It’s hard to take social media seriously because everyone can download TikTok and post a video. Everyone can log in to Instagram and share a story. Everyone can create a YouTube channel and share a vlog. So if everyone can do it, it’s not really special… right?
Not quite.
Social Media Strategists are key for digital marketing growth because they can create communities. Much like CRM Specialists know how to segment and target an email or SMS list, social media strategists know how to segment and target your social media platforms (without ad spend!)
Through this case study I’ll showcase how an optimized Social Media Strategy led to a massive boost in engagement and sales for Dr. Josh Axe and his supplement brand’s organic social accounts.
Project Overview
Dr. Josh Axe is a leader in the health & wellness online space, most well-known for his Nashville Private Practice, his website DrAxe.com, and his NYT Bestseller Eat Dirt.
Then, in 2016 Dr. Axe co-founded Ancient Nutrition. This supplement brand has a mission of helping connect modern lifestyles with ancient nutrients (and they created powdered bone broth and collagen which we all know is super trendy these days!)
As you can imagine, because of these amazing accomplishments and innovations, Dr. Axe and team didn’t have much issue growing an engaged following.
However, the did have one big problem.
Creating content that communities engage with on-platform is one thing, while creating content that encourages your community to make a purchase is a different story.
The Dr. Axe brand and the Ancient Nutrition store needed a collaborative social media strategy that built brand authority, engaged users, and drove transactions.
As I was hired to manage their social media full-time, I came up with a few solutions alongside the team.
We set our sights on the community. Their problems, questions, and shared experiences became the inspiration for our strategy and all the content we created. Paired with quick and helpful community management, this strategy grew an engaged following and drove sales from social media.
Project Breakdown
But… where to begin?
We followed the pulse of the brand marketing calendar, planning our social content and promotions against other major marketing initiatives.
Translating a brand campaign into a social campaign takes a little bit of time and a lot of creativity (especially in today’s landscape). Social audiences are more tech-savvy and vocal with a higher media literacy. Sharing ads and promotional materials with educated social audiences takes finesse and a keen understanding of the social space.
In order to merge the brand marketing calendar with necessary social media rizz, we built a social media campaign strategy that took every detail of social media marketing into consideration. Through this campaign format we built brand awareness, drove audience interactions, and increased sales from organic social media posts (tracked direct through UTMs).
Let’s walk through the seven parts of our social media campaign and how each part built on the last while helping us work towards set goals:
Part 1 – Outline Campaign
A campaign outline is a document or resource that compiles all the information you need to bring the campaign to life. It can include a variety of information, but some of the basics we used were: Goals & OKRs, campaign messaging, landing page links, product page links, collection page links, related blog posts or free resources, UTM tags, potential partners, social trends or sounds, etc.
By gathering all this information before working on the campaign, we were able to get a clear understanding of where we were and where we needed to get to hit our goals.
This allowed us to map out when and what we planned to share across all our social platforms for the duration of the campaign, as well as how we’d connect with other partners to increase our reach.
Part 2 – Solidify Collaborations & Partnerships
Since partnerships often revolve around dates and deadlines, we always connected with potential collaborators early on. We gauge their availability, and willingness to create content/share on social.
Once we understood their available level of collaboration, we could begin to fill in the blanks for when and how we’d partner.
Part 3 – Create Content
We completed an outline, we contacted partners, and then we started content creation.
This could include delegating to the appropriate designer, photographer, or videographer, or it could mean getting scrappy on Canva and Capcut– our team took a hybrid approach.
Content used for social, ads, or email might be handed off to a specialized creative team and sent for review, whereas graphics that were only shared on Instagram stories might be created in the app, by a social media manager, right before they were shared.
Part 4 – Curate & Schedule Content
We began this process about two weeks before a launch. It included compiling all our visual assets and pairing them with optimization pieces (like captions, tags, links, etc.). We’d send the full posts for review, would make any edits, and then schedule the content for sharing.
Part 5 – Live Share Content (as needed)
Some content, like stories with stickers or reels with collaborators, must be shared natively in app. When we had to share live, we made sure to optimize posts with incredible detail.
Part 6 – Engage with the Community
We followed a key strategy for engagement that required us to interact with incoming notifications as well as similar brands and creators in our vertical. This helped increase our reach on the platform because the activity mirrored that of a standard user.
This is why I always say that brands should use social platforms like they were created to be used!
Part 7 – Report on the Data
The end of each campaign meant a full campaign performance review.
We referenced the goals and OKRs set in the campaign outline and compared them our final numbers so we could make hypothesis about why some strategies succeeded or failed. Then we would brainstorm ways to stoke the fire or offset the problem in future campaigns.
Part 8 – Rinse & Repeat
Iterating on this campaign process will allow you to spot trends and make accurate forecasts about social media performance without spending additional money on boosting.
Project Impact & Analysis
Over two years of optimizing this campaign formula, we were able to:
- Increase Brand Awareness – 800M+ impressions gained
- Increase Community Size – 2M+ net new followers (filtering spam)
- Increase Consumer Interactions – average engagement rate increased from 3% to 6%
- Expand Our Team – 2 new hires, 3 promotions
Conclusion
Driving conversions from social isn’t as easy as, “wouldn’t a TikTok like [insert idea here] be fun?”.
The good news is that you CAN follow a standard social media campaign SOP to align brand goals with consumer wants and needs, then iterate on it to increase your impact.
This alignment results in massive engagement and revenue boost, as you can see from these results.
Want social media results like these?
Hey there! I’m Carlisle Russell, a seasoned marketing strategist with 10 years’ experience in social media marketing for e-commerce businesses. Tap here to learn more about building a profitable, predictable, and seriously engaged social media community.
