My name is George Weiner and welcome to Whole Whale TV. Today we are talking
about the hundred-dollar-a-month social media marketing plan. Whole Whale is a
digital agency, we have spent millions of dollars on social media marketing — you do
not need to spend that much! We have found what works on these different
platforms. But first, I want to take a step back. Maybe you're a social media
marketing person, posting for your organization, digital fundraising or
communications, or marketing for your organization, this is hopefully going to
give you a starting point for why we should be advertising. And I want to
start with one simple fact — well actually, a chart. This is Facebook
reach. It's not going up, it's going down. Organic reach is dropping over time, and
by the way, Instagram is next because a little company called Facebook owns that.
So we are in an ecosystem now where the attention that you're getting
organically is dropping. Facebook is not a social media platform, it is a digital
advertising platform. If you are a company, a brand, a nonprofit, I'll say it one
more time, Facebook is not a social media platform. That means that it is now a
pay-to-play environment— you can be frustrated, or you
can take action with a plan of $100 a month. And what we're doing is testing
and learning across the following platforms: YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook,
Instagram — by the way, leave us a comment if there's like another platform you're
like, I wonder what I would do there? What we're going to be doing in these series
is creating our best tactics for you to try with this $100 plan. I
don't want you breaking the bank, I want you learning, I don't want you to spend
$1200 on a Tuesday, that would be bad! You wouldn't learn nearly as much as the A/B
testing and the attention marketplace game we're going to be playing.
I almost equate it to, if you showed up to your job tomorrow and they say "Hey sorry,
we are not going to give you a laptop but you still have to work in this digital
landscape." You're not being given the tools for the job that needs to be done if
you do not have even the small budget to work with. The caveat here is on these
platforms you may think you're doing advertising — Facebook boosted posts,
it's just an aside, that is not what I'm talking about.
The boosted posts are tricking you into boosting to your existing audience to
get what you used to have with organic reach. That is not an effective use
ninety-nine percent of the time for your dollars. One more time, don't spend money
on Facebook boosted posts. Instead go to business.facebook.com for instance,
and set up a proper ad account. Each of these platforms has got a whole universe
behind the system that lets you target and test and measure what's going on
with your ads, rather than blanket spends that simply increase one tiny number and
the sidebar of your posts. So again we're going to be walking through how to use
these different platforms. Before we get going though, we need to identify why we're
on these platforms. For some way shape or form we're talking about attention. You
are an attention merchant, you're out there finding where the eyeballs are, how
much they cost, or how hard it is, by the way, because time is money. You spend time
creating that post — how hard did you have to work last week across all social
media platforms to create it? 3 hours? 5 hours? Is it sometimes a full-time
job of somebody to do? That costs you money. So now think about the same way
how much you're spending to find that attention or conversion. Here's some
ideas for goals, here's some ideas that you can think about for different goals
for your organization. Maybe we're interested in emails, direct donations,
maybe we want general attention or views of a PSA or a public service
announcement around "hey let's protect our you know landscape here," "let's
protect our wilderness," "let's..." you know, you get the idea. Now I want you to look
at it another way here — I want you to look at this commitment curve. On these
different axes we've basically plotted as you go up it is more difficult,
basically, to get that donation right? That donation is around $65, if you're
saying okay the cost-per-acquisition versus just the email or a
view down here on YouTube we're looking at things that just cost, you know,
2 cents to get a 30-second view. You can learn a lot with a $100
if you're paying for 2 cent views to a targeted audience. Let's say just
coastal cities or a certain region, we can be using on all these platforms
pixels on our site to retarget, to re-market people, or find new people that
are not like those. When we come back to this commitment curve though, we're
identifying where we want to find people and what is the value to your
organization. And I'll do a very simple bit of math here with emails. I give you
10 emails into your marketing, you message them over 9 months. What is
the chance that by the end of that you say "Hey, we're looking for $100
donations, $100 donations for our cause because
it's Wednesday and it matters, how many of those do you think you could get
to donate? Even if it's one, we're talking about ten dollars per email. Now, come
back 9 months prior — if you only spent $1 to acquire that email, did
you just make $9? Did you just make a heck of a lot more? 'Cause over the
course of the lifetime of that donor maybe the lifetime value is 3x the
initial investment, $300. What is the cost per acquisition for the thing you're
after if we're talking about digital fundraising? Now apply it to all these
platforms! This is where the fun happens, because after we've identified the goal
we're thinking about the message that we're sending to the audience on all the
platforms, we can think about the mindset of the person on LinkedIn, we're thinking
about business Facebook, we're thinking about entertainment, when we're on Insta
also that is entertainment, we're trying to either educate somebody about a new
topic, or form them or entertain them, but then hook them into that next step
action. Easily could be email, could be traffic to our site, you're gonna decide
that but ultimately be able to measure against what it was worth to you to get
that person into your ecosystem and assign that number and track it over
time. And guess what? You're going to find value. Maybe you find out that 7:30 p.m.
on a Saturday or Tuesday is like Pinot Noir o'clock — that means
the people that you're trying to get to donate have a Pinot Noir in their hand
and are more likely to press "GIVE" than at say, 11:00 p.m., when their inbox is
full and they're super frustrated at work. And then you run that advertising
program again and again, getting the highest value per click, per email, per
conversion, because you looked at your numbers, you looked over time, and then
guess what? When you've got something that works, and I'm not saying you can't
spend more than $100, if you are making money, if you are turning $1
into $10 over 9 months you take those data to your boss, to whomever
and say "Hey, I spent $100, if I had spent $1,000 we could have added a zero to what just
happened there." This is how e-commerce works, we just for some reason just don't
think of it the right way in the nonprofit sector. So I'm trying to shake
you awake, I'm trying to give you some opportunities to play around with, we've
got some fantastic ideas for what to do and what to try on Facebook, LinkedIn, on
Instagram, and by the way, leave a comment about other platforms if you're
interested. And you know, that's what I mean, I'm going to leave it there. I hope
you're excited because we have seen so much value and have seen amazing things happen
when you're able to employ this pretty basic plan and reshape what it means to
be in social media marketing. And yeah I'll leave it there. Good luck!