From One Small Brand Brother to Another

TalentZoo.com | Beyond Madison Avenue | Flack Me | Digital Pivot

Archives | Categories

By: Janet Kalandranis

All the big brands love to give advice (and it’s much appreciated) on how to use social media effectively, but many times these strategies are too costly or too time intensive for a smaller brand to even consider. The result is that smaller brands resort to the normal humdrum (or drum hum) of social media: photos, information, and a whole lot of boring. So what’s a small brand to do? See below for a small brand’s guide on how social media can prove to be a successful tool.

Cravings Popcorn in Lansing, MI started with zero marketing dollars. That’s the definition of a small brand. But this little powerhouse signed up for those social media accounts and created a strategy to build success for the company. Better yet, it worked.

Extension of the Brand: There are many positives to being a small brand, like the ability to change and create based on customer feedback in a short amount of time; aka flexibility. Cravings used its social media tools to suggest new flavors and ask customers what they wanted. This created an ongoing interest in the brand and one that customers felt they could interact with consistently. And by letting the secret leak about Bacon Cheddar popcorn, Cravings had customers talking about the new flavor online and asking for it in-store.

Know the Audience: Each social media platform has different users and this can even change based on region. Cravings found that Twitter users in its area were more sophisticated and wanted different information than those on Facebook. The brand adjusted its tone and messaging to make the information relevant and appropriate for each audience. And Cravings didn’t just stick to its own content, but instead played a needed role of simply delivering local information to its followers. Pretty smart.

Sell Anywhere: Okay, maybe not anywhere, but be creative. Cravings was able to use what brands think is a stale social media platform to sell its product. By innovating and researching, Cravings is now able to sell to its customers right where they already are: Facebook. It’s not about changing the standards of social media to become a selling platform, but instead identifying new ways that social media can work for a brand. Creativity and hard work allowed this brand to turn accessible social media tools into a complete marketing strategy, small-brand style.