Full Service Social Media Marketing

Investors in the 21st century know that the key components of marketing required for success include social media–every time. This e-commerce brand was no different. In fact, creating an engaging community on social was built into their investment strategy from the get-go.

This brand has been and continues to be a leader in the billiards industry, which presents a very unique opportunity. Yes–their industry and therefore audience is very niche, but they are also highly engaged and passionate customers. The industry overall is extremely old school -- and no one had yet taken the time to build an engaging social following. But Seybert’s was about to change that….

Jake was given our name from another long-standing client of ours, also a business investor. He has worked with us on various different brands and projects in the past and knew the results we produced. When Jake told us about Seybert’s, we were excited right from the start. We knew we’d be able to make a difference with an e-commerce brand like this, and Jake and the Seybert’s team provided the trust and autonomy to do just that.

Today, it’s a story we’re incredibly proud to tell. The results around audience growth, email list building and overall content engagement have been stellar–and that’s putting it mildly.

“After making an investment in an eCommerce business that had done basically zero marketing before our ownership, Marr was one of my first phone calls after they had shown demonstrable success with one of our other portfolio companies. Tessa and team have been invaluable partners since that first phone call. They helped us stand up social media accounts and effective engagement strategies immediately, and did so with a partnership and growth mindset that makes them integral members of the team more than outside vendors. Marr drives results on every platform they touch, they roll up their sleeves and help beyond just their scope of work, and are flexible to work with us and adapt based on the business performance and evolution of our strategy. The next investment I make, I know Marr will yet again be one of my first phone calls.”

– Jake

We kicked off both organic and paid social right out of the gate. Because Seybert’s was already a well-known brand that had never activated social in the past, we knew it was low-hanging fruit from a marketing perspective and the results supported our thesis. Any e-commerce brand should be utilizing this award-winning, all-encompassing strategy in 2022. And we’ll prove to you why.

RESULTS:

Their Facebook page grew organically from 6,166 to 23,050 followers from February to May 2021 (that’s 274% growth in just 4 months!), then were ramped up in June with a strategy-driven Page Likes campaign, scoring a record low cost per result (per page like, in this case) of $0.06! (We have still never seen anything this low, although campaigns for other clients have come close!). We had been working with a budget of about $1,000 per month at that point, but after reviewing the analytics of our second/third month of this paid objective, we indicated to the client that the results were proving predictable and might never be this low again, so now was a time to lean in if they wanted huge growth. We asked them how many Page Likes they wanted, and simply did the math as to what it would cost, tweaked our audience based on analytics, and we continued to run with that same budget and voila, our Page Likes hit a total of 39,000 by July! To reiterate, that is an astonishing 532% growth in just 6 months.

Today our campaigns have steadied, maintaining an impressively low CPR and the page is now up to over 51,000 likes after only a year of working with us.

Now, Instagram growth can be more challenging because Facebook Advertising (which you use to advertise on both Facebook and Instagram) currently has no objective to grow Instagram followers. (I know–we’re waiting impatiently… #eyeroll.) Our strategy here was heavily reliant on what we call outbound engagement.

Outbound engagement is a crucial and manual part of any social media growth strategy. By hopping their Instagram account daily and engaging with accounts that may have never seen ours before, we’re able to pop up in front of potential consumers or followers by saying “Hi!” with a friendly like, follow or comment. There are more specific strategies around this for optimal results, but we’re keeping those tricks of the trade *secret*.

Our team dedicated time daily to outbound engagement, all the while employing other tried and true organic strategies including a hashtag strategy that drove discoverability within our target market and working with a graphic designer and key influencers to produce and share content our audience would love. (Fun fact: in this case, it was not about sharing super polished content, but more raw and relatable stuff. That’s what this audience wants! We know, because we tested and got the results to prove it.)

After a year of working on this, Seybert’s Instagram audience has grown from scratch to a whopping 15.5k followers and maintained an average engagement rate of 4%. For comparison, industry-standard suggests 1.6% is strong. But hey–we like to push ourselves.

“Marr Media Group has been a great find for us at Seybert's. Social media can quickly become a very time-consuming endeavour for a small to medium-sized business and Marr gives us the ability to do it at a high level, without needing to become an expert in 'the weeds', as well as saving us a ton of time on content creation. Aside from the time I save by working with Marr, I also know I can tap into their full team if needed - our account manager is always offering to run an idea by another member of their team, whether it's a press release or help editing a video - I get more than just some social media posts from the Marr team. As for the results - we see industry-leading (low) costs for lead generation and have seen huge follower growth. The Marr group is a flexible member of my team, that has delivered on everything they said they world (and more).” – Mark

Now, growth and engagement are all well and good as we know brand awareness and top-of-funnel matters to marketers. But we like to work a step further as well and contribute where we can to mid-funnel conversions.

Email consistently performs better when it comes to driving sales, producing an average conversion rate of 4% while social usually converts at about 1%. So while it can still be a worthwhile strategy to test and run conversion ads directly through social, it is always a wise idea to build an email list.

We executed a monthly giveaway campaign that acquires email addresses in exchange for the opportunity to win, month over month. With this campaign strategy, Seybert’s has grown their email list by 14,976 paying only $0.61 per email on average. They are now able to email market to their list of over 32,000 leads and generate ROI that way.

What’s next for Seybert’s? Well, we found that utilizing Instagram and influencers together was a winning strategy, so we’ve leaned further into that and our attention has now shifted to TikTok to see what magic we can make happen there. We’ve barely begun, but we’re already seeing growth of 760 followers and views as high as 6,717 per video. We validated very quickly that this is a platform our audience hangs out on, and a place our content performs well, so we expect massive results over the coming year. Follow along on their incredible growth here.

Seybert’s continues to be a valued client partner of ours and we’re so thrilled to be a part of their journey to digital success!

Learn more about how we can help your brand achieve results like this through social media and influencer marketing. We have a very limited amount of capacity for new clients this year, so connect with us ASAP to see if we’re a fit to support your business.