Social Sauce – Big Pappa’s BBQ

What’s in the social sauce? Don’t like to pat ourselves on the back too often, but once in a while, every so often, we come across something that, well, you just can’t help yourself.

Entrepreneur Magazine (still get the printed copy, but now mostly read it on my iPad) had a great article titled Social Sauce. Certainly worth the read, especially if you are a doubter (someone not embracing social media). The article is about a social media experiment with Big Pappa’s BBQ in Denver and the test only ran 60 days. The complete article was an EXACT duplication of how we at Raven5 embrace and provide our program Socialmc2.

In this case, the experts ran a program that took a small business and added 275 Twitter followers, increased Facebook LIKES by 348 and improved by more than double the email addresses 646 new subscribers.

By comparison, we ran a campaign recently that increased Facebook LIKES by 656 (1175%), email addresses by 5,086 new subscribers and had a 9% response rate to our client’s website, all in 37 days. All this for a new brand, with a difficult age demographic and a product that didn’t suit the younger active online group,  as it fit a much older demographic (a group that is growing in online usage).

It’s a great article, certainly worth taking some time to read. Interesting the people at Big Pappa’s were quoted, “It’s all about a marketing mix. What this project has taught us is that social networking must be part of that mix and that it’s not nearly as difficult to manage as we once thought.” My perspective is slightly different, social networking and emarketing today must LEAD the mix, conventional marketing strategies are NOT as effective as your customers are continually building their online skills and time spent online continues to increase.

As your digital agency, we agree with the basics reflected in the article. First you need a good product, second you need the “big idea”, third you need to listen, fourth, be authentic and your best spokesperson is the owner, president or CEO (we’ve seen this continually), and lastly be patient. Social media takes time, it’s not a quick fix.

Social Media is critical in your marketing plan, building your email opt-in lists is critical to your current communications. Socialmc2 will give you the opportunity to create a social sauce of your own.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5, Toronto, October 2011

---

View All