So Bogdan and I have been busy making sure that we're posting often, creating the right kinds of content, and posting it all on a variety of social media platforms. We've split the company up a bit, so that in addition to the Video and Photography business "Buburuza Productions", we're now adding both our respective fine art specializations as well; "BogdanFotoArt" and "JohnBishopFineArt". That means we have a Twitter account, Facebook and Instagram for Buburuza Productions, but also we have all three for each of our art business entities as well. That gets super confusing, and means we're cranking out a lot of posts each day.
Good News / Bad News
It took us literally years to get our priorities right, and to figure out what we needed to post, how often, and on what platforms. The good news is that we've developed good habits now, and the postings get done pretty well every day. The bad news is that, with all of that effort and time, we've never once had a sale that we thought we could trace back to a social media post. And while sales aren't everything, they're certainly not nothing.
Ask Someone Young
So we did what any self-respecting middle aged men would have done. We spoke with a 22 year old. Jack Chadbourne is the son of one our our jewelry artists at the studio, Bourne Jewelry. Jack works in social media marketing, and we met with him today to explore the possibility of his helping us get our heads around what we need to be promoting, to whom, and how. He'd going to come back to us with a proposal, but I thought I'd revisit some of the points he made.
It's All in the Numbers
On of the first things Jack told us was that in order to make sense of anything we're doing online, we need to have Google analytics activated on our websites. That was simple enough. We just went to Google Analytics, filled out a few forms, and we were synchronized to harvest data about who is currently visiting our websites.
And that makes perfect sense, right? In any other professional endeavor, I know that data based decision making is always superior. We will now be able to study the traffic to our sites, and more importantly, have a base line of activity to compare to after we attempt a marketing campaign. How can we know if we got our marketing right if we don't know how many people were visiting us beforehand? We need to give Google Analytics a bit of time to gather enough data for us to work with, but these analytics should help us determine who is currently visiting our sites, so we can better reach out to that demographic.
The other thing to consider is that our research indicates that our target customer base is wealthy women, between the ages of 50 and 70. They are the ones who are still buying art during the pandemic, and I don't think we're doing anything to reach out to that group of customers. It will be very interesting to figure out how many of these women are currently visiting our websites. My guess is there are few to none. So the really interesting statistic to me will be to see if that demographic begins to appear with any regularity after our campaign goes into effect.
The other thing Jack told us was that, in today's world, you pretty much have to spend money to get any sort of results. I guess that rings true to me, but I was still a bit nostalgic for an Internet that was really free to all, and was the great equalizer in the publicity and marketing arenas.
So What's a Campaign?
In our case, we're starting with a fixed amount of money to play with, and we are going to create a two minute video presenting Bogdan and his artwork. There will be music, voice over, interviews, and B-Roll showing who he is, and what kind of art he produces.
Once that is complete, and we've reviewed the analytics from our website, we'll come up with a concrete plan outlining which platforms to hit, how much to spend promoting postings on those platforms, and track progress as the campaign kicks off. If we see that there is little to no progress, we'll kill the promotion, revisit our content, and try again.
At the end of the campaign, which roughly means when we run out of the allotted budget, we can look again to see if there has been any change in our hits and/or sales.
So why does this make so much sense to me, and it never did before? I have read books and articles, listened to podcasts and watched YouTube videos, and I still never felt like I understood what to do until this afternoon. I'll keep you posted as to how we proceed. Do you have any stories, advice, or warnings about experiences you've had running an online marketing campaign? Love to hear from you if you do.
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