The Challenge Oftentimes small retailers and dealerships have little or no budget for a dedicated social media manager. Finding and creating compelling content on a consistent basis puts a burden on sales managers and staff and frequently is one of the last things a...
STIHL produces the best-selling brand of chainsaws and a full line of outdoor power tools including blowers, trimmers, brush cutters, and construction tools. STIHL Limited, their Canadian subsidiary, is supported by more than 1,000 authorized, full-service dealers coast to coast.
When ThumbStopper® reached out to STIHL Ltd., they were running a co-op marketing program with minimal success. They found very few dealers taking advantage of their program and many using their co-op marketing funds inefficiently on one-off ads and branded merchandise.
At the time, STIHL Ltd. used a marketing library to house their content assets, but they discovered their dealers had trouble accessing assets, often forgot their passwords, and neglected to ask for help.
STIHL Ltd. knew that the best way to maximize the return of their co-op marketing program was through a more targeted and coordinated approach that was also convenient for their dealers.
STIHL Ltd. needed a simple and automated solution that wouldn’t require dealers to invest a lot of time and energy into the program. The ThumbStopper team presented them with the ultimate solution: An intuitive platform designed to bridge the content gap between brands and their retailers.
Maintaining social media platforms is a critical element of a business’s marketing plan. STIHL dealers are independently owned organizations and we recognized that a solution to build both the STIHL brand in conjunction with a dealer’s brand was needed. The Thumbstopper platform provides this solution. Locally owned dealers participate in their social communities, informing their customers with relevant and updated content created and maintained by STIHL thereby building both their brand and ours.
Dave Warren, President, STIHL Ltd.
The results speak for themselves, we doubled our targets in the first 3 months and achieved our secondary goal a year ahead of schedule!
Jeff Loosemore – Marketing Manager
After receiving a demo of ThumbStopper’s Brand Manager, the team at STIHL Ltd. was impressed by seeing the organic reach they could achieve. Not only could Brand Manager™ streamline their co-op marketing program, but it could also increase dealer participation and ensure their branded assets are used and shared on social media.
The team at ThumbStopper worked with STIHL Ltd. to create educational and promotional collateral, smartly distributed to their territory managers and dealers. The white-labeled experience made it clear that this program was an extension of STIHL, the brand the dealers already knew and trusted. Informational one-pagers and webinars complemented a proven series of emails that were sent to the dealers. A simple sign up page allowed dealers to customize the content they wanted to showcase on their social properties. Most importantly, the Account Growth team at ThumbStopper was fully briefed on the program details and called on dealers to explain the program, get them comfortable, and get them enrolled.
While STIHL Ltd. anticipated 250 dealer enrollments in the first 90 days, the actual enrollment count was 594. A staggering 138% more dealers enrolled than originally anticipated.
With all of those dealers connected, STIHL Ltd. began syndicating content out to their dealers immediately. Using ThumbStopper’s Brand Manager, STIHL Ltd.’s social media manager can store and manage all of their social media assets in one place while automating their content distribution across their dealers’ social media pages. By leveraging ThumbStopper’s automation, within the first six months of implementation, for every one post that STIHL Ltd. made to their own brand’s Facebook page, STIHL Ltd. made an additional 145 posts on average through their dealers’ pages. With all of their dealers’ posts combined, STIHL Ltd. reached an average of 28,574 fans per post. This is a whopping 364% increase in Organic Reach for the “dealers” and the brand.
Key Points:
Accessibility may not be a term you usually associate with the internet and social media. You might picture wheelchair ramps, directional signs in braille, or sign language interpreters at live performances. The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 dictates the legal necessity of these and similar accommodations in public spaces. As we’ve come to rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to buying groceries, it’s become clear that the internet is now also a public space. It must be accessible to everyone. And like other applications of ADA, businesses that do not comply are liable for damages caused by inaccessibility.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an international set of standards to provide instruction on meeting accessibility needs. It’s important for companies to understand how this applies to their websites, especially if they engage in e-commerce. In terms of social media, the requirements are less concrete. But prioritizing accessibility on your company’s social media is essential to your reputation, even if the legal requirements are uncertain. We’ll look at why it’s important to your customers, how it affects the perception of your brand, and how to make these changes efficiently.
The cornerstone of accessibility is inclusive design: products or experiences that are accessible for everyone regardless of disability. The most important place where this shows up is on company websites where most users expect to also find links to the brand’s social media profiles. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of websites are not accessible, despite the fact that the application of ADA to the internet is over 20 years old. Making websites accessible is a complex process without the use of specialized software like Accessibe or EqualWeb.
Unlike websites, making sure your social media is accessible is a straightforward, ongoing process. Every social platform has been quick to release optional accessibility features. These features are important to many users even if they don’t rely on them to use social media.
Making your social presence accessible tells users that your brand cares about people, not just profits. It’s the same idea as the push for the representation of different body sizes in fashion or more expansive skin tone ranges in beauty products. Brands that meet the needs of underrepresented groups endear themselves to others as well. And while optimizing your brand website for accessibility might be a larger project you aren’t ready to tackle yet, starting with your social media pages is a great way to show customers that you’re listening to their concerns.
Shifting to accessible content means incorporating inclusive design into your creative process. The practice varies by type of media. For platforms that have graphics or videos with captions, it means not only adjusting each component but also being mindful of how they interact with each other.
For example, YouTube’s automatically generated closed captions and subtitles are often inaccurate. It's one of many examples where the caption generation software has issues picking up strong accents and mumbled words. This could be remedied with handcrafted video transcription services. If that’s not in the budget, the video creator could add their script or transcription to the video description.
None of the technology for accessibility is perfect yet. Teaching computers to digest complex information for human understanding is difficult, and the variations in disabilities further complicate it. The majority of adjustments creators need to make revolve around helping assistive technology better understand their content. Let’s look at how to make different kinds of content accessible.
Many users find their new favorite brand through social media. When disabled people (who make up 26% of the population according to the CDC) can’t access your brand’s social posts, you miss the opportunity to connect with a demographic that’s eager to engage in online communities. On a hyper-local level, that kind of connection goes even further.
That’s why ThumbStopper exists to help brands distribute their social content to their retailer network. Retailers can connect with their local audience - with your accessible, branded content - in a more personal way. And since content goes to their page automatically once they sign up, retailers can effortlessly promote your brand online while focusing on running their business.
Ready to see how ThumbStopper can help your brand improve its reach? Check out our brand reach calculator or book a demo.
