Challenge: Use social media to promote and amplify a product to a wide audience.
Put your social media skills to the test! Create content a social media campaign to build brand awareness, generate leads, and drive sales for a Glowforge product and/or e-commerce storefront. You’ll consider which social platforms will be the most effective, what marketing strategies to use, and how to best engage your audience.
Promote an existing Glowforge product of your own from the Catalog or develop a new one in the Marketing Magic challenge. You can also use your own existing e-commerce storefront or develop one in the Sold! Build e-Commerce Success challenge.
Facilitation Guide
Background
Social media has become an essential tool for building brand awareness, generating leads, driving sales, and connecting with potential customers on a large scale. It allows businesses to more easily advertise towards their target market and expand their reach to other potential customers. Businesses often tailor their marketing strategy to different social media platforms based on demographics and user behaviors. That’s why you’ll determine which platform(s) will be the most effective for your target market!
Social media also benefits a business’ digital marketing through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Businesses with a large following and frequently-updated social media content tend to have an improved search engine ranking, which in turn drives more traffic to their website and increases revenue. It’s important that entrepreneurs continuously evaluate and adjust their social media strategy and campaigns to enhance their marketing efforts and generate revenue.
Glowforge empowers entrepreneurs to think outside the box when it comes to creating engaging products for their customers. These products can be easily customized or personalized using a variety of Glowforge features, which look enticing to customers who interact with businesses via social media.
Explore
What social media platforms and marketing strategies could you use to promote your Glowforge product or storefront? Consider the following:
- What are the pros and cons of each social media platform?
- What social media platform(s) does your target market use most often?
- What type of social media content does your target market connect with most (i.e. videos, images, stories, text)?
- How can social media enhance digital marketing and promote sales?
- What do competitors' social media accounts look and feel like?
- What are some successful social media campaigns that you can learn from?
Explore Tip
Search for the most recent social media demographics to better understand who uses which social media platform and for what purpose. This fact sheet will show you an example of what this data may look like. Use the search query “social media demographics” as a starting point.
Reflect and Review
Reflect on your research on social media platforms:
- How did you evaluate the pros and cons of different social media platforms while considering your target market? What did you learn that is interesting or compelling?
- What insights did you gain from competitors’ successful social media campaigns?
Before brainstorming social media strategies you’ll use to promote your product, are there any other resources you want to explore?
Ideate
Brainstorm different social media strategies you could use to promote your product or e-commerce storefront. Don’t worry about if your ideas are good or bad — just get creative! Consider the following:
- What message do you hope to convey to your target market about the product? How does this message align to your brand identity?
- How can your tone of voice, color scheme, and content delivery support your message throughout your social media campaign?
- What kind of content will you use most often? How will this content engage your target market?
- Are there promotions or incentives that you can offer to generate leads and drive sales? How might promotions or incentives impact your profitability?
Ideate Tip
Need some ideas to get your creativity flowing? Check out these 9 examples of highly effective social media campaigns. How does each example build brand awareness through customer engagement, color, or brand messaging?
Reflect and Review
Reflect on the strategies you brainstormed.
- How can you be consistent across your social media strategies?
- How might these strategies generate revenue?
Next, you’ll narrow your ideas down to one fully planned social media campaign. Is there anything else you want to explore before moving to that stage?
Design
Select a few strategies that you would like to include in your social media campaign. Your campaign should include your goals, a timeline, and any potential content drafts, ideas, or sketches. Later, in the Prototype stage, you’ll create one or two pieces of content to use in your campaign. Consider the following:
- What kind of content will you post and how often? Consider creating videos of creating your product on Glowforge.
- How will you use the overall visual design and tone of voice to convey your message throughout the campaign?
- How might you use Glowforge to enhance your social media photos? Consider creating backgrounds out of paper or staging products for photos using stands printed on Glowforge. Check out this earring display stand, tiered sunglass display, or art stand for staging ideas.
- How will you engage your target market? How will you respond to their comments and feedback?
- How will you track and analyze performance of your social media campaign?
- What will it cost to run your social media campaign? How will you budget for your expenses and maintain profitability?
Design Tip
Need help getting started? Try using a social media campaign template to guide your thinking. This can help you ensure consistency and efficiency while bringing your campaign vision to life.
Reflect and Review
Take a moment to reflect on what you’ve created:
- How does your campaign encourage customers to visit your storefront and to make a purchase?
- How does your campaign align with your brand message?
Now it’s time to create and test your content!
Prototype
Select one piece of content you planned for your campaign and create it using the appropriate software tools. Consider the following:
- What software do you need to create your content?
- What colors, font, and imagery will you use to convey your message and brand identity to your target audience?
- How might you use images of your Glowforge product to entice customers?
- How will your content generate traffic, drive the audience to your e-commerce storefront, and lead to sales?
- How will content be posted on the social media platform(s)? If you are using multiple platforms, how will you differentiate your content to meet the needs of each audience and platform?
Prototype Tip
You can develop a style guide for your brand that includes colors, fonts, imagery, tone of voice, and other elements. This can help you maintain consistency across social media channels. Learn how to create a style guide and what to include.
Reflect and Review
Take a moment to reflect on the content you created during this stage.
- How does the content you created align to your brand identity?
- How will your content increase customer engagement and sales?
- What feedback will you use to revise your content or campaign?
Is there anything you want to change before getting feedback?
Evaluate
After creating a piece of content for your campaign and sharing it with your peers, determine how you will get feedback from a focus group made up of representatives of your target market. Discuss with your teacher how you will publish your content. Then determine how you can use that feedback to adjust your campaign plan. Consider the following as ideas to help you evaluate progress and to help others offer actionable feedback:
- How will you get feedback from a focus group or your peers to better understand their needs and preferences?
- How can you use social media metrics to determine potential leads and sales? How likely were visitors to make a purchase based on your social media campaign? Consider how you can use metrics like impressions, likes, comments, and shares to inform your evaluation.
- How will you track your social media content’s return on investment (ROI)?
- What elements of the content or campaign caught the attention of visitors the most?
- How well did the content and campaign communicate the key features and benefits of the product? How well did they communicate the brand message?
Evaluate Tip
Not sure how to get feedback from your target market before going live? Try utilizing personas to help mimic your target market. Ask your peers, trusted adults, or teachers to join a focus group. Then use comments, reactions, surveys, and other social media features to generate feedback. Consider using one of these customer feedback tools.
Reflect and Review
Take a moment to reflect on the feedback you received from others.
- What could you do differently to improve your campaign?
- How will you increase sales leads from social media?
Once you have completed and finalized your campaign plan and initial content, it’s time to share it with a larger audience and grow your business!
