driven and revenue to the brand measured as a result of publishing from owned, paid and earned media channels to define an initial baseline return on investment measurement. To create this system, value structures were provided that relate to customer values in industries and product categories.
The measurement system was integrated into social media platforms. The development of the audiences of these platforms took place using a hub and spoke approach by focusing on building a strong voice through editorial content in the respective industries by redesigning the motors blog and creating a blog for electronics as a permanent home for industry and product category themed topics. It was decided early on that due to the direction and inconsistencies in rented platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, it was important to position these as amplifiers vs. communities. This decision was in alignment with many of these channels’ eventual business strategies as they transitioned from communities with loyal followings with limited organic reach to paid media channels. This allowed us to maintain and grow our audiences on our owned channels which we eventually integrated this loyal following into our own platform on eBay without seeing a drop of audience numbers.
The content approach was completely reset from the very beginning with the development of a thorough content strategy. This strategy focused on development on an in-house branded content creation and curation process that was in support of educational and aspirational topics that was positioned from a subject matter experts’ point of view so our brand was looked at as industry thought leaders. To support this, education and training was included to utilize new tools, hardware, software in addition to trade event attendance in order to raise the quality and authenticity of the content. As part of this strategy, an influencer curation program and partner content initiative was developed that became integrated internally within eBay’s ecosystem, and distributed externally across owned, paid and earned media channels. Throughout this period of strategic investment in content, new brand standards and category structure and taxonomy for content from long and short form copy, photography and cinematography were developed and included in the master brand guidelines for the company.
Defined the value in real-time discussions with customers on and off platforms with a strategic outreach process and content distribution program across key discussions where relevant audiences, industry leaders and brand partners could engage with our brand.
Created a structured listening methodology to be aligned with brand, industry and products categories that supported the formal intake process for long and short term insights. These insights defined the measurement of engagement, platform audience development, content creation and curation and engagement. The results lead to formal results in brand mentions in volume, share of voice, sentiment and trends.
5. RETURN
• Reach & Engagement – Delivered platform reach and engagement KPIs centered around blog, amplified by Facebook, Twitter, G+, YouTube, Reddit by an average of 200% using a technique known as social rinsing.
• Customer Acquisition/Retention and revenue day-to-day – Increased the average baseline of new customer acquisition on average by 105%, repeat buyers by 153%, traffic to site by 344% and revenue by 57% using owned, earned and paid media month-over-month over the course of a year.
• Customer Acquisition/Retention and revenue by campaign – Drove all aspects of strategy for quarterly month-long social media marketing campaigns from concept to execution that delivered on average new customer acquisition by 150%, repeat buyers by 851%, traffic to site by 529% and revenue by 185% month-over-month. Additionally increasing product adoption by 16,000% month-over-month using campaigns.
• Traffic – Drove year-over-year site traffic to eBay.com from social media platforms by 36% and ROI by 21%.