Facebook Ads Revved Up Leads for A Leading Powersports Manufacturer Their Story Our client, a leading brand in the recreational vehicle space, had a unique, new product launching and needed to leverage the best performing high-awareness channels they could to bring...
Retailers Experiencing 7X Better Fan Growth
A top manufacturer of powersports products including off road vehicles, snowmobiles, motorcycles, and ATVs came to ThumbStopper in 2018. Their portfolio includes over 30 brands and they’re represented in over 100 countries.
698% Better Facebook Fan growth
112% Better Organic Reach
While they are well-known as a leader in the powersports industry, they knew there was an opportunity to attract new customers on behalf of their local dealers.
They recognized the value of assisting their dealers in increasing their local online presence and the impact this strategy would have on driving in-store sales growth.
In 2018, they turned to ThumbStopper to scale their digital presence across over 400 dealer Facebook pages.
The Challenge
The brand was already leveraging their high quality marketing assets on their own social pages, but they faced several challenges in disseminating their content at the local level.
For starters, creating a central hub where dealers could access the marketing resources was possible, but there would be a barrier for the dealers in finding time to log in, download the assets, and post on their social pages.
With an overall goal of increasing brand sales for their dealers, the process hod to allow dealers to post high quality digital assets with no added work. Additionally, not all dealers carried all product lines, so the products had to be segmented and allow dealers to only subscribe to the content that represented the products that they sold in store.
The Solution
Using the ThumbStopper Brand Manager, the brand launched social media syndication to a key group of initial participating dealers. Each dealer was set up to only receive brand content and assets for the product lines that they carried.
The brand leveraged the Brand Manager to aggregate assets for each product line, and set content expiration dates so that none of their dealers would receive outdated or out-of-season content.
This automation, syndication, and segmentation improved the brand experience at the local level, and above all else, the customer experience, ensuring that every dealer social feed was consistently publishing quality content to their dealers’ customer base.
The Results
Over the past year, since implementing the ThumbStopper platform, dealers have experienced an average of 45,115 post impressions, 1,770 post engagements and have gained an average of 333 Facebook fans from an average of 108 posts per dealer.
For businesses without ThumbStopper, the average fan increase is 1.6%1 over a year. Participating ThumbStopper dealers have experienced a 12.5% increase in fans.
For businesses without ThumbStopper, the average organic reach for a post is 5.3%1. Participating ThumbStopper dealers have experience an average organic reach of 11.3%.
1 Hootsuite Global Report 2019 (Q4 Update)
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Key Points:
- Companies should understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure their websites are accessible.
- Brands that concentrate on accessibility on social media demonstrate care for their customers and build a positive brand reputation.
- Brands should always consider inclusive design, such as plain, straightforward language, in their social media posts.
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.
Social Media for All
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.
Making Content Accessible
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.
Text
- Use plain language that’s easy to understand
- Avoid text in all caps
- Capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag, like #SocialMediaMarketing, a practice called camel-case
Videos
- Provide descriptive captions. Instead of just displaying the words people on-screen say, explain background noises and other sounds that are relevant to the scene.
- Add your own subtitles or enable auto-subtitles on the video platform of your choice
- Use captioning for live videos when possible
Graphics
- Use color contrast checkers to make sure low-vision people can see images
- Try not to completely rely on color to show contrast
- Add alternative text on each social platform
Distribute Accessible Content
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.