Director of Partner Growth, Callum Ridley, is excited to publish the next blog in our series ‘A Partner’s Guide to Marketing Channels’, which takes a deep dive on different marketing channels and how partners can take advantage of these channels to improve site performance as well as to improve performance when working with brands on the Partnerize platform.
Callum recently interviewed Ishtvan Torpoi, Partnerships Consultant at Dept, to talk about all things Social Media Marketing! Dept is the digital agency for creativity, technology and data. They help their clients build and accelerate their digital business by creating leading digital products, services and campaigns.
Ishtvan joined the Dept team close to 12 months ago, however has been working on the agency side for about 5+ years. Over this time Ishtvan has learned a lot about the complex issues brands face in the digital space. As Partnerships Consultant at Dept, Ishtvan has strategic knowledge of digital paid channels such as Search, Social & Display.
Callum Ridley: What is Social Media Marketing?
Ishtvan Torpoi: Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service, in addition to brand awareness. Social media allows for very creative campaigning.
CR: What are the benefits of Social Media Marketing?
IT: In general, the same benefits apply as for other marketing channels:, this channel adds value in terms of branding, traffic and conversions. With social media, you can reach unique audiences, target specific interests, reach selected countries, etc. Due to the nature of Facebook and Instagram profile data, we can accurately target consumers similar to Google Search Ads.
For partners on the Partnerize platform, the core benefits to engage with social media marketing is:
- Growing brand awareness. Social media allows you to get your brand in front of people much more quickly and easily, than other forms of brand building.
- Increasing traffic to your website. Once you start to attract new followers on social, you can then engage them + existing followers with content to direct users to your website.
- Promoting your brand partners. Social offers a great space to promote your brand partners, whether that be promotions or editorial content.
In the Partnerize platform, a unique publisher reference (Pubref) can be assigned to a tracking link that will track from click to sale and is visible in partners reporting; you could use this to track a specific social campaign.
CR: Which social channels should be prioritised, in a social media marketing strategy?
IT: Facebook and Instagram are by far the most interesting. Depending on your audience & brand positioning, you could also take a look at:
- LinkedIn for B2B. This is an expensive platform and not suited for everyone. Make sure you have a solid strategy for this B2B channel and enough budget.
- TikTok for more GenZ focus. This is also an expensive platform mostly used for brand awareness and engagement campaigns. If you want hard conversions like sales, TikTok is not going to be the first choice.
- Pinterest for inspiration. The same applies as for TikTok, though Pinterest is not as expensive. This channel is used mainly for inspirational content.
- Twitter to start a conversation. Spark a conversation as a campaign here; increase brand engagement and direct users to your website.
- YouTube is mainly used for branding & review / guide videos. This can be an expensive channel, and is mainly used for branding campaigns. Performance campaigns are not a frequent thing vs branding, though they also occur and can be effective if the strategy & execution is strong and relevant.
CR: How often should you post on social media?
IT: Depending on your brand positioning and goals, you can choose to go into two directions; organic and paid.
- Organic; make sure to have an always on structure. To post 28 posts in week 1, and 5 posts in week 2 is not effective. Consistency is key to maintaining momentum. Make sure the posts are of informative nature with options to click out for products, but try not to use organic posts as a sales channel all the time.
- Paid; depends on advertiser needs, frequency here can be very different. Paid marketing is very different, and comes with a string of follow-ups and retargeting opportunities. None of this is done for free and goals can differ per branding or performance execution.
CR: What would be your top three tips to improve Social Media Marketing?
IT:
- Make sure you have an always on structure, content should be posted consistently. For campaigns (not always on), focus on relevancy to get the most out of your campaign posts. e.g. do not post automotive content to someone who is not interested in cars.
- Creative is key. Make sure relevancy is extremely high with captivating USPs and/ or CTAs.
- Trust the algorithms. When looking to scale, manual bidding is not doable anymore, with the right setup the algorithm will do its magic.
CR: Can you recommend any Social Media Marketing tools?
IT: Many tools are expensive, but if budget allows then Smartly for Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest is a must have. Smartly is a creative optimisation tool that uses data to optimise ads/creatives in real-time, in addition to improving creative and copy.
Bannerwise for creatives. With Bannerwise, you can create relevant ads without the need of coding skills to make your own HTML5, video, and dynamic ads.
If you are not currently working with Partnerize, let’s have a conversation! You can reach out to our Partner Growth team on partner.growth@partnerize.com or you can sign up for a Partnerize Partner Account here.
If you have additional opportunities available over the next few months, for brands and retailers to get involved with, let us know! We would love to help get the word out and share these on the Partnerize platform. You can submit your opportunities here.
