Page 42 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

But why causes in particular? The causes have all the ingredients to make a suc-
cessful social media marketing effort. They are usually time bound, have broad
appeal, and are subjects that people like to discuss with each other. Marketers who
tap into causes see their brands benefiting from the halo effect by being associated
with important social concerns and by gaining visibility with much larger audi-
ences than they normally would have. If you’re a marketer, it bodes well to directly
support a cause, encourage its supporters to harness social media marketing tac-
tics, or sponsor it indirectly. Even better, it makes sense to market your own cause
efforts using social media marketing tactics in a measurable fashion.

Procter & Gamble (one of the largest consumer-goods companies in the world)
organized a social media education session for all its marketers. But instead of
having a series of presentations by employees, P&G invited social media experts to
visit its headquarters. The company divided the social media experts into teams
and paired them with the company’s own marketers. The teams were tasked with
raising money for Tide’s Loads of Hope disaster relief campaign using social media
platforms to sell T-shirts. (The Loads of Hope website is shown in Figure 1-7.)
The winning team raised $50,000, and Tide matched that team’s contribution.
Through this effort, P&G positioned itself as a better corporate citizen, raised
money for a good cause, and was able to educate its marketers about the potential
of social media by actually practicing social media marketing. Some detractors
argued that this was just a one-day effort that got more attention than it deserved,
but the fact that so much money was raised in so little time is admirable.

FIGURE 1-7:
Tide’s Loads of
Hope.

26 PART 1 Getting Started with Social Media Marketing