RESPONSE Magazine - July 2018

commission percentage instead,” Carnett
says. “The influencer ended up making
more than $25,000 in residual commis-
sions from the partnership and our client
sold more than $100,000 in product from
this influencer alone.”
Carnett says she believes Facebook is
the most cost-effective platform to drive
conversions, but that Instagram is cur-
rently driving the most engagement.

“Depending on what the goal of your campaign is, both can be extremely effective in product education and sales when you have high-quality content combined with influencers increasing your brand’s reach,” she says.

Like Carnett, Jordan Finger, chief growth officer for Nutrafol, a hair vitamin supplement company, is particularly fond of paid social media.

“It’s a tremendous new customer ac-
quisition channel,” Finger says. “Right
now, paid social media is the most im-
portant digital marketing channel for
direct-to-consumer brands to drive aware-
ness, traffic, and new customers into their
funnel.”
Specifically, he says paid social can
leverage public relations. “Say a brand
gets a nice write up in Women’s Health
online. When it goes live, it’ll get organic
traffic from the publication, but after
24 to 48 hours that drops off. With paid
social media, on Facebook or Instagram
for example, you can get more mileage
from the article. The value of the earned
media is it is a third-party endorsement of
a brand’s product. Endorsements by trust-
ed publications still have a lot of value in
the marketplace.”
Finger adds that with paid social
media, a brand can link an ad to the write
up. “The reader can click into the brand’s
site to learn more and potentially buy,”
Finger says. “The reader likes this because
it’s trusted content that’s informative. It
doesn’t feel like advertising but rather an
Finger says Facebook likes this type of
editorial content because it typically gen-
erates more likes, comments, and shares
than a typical ad.

“Facebook will then reward the brand
by charging a lower CPM, get it more
audience reach and thus the brand will
have a lower cost-per-click (CPC) to get
traffic to its site.”

Beyond driving traffic and sales, Ryan
Romeos, manager of digital and social
marketing at e-sports and gaming com-
pany HyperX, says social media can foster
two-way dialog between the brand and its
customers. “When social media is done
right, a brand can foster a community
rich insights on what their customers care
about when making a purchase decision.”
To illustrate the point, Romeos uses
what he calls social listening, saying it
played a critical role in a recent product
launch. Just a few days after the launch,
Romeos learned through social listening
there was a problem causing a poor gam-
“Because of social listening we caught
this issue very early and addressed it
within 72 hours of launch,” he says.
“Once addressed, we saw nothing but
positive responses because of our quick
action and transparency. We also had
one-on-one discussions via social media
with any customer who had concerns.
Using social media to blast out messages
the time to listen and pay attention to
how your community is reacting to your
content and your brand.”
Still, for some marketers, social media
can do more than engage with fans and
followers. Casey Walters, vice president
of marketing at Shed Defender, a com-
pany that makes a product that minimizes
the effects of pet shedding, says brands
need to determine a strategy that outlines
how and why they’re using each platform.

“Brands can use social media to im-
prove customer service, generate aware-
ness, increase conversions, promote a
sale, increase email signups, and more,”
Walters says. “The
strategy needed to
achieve each of
these goals is very
different.”
Walters taps
Instagram and Fa-
cebook to target fe-
males ages 25 to 55,
a key demographic
for Shed Defender.

“We post or-
ganic content on
both channels,
Walters adds that she also uses Fa-
cebook Messaging to connect with cus-
tomers. “The Message Us button on our
website is a way to contact us via Messen-
ger and gives our customers an easy and
quick way to ask questions. It’s an added,
easy touchpoint that makes customer
service interactions simple and seamless,”
she says.

Walters wraps up by saying something that would be music to Zuckerberg’s ears. “Facebook ads have been the most cost-effective marketing tool to date,” she says. “We love that it makes it easy to optimize campaigns in real-time.”