Ideahaus : Creative + Communications

Satellite Marketing answers the question most businesses are asking, “How can we use social media to sell our products and services?”

Satellite Marketing Diagram v1

Satellite Marketing is a communications strategy designed to connect an organization with its target markets via social media sites and services.  These social media sites and services act as marketing sub-stations, or “Satellites”.

Satellites are used in addition to, or in place of, traditional media, such as print, radio, television, direct mail and outdoor advertising.  The goal is to expand the reach of the organization and enhance the results by creating relationships.

Satellites offer smaller, faster, dynamic communications opportunities, engaging prospects where they already exist.  Social media is among the fastest growing forms of communication today (site reference), with users connecting online for both personal and professional purposes.

To start, Satellite Marketing helps products or services to;

• Utilize social media, networks and functionality for marketing
• Develop relationships with prospects, customers, industry and media
• Promote the sampling and sales of products and services
• Supplement traditional media planning with social media planning
• Increase brand awareness, participation, engagement, reach and audience

Satellites are configured with strategically placed (and re-purposed) communications content from existing brochures, advertisements, web sites, public relations, branding, design, multimedia and events on social media sites then set in “orbit” around the prospect with the same diligence as traditional media. When planned properly, “social media planning” accounts for the same demographics, psychographics, frequency and impressions as conventional media planning. These Satellite-borne communications have greater credibility and frequency than traditional media, resulting in an enhanced impact upon the target market(s) of a product or service. Inherent in the model is the opportunity of a customer relationship.

Social Media Categories Diagram v1

Social media sites can be categorized into one or more of the following based on their users, community, functionality and media including;

• (s)ocial networks
• (v)ideo sharing
• (p)hoto sharing
• (m)icor-blogging
• (e)vents
• (bo)okmarking
• (ppt)sharing
• (v)ideo streaming
• (w)idgets
• (m)iscellaneous
• (b)logging

Marketing tag lines, logos, product images, advertising headlines, brochure content, email offers, video, press materials and event schedules can all be applied purposefully to the common form fields found in user profiles and company profiles; name, company, about me, email, image (user icon), links, etc.

In lieu of intrusive marketing, each satellite has a process for participation. Netiquette, protocol, call it strategy. Your behavior in the environment will dictate your success. Transparency (or translucency), in this instance, means that you cannot hide who you are or what you are doing here. Authenticity dictates that you be you; commission salesman, secretary, brand manager.

These sites often share technologies (RSS, API, etc) that enable them to inter-connect and share between each other. This interconnection can broadcast content to an opt-in audience, share and distribute content to a clearinghouse, and multiply marketing efforts exponentially.

The Satellite Marketing™ Process

1. Identify Your Target Market(s)

As with any plan you have to know who you’re going after. Documented demographics provide the age, gender, race, and income level, while psychographics address personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. Sometimes referred to as IAO variables (Interests, Attitudes, and Opinions), psychographics can be contrasted with demographics, behavioral variables (such as usage rate or loyalty), and bizographic variables (such as industry, seniority and functional area).

2. Strategy Development

Knowing who you’re going after is important. Knowing where they are is too. And what will you do with them when you find them? Strategy development reviews, explores and selects the most appropriate social media sites to form unique opportunities with your prospects. All of them.

Each category of social media satellite provides options; different ways to get to different people. It also has the ability to engulf your budget of hours and manpower (or womanpower) so finding a balance, being purposeful in your selection and avoiding overkill is important. Identifying roles and responsibilities helps reduce the duplication of effort, and scheduling confirms sales cycles and seasonality, as well as the right communication at the right time is happening as the relationship and technologies require.

3. Satellite Development

Developing a successful satellite to target your markets is dependent upon the communications assets you have to build it. Its also dependent upon the adaptation of its options, features and technology provided. User names, profile images, links, descriptions, and text fields addressing about me, favorites, hobbies, hometown, status, et al infer asset assignment. Understanding the differences and opportunities between personal, personnel and company profiles can be the difference between Sputnik and Sky Lab.

4. Satellite Deployment

Launching a satellite starts with the “save profile” button. The user name is now in the community database, listed as “recently joined”, and presented to the rest of the community for engagement. Review each profile in different browsers. Inter-connect each satellite with as many of the others as possible (and practical). This provides exponential return on the manual hours of each communication effort. For instance, when properly configured a video post at 12Seconds.tv updates Twitter with a tweet, a web site from a widget, a Facebook profile and a LinkedIn profile.

5. Participation

As much as you may want to jump right in there and start creating customers – DON’T! The first thing you want to do is get aclamated to the environment – just listen, watch, learn. Users no longer want or respond to a heavy handed sales pitch. Satellite marketing engages the prospect on their terms, where they live, when they want. Understand that each satellite environment will be different so repeating this process each time keeps you from assuming that one is just like the other. They are not. LinkedIn is a professional environment so don’t do anything that you wouldn’t do at work. Facebook is a personal site, so watch talking business when you’ve run into a neighbor. Use the professional manners and the social graces you’ve learned in your face-to-face world guide your decisions in your marketing efforts.

6. Measurement

Eventually, someone is going to ask, “how are we doing?” How will you be able to respond if you don’t have some sort of measurement. Many will turn first to a common benchmark; sales. Although a perfectly acceptable unit most sales are not easily attributal to the actions of social media. More often a negotiate metric is a better measurement. Some thing discussed and agreed upon that if some amount of something happens. For instance, the increase of friends or connections would be indicative of how many impressions you are making. The views of a video or photos are clearly valid exposures. Most accurate is a rubric. Borrowed from education, it is a scoring tool for subjective assessments like performance on a social media site. Rubrics allow for standardized evaluation according to specified criteria, making grading simpler and more transparent.

Want to learn more about Satellite Marketing?

Share your challenges with us and we’ll share with you how our clients have used Satellite Marketing and other communications to address their target markets. Contact us to send an email or schedule a call.

Samples of Our Work

Want to see the range of work we’ve developed for our clients – so far? Please explore this section for portfolio samples of all types of communications.

“The term “Satellite Marketing™” is a trade name developed by Kevin Popovic and used by him and Ideahaus, LLC, to describe the business process described herein. All rights to the term are reserved, and you may use the term only with the permission of, or proper accreditation to Kevin Popovic and Ideahaus, LLC.”